Notes on Wendy's changes for patch 644439 (2024-11-29)

[QuitePositiveGC]

Didn't see this thread until now, so I'll link my post here. kekw

[WenericMember]

Mightaswell link my concept here too.

TBH the betas could use a dedicated thread to link suggestion posts. as it stands it feels like a competition  for attention on the front page for the suggestion to be visible, and they also get drowned out by more general topics, like the many "is Wendy OP" threads.

[Catapult 2.0]

4 hours ago, Jason said:

Increase ways to use Mourning Glory

Added a recipe for making live butterflies with Mourning Glory and butterfly wings, resurrecting butterflies is very important for using Shadow Abigail (currently very cumbersome to use, we have to catch butterfly bees with a bug net to get 8s of power-ups)

[Mike23Ua]

I have a few weird suggestions as to what Mourning Glory’s can do for Wendy, WENDY not Abigail… cause yeah Wendy needs some stuff she can do while she hitches Abigail to a Sisturn.

”A sisterly bond that transcends life & death” hmmm.

Well, what if Abigail (when anchored at a Sisturn that can now be filled with stacks of mourning glory’s) can “Loan” Wendy some of her Supernatural powers? Such as:

“Spectral Strength”- You do not have access to the Flower Petal Debuff while Abby isn’t with you, so this balances itself out for obvious reasons (it’s weaker than petal boost but better than her becoming Wes Mode)

“Dance with the After Life” Abigail grants Wendy the ability to levitate over short durations, but doing so consumes mourning glory’s (similar to using souls as Wortox or Embers with Willow)

”Frightful Friends” Wendy can give the various ghosts in the game mourning glory (like feeding pigs food or rabbits carrots to hire them) Pipspook could do something cute like haunt grave sites and pull the loot up without digging up the grave (Kinda like Wobys new Digging) Regular Ghosts can be hired as AI Followers that can help with chopping wood, or combat, At Sea ghosts can be hired to act similar to Gnarwails being feed meat (they’ll float about on sea while hired grabbing loot and bringing it to Wendy’s boat) and the BigSpook- Well I can’t play in betas so I don’t even know what this guy does Currently….  But it just makes Sense that you can hire it (perhaps for help in boss combat?) by exchanging with it mourning glory’s.

Remember all of these suggestions only apply to Wendy herself, when Abigail is Anchored to her Sisturn and Away from Wendy’s use so it wouldn’t be broken OP.

[WenericMember]

33 minutes ago, Natsuki Bamboo said:

Added a recipe for making live butterflies with Mourning Glory and butterfly wings, resurrecting butterflies is very important for using Shadow Abigail (currently very cumbersome to use, we have to catch butterfly bees with a bug net to get 8s of power-ups)

Not a bad Idea, but it would probably have to be part of a bunch of crafts, like the itchcraft perks, bc it's a bit niche for an entire skill.

[Peasant]

Maybe you can consider stuffing sisturn with different kinds of flowers, and provide different enhancements according to the type of flower inside the sisturn. Normal petals provide extra hp, dark flower provide extra damage and insane aura, moon flower provides more light and sanity aura, etc.

Or moon flower allows abigail attack the shadow creatures?

[Steorra]

2 minutes ago, YXukun said:

Maybe you can consider stuffing sisturn with different kinds of flowers, and provide different enhancements according to the type of flower inside the sisturn. Normal petals provide extra hp, dark flower provide extra damage and insane aura, moon flower provides more light and sanity aura, etc.

This would makes sisturn become unignoreable in endgame, I like this.

For current stage sisturn would be just forget in dust in endgame... That is sadly and mismatch with Wendy story.

[TabbyTheNeko]

5 hours ago, Jason said:

Full patch notes

Hi everyone,

Previously we'd said we were going to remove the current Floral Shroud and replace it with one that lets Abigail benefit from Wendy's head armor instead. This put Wendy into more of the glass cannon playstyle like Wanda, and we didn't think that was the style Wendy players were looking for. So for the moment, that skill and it's partner have been removed.

What we plan to do next: Increase ways to use Mourning Glory, increase utility of Graves, Improve usability of the Team Spirit skills, catch up on bugs in the tracker.

With the dark petals I skill removed, wendy will still suffer massive sanity drain from evil flowers, and since the grave skills encourage the farming of them, I feel that the immunity to evil flowers, both being around them and picking them should be integrated into either the first grave skill, or the second sisturn skill (the one that reduces sanity drain from sanity auras while the sisturn is full).

If you're looking for more uses with mourning glory, maybe a skill that allows you to apply some muorning glory to the sisturn to give a bonus. Maybe something like temporary armor for abigail, or the positive sanity aura can also have a small healing aura for other players, maybe the sanity aura gets bigger (as in size) or stronger (as in faster sanity gain).

If leaning more into the flower side maybe wendy can use mourning glory and petals to like, provide a small buff to herself and her team by like holding them in her hand and them blowing them across her teammates.

Definitely very excited to see what you guys do with Mourning Glory, I think there's a lot of potential that can be done with the spiritual-cleansing-ectoplasm-stuff.

[cloudf]

59 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

what if Abigail (when anchored at a Sisturn that can now be filled with stacks of mourning glory’s) can “Loan” Wendy some of her Supernatural powers

I wish Wendy can have a skill that merges her and Abigail together and dashes over a short distance.

[WenericMember]

15 minutes ago, YXukun said:

Maybe you can consider stuffing sisturn with different kinds of flowers, and provide different enhancements according to the type of flower inside the sisturn. Normal petals provide extra hp, dark flower provide extra damage and insane aura, moon flower provides more light and sanity aura, etc.

Expanding the two blessed sisturn III and IV's skills into this would be really cool, pls make it its own post.

1 minute ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

With the dark petals I skill removed, wendy will still suffer massive sanity drain from evil flowers, and since the grave skills encourage the farming of them, I feel that the immunity to evil flowers, both being around them and picking them should be integrated into either the first grave skill, or the second sisturn skill (the one that reduces sanity drain from sanity auras while the sisturn is full).

If you're looking for more uses with mourning glory, maybe a skill that allows you to apply some muorning glory to the sisturn to give a bonus. Maybe something like temporary armor for abigail, or the positive sanity aura can also have a small healing aura for other players, maybe the sanity aura gets bigger (as in size) or stronger (as in faster sanity gain).

If leaning more into the flower side maybe wendy can use mourning glory and petals to like, provide a small buff to herself and her team by like holding them in her hand and them blowing them across her teammates.

Definitely very excited to see what you guys do with Mourning Glory, I think there's a lot of potential that can be done with the spiritual-cleansing-ectoplasm-stuff.

Per the stream they said they're considering integrating dark Petals I into the grave tab.

[kehun]

Nice job guys! I always thought that Wendy is good character but now with her skills it's just amazing! I love the building part with graves 

[Steorra]

25 minutes ago, cloudf said:

I wish Wendy can have a skill that merges her and Abigail together and dashes over a short distance.

this would be good for gameplay and cover much Wendy's downside, but this would be strange...

[cloudf]

5 minutes ago, Steorra said:

but this would be strange

I think I have to agree, but I also think it would be super cool.

I have been thinking about merging Wendy and Abigail for a long time (Maybe I should think up a better word than "merge"), and I have vague memories about a mod already did that. It's not that unreasonable I would say,  considering we already have so many crazy skills.

[RHX]

I may be late to post this reply.

Can we have Abi to have possession ability since she is ghost?

Abi can possess nearby mobs for few seconds and that possess mob can attack nearby mobs

Maybe abi team up with multiple ghost and she and team can possess multiple mobs?

And boss can attack nearby mobs and lose his aggression for Wendy

In this way she can farm resources easily.

[WenericMember]

I just hope whatever skills they add focus on Wendy. Abi got A LOT this tree between alignment perks, Team Spirit & some skills in blessed sisturn and potions.

The graveyard being fixed and the new Mourning Glory crafts being unrelated to Abigail would balance things out.

[deathlordCrossd]

abigail following me when i put the in Sisturn for increasing max hp and her max hp not going up anymore and max hp increase for that are quiet slow. I feel like grave stone skill not worth it when you can use Abigail for Haunt for more dark petals. 
I want to suggest some idea so here me out.

-you can turn petal in sisturn to mourning glory when they expired so it will help new player for finding them.

-how about new Shadow form of Abigail? maybe base on shadow monster or someting i'm not sure using murder action between fighting will worth it in shadow affinity 

-how about use gravestone skill for extra reviving station for Wendy? to make value of gravestone skill. maybe add some item like use on gravestone to setup or something?
-how about option for use petal or dark petal or maybe lunar flower for Sisturn to boost shadow or lunar abigail?

-I think shift down extra yield skill down and make strong brew up to the 4th. normally we switch abigail elixir a lot like nightshade, speed elixer and healing elixir so longer duration of elixir only byproduct.

- if you want to make gravestone to generate dark flowers maybe reduce cooldown between each flower.

-how about something specific for own wendy not abigail.

that's my suggestion
I hope i give some idea for you Dev teams. <3 

[Koomin]

On 11/29/2024 at 9:16 PM, Jason said:

...Gestalt Abigail is certainly designed with boss fighting in mind, but it's accessed by having already gone through several bosses, so we want to make sure the pre rift help is viable...

 

Hey Jason-
Did you maybe mean to require activating rifts by defeating ancient fuelweaver or celestial champion in the player's current game world for making shadow/gestalt Abigail, but miss that you can get it immediately in a fresh world with the current beta release in the rush to get this released Friday night?
-Most of the cast (barring ~3) can only use their affinity skills post-rift, even if they defeated celestial champion/fuelweaver in another world, since they require items from rifts.  Wendy however, can get affinity Abigail right away in a fresh world after getting some basic materials since no post-rift items are needed.  You just need to join a server that is fighting one of the bosses once and the skill is unlocked for good (ignoring more questionable ways that some employ to get the unlock).
-You said "Gestalt Abigail is certainly designed with boss fighting in mind, but it's accessed by having already gone through several bosses, so we want to make sure the pre rift help is viable".  Currently you don't need to defeat anything to get gestalt Abigail if you defeated celestial champion in a previous world, you just need some ice and basic structures, and can get it easily first autumn.
-You said in another recent post "We are aware Wendy has a harder time late game with bosses. The strength I was talking about is how good Abigail is in the early game." Both beta affinity Abigail forms are instead incredibly strong early game making her early game even more overbearing, with gestalt Abigail soloing most bosses and even some raidbosses, and shadow Abigail wildly spiking Wendy's overall damage. This seems like it might be a power level intended for the post-rift late game buff you were describing, where it would be more appropriate.

From what I can tell it seems like the current early transformation was not intended, but the design would make sense if corrected to as intended.  I'd suggest adding a requirement of dark tatters/pure brilliance to create shadow/gestalt Abigail (not pure horror since that is pre-rift from werepig), whether it be through a cost to activate the conversion, an upgrade to the moon dial, or an upgrade to the sisturn.

It seems pretty clear this was unintended and the beta is just doing it's job catching stuff like this, but sorry if I misconstrued anything.

[Jason]

Hey Koomin, 
Yeah, I'm aware if you defeat the Champion once you can have Gestalt Abby before then in another game. But you do have to defeat the Champion at least once before that. This is why I want pre rift option for a more survivable Abigail to work as well. A lot of players do not yet experience rift level stuff. 

[Peasant]

5 minutes ago, Jason said:

Hey Koomin, 
Yeah, I'm aware if you defeat the Champion once you can have Gestalt Abby before then in another game. But you do have to defeat the Champion at least once before that. This is why I want pre rift option for a more survivable Abigail to work as well. A lot of players do not yet experience rift level stuff. 

Is there any chance of stuffing other kinds of flowers and moruning glory  into the Sisturn? I myself had some ideas that different kinds of flowers provides different kinds of buffs to Abigail, and stuffing the Sisturn with only one kind of flower would give extra benefit to Abigail when Abigail rests by the Sisturn. This can be a replacement of the 600 extra hp.

[HowlVoid]

20 minutes ago, Jason said:

Hey Koomin, 
Yeah, I'm aware if you defeat the Champion once you can have Gestalt Abby before then in another game. But you do have to defeat the Champion at least once before that. This is why I want pre rift option for a more survivable Abigail to work as well. A lot of players do not yet experience rift level stuff. 

Question: You may not be able to offer a lot in terms of what internal data klei has on players. However, i still want to ask; about just what % of the player base has actually beat CC and FW? Could we get some stats? Maybe something for all bosses? I think it would offer some insight on things outside of the forum. 

[Mike23Ua]

49 minutes ago, Jason said:

Hey Koomin, 
Yeah, I'm aware if you defeat the Champion once you can have Gestalt Abby before then in another game. But you do have to defeat the Champion at least once before that. This is why I want pre rift option for a more survivable Abigail to work as well. A lot of players do not yet experience rift level stuff. 

You do understand the situation your putting your gamers into though right?

You have some players who will have defeated the appropriate bosses and unlocked powerful character affinity skills, and then you’ll have another set of players who have yet to even reach the unlock requirements.

However- because of this you’ll have some people running around with Lunar Abby as early as the first full moon, and other players not even having access to it.

The reason people are suggesting that you require a more late game resources to craft it is so that it only becomes available if you reach that point of the game (or toggle rifts on through settings and have killed the CC once before)

I personally have not unlocked any of the character affinities and usually what happens in this scenario is if two players using the same character joins a server and the host reviews their skills- they’ll kick the player with lower skill tree power and keep the player who has access to the better abilities.

Since DST is structured in a way that the player can literally craft Warly food dishes, switch to Wolfgang and then more easily kill the bosses, They’ll have access to Wendy’s most powerful boss fighting affinity skills without having done Any of the work of defeating those prior bosses as Wendy & dealing with that downside.

Making those skills require late game resource crafts at least means the player has to reach that point of the game in their currently played in world first (or toggle it on from settings)

Or the TL:DR you’ll have some players who have probably used glitches cheats and old exploits you have tirelessly changed and patched out to kill these bosses (void walking as just an example) and then you’ll have players who have a harder time unlocking those same perks because void walking is no longer doable.

Then you have players with Lunar Boss Killer Abigail, and Players without.

[Copyafriend]

17 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I personally have not unlocked any of the character affinities and usually what happens in this scenario is if two players using the same character joins a server and the host reviews their skills- they’ll kick the player with lower skill tree power and keep the player who has access to the better abilities.

Does..

 

Does this really happen? I dont play much public but it sounds really unlikely.

 

Secondly you only have to ever beat celestial champion and fuelweaver once to unlock it on every character. Honestly with your experience you could probably knock it out in a week if you chose a combat character and committed to getting it done

[arubaro]

11 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

Likely an exaggeration. 

And even if not the host is free of allowing the player they wants in their world... players have the option to host games if they dont want to be kicked

[Koomin]

6 hours ago, Jason said:

Hey Koomin, 
Yeah, I'm aware if you defeat the Champion once you can have Gestalt Abby before then in another game. But you do have to defeat the Champion at least once before that. This is why I want pre rift option for a more survivable Abigail to work as well. A lot of players do not yet experience rift level stuff. 

Hey thanks for the insight-

It does make sense to give an early game boss slanted Abigail form for newer players.  

 

I am still a bit confused though about the parts that I mentioned about Wendy being a very strong character in the early game, and the affinity forms being huge power ups in that part of the game.  It would make sense if they were side grades as a nice usability upgrade, and gestalt Abigail did similar damage to normal Abigail but single target and while survivable- instead she is nowhere near a side grade and does 500 damage per hit (probably due to being balanced for post-rift). This does seem like it could be put back into side grade territory through a big damage adjustment though.  Shadow Abigail, however, is not a side grade at all and appears to have no speciallization or niche beyond being Abigail but much better, so I'm not sure how that is not supposed to be a huge early game benefit for an incredibly strong early game character.  It seems like the goal should be adding nice choices between 3 equivalently strong Abigail forms, rather than 2x forms that obsolete normal Abigail and make Wendy's early game untouchable.  

 

I'm a bit concerned that the design approach as-is might result in servers being even more full of Wendys than they already are, which degrades the experience as-is.  It's not enjoyable to join a server with >50% of people choosing one character.

 

Additionally, I'm confused why the affinity skills need to be usable pre-rifts for Wendy since many players don't make it to rifts, but not for most other characters (like Walter and Wortox in this release).  If there is concern about players not getting to experience their affinity skills in worlds that don't make it to rifts, why is the design approach so different between characters?  Wouldn't Walter and Wortox players want to use their affinity skills (for example Wortox's shadow affinity working for any weapon, not just shadow scythe)? 

[yuntunhemudu]

Suggestions for improving the survival section of the skill tree:

Part of the functions of Flower Shroud can be separated and added to other skills.

 

Sistern skill. When Abigail binds the Sisturn, it will redirects Wendy's damage onto Abigail.

 

Beside the decorated graves, Wendy can heal Abigail with food. When Wendy regained her HP by eating, Abigail also regained the same HP.