Allow Wendy and Abigail to swap places

[CremeLover]

An interesting possilibity for Wendy's skill tree would be the ability to swap places with Abigail.

It would be a skill that, with the press of a button, allows Abigail to take the place of Wendy. This would be in theme as it reinforces the bond and connection between the twins.

Interesting synergies:

Combat get away: Allows Wendy to do a quick getaway from combat by using Abigail's Attack At command + place swap.

Cross gaps: You teleport to the other side.

Save Abigail/Wendy in a pinch by swapping with Abigail and taking the hit instead.

Easy getaway from Fuelweaver cage.

Downsides: It would be the least spammable of all short range teleports:

-Wortox requires souls, but can spam it.
-Woby requires hunger
-Wigfrid spear dash (while is not really a teleport, it does allow you to cross gaps)

You don't "teleport" but "swap places", so by its nature you would need ro reposition Abigail constantly if you wanted to use it for fast travel.

It can rehuse some of the target swap from Wortox's Soul Decoy to make enemies swap target on teleport, so it should not be that difficult to implement from a combat standpoint.

Other possibilities: Allow it to be used while CCed.

-When you're stunned by an enemy attack, while trying to get up, you could swap places with Abigail, creating an extra safety net against some bosses.

-While you're being eaten, use this to get out of the Belly of a Monster by getting him to diggest a ghost instead.

Cost: It should not have an outrageous cost activation, but it should require:

-Abigail to be level 3: If you decide to spam it in combat, and get Abigail to die, you don't just resummon her again and keep doing it.
-Some sanity

For comparisons:

--Wortox teleports cost souls, something he's constantly gathering and can carry a riddiculous amount now.
--Wigfrid's "teleport" has no cost, and she can regenerate her spear, but you need to have crafted a spear in the first place.
--Walter's teleport requires an affinity skill, and some hunger cost for Woby.

I'm not sure where this should go on the skilltree, if it is its independent skill, part of a tree, or part of the affinities, this is just me throwing ideas similar to what happened with Woby

[Steorra]

I agree this could be good for gameplay. But I'm worried that how could we make this change being suitable for the lore...

(plays have gave a lore explanation to affinity Woby's idea before.)

[CremeLover]

17 minutes ago, Steorra said:

I agree this could be good for gameplay. But I'm worried that how could we make this change being suitable for the lore...

(plays have gave a lore explanation to affinity Woby's idea before.)

They are both wearing the same flower in their head, I had the idea of making swap places through the flower, since Wendy's theme and magic seems to be flower related (mourning glory is called ghostflower in the code) , but I don't really want to overwhelm the animation team more than Wendy already has.

Lorewise, they are twins being in sync and using ghost flower magic. Not sure what the woby lore given is.

[Steorra]

7 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

Not sure what the woby lore given is

Once I was saw that is "Woby is mystery so she could have potential of the Constant magic for make her mutate into two affinity forms" which gave by a thread posted here.

[Yifei_]

Is this the effect? This is a Wendy skill tree made in a steam workshop, which includes a skill that swaps the positions of Wendy and Abigail (called "castling").

However, the skill wind-up time in this creative workshop mod is a bit too long. It might be useful for daily travel, but its effectiveness in combat is not so obvious. I hope its wind-up time could be similar to that of Lazy Explorer. Maybe then we could develop this gameplay in boss battles.

 

 

[CremeLover]

3 minutes ago, Yifei_ said:

Is this the effect? This is a Wendy skill tree made in a steam workshop, which includes a skill that swaps the positions of Wendy and Abigail (called "castling").

However, the skill wind-up time in this creative workshop mod is a bit too long. It might be useful for daily travel, but its effectiveness in combat is not so obvious. I hope its wind-up time could be similar to that of Lazy Explorer. Maybe then we could develop this gameplay in boss battles.

 

 

Oh, I was not aware this mod existed.

Yeah, something like this, but in my headit would either emanate from the flower in both their heads, or they would both shine briefly and quick swap, not using the reading a book animation, and hopefully making the camera transition not as abrupt and more smooth, and the animation being shorter.

Combined with the Attack at command, it could create neat synergies.

[Yifei_]

4 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

Oh, I was not aware this mod existed.

Yeah, something like this, but in my headit would either emanate from the flower in both their heads, or they would both shine briefly and quick swap, not using the reading a book animation, and hopefully making the camera transition not as abrupt and more smooth, and the animation being shorter.

Combined with the Attack at command, it could create neat synergies.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3377160236&searchtext=Wendy+Skilltree

Here is the link to the mod. Sadly it doesn't have the skill branch for Team Spirits. The "castling" skill is included in the Sister's Storybook feature, which is why it uses the animation of reading a book. Apart from the Sister's Storybook, this mod is also very creative in terms of herbal gathering. However, the mod doesn't pay much attention to balance, and the values given are very generous.

[CremeLover]

9 minutes ago, Yifei_ said:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3377160236&searchtext=Wendy+Skilltree

Here is the link to the mod. Sadly it doesn't have the skill branch for Team Spirits. The "castling" skill is included in the Sister's Storybook feature, which is why it uses the animation of reading a book. Apart from the Sister's Storybook, this mod is also very creative in terms of herbal gathering. However, the mod doesn't pay much attention to balance, and the values given are very generous.

Oh, is a full on skilltree.

I see some suggestions that I've seen in the forums in that skilltree:

-mourning glory drops from sisturn
-Queen's Gambit: Abigail and Wendy swap positions and health percent
-Abigail can attack nightmare creatures
-Abigail gains 60% defense
-Increases Abigail's health
-Merges Abigail and Wendy

Would need to test all possible interactions, but it almost seems like is turning Wendy into a second Maxwell, with all the book reading and extra minion summoning. Though, it does focus on Abigail more than the current skilltree does, even if it is quite overtuned.

I decided to focus more on fun than balance when giving suggestions, the enhanced potion effect seems interesting and something you could play with, but I would prefer to focus more on skills that do a simple thing effectively over skills that do 20 different things, like the Wreath. Though I woudln't be opposed to buffing the potions for Abigail, specially the shield ones.

[congrongfuguo]

On 2/9/2025 at 7:51 PM, CremeLover said:

They are both wearing the same flower in their head, I had the idea of making swap places through the flower, since Wendy's theme and magic seems to be flower related (mourning glory is called ghostflower in the code) , but I don't really want to overwhelm the animation team more than Wendy already has.

Lorewise, they are twins being in sync and using ghost flower magic. Not sure what the woby lore given is.

Just use this ability as part of the Flower Crown or Shroud, after all, the purpose of these two equipment is making Wendy more like a ghost

[CremeLover]

Just now, congrongfuguo said:

Just use this ability as part of the Flower Crown or Shroud, after all, the purpose of these two equipment is making Wendy more like a ghost

I really don't want to tie this ability to a perishable headgear that is already overloaded with effects, it would diminish the convenience and drastically decrease its usefulness in combat.
The swap would be using the sisterly bond and the flower in both their heads to swap places, and maybe shadow magic, but I don't think the wreath needs more effects and Wendy needs another ability hated behind items.

[Debruh]

I honestly am kinda sad that they didn't lean into stuff like Abigail's flower requiring nightmare fuel, and Wendy's quote for the Enlightened Crown. And just made her have two shadow affinities with no lunar ones.

One could have been damage focused like the one we have one, and the other could have leaned into the fact that the game refers to shadow power as shadoe magic, while lunar power is referred to lunar energy. With cool stuff like this.

Like instead of the flower shroud being a new item, the void rope could have has something cool with it, considering Wendy's quote for it.

[CremeLover]

5 minutes ago, Debruh said:

I honestly am kinda sad that they didn't lean into stuff like Abigail's flower requiring nightmare fuel, and Wendy's quote for the Enlightened Crown. And just made her have two shadow affinities with no lunar ones.

One could have been damage focused like the one we have one, and the other could have leaned into the fact that the game refers to shadow power as shadoe magic, while lunar power is referred to lunar energy. With cool stuff like this.

Like instead of the flower shroud being a new item, the void rope could have has something cool with it, considering Wendy's quote for it.

I though so too. Her lore and abilities are directly tied with shadow magic, so she would've been a fine candidate to have a shadow only tree, opposite to like wormwood.

However, I believe Klei want to reserve that for Maxwell only instead, and have only 1 shadow and 1 lunar exclusive skill trees. The Gestalt is not a bad idea in itself, just maybe doesn't have enough to justify it as a sidegrade.

The Wendy quote makes sense honestly, Abigail is a ghost bound to a flower by shadow magic, so getting closer to lunar magic, the opposite, would weaken the seal and free Abigail, leaving Wendy alone.

[congrongfuguo]

11 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

I really don't want to tie this ability to a perishable headgear that is already overloaded with effects, it would diminish the convenience and drastically decrease its usefulness in combat.
The swap would be using the sisterly bond and the flower in both their heads to swap places, and maybe shadow magic, but I don't think the wreath needs more effects and Wendy needs another ability hated behind items.

...In my opinion, it's hard to say that the Flower Crown is overloaded with effects. Especially many of its abilities are meaningless in the later stages and have only one effect at one time. And occupying the position of the head.

However, putting this skill in Shadow Sisterhood is also a good choice. We can further enhance its effectiveness： At the moment of swap places, Wendy and Abigail were immune to the damage  以及If the two sisters are not hurt for a period of time, their attack power will gradually increase.This is more interesting than killing butterflies to get high attacks.

[Debruh]

7 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

I though so too. Her lore and abilities are directly tied with shadow magic, so she would've been a fine candidate to have a shadow only tree, opposite to like wormwood.

However, I believe Klei want to reserve that for Maxwell only instead, and have only 1 shadow and 1 lunar exclusive skill trees. The Gestalt is not a bad idea in itself, just maybe doesn't have enough to justify it as a sidegrade.

The Wendy quote makes sense honestly, Abigail is a ghost bound to a flower by shadow magic, so getting closer to lunar magic, the opposite, would weaken the seal and free Abigail, leaving Wendy alone.

Yea, that's probably why. Imo, it would have been better to get Maxwell and Wendy out together. Maxwell's connected to Wilson, Winona via Charlie, and Wendy. Now all three got skill trees, so whoever he will get his tree with, will probably be just random.

Wilson came out on his own. Wolfgang, Woodie, and Wormwood came out together probably to reuse that animation, as it existed on their channel before the update. Willow and Wigfrid, cause they're lesbians.

But Winona and Wurt, as well as the latest three feel random. The former two's short was also just something random which sucked.

But yeah, Wendy also has no reason to side with Wagstaff. Honestly, of anything, from her quotes I got the feeling like she dislikes him, and dislikes him constantly needing the survivor's help. Plus the Enlightened Crown quote. And the fact that she doesn't seem that positive when fighting Celestial Champion. But eh.

I do think that gestalt Abby is inherently bad. Especially since she's made for an aloof playstyle. And takes away from the core thing of Wendy gameplay, positioning.

Speaking of positioning, I love this suggestion because 1) Nice detail to actually include their flowers in smth. 2) It encourages better positioning for both even more.

[CremeLover]

15 minutes ago, congrongfuguo said:

...In my opinion, it's hard to say that the Flower Crown is overloaded with effects. Especially many of its abilities are meaningless in the later stages and have only one effect at one time. And occupying the position of the head.

Yes, it is overloaded with effects, and yes, they are not very useful, and come with significant drawback of not being able to remove the helmet.
Is a bloated item that does many different things with underwhelming effects for just 1 skill point.

18 minutes ago, congrongfuguo said:

However, putting this skill in Shadow Sisterhood is also a good choice. We can further enhance its effectiveness： At the moment of swap places, Wendy and Abigail were immune to the damage  以及If the two sisters are not hurt for a period of time, their attack power will gradually increase.This is more interesting than killing butterflies to get high attacks.

I did think putting I-frames on it would be too much, so I just opted for making it a fast teleport instead, which does give you more wiggling room to use strategically.
This was a small suggestion that didn't want to go into heavy detail to rework the affinities, so I just didn't want to enter that field.

9 minutes ago, Debruh said:

Yea, that's probably why. Imo, it would have been better to get Maxwell and Wendy out together. Maxwell's connected to Wilson, Winona via Charlie, and Wendy. Now all three got skill trees, so whoever he will get his tree with, will probably be just random.

Wilson came out on his own. Wolfgang, Woodie, and Wormwood came out together probably to reuse that animation, as it existed on their channel before the update. Willow and Wigfrid, cause they're lesbians.

But Winona and Wurt, as well as the latest three feel random. The former two's short was also just something random which sucked.

But yeah, Wendy also has no reason to side with Wagstaff. Honestly, of anything, from her quotes I got the feeling like she dislikes him, and dislikes him constantly needing the survivor's help. Plus the Enlightened Crown quote. And the fact that she doesn't seem that positive when fighting Celestial Champion. But eh.

I do think that gestalt Abby is inherently bad. Especially since she's made for an aloof playstyle. And takes away from the core thing of Wendy gameplay, positioning.

I agree mostly.
The reason as to why certain characters get their skill tree at the time I believe is most of the time because "the dev team wanted to work on that one at the time".
And I think that's perfectly reasonable. Though it is still just a guess.

I disagree that Gestalt Abigail inherently bad. Having Abigail transform into a gestalt or a shadow creature could be a good way to handle the affinities. Which is why I suggested to give shadow vex to gestalt, to make it more single target dps oriented, while giving shadow something that is more focused towards crowds, but can still be used against bosses quite effectively with good positioning. You can also add some special effects like a short range panflute to gestalt Abigail or some kind of sleep effect, as gestalt and lunar entities do, and you can start getting yourself something more interesting with more possibilities.
Just because she's a gestalt doesn't mean she can't be made interesting.

9 minutes ago, Debruh said:

Speaking of positioning, I love this suggestion because 1) Nice detail to actually include their flowers in smth. 2) It encourages better positioning for both even more.

Thanks! <3

[Debruh]

2 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

The reason as to why certain characters get their skill tree at the time I believe is most of the time because "the dev team wanted to work on that one at the time".
And I think that's perfectly reasonable. Though it is still just a guess.

Ngl that didn't cross my mind. Though if true, is perfectly reasonable.

 

3 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

disagree that Gestalt Abigail inherently bad. Having Abigail transform into a gestalt or a shadow creature could be a good way to handle the affinities. Which is why I suggested to give shadow vex to gestalt, to make it more single target dps oriented, while giving shadow something that is more focused towards crowds, but can still be used against bosses quite effectively with good positioning. You can also add some special effects like a short range panflute to gestalt Abigail or some kind of sleep effect, as gestalt and lunar entities do, and you can start getting yourself something more interesting with more possibilities.
Just because she's a gestalt doesn't mean she can't be made interesting.

I meant less of turning Abby into a gestalt, but more of the intention behind gestalt Abby.

She's supposed to be a more aloof playstyle, which I think is inherently boring and turns Wendy into just a character that deals slightly more damage than normal. She's also supposed to beless maintenance. But deal less dps than shadow Abby. Jason kinda just said dps, without specifying single target or not. So she's not even a single target alternative to shadow Abby's crowd control.

I do agree that using gestalt mechanics such as sleep would have been cool, or even possession, would have been cool.

[congrongfuguo]

18 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

for just 1 skill point.

You can definitely put the ability of swap places on new skill points. At present, all skill points in the Flower Crown branch are completely unrelated to each other.

22 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

This was a small suggestion that didn't want to go into heavy detail to rework the affinities, so I just didn't want to enter that field.

Placing it in the shadow sisterhood is just one of the possible ideas.It can bring some interesting changes.

You can also place this skill point in the teamwork branch.

[CremeLover]

1 hour ago, Debruh said:

I meant less of turning Abby into a gestalt, but more of the intention behind gestalt Abby.

She's supposed to be a more aloof playstyle, which I think is inherently boring and turns Wendy into just a character that deals slightly more damage than normal. She's also supposed to beless maintenance. But deal less dps than shadow Abby. Jason kinda just said dps, without specifying single target or not. So she's not even a single target alternative to shadow Abby's crowd control.

I do agree that using gestalt mechanics such as sleep would have been cool, or even possession, would have been cool.

Tbh, making Abigail less emotional and more distant as a result of becoming a gestalt doesn't have to be inherently boring. Like I said, you can make her do a short range sleep bomb, where you take into account her position, and get to make use of the team spirit skills to relocate her. It is weird that she deals less damage than shadow from a thematical standpoint, her damage and vex are more concentrated, so shoudln't it deal more damage to single targets? Yet her vex is actually weaker than shadow despite shadow being able to apply it more often and to multiple targets.

As she is currently designed, yeah, she's a bit of a one trick pony that's just kind of okay at it, does her job, but is not very interesting.

1 hour ago, congrongfuguo said:

You can definitely put the ability of swap places on new skill points. At present, all skill points in the Flower Crown branch are completely unrelated to each other.

They are all new crafts with mourning glory, that's the relation they have. You could separate them into individual points so you can select each craft individually, and it would still make perfect sense.

1 hour ago, congrongfuguo said:

Placing it in the shadow sisterhood is just one of the possible ideas.It can bring some interesting changes.

You can also place this skill point in the teamwork branch.

Not sure this would be strong enough for being part of the affinity tree, but maybe. Would need to think of what to give GAbigail tho.

[Debruh]

3 hours ago, CremeLover said:

Tbh, making Abigail less emotional and more distant as a result of becoming a gestalt doesn't have to be inherently boring.

I don't aloof was meant as not friendly and less emotional by Jason. But more as in an uninvolved playstyle. He also did mention personally survivable. So he did probably mean it as in a playstyle where you don't have to care for Abby (during bosses). You just fight normally as Wilson, and she does hee thing. Which I do think is boring.

Your ideas are good, but that require getting involved with Abby. Which is why I think they're good. As opposed to the intended way of gestalt Abby, which is not caring for her.

Her getting designed with an aloof and uninvolved playstyle in mind, is probably why she does deal less damage. She is survivability, while the shadow line is damage. Though rn, I think both are kind of failing at these things.

[Yifei_]

5 hours ago, Debruh said:

I don't aloof was meant as not friendly and less emotional by Jason. But more as in an uninvolved playstyle. He also did mention personally survivable. So he did probably mean it as in a playstyle where you don't have to care for Abby (during bosses). You just fight normally as Wilson, and she does hee thing. Which I do think is boring.

I feel the same way. This kind of gameplay is really boring and lacks any cooperation between sisters.

[CremeLover]

7 hours ago, Debruh said:

I don't aloof was meant as not friendly and less emotional by Jason. But more as in an uninvolved playstyle. He also did mention personally survivable. So he did probably mean it as in a playstyle where you don't have to care for Abby (during bosses). You just fight normally as Wilson, and she does hee thing. Which I do think is boring.

 Thing is, there's also nothing inherently wrong with having Abigail be more self sufficient in combat. In fact, it opens design space for what could be other functionality.
Currently Abigal has no other ability other than just pure dps and debuff the target, but if some side functionality, like the topic of this thread and possibly others were to be added to the repertoire of what Abigail can do, a less management intense gameplay could be attractive, since you could focus on combat, and access the extra functionality if needed without having to worry if Abigail is alive/close to death or not.

You are right that It currently doesn't work that way, and it feels more like something non Wendy players would get into since it requires not really playing the standart Wendy, but just Wilson without the extra management. But the playstyle did create some design space that could be capitalize on, so I won't say is inherintely bad, just currently implemented the wrong way.

7 hours ago, Debruh said:

Your ideas are good, but that require getting involved with Abby. Which is why I think they're good. As opposed to the intended way of gestalt Abby, which is not caring for her.

Her getting designed with an aloof and uninvolved playstyle in mind, is probably why she does deal less damage. She is survivability, while the shadow line is damage. Though rn, I think both are kind of failing at these things.

Currently, the Lunar line is survivability and the shadow line is AoE. Damage wise is very similar, but lunar has beaten shadow by a tiny bit.

I really woudln't mind Lunar being more aloof and less management intensive, but I would like to include a more involved and less "hand free" approach that you could make use of, while it also being completely optional and allow you to play with an uninvolved Abigail if you want to (because choice is the purpose of a skilltree).

[Yaorin yon]

Whoa, this is really great. And if Team Spirit could have an independent cooldown, or even better, no cooldown at all, the playability of this skill would be incredibly outstanding.

[Catapult 2.0]

  I think you're talking about a skill in this mod (the homemade Wendy skill tree), which has a very fitting name - "King Rook Castling". I've played this mod to write advice to Wendy, and I still think it's a very good skill that allows players to improve some of Abi's survivability through skillful operation, allowing Wendy to protect Abi, and also improve some quality of life.
  There are a lot of excellent designs in this mod, and I hope that designers can play these excellent mods and absorb the nutrients from them (players will only support you to learn mods, and will not accuse you of using mod creativity).mod id：https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3377160236&searchtext=温蒂技能树

  我想你说的是这个模组（自制Wendy技能树）里的一个技能，它还有个非常符合的名字——“王车易位”。我曾为了给Wendy写建议也玩过这个模组，我也仍为这是个非常不错的技能，能让玩家通过熟练的操作提升一些abi的存活能力，让Wendy去保护abi，同时也能提高一些生活质量。
  这个mod里有非常多优秀的设计，希望设计师能去玩一下这些优秀mod，吸收其中的营养（玩家只会支持你们学习mod，不会指责你们用mod的创意的）。

[CremeLover]

16 hours ago, Natsuki Bamboo said:

  I think you're talking about a skill in this mod (the homemade Wendy skill tree), which has a very fitting name - "King Rook Castling". I've played this mod to write advice to Wendy, and I still think it's a very good skill that allows players to improve some of Abi's survivability through skillful operation, allowing Wendy to protect Abi, and also improve some quality of life.
  There are a lot of excellent designs in this mod, and I hope that designers can play these excellent mods and absorb the nutrients from them (players will only support you to learn mods, and will not accuse you of using mod creativity).mod id：https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3377160236&searchtext=温蒂技能树

  我想你说的是这个模组（自制Wendy技能树）里的一个技能，它还有个非常符合的名字——“王车易位”。我曾为了给Wendy写建议也玩过这个模组，我也仍为这是个非常不错的技能，能让玩家通过熟练的操作提升一些abi的存活能力，让Wendy去保护abi，同时也能提高一些生活质量。
  这个mod里有非常多优秀的设计，希望设计师能去玩一下这些优秀mod，吸收其中的营养（玩家只会支持你们学习mod，不会指责你们用mod的创意的）。

The mod does have a similar idea of what I proprosed, though I did not take the idea from the mod. It was mostly an extension of the idea of twins being in sync, so much so they can "become" the other and swap places.

And you are correct, sometimes mods can be a great inspiration, and sometimes some of those mods are implemented officially in the game. Minecraft is a great example of this.
In the case of don't starve, I can think of this mod being pretty much implemented into the game
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873350047
Though mods are a bit of a grey area, they are also indicators of a larger portion of the community that does not visit the forums, since you can use metrics such as subscribers and visitors to see how an idea fares with the non-forum part of the community.

[Catapult 2.0]

On 2/13/2025 at 12:17 AM, CremeLover said:

Though mods are a bit of a grey area, they are also indicators of a larger portion of the community that does not visit the forums, since you can use metrics such as subscribers and visitors to see how an idea fares with the non-forum part of the community.

Yes, the character designers really should look for some inspiration from these high-quality character adjustment mods instead of working in isolation.