There Are Big Positives and Big Negatives With Wortox's New Skills

[aidancode]

Wortox has always been a special character to me. I tend to use him when introducing friends to the game since... ya know, they're gonna kill themselves, and his playstyle is really unique, with upsides and downsides alike. Wortox is a character that is always extremely powerful, but always right on the edge of losing his main source of power. He can only hold limited souls, and he struggles with sanity. These are Wortox's defining characteristics. The ultimate support character.

Going into this rework, there were two things on my wishlist. The first is some kind of way to use souls as a damaging tool. I'm extremely happy with the new shadow affinity; I think it's very fun to play with and pretty much perfectly captures what I wanted to see. I would have loved for this to not be locked to such endgame gear, though. It's a shame that such a compelling way to play is locked behind a final boss.

The second thing on my wishlist was some way to teleport friends around. Still waiting on that. It's sad that the master teleporter Wortox gets overshadowed by Wanda in this department. It's definitely the kind of thing that both characters should be able to do.

So, I'm glad the rework addresses one of my wants, but there's a big problem here. Soul jars pretty much destroy Wortox's primary downside of limited souls. Wortox is no longer always living on the edge. At the cost of three inventory slots, Wortox can hold over 100 souls. That might seem like a lot of space to be taking up but when you consider that each of those slots corresponds to 1000 hunger worth of food that will never spoil, Wortox can easily spend way too long in the ruins and not run out of food, for instance. I think it was obvious going into this update that Wortox would be getting a way to hold more souls. It was inevitable. But the degree at which he is able to do so is far too much. Not only are soul jars twice as inventory efficient, they are dirt cheap to craft before a ruins rush.

I'd rework soul jars as follows:

Soul jars can hold 10 souls, down from 40, but they don't deplete when out of inventory. Instead, they'll actually replenish. This way you can place soul jars at various points of interest and hop between them as a sort of cheap Wanda teleport equivalent, but you can no longer use soul jars to cheese the amount of food and healing you bring places.

I think this would lead to a much more compelling gameplay loop in which Wortox has something to offer in the endgame besides the occasional double damage shadow reaper attacks.

I'd also really appreciate if Wortox's affinities still had some, perhaps more minor, effect when the corresponding gear isn't equipt. Something like shadow affinity not giving the aoe and lunar affinity still resulting in getting hit-stunned despite taking no damage.

And if Wortox were to get a reworked far-left path, perhaps making the third upgrade also unlock a craft that opened a portal to any target location on the map for anyone to follow? I don't know I'm just spitballing.

[aidancode]

19 minutes ago, SSneaky said:

Give them a twintaled heart when they're alive.

With another skill they can 'squeeze' them to teleport to you.

Not sure how I missed that. I guess I just never got a chance to try it so it didn't stick with me. Aw well, that's nice. Still, the skill tree needs a bit of work.