Lunar Wurt vs. Shadow Wurt - pros and cons?

[Jorvalt]

I've heard people say the Lunar Merms are stronger but I feel like a lot of the good aspects of shadow merms as well as the bad aspects of lunar merms are being overlooked. Here's what I think:

Lunar Pros

• Small health boost
• More damage in the form of a thorns effect (40 damage to anything nearby when hit)

Lunar Cons

• Need to feed them moonglass at first to mutate them
• Can't get the Brilliant Mudslinger until much later without a Wilson (post-Celestial Champion or post-Crab King with a Wilson)
• Can't give your merms planar damage until after CC as well
• Lunar marsh turf also spawns gestalts, which is annoying because the turf itself also gives Enlightenment

Shadow Pros

•  Come back as a shadow merm when they die (effectively doubling their health)
  • They already have this benefit from the start too, you don't have to do anything special to get it.
  • Shadow merms are also a PERMANENT follower
• You can get the Dreaded Mudslinger pretty early, all you have to do is get to Ruins and then kill Nightmare Werepig
• You can also give your merms planar pretty early, as you can just refight Nightmare Werepig to get more Pure Horror.
• Not only does the Dreaded Mudslinger not have a downside, it has an upside in the form of giving you and your merms a 50% chance to spawn a shadow tentacle on hit.

Shadow Cons

• ???
• No genuinely, I don't get it. Are there downsides to shadow resurrection merms besides just not getting a damage increase against shadow-aligned mobs? And that's not even really a downside?

 

Like Idunno, to me Shadow just seems like the stronger pick. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there info that hasn't been included on the wiki yet?

[GimplyGoose]

I agree that shadow merms are the overall stronger choice, but one thing you neglected to note is that lunar mutated merms have a 25% tentacle spots drop rate.

[Evelo]

I prefer lunar merms because I can dismiss them. Not being able to dismiss a follower is a huge downside in my eyes.

[GimplyGoose]

9 minutes ago, Evelo said:

I prefer lunar merms because I can dismiss them. Not being able to dismiss a follower is a huge downside in my eyes.

You can 'dismiss' all of your shadow merms by popping into/out of the caves.

[Jorvalt]

18 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

I agree that shadow merms are the overall stronger choice, but one thing you neglected to note is that lunar mutated merms have a 25% tentacle spots drop rate.

Oh yeah, I guess that does make farming tentacle spots a bit easier.

17 hours ago, Evelo said:

I prefer lunar merms because I can dismiss them. Not being able to dismiss a follower is a huge downside in my eyes.

Also true, but as was stated you can go into the caves to get rid of them. Kinda sad they can't come with you but eh.

 

Something I also forgot to mention is I guess you can negate the downside of lunar turf by just wearing your crown of enlightenment you would've gotten from CC anyway, but that does take up a head slot.

[Vasz_]

20 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

You can 'dismiss' all of your shadow merms by popping into/out of the caves.

Unfortunately it doesn't work with the Don't Starve Alone mod. I really dislike playing with lag, but I also don't want 20 Merms following me forever. I wish we could just dismiss them normally by killing a fish.

[Mysterious box]

On 9/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Jorvalt said:

I've heard people say the Lunar Merms are stronger but I feel like a lot of the good aspects of shadow merms as well as the bad aspects of lunar merms are being overlooked. Here's what I think:

Lunar Pros

• Small health boost
• More damage in the form of a thorns effect (40 damage to anything nearby when hit)

Lunar Cons

• Need to feed them moonglass at first to mutate them
• Can't get the Brilliant Mudslinger until much later without a Wilson (post-Celestial Champion or post-Crab King with a Wilson)
• Can't give your merms planar damage until after CC as well
• Lunar marsh turf also spawns gestalts, which is annoying because the turf itself also gives Enlightenment

Shadow Pros

•  Come back as a shadow merm when they die (effectively doubling their health)
  • They already have this benefit from the start too, you don't have to do anything special to get it.
  • Shadow merms are also a PERMANENT follower
• You can get the Dreaded Mudslinger pretty early, all you have to do is get to Ruins and then kill Nightmare Werepig
• You can also give your merms planar pretty early, as you can just refight Nightmare Werepig to get more Pure Horror.
• Not only does the Dreaded Mudslinger not have a downside, it has an upside in the form of giving you and your merms a 50% chance to spawn a shadow tentacle on hit.

Shadow Cons

• ???
• No genuinely, I don't get it. Are there downsides to shadow resurrection merms besides just not getting a damage increase against shadow-aligned mobs? And that's not even really a downside?

 

Like Idunno, to me Shadow just seems like the stronger pick. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there info that hasn't been included on the wiki yet?

A big downside to shadow merms is that you can't really consistently convert a large amount of merms I shadow merms and even if you do you lose their hp advantage meaning you can't really take good advantage of their planar powers.

As for lunar they drop tentacle spots meaning you'll passively get far more merm guards with far less effort.

Honestly the hp advantage shadow merms get isn't really useful beyond the very early game as merms with gear already tank all the bosses even without doubling their hp and the lunar mudslinger combined with the feeder makes mass merm dismissing and recruiting a far smoother process than the shadow side as you need to kill each merm to keep them as followers on the shadow side but need to cast the staff once for the lunar side.

Another con is when you change shards or roll back your shadow merms die.

When you really get down to it shadow has the advantage early game but after that there's absolutely no advantages to using shadows over the lunar side 

Basically lunar merms have

Easier management

Thorns damage

Easier tentacle spot access

More consistent planar damage

Free Enlightenment patches

 

 

While shadows have

Double merm hp

Shadow tentacles

Shadow dodge

Early access to mudslinger

Free conversion

[Bumber64]

What do you need tentacle spots for by the time you've got access to an army of lunar merms?

[ChintzyGnat]

I haven't personally tried lunar yet, but shadow merms were my first pick so I can effortlessly kill cc. I can kill 2 with 88 merms if I play my cards right.

However getting rid of shadow merms after a battle is annoying.

[Jorvalt]

On 9/6/2024 at 4:26 PM, Mysterious box said:

A big downside to shadow merms is that you can't really consistently convert a large amount of merms I shadow merms and even if you do you lose their hp advantage meaning you can't really take good advantage of their planar powers.

Planar damage doesn't do anything unless you're fighting an enemy with the appropriate alignment. And even then, it's a small bonus. You also ignored the fact that I already said you can't get planar damage for mutated merms anyway since it requires pure brilliance, and that needs you to kill CC.

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As for lunar they drop tentacle spots meaning you'll passively get far more merm guards with far less effort.

This tends to matter a lot less once you get to the point where you actually have the resources to farm them. They don't drop the moonglass you need to convert them, so you need a ton of it if you want to actually farm tentacle spots from them. I wouldn't say having to amass a bunch of moonglass from Lunar Island in order to do this is "less effort" than clearing the swamp with merms and then having them infight to give fish to the king for tentacle spots.

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Honestly the hp advantage shadow merms get isn't really useful beyond the very early game as merms with gear already tank all the bosses even without doubling their hp and the lunar mudslinger combined with the feeder makes mass merm dismissing and recruiting a far smoother process than the shadow side as you need to kill each merm to keep them as followers on the shadow side but need to cast the staff once for the lunar side.

First of all, don't give your merms gear. It's pointless, they're expendable. Merm guards respawn in 4 minutes without a feeder, and regular merms respawn in 4 days. You could argue that it's worth it in winter, but don't fight bosses in winter. It sucks.

You also have to remember you can't get the staff until post-CC for the point about permanent mutated merm loyalty. And feeding your merms is really not that hard. Stonefruit grows like crazy. You also have kelp in abundance if you got to Lunar Island.

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Another con is when you change shards or roll back your shadow merms die.

You also lose loyalty with mutated merms if you do this.

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When you really get down to it shadow has the advantage early game but after that there's absolutely no advantages to using shadows over the lunar side 

It's almost like if you just don't read any of the downsides I listed lunar looks like the better option of the two.

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Free Enlightenment patches

And free gestalt spawns. That's not an upside.

[Mysterious box]

16 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Planar damage doesn't do anything unless you're fighting an enemy with the appropriate alignment. And even then, it's a small bonus. You also ignored the fact that I already said you can't get planar damage for mutated merms anyway since it requires pure brilliance, and that needs you to kill CC.

Because planar enemies don't spawn until you activate the rifts so it's irrelevant.

 

16 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

This tends to matter a lot less once you get to the point where you actually have the resources to farm them. They don't drop the moonglass you need to convert them, so you need a ton of it if you want to actually farm tentacle spots from them. I wouldn't say having to amass a bunch of moonglass from Lunar Island in order to do this is "less effort" than clearing the swamp with merms and then having them infight to give fish to the king for tentacle spots.

This is only matters if you intend to avoid rift content as after the rifts are opened aside from just using the staff moonglass also rains from the sky. The tentacle spot boost is useful depending on how big of a merm guard village you plan on making and makes making your cave merm guards much faster as well after you've established your surface merms.

16 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

First of all, don't give your merms gear. It's pointless, they're expendable. Merm guards respawn in 4 minutes without a feeder, and regular merms respawn in 4 days. You could argue that it's worth it in winter, but don't fight bosses in winter. It sucks.

You also have to remember you can't get the staff until post-CC for the point about permanent mutated merm loyalty. And feeding your merms is really not that hard. Stonefruit grows like crazy. You also have kelp in abundance if you got to Lunar Island.

This is just wrong the equipment station makes them tanky enough to kill enraged klaus without alignments and on top of that without head gear the merm king's armor blessing doesn't even apply since it's given to head armor. Unless your staying in the early game and never planning to fight bosses I can't see a single good reason not to get the head gear and if that's how you plan to play why even make the merm guards to begin with?

16 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

You also lose loyalty with mutated merms if you do this.

Yes but they don't die so you can just immediately re-recruit them if you need.

16 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

It's almost like if you just don't read any of the downsides I listed lunar looks like the better option of the two

Lets go over them then.

 

On 9/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Jorvalt said:

Need to feed them moonglass at first to mutate them

In the early game on a character that excels at late game play.

On 9/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Jorvalt said:

Can't get the Brilliant Mudslinger until much later without a Wilson (post-Celestial Champion or post-Crab King with a Wilson)

You can actually kill celestial champion very early on depending on skill level.

 

On 9/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Jorvalt said:

Can't give your merms planar damage until after CC as well

Which only works on planar entities which don't exist pre rift and considering the lunar gear makes killing fuel weaver easier and the lunar boss is easier to kill in general I'm not sure why you'd do fuel weaver first outside of preference.

On 9/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Jorvalt said:

Lunar marsh turf also spawns gestalts, which is annoying because the turf itself also gives Enlightenment

Not only do you not need to stand on the patch you make to convert/empower your merms but in the fights you'd use them in your sanity is likely draining fast enough that gestalts likely wouldn't even have a chance of attacking this is literally only a problem if you intentionally make it so.

 

 

As I've said in the past the shadow path excels in the early game but if you have any intention to open the rifts there is absolutely no advantage the shadow path has over the lunar side.

• Durability? The other upgrades more than outshine the revival ability making the resurrection ability niche unless you actively ignore the king's quests and the armory. 
• Management? Kelp feeder with the staff is far more convenient compared to the shadow side where you don't have a convenient way to mass convert merms into shadows.
• Power? Just add more merm guards.

Something to keep in mind is when playing with the shadow side your mainly just playing with normal merms and guards until your merms die which as you get them better gear and more followers is more and more unlikely unless you actively go out of your way to kill them. This also means post rift shadow merms are far more inconsistent with planar damage unless you decide to spam horror fuel.

[Gashzer]

Being stronger in the early game is vastly more useful and important than being stronger late game. Early game perks in general are far far better and have a larger impact to QoL compared with late game oriented perks. As in the late game, even without character specific perks, you will have stronger gear and be less likely to die.

Hence shadow merms are always what you should choose when starting day 1 as wurt. Lunar merms just can't compete with free double hp and shadow merms drop nightmare fuel which is a resource that is heavily used early game to make ruins gear.

Celestial portal is cheap to make and use in the later game if you ever want to eventually make the switch to lunar merms.

[Mysterious box]

56 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Being stronger in the early game is vastly more useful and important than being stronger late game. Early game perks in general are far far better and have a larger impact to QoL compared with late game oriented perks. As in the late game, even without character specific perks, you will have stronger gear and be less likely to die.

This only really applies if the advantage is purely raw power but in this case the quality of life is what the lunar side excels in since both sides excel in raw power and durability already.

[Gashzer]

2 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

This only really applies if the advantage is purely raw power but in this case the quality of life is what the lunar side excels in since both sides excel in raw power and durability already.

You have to go out of your way to get moonshards to upgrade for a lunar merm that isn't even as strong as double hp.

Late game lunar mudslinger has QoL for recruiting but that's so far late game that most of the difficulty is already gone and shadow merms are more useful up until then.

[Mysterious box]

5 hours ago, Gashzer said:

You have to go out of your way to get moonshards to upgrade for a lunar merm that isn't even as strong as double hp.

Unless you don't plan to make a merm king your not really going out of your way for the shards first time around and unless your putting it off you can open the lunar rift around spring possibly sooner if your rushing. As for the hp the king's blessings and armor make the hp gap irrelevant unless normal merms are making up the bulk of your fighting force.

5 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Late game lunar mudslinger has QoL for recruiting but that's so far late game that most of the difficulty is already gone and shadow merms are more useful up until then.

Early game there's really not much that's even going to be able to kill your merms unless your actively traveling with a small amount and getting access to a high number of shadow merms means going out of your way to accurately kill a proper amount at the same time. The shadow side is fine but I just don't see a good reason to stick with it in a world where you plan to open the rifts but again if you don't plan to do so I can understand the choice.

[ToXic Cur3]

On 9/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Jorvalt said:

Shadow Cons

• ???
• No genuinely, I don't get it. Are there downsides to shadow resurrection merms besides just not getting a damage increase against shadow-aligned mobs? And that's not even really a downside?

The two downsides that I can think of is that in order to get pure horror easily to buff shadow merms with planar damage is you have to beat fuelweaver in order for Charlie hand to appear but most or some know how to fight fuelweaver properly and some dont fight him at all which Is fine since you can turn it on through world settings but killing them would be hard though with regular equipment 

Also for you to use the pure horror you have to wait for yours merms to convert to shadow merms through them dieing to use pure horror to buff them 

[Jorvalt]

On 9/8/2024 at 4:24 PM, Mysterious box said:

Because planar enemies don't spawn until you activate the rifts so it's irrelevant.

Actually no, the Shadow Pieces, the damaged clockworks, the 2nd phase of Ancient Guardian, and the Ancient Fuelweaver himself are all considered shadow aligned and therefore would benefit from planar damage. But in this case it doesn't matter because you CAN'T get planar damage before Ancient Fuelweaver.

And on the Lunar side, anything on Lunar Island, Crab King + his minions, as well as Celstial Champion are all Lunar aligned, so planar damage can matter for these enemies.

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This is only matters if you intend to avoid rift content as after the rifts are opened aside from just using the staff moonglass also rains from the sky. The tentacle spot boost is useful depending on how big of a merm guard village you plan on making and makes making your cave merm guards much faster as well after you've established your surface merms.

I genuinely don't know what kind of point you're trying to make here. What I was saying is that by the time you have tons and tons of moonglass or have defeated CC to get the Brilliant Mudslinger, tentacle spots become irrelvant. Farming spots by just having merms kill each other and then giving the fishes to Merm King is a far better method in the early to mid game, where you're going to need that most.

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This is just wrong the equipment station makes them tanky enough to kill enraged klaus without alignments and on top of that without head gear the merm king's armor blessing doesn't even apply since it's given to head armor. Unless your staying in the early game and never planning to fight bosses I can't see a single good reason not to get the head gear and if that's how you plan to play why even make the merm guards to begin with?

Enraged Klaus is an extreme case, most of the time your army of merms can survive long enough to kill a boss even without armor. And I concede, I was wrong, the pauldron buff will only apply if your merms have head armor. Maybe the tier 1 helmets are at least worth getting.

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Yes but they don't die so you can just immediately re-recruit them if you need.

Lets go over them then.

I actually went over this in testing because I hadn't fully gone over lunar merms yet and it turns out they completely lose their mutation if you change shards to dismiss them. So this means you have to spend all of that moon glass all over again if you want to re-mutate them. Way worse than dealing with shadow merms.

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In the early game on a character that excels at late game play.

Not really lol, dunno where you got that from

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You can actually kill celestial champion very early on depending on skill level.

No. The list of tasks is WAY longer than the shadow side, and you don't even need to do that to get the benefits from the shadow stuff.

Here's the list of tasks for killing Ancient Fuelweaver (not including any prep for certain items like lanterns/boats/gear/etc to even attempt this):

1. (optional) tame a beefalo to transport heavy items later (you do not have to fully tame it)
2. Find the ruins
3. On the way mine stalagmites until you get 8 fossils
4. Defeat Ancient Guardian and retrieve the key
5. Find each chess statue piece and bring it to the chess statue set piece (with your beefalo if you have one)
6. Complete the statues, wait for a new moon and then mine the statues to summon the Shadow Pieces and then kill them for the Shadow Atrium
7. Wander around the caves killing big tentacles and jumping in the hole until you find the one that leads to the Atrium biome (alternatively, use Moggles and a Lazy Explorer to teleport there)
8. Go to the boss room, put the key in, assemble the skeleton, summon the boss with the atrium and defeat it.

Here's the list of tasks for defeating Celestial Champion:

1. (NON OPTIONAL) tame a beefalo to transport heavy items later (you do not have to fully tame it)
2. Find both Pearl's Island and the Moon Stone. I'm lumping these both in the same step because both are relatively easy.
3. Find the ruins. In the process, get the materials to make a Starcaller's Staff and a Deconstruction Staff. Then make them once you get to the Ancient Pseudoscience Station.
4. Go to Pearl's Island, and complete 10 of her tasks, including all 3 of the home upgrades to get Pearl's Pearl.
5. Find Crab King.
6. Slot Pearl's Pearl and the gems you want into Crab King to awaken him, and then kill him to get the Celestial Tribute.
7. Wait for a full moon, then activate the event to create a Mooncaller's Staff. Once you succeed, use the Deconstruction Staff to get an Iridescent Gem.
8. Find the Lunar Archive.
9. Slot the Iridescent Gem in, then solve the Lunar Archive puzzle to get the recipe for the Astral Detector. Make like 2 or 3 of these.
10. Find Lunar Island.
11. Use the astral detector to find the two pieces of the celestial sanctum. Use your beefalo to bring these pieces and the celestial tribute to the boat you're going to use to make the trip back to Lunar Island.
12. Find the celestial altar pieces (it's not hard), mine them, and then bring all of those with the sanctum pieces and the tribute to fissures that are near each other and assemble them.
13. Go BACK to the main land to go into the moon storms and talk to Wagstaff. If you happened to have the desert goggles they will help you here, otherwise you probably want to make the goggles from the recipe Wagstaff gave you.
14. Help Wagstaff capture Restrained Static. Use a bug net to capture moongleams and then use a pickaxe to get some infused moon shards. Grab your celestial orb from wherever it is. Either wait a few days for those scrap stations to spawn or just visit the junkyard to get some scrap.
15. Fully assemble the Lunar Siphonator. Defeat Celestial Champion.

For the lunar side especially these aren't necessarily in order, but I think you get my point with just how much more stuff you need to do for getting to CC. I didn't even go into detail about the length you have to go to for pearl (it's a lot).

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Which only works on planar entities which don't exist pre rift and considering the lunar gear makes killing fuel weaver easier and the lunar boss is easier to kill in general I'm not sure why you'd do fuel weaver first outside of preference.

Already went over this

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Not only do you not need to stand on the patch you make to convert/empower your merms but in the fights you'd use them in your sanity is likely draining fast enough that gestalts likely wouldn't even have a chance of attacking this is literally only a problem if you intentionally make it so.

It's less that you'd actually be standing on the turf for a fight (you likely do this before the fight because it gives your merms no benefit), it's more the fact that the lunar turf just basically doesn't give you any benefit at all whereas the shadow turf does.

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As I've said in the past the shadow path excels in the early game but if you have any intention to open the rifts there is absolutely no advantage the shadow path has over the lunar side.

• Durability? The other upgrades more than outshine the revival ability making the resurrection ability niche unless you actively ignore the king's quests and the armory. 
• Management? Kelp feeder with the staff is far more convenient compared to the shadow side where you don't have a convenient way to mass convert merms into shadows.
• Power? Just add more merm guards.

Something to keep in mind is when playing with the shadow side your mainly just playing with normal merms and guards until your merms die which as you get them better gear and more followers is more and more unlikely unless you actively go out of your way to kill them. This also means post rift shadow merms are far more inconsistent with planar damage unless you decide to spam horror fuel.

• Durability: I don't consider literally doubling a merm's health to be negligible. I don't care what you say.
• Management: Or, yknow, just do the traditional way where you feed them. It's not hard. You typically rush Lunar Island as Wurt anyway, so you have an overabundance of food. You can just feed them in prep for a boss and it gives you like 1-2 days worth of loyalty which is more than enough to tackle any boss. You don't need to keep them around forever. You also more often do NOT want to keep them around forever, because follower AI is dumb and they might just decide to break one of your stage 1 marble trees because you hit a rock 10 minutes ago.
• Power: I really don't get this one. How is this a refutation of anything I said, exactly? This applies to both sides. You can just get more merms, and it doesn't matter. It only matters when you get to the point where the merms physically can not get to the boss because there's so many of them.

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Something to keep in mind is when playing with the shadow side your mainly just playing with normal merms and guards until your merms die which as you get them better gear and more followers is more and more unlikely unless you actively go out of your way to kill them. This also means post rift shadow merms are far more inconsistent with planar damage unless you decide to spam horror fuel.

If you do REALLY care about planar damage for some reason, which doesn't seem to matter a lot yet, then just... let them die? Lol. Just don't give them armor. I often have at least some merms die on their own when fighting a boss. I do wish there was an easier way to just convert them though. Just sacrifice them, which obviously carries the cost of them not having that extra health buffer.

3 hours ago, ToXic Cur3 said:

The two downsides that I can think of is that in order to get pure horror easily to buff shadow merms with planar damage is you have to beat fuelweaver in order for Charlie hand to appear but most or some know how to fight fuelweaver properly and some dont fight him at all which Is fine since you can turn it on through world settings but killing them would be hard though with regular equipment 

Also for you to use the pure horror you have to wait for yours merms to convert to shadow merms through them dieing to use pure horror to buff them 

Pure Horror is obtainable from Nightmare Werepig.

[ToXic Cur3]

7 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Pure Horror is obtainable from Nightmare Werepig

He is a good source but not effective enough to amass the materials needed and when you beat him you need to wait for him to appear in the junkyard then beat him again so he can go back to the caves and vice versa it is effective but not enough 

And i think by the time you have a good amount of pure horror you probably won't use it a majority of times since the mob your fighting is most likely dead by the time your merms convert to shadow merms unless it's a boss that has Aoe attacks/attacks that can kill them which speeds up that process

Examples of bosses

(celestial champion,deerclops/mutated deerclops,bearger/armored bearger,the twins dashing,fuel weaver,toadstools jump shockwave when he hits a certain health threshold)

Lastly, some when beating nightmare werepig use the materials to craft the full dreadstone armor with construction amulet or the full cost of it, if crafted through the construction amulet way the pure horror that remains is helpful for the merms but again the mob that is being fought has already passed away plus if none of the merms didnt die or some it's not worth using pure horror to enhance none to some merms due to the time that they have when buffed with it despite the shadow merms being loyal until they die (which is amazing honestly) 

[Mysterious box]

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Actually no, the Shadow Pieces, the damaged clockworks, the 2nd phase of Ancient Guardian, and the Ancient Fuelweaver himself are all considered shadow aligned and therefore would benefit from planar damage. But in this case it doesn't matter because you CAN'T get planar damage before Ancient Fuelweaver.

And on the Lunar side, anything on Lunar Island, Crab King + his minions, as well as Celstial Champion are all Lunar aligned, so planar damage can matter for these enemies.

Planar damage interacts with Planar defense which none of the enemies you've listed have Planar damage is not the same as the 10% alignment damage and defense players get which means having Planar damage pre rift does not matter.

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

I genuinely don't know what kind of point you're trying to make here. What I was saying is that by the time you have tons and tons of moonglass or have defeated CC to get the Brilliant Mudslinger, tentacle spots become irrelvant. Farming spots by just having merms kill each other and then giving the fishes to Merm King is a far better method in the early to mid game, where you're going to need that most.

You can defeat celestial champion in the mid game some even do it by spring but even then I usually need more spots as the world goes on especially for my cave merms I assume it just comes down to a difference in playstyle.

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Enraged Klaus is an extreme case, most of the time your army of merms can survive long enough to kill a boss even without armor. And I concede, I was wrong, the pauldron buff will only apply if your merms have head armor. Maybe the tier 1 helmets are at least worth getting.

That's the point though if they can survive the extreme case without mass death what's the point of giving them a extra life via the shadow side after you've given them their blessings and gear?

If your only using tier 1 armor there's no point in even using it at all. Not only is the durability lower but so is the reduction.

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Not really lol, dunno where you got that from

Don't know where I got that from? Are you really saying Wurt isn't a late game character? She's been called that for actual years and even has a unique advantage that you need to wait an in game year to take advantage of.

 

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

It's less that you'd actually be standing on the turf for a fight (you likely do this before the fight because it gives your merms no benefit), it's more the fact that the lunar turf just basically doesn't give you any benefit at all whereas the shadow turf does.

It's free mass conversion and planar empowerment which is meaningful when you get it because you will be fighting planar enemies the main reason shadow gets the tentacles is to compensate shadow merms barely receiving planar damage due to them needing to have died first which is endlessly frustrating in that scenario.

Because you fall into afew categories.

You kill your merms in advance to empower them losing the benefit of double hp

You spam pure horror when each merm dies

Or the more common outcome you just ignore the buff outright to save on resources because the cost effectiveness of the alignments reverse post rift.

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

No. The list of tasks is WAY longer than the shadow side, and you don't even need to do that to get the benefits from the shadow stuff.

You can still finish this by late winter to early spring if you really want to and people tend to go for lunar first anyway since it's a easier fight and makes the fuel weaver fight easier.

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

actually went over this in testing because I hadn't fully gone over lunar merms yet and it turns out they completely lose their mutation if you change shards to dismiss them. So this means you have to spend all of that moon glass all over again if you want to re-mutate them. Way worse than dealing with shadow merms.

Yep I knew they lost their mutation what I was getting at was you just walk over and use the staff on them again vs the shadow side who dies, needs to respawn, then needs to be killed again to become shadows again

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Durability: I don't consider literally doubling a merm's health to be negligible. I don't care what you say.

Then you should be aware that the armor and the king's blessing more than doubles their effective hp meaning they generally just don't die having a extra life is pointless if they already aren't dying no?

8 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

Management: Or, yknow, just do the traditional way where you feed them. It's not hard. You typically rush Lunar Island as Wurt anyway, so you have an overabundance of food. You can just feed them in prep for a boss and it gives you like 1-2 days worth of loyalty which is more than enough to tackle any boss. You don't need to keep them around forever. You also more often do NOT want to keep them around forever, because follower AI is dumb and they might just decide to break one of your stage 1 marble trees because you hit a rock 10 minutes ago.

Then what use is the shadow merm infinite loyalty if you don't want to keep them around? But that aside you just highlighted why the lunar staff is so good unintentionally you don't want to keep them around at all times but when you do want them for a bit all you have to do is use the kelp dish then use the staff for easy mass recruitment when you do need them.

 

The main point is we can agree that the shadow side is more convenient for the early game but I don't see how you can say it can compete with the lunar side late game as the shadow side's claims to fame becomes niche by that point.

[Jorvalt]

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Planar damage interacts with Planar defense which none of the enemies you've listed have Planar damage is not the same as the 10% alignment damage and defense players get which means having Planar damage pre rift does not matter.

You are actually right on this point, though you're confusing planar defense with "planar entity protection." Planar defense is player only afaik and just reduces planar damage taken. Planar entity protection reduces physical damage only and scales with the amount of damage taken. So instead of dealing about 30 damage for a merm guard, you're dealing the full 50 because their damage was fully converted to planar from the buff. Bear in mind the Brilliant Mudslinger can only give this buff every 8 minutes, and it lasts for two. So you need to use Pure Brilliance anyway in between casts.

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Don't know where I got that from? Are you really saying Wurt isn't a late game character? She's been called that for actual years and even has a unique advantage that you need to wait an in game year to take advantage of.

What are you even talking about here? Sunfish/Ice bream? I ignore those because they suck to get and heavily rely on luck. Sometimes you might be waiting all season and not get a spawn.

Wurt is not a "late game" character, I'd consider her to be more "mid game." Early game she basically plays the same as Wilson minus being able to eat meat (which is actually not a major issue) and then late early game to early midgame is when you get a merm king, you start setting up merm buildings, and then by the midgame proper you actually have a full setup to be able to tackle bosses.

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You can still finish this by late winter to early spring if you really want to and people tend to go for lunar first anyway since it's a easier fight and makes the fuel weaver fight easier.

I disagree with CC being easier, at least on Wurt, yknow, cause it's a literal merm blender. And as for how "quickly" you can finish it, yeah, maybe if you're a speedrunner god gamer or something. It's like you just ignored everything I said for that point.

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The main point is we can agree that the shadow side is more convenient for the early game but I don't see how you can say it can compete with the lunar side late game as the shadow side's claims to fame becomes niche by that point.

The point is the shadow side requires no investment whatsoever on your part, the staff can be gotten much earlier with better benefits, and as of right now planar damage is a little niche. Once you actually get to the endgame with the rifts, is there really a significant advantage of Lunar over Shadow? I really don't think so. The fact that Shadow is better in the early game and then Lunar is practically on even footing in the late game means there's not actually a lot of reason to favor Lunar over Shadow imo.

[Mysterious box]

12 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

You are actually right on this point, though you're confusing planar defense with "planar entity protection." Planar defense is player only afaik and just reduces planar damage taken. Planar entity protection reduces physical damage only and scales with the amount of damage taken. So instead of dealing about 30 damage for a merm guard, you're dealing the full 50 because their damage was fully converted to planar from the buff. Bear in mind the Brilliant Mudslinger can only give this buff every 8 minutes, and it lasts for two. So you need to use Pure Brilliance anyway in between casts.

While I don't remember the exact amount if I'm not remembering wrong the empowerment from the turf lasts longer than the duration of it.

12 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

What are you even talking about here? Sunfish/Ice bream? I ignore those because they suck to get and heavily rely on luck. Sometimes you might be waiting all season and not get a spawn.

Wurt is not a "late game" character, I'd consider her to be more "mid game." Early game she basically plays the same as Wilson minus being able to eat meat (which is actually not a major issue) and then late early game to early midgame is when you get a merm king, you start setting up merm buildings, and then by the midgame proper you actually have a full setup to be able to tackle bosses.

Even if you ignore her fish her crafts take a fair amount of time to setup which is why she's considered a late game character techincally you can rush them if you dedicated a entire season to them but that not how people normally play Wurt.

12 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

disagree with CC being easier, at least on Wurt, yknow, cause it's a literal merm blender. And as for how "quickly" you can finish it, yeah, maybe if you're a speedrunner god gamer or something. It's like you just ignored everything I said for that point.

I tend to play with friends so maybe that's why it feels easier on that front for me but even if your going at it alone and aren't going very fast getting cc done by spring isn't hard also merms perform really well against cc once you have the merm armor and kings blessings which if your at cc you have no excuse not to have finished the king's quests I mean seriously your doing your troops a real disservice not using their tier 2 armor the huge damage reduce combined with their dodge and triple attacks make a far bigger difference than you're probably thinking.

12 hours ago, Jorvalt said:

The point is the shadow side requires no investment whatsoever on your part, the staff can be gotten much earlier with better benefits, and as of right now planar damage is a little niche. Once you actually get to the endgame with the rifts, is there really a significant advantage of Lunar over Shadow? I really don't think so. The fact that Shadow is better in the early game and then Lunar is practically on even footing in the late game means there's not actually a lot of reason to favor Lunar over Shadow imo.

I guess I we'll have to agree to disagree but my stance is that they aren't on par late game what the lunar side offers is simply superior since what the lunar side offers builds on the upgrades you gain by reaching that point whereas the shadow side's advantages come up feeling niche by that point when paired with the upgrades you built up.

For context the warrior helmet with the blessing gives the merms 65% damage reduction 

[Jorvalt]

On 9/12/2024 at 11:33 AM, Mysterious box said:

While I don't remember the exact amount if I'm not remembering wrong the empowerment from the turf lasts longer than the duration of it.

The wiki lists empowerment from Pure Brilliance at 4 minutes, which is half of the cooldown of the Brilliant Mudslinger. I don't feel like going in and testing right now so I'm going to assume the buff duration is the same as consuming one Pure Brilliance, which is honestly being generous considering it's free and that might not be the case.

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Even if you ignore her fish her crafts take a fair amount of time to setup which is why she's considered a late game character techincally you can rush them if you dedicated a entire season to them but that not how people normally play Wurt.

1. Feed merms in swamp low value items like seeds
2. Throw them against tentacles for spots, spikes, and to kill the merms
3. Demolish house and collect all of the fishies
4. Repeat until you have cleared swamp (or killed all the merms)
5. Use fishies to make craftsmerm houses
6. Use spots to make flortifications
7. Get merm king (this does take a few ingame days)
8. Make merms kill eachother for fishies, trade fishies to merm king for spots
9. More flortifications
10. Repeat as much as you want

This is not difficult or particularly time consuming. You can get all of this done within the first ingame year. That isn't "endgame."

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I tend to play with friends so maybe that's why it feels easier on that front for me but even if your going at it alone and aren't going very fast getting cc done by spring isn't hard also merms perform really well against cc once you have the merm armor and kings blessings which if your at cc you have no excuse not to have finished the king's quests I mean seriously your doing your troops a real disservice not using their tier 2 armor the huge damage reduce combined with their dodge and triple attacks make a far bigger difference than you're probably thinking.

So you're talking about not speedrunning or whatever but you make a beeline straight to CC by SPRING of the first year? No clue what kind of point you're trying to make.

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I guess I we'll have to agree to disagree but my stance is that they aren't on par late game what the lunar side offers is simply superior since what the lunar side offers builds on the upgrades you gain by reaching that point whereas the shadow side's advantages come up feeling niche by that point when paired with the upgrades you built up.

For context the warrior helmet with the blessing gives the merms 65% damage reduction 

The only advantage lunar merms seem to have is more health (but not more than shadow merms bc they have literally double) and a thorns effect that I've found in testing seems to have some kind of internal cooldown, so it won't trigger on every instance of damage. Which means even less DPS increase than you think. And you do nothing to get benefit from Shadow merms and meanwhile you have to beat CC to get the staff for lunar merms, having to spend moonglass to upgrade them before then.

 

(btw sorry for kind of necroing this thread, I haven't been checking forums in a while)

[HeatAndRun]

The only thing I want for Wurt is a handier way to dismiss lunar/shadow merms. There are three ways to dismiss them for now and that's dying, going into the caves, and disconnecting. All of them are just... Inconvenient so much. Especially when you hired homeless merms.

[Jakepeng99]

You should have to feed them nightmare fuel for it to work.

[dst_lover]

6 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

You should have to feed them nightmare fuel for it to work.

I wish they will make this because to me the lunar one is way more fun because I feel I deserve it unlike the shadow skill