In the face of all the discontent with certain characters and their skill trees, I want to highlight Wigfrid

[Mortalbane]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

Stopping your gameplay isn't a downside?

For me it's too minor to be called a downside. You can get mighty while fighting or doing chores - if you couldn't, then it would qualify.

About WX i'm joking. But who knows...

[abrocator]

I just started playing new Wigfrid. Some thoughts.

Overall I’m thankful for some fun items: rond, elding spear, battle song quiver, and the commander helmet.

• Beefalo tree: completely random gameplay-wise. No synergy except for the new inspiration skill.
• Battle saddle: seems inferior to other advanced saddles. Also no synergy with her as a character. Why tank with a beefalo when you can tank as yourself and deal more damage? The saddle should give her a skill instead like charge attack that deals AOE and scares small mobs like spiders. Then she can dismount after it and fight on foot.
• Commander helmet: neat that it regenerates. It seems useful in a large server where you won’t be able to give dreadstone helmets to all players. So she can rely on simple materials for her own needs. But it really should have something that makes it live up to its name. You’re a commander so why no synergy with battle songs? Why not some skill that one player in the fighting group (doesn’t have to be Wigfrid I guess) can use to buff the group?
• Quiver for battle songs: we all love to hoard heh. This is great.
• Battle rond: this seems useful. Maybe most people kite perfectly but it can give you an alternative playstyle. Too bad that it seems like an early-mid game weapon. I will probably miss this unique ability when I can’t use it later in the game.
• Planar damage this and that: like I’ve always said this planar stuff only serves to bloat skill trees by giving these options to new skill tree characters to that they can “keep up” with this new mechanic. Planar all things should just be removed from the game. Also stat boost skills are boring.
• Elding spear: I see that good players like Lardee put this to excellent use. And like Mike said you can still use charge forever even if you are not good enough to access CC in the first 35 days.

Overall: some good items came out of a bit random/arbitrary skill tree.

What I might have liked as branches:

• Newbie path: lean into the tank and spank Wigfrid. Skills that help her as a basic equipment builder and built-in warrior easy mode. The skill tree is a perfect way to make her work for both newbies and for intermediate and expert players. (Admittedly the final upgrade to the elding spear is a great example of this approach.) 
• Intermediate/Expert warrior path: Remove her built-in damage buff and damage resistance but compensate by giving her skills which makes her more powerful than Newbie Wigfrid, but making use of these powers requires skillful and intelligent play. You could also remove vampirism. Partially give back damage buffs and also (if applicable) vampirism through better songs. The idea here is to make the player kite or block more. The battle rond could be here, or an improved version. Or: give her this ability for more normal weapons so she can use the block skill throughout the late game as well. Also change inspiration to last longer but require killing more dangerous (in terms of damage output?) enemies. The whole inspiration thing seems to have too much overlap with characters like Wortox and Wendy. (And the Elding Spear charge farm: back to farming killer bees.) Also maybe she could gain much more inspiration from defeating bosses solo? That way she can warm up with Eye of Terror and be a great support for the group when facing a raid boss. Or go into the ruins to defeat the werepig solo. Multi-tasking for the team.
  • Throwable spears (I’m sure Mike has discussed this): a javelin skill that consumes 50% of the durability and kills the enemy if they are at less than X% HP (if not it only does normal damage). For example: instant kill when at 3% or less HP, or max 400 HP (for bigger enemies like Toadstool). Inherently not spammable but also useful. Now there is a justification to rework the IMO too simplistic DST mechanic of “vampirism” on every hit ability (there’s no finesse to this ability) and instead give here a solid bonus for each last-hit-kill in terms of health, sanity, inspiration, or even more things.
  • Throwable spears (continued): this could be a gateway to a real (gameplay-wise, not just “valkyries would have mounts”) beefalo synergy: a warrior character that has the ability to finish off fleeing enemies. A rogue/assassin. The beefalo makes sense for the speed. But other than McTusk this doesn’t feel that applicable right now. 
  • This branch could also allow her to (either through the skill tree or with in-game decisions) choose whether to focus on support casting (some of the songs) or being a solo warrior power house. That way she will be equally comfortable in a solo world, in five-man raid boss fights, and as the loner who defeats bosses on a multiplayer server by herself. 
  • Hostile flare: she can already use this for on-demand fighting of e.g. Deerclops. But she could get some character-specific ways to summon a larger variety of monsters for raising her inspiration.
• Crafting path: More varied (early to late game) crafting. But these crafts consume inspiration in order to avoid swap character syndrome (you have to play as her if you want to craft). She could have her own “kill list” (killed while she was in the vicinity or with throwable spears allow that she does the final blow) which she can use to help her craft these things; some items require minor boss kills (spider queen, tree guard), others boss, others raid boss. Each kill can be used for a craft. Or maybe for a batch of crafts like 5 of a weapon at a time. A kill requirement also avoids swap character syndrome.
  • And if you like swapping characters: I think it’s satisfying to partially build the world as one character and let others (or myself through the portal) enjoy the fruits of that. Wigfrid’s legacy then becomes all the special crafts she has built by actively fighting in order to unlock them.
  • This also makes sure that she is properly differentiated from Wortox and Willow: inspiration is something you gain a lot of from killing difficult enemies, not farming bees.

Also about her (kind of) meat diet downside:

• Higher inspiration accentuates her downsides: high inspiration Wigfrid is a strict food-has-to-have-meat-in-it kinda gal! No “sweets too” loopholes. This makes sense since the more inspired she is the more she gets into character. Now you get the opportunity for creating awkward circumstances where a lot of fighting locks you out of using the jellybeans that you brought to deal with freezing damage (I imagine some Wigfrid players don’t bring healing food for fighting but might rely on jellybeans for environmental damage tanking like for many other characters). We could also expand her downsides: what other downsides could a valkyrie cosplayer have?

[Mike23Ua]

3 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I mean they buffed Wx's downside and as for Wolgang his is additional sanity loss and the changed his other one to needing to workout.

I'd be surprised if they touch Walter's downside though.

I won’t be surprised, I know someone who is actually deadly allergic to bees, like I mean they’ll swell up with blisters and it’ll seal off their throat & nasal passages, but people like that have to keep medically prescribed epiy pens on hand to stab themselves with.

I won’t be shocked at all if Walters skill tree gave him something like that. Plus the booster shot is already in the game for when we need to repair portions of our blacked out health bars, so it’s not unlike we aren’t already stabbing ourselves with shot needles anyway.

[Copyafriend]

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Plus the booster shot is already in the game for when we need to repair portions of our blacked out health bars, so it’s not unlike we aren’t already stabbing ourselves with shot needles anyway.

plot twist, booster shots are made with bee stingers, using one now causes 10 maximum health damage

[AliceShiki]

10 hours ago, CuteC said:

I would love to agree with you because this is something I'd want, but tanking in dst is meaningless with bosses having aoe attacks that hit other people anyway and also how often they switch aggro for absolutely no reason.

The only time it would be useful is if the rest of your team is doing ranged attacks... and even then it's still useless because the boss aggro isn't very good with ranged stuff.

I mean, not everyone plays on parties? And not all solo players are good enough to perfectly kite all boss attacks and stuff.

I usually play with some friends, but I had a lot of fun soloing Dragonfly (cheeseless), and the Battle Rond was a huge help there. I don't think I would have been able to win without it (granted, I also didn't use the fire dmg immunity song, because that one felt like it was going to trivialize the fight a bit too much).

Dragonfly aside, it's also a neat weapon that lets you land more blows than normal against bosses with very easy kiting patterns, because you can just parry the attack instead of kiting. I haven't tested this much, but I know I can land 7 hits instead of 6 against the non-enraged Dragonfly with the Battle Rond. Stuff like Treeguards and Deerclops should also be pretty easy to parry with it.

I'd also say it can be a useful weapon in situations where you really want a backpack + utility helm, because you'll then still have armor in your hand slot... Like ruins exploration and stuff. But then you have to be extra careful with your weapon duration (which would not be a problem if you just brought a ham bat instead), so I'm not sure if this is actually that useful... Still, it's a nice benefit of the Battle Rond.

So... I honestly like it quite a bit. Battle Rond is really fun.

[CuteC]

1 hour ago, AliceShiki said:

I mean, not everyone plays on parties?

Silly of me to expect a game called don't starve TOGETHER to have teamwork features.

[AliceShiki]

5 hours ago, CuteC said:

Silly of me to expect a game called don't starve TOGETHER to have teamwork features.

You could, or you could actually read the rest of the post where the actual meat of the content is in.

You do you, I guess.

[Evelo]

I still think all crafts should be base line and not tied behind skill sets.