If you were to dictate Warly's skill tree without giving him additional unique dishes.

[chirsg]

Unique dishes, to me, are pretty bad. 
Cooking being such an integral part of the game, just to have the benefits be wrapped up in bundle wrap and character swapped away isn't a good method at all, nor is having effects locked behind a single character.

in;b4, people saying the problem is character switching.
This is a matter of the bed being made and sleeping in it.

 

I don't think that Warly having further unique dishes is good for the game at all. But therein lies the problem. That's really all he can give. In singleplayer, the isolated experience and the general pace of the game generally being faster, he fit in a lot well due to his downside interacting with the premise of the game.

 

Furthermore, in singleplayer, cooking was one of the most interesting parts of the game with relation to how dishes helped with more than just honoring hunger/sanity/health,

- tropical bouillabaisse provided wetness protection, small speed boosts and wave immunity, also requiring a unique farming system to make it viable in the first place

- nettle rolls and meated nettles not only gave you immunity from the season's passive danger, but also gave a small questline to manage logistics of growing nettles, navigating a very dangerous season where they grew best and interaction with the world in general to get technology to a point where you could farm them

- Coffee was basically an illicit substance and a good metric on human behavior and addiction. 

With merely 3 dishes, the game was made far more interesting for all characters than warly and his litany of dishes you could both live without and could potentially trivialize the game if you had access to them.

 

 

Warly to me is a problem character and I truly do believe my detractors will ratio me by saying "There isn't a problem with Warly at all"

But I think Warly can definitely graduate from switch character to non, and I'm wondering outside of unique dishes, how would you do it?

 

For me, I'd probably introduce a foraging minigame not unlike Winona's hunt for experiments where she hotwires the boxes and Wendy's hunt for hunt for ghostly trinkets. Have him hunt for herbs periodically that are only visible to him.

The abundance of food is so pronounced in dst, that it would be kind of moot to have him exclusively yield more meat on slaughter of wildlife, but it makes thematic sense, so that could make it in, only because 'why not?'

And finally, a minigame that has him determine what he's cooking and how he'd interact with the cooking process, like for example, dishes tagged "Meat" would have him dice meat, season, tenderize etc. Dishes tagged "Veggie" would have him chopping vegetables and grinding herbs. Dishes tagged "Goodies" would have him do most of the presentation tasks attributed with pastry chef works.

 

But those are really just my ideas, and honestly, they're lacking for the most part.

My point is, that from now until eternity, cooking will never be interesting while Warly exists, and to remedy that, Warly needs to have something make him as a character stand alone without locking interesting parts of the game behind him. 

 

 

[GimplyGoose]

I'm not sure how it could be worked into a skill tree, but I had an idea that Warly could get 'cravings' for certain foods and that fulfilling those cravings could grant him some kind of benefit.

 

[chirsg]

18 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

I'm not sure how it could be worked into a skill tree, but I had an idea that Warly could get 'cravings' for certain foods and that fulfilling those cravings could grant him some kind of benefit.

 

Gnawrly.

I like it. 

[Wormboi]

I heard suggestions with warly about giving a skill that gives him higher chance to get "special" items from mobs that he kills (Like killing a volt goat has higher chance getting a horn as warly than any other character)

[Tranoze]

One problem i have with warly is i have to constantly look up the wiki for dishes i can make for ingredients at hand. As professional chef, he should know how to use ingredients better than other.
What if when he inspect ingredients, it show all possible dishes that use that ingredient as main?

[Mr Giggio]

This guy has interesting PoV:

 

[Brago-sama]

Tbh id be happy with a simple dish stat boost if he cooks it in his crockpot. Self proclaimed chef yet his bacon and eggs are the same as Wilsons.

I cant wait for his tree. I love cooking in this game

[DegenerateFurry]

I have to disagree here, and yes, I am a Warly main. The chef character being able to make things nobody else can make just makes sense. However, I'll humor you because I think it's absolutely possible to make cooking interesting for everyone while Warly exists: you just have Warly do the cool new stuff better than everyone else.
Note that this isn't necessarily about a Warly skill tree since that's not the point from your post that I feel like addressing.

I'd like to see wheat -> flour -> dough -> various baked goods added to the game. Maybe they're baked in a special oven structure (and Warly gets a portable oven that bakes faster, equivalent to his crock pot). You'd need a non-portable grinding mill for normal characters to make flour with, perhaps requiring an additional wheat item per flour produced compared to Warly's (for instance, his portable grinder has a 2 wheat : 1 flour recipe and the standard grinder has a 3 wheat : 1 flour recipe).

I'd like to see herbs that we can forage for and garden, and that give some kind of stat boosts to food that vary depending on the herb used and the type of food used (for example, dill would give more sanity if you put it on fish-based dishes, but it'd take away sanity value from sweet treats like ice cream and banana pops). Warly could just use less of them (maybe 1 herb item instead of 2 per seasoned dish?) and gain higher stat increases from them. We'd need some kind of non-portable seasoning station for normal characters.

We could represent Warly's general cooking skills by having him get some ingredients back when making a crock pot cook, showing that he makes better use of materials - a morsel for each big meat used, a chance to get a veggie/fruit back when using one in the crock pot (representing only using what's needed and having the knife skills to waste less), etc. It'd be case-by-case and some things would give nothing back, but you get the idea. I feel like this one would be right at home as part of a skill tree.

[chirsg]

3 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I have to disagree here, and yes, I am a Warly main. The chef character being able to make things nobody else can make just makes sense. However, I'll humor you because I think it's absolutely possible to make cooking interesting for everyone while Warly exists: you just have Warly do the cool new stuff better than everyone else.
Note that this isn't necessarily about a Warly skill tree since that's not the point from your post that I feel like addressing.

I'd like to see wheat -> flour -> dough -> various baked goods added to the game. Maybe they're baked in a special oven structure (and Warly gets a portable oven that bakes faster, equivalent to his crock pot). You'd need a non-portable grinding mill for normal characters to make flour with, perhaps requiring an additional wheat item per flour produced compared to Warly's (for instance, his portable grinder has a 2 wheat : 1 flour recipe and the standard grinder has a 3 wheat : 1 flour recipe).

I'd like to see herbs that we can forage for and garden, and that give some kind of stat boosts to food that vary depending on the herb used and the type of food used (for example, dill would give more sanity if you put it on fish-based dishes, but it'd take away sanity value from sweet treats like ice cream and banana pops). Warly could just use less of them (maybe 1 herb item instead of 2 per seasoned dish?) and gain higher stat increases from them. We'd need some kind of non-portable seasoning station for normal characters.

We could represent Warly's general cooking skills by having him get some ingredients back when making a crock pot cook, showing that he makes better use of materials - a morsel for each big meat used, a chance to get a veggie/fruit back when using one in the crock pot (representing only using what's needed and having the knife skills to waste less), etc. It'd be case-by-case and some things would give nothing back, but you get the idea. I feel like this one would be right at home as part of a skill tree.

The thing is about Warly as the chef is that the potential for really cool future effects that have an influence on the world around any character that eats them, is gatekept by Warly. 

Waterproofing dish is locked behind him, but devil's advocate, no character really "NEEDS" it. The weather isn't so unhinged that it's a requirement for a dish to be mandatory, but you best believe if there is a gamechanger like coffee, it's going to be warly locked.

 

I'll actually lose it if Warly is the only character who gets batch cooking of big meats, eggs, etc.

That's why I'd prefer non crockpot dishes locked behind him, because every single person on these forums know that if it's just "more dishes" it's going straight into bundle wrap and smacked into wolfgang's stomach.

 

Bottom line, I'd like more interesting dishes in the game, but 100% not just for warly. And I do think it definitely helps warly's case if he were more fun than for just people with a deep character knowledge about him, which I'm sure you have.

I know I'm always right, but this is the one place where I can say you're not exactly wrong despite us two disagreeing with one another.