Ultimate Warly Skilltree (Hear me out, I have COOKED)

[loopuleasa]

I had some dreams last night, and the night before, and other nights last year, and I think I have pieced together a vision that REALLY works for Warly, one of my favorite characters.

So let's start with the cinematic short that ran in my head that sprouted everything.

 

Warly Animated Short:

Title: Don't Starve Together: Passion, Love and Friendship [Warly Animated Short]

Scene Description: The animated short begins with a scene where the survivors (basically all of them, or as many as can fit) are huddled over a shoddy campfire, battered and bruised and hungry. Warly frantically fixes the leg of a crockpot as a tired Willow with bags under her eyes struggles to conjure a small flame to light the charcoal underneath. Warly looks around worried, as his companions are not having a good time to say the least. A Wolfgang and Wigfrid come up (maybe with one of them having a black eye after being in an unsuccessful fight) to bring around two measle monster meat and a morsel to the chef. Another set of survivor (let's say a Walter and Wurt bring a handful of berries). The chef musters a few meatballs with the little that is around (looking great btw), and in archetypical Disney fashion he tries to "cut the pea in half" to share the little food to the many survivors, after which everyone is saddened to see the paltry amount. Warly is saddened to see this is the best he could do and shakes his head in disappointment. Wilson comes near and pats him on the shoulder to comfort him and goes on to point his finger and gesture "Look closely". Camera pans to everyone enjoying their little "slice of meatball on a stick" and talking to each other smiling. Scenes here includes some sad survivors looking sad then taking their only bite and being surprised by the flavors! This symbolic scene drives the point home that survival in The Constant, and Don't Starve in general as a franchise is all about the friends you made along the way. Camera pans to Warly and Wilson, both of them smiling and looking optimistic and proud.

Next Scenes Description (Timelapse): The following 3-5 flash scenes are time travel scenes in the future, with fast transitions, with long time skips, as the base gets progressively "cozier" and filled with more amenities. Food becomes more plentiful with each scene, and the selection of cuisine and love and effort from the chef grows each time. The kitchen also expands and the crockpots changes eventually to the fancy skins (like the Tureen skin) as time goes on. With each scene, survivors are showed enjoying their food and the company of each other by the fire, laughing and chatting.

Closing Scenes: Warly, through sweat and effort, is showed proud in his facial expressions looking on everything that was achieved. That THEY all achieved. He goes in a fancy tent to grab a well deserved night of sleep. The following scenes show survivor after survivor coming to his tent to give gifts as thank you for the great work he's done. A smiling Wickerbottom is shown to give a book full of sketches titled "Ingredients of The Constant", Wigfrid gives an overly the top ornated Laddle, etc.

The camera zooms out of a really well kept and well lit camp in the night. Video end splashscreen shows.

 

 

Theme of the Skilltree and Warly's character:

Warly's vibes seem to be pertaining to someone with attention to detail, caring, and exhibiting more of a parental figure in the cast of Don't Starve. His talent for cooking is being pursued for the goal of lifting up everyone else in the harsh universe of The Constant. This naturally leads for him to be appreciated by others, which creates a virtuous cycle into him pouring even more love into his craft, seeing the fruits of his labor. His new identity with the skilltree is someone that also likes "tidying" and caring for the base to make it as welcoming and cozy for the survivors that have battled far or travelled wide.

 

Core mechanics:

Signature Dishes: Warly can make a "signature dish" for each individual survivor, that gives them a special unique power when eaten. This signifies how Warly got "to know" each survivor and what they like. This also makes people LOVE having a Warly on the team, as it gives a feeling of "Warly completes me" and an in-game effect of how helpful he is.

Some examples:

• Frazzletti (Spaghetti with frazzled wires for WX): 1 Frazzled wire, 3 filler. This would allow WX to receive full charge upon eating it. Has no spoilage time.
• Gourmet Monster Meatballs (for Webber): 3 Monster Meat, 1 egg. This would yield a set of 20 meatballs that webber can use to tame spiders for less monster meat, and the meatballs will also give an attack speed boost to spiders that ate it (signified by a shine effect on top a spider). Has very long spoilage time.
• Rose tea (for Charlie): 1 rose, 1 forgetmelots, 1 ice, 1 honey. This dish must be left in the dark. With a cooldown, Charlie will swoop in to grab the tea, with a less aggressive sound effect playing, and leave behind nightmare fuel.
• etc.

Food orders and cravings: Warly is able to examine a character (or another character examines Warly) and the quote text will also mention a food order/craving that survivor currently has. Warly is then able to play a small game of "Plate Up" by fulfilling SPECIFIC foods each survivor wants. Doing so makes the food give 10% more stats for each subsequent fulfilled "craving", up to a cap of 10x. Survivors can eat other foods in the meantime without affecting this chain, but this chain has a decay rate of let's say 3-5 days per -1 craving.

Picky eater mod but as skilltree: The picky eater (eat your veggies) mod is actually one of my all time favorite mods, as it is a game mode that forces you to only eat specific foods from a random selection of dishes. This mod is incredibly FUN if you are experienced at the game, albeit being a bit too hard for the average Warly. A soft version of this mod could be implemented for Warly's skilltree, similar to the above survival "food craving" system. Warly could periodically talk about the food he craves (only one dish). That food is only made with ingredients he already found. If he eats that one specifically, he experiences the 10% more stats for each fulfilled "craving" chain. However, for him, if he chooses to eat a "non-craved" food, the chain goes back 1 step. The cap for this is really high, up to 20x chain (+200% stats). This incentivizes experienced Warly players to try to eat a chain of highly specific crockpot dishes. Based on the chain, his body also slightly increases in all stats to signify his well rounded diet (and also to allow for the "craving" chain bonuses to fit).

Perks related to base building and tidying: Optionally, but would be good to have are some perks that enable Warly to be useful in "cozying" up the base and making it more livable. In my mind Warly is all about raising the IRL sanity of the players on his team, via food, a well kept base, or just good company.

The standard misc Warly suggestions: I won't go over them, but many people mentioned plenty in the past. The skilltree will have staples like Warly butchering/murdering creatures for more food yields, and the like. Many people have suggested generic skills before, and they can fit here.

 

Recommendations:

• Because of signature dishes, I recommend Warly's skilltree to be implement as the LAST survivor. Why? Because it is nice to know the "kit" of every survivor, and Warly can give a leg up by giving a special dish with a special power to EACH survivor.
• With this update it would be nice to also have some generic improvements to tableware and sitting animations (for instance placing food on table, animation for eating on the table, being able to eat and do other actions while seated, maybe having being seated + at a table give passive sanity gain)

[WenericMember]

This should probably go in the general discussion, not the beta thread (which is meant for existing content in beta), but cool Ideas.

Giving Warly a special dish for each survivor would be a fascinating idea, that I'd like to see. Might make him more of a swap character.

I doubt they'd give him his own dedicated short tho.

[loopuleasa]

2 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

This should probably go in the general discussion, not the beta thread (which is meant for existing content in beta), but cool Ideas.

Giving Warly a special dish for each survivor would be a fascinating idea, that I'd like to see. Might make him more of a swap character.

I doubt they'd give him his own dedicated short tho.

I am starting this thread in time to cook, and will resurface it when Warly beta arrives.

Like a true Warly player, I like "marinating" my creations.

[WenericMember]

1 minute ago, loopuleasa said:

I am starting this thread in time to cook, and will resurface it when Warly beta arrives.

Like a true Warly player, I like "marinating" my creations.

That's not a good idea. It'll get buried immediately under relevant discussion, and not be seen whenever Klei does look for inspiration for Warly's skill tree.

Just make a version in general discussion and link/repost in the beta thread when the Warly Beta starts.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

Ctrl + F for "Hambat", no results. I'm disappointed.

Weneric is right, though. Even topics actually relevant to this beta are lost. I woulda posted it in general, or saved it for after this release settles.

[Thieverpedia]

The short proposed sounds delightfully cozy for my main. Now I want to see it in action!