wendy Wendy Long Playtest World - RIFTS OPEN - 12/8 Start

[Dingle]

Hello! Doing another long Wendy Playthrough, with lots of thoughts and feedback. This time, with both surface and cave rifts open at the very start!

My last ones were here:

I originally wasn't going to do this, because I thought Wendy with Rifts open were a solved problem. Posters like Lardee, Pig Princess, and Debruh showed that Wendy does great on the lunar mutated bosses. Also, in the end of my linked post, I figured out that Abigail can most likely just solo the Ink Blight trio, incredibly easily.

But then people pointed out that I was missing some things, like how well Wendy does on Deadly Brightshades. So I got interested enough to make my rifts open world, after all.

I take screenshots, as I don't have enough time to sit down and edit video.

I'll be tracking how many rollbacks I do, and how many Graven Elixirs I use!

THE BUILD

I wanted to try the Lunar bosses with no Sisturn. So the obvious thing is to max out both the Potions and Pipspooks line. Then Graves 1 just to super maximize Mourning Glory.

I got Team Spirit III because I wanted to finally try out Scare and Haunt.

I got Shadow Sister because that's what I've been getting so far.

I got the butterfly ressurect as a joke. But I ended up actually liking it and using it.

PLAYTHROUGH PART ONE

I find Mosaic after grabbing resources. I find the graves at night, so on Day 2 I have my first 20 mourning glory. I'm used to the Pipspook quest now with Pipspook 3, so getting 20 mourning glories takes me about 2 minutes at this point.

Day 3, I have my picnic casket and Alchemy Engine up in Pig King biome. It was past Mosaic and a Savannah. The world's design is kind of weird, biomes are really far apart, not a great sign for world generation.

 

Day 6, base made! I put it in the Savannah for easy access to poop, so I can replant grass tufts for Brightshades. Also because it makes Pipspook quests really easy, if you're not in or near a forest. In hindsight, I should have skipped grass and just went for saplings, which don't require fertilization. Or neither, because brightshades infest farms, and I'm growing crops for Forget Me Nots, anyway.

Day 7, I get 20 saplings dug up in a forest, and find 3 living logs. I return to base to plant the saplings, then head off underground, as the cave rifts should have opened by now. The lunar rift is open by day 6, but deadly brightshades don't come until the third phase of the rift. I also catch 10 bees and some butterflies to take down.

Looking for the ruins in caves, and I find a bunch of things.

I find the Atrium tentapillar, nearly instantly. This would have been really useful if I was going for Fuelweaver.



The ickers keep falling, and they are insanely irritating. I have no planar weapon to deal with them.

I find the fused shadelings in the rifts. I murder 5 bees to buff Abby. Then I am super disappointed to find Abigail can't attack them! That's really bad!

....

And then I immediately run into the new masked guys. It's a bunnyman and some spiders. Abigail nukes them, of course, and they drop Pure Horror. So I have some to make vex potions. I still wasted those 5 bees, though.

Toadstool found, too.



Ink Blight Trio Fight 1

I run into Ink Blight Trio in the lichen biome. I buff Abigail with my last 5 bees, and then I don't actually attack them.

She solos them. I use a Revenant Restorative, but it didn't seem necessary.

She is bizarrely strong against them. I'm not sure why she takes so little damage.

I mess up and get too close during this, and the big one attacks me, once. This gets me down to 20 health. Haha.

To be continued.

[WenericMember]

45 minutes ago, Dingle said:

She is bizarrely strong against them. I'm not sure why she takes so little damage.

Looking at damage numbers, they do about ~55 damage each, with no doubled against non-players.

Abigail gets 15 planar defense from alignment, so they end up doing about 40 damage. Which is the equivalent of 2 spiders.

The main thing about Planar damage is it bypasses armour, and Abby doesn't have any so she doesn't care I think.

[Dingle]

7 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

Looking at damage numbers, they do about ~55 damage each, with no doubled against non-players.

Abigail gets 15 planar defense from alignment, so they end up doing about 40 damage. Which is the equivalent of 2 spiders.

The main thing about Planar damage is it bypasses armour, and Abby doesn't have any so she doesn't care I think.

The big one also can't eat her, which is what tends to get me.

I think they accidentally miss her a lot, too. That and they keep shifting aggro between taking a few steps towards Wendy, and then remembering, hey, there's something steadily aoeing us all down. It really seems like they attack her very slowly.

[WenericMember]

3 minutes ago, Dingle said:

The big one also can't eat her, which is what tends to get me.

I think they accidentally miss her a lot, too. That and they keep shifting aggro between taking a few steps towards Wendy, and then remembering, hey, there's something steadily aoeing us all down. It really seems like they attack her very slowly.

Their Patterns make them take in turns attacking right? Maybe its a result of that.

[Dingle]

38 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

Their Patterns make them take in turns attacking right? Maybe its a result of that.

Maybe a perception thing. If you're actively fighting them, time flies because you're trying to hit them as they walk away, and you're anticipating the next attack.

If Abigail is soloing them for you, you're just waiting for your loot.

[Crestwave]

3 hours ago, Dingle said:

She is bizarrely strong against them. I'm not sure why she takes so little damage.

Abigail has 15 base planar defense, which is equivalent to wearing both voidcloth and dreadstone armor. Most players only operate with 10 planar defense by wearing a head piece.

A little known fact is that her shadow murder buff actually gives her 15 more, which makes her total defense 30. This surpasses the max a player can possibly achieve (20) and makes her absurdly tanky against planar mobs.

Not only that, but she also has her invincibility shield, which means she can only take damage once every 0.5 seconds. All three inkblights have multi-hit mechanics, which makes her shield extremely effective against them.

Finally, the shadow alignment resistance also applies to her, making her resist damage from shadow-aligned enemies. This means the rasp's attacks do less damage than a spider to her.

[Yifei_]

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

She is bizarrely strong against them. I'm not sure why she takes so little damage.

Damage of Rasp: 20 + 20 planar
Damage of Jitters: 35 + 20 planar
Damage of Shriek: 25 + 30 planar

The biggest threat of the trio to players is the high planar damage. However, planar damage has almost no difference in effect on Abigail compared to physical damage. Moreover, Abigail now has 15 planar defenses and a 10% damage reduction brought by shadow affinity.

When I previously encountered Rictus, Abigail had an overwhelmingly dominant advantage. Abigail's AOE damage could easily break their invisibility state. Moreover, they had no reaction to Abigail's attacks, and the aggro was always locked on me.
 

[Dingle]

1 hour ago, Crestwave said:

Abigail has 15 base planar defense, which is equivalent to wearing both voidcloth and dreadstone armor. Most players only operate with 10 planar defense by wearing a head piece.

A little known fact is that her shadow murder buff actually gives her 15 more, which makes her total defense 30. This surpasses the max a player can possibly achieve (20) and makes her absurdly tanky against planar mobs.

Not only that, but she also has her invincibility shield, which means she can only take damage once every 0.5 seconds. All three inkblights have multi-hit mechanics, which makes her shield extremely effective against them.

Finally, the shadow alignment resistance also applies to her, making her resist damage from shadow-aligned enemies. This means the rasp's attacks do less damage than a spider to her.

 

32 minutes ago, Yifei_ said:

Damage of Rasp: 20 + 20 planar
Damage of Jitters: 35 + 20 planar
Damage of Shriek: 25 + 30 planar

The biggest threat of the trio to players is the high planar damage. However, planar damage has almost no difference in effect on Abigail compared to physical damage. Moreover, Abigail now has 15 planar defenses and a 10% damage reduction brought by shadow affinity.

When I previously encountered Rictus, Abigail had an overwhelmingly dominant advantage. Abigail's AOE damage could easily break their invisibility state. Moreover, they had no reaction to Abigail's attacks, and the aggro was always locked on me.
 

Thanks for these detailed info posts!

Shadow Abby getting 30 total planar defense with Murder up would explain a lot. I did notice the multihit mechanics working, too.

The constant 40 planar AOE, on top of her extreme tanking, kills them pretty fast, too.

Not that she needs the murder buff. In my previous world, I killed them withot the murder buff. She had vex elixir and a revenant restorative on, but she barely got hurt anyway, and I was very cautiously attacking on a beefalo when the big one was distracted.

I felt like she could solo them, even then. I'll see if she can next time I fight them on this playthrough. I was going to fight them with brightshade sword + abby instead originally, but why bother?

[Koomin]

Dingle just carrying the entire beta feedback on their own back.

6 hours ago, Dingle said:

The ickers keep falling, and they are insanely irritating. I have no planar weapon to deal with them.

I find the fused shadelings in the rifts. I murder 5 bees to buff Abby. Then I am super disappointed to find Abigail can't attack them! That's really bad!
 

^this seems like it should be fixed.

Edit: nevermind, see post below

 

6 hours ago, Dingle said:

3 hours ago, Crestwave said:

Abigail has 15 base planar defense, which is equivalent to wearing both voidcloth and dreadstone armor. Most players only operate with 10 planar defense by wearing a head piece.

A little known fact is that her shadow murder buff actually gives her 15 more, which makes her total defense 30. This surpasses the max a player can possibly achieve (20) and makes her absurdly tanky against planar mobs.

Finally, the shadow alignment resistance also applies to her, making her resist damage from shadow-aligned enemies. This means the rasp's attacks do less damage than a spider to her.

Ink Blight Trio Fight 1

I run into Ink Blight Trio in the lichen biome. I buff Abigail with my last 5 bees, and then I don't actually attack them.

She solos them. I use a Revenant Restorative, but it didn't seem necessary.

She is bizarrely strong against them. I'm not sure why she takes so little damage.

This also seems like it needs to be fixed.  The 15 extra planar defense is so unnecessary.  I didn't even realize it existed.  Shadow Abigail being both tank and DPS is currently the biggest problem in the beta in my opinion.

[Dingle]

5 minutes ago, Koomin said:

^this seems like it should be fixed

Which one, the ickers or shadelings?

The shadelings make sense, they count as shadows for winona catapults, too.

I didn't mind after thinking about it, as there are alternate pure horror sources. There is both the shadow mask enemies, and the mimic chests.

Really the cave rift farming seems a lot more varied and less annoying than surface rifts at this point.

[Koomin]

40 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Which one, the ickers or shadelings?

The shadelings make sense, they count as shadows for winona catapults, too.

I didn't mind after thinking about it, as there are alternate pure horror sources. There is both the shadow mask enemies, and the mimic chests.

Really the cave rift farming seems a lot more varied and less annoying than surface rifts at this point.

Good points - agree with all, edited first post.

[Yifei_]

I also started a play through a Rift start once in the beta version last year and I finished it today. I adjusted the world settings to have a very short autumn, an extremely long winter, set both the caves and the surface to have perpetual rain, and increased the damage the character takes. I wanted to see how Wendy performs under these extreme conditions.

In the skill points, I did not invest in Shadow III and Mourning Glory I. This is because when going to the ruins, I did not have enough inventory space for butterflies, and even without murdering, the damage was already quite good. Additionally, I did not tame a Beefalo.

This playthrough gave me the following impressions:

1. The trio of Rasp, Jitters, and Shriek or three Rictus: Abigail is still very powerful.
2. Ancient Guardian and Nightmare Werepig: Abigail's damage output is quite brutal (especially when combined with Cursed Vexation). I killed the Ancient Guardian before the light bulbs in the area went out, which made me feel like I was playing as Wolfgang.
3. Clockwork creatures: There's better room for maneuver. Using Scare is quite effective against the Bishop and the Knight, Escape allows you to effectively flee the Rook’s high damage, and using Attack lets you better control Abigail in the complex ruins terrain. Especially that Scare ability—it has a very short cooldown. The clockwork creatures have no way to retaliate. You can also use the same method to bully Tallbird.  

    

4. Ghostly Elixir: I basically didn't carry Ghostly Elixir before skill tree—on one hand, it took up inventory space, and on the other hand, Mourning Glory production was very low. However, the skill tree simultaneously compensates for both of these shortcomings. After equipping healing potions and speed potions, I had a higher margin for error.
5. Shadow creatures: It is still quite challenging. Even with planar equipment, dealing with a single Lurking Nightmare as Wendy is still quite difficult, and the actual situation is much more complicated than dealing with just one.
6. Icker: This thing is really annoying and even somewhat disgusting. Even though I was cautious throughout, I was swallowed once… Fortunately, I was wearing a planar armor at the time.
7. Winter rain in the cave: I don't know why, but after setting it to perpetual rain, there is no acid rain underground.

 

What I'm currently dissatisfied with in the skill tree are the entire branches of Mourning Glory (both in terms of practicality and how it aligns with Wendy's character), the triggering conditions of Shadow III, the values of Shadow II, the conversion conditions of Lunar III, the AI of Lunar Abigail, and the unclear purpose of Vengeful Ghost. On the other hand, Team Spirits is my favorite and the branch I’m most satisfied with. The Pipspook and Elixir branches are also somewhat good. The Graveyard branch has its practical uses, but there could be better ways to showcase Wendy’s attitude towards the deceased than just "digging graves."

 

[Debruh]

8 hours ago, Dingle said:

But then people pointed out that I was missing some things, like how well Wendy does on Deadly Brightshades

From my experience,

Gestalt: With the lunar elixir Gestalt Abby seems to deal pretty high damage with attack at. Using it to dash through two vines will probably break a brightshade. You can also just make her dash repeatedly through then

Shadow Abby: Just the old typical Abby strategy. Don't fight the middle one or Abby will constantly get trigger and get hit by the one on its left or right. She can still get hit by the middle one when doing the left or right but attack at helps. If you use ranged Weapons. Then it's pretty easy as even in their range where they will try to hit you with vines, Abby will hit most of the vines, causing them to retreat.

The sister duo were always pretty good against the inkblight trio, though I do think they made Abby too good against them. Murder buff planar defense is weird

Rictus is a joke. It accidentally hit my beef once, while still targeting me. And then got killed by it. Its aggro is weird. The initial bite attack while it's hidden, is more dangerous to Abby than anything else it does.

[Dingle]

My memory might be shakier for some stuff, the below is from the rest of my play session from a few days ago at this point. I also haven't been able to play again, but plan to sometime this week.

PLAYTHROUGH PART TWO

I got hit by the big Ink Blight, which nuked my health from full to 20 last time. So I ate my one Pierogi I brought down, getting my health back to 60.

Haunt sadly does NOT let you jostle things out of the loot holes in the ruins.

I have a really terrible ruins generation. You can see a glimpse of it in the top right minimap of the below picture. It's almost no statues, and I am constantly dodging the Ickers.

I get pretty pissed off at how bad the ruins are, and the Ickers combining with the clockwork makes things really tense. I get distracted by this, and an Icker patch drops in an area that isn't even a rocky hallway. One lands right on my head, game over.

ROLLBACK COUNT: 1 - Cause of Death, Ickers + Frustration

After that, I cut my losses with the really crappy ruins generation, because I don't want to miss the above ground deadly brightshades. I finally find a third branch that seems like it may lead to anything, but it's right as nightmare phase starts. I did not find AG, but I'll probably go back for it later. I make a starcaller, without using a construction amulet, because I can't find any thulecite. I use what little bit of thulecite I got to upgrade the only crafting station I found, and to make a Pick/Axe.

I also farm some splumonkeys. Free loot for Wendy.

On my way out, I take the blue mushroom exit, because I figured it would be way closer than the long, windy path I entered from. I was right, a cave hole is extremely close to muddy by way of the blue mushrooms. I grab 20+ of them on the way out, as it was about to hit night.

I go back to my base around day 15, and do a pipspook quest super fast. I also grab more poop for my grass tufts, and do a check of what Elixirs I have now. I make 6 vex potions.

After my poop gathering adventure, I come back, and Brightshades spawn!

Deadly Brightshades - First Fight

I murder 8 butterflies, to apply the buff to Shadow Abigail. She is in Defensive the whole time for this first fight. I use a hambat and pigskin helmet.

I use no elixirs on Abigail.

Fight takes 2 minutes or less. She feels really strong against the deadly brightshades. With using Attack Here, I could easily get Abigail to AOE down multiple vines at once. Then I could use Escape to pull her back quickly if needed from the brightshades when they were about to pop.

The murder buff seems to help a LOT with DPS, as it's 40 DPS of pure planar, added. Or maybe less, as it was daytime? Not sure on the numbers.

Abigail takes some damage from the brightshade revenge AOE itself, but the murder buff also gives her 15 extra planar defense it turns out, for 30 total. She is a lot more survivable vs the brightshades than I remember her being. Near the end, she does take a lot of damage from 2 of the brightshades because I got lazy with getting her out of there. But she doesn't die.

Good start! Usually I'd then make brightshade gear, to make further Deadly Brightshade fights easier. But I don't, as for the first few waves of Brightshades, I want to try just using the hambat in different scenarios.

I then give Abby a revenant restorative, and run to the open rift, to get some of the bright rocks. I always forget what they're called.

Grazers

The Grazers can't really hurt Abigail much, and she defends you from them really nicely. It makes mining the riftstals easy.

On the way back, I use the footprints to get a Varg.

I let Abby tank a lot during the Varg fight, as she has a revenant on anyway. The two day duration comes in handy!

Then I desummon her and run away as the Varg dies. I have one spawned to fight later. I may spawn another one so I can fight it twice for testing purposes. If you kill one, you lose the 100% chance of a Varg when rifts are open. I think you lose this forever?

I go back to base to plant more seeds and look at my loot. My food loot. I am having horrendous luck with Forget me Lots. I usually get them in the first round of seeds. I get the hot weed and the tillweed instead. Surprisingly little weeds in general.

Abby is on Riled mode right now to kill butterflies. I planted a single flower near the fridge. The ultimate Wendy food cheat.

I then go underground again, so I don't miss out on the Cave Rifts.

Inkblight Trio - Fight 2

Not a lot to say here. I believe I just used 4 butterflies for the Murder buff, so it ran out before the fight ended. Abby soloed them again. The big one leaped at me again and ate Wendy, so I almost died from that, again. I mine the dreadstone this time! But just barely. Abby kills the last one like 3 seconds after I mine it.

I get to my base again, and the Brightshades are up again!

Ran out of time, will continue this later.

 

[Debruh]

16 minutes ago, Dingle said:

The murder buff seems to help a LOT with DPS, as it's 40 DPS of pure planar, added. Or maybe less, as it was daytime? Not sure on the numbers.

I think it's the same damage Abby does. 15 if daytime, 25 if dusk, and 40 if night, Nightshade or caves. Not sure, but if true it really makes Nightshade great.

 

16 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Then I desummon her and run away as the Varg dies. I have one spawned to fight later. I may spawn another one so I can fight it twice for testing purposes. If you kill one, you lose the 100% chance of a Varg when rifts are open. I think you lose this forever?

Also not sure about this, but I think thid returns if the it's the varg cycle after you kill all 3 once. Idk if it's considered the varg's turn if bearger or deerclops is killed, or if both need to be killed for it to be the varg cycle. Either way, Wendy is pretty good at lunar varg, can get it like day 6/as soon as a rift opens

[Dingle]

20 minutes ago, Debruh said:

I think it's the same damage Abby does. 15 if daytime, 25 if dusk, and 40 if night, Nightshade or caves. Not sure, but if true it really makes Nightshade great.

I'll try this in the next wave of brightshade rifts. I plan to play at least until that + deerclops.

20 minutes ago, Debruh said:

Also not sure about this, but I think thid returns if the it's the varg cycle after you kill all 3 once. Idk if it's considered the varg's turn if bearger or deerclops is killed, or if both need to be killed for it to be the varg cycle. Either way, Wendy is pretty good at lunar varg, can get it like day 6/as soon as a rift opens

Nice if true. In multiplayer worlds we usually try to summon like 6 vargs before killing a lunar varg. Just because I assume the "100% hostile footprint" thing goes away forever.

[Dingle]

Continuing posting from my play session I did on the 8th and 9th.

PLAYTHROUGH PART THREE

Last part, brightshades just spawned in the base again after I came back from underground. Again, I'm fighting Deadly Brightshades with a hambat and a pigskin helmet. I want to test strategies for fighting the FIRST brightshade wave, with no rift gear.

Although, in a real game, I'd probably already have cave rift gear BEFORE opening the lunar rifts. It makes more sense to go for cave rifts at first with Wendy, as she can obliterate both Fuelweaver and Cave Rift content.

Deadly Brightshades - Fight Two

I try fighting the deadly brightshades with a hambat, Abby on Riled Up, and no Murder buff.

It goes very poorly. I forget to take a picture at both start and end, so I'm not sure on how much time it takes. It feels slow.

I believe I spend 1 or 2 cure alls on the fight, to keep Abby alive. Here's a picture of about halfway through the fight, right as I apply a Cure All:

You can also see a Forget me Not is sprouting.

After that fight, I hang around the base for a bit. I finally make a second crock pot. And another wave of Brightshades spawn.

Deadly Brightshades - Fight Three

I forgot to take pictures of this one!

Abby on Riled again, but this time I Murder 6 butterflies. This doesn't last Abby the whole fight, but seems like most of it.

It's not as good as the first fight, but it's way, way better than the second. I end up using a Revenant Restorative. I'm not sure what the difference was from the first fight, maybe I was more complacent and didn't use the Team Spirit moves as much. I do remember their spacing was pretty annoying, it seemed like I couldn't bunch up the vines very well. There was always one vine just out of reach of Abby, but enough to be a threat to Wendy.

I also used the Mourning Glory 1 revive on the butterflies. This actually made me think about it more, as an interesting thing to get.

It takes 20 mourning glory to revive 10 butterflies. That takes 2-3 minutes to gather now, outside of things like setting up a graveyard on a small island.

Can I catch 10 butterflies with a net in 2 minutes? Probably not. Especially during the seasons with less daylight.

I could catch bees or lightbugs pretty fast, but then you have to figure in how long it takes to walk to those. I can set up a Pipspook graveyard right in my base. My current base location is pretty far from bees, and going underground for lightbugs is both a loading scene and walking.

In multiplayer or a longer term world, I'd set up bee boxes. But I don't have those, either. So I'd say butterfly revival is kind of niche, but an interesting option. Before this, I just thought of it as a joke.

After this I run to the rift area, which already disappeared from the map. I'm hoping that I can still mine some. I also resurrect some more butterflies, as I want to visit underground on the way back to see if I can kill one last inkblight group.

Passing through the Mosaic, I get moonstone and tallbird eggs. Scare is REALLY handy, I can easily keep 4 tallbirds off of me forever. I also end up doing another pipspook quest, I think I spend a couple mourning glory on Revenants.

When I get to the riftstal location, it's already all gone. I actually really dislike the pure brilliance stuff. There's only one source, and I tend to mess up the timing. I always forget once the brightshades show up, the rift is already really close to closing.

After this, I head back to the base to drop things off. At this time, I also realize I can't make any brightshade gear, as I'm missing the lunar orb from the meteor.

I go back underground. The rift is already closed, no more Inkblight fights.

I start to head over to the Ruins so I can make the Inkblight Bongo crafting station.

That's all I have for now! This catches me up to my last playthrough. I haven't had time to play again, but I plan on trying to play until both Lunar Deerclops and the second Deadly Brightshade waves happen.

[Dingle]

Continuing my playthrough posts. I ended up killing everything up to Crystal Deerclops. I didn't end up killing Armored Bearger, as I didn't want to practice the fight + I didn't want to play till second Autumn + it already seems like a solved problem. Here's a video of Lardee killing it in about 45 seconds:
 

Abigail doesn't get hit during his fight. For reference, it takes Wilson about a minute and a half to do the same fight. So Wendy does it twice as fast.

PLAYTHROUGH PART FOUR - FINAL

After walking underground for just a couple minutes, the rifts open again! Here's what I'm carrying real fast:



I fight the Inkblight Trio on the way to the Ruins to make the Inkblight Crafting Station. Here's the start of the fight. I decide to see what happens if I just stand completely still, and have a Revenant Restorative and Vex Potion on Abigail. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I put a Vex on her. I don't think it does anything if she's just soloing them.

Inkblight Trio - Fight 3

I don't have anything to Murder for the Shadow Abby buff, so she takes way more damage. Also interesting: From previous fights, I was having Wendy move around. This also moved Abigail around, which makes her dodge a surprising amount of damage by accident.

This time, I was standing completely still a short distance away, so that the big Ink wouldn't jump at me. It loves to do so.

Abby's health got whittled down way faster than before. Around 150 Abby health, I decided to help in the fight by hitting the big Ink when it was very safe to do so, after it attacked.

Funny punchline: It died in only 5 ham bat hits at that point. The second Inkblight died at about the same time, to AOE damage.

So I think she can solo the trio with Revenant and WITHOUT the murder buff, but probably just barely. It's worth it to contribute to the fight, just to kill the big ink a little faster, as that's what does the most damage to Abigail by far.

By "contribute to the fight", I don't even think you need to attack, though. Like I said, just moving slightly makes Abigail accidentally dodge a lot of damage. That or just using Escape before the big ink's attack turn would probably do it.

I go into the ruins branch I missed and get thulecite and a couple more green gems. Scare is super useful on the Clockwork.

I actually have some problems with the Shadow Mask things, but specifically the Cave Lobsters can do a lot of damage to Abigail if you don't help out at all.

I also have ONE Lurking Horror fight, the post-rift version. I usually just avoid nightmare phase in the ruins as Wendy, and farm splumonkeys instead. I actually do this as a lot of characters now, so it was my first time really fighting a Lurking Horror. It really sucked.

The fight itself wasn't that hard, it just dragged on FOREVER without a source of planar damage. And any mistake took a chunk of health off me, because I wasn't wearing planar armor. And Abigail can't help, of course. Though I usually don't have problems fighting Terrorbeaks as Wendy.

The Lurking Horror dropped 3 pure horror, I believe. I had no idea they dropped so much.

I make the crafting station, and bring up a deconstruction staff and a lot of construcition amulets. The idea is that I can make a ton of brightshade gear to mess with if I want, if I manage to get the meteor to spawn. The meteor never spawns, though.

On the way out, Inkblights spawn again. Not sure why they respawned so fast.

Inkblight Trio - Fight 4

This time, my plan was to use no murder buff but use a revenant, and only help out in a very safe way. I would only attack the big Ink after its attack turn. Abigail would soak up all the aggro that way.

She did soak the aggro super easily, and it was going great. But then I diverged from the plan, because the flying one was clearly away from the others and I could easily attack it. So I thought I'd kill that one first. It died extremely quickly, and even when I was attacking it, it seemed to prefer to want to attack Abigail, who was pretty far away.

This is a mistake, because it makes the remaining two attack faster. The big ink really started to wail on Abigail.

After all these fights, the best ways to kill the Inkblight Trio are just:

1. Murder 5 creatures in inventory. Abigail will easily, easily solo them if Riled, quickly.

2. Have Riled Abigail attack them, and then just wail on the big Ink when it's not its attack turn. Abigail will draw the aggro of the others, the only one that really seems to prefer attacking Wendy is the big one (who loves to leap towards you). You may need a Revenant Restorative for this, but probably not as long as you kill the big Ink first.

Option 2 also gives you a tiny bit of time to mine the dreadstone once the big one dies, but you have to be very quick because even without the murder buff, the AOE damage adds up.

I head back to base, and admire all my loot, and then I actually make some planar gear finally.

As an experiment, I also move the graves to be between the farm and my twigs and grass. I wanted to try using Bigspooks on the Deadly Brightshades. I also flex by resurrecting a bunch of butterflies.

After this, I look for footprints. I want to summon a second Varg, so I can experiment with killing it twice. I just can't seem to find any, so I just go for the Varg.

Lunar Varg Fight

It's incredibly easy, I just have Abigail tank. I use 6 butterflies, a Revenant, and a Vex. I know even if I mess up (and I do), Abby can stun the Varg if she gets one hit in on it during the flamethrower attack, though I mess up by forgetting to have her be Riled so the Varg gets two attack chains in, so Abby gets pretty hurt. I think it dies in one stun. There's just not a lot to say.

I then head back to base to wait for Deerclops. I also get another Pipspook quest done.

MY BIRD!

Crystal Deerclops Fight

I realize at this point that I have no speed boosts whatsoever for Crystal Deerclops. Woops. I'm not sure if I can fight it without speed boosts, especially with the addition of fighting it with Abby for the first time. So I end up relying on the Gloomerang a lot, which I've never used before.

I use Attack Here to send Abigail away from me when Deerclops is using ranged attacks. By the time she gets back to me, I can use the fire staff to stun it and wail on it with the Reaper scythe. When she gets up, I desummon, and use the Gloomerang until she can be stunned again. When she's in the beginning of the stun animation, I summon Abigail again. Repeat. It takes 3 cycles.

I don't think this is a very conclusive fight, as an experiment. I know there's a way better way to do this, without using the Gloomerang. It also takes me quite a bit of running around at first, because I haven't practiced the fight and really don't want to get hit.

For reference, here's another video of a better Crystal Deerclops Fight. This is without using the skill tree, though, so I wonder how fast it can be done now:
 

At that point, I wait around for more Deadly Brightshades.

Deadly Brightshades - Fight Four

I use a hambat again, now with Bigspook assistance. Abigail has Nightshade Nostrum and Vex on, and is Murder Buffed.

I don't have a very good time on the fight, as I spent some time between screenshots making a hambat (I forgot to) and confirming that the Bigspooks would even move. I know it was much faster than the first fight, which was 2 minutes. Nightshade Nostrum + Murder Abby just obliterates the brightshades.

Keep Abby on Soothed so she's close to you and you have to worry less about her flying into the Brightshades. She will pop MULTIPLE vines if you run for the middle of them. Then her help versus a stunned brightshade will kill them before they can get back up.

The bigspooks got killed almost immediately, and oddly, they did NOT respawn during the fight. They respawn constantly during bosses. So not sure what happened there.

I then wait a bit more than a day, taking a trip to catch some bees, and...

Deadly Brightshades - Fight Five

This time I finally use the Reaper. Abby just like in the previous fight (Nostrum, Vex, Murder Buffed), with Bigspook support. I also decide to try to kill the Brightshades as fast as possible, even if it means Abby dies.

The Bigspooks survive a bit more, because I'm really aggressive to try to keep them alive. However, they REALLY mess up the fight. They constantly trigger the brightshade AOE, making Abby take way more damage than usual. This gets her killed at the same moment the last brightshade dies.

Going by the screenshots above, I think that's less than a minute?

That was it for the run.

TOTAL ROLLBACKS: 1 (Icker falling on my head in first ruins rush)
TOTAL ABBY DEATHS: 1 (In the above screenshot, and I could have saved her haha)

I then resurrect her with a Graven just because.

Ran out of time for now! I'll post a bunch of thoughts and feedback when I can.

[Debruh]

33 minutes ago, Dingle said:

For reference, here's another video of a better Crystal Deerclops Fight. This is without using the skill tree, though, so I wonder how fast it can be done now:

This might be outdated

 

 

Also has a bunch of flaws

[Dingle]

5 minutes ago, Debruh said:

This might be outdated

 

Also has a bunch of flaws

That is really great!

I wonder how fast it could be with just the scythe. Or if there's even a reason to just use the scythe now... it would have to be faster, somehow. There's really no reason to not just get both if solo.

[Debruh]

12 hours ago, Debruh said:

This might be outdated

 

Also has a bunch of flaws

Just redid this fight in an actual run, so here's some worthless info.

Deerclops was a bigger threat. She got Abby to low health due to the aoe of his attack. Would probably be an even bigger problem if he wasn't feastclops (laser doesn't damage Abby if she's behind him). I'm pretty sure escape could make Abby not take damage but I didn't use it.

If tanking Deerclops with vex on Abby and an ornery beef (default saddle), cure-all is probably better than nightshade, the damage difference won't matter much on him, and cure-all will get Abby in top shape for crystal clops. Did use 4 bees on deerclops.

Crystal died when it was regrowing the crystal in its eye. Despite me not using nightshade at the first portion of the fight, not wailing on her immediately when she got knocked down but using nightshade, and lagging. So she probably could have died sooner

Consuming only one use of a fire staff, and 45% of a gloomerang. Used 10 bees, I think they lasted enough, can't tell due to a mod on how Abby looks.

Shadow reaper is at 63% after doing crystal deerclops+possessed varg+a crawling horror.

 

[Dingle]

4 hours ago, Debruh said:

Just redid this fight in an actual run, so here's some worthless info.

Deerclops was a bigger threat. She got Abby to low health due to the aoe of his attack. Would probably be an even bigger problem if he wasn't feastclops (laser doesn't damage Abby if she's behind him). I'm pretty sure escape could make Abby not take damage but I didn't use it.

I forgot to mention in my post, but I ended up using a cure all near the end of deerclops. Then forgot to reapply nostrum.

I couldn't figure out the Escape timing for feast deerclops without any practice, so ended up just using attack here to fling abby away. In future I'd either spend some time practicing Escape (to see if its possible, the cooldown seems really tight if it is), or just tank on a dwarf star.

4 hours ago, Debruh said:

If tanking Deerclops with vex on Abby and an ornery beef (default saddle), cure-all is probably better than nightshade, the damage difference won't matter much on him, and cure-all will get Abby in top shape for crystal clops. Did use 4 bees on deerclops.

Crystal died when it was regrowing the crystal in its eye. Despite me not using nightshade at the first portion of the fight, not wailing on her immediately when she got knocked down but using nightshade, and lagging. So she probably could have died sooner

Probably still about a 40 second fight, then.

[Dingle]

Posting last thoughts and feedback. This may be less in depth than some of my other feedback threads. Just low on time, and posting on phone.

Thoughts

1. I'm even more convinced the brigading group spamming that Wendy was weak post rift were gaslighting the developers, for the purpose of overly buffing Wendy.

2. I haven't taken Lunar Abby seriously at all. I hear she's ok. But why bother? Shadow abby just seems much better. I think the original idea was that Lunar was defensive and Shadow was offensive. After the tweaks to Shadow, it's just "Better Abby". No downsides, powerful upsides day 1, and access to Vex Elixir, a giant power increase for non planar enemies.

3. Between this and previous playthroughs, I don't think I'd play Wolfgang anymore. You get the same single target dps, but with more setup (you need to kill nmwp and catch butterflies), and you need to learn the team spirit commands. In exchange for these, you get a lot more besides the single target dps. AOE, different types of utility, easy farming of various mob drop resources, group night vision if you take mg2, so on. At this point there's enough evidence and math to just laugh at anyone who tries to argue otherwise.

I guess the question is "is it ok that Wendy is the new, better Wolfgang, with a Floating Wolfgang near her?"

My answer: Maybe? She takes more skill. Now when people ask "So what's Wolfgang's disadvantage????" people can reply, "well, he's not Wendy".

Depends on what the devs want overall, I guess. Is the plan to buff even already strong characters, for some future post-post rift threats we will see, someday? Was that the plan at start of beta, or did it change due to the brigading? Is there even a long term plan, or are character updates and character balance more of a self contained, in the moment thing? I have no idea, and don't think the grand plan has ever been really stated.

Feedback/Dev Requests

1. If you took all 30 planar defense away from Shadow Abby, I'd still probably favor her just for the big planar damage boost she gets from Murder. I'm not sure what to replace shadow sisterhood I with. Suggestion from Weneric was hex giving Wendy and others slight planar damage.

2. Probably look at that Vex elixir math versus non planar enemies. Especially on a war saddle beefalo. Post rift enemies I think Vex is a 10% increase, which seems decent to me given that they are cheap and stack with other elixirs.

3. Scare is great. I mostly wish Wigfrid's version wasn't awful.

4. I found the butterfly resurrect way more useful than I thought I would.

5. Whatever you do to Blessed Sisturn 3, it has to be exactly as good as Potions 2 through 4. That is its direct competition in builds.

That's all I have, though maybe I'll think of some more later. Otherwise, really just waiting for next hotfix.

[Debruh]

1 hour ago, Dingle said:

haven't taken Lunar Abby seriously at all. I hear she's ok. But why bother? Shadow abby just seems much better. I think the original idea was that Lunar was defensive and Shadow was offensive. After the tweaks to Shadow, it's just "Better Abby". No downsides, powerful upsides day 1, and access to Vex Elixir, a giant power increase for non planar enemies

Gestalt Abby is just useless to most players who, at the very least try to, know Wendy. The whole point is that she's a more survivable form that doesn't draw aggro, but it's just not as interesting as normal Wendy gameplay nor as rewarding. While also suffering from the usual lunar affinities problem of being later in the game.

I love shadow Abby, but I do think that the planar defense needs to be removed, at the very least the doubling of planar defense. Maybe nerf her attack to be 1.5x, with her original damage turning to planar and her new damage staying as physical damage? Idk

Cursed Vexation being better for pre rifts rather than post rifts is kinda of a problem, not really a big one. Though, I don't have a problem with it really.

[Dingle]

22 hours ago, Debruh said:

Gestalt Abby is just useless to most players who, at the very least try to, know Wendy.

I think there's absolutely a niche for an Abigail alternative designed for Wendy players that don't want to learn the "high skill ceiling" parts of Wendy.

I think its pretty clear from the beta forums that this group doesn't like Gestalt Abby, either. It's just not clear to me if they're actually testing her or not, though. Or if it's more that they don't like how her design sounds.

In any case, I think the idea of lunar abby = easy, mellow Abby and shadow abby = expert, but hard to maintain Abby or "Regular Abby Plus" sounds like it could have worked. It's just figuring out what that should actually look like.

I liked an idea I saw way back of changing Lunar Abby so instead of Soothed and Riled, it was using the flower to change between Soothed Normal Abby and some kind of support Gestalt. That is, the Gestalt Abby would be kind of weak in itself, but it would get an extra support aura for Wendy and allies. And then you could use the flower to shift between that and normal Abigail.