qol Walter's Startup and Woby's skills

[Mysterious box]

So while I am really enjoying Walter's skill tree so far I feel like there's some issues with his skill tree gameplay loop.

First up Woby's training station is too expensive of a startup cost meaning it'll be several days in most cases before Walter can even begin the training process it's 2 boards, 6 logs, 2 ropes, and 3 silk and it's the baseline requirement to even activate Woby's skills and check her progress I feel like it's not necessary. Another issue being that you're spending skill points on these skills and you still need to train Woby on top of that while each skill still only offers a single function that needs a shared secondary point system to activate and this will have to compete with current skills and other skills that may show up as this beta progresses making Woby seem less and less desirable to invest in.

My thoughts on how to fix this would be to condense the skills into 3 skills and give them additional effects as you reach thresholds in the training while allowing you to keep them all active. Here's my thoughts:

Agility

• Base effect: Woby gets faster as the training progresses
• 25% filled: Woby can now jump across gaps 
• 50% filled: Woby will now dodge the first hit you would take when her hit timer resets

Bravery

• Base effect: Woby can take more hits and will lower the amount of sanity damage you take as the training progresses
• 25% filled: Woby will defend her backpack not allowing other creatures to steal from it
• 50% filled: Woby will now flee a short distance away from where Walter was hit then set Walter down without bucking him when her hp expires with a cooldown of half a day

Supportive Pup

• Base effect: You can command Woby to dig and pick up items on the ground unlocks additional interactions as the training progresses
• 25% filled: Woby can now pick from producer plants like saplings, grass tuffs, and berry bushes
• 50% filled: Once per day you can ask Woby to dig up a random item(the current dig skill)

Next up is the field kit considering you'll be needing to use it a lot early on I think reeds is too limiting a resource I feel like it would be better if instead it cost 2 stick and 4 grass making it a bit more accessible and less necessary to keep on you early on.

Finally I think an ammo bag may still be needed while the higher stack size definitely improved the flow of combat if the goal is to use various types of rounds for different situations we still don't quite have enough room to give an example.

• for combat 2-3 stacks of damage rounds is usually enough which is 240-360 rounds but we have single target and multi target ones so that's doubled
• For crowd control we currently have a wide variety of choices
  • Slowdown rounds which is 1 slot
  • Sticky rounds which is 1 slot
  • Freeze rounds which is 1 slot
  • Poop pellets which is 1 slot
  • Alignment rounds which is 2 slots each at minimum

 

[Mysterious box]

I also want to add that I think stinger rounds should probably have their overall damaged raised as it's likely to be the aoe round most players will have access to and as a standard aoe round it's damage is too low in terms of aoe and direct damage. I also think honey should have it's duration raised to 10 to 12 seconds for the same reason I understand upgrades are available but I think how accessible those upgrades are to the average player should also be a consideration.

[Bluepugjr]

6 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

it'll be several days in most cases before Walter can even begin the training process it's 2 boards, 6 logs, 2 ropes, and 3 silk and it's the baseline requirement to even activate Woby's skills and check her progress I feel like it's not necessary. Another issue being that you're spending skill points on these skills and you still need to train Woby on top of that

This^
 

i came to this same realization while testing it and it just didn’t feel good.

first I have to survive enough days to get the insight to invest into woby training

then I need to gather all the items to craft it which took a few days

then I finally started the training and I couldn’t even see the improvements until around day 35-40

its just way to much time/commitment especially for such a small improvement overall.

tbh I feel like these sentiments extend to most of his tree.