Rework knabsack and evil inclination - make EvilTox great again

[erick was right]

Current Problems:

• Naughty inclination is significantly weaker compared to nice inclination and is unnecessary, especially considering the existence of "overflowing greed" for storage (rebalance needed).

• Nice Wortox is vastly superior to Evil Wortox while having ability to use Knabsack to its fullest with no downsides

• Knapsack is only useful in the early game (or during the first few seasons).

• Knapsack at 1 point: completely useless.

• Knapsack at 3 points: slightly better than a Ham Bat but still only useful in the early game.

• Knapsack is somewhat useful in the mid-game for new players or those who take a slow approach.

• Knapsack becomes useless in the late game, making it a waste of 3 (!) points in a long-term scenario. Consequently, Evil Wortox falls completely behind Nice Wortox in the late game.

I won’t go into the details of how this entire branch is completely useless for Nice Wortox since Nicetox is already strong (due to inclination, teleportation buff, and soul echo buff). However, I suggest reworking this branch instead of trying to merge it, as even if all four of these skills were combined, they would still be mediocre, and I would never invest in them.

Issues with Current Evil Wortox Skills:

• Reaching Souls: Useless. It has a negative impact as souls arriving faster actually act as a debuff (less reaction time).

• Soul Bastion: Useless. Wortox has never had issues with healing, as souls can be easily gathered from bees, butterflies, and spiders.

---

Suggestions for Eviltox Rework:

1. Skill Merging and Adjustments:

   • Combine Soul Thief II and Soul Pierce I (keeping Soul Thief I separate to ensure progression).

   • Combine Soul Thief I and Soul Pierce II as a second skill upgrade for those who want to focus on this playstyle.

   • Merge all Soul Decoy skills into one.

   • Increase Krampus Sack drop rate from Krampus/Klaus for Evil Wortox (QoL improvement).

2. Inclination Change:

   • Remove Naughty Inclination (as "overflowing greed" already covers storage needs).

   • Instead, make all constant passive (frog, penguins, rock lobsters, monkeys (?) - at the cost of shadow monkeys being neutral) mobs aggressive towards Evil Wortox.

   • New Mechanic: Evil Wortox can infuse higher-tier weapons with souls. While infused, the consumed souls cannot be used for healing. However, once the infusion ends, the souls return to his inventory.

   • Balancing Mechanic: Early-game weapons should be weaker than the Knapsack, but late-game weapons should surpass it, ensuring the Knapsack always has value.

   • Introduce Evil Chester, a variation that can store soul jars.

   • While in evil form, Chester:

     • Produces X Nightmare Fuel, Evil Flowers, or Souls per day.

     • Downside: Pigs and bunnies become hostile toward Evil Chester, making him a potential distraction tool at the risk of being killed.

     • Gains 3 additional inventory slots, enhancing utility.

3. New Evil Wortox Skills:

   • Introduce four new skills that make Evil Wortox viable and on par with Nice Wortox.

   • Avoid excessive stat boosts or "stat checking," as this leads to bad game design.

4. Thematic Additions:

   • Utilize Wortox’s horns or tail in his abilities. For example, if his soul jars are at max capacity, his horns could emit an evil red aura (smaller than the Winter’s Feast Deerclops eye light). This would:

     • Look visually impressive.

     • Provide a massive buff to Evil Wortox’s max potential, but only if he plays skillfully.

     • Prevent healing spam in boss fights and extend the time needed to regain full power post-fight.

---

Balancing Nicetox & Eviltox:

• Nerf Nicetox by giving Evil Wortox an inclination buff that prevents souls from leaking out of jars.

• Introduce a new Nicetox inclination: Souls in his inventory gradually leak (1-2 per in-game day) due to his friendliness toward Constant’s creatures.

• Buff Wortox's damage scaling based on his current “karma” or the number of Krampus/Klaus kills (with a limit) to ensure he scales evenly with Nicetox.

---

Final Considerations:

I currently don’t have specific ideas (or rather time) for reducing the effectiveness of Reaching Souls/Soul Bastion. Consider reviewing other community suggestions while keeping in mind that:

• The changes shouldn’t make Nice Wortox much better than Evil Wortox.

• Global teleports for all friends, infinite zero-cost revives, permanent movement speed buffs, and using pigs/bunnies for exploits are already OP mechanics.

A well-balanced Evil Wortox should reward skilled gameplay rather than encouraging a brainless healing meta. The proposed changes introduce decision-making elements that force players to manage their resources carefully while making Evil Wortox more viable compared to his Nice counterpart.

 

 

[kehun]

No thank you Edgy Rick.

[salty_cookie]

Nice inclination itself may be stronger. But the skills under the branch are weaker. Both branches house must pick skills like moment branch in nice and soul jars in naughty. Other 2 nice branches are useless once you get a lazy deserter, and soul bastion is soul bastion. You don’t need to rebalance the inclination buffs. Just make knabsack be either a decent weapon that is not just fill 4 slots for a cheaper dark sword. Or make the tool part of it be actually useful.

[erick was right]

9 minutes ago, salty_cookie said:

Nice inclination itself may be stronger. But the skills under the branch are weaker. Both branches house must pick skills like moment branch in nice and soul jars in naughty. Other 2 nice branches are useless once you get a lazy deserter, and soul bastion is soul bastion. You don’t need to rebalance the inclination buffs. Just make knabsack be either a decent weapon that is not just fill 4 slots for a cheaper dark sword. Or make the tool part of it be actually useful.

My point is: how do you balance Evil Wortox when, as Nice Wortox, I can essentially be a global taxi, teleporting everyone everywhere for free from the very first days?

You might argue that Nice Wortox and Evil Wortox are equal in singleplayer, but the game is called Together. So my question is: in what situation would I ever choose to play as Evil Wortox while playing with friends? It just wouldn't happen. The Echo branch is good, but I think you're underestimating the taxi feature—try playing with Wendy or with anyone who can help you killing bees in seconds.

For example, in the red-bee biome, I can teleport to Wendy, give her souls so she can teleport to me, hop back to the bees, and then she teleports to me again. In about a minute, we can collect 100 souls effortlessly. I can keep supplying her with teleport charges, teleport her back, and then teleport myself to the other side of the map—say, an island.

This is my point: how could Evil Wortox ever compete with that? That is the reason I need Evil Wortox should get buffed. Ignore even the global taxi - the fact that you can gather 200 logs in first 3 days cause you're not handicapped by agressive pigs is huge itself. I think there is misunderstanding about the taxi feature cause probably most of beta players plays solo.

[salty_cookie]

9 minutes ago, Cosiek said:

My point is: how do you balance Evil Wortox when, as Nice Wortox, I can essentially be a global taxi, teleporting everyone everywhere for free from the very first days?

By allowing naughty branch to help you gather souls without needing to rely on teammates. Wendy players have their own tasks other than be your on demand bee blender.

 

10 minutes ago, Cosiek said:

You might argue that Nice Wortox and Evil Wortox are equal in singleplayer, but the game is called Together. So my question is: in what situation would I ever choose to play as Evil Wortox while playing with friends? It just wouldn't happen. The Echo branch is good, but I think you're underestimating the taxi feature—try playing with Wendy or with anyone who can help you killing bees in seconds.

A branch made for team utility is going to be better in multiplayer than the one made to help only you.

 

12 minutes ago, Cosiek said:

For example, in the red-bee biome, I can teleport to Wendy, give her souls so she can teleport to me, hop back to the bees, and then she teleports to me again. In about a minute, we can collect 100 souls effortlessly. I can keep supplying her with teleport charges, teleport her back, and then teleport myself to the other side of the map—say, an island.

Wendy players are not a blender I can summon on demand. Decoy and pierce however are.

 

13 minutes ago, Cosiek said:

This is my point: how could Evil Wortox ever compete with that? That is the reason I need Evil Wortox should get buffed. Ignore even the global taxi - the fact that you can gather 200 logs in first 3 days cause you're not handicapped by agressive pigs is huge itself. I think there is misunderstanding about the taxi feature cause probably most of beta players plays solo.

If you want to be a team player you pick nice if you want an on demand blender for soul gathering you pick naughty.

[Biskit]

I can't tell if those who think Nice inclination is "superior" compared to Naughty are trolling or not. Yall are either trippin or legit just trolling, like there is no way.

Naughty inclination does Not need any buffs.

Knabsack* is not only slightly better than a hambat. It can get up to Dark sword damage, without the negative sanity aura and doesn't need any science/magic.

Knabsack also has ability to Knab stuff, which is unique and a new concept.

Not everything is meant to be from early-late game. For example Woodie has 2 skills for a Hardwood Hat and a Walking Stick. Both which are very cheap, and for early game. What makes it good however, is it can be given to teammates from day 1. But when people asked for the same treatment for Knabsack, some people disagreed that it makes Wortox a Swap Character!!! (Which is sad to see)

For late game, Wortox has very good skills as affinities which synergize really well with some other skills he has, like Reverberation.

31 minutes ago, Cosiek said:

in what situation would I ever choose to play as Evil Wortox while playing with friends?

You realize you can have Naughty inclination and also have all 3 Lifebringer skills, right? You can have Reverberation on top of all these.

You can also use Lazy Deserters when summer starts, so Lifebringer 3 is not anyhting crazy or "Superior".

You can also respec and change your skilltree to satisfy your desires.

[erick was right]

I really recommend Klei devs to play by themselfs with abusing as much as possible taxi on multi on Nice Wortox to see themselfs what power I'm talking about and if what I said about taxi driving is true.

Then compare it to Evil Wortox.

 

Don't balance game about singleplayer when name is Together.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

3 hours ago, Cosiek said:

 

Increase Krampus Sack drop rate from Krampus/Klaus for Evil Wortox (QoL improvement)

While I don't think this would be bad, I think I'd actually like a speed boost while wearing the Krampus Sack over anything on Wortox. Something small, like 10%. But we don't have to do much walking anymore, and it's weaker than the Magiluminesence anyway. A lot of people have wanted some sort of special thing with the Krampus Sack, though, and this seems like a nice everyday buff for it on him.

3 hours ago, Cosiek said:

• Nerf Nicetox by giving Evil Wortox an inclination buff that prevents souls from leaking out of jars.

• Introduce a new Nicetox inclination: Souls in his inventory gradually leak (1-2 per in-game day) due to his friendliness toward Constant’s creatures.

I legitimately hate the Soul Jar more than anything about this skill tree, but I was thinking about it yesterday, and if we got a proper 40-Soul-cap skill (like I'm sure we all expected from this skill tree) that wasn't gatekept by 3 skill points and 4 inventory slots for no good reason, the jar could be kept as a feature if it leaked in Wortox's inventory. Could leak a bit slower for Naughty, that makes sense to me. Basically it would serve as a tool you can use for farming extra Souls for crafting Soul items, or filled before a boss or ruins or something for an extra supply that decays over time, and cover initial travel costs as well. I'd want the decay to be strong enough to not warrant carrying more than 1 jar, though, which means probably the current decay rate we already have. If it's a bit slower on Naughty, I think that's fine-ish. That seems like the only way to save this item without deleting it entirely, as a jar-hater.

If a decay resulted in Nice Wortox only holding 0 or 1, and Naughty Wortox only held 1 and got more value out of it, I think the feature would be a lot less intrusive to the entire rest of the skill tree (assuming dependencies on Overflowing Greed and Covetous Collector are properly reworked.) The Soul Jar is the only reason Soul Bastion sucks so much. It's otherwise a really good skill, but it's so hard to justify it when the cost of healing is irrelevant.

Obviously there is a bunch of other changes that would need to be made, specifically for improving map teleport costs for a 40-Soul cap so we can keep the flexibility we experienced this beta, but I hate the jar so much...

In multiplayer, I think the biggest roadblock for Naughty is that it's really quite hard to get that inclination without giving up Soulbringer III or a critical teleport skill from Lifted Spirits. If there were a way to comfortably do that better, I think we'd feel better about this. I also don't really like that Nice (or Neutral, but lol) is the only real viable option in multiplayer. Is that an accurate assessment?

Also lmao these poll results. Welp, that's the downside of doing a beta test. Not a lot of us are actually experiencing multiplayer gameplay and going out of our way to organize it...

[aidancode]

I don't know what you're talking about with nice being better to naughty. Nice is just a bunch of nothing perks. 4 skills for a stat increase on the healing. 3 skills for a multi-player only perk that becomes worse and worse the more players you have. Nice Wortox is so much worse than Naughty and is way more deserving of a rework.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

5 minutes ago, aidancode said:

I don't know what you're talking about with nice being better to naughty. Nice is just a bunch of nothing perks. 4 skills for a stat increase on the healing. 3 skills for a multi-player only perk that becomes worse and worse the more players you have. Nice Wortox is so much worse than Naughty and is way more deserving of a rework.

I think you might be forgetting the Lifted Spirits branch.

But I don't think Twin-Tailed Hearts get particularly worse. You don't really need an entire server to come with you for whatever you're doing. I've always just brought 1-3 other people with me for bosses or ruins or something, while the remaining players are tending to a farm or, like, dying to darkness, or lighting the base on fire or something. This game has a too-many-cooks issue, for sure.

[Hollow soul 3]

Nice inclination is 6/11ths useless if you're playing with a decent group, 7 out of 11 if you're playing solo.

[aidancode]

10 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

I think you might be forgetting the Lifted Spirits branch.

Didn't forget it, it just didn't complement the point I was making so I didn't mention it.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

Just now, aidancode said:

Didn't forget it, it just didn't complement the point I was making so I didn't mention it.

I find it a little odd they're related to an inclination at all. They feel like, thematically, they'd be Neutral skills.

[Evelo]

As a solo player, the Nice Side has almost nothing to offer. Only the extra teleport. Everything else is useless.

[aidancode]

12 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

I find it a little odd they're related to an inclination at all. They feel like, thematically, they'd be Neutral skills.

Tbh it's prob just an excuse to have SOMETHING for solo play on the nice side. Wortox's skill tree is not the most well thought out on a conceptual level.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

6 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Tbh it's prob just an excuse to have SOMETHING for solo play on the nice side. Wortox's skill tree is not the most well thought out on a conceptual level.

[Hollow soul 3]

5 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Tbh it's prob just an excuse to have SOMETHING for solo play on the nice side. Wortox's skill tree is not the most well thought out on a conceptual level.

They had a great opportunity for the healing perks when they added the newer scale inclination. Or they could cut out the filler and add something actually impactful.

[Radicaljoe]

I enjoy seeing people are really liking nice inclination. But, logically I am not putting together how they think nice is worth even attempting to have as an inclination over naughty.
I get free soul lunches and I haven't eaten mortal food in ages. I heal myself for 5 less, but I still have a hundred souls so nothing really changes. 
Aside from that, being overflow immune is the main upside I enjoy. I don't like taking the extra soul space per jar skill, messes with my muscle memory, so the inclination giving me time to stuff souls into my jars is very helpful.

However, I don't understand the nice inclination's purpose. I know you get more sanity from dropping souls, and you lose more when eating souls. And the only other upside is you can befriend catcoons, bunnymen, and pigs. Which... is cool I guess (not a fan of pigs and I want to burn every bunny house I see because I hate them anyway). But to balance the tree to keep Nice you have to give up the cooler perks of the naughty tree, like Imp-losion.

I understand it's a matter of opinion, but I cannot understand the logic at all.

[Bumber64]

14 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

I get free soul lunches and I haven't eaten mortal food in ages. 

How are they any more free than nice? You're giving up access to sanity "food" for slightly less waste on hunger. It might be a good trade-off if you weren't literally swimming in souls now.

[Radicaljoe]

13 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

How are they any more free than nice? You're giving up access to sanity "food" for slightly less waste on hunger. It might be a good trade-off if you weren't literally swimming in souls now.

Free in the sense of I can just eat souls without sanity loss. But like I said, minor upside compared to the soul overflow prevention.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

58 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

I enjoy seeing people are really liking nice inclination. But, logically I am not putting together how they think nice is worth even attempting to have as an inclination over naughty.
 ...
I understand it's a matter of opinion, but I cannot understand the logic at all.

From my perspective, it's the trade between accessible on-hand sanity control + slightly less wasted Souls on health vs. overload protection + skills I don't really want, and overloads can be managed manually pretty easily instead of relying on the perk.

But as far as the skills are concerned, you can take both Overflowing Greed and Soul Decoy III while also achieving a Nice inclination. So as long as you're willing to give up Soul Pierce (or I guess Neutral skills lol), it's pretty easy to achieve. This is mostly because of how powerful every skill is in the Lifted Spirits branch, so you only need 4 Insight points + affinity to become Nice. So the choice is between one of the Nice skill branches + easy sanity control, overload protection + Neutral skills, or overload protection + Soul Pierce - Capricious Movement/Covetous Collector.

I picked the former because it helps with supporting the Enlightened Crown, found Neutral skills to be useless (and Cloudy Carmine disruptive), and no longer wanted Soul Pierce for anything in particular, and sometimes found it even a little annoying. Don't really need the overload protection either, since overloads can just be avoided by a few attentive clicks.

It's a lot easier of a choice to make in multiplayer, where Nice skills (specifically Soulbringer) provide better value, but I get where you're coming from. Nice Wortox doesn't seem better from the surface, but the sanity control is seriously a huge QoL perk. From my experience, though, it's a lot harder to justify it in early and mid game when solo, but becomes a little more appealing by late-game. This is mostly due to Soil Bastion's mediocrity, however. There's much better ways to cheese many bosses that don't require Soul Pierce, too. I can see someone choosing either/or, but I think it feels really bad to give up Capricious Movement to maximize Soul Pierce with Covetous Collector, so that route is a total no-go for me, and I do not like the clunkiness of Soul Pierce cheesing nor the Neutral skills.

I liked Naughty for its overload protection a lot more during solo testing, but as soon as I started running Nice in pubs, I went "Oh. This is actually really comfortable, to be able to manage all 3 stats with one item..."

[Bumber64]

56 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

Free in the sense of I can just eat souls without sanity loss. But like I said, minor upside compared to the soul overflow prevention.

The loss of sanity control amounts to a downside that isn't balanced by the minor upside, or even the protection, IMO.

Potentially needing a BQ crown and NM amulet for AFW. Unable to maintain CC crown (which pairs well with lunar swindler for smacking bosses).

I'll even take neutral over naughty, considering the alternative is sanity food to maintain enlightenment. (Releasing twice the souls might still be faster, beyond just not wanting to bring the food.)

[Radicaljoe]

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

The loss of sanity control amounts to a downside that isn't balanced by the minor upside, or even the protection, IMO.

Potentially needing a BQ crown and NM amulet for AFW. Unable to maintain CC crown (which pairs well with lunar swindler for smacking bosses).

I'll even take neutral over naughty, considering the alternative is sanity food to maintain enlightenment. (Releasing twice the souls might still be faster, beyond just not wanting to bring the food.)

This is why I love the Wortox tree. I hate the cc crown and can manage my sanity pretty well most of the time so sanity is nothing to me. I love seeing the different playstyles boosted by the different inclinations. and how different everyone's views are on it.

[IAmAFurrz]

i like both, i have uses for both sides while also being able to get all the skills i want to i dont really find one is better than another generally

3 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

This is why I love the Wortox tree. I hate the cc crown and can manage my sanity pretty well most of the time so sanity is nothing to me. I love seeing the different playstyles boosted by the different inclinations. and how different everyone's views are on it.

his skill tree and inclinations are so awesome and thematic, im so glad hes got the most well designed and interesting one 

[ApoIIo]

18 hours ago, Cosiek said:

 

1. • Remove Naughty Inclination (as "overflowing greed" already covers storage needs).

   • Instead, make all constant passive (frog, penguins, rock lobsters, monkeys (?) - at the cost of shadow monkeys being neutral) mobs aggressive towards Evil Wortox.

Absolutely not. The time window prevents basically all my possible accidental overloads. It's extremely convinient in the way it lets me be way more relaxed with refilling my jars. I can just kill hundreds of bees in seconds without exploding four times. Honestly, are you *really* evil Wortox if you get penalized for commiting genocide?
Also, all passive mobs being aggressive would get old *incredibly quickly*. So no thanks.

But hm yes yes buff eviltox my precious

also remove or redo knapsack entirely, the premise is ok, the visuals suck, the mechanics are atrocious