Wurt's skilltree has some flaws, but...

[Timberwolf227]

I've been looking through the forums to find new info for the beta (since there are only a few videos out at the time of writing this), and this might be a hot take, but I think a lot of the Wurt skilltree is good for the most part.

I don't even completely hate the mosquito tree idea. A lot of the items in it are at least alright, they really just need to be buffed some and the first mosquito plush that makes them neutral should be moved into Itchcraft 1. This way you could have only 2 points needed to max it out and then make the final tier buff the items more. As it currently stands the Bloodshot heals Wurt for 16 immediately with 10 more healed over the next few seconds. This is when the perk Itchcraft 2 is unlocked though so to make using a skill point on it more worth it buff the healing a bit, because where the item is at right now with only costing 2 mosquito sacks is really nice. A nice idea for the skeeter bomb has been said multiple times, but make the mosquitos spawned be neutral to merms or an idea I personally loved was to make them heal merms when they bite them to act as a medic utility item for your troops. Also the mosquito plush should probably give a better reason for us to carry it around and take up an inventory spot. Being neutral to mosquitos is alright but not overly worth the item taking up space. Instead you could potentially give it the use of making mosquitos allied to her. It's not super great either, but make it so if something attacks her the mosquitos consider it an attack on them as well and assist. (The item should probably also make nearby survivors at least neutral as well, but that might already be a feature). Mosquito allies is at least more interesting and enticing to use than just neutral and this way you could bug net some and release them near a fight for at least a tiny bit of utility as a distraction. On top of it, maybe add a sanity gain as well? But we'll get into that and the wetness conflicting as well with the fish in inventory system later.

I really like the affinity skills and think they are interesting and really fun, but as pointed out by a few others, the aoe from the lunar merms probably shouldn't target other merms at all and definitely shouldn't target other lunar merms. The other concern I've heard is that the shadow affinity is a little lackluster compared to the lunar and a way you could potentially make the shadow merms a little better is to give them like a maxwell's shadow puppet slash attack. I see how that might be too good and too similar to maxwell, so maybe give the shadow merms a time limit for how long they can exist if it's not already a thing. (I'm going to be honest, I don't know too much about the shadow merms but after this I'll test a few more things and see if there are any better perks for them.

For the amphibious tree, I actually really like it as well. I agree that the wetness temperature perk should make Wurt immune to the temperture effects of being wet (there are frogs that literally can be frozen and thaw while being perfectly fine after all). The sanity gain is kind of pointless for older players, but you could still have it just merge the first 2 levels involving sanity together. This makes it an option for players learning how to manage Wurts unique downsides when just playing her for the first time. There is also the passive ability to gain sanity with a fish in the inventory as well which makes the perk less enticing, but getting to the higher levels in the tree would be less painful with the 2 perks merged into only 1. The dodge ability is really cool as a concept, but should probably be a bit stronger since wetness passively drains over time. This makes the perk less useful in long term fights that you would want this most in. A decent idea imo would be to add a few more options for perks or just one perk with some or all of the following ideas: Making wetness last longer, making it be gained faster, not losing wetness at all in spring, immunity to flames while wet but at the cost of wetness, making being in the swamp passively increase wetness. Anyways, just a few ideas. Also a lot of people have mentioned swimming and fishermerms, which are alright somewhat. Swimming in salt water definitely needs a downside to justify being able to go to the islands and basically be free of a lot of attackers.

Fishermerms are also ok i guess? I get why people would want them to an extent and it would-be great to have other merm occupations, but although Wurt has more uses for fish than most survivors they seem like they would be under utilized. Wurt's primary uses for fish (to my knowledge) are: Craftsmerm houses, Clever disguise, fish in inventory for sanity gain, recruiting merms, and trading with merm king. For making craftsmerms houses I could see, but they are usually overshadowed by warrior merms anyway which don't require a fish anyway to make. I don't see how anyone would need to mass produce that many clever disguises to justify a whole new merm role. You do not need that many fish in your inventory to justify that for sanity gain either. Recruiting merms maybe? But veggies do that cheaper and are way easier to get. Leaving merm king as the main use for them, but there are only a few standout drops in his loot table. Tentacle spots for making more of Wurts crafts and maybe  for  Wickerbottom. Another is the specific crop seeds which is decent for growing specific foods, and on top of the regular seeds he drops you have a ton of seeds to hire merms. The last standout drop is gold I guess? This makes sense because of Wurt's relationship with pigs, but you already have a stockpile of gold usually anyways by late game. The problem is that most of these issues are solved when a merm dies anyways and drops a fish, and many people have already stated that merms are expendable and respawn fast. Basically the main use I could see for them would ocean fish for gold or exclusive crafts that are required for those specific fish, but I genuinely don't know if it's worth a whole new job/type of merm.

A good point I can see is potentially a farming merm though, we already have a new fertilizer item in the mosquito section as well. A few ideas for that would be bringing back the old farm plots, and making them a Wurt exclusive with a swampified look. They couldbe made so only farming merms could use them basically making it something you leave near your base and let them passively grow. This works great because it allows for recruiting merms like having a fishermerm, but Wurt can actually eat the food this time. Another thought is to add an interaction between the new mosquito fertilizer and the plot to either boost the speed or just skip to the next stage like the old plots did. You could even make it have to be placed on swamp turf to go with the theme of the merm buildings already.

The last few thoughts on the skill tree has to be some of the remaining swamp master skills. After the bug with the marble armor pauldrons is fixed that's going to be a cool feature. The merm king hunger increase and hunger rate decrease is fine for the most part. I have no idea what sensible swamp fighter does since it and the merm king food descriptions are bugged, so we'll see about that one when it's fixed. The faster marsh movement speed for nearby allies isn't great but is pretty harmless. The new buildings are pretty cool, but they have a few issues. Like  some have mentioned, the second tier only requires a tentacle spot to build over the first tier which is weird so maybe remove the ability to craft the better one and just make it be able to be acquired by giving the previous tier the spots to upgrade it to that tier. This makes the old one at least make sense to build to get to the last one whereas before you would only want to make the better one if you have the second tier skill. The only other weird bit is that the kelp dish doesn't feed merm king which makes more sense than respawning the merms faster given the current respawn times already.

Overall though, even though it has a lot of problems, I can't help but love the Wurt skill tree for what it brings and for what potential it could have. I've been having a good time with this beta so far, and think Klei did pretty well for releasing the update when they did! Afterall, the update wasn't completely working when it released, but they kept their promise and released it to us anyways. They could've delayed it, but chose to let us test it as is, which gives us more time for us to give them feedback. Anyways though this is a lot to read so if you read it all, thank you, and if you have counterpoints or other ideas, I'm all for hearing everyone's thoughts!

 

 

 

[marshyds]

28 minutes ago, Timberwolf227 said:

Fishermerms are also ok i guess? I get why people would want them to an extent and it would-be great to have other merm occupations, but although Wurt has more uses for fish than most survivors they seem like they would be under utilized. Wurt's primary uses for fish (to my knowledge) are: Craftsmerm houses, Clever disguise, fish in inventory for sanity gain, recruiting merms, and trading with merm king. For making craftsmerms houses I could see, but they are usually overshadowed by warrior merms anyway which don't require a fish anyway to make.

A potential solution is making the fishing merms also swim in the ocean, giving them double uses.

In terms of fish as food for others, it could be possible to have to pay them a minimum of 16 or so food to receive said fish.

Another option is adding one or two skills that gives EVERY ocean fish an ability so its more interesting for her (Don't you dare split it into 6 different skills!)

If such a skill were to be added, the swimming merms could fish in the ocean, bringing back new toys to mess with every day.

In general the skilltree is full of "Tier I and II" filler, which could be compressed and refilled with more merm content.

[paodocevoante1]

37 minutes ago, Timberwolf227 said:

I've been looking through the forums to find new info for the beta (since there are only a few videos out at the time of writing this), and this might be a hot take, but I think a lot of the Wurt skilltree is good for the most part.

I don't even completely hate the mosquito tree idea. A lot of the items in it are at least alright, they really just need to be buffed some and the first mosquito plush that makes them neutral should be moved into Itchcraft 1. This way you could have only 2 points needed to max it out and then make the final tier buff the items more. As it currently stands the Bloodshot heals Wurt for 16 immediately with 10 more healed over the next few seconds. This is when the perk Itchcraft 2 is unlocked though so to make using a skill point on it more worth it buff the healing a bit, because where the item is at right now with only costing 2 mosquito sacks is really nice. A nice idea for the skeeter bomb has been said multiple times, but make the mosquitos spawned be neutral to merms or an idea I personally loved was to make them heal merms when they bite them to act as a medic utility item for your troops. Also the mosquito plush should probably give a better reason for us to carry it around and take up an inventory spot. Being neutral to mosquitos is alright but not overly worth the item taking up space. Instead you could potentially give it the use of making mosquitos allied to her. It's not super great either, but make it so if something attacks her the mosquitos consider it an attack on them as well and assist. (The item should probably also make nearby survivors at least neutral as well, but that might already be a feature). Mosquito allies is at least more interesting and enticing to use than just neutral and this way you could bug net some and release them near a fight for at least a tiny bit of utility as a distraction. On top of it, maybe add a sanity gain as well? But we'll get into that and the wetness conflicting as well with the fish in inventory system later.

I really like the affinity skills and think they are interesting and really fun, but as pointed out by a few others, the aoe from the lunar merms probably shouldn't target other merms at all and definitely shouldn't target other lunar merms. The other concern I've heard is that the shadow affinity is a little lackluster compared to the lunar and a way you could potentially make the shadow merms a little better is to give them like a maxwell's shadow puppet slash attack. I see how that might be too good and too similar to maxwell, so maybe give the shadow merms a time limit for how long they can exist if it's not already a thing. (I'm going to be honest, I don't know too much about the shadow merms but after this I'll test a few more things and see if there are any better perks for them.

For the amphibious tree, I actually really like it as well. I agree that the wetness temperature perk should make Wurt immune to the temperture effects of being wet (there are frogs that literally can be frozen and thaw while being perfectly fine after all). The sanity gain is kind of pointless for older players, but you could still have it just merge the first 2 levels involving sanity together. This makes it an option for players learning how to manage Wurts unique downsides when just playing her for the first time. There is also the passive ability to gain sanity with a fish in the inventory as well which makes the perk less enticing, but getting to the higher levels in the tree would be less painful with the 2 perks merged into only 1. The dodge ability is really cool as a concept, but should probably be a bit stronger since wetness passively drains over time. This makes the perk less useful in long term fights that you would want this most in. A decent idea imo would be to add a few more options for perks or just one perk with some or all of the following ideas: Making wetness last longer, making it be gained faster, not losing wetness at all in spring, immunity to flames while wet but at the cost of wetness, making being in the swamp passively increase wetness. Anyways, just a few ideas. Also a lot of people have mentioned swimming and fishermerms, which are alright somewhat. Swimming in salt water definitely needs a downside to justify being able to go to the islands and basically be free of a lot of attackers.

Fishermerms are also ok i guess? I get why people would want them to an extent and it would-be great to have other merm occupations, but although Wurt has more uses for fish than most survivors they seem like they would be under utilized. Wurt's primary uses for fish (to my knowledge) are: Craftsmerm houses, Clever disguise, fish in inventory for sanity gain, recruiting merms, and trading with merm king. For making craftsmerms houses I could see, but they are usually overshadowed by warrior merms anyway which don't require a fish anyway to make. I don't see how anyone would need to mass produce that many clever disguises to justify a whole new merm role. You do not need that many fish in your inventory to justify that for sanity gain either. Recruiting merms maybe? But veggies do that cheaper and are way easier to get. Leaving merm king as the main use for them, but there are only a few standout drops in his loot table. Tentacle spots for making more of Wurts crafts and maybe  for  Wickerbottom. Another is the specific crop seeds which is decent for growing specific foods, and on top of the regular seeds he drops you have a ton of seeds to hire merms. The last standout drop is gold I guess? This makes sense because of Wurt's relationship with pigs, but you already have a stockpile of gold usually anyways by late game. The problem is that most of these issues are solved when a merm dies anyways and drops a fish, and many people have already stated that merms are expendable and respawn fast. Basically the main use I could see for them would ocean fish for gold or exclusive crafts that are required for those specific fish, but I genuinely don't know if it's worth a whole new job/type of merm.

A good point I can see is potentially a farming merm though, we already have a new fertilizer item in the mosquito section as well. A few ideas for that would be bringing back the old farm plots, and making them a Wurt exclusive with a swampified look. They couldbe made so only farming merms could use them basically making it something you leave near your base and let them passively grow. This works great because it allows for recruiting merms like having a fishermerm, but Wurt can actually eat the food this time. Another thought is to add an interaction between the new mosquito fertilizer and the plot to either boost the speed or just skip to the next stage like the old plots did. You could even make it have to be placed on swamp turf to go with the theme of the merm buildings already.

The last few thoughts on the skill tree has to be some of the remaining swamp master skills. After the bug with the marble armor pauldrons is fixed that's going to be a cool feature. The merm king hunger increase and hunger rate decrease is fine for the most part. I have no idea what sensible swamp fighter does since it and the merm king food descriptions are bugged, so we'll see about that one when it's fixed. The faster marsh movement speed for nearby allies isn't great but is pretty harmless. The new buildings are pretty cool, but they have a few issues. Like  some have mentioned, the second tier only requires a tentacle spot to build over the first tier which is weird so maybe remove the ability to craft the better one and just make it be able to be acquired by giving the previous tier the spots to upgrade it to that tier. This makes the old one at least make sense to build to get to the last one whereas before you would only want to make the better one if you have the second tier skill. The only other weird bit is that the kelp dish doesn't feed merm king which makes more sense than respawning the merms faster given the current respawn times already.

Overall though, even though it has a lot of problems, I can't help but love the Wurt skill tree for what it brings and for what potential it could have. I've been having a good time with this beta so far, and think Klei did pretty well for releasing the update when they did! Afterall, the update wasn't completely working when it released, but they kept their promise and released it to us anyways. They could've delayed it, but chose to let us test it as is, which gives us more time for us to give them feedback. Anyways though this is a lot to read so if you read it all, thank you, and if you have counterpoints or other ideas, I'm all for hearing everyone's thoughts!

 

 

 

Hey Timber, I wanted to ask you if you understand King Merm's quest and what they do because I'm confused

[Timberwolf227]

5 minutes ago, marshyds said:

A potential solution is making the fishing merms also swim in the ocean, giving them double uses.

In terms of fish as food for others, it could be possible to have to pay them a minimum of 16 or so food to receive said fish.

Another option is adding one or two skills that gives EVERY ocean fish an ability so its more interesting for her (Don't you dare split it into 6 different skills!)

If such a skill were to be added, the swimming merms could fish in the ocean, bringing back new toys to mess with every day.

In general the skilltree is full of "Tier I and II" filler, which could be compressed and refilled with more merm content.

I actually really like this idea. I was a bit skeptical of having the merms swim, but I see the appeal for this idea. Swimming would also be nice for saving space on boats even, since they get pretty crowded with all of the merm minions following, so having them swim would also work for them following the boat. As for the fish abilities, I love that idea as well! It would give a reason to have other fish in the inventory other than the standard pond fish and I agree it should be only one or two skills to get the benefits. This has warmed me up to the idea of the fishing merms because that's an amazing benefit to having them go get the harder to find fish. I also agree that the tree is pretty bloated as well, as I said above, The mosquito plush should definitely be part of Itchcraft 1 instead of requiring the perk to even get to the Itchcraft Perks. Also the sanity gain while wet from amphibious should at minimum be changed to 1 rank if not switched to something else entirely.

13 minutes ago, paodocevoante1 said:

Hey Timber, I wanted to ask you if you understand King Merm's quest and what they do because I'm confused

Oh yeah no problem! The quests are just to give the merm king an item that corresponds to the skill. The first rank is a Marble suit (it's bugged currently andwillcrash the game), the second is a thulecite crown, and the third is the strident trident. They basically just buff merms based on what item it was. The marble suit is damage resistance, the crown is avoiding damage i'm pretty sure, and the trident boosts damage or possibly adds 3 hit combos (more testing is needed).

[flamboyant wolf]

Honestly, everything I didn't like aside, I kinda like the idea of the toolshed and the armory(I'm still not sure if I got the names right).

They're pretty fun, if not the new merm huts, then having a few different tool shacks for different "professions" could be cool.