Fire/Ice staff improvements, blowdart bulk crafting.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Staffs. Specifically the three starting basic staffs we get from Shadow Manipulator. They feel very not powerful and or have not enough durability wise. For any use of them we have to carry many to deal with bosses, clogging inventory and making a whole bunch more in case of running out.

We should get some kind of ancient crafting for this either from forbidden knowledge in the Archive to create them into greater ancient staffs to condense our character's basic magic to more advanced type of magic.

Fire staff upgrade should do percentage burn and ice staff should freeze better and send a wave of cold to freeze targets in place, retaining their original aggressive side and utility side of damages. Bosses have their resistance ability stacking anyway so damage and utility would be better put on cooldown before reusing as an advanced strategy to vary your tactics and tool usage.

---

Other change I had spoke about is blowdarts and they need some sort of work on, because they exist and they feel like they just don't or ever were cared about to improve upon.

People took the white blowdart as 'too op' idea as a ranged weapon not to consider to maybe it could do better in the game by being more efficient in it's crafts, as well as any other dart.

Solution: Just increase the crafts up to 5 per craft. It's that simple really. Mobs in the game have so much health and grinding for resources to make these is a pain on it's own. We have a ranged character and much later lategame ranged weapons already taking up their spot, but they can retain relevancy for early or late depending on the resource availability.

White blow dart is a seasonal thing to be farmed so not many would benefit from this unless they're Wicker (who generally just benefits from every resource the most by books anyway) but gives a chance to feel powerful by having a strong ranged weapon to blast enemies with.

Sleep darts usually are not ever thought of as well as fire ones. Sleep darts would be most useful for PVP scenarios so 5 darts is enough for a strong slow to not let anyone to run away from a fight as well as finishing their target if they can handle them is good for that situation.

Other than that if one would not have panflutes perhaps sleep darts could act as a stacking slow on bosses and mobs before they sleep? Kinda like Walter slows but it's a craftable that anyone can make with a bit of work put into it.

Fire darts kinda need rethinking overall. They exist alright. Maybe like a lesser % damage +10 damage or something than above suggested idea for a greater fire staff.

Electric darts are fine, could be easier to craft by just giving 5 each instead so that's that. Also Balloons to make targets wet would be a great mechanic for that addition. Make electric items great again or whatever.

Come to think of it, Electric darts are only fine cause we can release canaries and they give multiple feathers. If we could pluck captured birds maybe it would make more sense that darts would get more general usefulness. Either that or increased crafting amount, either would work probably. Or both, depending on how much we will craft and how we get those resources.

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The conclusion is to make items have better diversity in use and staying more relevant. New additions and items in lategame don't match for the items we have mid to late game. Some craftables are not beneficial considering their complex tasks to make them a.k.a. making darts. Staffs are cool but they really could their own side of progression. Darts are a resource side of progression while magic is exploration side. Kinda like Gunpowder VS ruins gear. Both do their job well in different ways of gathering and or finding those things.

Thanks for reading through my Klei Talk.

[Captain_Rage]

Or an Elastispacer upgrade for Traps for capturing Koalefants.

[HowlVoid]

Didn't a lot of people ask for it because of Wendy having to catch stuff to sacrifice. I think we got it because the need for it became apparent.

[Well-met]

ice and fire staffs are fine. The problem is burning mobs does almost no damage at all if you arent willow

blowdarts just need bulk crafting

[Violet Desiree]

My main problem with fire staff is that it dosent carry on willows fire mechanic so even if she is the one character that says "its my favorite toy" its legit useless on her i hope it gets rework into an ember storage or maybe something like a catalyt that increases both the cost and power of them

 

[Frosty_Mentos]

5 hours ago, Well-met said:

ice and fire staffs are fine. The problem is burning mobs does almost no damage at all if you arent willow

blowdarts just need bulk crafting

I mean regardless of Willow or not I feel like magic items could feel more beneficial and or fun in having higher tier crafts.

Blowdarts really needed bulk crafting for DST a while ago.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Technically, we could be getting blueprints by going to ruins and mining down specific gem statues that would be red and blue ones for those upgrades. Ancients have used magic before after all, assuming thulecite staffs they have probably were greater staffs than what characters have so there would be some level of ancient knowledge to give us for better solutions of magic casting.

I just like the idea of having magic to be a support of sorts and being useful cause of it. Either by helping your units to do damage or to heal them or using as superior utility tools when needing a pause to recoop against an enemy.

[FillerText]

Maybe make recently thawed mobs have their hitstun immunity temporarily removed? In singleplayer, you can kill Mactusk in 4 seconds as Wes using only a Spear + 2 Staff casts. In multiplayer? it takes SIX with a hambat on a regular character. It's straight up just faster, and more convenient to chase him until his AI breaks. It's not like it was op anyway, you still spent a blue gem just to kill a mob you can kill anyway. It was simply a much faster way to do it.

[Well-met]

6 minutes ago, FillerText said:

Maybe make recently thawed mobs have their hitstun immunity temporarily removed? In singleplayer, you can kill Mactusk in 4 seconds as Wes using only a Spear + 2 Staff casts. In multiplayer? it takes SIX with a hambat on a regular character. It's straight up just faster, and more convenient to chase him until his AI breaks. It's not like it was op anyway, you still spent a blue gem just to kill a mob you can kill anyway. It was simply a much faster way to do it.

at that point Mctusk fight is so old its just begging for a revision

[WilsonHiggs]

Ice staff is perfect, if anything they could add a little more durability 

Fire staff is cool but needs more damage and mobs shouldn't drop ashes. Idk why such logical thing is behind a specific perk in willow's skill tree

Telelocator staff simply needs double durability 

Agree about the darts, not only for blow darts. Fire darts also needs a damage bonus like the suggestion for the fire staff. Sleeping darts should have a strong sleep power to be considered against the unbalanced pan flute.

About blow darts, mctusk could be reworked into a non bugged mob that yields more loot like guaranteed cane, dropping more darts instead of just 1 and having an interesting fight instead of being an ancient mess from ds

[Well-met]

I'd also remove the sanity loss on use imo

[reddocc]

Ice staff is fine as it is.

For fire staff I would add the option to use it as a torch that warms you up, we currently have no means of warming up our characters that don't rely on waiting next to a heat source or an opposite to the chilled amulet.

This change would also synergize with clothing in winter as you wouldn't need to burn random trees and wait, you could just hold the staff like you would with the chilled amulet. I think with this change alone of a portable/equipable heat source the boring thermal stone meta would just be an option.

Another less powerful option for the fire staff is that when used on something that is already burning it extinguish it instead(could use the same animation as pyrotechnics), this functionally could be extended to be able to extinguish stars form moon/star caller.

[Well-met]

23 minutes ago, Pedro cc said:

Ice staff is fine as it is.

For fire staff I would add the option to use it as a torch that warms you up, we currently have no means of warming up our characters that don't rely on waiting next to a heat source or an opposite to the chilled amulet.

This change would also synergize with clothing in winter as you wouldn't need to burn random trees and wait, you could just hold the staff like you would with the chilled amulet. I think with this change alone of a potable/equitable heat source the boring thermal stone meta would just be an option.

Another less powerful option for the fire staff is that when used on something that is already burning it extinguish it instead(could use the same animation as pyrotechnics), this functionally could be extended to be able to extinguish stars form moon/star caller.

cool ideas

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

I'd also remove the sanity loss on use imo

It goes against the theme and the cool old system of reward gained with a cost 

[Well-met]

12 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

It goes against the theme and the cool old system of reward gained with a cost 

and reap what you sow goes against the theme and the cool old system of not farming in winter but you don't see anyone complaining about it

[WilsonHiggs]

11 minutes ago, Well-met said:

and reap what you sow goes against the theme and the cool old system of not farming in winter but you don't see anyone complaining about it

Actually you see plenty of people complaining about it. Even if not, should everything change to worst just because there are things that changed? Idk you but i prefer only few things with bad or uninteresting design than just throwing 10 years of a cool game for the sink

[somethin]

3 hours ago, Well-met said:

I'd also remove the sanity loss on use imo

IMO that's the least consequential change you can make... Like, sanity is never the factor here.

[Mr Giggio]

I want to add the fact that I failed to make Chilled amulet work in a single very very specific situation even 

 

Always outclassed no matter what. Even for boats. It's a sad item

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Mr Giggio said:

I want to add the fact that I failed to make Chilled amulet work in a single very very specific situation even 

 

Always outclassed no matter what. Even for boats. It's a sad item

The freezing effect should be way stronger and without losing that much durability per hit

As a way to cool down is very useful if used with an eyebrella or any other cloth but sadly the feather fan has the same use for cooling the player while also can set down fires. But if the player will carry a can then the amulet isnt bad considering how cheap it is, way better than a thermal stone

[Frosty_Mentos]

Why not consider nearly armorless builds of sorts where element/magic damage to kill and barriers are used for short shielding opportunities in order of playing around as fully squishy but high DPS? Combined of using amulets for amplifying a stave's power and having additional perks to which ones you wear to control the battle field in ways you want to at higher risk but higher reward.

Magic items generally are reserved for more squishy types of builds, and sure we can mix and match items for our liking to have defense and utility and damage mixing as we sorta do kinda now but without the magic and elemental damages cause those basically don't do much compared to a sword.

I think it would be fun to swap around to what feels more comfortable at the time for every situation as improving on magic staves and items could generally diversify our builds and ways we want to tackle the world.

We right now have somewhat decent utility in basic builds we can do, but it's also not that great cause in the end it all devolves to hambats, darkswords and rift items.

This sorta idea I bring up cause we got ranged weapons in lategame that just do regular planar types of damage, so why not summon ice fields or before an icy tank that would use ice amulets to freeze all targets and create chilling bombs or something? Fire torrents or fire waves of sorts.

Now that I'm at the point of writing all this is giving Mind Over Magic but that's probably why having these things might be cool and fun longterm.

Even without just full mage builds I do wish many amulets would have better uses or upgrades as well as alternative staffs or a staff we could find or make to improve on.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I get a feeling there's not as much enthusiasm from people here. Kinda a shame really. No wizard build enjoyers.

[Sunset_Liddel]

4 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I get a feeling there's not as much enthusiasm from people here. Kinda a shame really. No wizard build enjoyers.

depressing considering they gave maxwell a wizard skin

[Frosty_Mentos]

9 minutes ago, Sunset_Liddel said:

depressing considering they gave maxwell a wizard skin

99% of playerbase being Wendy basically

[Anis5240]

35 minutes ago, Sunset_Liddel said:

gave maxwell a wizard skin

that ain't wizard skin, that's cringe ass maxputin, lover of the shadow queen skin /j

4 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

No wizard build enjoyers.

at the end of the day those staves need gems and unless some people wanna run a varg farm, it barely sees an everyday use.

[WilsonHiggs]

3 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

99% of playerbase being Wendy basically

Or because we might not want spells but more magic that keeps the theme of the old staves. I dont want wands or magic combos, i want more ice stave like stuff

3 hours ago, Anis5240 said:

at the end of the day those staves need gems and unless some people wanna run a varg farm, it barely sees an everyday use

1 ruins cleaning give you gems for years and now we have geodes