Please redo Walter

[shaurun]

Walter is a good cheerful boy, but his skill tree actully doesn't cover a lot of his sides besides the slingshot and Wobby (a little bit).

Regarding Woby:

Current skill tree makes her still worse than beefalo to ride. Investing time to train Woby as a rider is almost same as investing time into beefalo training. So train beefalo and leave Woby a small dog seems to be an optimal choice. While everyone would like to see Walter with Woby instead of beefalos. 

Suggestions:

• Make Woby equal to beefalos with the skill tree
• Versatility: add some treats to transdorm Woby into different kinds of "beefalos" by feeding it to her: 
  • "rider": no back off on damage, instead she jumps away on damage taken with Walter on her back. She has rider+rider saddle speed.
  • "angry": now Woby bites upon taking damage, no back off. She also bites enemies in close range with some cooldown. She has slower speed, like standard beefalo with war saddle for example.
  • "tanky": no back off damage, sanity gain when riding, and she can howl to scare enemies or bark to push them a bit away. She can also provide Walter some additional damage descrease. Same speed as pudgy beefalo with standard saddle.

Those are just ideas how to make Woby attractive to ride and use in battles. Things related to small Woby are fine, but as mentioned by several people, are just too passive. If Woby for example could create loot stashes on click which act as 1 slot chest - it would be funnier. Maybe he can even achieve faster spoilage for food with it, or cook something specific this way - idk, there's a lot of space to make it more interesting to use.

Regarding slingshot:

I think currently Walter has too many skills related to sligshot upgrades and ammo. There was idea in the forum and some suggestios in youtube to make slingshot more supportive tool isntead of damaging weapon, e.g. I like honey/icker rounds to slowdown the enemy, dealing small damage overtime is nice, and have some aoe ammo is cool. Walter already has ammo to distract enemy, to freeze it and to set it on fire. I think that's enough actually, I don't think Walter should focus on doing damage at range, especially since he has no sanity loss near enemy perk and it would be cool to utilize it somehow, so getting close to deal damage looks nice. 

Suggestions:

• leave utility ammo to support the team (slow down enemy, scare, freeze, fire, 1 type of aoe damage rounds, damage over time rounds), add making enemies wet
• possibly add some support rounds to shoot into allies such as small aoe healing
• make Walter utilize his "no sanity loss when close to the enemy" by removing single target high damage ammo options
• leave spezialization for slingshots: longer range/faster speed to shoot/maybe add "applying double effect" so freezing can be easier of doubles effect time/maybe add apply aoe effect with each round
• leave crafting more rounds with same resources skills, it's good option

Regarding other perks:

Walter has his hat, his cheerful aura, campfire stories, sanity gain in forest, fast cooking - why not to boost some of it? I won't go into concrete ideas, I think anything can make this character funnier to play, and there are plenty of ideas in this forum. Those I found interesting:

• cooking on fire as if firepit was a crockpot / or portable crockpot which can only be installed on firepit
• portable drying racks / drying food in trees
• sanity aura for everyone around (small passive or huge as specific action like "combat story telling", which requires to stand still when used and interrupts upon damage taken / if not on tanky beefalo)
• something for easy fishing
• map reveal story (since Walter is good for scouting) or ability to draw map on the floor for everyone, so Walter shares information about map with others.

Suggestions:

• just add anything so we can focus not only on sligshot please.

Thanks, and excuse me for my poor english.

[WenericMember]

I'm pretty sure they announced they delayed the beta to add "camper" skills.

[IAmAFurrz]

52 minutes ago, shaurun said:

• just add anything so we can focus not only on sligshot please.

yea its an awful skill tree just for this reason alone

 

52 minutes ago, shaurun said:

Thanks, and excuse me for my poor english.

your english was good so dont worry about it

[Mysterious box]

On 12/30/2024 at 1:59 AM, shaurun said:

Walter is a good cheerful boy, but his skill tree actully doesn't cover a lot of his sides besides the slingshot and Wobby (a little bit).

Regarding Woby:

Current skill tree makes her still worse than beefalo to ride. Investing time to train Woby as a rider is almost same as investing time into beefalo training. So train beefalo and leave Woby a small dog seems to be an optimal choice. While everyone would like to see Walter with Woby instead of beefalos. 

Suggestions:

• Make Woby equal to beefalos with the skill tree
• Versatility: add some treats to transdorm Woby into different kinds of "beefalos" by feeding it to her: 
  • "rider": no back off on damage, instead she jumps away on damage taken with Walter on her back. She has rider+rider saddle speed.
  • "angry": now Woby bites upon taking damage, no back off. She also bites enemies in close range with some cooldown. She has slower speed, like standard beefalo with war saddle for example.
  • "tanky": no back off damage, sanity gain when riding, and she can howl to scare enemies or bark to push them a bit away. She can also provide Walter some additional damage descrease. Same speed as pudgy beefalo with standard saddle.

Those are just ideas how to make Woby attractive to ride and use in battles. Things related to small Woby are fine, but as mentioned by several people, are just too passive. If Woby for example could create loot stashes on click which act as 1 slot chest - it would be funnier. Maybe he can even achieve faster spoilage for food with it, or cook something specific this way - idk, there's a lot of space to make it more interesting to use.

Regarding slingshot:

I think currently Walter has too many skills related to sligshot upgrades and ammo. There was idea in the forum and some suggestios in youtube to make slingshot more supportive tool isntead of damaging weapon, e.g. I like honey/icker rounds to slowdown the enemy, dealing small damage overtime is nice, and have some aoe ammo is cool. Walter already has ammo to distract enemy, to freeze it and to set it on fire. I think that's enough actually, I don't think Walter should focus on doing damage at range, especially since he has no sanity loss near enemy perk and it would be cool to utilize it somehow, so getting close to deal damage looks nice. 

Suggestions:

• leave utility ammo to support the team (slow down enemy, scare, freeze, fire, 1 type of aoe damage rounds, damage over time rounds), add making enemies wet
• possibly add some support rounds to shoot into allies such as small aoe healing
• make Walter utilize his "no sanity loss when close to the enemy" by removing single target high damage ammo options
• leave spezialization for slingshots: longer range/faster speed to shoot/maybe add "applying double effect" so freezing can be easier of doubles effect time/maybe add apply aoe effect with each round
• leave crafting more rounds with same resources skills, it's good option

Regarding other perks:

Walter has his hat, his cheerful aura, campfire stories, sanity gain in forest, fast cooking - why not to boost some of it? I won't go into concrete ideas, I think anything can make this character funnier to play, and there are plenty of ideas in this forum. Those I found interesting:

• cooking on fire as if firepit was a crockpot / or portable crockpot which can only be installed on firepit
• portable drying racks / drying food in trees
• sanity aura for everyone around (small passive or huge as specific action like "combat story telling", which requires to stand still when used and interrupts upon damage taken / if not on tanky beefalo)
• something for easy fishing
• map reveal story (since Walter is good for scouting) or ability to draw map on the floor for everyone, so Walter shares information about map with others.

Walter's current skill tree already allows you to use his slingshot as a support tool but also as a weapon so I don't see the point of removing the best of both words. He's got aoe slowdown, aoe freeze, deaggro, damage aoe damage over time, as well as the supportive benefits of manual aiming. Crockpots are Warly's deal not really a reason to take from his playstyle and I really don't get the fixation on a map reveal perk for one of the fastest moving characters.

On 12/30/2024 at 1:59 AM, shaurun said:

• rider": no back off on damage, instead she jumps away on damage taken with Walter on her back. She has rider+rider saddle speed.
• "angry": now Woby bites upon taking damage, no back off. She also bites enemies in close range with some cooldown. She has slower speed, like standard beefalo with war saddle for example.
• "tanky": no back off damage, sanity gain when riding, and she can howl to scare enemies or bark to push them a bit away. She can also provide Walter some additional damage descrease. Same speed as pudgy beefalo with standard saddle.

These are completely out of character for Woby she's supposed to he cowardly and getting hit too much is meant to be punishing.

[shaurun]

17 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Walter's current skill tree already allows you to use his slingshot as a support tool but also as a weapon so I don't see the point of removing the best of both words. He's got aoe slowdown, aoe freeze, deaggro, damage aoe damage over time, as well as the supportive benefits of manual aiming.

True but it's slingshot only route. If I want to go something else. what should I go? Woby is replaced by beefalo, so only 2 points for small Woby then, - and I have to pick everything for slingshot then. So I was thinking what to replace, and honestly, I don't see the reason for repeating things. like "single target damage... or, another single target damage" and "aoe, another aoe" and "slowdown, another slowdown", even if they use different resources and have different "power". It's cool to spread skills betweeen different effects, and also, I really would like to utilize "no instanity aura from enemy" feature, while skill tree suggests to always stay at range because "your slingshot damage can be better and cheaper than melee weapons damage".

17 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Crockpots are Warly's deal not really a reason to take from his playstyle and I really don't get the fixation on a map reveal perk for one of the fastest moving characters.

Won't argue, there're different points of view on that, but to me it doesn't matter which "non-slingshot" skills will Walter receive - I just want to have some choice and I want to feel Walter as a skilled boy-scout, not a hooligan with a slingshot only.

17 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

These are completely out of character for Woby she's supposed to he cowardly and getting hit too much is meant to be punishing.

I had no idea to tell "klei do exactly that". I just tried to say that I want riding Wody to be actually good choice compared to beefalo. And gave some quick on hand ideas. Also, I think Walter can TRAIN Woby to be not so cowardy over time, same as Woodie somehow was able to overcome his curse and learned how to transform it in a druidic way.

[Mysterious box]

5 hours ago, shaurun said:

True but it's slingshot only route. If I want to go something else. what should I go? Woby is replaced by beefalo, so only 2 points for small Woby then, - and I have to pick everything for slingshot then. So I was thinking what to replace, and honestly, I don't see the reason for repeating things. like "single target damage... or, another single target damage" and "aoe, another aoe" and "slowdown, another slowdown", even if they use different resources and have different "power". It's cool to spread skills betweeen different effects, and also, I really would like to utilize "no instanity aura from enemy" feature, while skill tree suggests to always stay at range because "your slingshot damage can be better and cheaper than melee weapons damage".

The skill tree is planned to get more skills outside of the slingshot based around around Woby and boyscout perks but I doubt they'll lean harder into melee combat because he's already okay in that area the focus on the slingshot was mainly because it was bad previously but there's no reason for skills to lean into melee more than they already do as that's not the focus of his character.

That being said just because he's good at ranged combat doesn't mean you need to stay at ranged if you want to use combat then use melee combat the game shouldn't have to give specifically tailored skills to make you want to use normal combat it really feels like some just don't like the idea that he's good at ranged combat as though something is lost because of it.

5 hours ago, shaurun said:

"your slingshot damage can be better and cheaper than melee weapons damage".

This is highly debatable melee weapons still do more damage than the slingshot and even in the late game melee weapons with their repair kits are cheaper than using the slingshot's ammo.

5 hours ago, shaurun said:

Won't argue, there're different points of view on that, but to me it doesn't matter which "non-slingshot" skills will Walter receive - I just want to have some choice and I want to feel Walter as a skilled boy-scout, not a hooligan with a slingshot only.

I agree he needs more skills but I feel like they should be more his own thing and something that he doesn't already excels at.

 

5 hours ago, shaurun said:

I had no idea to tell "klei do exactly that". I just tried to say that I want riding Wody to be actually good choice compared to beefalo. And gave some quick on hand ideas. Also, I think Walter can TRAIN Woby to be not so cowardy over time, same as Woodie somehow was able to overcome his curse and learned how to transform it in a druidic way.

Woodie didn't really overcome his curse it was suppressed by aligning with the moon that aside I feel like there are ways to make Woby competitive with a beefalo without just making her a complete beefalo clone like giving her more abilities that beefalos don't have access to.

[MisterBilly]

9 hours ago, shaurun said:

True but it's slingshot only route. If I want to go something else. what should I go?

 Playing a character whose major draw and point isn't a slingshot would probably be ideal.

[shaurun]

10 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

That being said just because he's good at ranged combat doesn't mean you need to stay at ranged if you want to use combat then use melee combat the game shouldn't have to give specifically tailored skills to make you want to use normal combat it really feels like some just don't like the idea that he's good at ranged combat as though something is lost because of it.

I didn't mean it. I think he's already good at range with the kit he has, skills for more rounds per material + tulecite rounds and he is amazing at range. Some aoe rounds is what he doesn't have so glass chards are is cool option added with skills. Then damage over time rounds  is very unique by itself, no melee weapon is dound that (except maybe tulecite club but is's debatable). So combine these and there's no point to make any other rounds for damage. They'd better add "+x% damage with sligshot" to skill tree so his existing rounds, like stone and gold and marble, get better, honestly. 

However I highly appreaciate other rounds which make apply different debuffs (most were in the original kit, though, like freezing rounds or poop rounds). 

10 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Woodie didn't really overcome his curse it was suppressed by aligning with the moon that aside I feel like there are ways to make Woby competitive with a beefalo without just making her a complete beefalo clone like giving her more abilities that beefalos don't have access to.

Well before Wodie was only able to transform in Werebeaver. Now he developed 3 forms. Before Woodie has spontaneous transdoemation upon chopping tons of trees. Now he has no such a problem. Now he can aso pick a form and transform at will using idols. So it's not about lunar skill tree branch which allows to stay in human form in full moon. It's about how character has changed overall - before he was a cursed man, true werebeaver. now he's like a druid with 3 forms and rare occassions of spontanuos tranformations + treeguards helpers.

So I think if Woodie can go such a huge transformation, Woby also can over time become more brave.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

13 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

This is highly debatable melee weapons still do more damage than the slingshot and even in the late game melee weapons with their repair kits are cheaper than using the slingshot's ammo.

No, they don't. This is misinformation, and I'm getting tired of hearing this when it's clearly observable through gameplay in the beta. The slingshot is Walter's new meta.

Even in a vacuum, their DPS potential is pretty identical, but the slingshot still comes out on top. The only way I've been able to get melee to be stronger is with good animation cancelling. Except it doesn't even matter when you get to sit comfy on a Beefalo or Woby and trivialize kiting with range and fully abuse slowdown rounds on slingshot. So, no, the slingshot is stronger in practice, no matter what. But I have data to back this claim up.

Raw DPS numbers below, reflecting time to kill a Treeguard. Enlightened Crown used unless otherwise noted. No kiting, no hitstun, no animation cancelling, time rounded.
11s using slingshot with Lunar alignment.
13s using slingshot with Shadow alignment.
19s using slingshot with Shadow alignment + Void Cowl.
13s using Brightshade melee + Lunar alignment.
12s using Brightshade melee + Shadow alignment.
17s using Void melee + Shadow alignment with Void Cowl.
21s using Dark Sword, no crown.
24s using slingshot (pre-rift upgrades) with Gunpowder Rounds, no crown.
20s using slingshot (pre-rift upgrades) with Cursed Rounds, no crown.

The only practical reason to choose melee is if you don't care about time and have weapons to burn. If you don't want combat to cost materials, just use your Beefalo's melee for free. Cursed Rounds are cheaper than Dark Sword materials and work well against the vast majority of targets in the game. The other pre-rift ammunition besides Moon Glass and Gunpowder Rounds are largely inconsequential in cost and worth using for all applicable use cases, even in tandem with melee. Post-rift materials for DPS rounds are the only ones that matter in cost, but they've historically stopped mattering to me once I set up a Brightshade farm for Lunar alignment or duplicate Dreadstone for Shadow. Unless you're thinly spreading Brightshade Husks and Dreadstone across a large server with several active players, it doesn't take long to end up with more than enough of these materials to fuel ammo, especially with some independent effort put into their acquirement.

I welcome anyone to test these numbers themselves, because, clearly, these forums are not an accurate source of information. I recorded all of this to gather the kill time but I have no interest in editing clips down for a forum post. It's not hard to do your own research, but it sure is easy to do none at all.

Edit: Post-rift slingshot with Cursed Rounds and Enlightened Crown and no status rounds is 12s. Yeah...

[_mylilsunshine_]

15 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

This is highly debatable melee weapons still do more damage than the slingshot and even in the late game melee weapons with their repair kits are cheaper than using the slingshot's ammo.

3 hours ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

No, they don't. This is misinformation, and I'm getting tired of hearing this when it's clearly observable through gameplay in the beta. The slingshot is Walter's new meta.

Even in a vacuum, their DPS potential is pretty identical, but the slingshot still comes out on top. The only way I've been able to get melee to be stronger is with good animation cancelling. Except it doesn't even matter when you get to sit comfy on a Beefalo or Woby and trivialize kiting with range and fully abuse slowdown rounds on slingshot. So, no, the slingshot is stronger in practice, no matter what. But I have data to back this claim up.

Yep, you're objectively correct.
If we're comparing using end-game metrics, the Slingshot is literally on par with melee in terms of dps because of their better uptime, you don't have to kite as much to do damage.
The cost-damage ratio is very good as well, using Void Grip+Cowl, Possessed Band, and Dreadstone Round will give you about a 60% chance to not consume ammo (if they're added additively) and 173dps, similar to swinging a Dark Sword with animation canceling but with planar damage.
Not everyone can animation cancel and/or willing to learn/put in the effort, so this offers a less sweaty and more comfy playstyle.

 

[OMEGASCRUFF]

1 hour ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

Yep, you're objectively correct.
If we're comparing using end-game metrics, the Slingshot is literally on par with melee in terms of dps because of their better uptime, you don't have to kite as much to do damage.
The cost-damage ratio is very good as well, using Void Grip+Cowl, Possessed Band, and Dreadstone Round will give you about a 60% chance to not consume ammo (if they're added additively) and 173dps, similar to swinging a Dark Sword with animation canceling but with planar damage.
Not everyone can animation cancel and/or willing to learn/put in the effort, so this offers a less sweaty and more comfy playstyle.

 

Just to add some additional context, in my own gameplay recently, I've been literally just spamming Cursed Rounds for nearly everything, regardless of planar defence. They're so cost efficient that I ended up dropping Dreadstone Rounds almost completely, while just using Icker + Pure Horror and the 10% bonus from my alignment alone (Icker's also completely costless while Pure Horror is cheap.) I only ever used Dreadstone vs. mutated bosses, and there's barely even a point in doing so.

Against planar mobs, the split damage on Cursed Rounds changes the planar reduction to be around 1/3rd only, so they're fine when used with 4 Pure Horror Rounds intermittently. Cursed is 32 + 24 * .5 + 27 damage, +10% vs Lunar, with Dreadstone becoming 49 (I think?) + 27 damage, so 54 + 29 on Lunar. That's a DPS increase of 6% on only part of the rounds I shoot, and now the floor is a mess. And for reference, Brightshade Sword + Helm on a Lunar target is 63 I think, so 69 with alignment, which is less than both, plus you have to kite full-time. (Don't think it's a good idea to use Enlightened Crown on melee against planar mobs with Walter in specific, so the helm is the benchmark here.) The calcs are surely different with Lunar alignment, but I really don't care when Shadow alignment gives me a much better slowdown round to stack and Pure Horror is good at piercing planar defence already.

I felt this in my gameplay but never did the math and isolated testing til today. I knew the DPS was close but I didn't know it was THIS close. I'd say that I might actually respec to drop Dreadstone Rounds entirely now that I have the numbers to look at, but there's nothing to use this saved point on unless they give us more Woby training points or buff Shockscrap immensely. I'd maybe have 2 or 3 extra points to invest in new camper skills if it weren't for that pesky lock on Projectile Pro...

In summary, there's no good reason to use melee, even if you're using cheap Cursed Rounds instead of Dreadstone, on even planar mobs. It just doesn't make sense to put yourself in harm's way for no benefit and ignorable cost. This beta has made Walter his slingshot, for better AND for worse.

(Also I'm on the Dreadstone Rounds kinda suck train.)

[Catuna_]

18 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

This is highly debatable melee weapons still do more damage than the slingshot and even in the late game melee weapons with their repair kits are cheaper than using the slingshot's ammo.

me when i havent played walter

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

No, they don't. This is misinformation, and I'm getting tired of hearing this when it's clearly observable through gameplay in the beta. The slingshot is Walter's new meta.

Even in a vacuum, their DPS potential is pretty identical, but the slingshot still comes out on top. The only way I've been able to get melee to be stronger is with good animation cancelling. Except it doesn't even matter when you get to sit comfy on a Beefalo or Woby and trivialize kiting with range and fully abuse slowdown rounds on slingshot. So, no, the slingshot is stronger in practice, no matter what. But I have data to back this claim up.

Raw DPS numbers below, reflecting time to kill a Treeguard. Enlightened Crown used unless otherwise noted. No kiting, no hitstun, no animation cancelling, time rounded.
11s using slingshot with Lunar alignment.
13s using slingshot with Shadow alignment.
19s using slingshot with Shadow alignment + Void Cowl.
13s using Brightshade melee + Lunar alignment.
12s using Brightshade melee + Shadow alignment.
17s using Void melee + Shadow alignment with Void Cowl.
21s using Dark Sword, no crown.
24s using slingshot (pre-rift upgrades) with Gunpowder Rounds, no crown.
20s using slingshot (pre-rift upgrades) with Cursed Rounds, no crown.

The only practical reason to choose melee is if you don't care about time and have weapons to burn. If you don't want combat to cost materials, just use your Beefalo's melee for free. Cursed Rounds are cheaper than Dark Sword materials and work well against the vast majority of targets in the game. The other pre-rift ammunition besides Moon Glass and Gunpowder Rounds are largely inconsequential in cost and worth using for all applicable use cases, even in tandem with melee. Post-rift materials for DPS rounds are the only ones that matter in cost, but they've historically stopped mattering to me once I set up a Brightshade farm for Lunar alignment or duplicate Dreadstone for Shadow. Unless you're thinly spreading Brightshade Husks and Dreadstone across a large server with several active players, it doesn't take long to end up with more than enough of these materials to fuel ammo, especially with some independent effort put into their acquirement.

I welcome anyone to test these numbers themselves, because, clearly, these forums are not an accurate source of information. I recorded all of this to gather the kill time but I have no interest in editing clips down for a forum post. It's not hard to do your own research, but it sure is easy to do none at all.

Edit: Post-rift slingshot with Cursed Rounds and Enlightened Crown and no status rounds is 12s. Yeah...

It felt faster with melee in my gameplay but yeah I didn't time it as I mostly played the beta on a public server so I'll admit I'm wrong when it comes to the dps comparison.

When it comes to cost however I still have a hard time completely agreeing. Pre rift when comparing a dark sword to cursed rounds which is 4 thulecite fragements and 4 nightmare fuel vs 1 living log and 5 nightmare fuel as living logs become easier to maintain as the world goes on assuming you don't do regular ruins resets. If you use green gems to get around this the same can be done for living logs(though I don't think anyone would do this for logs when gnomes exists)

Assuming you are post rift however repair kits at least in my opinion feel cheaper due to only needing 1x of each resource for repairs.

[_mylilsunshine_]

1 hour ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

I felt this in my gameplay but never did the math and isolated testing til today. I knew the DPS was close but I didn't know it was THIS close. I'd say that I might actually respec to drop Dreadstone Rounds entirely now that I have the numbers to look at, but there's nothing to use this saved point on unless they give us more Woby training points or buff Shockscrap immensely. I'd maybe have 2 or 3 extra points to invest in new camper skills if it weren't for that pesky lock on Projectile Pro...

In summary, there's no good reason to use melee, even if you're using cheap Cursed Rounds instead of Dreadstone, on even planar mobs. It just doesn't make sense to put yourself in harm's way for no benefit and ignorable cost. This beta has made Walter his slingshot, for better AND for worse.

(Also I'm on the Dreadstone Rounds kinda suck train.)

Amazing, love the numbers. I was talking about Dreadstone round in terms of ammo economy cause of how you can pick them back up. Now that I have given it some thought, acquiring Dreadstone round basically has the same process as acquiring Cursed round. You need Decon staves and amulets, that are only crafted at the ruins, to dupe Dreadstone. At that point, you might as well craft Cursed round anyway, the materials are all there and very abundant! Crafting Cursed round is so much more available with the (reset) Ruins & Labyrinth, hammering (crafted) Walls, looting the Archive, etc. And Green gems are better off used to dupe alignment gear.

Even if Cursed round isn't as effective on mobile bosses pre-Icker, there's still Slow-down round which is just as good. Then Cursed round is the BiS ammo (which I disagree with, I want alignment round to be the best).

Dreadstone round = suck!

[OMEGASCRUFF]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

It felt faster with melee in my gameplay but yeah I didn't time it as I mostly played the beta on a public server so I'll admit I'm wrong when it comes to the dps comparison.

When it comes to cost however I still have a hard time completely agreeing. Pre rift when comparing a dark sword to cursed rounds which is 4 thulecite fragements and 4 nightmare fuel vs 1 living log and 5 nightmare fuel as living logs become easier to maintain as the world goes on assuming you don't do regular ruins resets. If you use green gems to get around this the same can be done for living logs(though I don't think anyone would do this for logs when gnomes exists)

Assuming you are post rift however repair kits at least in my opinion feel cheaper due to only needing 1x of each resource for repairs.

The fragments aren't the problem. It's the Living Logs and Nightmare Fuel. There's 3-6 logs in your Forest shard from Totally Normal Trees, unless you wind up with a Treeguard setpiece, and there's a few Mush Gnomes that drop 1-2 each in the Lunar Grotto on a pretty meh daily respawn timer. When you're investing at least 3 of these into the bare minimum in staffs from a ruins rush, plus 3 more for a Shadow Manipulator, you have very little to work with afterwards until Treeguards start spawning more easily unless you devote time actively to camping Mush Gnomes, during early days when your time is better spent doing more important things. But Cursed Rounds are also 50% more efficient on Nightmare Fuel. It's pretty likely you're gonna end up bottlenecked on either logs or fuel for Dark Swords for a little while without going out of your way to farm either, which is why most people use Hambats early on. If you have both a Wormwood AND a Willow on your team, I'd say it'd be a bit different, but I'd be very annoyed if they expressed some problem with me hammering down normally-ignored walls for ammo. It's really just that it takes a lot less time to get the fragments in bulk than it does to farm extra Nightmare Fuel and Living Logs, especially when solo.

You can get an insane amount of fragments from hammering down walls in the wilds, the ruins themselves, or even the archives if you feel like it. Doing a full clear of the ruins itself will net you a great deal of fragments from Broken Clockworks, damaged clockworks, the labyrinth, and the Ornate Chest. There's no need to duplicate Thulecite for this. Most people don't bother hammering down walls at all, but it's worth it as a Walter. I went home with 3 stacks of Thulecite Fragments on my first ruins clear, or 3,600 rounds, which was enough to last much longer than necessary. You can also just use Marble rounds for anything you don't deem important enough if you feel like being careful with them. I used both, but only Cursed Rounds for anything remotely important as my primary DPS option. Marble's totally valid for trash mobs with <150~200 HP.

Post-rift, Thulecite and Nightmare Fuel are both largely meaningless, and your ruins has reset for more fragments, so you may as well just spam Cursed Rounds as much as you want. The only real sink for Thulecite is through crowns, as the body armor isn't very popular when it's competing with the Magiluminesence, Marble Suit/Night Armor, Dreadstone, and rift armors. The crowns are still pretty good for any stage of the game, but once rifts are open, most players just default to their preferred rift gear set (or the Enlightened Crown.) I've never not had an excess of Thulecite after my second ruins clear, which used to be as late as year 2 summer back when I played at a slower pace. And as for Nightmare Fuel... Well, there's Ickers, and the lowered need for it at all after Dark Swords stop being the best melee option.

Overall, Projectile Pro opened up the doors for this ammo by a very great deal when it comes to its economy. It was absolutely not worth it, without this. But things are very different now.

1 hour ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

Even if Cursed round isn't as effective on mobile bosses pre-Icker, there's still Slow-down round which is just as good. Then Cursed round is the BiS ammo (which I disagree with, I want alignment round to be the best).

Dreadstone round = suck!

They're HIGHLY effective when playing in a group, because the other players will keep the target steady for you. Otherwise, yeah, it depends on the mob's movement speed and if you're willing to use Sticky + Slowdown Rounds on faster targets. Sticky is super free for anything average or slow, though.

I want alignment to be best in slot, too. It really doesn't make sense that it's not. Dreadstone needs a small damage buff independent of the Void Cowl (or ideally the Void Cowl buff needs to be improved quite a lot, because on Walter it competes so heavily with the Enlightened Crown), or an additional use is given to it. (Knockback when charged would be spicy and also useful for Lunar alignment. Much less knockback on giants probably, and it could scale down with slowdown effects for balance purposes. I'm not sure there's any existing programming to repurpose for this functionality, though, and dev lift matters more this close to release.)

Still not sure what to do about Brightshade/Pure Brilliance Rounds, and I'd have to double check the planar split on the former before making a statement on the numbers, but I'd really like Pure Brilliance to last longer than like 7 seconds and have its damage bonus increased to 10 for other allies specifically. I don't really know, though, because I've been kinda just waiting for the next update to see what changes first.

[Mysterious box]

On 1/2/2025 at 11:10 AM, OMEGASCRUFF said:

The fragments aren't the problem. It's the Living Logs and Nightmare Fuel. There's 3-6 logs in your Forest shard from Totally Normal Trees, unless you wind up with a Treeguard setpiece, and there's a few Mush Gnomes that drop 1-2 each in the Lunar Grotto on a pretty meh daily respawn timer. When you're investing at least 3 of these into the bare minimum in staffs from a ruins rush, plus 3 more for a Shadow Manipulator, you have very little to work with afterwards until Treeguards start spawning more easily unless you devote time actively to camping Mush Gnomes, during early days when your time is better spent doing more important things. But Cursed Rounds are also 50% more efficient on Nightmare Fuel. It's pretty likely you're gonna end up bottlenecked on either logs or fuel for Dark Swords for a little while without going out of your way to farm either, which is why most people use Hambats early on. If you have both a Wormwood AND a Willow on your team, I'd say it'd be a bit different, but I'd be very annoyed if they expressed some problem with me hammering down normally-ignored walls for ammo. It's really just that it takes a lot less time to get the fragments in bulk than it does to farm extra Nightmare Fuel and Living Logs, especially when solo.

You can get an insane amount of fragments from hammering down walls in the wilds, the ruins themselves, or even the archives if you feel like it. Doing a full clear of the ruins itself will net you a great deal of fragments from Broken Clockworks, damaged clockworks, the labyrinth, and the Ornate Chest. There's no need to duplicate Thulecite for this. Most people don't bother hammering down walls at all, but it's worth it as a Walter. I went home with 3 stacks of Thulecite Fragments on my first ruins clear, or 3,600 rounds, which was enough to last much longer than necessary. You can also just use Marble rounds for anything you don't deem important enough if you feel like being careful with them. I used both, but only Cursed Rounds for anything remotely important as my primary DPS option. Marble's totally valid for trash mobs with <150~200 HP.

Post-rift, Thulecite and Nightmare Fuel are both largely meaningless, and your ruins has reset for more fragments, so you may as well just spam Cursed Rounds as much as you want. The only real sink for Thulecite is through crowns, as the body armor isn't very popular when it's competing with the Magiluminesence, Marble Suit/Night Armor, Dreadstone, and rift armors. The crowns are still pretty good for any stage of the game, but once rifts are open, most players just default to their preferred rift gear set (or the Enlightened Crown.) I've never not had an excess of Thulecite after my second ruins clear, which used to be as late as year 2 summer back when I played at a slower pace. And as for Nightmare Fuel... Well, there's Ickers, and the lowered need for it at all after Dark Swords stop being the best melee option.

Overall, Projectile Pro opened up the doors for this ammo by a very great deal when it comes to its economy. It was absolutely not worth it, without this. But things are very different now.

On 1/2/2025 at 9:51 AM, _mylilsunshine_ said:

Even if Cursed round isn't as effective on mobile bosses pre-Icker, there's still Slow-down round which is just as good. Then Cursed round is the BiS ammo (which I disagree with, I want alignment round to be the best).

Dreadstone round = suck!

They're HIGHLY effective when playing in a group, because the other players will keep the target steady for you. Otherwise, yeah, it depends on the mob's movement speed and if you're willing to use Sticky + Slowdown Rounds on faster targets. Sticky is super free for anything average or slow, though.

I want alignment to be best in slot, too. It really doesn't make sense that it's not. Dreadstone needs a small damage buff independent of the Void Cowl (or ideally the Void Cowl buff needs to be improved quite a lot, because on Walter it competes so heavily with the Enlightened Crown), or an additional use is given to it. (Knockback when charged would be spicy and also useful for Lunar alignment. Much less knockback on giants probably, and it could scale down with slowdown effects for balance purposes. I'm not sure there's any existing programming to repurpose for this functionality, though, and dev lift matters more this close to release.)

Still not sure what to do about Brightshade/Pure Brilliance Rounds, and I'd have to double check the planar split on the former before making a statement on the numbers, but I'd really like Pure Brilliance to last longer than like 7 seconds and have its damage bonus increased to 10 for other allies specifically. I don't really know, though, because I've been kinda just waiting for the next update to see what changes first.

Personally I usually have more nightmare fuel than I can use by the time I leave the ruins since I usually farm the splumonkeys while I'm down there. That being said I more so meant in a world where you don't reset the ruins as while fragments can still be generated it'll slow down a fair bit.

As for post rift my trash cleanup rounds tend to be glass rounds since they're just as effective as marble. As for weapon comparisons I instead compare their cost efficiency to the late game weapons with repair kits but I guess it doesn't matter either way just a difference in perspectives.

On 1/2/2025 at 11:10 AM, OMEGASCRUFF said:

Still not sure what to do about Brightshade/Pure Brilliance Rounds, and I'd have to double check the planar split on the former before making a statement on the numbers, but I'd really like Pure Brilliance to last longer than like 7 seconds and have its damage bonus increased to 10 for other allies specifically. I don't really know, though, because I've been kinda just waiting for the next update to see what changes first.

I feel like the Brilliance buff should just be raised to 1 minute like the icker rounds debuff even if that means it's craft count gets nerfed and have it's damage increase raised to 10 for both or given another effect as currently it's only purpose is to boost damage of other things as for the brightshade rounds I think the simplest solution is to give it the same spawnrates as cursed rounds then tweak it's damage if it gets to high because of that.

Edit: since the slingshot is already on par with melee weapons maybe instead we should just give Brilliance rounds a non damage based ability?