Damage scaling (15-25-40 -> 30-50-80) was more fun than constant +25 damage. Make Abi more vulnerable if you feel the need to instead. There is no need for maximum duration of Shadow Sisterhood III to exist either

[Pig Princess]

By the way, I see no reason why sisturn skills could not give additional actions to Wendy. Wouldn't it be cool if cacti flowers/forget-me-lots allowed to switch perspective to Abigail for a 30 seconds if she was summoned and Wendy died, and player could haunt containers to drop life giving amulet, give telltale heart to Wendy by haunting it on top of her, as well as to attack during that period so death place is at least clean? Or that could be part of vengeful spirit. The difference between current one could be presence of elixirs on Abigail during those 30 seconds.

[Steorra]

7 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

By the way, I see no reason why sisturn skills could not give additional actions to Wendy. Wouldn't it be cool if cacti flowers/forget-me-lots allowed to switch perspective to Abigail for a 30 seconds if she was summoned and Wendy died, and player could haunt containers to drop life giving amulet, give telltale heart to Wendy by haunting it on top of her, as well as to attack during that period so death place is at least clean? Or that could be part of vengeful spirit. The difference between current one could be presence of elixirs on Abigail during those 30 seconds.

as flavor function I thought every other idea would be far better than current vengeful ghost ... (.....

[Pig Princess]

30 minutes ago, Steorra said:

According to the latest Lubby's change, we could see that Klei adjusted Lubby's design into a "You could not get benefit from micro-management of Lubby (AoE and I.Frame got deleted from her "attack at"); however, you MUST micro-manage Lubby for ensure her survive (according to Yifei's details test, Lubby performed worse than regular Abby to most bosses and the Ruin - the most worse part is you have to manage Lubby for her survive but you got no benefit except the survivability from the management, and Lubby's perform unworthy than regular Abby).

But that is the point I'm trying to convey. Instead of placing benefits and clearly state necessity to manage, developers decided to go with "low maintainance/interaction" approach. Problem is Abigail's basic AI is not enough, and she still demands micromanagment while developers seem to think that she doesn't. So they are not going to give her benefits or more tools to account for gestalt's altered characteristcs, on the contrary, they reinforced their stated intention by removing benefit from "attack at" command.

And elephant in the room is that it's precisely interactions with Abigail that make her interesting. What a surprise that making her benefit from commands less made her less popular on top of being unpopular (as far as I can tell, at least; maybe I'm biased) and resulted in critique. Of course there are players that would propose immortal Abigail from second beta iteration with straight face, but as far as I can tell people would be happy if lunar Abigail was just different in managment and - even though it's not true for me specifically - she demanded less micromanagmment. Less hard, but not removal. At this rate they might as well make her immortal (and unable to draw aggro) but deal 0 damage (so she would only apply vex). Does that interest anyone? Ideal aloof gameplay, ideal "no managment", can't solo bosses.

[Yaorin yon]

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

How can that be made more interesting than spamming "escape" command and possibly applying healing? There needs to be something so fights are not reduced to this

 

This involves a shift in gameplay, akin to a "Pokémon" or "RTS" (Real-Time Strategy) style game mode. It requires that teamwork abilities have a cancel function at any time (or, for example, a design with independent cooldowns and stored uses). Under such premises, limitations could be imposed through the consumption of Mourning Glory, other resources, a time-limited state similar to Woodie's, or by weakening Wendy's own combat capabilities/The default combat abilities of Moon Abigail.

The fun comes from dealing damage while simultaneously avoiding it through skillful play (I have a related post on this topic, I don't know if you've seen it).

 

 

Of course, if someone wants to fill Abigail with endless supplies, that's also a valid playstyle. Different players will find different aspects enjoyable, and there's little point in resisting it (just like how you can prepare countless bombs, ranged weapons, or use other creatures to avoid interacting with a boss in combat).

 

[Pig Princess]

41 minutes ago, Yaorin yon said:

The fun comes from dealing damage while simultaneously avoiding it through skillful play (I have a related post on this topic, I don't know if you've seen it).

Yes, I'm familiar with the feature, but I can't agree with the post fully. I think invincibility in the end of attack at command has no reason to exist (both mechanically and logically), also I would rather have ability to bind commands to keys in vanilla. I agree with invincibility at the beginning of attack, even with mod that allows to bind it to key I didn't find it easy to reliably perform. I could only partially agree with the post and thus decided to not put a reaction. I'm not sure if there is a point in bumping this thread: it doesn't look like this suggestion has big chances to be implemented, and I doubt anyone reads past 1st page unless they are engaged in discussion (by being mentioned or quoted). I mean it's a suggestion to what Klei perceived as clear bug, not any suggestion.

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Someone was insist to use Thulecite Club's shadow tentacle to against my argument. I have to say... You knew how ridiculous their argument is. They completely ignoring the shadow tentacle's missing-rate but only do the comparison based on theory.

I'm confused of why it's that amazing considering shadow tentacles were also buffed by damage multiplier, so it's not like they suddenly gained 20 damage per tentacle (on top of tentacles missing rate and low spawn chance). But I think that creating separate topis, or bumping existing one(s) would fit this discussion better

[Steorra]

43 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

I'm confused of why it's that amazing considering shadow tentacles were also buffed by damage multiplier, so it's not like they suddenly gained 20 damage per tentacle (on top of tentacles missing rate and low spawn chance). But I think that creating separate topis, or bumping existing one(s) would fit this discussion better

[Dingle]

3 hours ago, Steorra said:

You mean that around 3% planar damage buff DO impact to the result? Could you stop lying for your own hidden intention?

Arcwell's last chart, which you saw. The buff in top end damage was more than 3% for Wendy than before, even with the Murder nerf.

This chart also shows different scenarios for Wolfgang. Shadow maul and cowl vs a lunar enemy for Wolf only does 14 or 15% more damage than Wendy with a crown and brightsword and Vex.

You keep repeating the thulecite club thing. That's nice early game, but isn't the choice for the top end. Again, you should know better, as you saw the chart.

[Steorra]

24 minutes ago, Dingle said:

more than 3% for Wendy than before

So, where's the before math from your linked thing?

I have to say, I see no old CursedVex calculation from Arcwell's math.

I doubt if it's my eye's problem or your basic logic's problem.

You knew that a math only showed Wendy's new CursedVex data cannot prove anything relative with "if the CursedVex change is a buff or nerf" right?

[Dingle]

4 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

 

 

I checked through activity and looks like I didn't read continuation of your playthrough with open rifts, not sure why (but judging from the dates of posting, it's the time when I had been away from forums/read very little - during second half of January).

Anyway, regarding playthrough itself. Looking at your brightshade flowers I can at least say that they are less dense that I'm getting on average. It's probably because your grass and saplings were planted in rows, but mine are tend to be batch of 4x10 or 5x8 (per stack) as densely planted as possible. Brightshade minimum distance between plants from one wave is about 1.5 wall units, as far as I remember and judging from my experience, so it makes sence why probability of you getting that minimum distance (2 valid positions in a row) was much lower than mine (8 valid positions for trouble). You even mention yourself that one time fight went smooth and the other time - consederably worse, even through you used the same equipment. Not to mention that rows scale linearly and batches scale with square, so if we count grass tufts across 2 other grass tufts as well, the number of trouble-making positions grows faster in batch scenario (also for batch there are more plants that are in the middle, and in case rows pretty much all flowers are peripheral). The fact that I usually make base near shore and have only half of directions to approach them doesn't help either, not to mention that at this planting density even berry bushes (0.5 pitchfor tile for them) start to block your movements. But planting dense is beneficial because one can use reaper on grass and because giant trees/flingomatic don't have a lot of place to work with if one wants to summer-proof base with the least possible resources. In case trees it's not 5.5 tile, but actually more like 4.0-4.5 directly in front of trunk. I also like to have everything nearby - and grass/twigs are not the only thing to be planted/placed at base - so even through it's possible to cover all biome edge with trees, it's impractical for my purposes, not to mention that I try to grow those trees as soon as possible and there is just not enough time to get more nuts, goop and figs at this point. I used flingomatic from ancient times and I don't mind it, however, it still encourages player to come up with densely-packed designs.

But I feel like me not being able to pop the vines simultaneously and enlightened crown screwing me from time to time makes bigger difference: gestalt can spawn in the direction of active brightshade and hit that instead of my target, which triggers quite big AoE that even surpasses Abigail's range, so even if I was fine before that, now I'm knocked back. Klei fixed being able to use "attack at" command without cooldown, and I tried to avoid abusing it previously anyway, so how do you do it now? When I try, I usually break 1 vine and the others just retreat, and while it buys some time, flowers stay active and prone to be triggered for AoE. If I'm going to wait, the first flower recovers. Does Abigail attack frequently enough to fend off the other vines from Wendy? I often find that Abigail is behind and vine is infront, so she doesn't even reach the vine while vine reaches me. So I find that it's just easier to do as Wendy, sometimes even without CC crown. If your suggestion is to use only Abigail to break vines so damage is evenly distributed, then my counter-arguement is in that time you could have killed at least one flower yourself in safer way.

As for Klaus, I guess you mean that scare command is better than no command other things being equal (Abigail present, time of day/elixir choice), which is true as night damage is probably going to kill one of the deers before Klaus toward the end of the battle if you don't pay attention and don't push her between deers mid-fight. However, fighting alone actually gives better results than both those approaches, unfortunally. If I'm going to press "scare" on cooldown, why would I do it instead of using this time to hit the boss? It's not the shortest animation either and I would rather not have additional fire/ice circle blocking my approach to Klaus. Without scare that is spammed on cooldown Abigail will be hurt by deers inevitably and she will need revenant restorative. I don't need crowd control for this fight either, and reaper/beefalo makes length of the fight perfectly fine, so why would I use Abigail's help if she brings more trouble than aid in this fight and would only get herself hurt?

By the way, considering Wendy is going to do all the bullying of bad Santas by herself in my hands, I would like Abigail to be able to celebrate with Wendy at least in some way. I wish it was possible to gift Abigail gift during Winter's Feast and she accepted (even small gift). It could give really tiny buff (DVG often proposed making her glow bigger - that would fit) or be just visual effect like holiday cheer effect. When I was little, I remember during one year I begged for the classic gift with shiny paper and bow-knot, and was happy to receive it, and the fact that it was tiny gift with 2 sweets didn't make it any less pleasant (tiny gifts are actually the cutiest).

Returning to the topic, I noticed that you didn't post anything shadow/lunar quest line related. Maybe you just didn't describe it in the same format, but up until your semi-conclusion on the first page (do I need to read all 3 pages?) of rift playthrough you killed shadow rift trios, brightshades in different ways, crystal deerclops and regular early game bosses. I don't imply that your feedback is invalid by any means, but since then BS III was nerfed so Ancient Fuelweaver won't be a breeze anymore, I'm curious about Shadow pieces and if you think it's more time/resources/fault-tolerance-efficient to kill tier 3 rook or bishop; I don't see Celestial Champion, as well as repeated Armored Bearger considering it's quite demanding fight even if it's true that Abigail can be kept alive and helpful during the fight. Do you agree with Lardee that spectral cure-all pre-skilltree is enough to not even try to manage Abigail at all during this fight? I find this not to be true; I find it not trivial to draw aggro from Abigail and manage position, and if Bearger manages to hit her even with one combo, she is going to be barely alive even if you unsummon quickly, and until stun phase you won't be able to summon her again. He always initiates triple combo for me, so I wonder how can people get only single hits for mistakes. There is no describtion of both Toadstools either (I'm interested in Misery). There is also the fact that rift masks actually auto-kill clockworks in the ruins, making any character's advantage there less relevant (I wish they didn't; do I remember correctly that now rift masks at least despawn with rift?). For inkblights classic trio you yourself said that big contribution was from Wendy drawing aggro and not killing Rasp's allies first. With less planar defence and fixes to their brains it would be fine though? As for rictus, while Abigail can solo them, she also tends to reveal 2 or even all 3 of them at once, meaning you can't have normal fight - so long as they are not synchronised, you can't practically fight them anymore because they are unsynchronisable, and you have to let Abigail kill them. Normally you fight them one by one, and this situation doesn't happen at all. I wish they could reaggro on Abigail, I would rather have a window to join the fight than agree to current situation when I have to let Abigail solo them, even if that means she can't solo them anymore.

I agree that it's interesting potential interaction, like side-grade to nightshade nostrum for day damage, however, for dusk it's literally the same as scaling variant, and for night it's downgrade. However, I dislike that need to engage in more mechanics was reduced while planning skill ceiling was lowered, as well as overall damage distribution made more uniform so suddenly it matters much less when to fight your battles (because Abigail at night is about as strong as during day (25 vs 50 difference between damage models is a lot) it's so weird in flavor). And what is the problem of fighting at dusk and/or night anyway, considering they constitue from half to majority of day usually? Unless it's summer, I guess, and here is where synergy with nostrum comes to aid. If anything, it proves my point that scaling is good because it makes nostrum more worth the price. I also wonder what crowds are you fighting during day specifically where 1 hit would make a difference and where you don't want to use nightshade? One crowd I find important to take down is grumble bees, but here nostrum is worth it, and current day damage with buff (40) is much less than possible damage within synergy (80). For spiders you just let Abigail hit everyone and focus on warriors yourself (and everyone is killed in about the same time without any buffs), then kill the den together. For werepigs you want 80 damage exactly because it's crowd of the night (full monn specifically), and single converted werepig you fight one by one (or rather, 1 werepig vs Wendy, Abigail and the rest of the allied pigs that are waiting their turn). Moonstone defence looks more like 1 vs 1 fight, you just need to focus werepigs instead of random enemy, and, again, it's "crowd" of the night. Frog rain happens in spring, so day has very little duration, but even then are you saying that 30 damage per hit with revenant restorative is not enough? In that case you can just... help her? I experimentally found out even before skill tree that standing under her and helping turns day/dusk situation when she slowly drains her hp even under revenant restorative into situation where she breaks even or even heals a bit over time. Or you could use 2 spectral cure-all and she soloes frog rain ragardless time of day. I don't see a reason to kill regular/killer bees any faster. Would 4 hits instead of 3 even make a difference? It's literally one second and niche application anyway - it's specifically relevant only for clearing killer bee biome, which doesn't even spawn in every world and is one-per-world thing you do, and even then you can easily ignore it unless Wagstaff decides it's perfect place for research or something. But even then I find that running around with soothed Abigail and focusing bee hives is faster than trying to kill bees first. Basically it doesn't matter how quickly Abigail kills this crowd, it's killed passively behind me while I'm killing the hives. She kills hounds perfectly fine during day, provided you help with varglet. But why wouldn't you help her and just wait until she kills a single remaining enemy herself?

Also what about night/cave crowd damage suffering as a result of uniform damage buff? Wouldn't it be cool if scaling and hinger potential ceiling encouraged more people to explore better light sources to fight at night and to go down to the caves for maximum power?

Any why must Abigail's boss fighting properties suffer in favor of crowd fighting properties that are already excellent?

Murder lasts 8 seconds per critter (but it has maximum duration, unfortunally). 

I disagree with the idea that fate of shadow Abigail must be (or must be made) only day to day combat - which is not very engaging anyway and is in excellent state power-wise even without skills - just because we have lunar Abigail that doesn't even do her job. I think both Abigails should be interesting and powerful options for fighting bosses. But lunar Abigail is boring because she is less interactable, and because from Wendy boss fights what I actually want is not just damage, but position managment and differentiation of strategy from anyone else. Which happens with regular/shadow Abigail but not with gestalt Abigail, and Klei clearly want gestalt to be just auto-buff (disgusting) without managment, they clearly want lunar Wendy&gestalt Abigail fights diverge from Wilson even less. Lunar Abigail is out of character phenomenon for Wendy.

I think current disign of regular(shadow) Abigail is excellent for boss fights, and shadow Abigail should be as appealing as lunar Abigail, provided we assume that lunar Abigail is appealing or would be in the future.

I also think that a better way to make both appealing would be to play with role of sisters in the fight. Shadow Abigail is support, and while she can be buffed she is never going to do majority of the damage even with 80 damage per hit, meaning Wendy is going to deal majority of the damage. Nightshade nostrum +Shadow Sisterhood III combo promoted more proactive and aggressive playstyle, which fits perfectly into the concept. Lunar Abigail could flip the dynamic where it's Wendy who applies debuff to enemies and it's Abigail who reaps most of the benefit from it, gestalt Abigail could scale her damage with number of hits that enemy received between her attacks, so she would be buffed from different things than shadow one and Wendy would be encouraged to use different equipment (enlightened crown, any multihit tool, allies). All lunar needs for that is for her elixir to make all her damage planar, reversed vex, introduction of hit count to enemy (it's done to some enemies in Uncompromising Mode, which means it is possible) and ability for player to choose when to attack as Abigail (might be done as right-click option).

I think it would be interesting where one alignement would be Wendy leading the way for both sisters, the other - Wendy giving place of star of the show to Abigail but still doing a lot herself for both to shine.

Responding to what I can, its hard to keep track of a big post on phone.

Brightshades: if you post a picture or video of what you mean by a tight setup, I can try to replicate and test. The enlightened crown sounds like its messing you up, though. I've had that crown problem on other characters.

Repeated armored bearger: How repeated? Can't you only fight it once a year?

Inkblight trio: Haven't fought post changes. I don't imagine they're too bad still, as one of my tests was nearly afking with Abby not having the Murder buff.

Toadstool: Escape should help I imagine. Though never tested it.

Celestial: Didnt do but Lardee has I believe. Escape is super helpful.

Shadow trio: I did Rook last in my other playthrough I think. Though at that time, someone showed me that Bishop last is a really great idea. Escape lets Abby handle it for you.

Fuelweaver: I don't think this would be a big deal. You're at least going to have early wolfgang damage versus it, due to thule club + cursed vex from a werepig kill before fw.

Rictus: never ran into them, so no comment.

Klaus: I used escape and attack here to reposition Abby so she wasn't always attacking the same deer.

24 minutes ago, Steorra said:

So, where's the before math from your linked thing?

I have to say, I see no old CursedVex calculation from Arcwell's math.

I doubt if it's my eye's problem or your basic logic's problem.

You knew that a math only showed Wendy's new CursedVex data cannot prove anything relative with "if the CursedVex change is a buff or nerf" right?

Slightly under the post I linked.

[Steorra]

7 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Slightly under the post I linked.

Screenshot it.

[Arcwell]

I said this in the previous thread (here) but drawing conclusions from DPS charts is not a great idea.

If a character has 15% higher max DPS than another character in a vacuum, that does not mean they kill bosses 15% faster. It means they would kill bosses 15% faster if:

• The boss never attacked
• The boss never moved
• The player had infinite sanity (or enough to maintain e. crown through a negative sanity aura)
• The player did nothing but hold F

 

[Steorra]

38 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

I said this in the previous thread (here) but drawing conclusions from DPS charts is not a great idea.

If a character has 15% higher max DPS than another character in a vacuum, that does not mean they kill bosses 15% faster. It means they would kill bosses 15% faster if:

• The boss never attacked
• The boss never moved
• The player had infinite sanity (or enough to maintain e. crown through a negative sanity aura)
• The player did nothing but hold F

 

Thanks.

@DingleSorry, my eyes was blinded by info dumpling.

1 hour ago, Dingle said:

even with the Murder nerf.

But this was wrong. Arcwell was did the old CursedVex math by using dusk damage, it's same as post-nerf of Shabby.

The result is around 6% (by Arcwell's scenerio. If by me which ignored Abby's damage, it would be 7%). Still not a impactful result I have to say if you considering the crown's perform in practice. (Though, better than the T.Club)

My math which said it's only 3% was ignored the combo of "planar weapon + Crown". Since you can hardly to use that combo ON FOOT.

I only considered the Beefalo + Crown.

38 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

I said this in the previous thread (here) but drawing conclusions from DPS charts is not a great idea.

If a character has 15% higher max DPS than another character in a vacuum, that does not mean they kill bosses 15% faster. It means they would kill bosses 15% faster if:

• The boss never attacked
• The boss never moved
• The player had infinite sanity (or enough to maintain e. crown through a negative sanity aura)
• The player did nothing but hold F

 

though my argument have no business with Wolfgang, I don't want to join the "If Wendy should have more DPS than Wolfgang" discussion since I think it is meaningless, I was only focused on the comparison between old CursedVex and the new.

[Dingle]

2 hours ago, Steorra said:

Thanks.

@DingleSorry, my eyes was blinded by info dumpling.

But this was wrong. Arcwell was did the old CursedVex math by using dusk damage, it's same as post-nerf of Shabby.

The result is around 6% (by Arcwell's scenerio. If by me which ignored Abby's damage, it would be 7%). Still not a impactful result I have to say if you considering the crown's perform in practice. (Though, better than the T.Club)

My math which said it's only 3% was ignored the combo of "planar weapon + Crown". Since you can hardly to use that combo ON FOOT.

I only considered the Beefalo + Crown.

though my argument have no business with Wolfgang, I don't want to join the "If Wendy should have more DPS than Wolfgang" discussion since I think it is meaningless, I was only focused on the comparison between old CursedVex and the new.

Info dumping?

"It's more than a 3% buff to Cursed Vex, but this doesn't count because it's not on a beefalo"....

You used to bring up Wolfgang constantly, in relation to Wendy. What changed?

[Pig Princess]

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

Responding to what I can, its hard to keep track of a big post on phone.

Sorry for the length, there was a lot to respond to. I'll try my best to be brief next time.

About brightshades:

Spoiler

This is screenshot in test world were I did 5x5 batches of saplings. This is a good representation of what I usually get.

In my current world plant area looks like this - there is no brightshades currently as I recently cleared them and don't feel like rolling back or skipping days. But you can get the idea of their spawn area layout:

Ignore modded storage, Uncompromising Mode and Heap of Foods featues - it doesn't change anything about brightshades. Ignore insight as well, I find it useful for betas to gather information faster and I keep forgetting to disable it after I looked up what I needed in the beginning of playthrough.

I acknowledge enlightened crown problems, but Abigail makes it needlessly complicated worst case scenario and doesn't help much best case. But I want her to help, I would rather be proven wrong and learn how to it with her.

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

Repeated armored bearger: How repeated? Can't you only fight it once a year?

I just meant several kills during playthrough like you did with brightshades. It's a good test of fault tolerance and how small things/changes in strategy influence flow of the fight.

By the way I don't imply that Armored Bearger or CC phase 3 is impossible or very hard (not to the level of Fuelweaver with equipment restrictions). It's very doable, but from my experience it's not on the same level of ease as Dragonfly or Bee Queen. In one of your playthrough you were like "you can dodge half of the time if you want" about Dragonfly; it can be true for her (if you don't mind to spend extra armor), but it gives a feeling that every boss is like that for Wendy. I don't like how it feels: you are sincere and diligent in your feedback, but it's misleading. My own experience doesn't match even though I'm not trying to make Wendy feel weak (but I have no proof, so what is the worth of such words?).

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

I don't imagine they're too bad still, as one of my tests was nearly afking with Abby not having the Murder buff

But didn't you write that when you truly afk'd, Abigail needed healing (even if small)? Did they actively target her or were their brains broken just like when you draw their aggro? Anyway, yes, Abigail is strong against them, but that was prior skill tree. And I'm going to repeat old arguement that Abi was always great against hordes, so it makes sense that is performs good there? If you disagree and want to promote Wendy's participation, wouldn't it be fine to propose Rasp being able to swallow Abigail (why can't it in the first place?)?

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

Fuelweaver: I don't think this would be a big deal.

Maybe you are just that good at the game and I became rusty, but Fuelweaver is definitely not something that can be brushed away like "not a big deal". He is not impossible, but even with Wolfgang damage he has plenty of ways how to destroy player and fight is still harsh test of your reaction, planning and managment of equipment switching. Pause and brightshade staff/weather pain make him much easier, but we are not talking about this kind of setup. I just wanted to point out that he is not trivial, contrary to how people these days make him to look. And it's at least as skill-intensive to fight him as Wendy&Abigail as to fight him alone (you make easier one component of the fight but bring another). In both cases it's not your average "holding F on Bee Queen or on Deerclops near fire pit". Not showing respect to Fuelweaver is illegal.

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

Klaus: I used escape and attack here to reposition Abby so she wasn't always attacking the same deer.

Yes, but did you tank through elemental damage? Did you gain any benefit from bringing Abigail into the fight, i.e. did it make the fight quickier, easier or make you take less damage? Or some other benefit? In my tests it doesn't have any advantage over old-fashioned way.

[Dingle]

4 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Sorry for the length, there was a lot to respond to. I'll try my best to be brief next time.

About brightshades:

  Hide contents

This is screenshot in test world were I did 5x5 batches of saplings. This is a good representation of what I usually get.

In my current world plant area looks like this - there is no brightshades currently as I recently cleared them and don't feel like rolling back or skipping days. But you can get the idea of their spawn area layout:

Ignore modded storage, Uncompromising Mode and Heap of Foods featues - it doesn't change anything about brightshades. Ignore insight as well, I find it useful for betas to gather information faster and I keep forgetting to disable it.

I acknowledge enlightened crown problems, but Abigail makes it needlessly complicated worst case scenario and doesn't help much best case. But I want her to help, I would rather be proven wrong and learn how to it with her.

I'll compare your brightshade picture to some of mine when I can! Maybe even try some fights out, if theres a good way to force them to spawn close together. Any requests on my items and weapons?

4 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

I just meant several kills during playthrough like you did with brightshades. It's a good test of fault tolerance and how small things/changes in strategy influence flow of the fight.

Oh sure, I wanted the most real playthrough possible though.

4 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

By the way I don't imply that Armored Bearger or CC phase 3 is impossible or very hard (not to the level of Fuelweaver with equipment restrictions). It's very doable, but from my experience it's not on the same level of ease as Dragonfly or Bee Queen. In one of your playthrough you was like "you can dodge half of the time if you want" about Dragonfly; it can be true for her (if you don't mind to spend extra armor), but it gives a feeling that every boss is like that for Wendy. I don't like how it feels: you are sincere and diligent in your feedback, but it's misleading. My own experience doesn't match even though I'm not trying to make Wendy feel weak (but I have no proof, so what is the worth of such words?).

Was that really misleading? That was more of a fun thing, I don't think Dragonfly is considered one of the tougher bosses. That was also with pre nerfed Blessed Sisturn 3.

4 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

But didn't you write that when you truly afk'd, Abigail needed healing (even if small)? Did they actively target her or were their brains broken just like when you draw their aggro? Anyway, yes, Abigail is strong against them, but that was prior skill tree. And I'm going to repeat old arguement that Abi was always great against hordes, so it makes sense that is performs good there? If you disagree and want to promote Wendy's participation, wouldn't it be fine to propose Rasp being able to swallow Abigail (why can't it in the first place?)?

Abby needs healing off top of head if younl truly afk + dont Murder buff her. Can't remember how much. I haven't thought about the ink trio for awhile. I haven't fought them after the adjustments, either.

4 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Maybe you are just that good at the game and I became rusty, but Fuelweaver is definitely not something that can be brushed away like "not a big deal". He is not impossible, but even with Wolfgang damage he has plenty of ways how to destroy player and fight is still harsh test of your reaction, planning and managment of equipment switching. Pause and brightshade staff/weather pain make him much easier, but we are not talking about this kind of setup. I just wanted to point out that he is not trivial, contrary to how people these days make him to look. And it's at least as skill-intensive to fight him as Wendy&Abigail as to fight him alone (you make easier one component of the fight but bring another). In both cases it's not your average "holding F on Bee Queen or on Deerclops near fire pit". Not showing respect to Fuelweaver is illegal.

Worst case, I think Wendy is a really, really good matchup for fw now. The team spirit 2 commands are amazing. Then you have the really good early damage of thulecite club plus cursed vex.

4 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Yes, but did you tank through elemental damage? Did you gain any benefit from bringing Abigail into the fight, i.e. did it make the fight quickier, easier or make you take less damage? Or some other benefit? In my tests it doesn't have any advantage over old-fashioned way.

Quicker than fighting with no Abby? I presume so, due to hex. But I didn't do a/b tests.

[Pig Princess]

1 minute ago, Dingle said:

Any requests on my items and weapons?

Melee (ham bat and brightshade sword would do) and getting hit as less as possible. Thank you!

3 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Worst case, I think Wendy is a really, really good matchup for fw now

She is, but I refuse to agree that it's easy or makes the fight trivial. I'm not saying that you claim that, but I have a feeling it might be interpreted that way. So I'm going to mention it explicitly just in case.

[Dingle]

6 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Melee (ham bat and brightshade sword would do) and getting hit as less as possible. Thank you!

She is, but I refuse to agree that it's easy or makes the fight trivial. I'm not saying that you claim that, but I have a feeling it might be interpreted that way. So I'm going to mention it explicitly just in case.

Cursed Vex ok? I'd have this in a real game by that point, at least from nmwp.

Do you know if theres a way to force brightshade spawning?

[Steorra]

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

You used to bring up Wolfgang constantly, in relation to Wendy. What changed?

The latest update is relative with CursedVex, not with Wolfgang.

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

doesn't count because it's not on a beefalo"....

Both Arcwell and me mentioned that the crown has huge different performance between theory and practice. It's not a thing regarding Beefalo. It's a thing regarding the difference between theory and practice.

Tbh, if you insist to use the crowns as an example for your argument, there's few differences with the Club. Both of them are great in theory but have problems to cause damage lose in practice.

[Pig Princess]

8 hours ago, Dingle said:

Cursed Vex ok?

It might be interesting to test with and without it and see if there is a difference. I agree that cursed vex is expensive only before cave rift and 1st raid to the labyrinth, after that so long as there are mouring glories, one might as well use it if it helps.

Although it's possible player decides to open lunar rifts much earlier than shadow ones in oder to use morning star/volt goat jelly on cave bosses first, or just dislikes how masks auto-kill everything (like I dislike).

8 hours ago, Dingle said:

Do you know if theres a way to force brightshade spawning?

No, I just made several batches of 25 (5x5) plants with 11 tiles distance between batches and minimum possible distance between plants themselves, then skipped days through console with rifts open (game setting "rift->always"). Brightshades from one wave have minimum possible distance between plants, so at least 8-9 plants are needed for all 3 to spawn reliably. Here is in-debth explanation of their mechanics:

Spoiler

 

You need to skip days several times as rift updates 1 stage per skip at most, and brightshades come only at stage 3.

[Lardee]

On 2/20/2025 at 12:36 AM, Pig Princess said:

Do you agree with Lardee that spectral cure-all pre-skilltree is enough to not even try to manage Abigail at all during this fight?

It's not.

That was only true when combined with Blessed Sisturn III pre-nerf.

[YouKnowWho142]

Without reading basically anything else in this thread, and this is an extremely unpopular opinion that I’d understand if no one had, but I personally prefer the constant damage. I was never a fan of Abigail scaling with the time of day and I enjoy the more consistent damage buff, so it’s more engaging for me personally. That’s just me though. It’s not really fun to me to be locked to fighting during specific times of the day, and the only thing the constant damage negatively impacts is nighttime damage where she’s already at her strongest.

[Lardee]

On 2/19/2025 at 9:17 AM, Yaorin yon said:

Combat isn't about beating up a DPS counter. Using that as a benchmark, Winona would be the most powerful character.

If Lardee were to fight armored bear with Wolfgang , he'd admit it's at least three times easier than having Wendy do the same thing.

Exactly. 

This is why if you're going to compare characters, it needs to be done in actual gameplay, not by theoretical maximums in unrealistic conditions.  

 

Also, not liking a something =/= it's less engaging. Removing an element with which the player engages with (day/night cycle damage) is objectively less engaging than keeping it.

[Pig Princess]

8 hours ago, Lardee said:

It's not.

That was only true when combined with Blessed Sisturn III pre-nerf.

Thank you for clarification.

I remember you posted a lot of videos, and one of them was where you commented that you didn't manage Abigail at all, in another you showed that spectral cure-all was always enough to fight Armored Bearger even before skilltree (still, team spirit is really helpful so one don't need to run from afar for Abigail to catch up only when you are at the other side of the boss already). When I actually think about right now, I realise that I don't remember if that was the same video or how were comments posted, so either I was confused, or my memory failed me. I'm sorry either way, this beta and discussions are exausting because of how long it is and how much there is to read and remember, and it was not my intention to confuse or misinform people about your claims. 

[Pig Princess]

As for Armored Bearger himself, I still wonder why in my fights he uses triple hit right away should he target Abigail, and why in videos I saw he usually does less. I thought at first that he checks for damage taken since the last stun/it's tied to possibility of butt attack, but seems like it's not the case.

@Lardee, I watched again the video where you said you didn't manage Abi at all, and remembered what I wanted to comment on. In this video Bearger only swipes once should he target Abigail, and even though you claim you don't even try to manage Abigail, you are consistently making sure Wendy is not on the same side as Abigail. What do you mean by "manage" then if positioning doesn't count? I'm not saying BS III was fine, I just compared your videos and your comments on them. If positioning Wendy doesn't count and if spectral cure-all makes it ok for Abi to tank butt-attack, logically thinking there is not much more to do and in that context it could be easily understood as "it's easy/there is not much need for managment with spectral cure-all". It's probably why I was confused in the first place. But in my fights where I let Abi get hit by butt-attack (with revenant restorative or current BS III on; she tanked 2 such attacks because of 2 cycles) I had to be perfect with positioning and after kiting swipe had to perform additional step in order to be opposite to Abigail again. I also had to be very aggressive because Bearger liked to switch aggro should I kite a bit earlier. It doesn't matter that I used small healing instead of big one or damage reduction for this fights, since all 3 allow to tank butt attack without managing this particular attack and should I make mistake in avoiding swipes, nothing from 3 would negate triple swipe after tanked butt attack. 

It's not impossible, but not trivial either, so what I want to say is that although it can look easy and although fight is reasonably possible overall, it's not as easy as Bee Queen, and not as fault-tolerant as Dragonfly with healing for both Abi and Wendy. No amount of healing would save Abi from triple swipe and butt attack deleting her, and current BS III makes it so she can withstand some damage but not much afterwards because of no normal healing (I'm fine with that). 

[Debruh]

44 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

As for Armored Bearger himself, I still wonder why in my fights he uses triple hit right away should he target Abigail, and why in videos I saw he usually does less. I thought at first that he checks for damage taken since the last stun/it's tied to possibility of butt attack, but seems like it's not the case.

@Lardee, I watched again the video where you said you didn't manage Abi at all, and remembered what I wanted to comment on. In this video Bearger only swipes once should he target Abigail, and even though you claim you don't even try to manage Abigail, you are consistently making sure Wendy is not on the same side as Abigail. What do you mean by "manage" then if positioning doesn't count? I'm not saying BS III was fine, I just compared your videos and your comments on them. If positioning Wendy doesn't count and if spectral cure-all makes it ok for Abi to tank butt-attack, logically thinking there is not much more to do and in that context it could be easily understood as "it's easy/there is not much need for managment with spectral cure-all". It's probably why I was confused in the first place. But in my fights where I let Abi get hit by butt-attack (with revenant restorative or current BS III on; she tanked 2 such attacks because of 2 cycles) I had to be perfect with positioning and after kiting swipe had to perform additional step in order to be opposite to Abigail again. I also had to be very aggressive because Bearger liked to switch aggro should I kite a bit earlier. It doesn't matter that I used small healing instead of big one or damage reduction for this fights, since all 3 allow to tank butt attack without managing this particular attack and should I make mistake in avoiding swipes, nothing from 3 would negate triple swipe after tanked butt attack. 

It's not impossible, but not trivial either, so what I want to say is that although it can look easy and although fight is reasonably possible overall, it's not as easy as Bee Queen, and not as fault-tolerant as Dragonfly with healing for both Abi and Wendy. No amount of healing would save Abi from triple swipe and butt attack deleting her, and current BS III makes it so she can withstand some damage but not much afterwards because of no normal healing (I'm fine with that). 

From what I see from these two videos: Old BS||| video, and Without BS |||, the second one manages Abby more, I think?

The first one has instances where it feels as if Lardee is trying to be on the same side as Abby (though bearger's range is weird due to DS's weird 3d like thing), while the second one does actually look like they're trying to care for Abby, even using commands, making her dodge even ground slams while the first she just eats them

The second one also has Abby come pretty close to death at the end, if it wasn't for lardee pushing Abby out of the attack last second