Some Suggestions for Warly's Skill Tree

[ZephyrDDD]

During my single-player experience with Warly, I found the following pain points:

1. Being fed up with specific dish tests the player's familiarity with the recipes, but the trial-and-error process of planning the menu only has penalties, lacking positive feedback.

2. Side effects of eating only cooked food:

(1)limited inventory. Cookware and ingredients (carried in advance & collected along the way) will occupy additional inventories, while the chef pouch will occupy backpack space.

(2) Preservation. There are more short-shelf-life food available in the first autumn and first winter, which makes it difficult for Warly to travel far in the early stages.

(3) Relying on farming. Relying heavily on farming profits without any skills about farming.

3. All Warly's skills serve for food itself but possess no positive traits himself.

4. Slow development pace. Cooking urgently requires farming, and  the selection and cultivation of crops will consume a lot of time in the early stages.

5. Weakness in the later stages. All buffs act on magnification of single-target actions, not sufficient to form a qualitative change, in both combat and routine scenes.

I tried to design some skills to solve these problems (not a complete skill tree):

 

Chef Pouch

• Chef Pouch I：Using 1 gear, 1 blue gem to upgrade the [chef pouch].
  • [chef pouch I] 6 inventories, 50% rotting speed, equipped on backpack space.
• Chef Pouch II：Using 2 pigskins, 1 thulecite to upgrade the [chef pouch I]. (requires science machine)
  • [chef pouch II] 8 inventories, 50% rotting speed, equipped on backpack space.

• Chef Pouch III：Using 2 lune tree blossom, 1 orange gem to upgrade the [chef pouch II]. (requires alchemy engine)
  • [chef pouch III] 8 inventories, 50% rotting speed, can only accommodate cookware, ingredients, and cooking products, and can be stored in other containers.

Quote

In the early stage, Warly can use chef pouch I as a hand ice box; with thulecite in ancient ruins, Warly can use ice-box-backpack; On the lunar Island, Warly can have a “tackle box” contains his food and cookware.

Great Cook

• Agile Cook：reduce Warly's cooking time by 20%.
• Masterly Cook：Warly has a 20% chance of obtaining twice the product when cooking with a portable cooking pot.
• The Taste of Home：After consuming the same food produced by the same portable crock pot 5 times in a row within 10 seconds, the diner will be transported back to the location of the portable crock pot(not work when the target pot stored in Warly's inventory

Quote

In the early stage, Warly have only one pot, cooking a meal may cost half a day; he also need a chance to fully use some rare ingredients; "The Taste of Home" is his background story, which is his obsession: food should bring someone home

Seasoning

• MSG：Warly can make 2 [MSG] with 3 kelp fronds in the portable grinding mill.
  • [MSG]brings food delicate flavor,  which increases diner's movement speed by 120% after consumption, lasting for 4 minutes.
• Frugal Seasoning：The consumption of raw materials for making seasonings is reduced.
  • e.g. make 1 chili flakes with 1 pepper.

• Storable Station：Portable seasoning station has 6 inventories which can only store seasonings.

Quote

MSG allows Warly travel farther in the early stage and makes it possible to have Lv.3 acceleration without the path; while selecting the seeds, you can make the seasoning earlier; storable seasoning station relive the stress of storage.

Gourmet

• Gourmet I：Earns 120% bonus of food, multiplied by other algorithms.
  • Warly earns additional buff from some chef's dish with specifically seasoning:
    • salty puffed potato souffle: slowly heal 45 sanity, 40 health within 4 minutes.
    • garlic bone bouillon: have 50% chance of recovering 3 health when injured.
    • garlic monster tartare: have 50% chance of consuming 3 health during an attack, result a group attack with 10 damage.
• Gourmet II：After consuming 3 different types of dishes in 4 minutes, the time required for food related operations is reduced by 50%.
  • these operations contains: planting, watering, conversing with plants, harvesting, hammering giant crops, cooking etc.
  • Warly earns additional buff from some chef's dish with specifically seasoning:
    • sweet fresh fruit crepes: have 50% chance of obtaining double the product after work.
    • delicate fish cordon bleu: offshore work efficiency +50% (rowing/scraping barnacles/tapping salt mines, etc.).
• Gourmet III：The more different flavors of food eaten in 4 minutes, the greater the benefits brought by that flavor (up to 6 types).
  • Penalty:eating the same flavor of food within 2 days will reduce seasoning benefits.
    • the maximum penalty for the 2-day tasting period is 50% of the reward for the 5th or later tasting.
  • 4 minutes counts back from the time the flavor of the food is consumed.
  • when there were 1-4 different previous flavors, each one provided an additional 8% magnification; When there are 5 different previous flavors, the profit is 150%.

  • When the maximum penalty for any flavor during the tasting period is reached or  6 or more flavors of food are consumed within 0.5 days, the profits of all food becomes 80%, multiplied by other algorithms.

  • Warly earns additional buff from some chef's dish with specifically seasoning:

    • spicy hot dragon chili salad: have 50% chance of burning the target for 3s while attacking.

    • delicate moqueca: have 50% chance of causing target's moisture value +2.

e.g.1
TIME/min	0	1	2	3	4	5	6
SEASONING		A,B	C,D	E	F
BUFF		100%,108%	116%,124%	132%	150%
e.g.2
TIME/min	0	1	2	3	4	5	6
SEASONING	A	A	A	A	A	A	A
BUFF	100%	90%	80%	65%	50%	30%	30%
e.g.3
TIME/min	0	1	2	3	4	5	6
SEASONING	A		B,C	D	E	F	B
BUFF	100%		108%,116%	124%	124%	132%	124%*0.9

 

Quote

Based on the origin taste period, I extend the settings to seasonings and give it some positive points. You are able to choose eating 6 different flavored seasoning foods in a short period of time to get high explosive profit, while the menu for the next 2 days needs to be carefully arranged; Or you can also choose to rotate and consume different flavors to maintain the 100%~132% profit brought by the 5 seasonings. In that case, frequent use of single flavor seasonings is also not encouraged.

Moon & Shadow (mutually exclusive)

Moon

• Taste of Moon：Warly can make 2 [lunar crystals] with 3 pure brilliance in the portable grinding mill.
  • [lunar crystals]makes food bitter,  which increases damage to the Shadow faction by 20% and have 30% chance to generate moon spirit(20 planar damage), lasting for 4 minutes. 
  • characters won't eat sour food after bitter food.
  • the formula can be influenced by [Frugal Seasoning]
  • the probability of generating moon spirits, shadow faction damage increasing, and moon spirit damage in bitter food will receive a bonus of [Gourmet III].
• Lunar Gourmet：After consuming bitter food, Warly has an additional chance to generate moon spirits with each attack, and the moon spirits gets AOE;
  • Warly achieves a small-scale luminous effect, and slowly recovered a total of 100 sanity within 4 minutes.
  • Warly earns additional buff from some bitter chef's dish:
    • bitter glow berry mousse: after being irradiated for 10 seconds, the organisms in the surrounding area fell asleep.
    • bitter asparagazpacho: have 50% chance of freezing the target for 3s while attacking.

Shadow

• Taste of Shadow：Warly can make 2 [rosy vinegar] with 3 pure horror in the portable grinding mill.
  • [rosy vinegar]makes food sour,  which increases damage to the Moon faction by 20% and have 30% chance to generate shadow tentacle(20 planar damage), lasting for 4 minutes. 
  • characters won't eat bitter food after sour food.
  • the formula can be influenced by [Frugal Seasoning]
  • the probability of generating shadow tentacles, moon faction damage increasing, and shadow tentacles' damage in bitter food will receive a bonus of [Gourmet III].
• Rose Gourmet：After consuming sour food, Warly has an additional chance to generate shadow tentacles with each attack, and the shadow tentacles gets AOE;
  • When Warly is injured, his sanity will be deducted first instead of his health, and slowly decrease a total of 100  sanity within 4 minutes.
  • Warly earns additional buff from some sour chef's dish:
    • sour grim galette: makes Warly's appetite upper limit 100, sanity upper limit 400, health upper limit 100.
    • sour volt goat chaud-froid: have 50% chance to trigger a lightning ball explosion(AOE) during an attack, slowing down the target by 2 seconds.

Quote

After the ancient fuelweaver and celestial champion, Warly needs more AOE and control capability to better face the enemies.

These designs are just some premature mechanistic ideas and still lack consideration in terms of numerical values. I hope that with the support of the skill tree, Warly will no longer just be a cooking tool, but will have his own unique style when facing various bosses and daily work in the middle and later stages.

Welcome everyone to discuss!