New Wurt insight tree discussion - what's useful, what's not?

[Jorvalt]

Now that people have had a lot of time to try this stuff out, I was curious to hear your thoughts on this matter. Here's mine:

The Amphibian tree seems like a bit of a mixed bag.

Mental Fluidity I and II are very situational, as Wurt practically never has to worry about sanity anyway just by holding a fish in her inventory. Doubling that sanity gain but also requiring you to be wet just doesn't seem all that great. However, you have to take these two to get to the lower part of the tree.

All-Weather scales seems alright, it won't save you from freezing during winter at all predictably, and it can save you from freezing in like mid-Spring but not early Spring when it's still cold.

Slippery Hide I and II seem OK on paper, granting you +31 and +50 health at full wetness respectively, but gaining wetness is actually very difficult as your two main sources of wetness would be either jumping off a boat (which you basically would have to do in prep and not in the middle of something) and water balloons (which cost ice that could be better used on other stuff). Plus, your wetness seems to decrease rather quickly, even when it's not hot, so that extra health does not stick around for long at all.

Hydrous Healing I and II seem a bit more useful, as it'd allow you to easily heal back up after a trip without having to expend any more resources, but that's about all that it would seem good for to me.

 

Mermdom is a whole thing, it's basically just a bunch of mini-trees.

I think itchcraft is okay. Some might say it's overrated, but mosquitoes can be useful, and the mosquito bomb is fun to use.

Sensible Swamp Fighter is arguably useless because most of the time merms are expendable and you can always just get more. Swamp Pathfinder seems equally meh, you're not going to see that speed benefit in the majority of cases. I guess you could make marsh roads or something, but why.

I think most people agree the King pauldron/crown/trident stuff is rather useful. Pauldron is easy to get early on, the crown you could get early I guess if you ruins rush, the trident you won't get until much later though. And that also requires you to fight a boss that most consider to be very unfun.

Sated Sovereign is really not all that useful until you get to Sated Sovereign III with the reduced hunger rate. Unless you're making really long trips, keeping the king fed is not hard. And even if he does die, you can just get a new king. It's rare that you're going to be caught out in the middle of fighting a boss or something.

Community Feeder I is always worth it imo, just for the faster respawn (32% if it's full). The second level is decent, but it only increases the rate by an additional 16% if you have it completely filled so I don't know if that's worth an entire point.

Industrious Merm not only allows your merms to chop trees and mine rocks as they could before, but now they can also till soil and dig up tree stumps, which is actually really nice (especially the tilling soil part). Dunno if the upgraded one is worth it, the tools are dirt cheap and if you have a bunch of merms it's fast either way so the increased efficiency doesn't matter much.

Hardheaded doesn't really seem worth it, the first tier is only a 30% reduction with a bit less durability than a Football Helmet, the second is a 50% reduction with the same durability as a Football Helmet. I know it's cheap protection, but Merm Guards literally respawn in 4 minutes unless it's winter, and regular merms can't use the helmets.

 

I know there's a debate on lunar vs. shadow merms, and from what I've seen people say lunar merms tend to be stronger in general, but you also have to admit the utility of having a merm with a second life, especially the fact that the shadows can then follow you into the caves, is incredibly useful.

 

What do you guys think?

[Evelo]

I really dislike Merms because I dislike followers in general. They trivialize the game substantially imo. So I tend to run with Mosquito Skills x3; Kings Quest x3; Sated Sovereign X3; 6/7 Amphibian Traits (I skip on Slippery Hide II).

But that's me. I ignore the affinities since they don't affect Wurt at all just her merms and... I don't like merms so there ye go.

[Sesekriri]

Getting all 3 levels of the mosquito perks for me is a must. It's not the greatest healing, but it allows you to obtain huge quantities of mid-level unspoilable healing items as early as you like, for the cost of a single beefalo wool. It's absolutely resource free, with only a time investment if running through the swamp in evening, in any season but winter, which is something Wurt wants to be doing anyways to recruit Merms, kill tentacles for spots, and harvest reeds for her merm houses.

I find I struggle to heal as Wurt and these are a great option until you can set up farms to reliably get better vegetarian healing.

[Brotid01]

You look oddly familiar I like it.

Amphibian.

Mental Fluidity:

Wurt by default just need to hold a fish + Top hat and with time new ways to sustain your sanity become more accessible like Walurs Hat, Bananas Shake, Dried Kelp, Green Mushroom, etc.

I don’t think is perk is useful to newest player or even advanced ones because you need certain level of knowledge but by the time you reach that level you already know other ways to manage your sanity, don’t give me wrong the effects are quite powerful with the right conditions meet you can reach and keep +20/min sanity even higher but again I don't like it.

 

Weather-Scales:

it kinda makes sense you can't fully protect you from the cold winter.

 

Slippery Hide:

Good to use before and middle of combat in my case i have a plentiful amount of blood sacks and ice so water balloons are the last thing I'm should worried about.

 

Hydrous healing:

You know why I like spring? Is a good season to farm crops, it rains all day (Mostly) with the help of my big o’ Gramophone and merms I can easily farm big amounts of Dragon Fruit with no effort at all which traduces in Dragonpies, why i bring this topic?

Why should I spend 1 or 2 insight points for healing? when I can get healing with no effort at all.

 

On one hand I can just slowly heal or I can click one time eat a dragon pie and keep moving, sure you waste time cooking if you don’t properly have a nice kitchen set-up but with good planification and Bundle Wraps because yea Bee Queen is on the list of things as Wurt you can easily kill you end it up with Dragon Pies for years.

 

And Jellybeans are a thing sure the effect is not as strong but make the work done without insight points you can use it in middle of combat or in your free time as well and that’s lead me to the third point.

Merms.

I’m a lazy person so having a big army of merms… suits me… and the problem with that is if you don’t take damage at all because you merms do all the job your shield doesn’t take damage and if you don’t take damage there’s no damage to absorb also no damage to heal in the first place… so maybe is that I don’t like Sloppy Hide or Hydrous Healing because reaching certain point in the game I barely use it.

 

Swamp master I mean Mermdom.

King’s Quest Branch:

I love the Mini Side Quest nothing to say.

 

Itchycraft:

Fertilizzer are meh, The King of Merms drops a lot of seeds meaning you can get Rot, Guano (From Bird Cage) also the King drops Kelp even if you still don’t have kelp fronds is possible to craft Growth Formula maybe not as effective but cheaper and insight-free.

The T-Virus bloodshot a lot of people like it but with enough merms you can kill almost everything without casualties and as they say “if he dies he dies” if yours Guards dies it doesn't takes long to respawn them anyways.

But but hear me out… Lil’Itchy and mosquitoes Molotov are enough to love it even with all mentioned before i like the mosquito branch.

 

Sated Sovereign:

Not a big fan but nothing against neither.

 

Sensitible Swamp Fighter:

Useless I agreed with you.

 

Community Feeder:

I like decoration but truly this perk is out of my knowledge field I never truly tried I guess... I can use it to place a few houses near a mysery toadstool and keep the guards respawning over and over again Idk...

 

Industrious Merm:

A mandatory perk in my opinion having at least tier 1 unlocked.

 

Hardheaded:

I like it not only as decoration but also extend the life of your merms like two birds one rock, but you also can use football helmets so... idk still like as decoration.

 

Affinities:

Playing solo Lunar playing casual Shadow is easier to get, cheaper you get 2 merms for doing pretty much nothing and also love hearing the Shadow reaper speaking to me.  

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Hardheaded doesn't really seem worth it, the first tier is only a 30% reduction with a bit less durability than a Football Helmet, the second is a 50% reduction with the same durability as a Football Helmet. I know it's cheap protection, but Merm Guards literally respawn in 4 minutes unless it's winter, and regular merms can't use the helmets.

Figured I mention that if you have the king's first quest complete it's actually 45% for tier 1 and 75% damage reduction for tier 2 combined with the dodge ability from the second quest makes a massive difference in some of the more dangerous boss fights but I do agree if your not facing more dangerous content the helmets are effectively useless.

6 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

I know there's a debate on lunar vs. shadow merms, and from what I've seen people say lunar merms tend to be stronger in general, but you also have to admit the utility of having a merm with a second life, especially the fact that the shadows can then follow you into the caves, is incredibly useful.

The way I see it shadow merms are best for short term worlds while lunar are better for long term worlds. The reason I say this is shadow merm's double hp doesn't really matter after you've gotten all the merm upgrades setup as they already become extremely durable without the second life but in the early game you don't really want your limited merms dying to things like tree guards before you get setup and having the early unlimited loyalty is a great boon for early game base building. The dreaded mudslinger is also great for some burst dps.

Lunar merms on the other hand have thorns damage, synergize better with the kelp dish since after mass recruiting they can be changed with the brightshade staff, and drop tentacle spots on death making for much faster merm guard farming.

 

 

 

As for the amphibian tree I do agree that Wurt dries off too fast after getting wet which is my main gripe about the whole branch and why I often avoid it.

Swamp fighter is worthless in my eyes as even if you wanted to use bloodshots on merms it only heals 150 hp to them at a time and if your not healing them the merms will only distance themselves from combat once and just stand there taking a beating after unlike bunnymen who keep fleeing until they're somewhat healed I feel like this skill just wasn't thought out very well.

[ChintzyGnat]

All the skills are useful. Just not to everyone...

[Jorvalt]

6 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Figured I mention that if you have the king's first quest complete it's actually 45% for tier 1 and 75% damage reduction for tier 2 combined with the dodge ability from the second quest makes a massive difference in some of the more dangerous boss fights but I do agree if your not facing more dangerous content the helmets are effectively useless.

Actually 45% and 65%, but this also applies to any other head armor bear in mind.

5 hours ago, ChintzyGnat said:

All the skills are useful. Just not to everyone...

First of all: nah.

Second of all, this isn't just about usefulness or power, but also about fun factor. Most of the skills from trees added so far that I consider to be good are the ones that change the way a character plays, in a good way. Willow being a really good example of that. Wurt's skills are mostly just numbers gains and don't really change the ways she plays in any way. I'm not saying Wurt isn't fun to play, I'm just saying it's nice to have different playstyles and variety.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Jorvalt said:

Actually 45% and 65%, but this also applies to any other head armor bear in mind.

Whoops I accidently added a extra 10 percent on the latter that being said it does make a fair bit of difference. While not needed it does become pretty crazy with Wigfrid's helm.

[Jorvalt]

So, now that I've done proper testing, Hydrous Healing is actually just awful. Like, really awful. Wiki says the healing rate is 0.5 health every 4 seconds at the second rank, and yeah. It really is that slow. 1 hp per 8 seconds, at 100% wetness mind you, which you will only have for a fraction of a second. So even in the best case scenario it's terrible. Slippery hide is surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) more useful than that.

I honestly really wish something in her tree would've given her a limited swim ability. Like, allow her to swim for short bursts before either drowning or returning to land. That would've made a lot of sense considering you need kelp so much and much of the kelp tends to be just off shore, out of reach. Would've made more sense than even more sanity gain, or a healing ability that's almost entirely useless.

[Ketrai]

Okay I'm amazed no one has mentioned it yet. But you can fill mosquito sacs up at water ponds. Your welcome, the wetness perks are stronger and more convenient than you think...

Like sure, hydrous healing is stupid weak but I'd grab the wetness = health. I do think they should buff sacs to give 40 wetness or something because going from 8hp per mosquito sack to an equivalent 10hp isn't a great deal, especially as it starts to decay if it isn't raining. And it's pretty useless against dragonfly to begin with.

[Mysterious box]

20 minutes ago, Ketrai said:

Okay I'm amazed no one has mentioned it yet. But you can fill mosquito sacs up at water ponds. Your welcome, the wetness perks are stronger and more convenient than you think...

Like sure, hydrous healing is stupid weak but I'd grab the wetness = health. I do think they should buff sacs to give 40 wetness or something because going from 8hp per mosquito sack to an equivalent 10hp isn't a great deal, especially as it starts to decay if it isn't raining. And it's pretty useless against dragonfly to begin with.

Because it's really not a good solution you still dry off too fast for it to matter on top of it making you cold on throws meaning you have to pace them and building up sacks for this isn't the fastest process especially if you using mosquito bombs and the medicine which are a far more useful use of the sacks.

[Jakepeng99]

On 8/20/2024 at 5:09 AM, Evelo said:

But that's me. I ignore the affinities since they don't affect Wurt at all just her merms and... I don't like merms so there ye go.

Big False.

The lunar one gives her enlightment, marsh speed boost and wetness.

The shadow gives shadow tentacles, marsh speed boost and wetness. You also get the affinities for extra damage and defence too.

 

Edit: Idk why i commented with "Big false"

[cybers2001]

Mental fluidity seems nice when paired with fashion melon, though. Especially early game. Frees up an inventory slot, too.

[Evelo]

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Big False.

The lunar one gives her enlightment, marsh speed boost and wetness.

The shadow gives shadow tentacles, marsh speed boost and wetness. You also get the affinities for extra damage and defence too.

Didn't know she gets the affinity benefit. So that's nice. The wetness is so slow it is practically ignorable. Shadow tentacles seems useful but you need to invest 2 points into it. Either way they require 2 points that imo would be better spent else where. Just how I play the game is all. If you get the affinity bonus from only 1 point I might consider the Lunar one since 10% extra damage to shadow creatures is always nice, plus I like how the lunar merms look even if I rarely use them for anything besides tree chopping.

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, cybers2001 said:

Mental fluidity seems nice when paired with fashion melon, though. Especially early game. Frees up an inventory slot, too.

It doesn't really help too much for sanity gain since the hat drains sanity even when Wurt is using it.

[Brotid01]

3 hours ago, cybers2001 said:

Mental fluidity seems nice when paired with fashion melon, though. Especially early game. Frees up an inventory slot, too.

Using the console commands, I’m going to set my stats with the next values:

After 1 Minute this are the stats:

Resulting in the next:

·         +3 Hp.

·         +1 Sanity.

Funny enough the insanity aura from our melon melon water water hat almost nullified Mental Fluidity barely gaining 1 sanity per minute if is "always day setting", you’re not fighting, you not eating something it gives you insanity, you are not in caves let’s be real that’s not happening in real gameplay making other hats far better on early-days of course I'm not counting the fact you need a watermelon even before getting silk because a top hat are way better in this case.

and yeah hydrous healing also sucks with the hat.

[cybers2001]

41 minutes ago, Brotid01 said:

Using the console commands, I’m going to set my stats with the next values:

 

 

 

After 1 Minute this are the stats:

 

 

 

Resulting in the next:

 

·         +3 Hp.

 

·         +1 Sanity.

 

Funny enough the insanity aura from our melon melon water water hat almost nullified Mental Fluidity barely gaining 1 sanity per minute if is "always day setting", you’re not fighting, you not eating something it gives you insanity, you are not in caves let’s be real that’s not happening in real gameplay making other hats far better on early-days of course I'm not counting the fact you need a watermelon even before getting silk because a top hat are way better in this case.

and yeah hydrous healing also sucks with the hat.

 

Well my point is for use in summer, as the fashion melon prevents overheating, and with Wurt being Wurt, the downsides are negated or turned into upsides.

[douan33]

Wurt main here- I do like the skill tree of course but it could be way better.

Like for Warly skill tree I see people throwing ideas like "Nostalgic Smell II: When Waryl's crockpot is cooking a food, players in the area of the crockpot do not suffer from any sanity drain". Like that infinitely changes Warly! Chef character cooking food mid-fight fighting Fuelweaver? Amazing! 

But Wurt skill tree is just basic. You can literally just reset insight points for Wurt to build everything... that's just bad. That's not a skill tree that's just adding new buildings to Wurt. I was personally shocked when I found out I could do that.

• Slightly less shaddy tools is just straight up bad. I use it for merms to tend the farm but I can not just drop my merms whenever I want so their tools end up breaking for cutting a tree or breaking a boulder so I can never just efficiently use it.
• Armor for merms is good, but it is not worth 2 points on the skill tree. It should have been a thing from the start.
• Communal Kelp is good but it is janky. Some merms will gain 2000 loyalty while some will gain 300.
• Not to mention that lunar aligned side of the skill tree is straight up worse than shadow but it applies to every character lol.

We should've gotten more control over the merms, not 30 seconds saved with communal kelp dish.

Also merms already do every task fast, I do not even see the difference when they use tools since you should already be using at least 15 merms to cut the trees. They can just keep cutting when you are digging up the stumps, but they don't!! They don't do work when you are not nearby!

My ideas for reworked Wurt skill tree (that won't happen)

1. You want to add buildings to her? Sure, add a communal house or an honorary statue that merms like to hangout around. So when you recruit them you can just drop them off there, where they lose %300 slower loyalty and they don't follow you anymore, and you can recruit them one by one or all at the same time.
2. No fishing things for Wurt? Really? Wurt should've been able to get some fishing perks like directly pick up fish in the ocean or from the lakes. It would maybe take like 30 seconds for each fish so rod would still be good for her but you wouldn't need to build a fishing rod for a fish lover character just to try to catch ONE ice bream or one sunfish (forgot the name)
3. Wurt can not trade with Pig King, so they added trading with Merm King, and they never touched that feature again. At least they should've added a new tab that you can use fish to trade, like you know how you give fish or trinkets to merm king for seeds and kelp and rot? That but maybe you could choose what you are gonna get with a new tab. Nothing even OP just 2 fish for 6 seeds OR 2 fish for 6 gold OR 2 fish for 8 kelps ETC. Nothing too fancy just more control over the player.

So basically they added some small mostly useful but wasn't neccessary features to wurt as a skill tree (excluding shadow aligned part)

Edit: Oh and King's Quest is just straight up good. The idea, the way they implemented it and the benefits.

 

[Mysterious box]

30 minutes ago, douan33 said:

Not to mention that lunar aligned side of the skill tree is straight up worse than shadow but it applies to every character lol.

Most people seem to agree at this point that the lunar side is better long term while the shadow side is better for short play sessions so I think they struck a good balance as far as Wurt's alignments go lunar side even better synergizes with the kelp dish.

 

32 minutes ago, douan33 said:

We should've gotten more control over the merms, not 30 seconds saved with communal kelp dish.

I think this was done to not power creep Webber while still improve on the functionality of merms.

33 minutes ago, douan33 said:

Also merms already do every task fast, I do not even see the difference when they use tools since you should already be using at least 15 merms to cut the trees. They can just keep cutting when you are digging up the stumps, but they don't!! They don't do work when you are not nearby!

There's a very noticeable difference as their speed becomes comparable to bearger's and you end up not even being able to keep up with them even when focusing purely on collection,

 

35 minutes ago, douan33 said:

Wurt can not trade with Pig King, so they added trading with Merm King, and they never touched that feature again. At least they should've added a new tab that you can use fish to trade, like you know how you give fish or trinkets to merm king for seeds and kelp and rot? That but maybe you could choose what you are gonna get with a new tab. Nothing even OP just 2 fish for 6 seeds OR 2 fish for 6 gold OR 2 fish for 8 kelps ETC. Nothing too fancy just more control over the player.

They've touched this multiple times it's the reason you can get gold and reeds from the merm king now and that his rewards increase based on fish weight.

[Brotid01]

1 hour ago, cybers2001 said:

Well my point is for use in summer, as the fashion melon prevents overheating, and with Wurt being Wurt, the downsides are negated or turned into upsides.

Wrong again my little one, Fashion Le Melon doesn't prevents overheating instead just extend the time before overheating is a tiny but big difference.

• Refrigerant Circuit from Wx-78 prevents you from overheating.
• Ice Amulet prevents you from overheating.
• Hiding in the caves prevents you from overheating.

Wearing Fashion Melon Doesn't prevent overheating.

Fashion Melon Overheat:

Spoiler

And you may say "Well of course you still need other items to survive like thermal stone".

But combining others types of gear also gives you better results over the Melon Hat but from now let's just make a comparison:

Spoiler

As mentioned before Fashion Melon doesn't give you as much by itself is not even the greatest or the cheapest, have the worst durability, spoil faster, can't be repair, the sanity boost nullify the mental fluidity boost, just slow your heat needing other sources to keep you cold anyways, you need to farm a lot to get the seeds and then farm a lot to amass the fruit, is recommended to kill bee queen in order to protect your fruits/seeds from spoiling or waste your time farming over and over again to restock because if you don’t and you loose your seeds and let them turn into rot you’ll have to start all over again from zero, in comparison to other hats who the only requirement is pig skin, ice or just killing a boss, or items you can easily store every time you want and doesn't spoil even when the durability goes down you can repair it anytime and gives you more stats in all aspects, making the Melon Hat who gives you nothing juts not worth it.

That's why I don't like answering at post feel sometimes I'm too intense hahaha... even tho I respect everyone who dares to defy the boring meta and try something different I like that but the true is even on Wurt the Melon is mediocre at best and is not your fault some items are far behind, outdated or pointless and klei really needs to do something about it.

Let's take for example the Scalemail: all the Mobs who dare to touch you are gonna burn taking damage, leaving ashes when dying instead of loot, burning everything around, making such a mess and It's funny because an Armor should make you feel safe about taking damage not afraid of taking damage y'know? Ha!
Something similar happens to Fashion Melon, the idea is good, the intention is good, the execution... not much.

Now if you ask me 1 simple change is enough to turn the Melon Hat into a pretty good item for Wurt in early game not meta but good:
Make the Fashion Melon gives sanity instead to only Wurt by +2/Min. with that and mental fluidity plus hydrous healing our Melon can finally turn into a cheap good hat beating a lot of items in early game for Wurt-only.

Otherwise, Ice Cube is the Winner for early summer-only if you can stack it with Walking Cane, Swamp speed, Magiluminescense or Beefalos and as far i remember the ice Cube indeed prevents you from overheating but i need to check that but it protects you from the worst days of summer it should do the same for early summer as well.

2 hours ago, douan33 said:

Wurt can not trade with Pig King, so they added trading with Merm King, and they never touched that feature again. At least they should've added a new tab that you can use fish to trade, like you know how you give fish or trinkets to merm king for seeds and kelp and rot? That but maybe you could choose what you are gonna get with a new tab. Nothing even OP just 2 fish for 6 seeds OR 2 fish for 6 gold OR 2 fish for 8 kelps ETC. Nothing too fancy just more control over the player.

Funny enough you can trade as "Wurt" by turning yourself into Wonkey and trade all the trinkets if you don't like using the Celestial Portal, then after that go to Moon Quay and turn yourself into Merm again.

On the other hand, you can base near any coast and place an Ocean Trawler or a few for better results, so while you are working on the base farming, crafting, etc. passively you are going to catch sea fishes for trade.
Sadly, a more complex system of trading is not happening anytime soon or anytime in general so F.

[cybers2001]

2 hours ago, Brotid01 said:

Wrong again my little one, Fashion Le Melon doesn't prevents overheating instead just extend the time before overheating is a tiny but big difference.

• Refrigerant Circuit from Wx-78 prevents you from overheating.
• Ice Amulet prevents you from overheating.
• Hiding in the caves prevents you from overheating.

Wearing Fashion Melon Doesn't prevent overheating.

Fashion Melon Overheat:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

As per both wikis, the fashion melon sets the player’s temperature to 55C.

Quote

Cooling Down

There are several ways to cool oneself down:

• An Endothermic Fire, Endothermic Fire Pit or Polar Light is a stationary light source that works like a fire, but they cool the player instead.
• A Chilled Amulet, Ice Cube, or Fashion Melonwill lower temperature when worn. Note that these have different cooling values. The Ice Cube and Fashion Melon will also cause Wetness while worn, so caution is advised especially as WX-78.

Might need to test it again lil buddy. Your video shows your temp starting at 92C and ending at 88C, so looks like it was in the process of doing its job to me.

Considering this, comparing fashion melon and ice cube to the other hats is flawed reasoning: even eyebrella requires you to cool down at some point, as you say. It’s superior to the chilled amulet, which only lasts 3/4 of a day, and to thermal stones which last no more than a day, typically. Ice breams can live up to 4 days with Wurt, but again that means you need to juggle fish in your inventory. Meanwhile, 3 day spoilage of a fashion melon is arbitrary considering how easy it is to mass produce melons.

[douan33]

1 hour ago, Brotid01 said:

Funny enough you can trade as "Wurt" by turning yourself into Wonkey and trade all the trinkets if you don't like using the Celestial Portal, then after that go to Moon Quay and turn yourself into Merm again.

On the other hand, you can base near any coast and place an Ocean Trawler or a few for better results, so while you are working on the base farming, crafting, etc. passively you are going to catch sea fishes for trade.
Sadly, a more complex system of trading is not happening anytime soon or anytime in general so F.

I do not really use Ocean Trawlers as Wurt. Even as other characters you don't need a passive fish farm. My entire point about Merm King's trading system was that it could be way better with a simple touch in a Wurt related update that included Merm King too. But that could be just me, so yes you are completely right, if you needed to trade with PK so bad there's more than enough 5-minute solutions.

5 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Most people seem to agree at this point that the lunar side is better long term while the shadow side is better for short play sessions so I think they struck a good balance as far as Wurt's alignments go lunar side even better synergizes with the kelp dish.

Is that so? I always hear that shadow alignment is superior while lunar is superior on paper. 

And in my opinion, merms demolish any non AoE boss attacks anyways, but when it comes to AoE bosses at least shadow merms do more damage long-term. I had like 15 merm guard hutches for celestial champion (so I could basically skip the first 1.5 phases) but they managed to outlive celestial champion, I think I still had 4 of them as shadow merms and they stayed alive for 2 waves of hounds and during that time they helped me with tree chopping. That was my first time trying shadow aligned side of Wurt and I really liked how it turned out so I may be a little too biased, but I think it is just better.

5 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

There's a very noticeable difference as their speed becomes comparable to bearger's and you end up not even being able to keep up with them even when focusing purely on collection,

 

They've touched this multiple times it's the reason you can get gold and reeds from the merm king now and that his rewards increase based on fish weight.

Then we must be planting our pinecones so different. Most of the time, even though I distribute them after cutting a single tree they try to cut the same tree, that's basically 12 useless merms just trying to walk. Since they dig up the stumps I get to collecting as soon as possible, but maybe after 5 trees cut they just walk back while I'm just trying to pick the log of the first bunch of trees they were able to cut so fast. I'm sorry but I can not believe this is not a universal Wurt experience, I have been maining Wurt for 2 years now.

About the trade, I was not talking about ocean fishes at all. I generally think trading with merm king is not really good, I'll do it if I'm low on seeds late-game trying to fill my polar bearger bin or I happen to have a pond and a fishing rod nearby and needed kelp, but I believe you can't relate to that because I kinda carry some Edgy Rick DNA, but I still think even if they didn't directly change merm king trades they could change Wurt's fishing. 

[Mysterious box]

9 hours ago, douan33 said:

Is that so? I always hear that shadow alignment is superior while lunar is superior on paper. 

And in my opinion, merms demolish any non AoE boss attacks anyways, but when it comes to AoE bosses at least shadow merms do more damage long-term. I had like 15 merm guard hutches for celestial champion (so I could basically skip the first 1.5 phases) but they managed to outlive celestial champion, I think I still had 4 of them as shadow merms and they stayed alive for 2 waves of hounds and during that time they helped me with tree chopping. That was my first time trying shadow aligned side of Wurt and I really liked how it turned out so I may be a little too biased, but I think it is just better.

There's the thing post update with all the upgrades merms already demolish aoe bosses keep in mind that even lunar merms can take down enraged klaus the only scenario where I see shadow merms working better for bossing is if you for whatever reason don't give them upgrades so them having a extra life doesn't really matter at all if they just aren't dying. Outside of being revived however lunar merms have access to thorns damage, easier access to planar damage, and easier mass recruitment conversion when paired with the brightshade staff and kelp dish, and easier access to tentacle spots since they drop them on death.

This is where the divide happens shadow merms will take you further with less investment but when you invest there are no real advantages to shadow merms over lunar ones which strikes a very good balance.