Some ideas for Walter perks to reward aggressive play

[Guille6785]

Mandatory disclaimer to avoid the same irritating responses I get from the same people every time I post anything on these forums: These suggestions have nothing to do with speedrunning. Even if every single one of my ideas got implemented, Walter would still have next to no use in DST speedruns. This is just what I think would make the character more fun for me.

Some background:

Spoiler

A few months ago I shared this challenge run I did

I initially considered just using Wilson for this challenge but I ultimately settled on Walter without the slingshot (I didn't want to use damage multipliers) and it ended up being the most fun I've had with Walter since I've always considered him to be a very misunderstood character. Back in early 2021 when people insisted that pre-rework Wolfgang was the most OP thing there was in the game (???) I frequently vouched for Walter as an excellent option instead for players who wanted to progress through the game quickly, as he basically starts with a fully tamed beefalo from the moment he spawns in who doubles as a free chester (who can be used alongside the actual chester/hutch), and to top that off, if you manage to never get hit you literally never have to worry about sanity, so it's like you're wearing a permanent Bee Queen Crown as long as you can avoid damage altogether. This was back when Wolfgang couldn't even assemble the shadow pieces quickly mind you, so Walter was pretty much uncontested in most worlds when it came to doing this ASAP.

Obviously, the community back then absolutely hated Walter, largely writing him off as useless because of how punishing his downside was to a lot of people, and it was not uncommon to see people (even Youtubers) who fully believed Walter was supposed to fight everything using nothing but the slingshot. I clearly don't think this was ever the case; instead, I always saw Walter as a character who was meant to reward more experienced players who were willing to go most of the game making a conscious effort to avoid damage in combat with significant rewards in other areas of the game (i.e. world exploration and inventory management), with the slingshot being merely an option for players who really wanted to play the character for some reason or another but couldn't avoid damage to have something to fall back on if they still wanted to engage in combat and not die to shadow creatures. The video I posted above is an excellent example of how by playing well you can reap all the rewards with none of the downsides (I rush both the CC and FW questlines simultaneously thanks to Woby's extra inventory and speed).

Sadly updates come and go, and more than 3 years later, a lot of what Walter had which I once considered to be top tier perks are now fairly replaceable: All characters are now encouraged to domesticate a beefalo as early as possible (if speed is what you're after) ever since the beefalo bell was added, and the extra inventory perk was straight up given to Maxwell for some reason but better (12 slots in the magician's top hat which you can get extremely early on). I'm not going to debate whether or not power creep is a thing, but the point I want to make here is that Walter has always had a fun playstyle that rewards experienced players that isn't just holding F with the slingshot and yet Klei seems to hate Walter because they've been seemingly doing the complete opposite when it comes to encouraging players to participate in it.

It shouldn't come as a surprise then that I was incredibly disappointed with Walter's skill tree, with the majority of the new skills added being exclusively for the slingshot. I'm not against this being an option, nor am I saying you're wrong if you enjoy slingshot-only combat, but it seems that years of complaints from community members about how Walter is apparently bad because the slingshot is bad made Klei forget about the genuine potential the character has for a properly aggressive playstyle instead. In my view, the obvious thing to do would've been to split the tree between two clear routes: Safety perks (like the current slingshot ones) and Risk/Reward perks. I'm aware the devs said they're looking to add more non-slingshot perks after the christmas break, but that doesn't guarantee they'll add anything that encourages playing Walter aggressively, which is why I wanted to share some ideas of potential things I'd like to see added:

Simple Woby perks:

Nimble Woby - Woby won't trigger spider dens and no longer has collision with Walter, kind of an obvious one to add (I'm not sure if this is already a thing in the beta, someone please correct me here)

Fearless Woby - Woby won't panic when around enemies (another obvious one)

Extra carrying capacity - Woby has 3 extra inventory slots when in big form. Reverting back to small Woby will spit out the items, similar to Packim Baggins from Shipwrecked. (Again, kind of an obvious one, and I'm surprised this hasn't been suggested more)

Explorer Woby - Running non-stop increases Woby's speed, similar to Wonkey's sprint. First by 10% after 30 seconds, then a 2nd time for 20% after running for 60 seconds straight, up to a maximum of 12 speed. This is a bit slower than a rider beefalo with a glossamer saddle, but faster than a rider beefalo with a regular saddle. Some have argued Woby's speed is balanced in that beefalo are still faster, but IMO Woby deserves to remain faster for non-stop running than all of them except the fastest one for the simple reason that she can't tank damage for you and she isn't a fighter. This at least gives Walter the niche of being really, really good at the one task of exploring the world ASAP without collecting resources along the way.

Explorer Woby 2 - Small Woby will smell out points of interest as soon as they are loaded in. This will create a visible trail leading you there, similar to how points of interest are marked with icons for the scrapbook, including but not limited to suspicious marbles, pig king, walrus camps, pseudoscience stations, etc.

Explorer Woby 3 - Walter can now click on an item and give it to small Woby to smell it. This will create a trail to the closest item of that type on the world, similar to Wheeler's navigadget. Ideally, this could be programmed in a way that e.g. smelling thulecite leads you to a thulecite statue, although this might be hard to program, but it could have cool applications like finding goats or beefalo by giving a piece of raw meat to Woby to smell.

Risk/reward Woby perks:

Super carrying capacity - Woby gets 3 more extra inventory slots when in big form, for a total of 15, beating out Maxwell's 12 slots. However, getting bucked off Woby reduces her hunger by 30 points (get bucked off twice and Woby reverts back).

Fast woby - Upon transforming, Woby remains at the top base speed of 10 regardless of her hunger level. Getting hit, however, returns it back to the original scaling speed, and it remains that way until she transforms from Small back to Big form.

Woby combat - Walter can use melee weapons atop Woby. However, Woby doesn't like this, and getting hit on Woby after having used a melee weapon in the last 10 seconds causes Woby to buck off Walter regardless of how much damage he's taken (like it used to work before this got changed). This gives Walter the option to access high speed for combat extremely early on, effectively being equivalent to a cane and a road, with the caveat that you essentially can't get hit.

Swimming training - Woby can swim in the ocean. This drains her hunger by x5 as much, giving her a maximum time on the water of 4 minutes with a full belly. If Woby transforms back, Walter drowns. The idea behind this perk isn't to overlap with Goose, who is better suited for exploring the water e.g. to find the lunar island, but rather to be used exclusively for crossing bodies of water when you already know what's on the other side, as trying to explore would essentially be a death sentence. For example, Walter players could effortlessly cross small rivers like Wortox players, and a daring Walter player could simply swim to the lunar island early on if they are absolutely certain of where it is located, bringing back useful resources on Woby's extra inventory space.

All of these perks would hypothetically be in the same tree, therefore the downsides would stack with each other (e.g getting bucked off with the Woby combat perk would also reduce her hunger by 30 points and revert her speed to scaling with hunger again).

Walter perk ideas:

Skilled gatherer - Walter no longer takes damage from gathering cactus or spiky bushes. (Simple convenience perk for the risk/reward perks)

Skilled cook - Food cooked by Walter recovers more freshness. (A lot of people underestimate Walter's fast cooking ability which is good for stocking up monster meat for Woby, since she recovers less hunger from stale and spoiled monster meat. Cooking is hardly the most interesting mechanic in DST, but I think this would make players consider cooking food that they otherwise wouldn't bother with).

Familiar survivor - Walter can pet Woby to comment on random bits of information that are normally hidden from the player. These would include moisture, time until the next hound wave, time until the next season change, time until the next giant spawns, etc. all in the form of casual comments. These are fairly useless for newer players but can be really useful to people who can know what to do with them.

Aggressive playstyle perks:

Comfy survival - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes increases Walter's sanity bonus from trees from 6/min to 9/min. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to 12/min. (A lot of people blatantly miss the point of this perk, which is to passively restore Walter's sanity from incidental damage while exploring the surface. This would make it worth a little bit of extra effort to make it more noticeable. This is a simple perk to get players in the habit of minding the damage they take.) (Optional: Taking damage temporarily nullifies the sanity gain for 2 minutes)

Comfy survival 2 - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes increases Walter's regeneration from sleeping by 50%. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to 100%. (The portable tent isn't nearly as bad as people say it is, but this would make it a genuinely good item worth investing in for recovering stats without ever needing to resort to food, provided you're willing to go a few days without being careless.) (Optional: Taking damage temporarily reduces stats gained from sleeping by half for 2 minutes)

Comfy survival 3 - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes increases stats gained from cooked foods (including crock pot dishes and dried foods) by 10%. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to 20%. (Optional: Taking damage temporarily reduces stats gained from all foods by 25% for 2 minutes)

Comfy explorer - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes increases map reveal radius by 10%. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to 20%. (Optional: Taking damage temporarily reduces map reveal radius by half for 2 minutes)

Comfy explorer 2 - Several animation speeds now scale with your health. At full health, Walter will be able to pick items like grass and twigs faster, like Woody's quick picker ability. Other animations like crafting speed are also faster. However, at lower health values, these animations will actually get slower than average. (Could potentially apply to the attack animation as well, although I don't know how I feel about this; maybe it could apply exclusively to the slingshot).

Handy explorer - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes reduces weapon and tool durability per use slightly. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to a more noticeable amount, and increases work efficiency. 

Light explorer - Walter gets 1% extra speed, which transfers to Woby, for every 2 empty inventory slots, up to a maximum of 7% extra speed. Items on backpacks do count towards slowing you down but not towards speeding you up.

Light explorer 2 - Walter gets 8% extra speed when not wearing either a backpack or armor in his body slot (clothing is ok). Does not multiply with light explorer, only adds up to a total maximum of 15% extra speed. (The objective is to reward players who go the backpack-less route for Walter and experiment with other items instead. This is genuinely a very fun playstyle and can lead to decision-making over whether travelling lighter is worth not being able to carry as much or tank as much, as Head armor only goes up to 90% damage reduction and prevents you from also wearing the pinetree pioneer hat. It applying to Woby gives use to Woby even late game compared to being outright replaced by rider beefalo, as she would be able to outrun a rider beefalo with a glossamer saddle at the cost of her aforementioned downsides).

Slingshot - Melee combat perks: This is something I'd like to see to add a more unique way to approach combat for Walter. The intention would be to allow players who think the slingshot is boring/a crutch to implement it into melee combat instead, turning it into a flexible weapon instead of a safety option. It would also allow both branches of the skill tree to work together in tandem if a player wishes to go this route. I'm not gonna name these, just brainstorming some ideas:

- A perk that allows Walter to fire the first shot with little to no windup if they fire within 2 seconds of switching to the slingshot. There can be an internal cooldown of ~5 seconds for this ability. This is meant to be combo'd with the next ability:

- Firing magic rounds temporarily buffs Walter with special effects for his melee weapons. For example, firing a freeze round temporarily allows Walter's melee strikes to do 1 freeze buildup each for a few seconds, thulecite rounds give consecutive melee strikes a 20% chance to spawn another shadow tentacle, etc. This could have interesting uses for people to use the slingshot as a complement to melee combat; for example, one could fire 1 freeze round at toadstool, then follow up with 2-4 melee strikes for a freeze, depending on freeze resistance, which would be vastly more efficient than using ice staves.

The ideal scenario would be to encourage a Walter player to dodge an attack, quickly switch to the slingshot to apply a buff as the enemy approaches, then walk in again, do damage with the melee weapon, then repeat.

- Maybe a magic round that does a significant amount of damage over time, or that debuffs enemies to take extra melee damage (obvious reasons)

- A skill to make charged shots from marble rounds guaranteed to hitstun enemies, even in the middle of attack animations, like riled Lucy in the forge. Just a fun thing to add an alternative playstyle for Walter

 

The end result would be a character that I think I'd have a lot more fun with while building off the same concept that already exists, with useful perks for a variety of situations (believe it or not, I don't just want Walter to have higher dps for not getting hit, I'd actually like to see Klei take the opportunity to give players a way to make certain aspects of the game that no character has perks for a breeze as Walter). These took a while to type but I think those are all the ideas I have for now

[MisterBilly]

I like the idea of Walter's magic ammos interacting with his melee, or melee in general.

Maybe he could have something that makes it so whenever he uses magic ammo, it puts a stacking magic effect on an enemy up to a limit, and switching to and hitting him with melee detonates it? It would also be really good with teammates.

 

edit: Y'know how pure brilliance rounds increase planar damage enemies take from the slingshot? It'd be good if they applied that to the melee planar weapons too, maybe even making it more effective, or having a special effect, or perhaps just giving planar damage to weapons, not just planar weapons in general. This would give lunar affinity a sort of melee combo potential with Walter, in contrast to how Shadow affinities slow is more better for ranged.

[_mylilsunshine_]

always nice to generate ideas and discussions for the beta, especially if it's a less popular character like walter.  

[Crestwave]

36 minutes ago, MisterBilly said:

edit: Y'know how pure brilliance rounds increase planar damage enemies take from the slingshot? It'd be good if they applied that to the melee planar weapons too, maybe even making it more effective, or having a special effect, or perhaps just giving planar damage to weapons, not just planar weapons in general. This would give lunar affinity a sort of melee combo potential with Walter, in contrast to how Shadow affinities slow is more better for ranged.

I believe it does. Unless they changed it recently, the pure brilliance buff adds 5 planar damage to every instance of planar damage—including from melee or other players.

[MisterBilly]

7 minutes ago, Crestwave said:

I believe it does. Unless they changed it recently, the pure brilliance buff adds 5 planar damage to every instance of planar damage—including from melee or other players.

Ah, okay, my bad, I thought it was only for the slingshot, thank you for the correction. If this is the case, I still think it needs to be buffed for melee in some way.

[Chewabacca]

Wasn't expecting to agree with as much of this as I do coming into this thread from the other one. These are some really neat ideas. Some quibbles:

7 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

Nimble Woby - Woby won't trigger spider dens and no longer has collision with Walter, kind of an obvious one to add (I'm not sure if this is already a thing in the beta, someone please correct me here)

I would actually prefer for Woby to keep her collision with Walter, as right now pushing her around is the easiest way to get her smaller form out of the way. I would prefer a better solution to control where she is, but until then, collision is useful.

7 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

Comfy survival 3 - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes increases stats gained from cooked foods (including crock pot dishes and dried foods) by 10%. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to 20%. (Optional: Taking damage temporarily reduces stats gained from all foods by 25% for 2 minutes)

Walter's hunger is only 110. Apart from HP, he wouldn't really benefit that much from buffed food stats, and if he loses the perk by taking damage, it's not even useful for that. This is generally an issue I have with the "comfy survival" set: they enhance perks that are most useful when you've taken damage, and then set the condition that you can't have recently taken damage. 

Less a problem and more a clarification: I'm not sure whether or not you've already seen it, but since you compare Woby's speed to a beefalo's a couple times here, just wanted to note that Woby's speed with her agility skill at 100% and full hunger is now 15, faster than a beefalo's max speed.

Apart from the two issues, I really like these ideas, particularly the Simple Woby, the risk/reward Woby, the Walter perks, the comfy explorer, and the handy explorer ones. These seem like skills that would reinforce Walter's identity as a scout/explorer in a creative way, especially with all the different slingshot skills threatening to drown that out.

[Guille6785]

7 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

I'm not sure whether or not you've already seen it, but since you compare Woby's speed to a beefalo's a couple times here, just wanted to note that Woby's speed with her agility skill at 100% and full hunger is now 15, faster than a beefalo's max speed.

For some reason I thought I heard someone say it only went up to 11, but tbh I kind of just decided to pretend that perk didn't exist when I wrote this thread

[Arcwell]

9 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Woby's speed with her agility skill at 100% and full hunger is now 15, faster than a beefalo's max speed.

Not that it changes the point you made but Woby's top speed (with both speed badges) is 13, not 15.

Source:

Spoiler

[ShadowDuelist]

I like most of the ideas, specially making a character themed around the idea of getting buffed out of not getting hit.

My only issue is with this:

On 12/24/2024 at 8:26 PM, Guille6785 said:

Comfy survival 2 - Not receiving damage for 8 minutes increases Walter's regeneration from sleeping by 50%. Not receiving damage for 16 minutes increases this to 100%. (The portable tent isn't nearly as bad as people say it is, but this would make it a genuinely good item worth investing in for recovering stats without ever needing to resort to food, provided you're willing to go a few days without being careless.) (Optional: Taking damage temporarily reduces stats gained from sleeping by half for 2 minutes)

The main point of sleeping is to recover from the mistakes you've made by taking damage, since it's the most common way Walter will loose both health and sanity. Getting severely damaged and then having to wait 2 days for the most efficient sleeping is anti synergic:

• If you didn't get hit for 2 days, you have had more than enough time to restore your stats through food, fighting nightmares, or other means instead.
• If you didn't drop your stats at all, you don't require sleeping in first place.

I think this should be so that the more hurt you are when you enter the tent, the faster the tent will heal you.
EG: A 2 HP Walter will heal a lot faster than a 100 HP Walter, so in both situations the healing time to full HP is about the same (pretty short)

  

[Guille6785]

7 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I like most of the ideas, specially making a character themed around the idea of getting buffed out of not getting hit.

My only issue is with this:

The main point of sleeping is to recover from the mistakes you've made by taking damage, since it's the most common way Walter will loose both health and sanity. Getting severely damaged and then having to wait 2 days for the most efficient sleeping is anti synergic:

• If you didn't get hit for 2 days, you have had more than enough time to restore your stats through food, fighting nightmares, or other means instead.
• If you didn't drop your stats at all, you don't require sleeping in first place.

I think this should be so that the more hurt you are when you enter the tent, the faster the tent will heal you.
EG: A 2 HP Walter will heal a lot faster than a 100 HP Walter, so in both situations the healing time to full HP is about the same (pretty short)

  

The scenario I was thinking of with this perk is that if you got severely hurt and/or lost a lot of sanity from a variety of means you could use the tent on the spot and recover right away or you could hold off a little bit with your stats low to not have to spend as much time in the tent, but now that I think about it I completely forgot Walter loses sanity passively at low HP so this is a terrible gamble, so yeah, a buff to sleeping would have to come in the form of an entirely different perk

[Myrem]

On 12/26/2024 at 2:00 AM, Arcwell said:

Not that it changes the point you made but Woby's top speed (with both speed badges) is 13, not 15.

yes 10 * (1+30%) = 13

[Mysterious box]

Maybe of this was like one skill off to the side but giving Walter a bunch of skills based on going days without getting hit just doesn't seem engaging to me and would probably just be stressful for most other players but eh that's just my opinion on it.

That being said I do think some skills are interesting like the smell tracking but I also feel like making Woby fearless completely goes against her nature.

[viblym]

Woby swimming sounds incredibly goofy, I wouldn't mind small Woby being able to swim to pick things up however, but being able to ride Woby over the ocean doesn't feel like a good idea.

Woby speed ramping could be neat but I think her speed (Especially with her speed badge perk) could be better by simply making it so she didn't have diminishing speed with less hunger.

Skilled cook feels like something that'd be better for Warly

I like the idea of Skilled Survivor but that information is only so useful to new players, so that'd be best off packed in with another perk, or as a perk that's not necessary for branching into other skills.

Comfy survival doesn't feel like it addresses the issue some players have with Walter, that being his recovery after sanity loss isn't instantaneous, I don't imagine waiting 8 minutes after loosing 100 sanity just to sleep or get a slight sanity regeneration increase (on par with tam) is the reaction period players would want for that loss. If someone looses their sanity they can just instantly pop down the portable tent and get it back, waiting 8 minutes for that to be buffed is enough time to just walk home to your bases tent or siesta-lean-to, and doesn't really synergize well with his portable tent. I can see the sanity regeneration increase as useful if the player does not have adequate food and cannot sleep, but the build up doesn't seem useful. This skill also doesn't appear to discriminate between taking a hit from something like a mosquito, or something like bearger. Alternatively sanity regeneration perks could be improvements to his Pinetree Pioneer hat, which is an okay item for Walter, but not great and surely needs more attention. The sleeping perks could even be maintained somewhat, as the Pinetree Pioneer hat could be given similar functionality to the Year of The Bunnyman sleeping cap, which increases the efficiency of sleeping. No build up required, and can be condensed into one perk.

Comfy explorer just feels like a mash of Woodie's picking perk mixed with Winona's crafting perk (and downside). Can't say I'm a fan.

Light Explorer OH MY GOD IS THAT WHEELER??? But in all seriousness Walter already has speed bonus related perks in Woby that are already buffed in the skill tree, and would be buffed even further with your skill tree ideas. I really don't think he needs that nor would I think the ritual required to absorb Wheeler's soul would be worth it.

Sling shot 2 second no wind up- Scrappy frame Charged shot achieves this

Magic rounds buff- Could just add a pre rift variant to the Pure Brilliance rounds and buff the Pure Brilliance rounds. The rounds already work with melee weapons, provided they do planar damage. You are already advantaged by using magic rounds in melee combat, especially with things like slow down rounds and their variants, they are not exclusive to ranged attacking.

Increased hitstun chance with marble rounds- Would make them nice

 

[Chewabacca]

Bumping this thread because this post had a lot of interesting ideas that I hope the devs consider. Seeing the slingshot improved is great, but it doesn't need to drown out every other aspect of his character.