Hot Take on Shadow and Lunar Affinities

[HalfBigBang]

Heyo! This has been on my mind for a long, long time and I believe since we are getting more shadow content that it would be the perfect time to mention a gripe I have with the whole mechanic. Now don't get me wrong, I like affinities. They make sense with the direction the story is seems to be heading, plus they are just cool and fun (looking at you, Willow and Wurt). With that being said, there is one small issue.

You see when you select an affinity, there is this small but noticeable boost that all characters have. Lunar Affinity gives you a +10% protection from Lunar Aligned mobs and a +10% damage to Shadow Aligned mobs. Quite frankly this just doesn't make much sense. Sure the lunar and shadow side are at war yes, but think on this. When you go down lets say the lunar path, what do you do? You go fight lunar bosses (and presumably in the future the same logic would apply for the shadow side)! And what would you say would be more effective when fighting them, doing a little more damage every hit, or taking less damage if they do hit you? The damage of course. So then by extension to go fight the lunar bosses you would need to work for Charlie not Wagstaff! Even though the whole reason your fighting them is because Wagstaff asked you to!

Now you might be thinking, "10% really isn't that much to get worked up over, it's not even listed as a benefit in the skill trees after all." The thing is when fighting bosses what you normally do is try to do as much damage as you can and as for your health you just make alot of healing items so the 10% reduction is essentially redundant while the extra damage is by comparison a massive boon! 

You shouldn't need to be rocking the entire void gear with Shadow Affinity to go fight Lunar Deerclops or Lunar Bearger! It just doesn't make any sense for the stuff given to you to be most effective when working for the opposing team! It's just nonsensical to be honest

Tell me what you guys think am I completely off the radar or am I on to something here?

tldr: shadow affinity is best for working with Wagstaff and that just doesn't track

[Semind]

I think Wagstaff is an unrelated third party to the Shadow/Lunar conflict, personally.

Edit: Unaffiliated, not unrelated. Obviously Wagstaff has something to do with the lunar rifts activating, I just don't fully see that he's in cahoots with Alter as opposed to Charlie who appears to be a thrall for whatever is beyond the Ancient Gate.

[Echsrick]

first of all, why is the 10% attack and defense hidden? second, i dont think you understand it, the skill tree describtion says "cryptic founder" (wagstaff) and "shadow queen" (charlie) and given in 1 video where charlie repairs the gateway them "the shadow rift stuff creatures" charlie seems annoyed because she dit not get what she want, so the thing is she gives you the protection as much as she can from shadow stuff if you side with her, the attack bonus comes from being passivly gettin the shadow powers, and it is fair enought to get protection from the creatures you just let loose onto the world, same thing with wagstaff, he gives you protection so he can do more research stuff of the moon stuff

[HalfBigBang]

17 minutes ago, Semind said:

I think Wagstaff is an unrelated third party to the Shadow/Lunar conflict, personally.

Edit: Unaffiliated, not unrelated. Obviously Wagstaff has something to do with the lunar rifts activating, I just don't fully see that he's in cahoots with Alter as opposed to Charlie who appears to be a thrall for whatever is beyond the Ancient Gate.

Although True that Wagstaff is not directly related to lunar in the way Charlie is to the shadows is, there are two things to consider. The first is that from a purely game design perspective the Wagstaff and Lunar side are the same even tho the lunar forces and Wagstaff are two separate things lore wise. Second and more importantly at the end of the day Wagstaff is harnessing Lunar magic while Charlie is harnessing shadow magic. So really, the in game distinction shouldn't necessarily be important besides the mentioning of the Cryptic Founder and the Shadow Queen or lackthereoff in the case of wormwood when it says "Tap into your lunar roots" for people interested in the lore.

17 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

first of all, why is the 10% attack and defense hidden? second, i dont think you understand it, the skill tree describtion says "cryptic founder" (wagstaff) and "shadow queen" (charlie) and given in 1 video where charlie repairs the gateway them "the shadow rift stuff creatures" charlie seems annoyed because she dit not get what she want, so the thing is she gives you the protection as much as she can from shadow stuff if you side with her, the attack bonus comes from being passivly gettin the shadow powers, and it is fair enought to get protection from the creatures you just let loose onto the world, same thing with wagstaff, he gives you protection so he can do more research stuff of the moon stuff

Seems a little convoluted for an explanation when you could lets say have Shadow Side give you 10% protection AND damage against shadow mobs and have the Lunar Side give you 10% protection and damage against lunar mobs.

Maybe it's just confusingly worded but what i'm getting from what you wrote is that Charlie isn't really in cahoots with Them anymore, and so she feels the least she could do is give you protection against what she is partly responsible for unleashing? Hard to really say what her motives are as she seems more allusive then Wagstaff in her appearances not to mention just straight up being two people (merged into one granted). As for Wagstaff no notes the 10% protection from lunar mobs makes perfect sense to me.

 

Still though, the issue remains that to go down the lunar path optimally you need to go get shadow gear and have shadow affinity and to go down the shadow path you need Lunar gear and the lunar affinity. And that just straight up doesn't make much sense.

[Echsrick]

54 minutes ago, HalfBigBang said:

Still though, the issue remains that to go down the lunar path optimally you need to go get shadow gear and have shadow affinity and to go down the shadow path you need Lunar gear and the lunar affinity. And that just straight up doesn't make much sense.

you dont need the thing to kill the thing, i mean, if you side with A why would you want to get things that hurt A more then B?

[Cassielu]

I think the way it looks now makes a lot more sense both in lore and gameplay.

On the one hand. Wagstaff and Charlie just want you to share the power they have, and things like the lunar fire formula and the recall shadow creatures are the main things they want to give you. +10% damage only because lunar and shadow powers that are equally hostile to anything that has other's powers.

On the other hand, it doesn't make too much sense to give lunar rift boosts to players before they've even touched the lunar rift content.

[Danila6300]

It seems to me that protection is an underestimated parameter. 

[Wumpair]

Hello!  Haven't been active in the forums for a while, but this seems like an interesting debate to participate

It is true that there is something strange about the affinities. For a long time I didn't understand - why is it that in order to unlock the skill, for lunar we need to kill the celectial champion (CC), and for shadow ancient fuel weaver (AFW)? It seems counterintuitive, shouldn't it be the other way around? (Should you get the shadow boost for instance if you help the shadows by killing the lunar champion?)

But then remember who is responsible for the afinities - Charlie and Wagstaf; not 'Then', Alter and the Shadow-Eye (In my head canon its name is Constant, as it is oposite from change-alter). Charlie wants us to kill AFW, harness his power to oppen the portal, even if the long awaited meeting with Constant goes wrong; Wagstaf aswell wants us to kill CC to harness his energy. I think that the small 10% buff is the result of killing AFW/CC and that energy being released, part of this power gets into the survivals, resulting in a boost in defence for the respective side and a boost in attack for the oposite. 

So for me, lore-wise those 10% boosts make sence; the other question is what affinity is best to fight what boss, and this just comes down to personal preferences and some characters having better abilities from one side than the other. 

[Semind]

11 hours ago, HalfBigBang said:

Although True that Wagstaff is not directly related to lunar in the way Charlie is to the shadows is, there are two things to consider. The first is that from a purely game design perspective the Wagstaff and Lunar side are the same even tho the lunar forces and Wagstaff are two separate things lore wise. Second and more importantly at the end of the day Wagstaff is harnessing Lunar magic while Charlie is harnessing shadow magic. So really, the in game distinction shouldn't necessarily be important besides the mentioning of the Cryptic Founder and the Shadow Queen or lackthereoff in the case of wormwood when it says "Tap into your lunar roots" for people interested in the lore.

Did we have an explicit mention somewhere that Cryptic Founder refers to Wagstaff? I wasn't sure if that was a red herring or not. But at any rate I needed to read more closely since your assessment is based on gameplay implications seemingly. I guess I don't quite see what you see in saying that doing more damage is an obviously more helpful buff than taking less damage. The logic is presumably the boss has to take damage for the player to succeed, the player doesn't necessarily have to take damage to succeed.  Edit: Again, reading carefully is not in my wheelhouse right now. To speak to your point on healing items can just be increased to compensate for more damage. It's a spectrum based on the player's skill. Surely you wouldn't agree that armor is basically pointless since you can just bring more healing items to make up for the extra damage taken, yeah? That means there's a line somewhere that the convenience of reducing the enemy's damage outweighs the option of just preparing more healing. And that line isn't going to be the same for everyone. Some players will be worse at avoiding attacks, especially if damage comes in closely bunched together attacks. That's cool if you're not benefiting much from taking 10% less damage for a few hits, it doesn't mean someone won't appreciably benefit from greater survivability from, say 4 hounds and a Possessed Varg's breath coming at you all at once.

[HalfBigBang]

14 hours ago, Wumpair said:

Hello!  Haven't been active in the forums for a while, but this seems like an interesting debate to participate

It is true that there is something strange about the affinities. For a long time I didn't understand - why is it that in order to unlock the skill, for lunar we need to kill the celectial champion (CC), and for shadow ancient fuel weaver (AFW)? It seems counterintuitive, shouldn't it be the other way around? (Should you get the shadow boost for instance if you help the shadows by killing the lunar champion?)

But then remember who is responsible for the afinities - Charlie and Wagstaf; not 'Then', Alter and the Shadow-Eye (In my head canon its name is Constant, as it is oposite from change-alter). Charlie wants us to kill AFW, harness his power to oppen the portal, even if the long awaited meeting with Constant goes wrong; Wagstaf aswell wants us to kill CC to harness his energy. I think that the small 10% buff is the result of killing AFW/CC and that energy being released, part of this power gets into the survivals, resulting in a boost in defence for the respective side and a boost in attack for the oposite. 

So for me, lore-wise those 10% boosts make sence; the other question is what affinity is best to fight what boss, and this just comes down to personal preferences and some characters having better abilities from one side than the other. 

Heyo thanks for stopping by  I think it's important to remember that both lore wise and ingame wise, both CC and FW have been defeated. It's more so on which survivor is working for who ya know? So the 10% boosts is less from energy being unleashed upon their defeat, and more so a boon from Charlie or Wagstaff themselves. As for the character specific affinity boosts yeah that's just a playstyle thing

 

9 hours ago, Semind said:

Did we have an explicit mention somewhere that Cryptic Founder refers to Wagstaff? I wasn't sure if that was a red herring or not. But at any rate I needed to read more closely since your assessment is based on gameplay implications seemingly. I guess I don't quite see what you see in saying that doing more damage is an obviously more helpful buff than taking less damage. The logic is presumably the boss has to take damage for the player to succeed, the player doesn't necessarily have to take damage to succeed.  Edit: Again, reading carefully is not in my wheelhouse right now. To speak to your point on healing items can just be increased to compensate for more damage. It's a spectrum based on the player's skill. Surely you wouldn't agree that armor is basically pointless since you can just bring more healing items to make up for the extra damage taken, yeah? That means there's a line somewhere that the convenience of reducing the enemy's damage outweighs the option of just preparing more healing. And that line isn't going to be the same for everyone. Some players will be worse at avoiding attacks, especially if damage comes in closely bunched together attacks. That's cool if you're not benefiting much from taking 10% less damage for a few hits, it doesn't mean someone won't appreciably benefit from greater survivability from, say 4 hounds and a Possessed Varg's breath coming at you all at once.

Don't get me wrong, the 10% protection isn't useless, it's more so that more damage will always be useful while taking less damage might not necessarily be. Personally I think it would make the most sense if by siding with lunar you get protection against lunar and more damage against it and vice versa. That way if you lets say want to go the Lunar path and go help Wagstaff fight Armoured Bearger and whatnot, as you've sided with him explicitly he'd help you out more.

[cropo]

18 hours ago, Danila6300 said:

It seems to me that protection is an underestimated parameter. 

I know right? I picked shadow affinity for Wilson precisely to take less damage from shadow stuff. Slapping a free damage resistance on my char is one of the best buffs I could ask for.

[Danila6300]

20 hours ago, cropo said:

I know right? I picked shadow affinity for Wilson precisely to take less damage from shadow stuff. Slapping a free damage resistance on my char is one of the best buffs I could ask for.

Everyone has their own preferences. 

[Wumpair]

On 9/2/2024 at 4:17 PM, Semind said:

Did we have an explicit mention somewhere that Cryptic Founder refers to Wagstaff?

 

On 9/2/2024 at 9:40 PM, HalfBigBang said:

Heyo thanks for stopping by  I think it's important to remember that both lore wise and ingame wise, both CC and FW have been defeated. It's more so on which survivor is working for who ya know? So the 10% boosts is less from energy being unleashed upon their defeat, and more so a boon from Charlie or Wagstaff themselves. As for the character specific affinity boosts yeah that's just a playstyle thing

Great point! On the other hand lore-wise you unlock the afinities only after killing CC/AFW atleast once; so I think that although we can play with them early, it is just a game-mechanic and lore-wise the survivers get them at the moment of killing CC/AFW. One thing I think I didn't make clear: I think that only the 10% boosts are what is related to killing CC/AFW, the other perks the characters get are from Charlie/Wagstaf directly. Then again Winona doesn't get any 10% buff, so who knows...