Make Abigail's gestalt transformation/murder buff requirement more meaningful

[Cassielu]

Murder

Murder Buff activation is actually not bad... The biggest problem is that, until this update, there was almost no difference between killing an animal in the inventory with a weapon and regular combat killing, which made the world feel more reasonable, unlike most other games where the inventory and the world outside the inventory are two completely unrelated things. It just doesn't feel worth it to change all those years of existence for Wendy.

Another issue is that this skill works very much like spam boss, where you collect a bunch of animals, kill them before the boss battle, and then enjoy the buff without any specific strategy changes involved. The difficulty and repetition of collecting animals also prevents players from using it many times in daily non-boss battles.

So I hope to get the following changes:

• Regular combat kills also provide buff for Abigail, but much shorter, like 1 or 2 seconds.
• Wendy attacking vex mob can extend buffs for a very short time, like 0.2 seconds.  (aka, slow it down)
• Wendy's murder action will display a new string "sacrifice" to show that it is different from simply killing them.

This would encourage a more aggressive style of combat, allowing extending the duration of buffs through attacks to reducing preparation, reducing spam, increasing differences in gameplay. It also strengthens Shadow Abigail's identity as "better at her original AOE attack" compared to Gestalt Abigail's. And complete fix the problem about murder and regular combat killing,.

Also, this does not diminish the importance of "collecting animals", it will still be the most effective and easiest way to use the murder buff.

Gestalt

Gestalt Abigail is distinguished by the fact that she trades her original AOE advantage for an advantage against powerful individual enemies. Considering that Gestalt Abigail is designed to be a form that requires the player to switch between, I think the purpose of this skill is to allow the player to choose between the original Abigail and the Gestalt Abigail for the different situations they will face.

The current transformation requirement (Full Moon/New Moon) is a little too harsh for this purpose. Rather than making complex future planting - think which kind of Abigail useful to which kind of mob, more players seem to see it as some kind of forced price to pay or punishment.

How can it be improved? Well, I'm not sure, but one thing is that it definitely needs to be simpler:

• A common idea in the forums earlier is to make it related to the Lune Tree Blossom and Sisturn, when Sisturn full of Lune Tree Blossom, Abigail becomes a gestalt.
• One of the ideas I had was to make it about enlightenment, when Wendy is fully enlightened Abigail will turn into a gestalt, and zero sanity will change back. The benefit of this is that the player can gradually make Abigail's transformation easier by engaging in the game, but it may still be a bit harsh for the purpose of "choosing the right Abigail".
• One of my recent new ideas was inspired by @Yifei_ for Wendy to get a special Abigail's Flower, made from lunar  material instead of nightmare fuel. Using it to summon Abigail will get Gestalt Abigail, while using the original Abigail's Flower will get regular Abigail. But that might be a little too easy?

[Yaorin yon]

I think the activation and delay parts are very cool, and even made me have some selfish thoughts, hoping that the moon and shadow can be compatible at the same time (like Winona's two-color catapult). Because the curse of the moon Abigail lasts longer, when you use team spirit, you can have more ample delay time.

I think the Moon Abigail Flower part is extremely cool, and I hope that after using the Moon Phase Disk, Wendy can unlock this recipe, similar to how a Star Staff becomes a Moon Staff, providing an extremely flexible and versatile mode experience

[Yifei_]

I fully support this. The current transformation conditions, especially the Lunar Affinity, are too demanding: The lunar cycle in DST lasts a total of 20 days (almost three hours), there are interferences from Moon Storm and Lunar Grimoire, the lunar phase is almost impossible to determine when re-logging into a multiplayer server, and it is completely impossible to transform in the Caves.

I mentioned some possible transformation suggestions in my post (using the Moon Dial in the Caves, using Infused Moon Shards). They may not be the most ideal solutions, but I hope there will be better methods.

Additionally, I also proposed the idea of adding a new recipe in this post. Perhaps this could be linked to the transformation conditions? However, directly using different flowers to summon different forms of Abigail seems a bit too simple.

 

[Cassielu]

Well, I see that the Gestalt requirements have been relaxed. I don't think it does much to improve it, it doesn't replace "I have to remember to do this in twenty days" with more interesting experiences/thoughts, it just shortens that time. It's still houswork, just less hard, not more fun.

Still expect for more changes.

[Steorra]

On 2/2/2025 at 3:45 AM, Cassielu said:

Wendy's murder action will display a new string "sacrifice" to show that it is different from simply killing them.

pretty love this detail

On 2/2/2025 at 9:28 AM, Yifei_ said:

I fully support this. The current transformation conditions, especially the Lunar Affinity, are too demanding: The lunar cycle in DST lasts a total of 20 days (almost three hours), there are interferences from Moon Storm and Lunar Grimoire, the lunar phase is almost impossible to determine when re-logging into a multiplayer server, and it is completely impossible to transform in the Caves.

I mentioned some possible transformation suggestions in my post (using the Moon Dial in the Caves, using Infused Moon Shards). They may not be the most ideal solutions, but I hope there will be better methods.

Additionally, I also proposed the idea of adding a new recipe in this post. Perhaps this could be linked to the transformation conditions? However, directly using different flowers to summon different forms of Abigail seems a bit too simple.

 

what about to detrans Gesbby into normal form by using a 90+% duration Night Light in caves? (Then the duration of the Night Light should be set as 0)

On 2/2/2025 at 3:45 AM, Cassielu said:

One of my recent new ideas was inspired by @Yifei_ for Wendy to get a special Abigail's Flower, made from lunar  material instead of nightmare fuel. Using it to summon Abigail will get Gestalt Abigail, while using the original Abigail's Flower will get regular Abigail. But that might be a little too easy?

no "balance" talking here, the problem of this method is this is seems paradoxical to the lore of Abby's flower.

It seems Abby's soul was bond with her flower. Ofc we could have flower duplications, but it's an obviously gameplay thing. But once we could craft two type flower for Abby... Things gonna be weird.

[Yifei_]

5 hours ago, Steorra said:

what about to detrans Gesbby into normal form by using a 90+% duration Night Light in caves? (Then the duration of the Night Light should be set as 0)

I don't think it's a "problem" that the conversion can't happen in the cave. This is because, in the current cave environment, Lunar Abigail is significantly weaker than Normal Abigail, and there's absolutely no reason for me to choose Lunar Abigail in the cave.

When facing the bosses in the cave: Toadstool, she can't avoid bombs, Ancient Fuelweaver, she lacks AoE attacks, Ancient Guardian, she is harder to position, and Nightmare Werepig's aggro (aggression) can easily get out of control.

Moreover, there's the downside of losing AoE capabilities: unable to kill shadow monkeys in large numbers, unable to break Rictus's invisibility, and unable to quickly kill big tentacles.

It's truly a "brilliant" design: no conversion conditions are provided in the cave, because you simply don't need to convert, unless you want to make your experience clearing ruins even worse!

[Yaorin yon]

These are the new ideas I came up with based on your post. I hope you don't mind me sharing them with you here. Your thoughts often help me see things from a fresh perspective.