[Game Update] - 643115

[Jason]

Notes on Wendy's changes

Beta releases are intended to be a time when we release a test version of the game and issue balance changes and fixes while we work toward live. We expect to make tuning changes and adjustments once we release the game to the beta branch and gather feedback. Since Wendy's tuning was fairly low in a lot of places when it released to the beta, in this update we have raised a bunch of the effects of her skill tree:

• Abigail's Planar Defense for her alignment skills has gone up.
• The maximum health for resting at the sisturn has been gone up.
• The Cursed Vexation effect was shifted from a duration increase to a damage increase instead.
• The burst damage effect from the final Shadow Skill has been changed to a buff that multiplies abigails damage for a duration.
• We have added refinement of Dark Petals from regular Petals, in addition to the Petal refinement that exists.

There are several things we are planning to change that are not in this update:

• A Haunt command for Abigail.
• Evil Flower Growth rate at decorated graves will be increased.
• Strong Brew skills will be compressed into two slots and a new skill added to craft an Elixir carrying container.
• The Flower Shroud currently redirects Wendy's damage onto Abigail. It will change so that Abigail will benefit from Wendy's head gear armor instead. 

The current version of the dress was intended to increase Wendy's appeal to players who don't like fighting but want to survive if they get caught. In truth there are a lot of armors already to help Wendy stay alive and there were many issues with the current design yet to be solved. So we agreed to change it to help Abigail have more durability in combat instead.

Notes on Walter's changes

We're still working on his ammo, and hope to update them in a batch next week.

• Gunpowder, Dreadstone, and Brightshade Husk Rounds, as well as the old Slow-Down Rounds are currently being worked on.
• In addition we have the new Pure Briliance and Pure Horror Rounds coming.

The Woby training skills are also a work in progress. Here are some things we're working on:

• Making the training progress and badge effects more engaging and easier to understand.
• Adjusting numbers and possibly adding features that would make Big Woby a competitive alternative to beefalos. The goal is to have features that set them apart, instead of trying to replace beefalos.

Another feature that didn't make it into the build yet, is that when using the Thulecite Slingshot Frame, the special skill-shot should enhance the magic effects of ammo such as Slow-Down and Freeze Rounds, and possibly the Cursed Rounds as well.  It's possible that Pure Brilliance and Pure Horror Rounds will be included depending on how those are implemented.

We also want to rebalance ammo production since it may be a bit too high at the moment.  The plan is to lower the bonuses from Production Pro skills, and raise the base values a bit to compensate for this change.  We're also going to look at having different values depending on the type of ammo.

Notes on Wortox's changes

The initial Naughty or Nice aspect was a core foundation for the tree, with Naughty focusing on the trapping and greedy part of Wortox and Nice focusing on the releasing and kind spirited part of Wortox. The Inclination status being simple stat changes is not one that makes for a gameplay shift and can feel a bit lackluster, so we will be looking into making them have a reason to go for with different reasons.

The Knabsack was added onto to the point where there were many conditions stitched onto it that made it feel not good to use. Likewise for some of the Naughty side skills being too interconnected, and read like a dictionary. So skills involving the Knabsack have been streamlined to not need it as a catalyst and the Knabsack has been brought to a more early to mid game state as an alternative.

Soul Jar filled states were an instant on and off switch for power and that felt bad for gameplay so those have been removed and instead are now linear slides for Soul counts instead which helps make the Soul Jars able to be used while not stripping of all of the gained power inside in one go from one Soul removed.

The Neutral Pan Flute perks are a bit underwhelming when in game due to the random factor about it. It was created to try to flow with Wortox's more care free nature of doing things in the moment as a side bonus for a strong item in the game. In practice this feels like it punishes for not using it so it will be looked over to make that feel better and more of a competitor to the other skills. In the mean time the buff duration will be increased so the down time from not using it will be reduced. The side prongs for the Pan Flute have their situational uses but lack purpose for certain players who use the Pan Flute for different purposes. We will be looking into making these perks have more depth to them or scrap them for other Neutral related goodies.

The Lunar Affinity being protective against Shadow Aligned made sense with lore, but comparing it to the Bone Armor, an item that you get right before rifts, made the restriction too overbearing and the perk not useful. This is addressed in the hotfix.
 

Changes
Wortox

• Naughty skills
  • Knabsacker's planar damage aspect has been removed.
  • Overflowing Greed no longer requires Soul Jars to be filled, and now has an increased amount of Souls able to be held before overloading.
  • Covetous Collector no longer requires Soul Jars to be filled, and will instead use the current number of Souls possessed for damage calculations.
  • Soul Pierce I and Soul Decoy III will no longer use a held Knabsack's damage, but will instead use Covetous Collector as the source to increase their damage by a bit.
  • Soul damage will adhere to explosive resistances for bosses.
  • Knabsacker pickup cone area has been increased slightly to feel better.
• Lunar Swindler has had its Shadow Aligned restriction removed and acts more like Bone Armor for how late in the game this perk takes effect.
• Impromptu Flautist buff duration has been increased for now until a revision on it is done.

Wendy

• Added an evil petal refinement recipe.
• Increased Abigail’s alignment Planar Defence buff from 5 to 15.
• Increased the health boost maximum  from the Sisturn from 100 to 300.
• Changed Cursed Vexation from increasing vex duration to increased damage.
• Changed the Shadow Aligned Murder effect from a burst of Planar damage, to a damage multiplier buff on Abigail plus some extra Planar Defense. Stack size affects duration.

Walter

• Moved some of Walter’s new crafting recipes to their respective crafting stations.
• Increased projectile speed of charged shots.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed crash sometimes when pressing the Alt Action button on controllers.
• Fixed crash sometimes when projectiles go offscreen.
• Fixed the keyboard Attack control always behaving like Forced Attack.
• Fixed an erroneous ingredient name in Cursed Vexation Elixir.
• Fixed missing minimap icons for the Tackle Box and Spectackler Box.
• Fixed Cargo Hold on Archaic Boats having a minimap icon at all.

View full update

[WenericMember]

Thanks so much, these changes are huge and its good to know what's coming in the future, even if its not immediate.

Edit: Overall, I think these changes will put Wendy's skill tree in a pretty good spot, and while I'm still not a huge fan of the base Strong Brew effects, that's not particularly a problem overall.

Edited November 23, 2024 by WenericMember

[Dingle]

Oh wow, thanks for the big post on your design logic! I really appreciate seeing these thoughts typed out.

[ADM]

The notes give good highlights of where you're putting efforts next, and boy are they good ! I'm really looking forward how it'll all end up on release.

[AmigoInsonia]

Loving those changes, keep it up!

[Frosty_Mentos]

Okay, but hear me out. Can you allow us to put evil flowers in vases? They are very pretty for their shapes they have and having sanity aura could be fun to play around with sanity stations to create with them or even just as decor options it'll be fantastic addition.

Or us being able to put nightmarefuel on flowers/vased flowers to turn them dark for the sake of not needing to die and can just corrupt them over doing it as a ghost. Incase of situations where people play hardcore worlds I think having a thing like nightmarefuel corruption to take place where we spread it and getting easier ways to make sanity stations would benefit us greatly by easing the work needed to build one. Fuel is abundant but it needs more uses.

Also, if we're gonna be capturing creatures for Wendy players, can we as well get improved butterfly nets? I was talking about it a while ago and really want to have easier time capturing bugs or lunar moths without the need to crafting too many nets. They are very costly for just ten mere uses, needs either a buff or upgrade for them to feel at least more appealing to use.

[Well-met]

Super informative post.

however I do not believe bringing Woby up to beefalos will work, as beefalos have been extremely overtuned in the YoTB update.

[twitchgabo]

Jason, thank you so much for this update and your review on the skill trees. We admire Klei's work.

Please keep on looking into the forum suggestions, there are a bunch of cool stuff the players are suggesting (specially Wortox suggestion to make mobs not aggressive to him if he is on the Nice aspect of his Skill tree).

 

Thank you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

♥

[Maxil20]

Holy heck, apart from the perk changes (I am really looking forward to the abigail tweak personally) I really appreciate the dev explanations here. It’s very nice to see insight into them, and I’m sure it means a lot to many players!

[Pokrotecki]

The changes to Wortox's tree and making the skills less dependant on the knabsack is a good change but I honestly don't really like the state the knabsack itself is in right now, I really wanted to see an actual sack used as a weapon instead of this stiff ball on a stick, also I believe that giving it storage that it's damage would be scaled off of would make much more sense instead of making the player clog up their inventory as it is a krampus-inspired sack, maybe make it take up both the hand and backpack slots to make up for the extra storage?

[Mike23Ua]

 

Nuff Said. Many Thanks guys! 

[HeatAndRun]

Things are cooking well, very well!

[twitchgabo]

5 minutes ago, Pokrotecki said:

The changes to Wortox's tree and making the skills less dependant on the knabsack is a good change but I honestly don't really like the state the knabsack itself is in right now, I really wanted to see an actual sack used as a weapon instead of this stiff ball on a stick, also I believe that giving it storage that it's damage would be scaled off of would make much more sense instead of making the player clog up their inventory as it is a krampus-inspired sack, maybe make it take up both the hand and backpack slots to make up for the extra storage?

Or maybe we shoud keep a the Knabsack as it is and have an improved version of it that should require a Krampus sack (like a gadget that we can "equip" the Krampus Sack and making a new improved Knabsack with empty slots and more power)... I also don't feel like it is good as it is 

[Wormboi]

Are you guess gonna make wortox to able teleport with a beefalo or while carry a statue?

[doug27fani]

29 minutes ago, Jason said:

Beta releases are intended to be a time when we release a test version of the game and issue balance changes and fixes while we work toward live. We expect to make tuning changes and adjustments once we release the game to the beta branch and gather feedback. Since Wendy's tuning was fairly low in a lot of places when it released to the beta, in this update we have raised a bunch of the effects of her skill tree:

Thank you for this message. This way it is easier to understand the proposals of what you are planning for development.

Taking advantage of the fact that you are messing with Walter, you could make some life improvements for him riding the woby.

Today, if you're on the ground and your character's inventory is full, when you pick up food that's in your hand, hovering over the character with your mouse will give you the option to eat. However, when you're riding the Woby, this isn't possible. You have to get off, eat, and then get back on. I don't know if this is intentional, but it's an annoying little thing that could improve the experience of playing as Walter.

Another thing, since you can pick things up off the ground riding Woby, why can't you examine suspicious dirt piles? Woby is a dog, dogs are good sniffers. Today you have to go down, investigate, go up, go down, investigate, go up.

[Siren11]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the explanations, and it seems like there are some pretty exciting changes in the future!

[Mysterious box]

28 minutes ago, Jason said:

We also want to rebalance ammo production since it may be a bit too high at the moment.  The plan is to lower the bonuses from Production Pro skills, and raise the base values a bit to compensate for this change.  We're also going to look at having different values depending on the type of ammo.

This feels kind of worrying as it'd be sad to have Walter go back to being a massive resource hoarder again even more so when he's going to be dealing with even more limited resources.

33 minutes ago, Jason said:

Another feature that didn't make it into the build yet, is that when using the Thulecite Slingshot Frame, the special skill-shot should enhance the magic effects of ammo such as Slow-Down and Freeze Rounds, and possibly the Cursed Rounds as well.  It's possible that Pure Brilliance and Pure Horror Rounds will be included depending on how those are implemented.

Considering poop pellets are also a special round will they get a special effect for it as well or will it only be magicial based rounds?

 

[Argwarn]

This updated flower shroud simply boosts wendy's beefalo reliance which isnt great,one aspect I liked about the shroud is the incentive on foot combat and this version lacks that entirely,not to say the old design was good .

Secondly from what I've seen currently gestalt abigail is mostly a downside due to it decreasing vex uptime and the weird interaction with nightshade nostrum.

Generally positive balance changes though

[-Variant]

I'm not too big on the given trees currently, but if there was anything I did want to say, I'm absolutely, genuinely in love with the detailed notes and feedback here.

The insight onto the teams views and their current direction is priceless, I hope this becomes a permanent staple from here on!!

[Nikki Darks]

Extremely hyped for the Wendy stuff! 

Wondering if you guys would be up for making Wendy lose no sanity when digging graves, since that's her thing now?

 

[Hyuyu]

Thanks for the updates on changes! I like the simpler route taken for wortox and the knabsack and I'm looking forward to testing it out

[gaymime]

thankyou for the context on these changes! it feels a lot better to know the "why" behind the "what", you know?

 

also the bindle is super cute just for aesthetics alone and i will be using it exclusively for roleplaying purposes if it becomes viable for others to carry it around(regardless of whether they can use it or not)

[ShadowDuelist]

This is looking amazing and explaining the insight of the design logic helps a lot, specially to test and suggest.
Thanks so much!

[asdsaax]

Oooh! Knabsack is way healthier now as casual mob whacker rather than weird semi-end game weapon
though I would be thrilled to see panflute's side skills scrapped for something much more exciting, because trust me, ol' panflute is enough and there's no reason to give it "depth"

Have a nice day and thank you for amazing work!

[Dingle]

14 minutes ago, Hyuyu said:

Thanks for the updates on changes! I like the simpler route taken for wortox and the knabsack and I'm looking forward to testing it out

Please post your findings in a thread! I can't check for awhile. I am wondering if you still need 200 souls, and the new number for Overflowing Greed.