Walter Builds Survey

[Chewabacca]

Given how flexible Walter's new tree is, I thought it might be fun to check out what arrangements people are going with. Here's mine: 
(yeah, yeah, I know, advanced bands was a mistake. Not even sure why I got it considering I was usually too lazy to go fight a tentacle for the better one even before the tree got expanded. Will probably be switching that one to advanced frames so that I can consistently used cursed rounds to full effect).

Feel free to post your own here!

[Crimson Hollow]

My setup ususally looks like this. This is an old screenshot so courier woby perk was locked, but now it should be working.

If i wanna choose that perk I'd give up advanced band, but everything else would be the same.

[Steorra]

this is mine for pre-rift game. I found that the Field Medic, the Special Treat and the Twine Twirler make few difference for my early game (mostly is about ruin rushing and bosses rushing) experience.

[_mylilsunshine_]

ideal skill tree and a bonus fit

my reasoning:

1. i want ammo smith (2p) for better crafting efficiency and economy, so i pick the best normal ammo (glass/stinger) and shadow-alignment. but honestly i like the look of lunar woby more

2. i want the slingshot kit for bossing, but the advanced band is barely needed, even the possessed band (too long and not very useful) so i didn't take it

3. i'm a builder so i need a lot of resources, that's why i take better rope crafting and woby helper

4. traveling around is cool, so i take pep pup (mandatory for any waltuh player out there tbh) and sprint. taking normal dash is a waste as it consumes hunger yet doesn't let you dash over ledges, and it resets your sprint. alignment-woby is a bit overpowered when taken from day 1, so i might take it after fuelweaver or moon champ. but then again i don't see the need for them so i might not take any at all

5. portable rack and woby treat (mandatory) for traveling around, which is cool. and i need to sustain hard-working bigBy

6. field medic so i can easily heal from spider glands and flutter strip. no need to sweat over healing as much

7. pioneer's panache is not really that great, if i'm being honest. i just wear the pinetree hat a lot (fashion over practicality) so i might as well take it

8. i don't know if i have a need for courier woby yet, but i might change my mind in the future. i would also take portable campfire over panache

9. i take foraging woby for the nomadic playstyle. i don't have to worry as much about cooked dishes, and more cactus is always welcome

[Dr. Safety]

I'm not at my PC and can't screenshot my build, but I am a full on Woby enthusiast. Very few slingshot perks.

Iirc, I do everything in the Woby tree, everything in the scouting tree besides the drying racks, and 2 of the ammo skills + extra ammo when crafting. I mostly use the slingshot for debuffs/drawing aggro, and melee for actual DPS.

Is it the best build for him? Not at all. Using good body armor and the pinetree hat is good enough. 

[Gashzer]

This is my salty tryhard loadout.

Drying rack and woby treats are noob trap skills for Walter, 2 points wasted on food? Monster meat comes from everything and with lunar woby being so efficient speed wise even with low hunger woby moves at full speed. With full slingshot you shouldnt be getting hit as Walter so pinecone panache and first aid are a waste. Portable campfire can quicky be replaced by a starcaller staff.

Dreadstone is a great ammo type, pretty strong, reusable and obtainable early. Thulecite rounds are good but the tentacles can miss fast targets unless you use slow down rounds, ick rounds are awesome but by the time you get them you wont need them! so shadow affinity rounds just arnt as convenient to use as lunar rounds in a post-rift world. Plus lunar woby > shadow woby at all stages of the game.

Ammo pouch is great. I dont like using a backpack with walter after first autumn so this allows you to store all your rounds nicely and frees your body slot for buffy vest/beefalo hat combo for winter so you never freeze.

Mine/chop takes up too much hunger for the little amount of work woby does, just recruit pigs or use pick/axe for faster mine/chop. As walter you dont really need to resource gather mass amounts of logs/rocks. Crockpots and base building goes against his playstyle.

Boosted rope crafting helps ease pressure of early game prototyping and is useful for all stages of the game.

Gatherer woby skill helps alot to collect dreadstone rounds after you use them without needing to carry a lazy forager everywhere. I guess you can change this with hard head skill if you wanted. Forager woby is the weakest of the 3 utility woby skills unless you plan to fight melee and need extra cactus flesh.

[Ruperstiltskin]

This is my current set-up cause i have the need to have the woby interface full with buttons and the skills are nice anyway and woby deserves all the love for her so fully buff her instead of getting the slingshot grips / frames. 

If they decide that woby delivery only needs 2 scouting skills to unlock i would probably take off the drying rack eventually and put the slingshot grips there!

Maybe i would even take off the mining headbutt for the grips

[Civecilim]

1 hour ago, Crimson Hollow said:

My setup ususally looks like this. This is an old screenshot so courier woby perk was locked, but now it should be working.

If i wanna choose that perk I'd give up advanced band, but everything else would be the same.

This except I can't decide which 2 Woby skills are most worth. I usually pick faster Woby and double forage. I usually pick rope fire and treats for the 3 scout perks.

Was considering just abandoning riding Woby as having a beefalo is still very useful, but between being able to occasionally ride a rider beefalo instead of ornery that has a shadow dash vs getting the ammo bag and advanced bands and probably some other minor thing, it's hard to choose. I usually wind up keeping the shadow dash. The treats feel super pointless if you never ride Woby, but it's not like I can easily not take the treats because you still need 3 for delivery skill, and the currently unselected scouting perks all feel super lame, so there isn't any feel good substitute. I would probably wind up with the butterfly skill if forced to make a change.

[_mylilsunshine_]

25 minutes ago, Ruperstiltskin said:

i have the need to have the woby interface full with buttons

this is so real of you

[Civecilim]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Drying rack and woby treats are noob trap skills for Walte

All the scouting perks kinda stink, but the delivery skill is so good im forced to take 3, and woby treats is 3rd place even as someone who rides Woby very rarely and doesn't use Woby chops/mine. I considered the butterfly perk instead but you can always just eat 500 pierogi.

[Crimson Hollow]

30 minutes ago, Civecilim said:

This except I can't decide which 2 Woby skills are most worth. I usually pick faster Woby and double forage. I usually pick rope fire and treats for the 3 scout perks.

Was considering just abandoning riding Woby as having a beefalo is still very useful, but between being able to occasionally ride a rider beefalo instead of ornery that has a shadow dash vs getting the ammo bag and advanced bands and probably some other minor thing, it's hard to choose. I usually wind up keeping the shadow dash. The treats feel super pointless if you never ride Woby, but it's not like I can easily not take the treats because you still need 3 for delivery skill, and the currently unselected scouting perks all feel super lame, so there isn't any feel good substitute. I would probably wind up with the butterfly skill if forced to make a change.

This is actually why I love his skill tree - It has a little bit of something for everyone.

You enjoy mobility? Shadow woby. Speed? Lunar woby. Safety? Beefalos are always there.

Want to maximize damage? You can give up scout perks for great ammos. Enjoy playing melee Walter? butterfly strips, pinetree panache and utility rounds are available.

Other than that, most of scout perks are primarily for team utility. So some of them are not exactly appealing for those who are not into this playstyle. 

[WM2MIL]

Woby: The extra speed is nice but I really don't need to go extra fast or teleport, the sprint is enough for me. Roaming retriever saves you some time from gathering some stuff on the ground and passively gets you stuff that you later might need. Mining is useful although slow so I don't waste my pick on those marble trees.

Scouting: I make lots of fences for farms so all the grass that I save from making one rope does add up which enables me to make more rope and thus more fences, trying rack attachment is a neat one when sailing, you can make woby stationary and have 3 racks in more or less the same space of a single one. The treats is skippable but does come in handy and since I picked the drying rack one I might as well. The "Woby here, Woby there" skill is just handy to help empty your stuff in base if you are full and far away of if you are in base and another player forgot to bring something with him, just send woby to him.

Customizer: Best of both worlds, I mainly use the scrappy frame for the double damage on charge (I pair it with gunpowder ammo, those crit gunpowder ammo are large and deal a lot of damage to the primary target you are hitting, good against planar entities too like armoured badger) I miss on the "secret" possessed sling but eh whatever I don't need that much extra range or the chance to not consume ammo.

Ammo: Aoe for some very specific fights like Fuel Weaver also stinger ammo is cheap. Luck rounds skill is primarily for the gunpowder ammo, kaboom, need I say more?

Shadow slinger tar ammo is handy.

Ammo smith is a must

Ah if I need to swap ammo I just have a 2nd slingshot with me. So at the late game I have 2 improved scrappy sling shots with infinite ammo storages and swapping between them is faster than changing ammo.

[Catuna_]

 

Pre rifts (lunar woby for the win)

Post rifts

I believe shadow Walter is stronger but at the same time I far prefer lunar woby for transportation so I think I'll stick with her... I might just stay affinity-less in favor of dreadstone rounds' absurd efficiency instead since they already deal planar.

[_mylilsunshine_]

9 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

-snip-

no ammo smith is diabolical. i get it just for the faster crafting and less clicking (2 clicks less) alone, not even mentioning ammo economy. how are you finding dreadstone round, especially without ammo smith and possessed band? i thought cursed round was the de facto goat ammo in terms of dps and craft efficiency, but i'm interested in hearing more

[Chewabacca]

12 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

no ammo smith is diabolical. i get it just for the faster crafting and less clicking (2 clicks less) alone, not even mentioning ammo economy. how are you finding dreadstone round, especially without ammo smith and possessed band? i thought cursed round was the de facto goat ammo in terms of dps and craft efficiency, but i'm interested in hearing more

Oh thank God a normal message about Walter tonight Not going to speak for Catuna of course, who probably picked dreadstone for different reasons than me, but I like dreadstone for being a solidly dependable higher-damage single-target round. Cursed rounds have cases where figuring out how much the boss is actually going to get hit by the tentacles feels a bit tricky (hello Bee Queen), whereas dreadstone is always dealing a reliable 59.5 damage per hit. It's also fun to quickly swap between a lazy forager and a marble suit to vacuum up ammo--no idea of how practical it is, but definitely fun.

[_mylilsunshine_]

2 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Not going to speak for Catuna of course, who probably picked dreadstone for different reasons than me, but I like dreadstone for being a solidly dependable higher-damage single-target round. Cursed rounds have cases where figuring out how much the boss is actually going to get hit by the tentacles feels a bit tricky (hello Bee Queen), whereas dreadstone is always dealing a reliable 59.5 damage per hit. It's also fun to quickly swap between a lazy forager and a marble suit to vacuum up ammo--no idea of how practical it is, but definitely fun.

dreadstone's consistency really alleviates you from needing slow-down effect, i like that thought. cursed round is pretty overkill for normal mobs, and most of them are too fast for tentacles anyway. in my current run i'm having trouble sustaining nightmare fuel to craft cursed round so i might join the dreadstone gang, that means i will have to pick 'pickup woby' then.

[Mysterious box]

It's not always the same but I feel this is my default for Walter. Though sometimes I trade out hard headed for the ammo case.

[Jakepeng99]

On 2/17/2025 at 5:27 PM, Catuna_ said:

believe shadow Walter is stronger but at the same time I far prefer lunar woby for transportation so I think I'll stick with her... I might just stay affinity-less in favor of dreadstone rounds' absurd efficiency instead since they already deal planar.

I kinda like that most skills are somewhat equal, so affinities are not mandatory.

 

Except from the rift pellets.

[kroban]

This is my choice for the early game, In the server I play we usually upgrade the portal during the first spring/summer. I play pretty chill so, I don't go to ruins other than for the frame, and I basically spend the first year farming Krampus/critters with gold rounds, farming materials for base, doing a good explore to the ocean to find all the islands (I do like to rush Pearl for fishing, gems trees and treasures), and looking for the Grotto.

My first change will prob be taking out Campfire, Rope, Drying Rack and Foraging perks, and using those 4 points for the improved Pioneer hat, Woby mail, gunpowder ammo, and improved ammo crafting.

After stacking a lot of ammo I will prob change that perk for the ammo pouch too, or shadow rounds, or probably even Shockscrap rounds since I build scarecrows around my base...honestly Walter skill tree is pretty versatile ngl, its hard to pick the perks, you can do so many different builds with it 

[4Rory]

Just Tame an Ornery Beefalo (melee/Woby support)

-OR-

Just Tame a Rider Beefalo (slingshot/Battle Walter)
 

 

 

[Chewabacca]

21 minutes ago, 4Rory said:

Just Tame an Ornery Beefalo (melee/Woby support)

-OR-

Just Tame a Rider Beefalo (slingshot/Battle Walter)
 

 

 

You know, I knew it was possible for someone to use up all their insight and only choose 1 slingshot or 1 Woby skill, but I didn't think it would actually happen this soon except for the people who were entirely uninterested in the slingshot. I respect the madness. Heads up that Woby Here, Woby There is faster with a big Woby though. 

[4Rory]

2 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

You know, I knew it was possible for someone to use up all their insight and only choose 1 slingshot or 1 Woby skill, but I didn't think it would actually happen this soon except for the people who were entirely uninterested in the slingshot. I respect the madness. Heads up that Woby Here, Woby There is faster with a big Woby though. 

Thanks for the insight! Even so, its not like Monster Meat is hard to get ahold of, and if Woby isn't draining hunger sprinting Walter's dumpy all day its not hard to maintain if you really care. Honestly though I think WHWT is a very powerful skill which doesn't actually need much optimizing- you send Woby off once or twice every few days while you are resourcing, and it saves you the trip, so it's really good, but if you aren't using Woby as a mount anyway, not having him with you for an extra couple seconds won't be much bother. I'd still make Woby big when I am drowning in Monster Meat, but its hardly priority.

[WilsonHiggs]

This topic just shows why skill tree is what a skill tree should be. I hope they revisit bland skill trees

[_mylilsunshine_]

they lowered the requirement for Woby Here Woby There from 4 to 3 skills btw, and she STILL can deliver to backpack, awesome

here's what i'm cookin' with for a complete boss run

i don't like picking alignment woby because they're too OP, only after i kill CC or FW

[kroban]

After giving more thoughts to it these are my 2 variations for the first year, In the server I play we usually repair portal in the first year, so im used to change the skill tree right after its repaired