Walter gaming Tips and Q&A

[_mylilsunshine_]

On 2/27/2025 at 1:55 PM, _mylilsunshine_ said:

2. the best slingshot grip before Bee Queen is the glommer grip, so get it asap. but you don't have to pick up the glommer flower for it to follow you and produce goop, you just need to visit the glommer statue after a full moon and it should leave behind some goops for you, if the pigs haven't eaten them. (i used to sweat myself rushing the ruins and leave before day 11, but now i can take my time with it)

after actually playing the game, glommer doesn't drop some freebie goops for you like i had thought, i must've mistaken it with glommer being killed and leaving goops on the ground. turns out i'm a lying bum.

so i come offering some tips after 09 hours of skill tree gameplay,

[1] the piggyback is your friend, 04 more slots for all of your hoarder needs. the 20% movement speed (it's actually only 10%!) penalty will make your daily tasks a drag but if you're on woby most of the time, thanks to snacks and freebie drying racks, you shouldn't feel the weight (heh, nice one waltuh) of the piggyback much. once you defeat bearger, the insulated pack is a great alternative/upgrade. the same slots as a backpack but animals starve/food spoils at a 50% reduced rate. this is pretty good for cheap, high spoilage food like meatballs, because walter has a small tummy so cooking high hunger food feels like a waste, yet meatball spoils too quickly.

even the krampus sack feels not as mandatory unlike other survivors thanks to your good friend woby, so you can give your multiplayer friend the sack, or wear the insul pack in single player.

Spoiler

 the wiki is pretty confusing about either 20 or 10% movement speed penalty, someone with better literacy please read it for me https://dontstarve.wiki.gg/wiki/Piggyback/DST

[2] trail mix is walter's power food, 27/5 hunger/30 hp/5 sanity and it has a fast-eating animation, basically budget pierogi. with forager woby, trail mix is extremely easy to cook with just birchnut/berry/berry/filler. if you're worried about poison birchnut, just let your big girl handle it with the helping horns perk (courtesy of @mima_).

Spoiler

[3] glass round is a powerhouse ammo. i severely underestimated this thing and i was already estimating it pretty highly. in the early days you can easily find some marbles, but you should visit the lunar island asap for what basically feels like infinite marble ammo. 51 damage on-hit (same as marble and cursed round) and 34 damage-splash, it can wipe out tier-3 dens faster than i can blink (exaggerating) and it can wipe out (killer) beehives by just shooting at the hives and stunlock whatever bees come out.

[4] glass round is amazing against bee queen. this tech was already explored in the beta, where you can consistently wipe out grumble bees in the first two phases, and sometimes stunlock and wipe everything in the last two phases. glass round makes magicless (no slow-down round) bee queen kill possible for me, i don't have to scramble for shadow manipulator materials and moon rocks, praise glass round!

[5] on the topic of bee queen, it's still a difficult fight regardless. even wearing marble suit (95% damage reduction/DR), you will always be bucked off after one hit from any bee because of walter's allergy, armor is only good for reducing the sanity loss from taking damage. so make sure to clear out nearby beehives and play it safe in the fight. a good tool for redeeming mistakes in the fight is the scalemail, which set enemies who attack you on fire. this is great for distracting grumble bees and not be swarmed to death. this thing barely sees any use (at least i don't) so it's nice to see it shine, especially when paired with the thulecite crown which bumps your DR to 90% from 70%. another tool is the panflute and/or the lazy explorer. both let you find space to climb back on a frightened and scrambling woby.

[6] i learnt a lot about walter from @Guille6785 (and generic tips as well), possibly the only person to ever make content on walter boss run, both pre-tree and with-tree (which i hope is soon to be changed!). 

Spoiler

 

my current skill tree:

Spoiler

ammo branch:

- ammo smith is a must, 3x times more efficient at spending resources

- moon glass, and to a lesser extent stinger, are great rounds to have. i'm not planting and mining marbles just to have an every-day ammo

- i don't think lunar rounds are great, so no. and i don't want to use icker round because i don't want to rely on slow too much, which means shadow round is only pure horror. i can live with not using pure horror actually

- which leaves us with honey/shockscrap and gunpowder/dreadstone. honey/shockscrap is poop from a butt. dreadstone is really good consistent damage + planar damage, especially when paired with picker woby or a lazy forager. gunpowder is a haha funny boom boom round for me

customizer branch:

- advanced grips is a no-brainer, i like using the slingshot for combat

- advanced bands is dookie from a bum

- advanced frames is pretty good. scrappy frame let you trivializes some creatures, especially shadow bishop. it also lets you conserve ammo thanks to the x2 damage charge bonus, so basically 50% ammo efficiency. really good in the early game of a long-term world. thulecite frame is nice to boost magic rounds like slow-down (which i don't use), freeze round (niche), and pure horror (i don't have), so it's actually not good.

scouting branch:

- twine twirler, fast craft and cheap rope is always nice

- field medic, amazing 36hp/10 sanity heal craft, and spider gland now have a use as an early game healing item (12 hp) too. i get hit a lot so i especially appreciate this perk

- woby snacks and drying racks, go hand in hand and let you maintain bigBy basically forever, as long as you are diligent with your meat drying. jerkies and dried kelps are also amazing munchies

- pinetree panache gives you 4x times sanity reduction effectiveness, but i don't really need it. the boost to wetness protection is also pretty meh. i'm someone who wears the pinehat 24/7 for aesthetic and i still think this perk is not worth it

- portable campfire, cute, but dwarf star is my warm cuddly friend

- woby here, woby there. this was cute, i used it to transport some loots when ruins rushing but i didn't really utilize it much after that. will try to in the future. if i didn't pick this perk, i would've picked retrieving woby so she can pick up butterfly/seed/poop/dreadstone ammo for me, and also any generic resources

woby branch:

- pep pup, must have

- fury forager, really nice for berries and cacti. i often find myself hungry in the early game so i like the extra berries, and cati are always good brain food. extra bananas in the future as well, and don't forget the healing/sanity mushrooms!

- hard-headed, thank you woby for making chores less of a drag. as long as i can keep the meat dangling, i can maintain bigBy as my helpful worker

- scruffy sprinter, who doesn't like more speed? especially speed that ignores hunger speed penalty

- i find the two woby-alignment too overpowered for the early game, so i didn't pick any. woby normal dash is useless as it resets her sprint, it's only a precursor to the alignment so no need to pick it

[Guille6785]

13 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

 the wiki is pretty confusing about either 20 or 10% movement speed penalty, someone with better literacy please read it for me https://dontstarve.wiki.gg/wiki/Piggyback/DST

it was 20% in vanilla Don't Starve then reduced to 10% in RoG which stuck to every other version of the game

[_mylilsunshine_]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

it was 20% in vanilla Don't Starve then reduced to 10% in RoG which stuck to every other version of the game

thank you i knew it was right to trust my goat piggyback, also i guess someone with wiki edit permission should touch up on the description, even the scrapbook in-game says 10% and the wiki is wrong about everything

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, Insaginary said:

I may be one of the only ones who like using Kablooies.

Also, @Guille6785, have you considered bringing your close-quarters-slingshot incentive threads to General Discussion (either the shotgun band/frame or the close-up-higher-damage mechanic for bands), to give Klei another chance to consider them?

tbh if they didn't already add them it's probably because they don't think it suits the character so I doubt we're gonna get them even if we keep asking

[_mylilsunshine_]

3 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

tbh if they didn't already add them it's probably because they don't think it suits the character so I doubt we're gonna get them even if we keep asking

since a lunar sling-upgrade and armor-synergy are still missing, i'd say that we still have a chance with our close combat suggestions. it's just we can't really know if they'd take it or when they'd release it.

although, i can't see lunar alignment really vibes with close-combat, it's more like shadow alignment. 

9 minutes ago, Insaginary said:

I may be one of the only ones who like using Kablooies.

there's no new testing so i can't really tell if kablooies are worth using now, but the crafting cost for it is still a bottleneck if i want to use it as an every-day ammo, even bossing ammo is stretching it

[Chewabacca]

1 hour ago, Insaginary said:

I may be one of the only ones who like using Kablooies.

1 hour ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

there's no new testing so i can't really tell if kablooies are worth using now, but the crafting cost for it is still a bottleneck if i want to use it as an every-day ammo, even bossing ammo is stretching it

Kablooey fans rise up. Pre-ruins, kablooies are the second-highest-damage round in the toolkit (highest is shockscrap with electric damage, but crafting cost is even more a bottleneck there). Even after ruins, they do good damage and their ingredients are all very easy to find. Nitre is common, especially once forest petrification gets going, you can get rotten eggs from abandoned pengull dens and your own birdcage, and charcoal is charcoal, you make that stuff in bulk. I don't really use it as bossing ammo either, mostly because I don't fight bosses much and cursed rounds exist, but it's good to have on hand for when I want to shoot something dead quickly. Plus it just feels satisfying to use. Also guys the beta is over, I really don't think they're going to be changing much about the tree.

Question for the Q&A part of this thread: do poop pellets count spider queens as bosses? I know they don't work on treeguards, but harder to tell with spider queens since they're hostile by default and the timer on poop pellets doesn't last long enough for me to tell whether they briefly de-aggro spider queens or not.

[kroban]

1 hour ago, Insaginary said:

I may be one of the only ones who like using Kablooies.

I like those a lot too, its my go-to ammo for killing bosses in early and midgame, some people say "just use moonglass its easier to farm" but against bosses Kablooies do A LOT more dps, its 8 more damage per hit + the chance to crit. They are pretty good.

It requires some effort to gather the materials but it ain't that hard to spam. I usually rush for birdcage on the first autumn, give it some morsels, and leave the eggs to rot on a chest. Then I farm meteore biome (which is where you can get both flint and nitre) and for the rest well, coal is the easiest thing to farm and grass is relatively cheap if you pick the rope perk. 

[_mylilsunshine_]

y'know what? an open mind is a big-ass mind, i'll use kaboolies a lot more and see how i like it.

15 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

Question for the Q&A part of this thread: do poop pellets count spider queens as bosses? I know they don't work on treeguards, but harder to tell with spider queens since they're hostile by default and the timer on poop pellets doesn't last long enough for me to tell whether they briefly de-aggro spider queens or not.

according to the wiki, spider queen is indeed, a boss monster, and poop pellet doesn't work on bosses. tested it in-game myself, with the simple hp bar mod that shows aggression status. spider queen never deagro no matter how much poop i fling at her

19 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

 Also guys the beta is over, I really don't think they're going to be changing much about the tree.

yeah but it's not like we're asking much either. some numerical changes on the underperforming rounds, and a lunar round + sling upgrade + armor synergy, and walter's tree is golden. the lunar additions feel like a must-add, since right now you're locked into using void gear if you want to dps the optimal way (jelly cancel is a different story though). and locking player's choices is bad game design

[mima_]

2 hours ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

trail mix is walter's power food, 27/5 hunger/30 hp/5 sanity

 

personally im not fan of trail mix, maybe because you need to gather specifically berry and birchnut, which are seasonal and harder to gather in my opinion.
since im using moonshots as my main ammo and early trip to lunar give me easy veggie (kelp&stonefruit) so i use breakfast skillet as my main food source/healing food.
since its only require 1 egg and one veggie. which can be harvested easily. like farming morsel for eggs (i use stingerzinger to farm bird cus its dirt cheap) with 1 value total of veggie and u can also use sticks as filler.


more importantly they rot slowly and have decent stat

having 3 of those can fully fill walter small belly.

 

[Valase]

Have you guys encountered a bug where Woby gets scared of lightbugs(the ones that follow you if you have one in your inv)? I just had it happen twice but I don't know the conditions to replicate ;-;

Also, If you guys base near Dfly, use place a flower near the lava ponds (as much as you can without it burning), and you will get a lot of butterfly wings while you work on your base.

[_mylilsunshine_]

has anyone tried out the combo slowing + shockscrap hitstun? they changed it so that all electric projectile has higher hitstun now, and shockscrap round can seemingly stagger enemies once every other hits.

shockscrap is still expensive, and slowing isn't all that fun, but this combo would allow for a greater DPS window and shockscrap still hits for 74.4 against wet target, which could be more but still decent

also i've been trying out kablooies and they, in fact, are good if not great. x2 damage with scrappy frame and when it crits, it's gglorious. at least it saved me from a monkey raid when i was caught with my pants down.

[Mysterious box]

On 3/4/2025 at 9:19 PM, Valase said:

Have you guys encountered a bug where Woby gets scared of lightbugs(the ones that follow you if you have one in your inv)? I just had it happen twice but I don't know the conditions to replicate ;-;

Also, If you guys base near Dfly, use place a flower near the lava ponds (as much as you can without it burning), and you will get a lot of butterfly wings while you work on your base.

So i think it's because even though they can't attack they can aggro on things like other followers so that aggro might be scaring her.

[Crimson Hollow]

I've also experienced woby being scared of screaming mandrakes. I had to command her to stay to be able to mount her.

[_mylilsunshine_]

yep it's one of the suggestions in the beta that didn't make it, i figure we can make a new thread to bring up this old problem: woby being scared of neutral, even passive creatures.

On 3/5/2025 at 9:19 AM, Valase said:

Have you guys encountered a bug where Woby gets scared of lightbugs(the ones that follow you if you have one in your inv)? I just had it happen twice but I don't know the conditions to replicate ;-;

29 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

I've also experienced woby being scared of screaming mandrakes. I had to command her to stay to be able to mount her.

32 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

So i think it's because even though they can't attack they can aggro on things like other followers so that aggro might be scaring her.

[_mylilsunshine_]

8 minutes ago, Insaginary said:

Perhaps making a thread of your own suggesting a change instead of a comment would make it more likely to be seen?

the thing is that we're not really sure what the devs are working on right now, and whether they are taking suggestions or not. making a thread right now might leave it go unnoticed by the devs and other players, yaddi yadda

and like i said, it didn't make it in once, so i'm not in a hurry to run and suggest it again for walter. but i'll keep it in mind though

[_mylilsunshine_]

i've been using "Better Spell Casting" mod on the steam workshop as a walter-specific mod, it enables (dis)mount woby with a right-click, so just like before, and allows you to choose the item on the radial menu with a hotkey, e.g: i can open woby's inventory while riding her by pressing F1 (my choice) without right-clicking her and then click on the icon. i can press X and open up woby's radial menu, and then F2 to turn on foraging.

i'm a keyboard and mouse user, but a bit more keyboard, so i appreciate this mod a lot. the camera change whenever you open up woby's menu is also disorienting so this mod helps with that

Spoiler

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3102130643

i learnt about this mod thanks to someone on the forum, but my pea brain forgot who and i can't find out. thank you though, possibly kind stranger

secondary mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3317960157

sorry about our controller friend, i hope you will get your flowers soon

[mima_]

woby here and there perks is nerfed and kinda frustrating on how long it takes to woby to come back, do u feel so too?
i dont think it worth to pick the skill over the slingshot upgrade or ammo anymore. 
also it feels so long since there no indication on how long the trip is or when he will comeback.
 

[Crimson Hollow]

7 minutes ago, mima_ said:

woby here and there perks is nerfed and kinda frustrating on how long it takes to woby to come back, do u feel so too?
i dont think it worth to pick the skill over the slingshot upgrade or ammo anymore. 
also it feels so long since there no indication on how long the trip is or when he will comeback.
 

I can only see this skill being appealing for those who prefer using a beefalo, given the huge interval you'd have to go without woby

[aidankocherhans]

On 3/4/2025 at 1:15 PM, _mylilsunshine_ said:

there's no new testing so i can't really tell if kablooies are worth using now, but the crafting cost for it is still a bottleneck if i want to use it as an every-day ammo, even bossing ammo is stretching it

After enough time in a world they can become a great everyday ammo, they're stronger and less tedious to farm than marble

I had an excess of rotten eggs just by accident by the time the update came out

[Valase]

24 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

After enough time in a world they can become a great everyday ammo, they're stronger and less tedious to farm than marble

I had an excess of rotten eggs just by accident by the time the update came out

I like to use the moon glass rounds, moon glass comes in such an abundance, and even if you manage to run dry on the surface, you still can mine it on the grotto.

[aidankocherhans]

Here's my Walter tip:

The thulecite frame is a solid replacement for moon glass rounds, if you're trying to make room for other skills in your tree. Ice rounds with aoe can handle a horde by making it a 1 on 1 for a while, slowdown rounds make hordes much easier to kite, and if you can get pure horror rounds they're basically just another aoe damage ammo

Gunpowder crits can also help clear crowds if you don't have moon glass rounds 

[Chewabacca]

7 hours ago, kroban said:

I want to throw another quick tip.I think that Field Medic perk ALSO affects sleeping, it seems to increase both the sanity and hp gained. 

Now, I haven't tested this specifically with numbers and all that, so I could be wrong, its more of a "feeling" I got while playing it live, I played Walter quite a lot before the skill tree and from what I've seen now I think he heals way faster with this perk. Like, atleast the sanity bar while sleeping is definitely bigger than it used to be.

I don’t know whether Field Medic buffs the healing on sleeping, but the reason that the sanity arrow is bigger than it used to be is that during the beta the arrow’s size got reported as a bug since the storytelling arrow was bigger than it despite giving less sanity than sleeping.

6 hours ago, mima_ said:

woby here and there perks is nerfed and kinda frustrating on how long it takes to woby to come back, do u feel so too?
i dont think it worth to pick the skill over the slingshot upgrade or ammo anymore. 
also it feels so long since there no indication on how long the trip is or when he will comeback.

I don't see it ever being useful for solo play but it can be surprisingly helpful for multiplayer, if you've already got things to do in the area and don't feel like returning to base yet. For long trips, it's 1 and a half minutes if Woby is in her big form, 2 and a half if she's small.

[_mylilsunshine_]

i find Woby Here Woby There is useful when you're not trying to squeeze the juice out of everything, meaning you don't play for efficiency lol the less you stress out about time and effort and being efficient, the better the skill is

i once sent woby to drop off some items while i wait for the nightmare phase to end, that's cool

[Walrusst]

I just learned how to moleworm farm and while its sort of obsolete, its also a pretty neat walter trick on public servers that sure as hell beats hunting birds and always basing pig king for the gold. (Note: Shooting a bird and giving him meat technically is more reliable, but not having to have the same base location every save helps so much. You also need gold or stingers in most cases to start shooting birds so if you join day 4 and wolfgang took all the gold this is pretty helpful, since its technically possible even if people have taken all the gold and marble already.)
Since, you usually need a few decent bullets just to give you options in your hunt for good grips/frames/to farm shadow knights for thulecite before you enter walter go mode. Well.....

Well, if you build a small 6 wall diamond shape place with some assorted rocks stacked inside of it, and move the moleworm burrows to all be near your pen full of bait, you can just endlessly dig up the burrows for the basic stone types since the moleworms will do two things: Try to break into the pen they can't get into, and replant their burrows (Which can be dug for more resources.)
Since digging the burrows just gives random stone, including gold.

It alleviates the public game issue of starting resources being too slim for pubs decently until you get better renewables near the base. Just don't kill the moleworms, or set up a moleworm nursery in a different shard to maximize the benefits + enable you to repopulate when wigfrid murders them all.
Even better, in the caves a farm like this is improved by the moleworms gathering the absurd amount of earthquake resources you can generate since they can put up to 50 stacks of stuff in their burrows. So now your moleworm farm is a gems and marble deposit since they will just keep cleaning and consolidating item drops.

[Wawchik]

I don't know why, but Woby with helping horns skill can mine icebergs in 3 hits, while a player needs 9. Really helps to gather a lot of ice