Now that the idea of old skill tree refreshes are fresh on everyones tongue, brainstorming time.

[Walrusst]

Now that the new skill trees have largely overcome the three identical skills paradigm we saw in a lot of older trees with gradually growing bonuses, now is a great time to talk about old characters who have these huge mountains of redundancy.

While many of these old trees still create a great gameplay experience by having good interplay with the charters base kit (Woodie/wormwood,etc etc.) I get that a big part of this update was people arguing against the bonus stacking style of tree for more individual bonuses where each step in a tree did something more incrementally interesting. Honestly its resulted in some great things, since having so many valid choices makes the trees a lot more addictive.

Rather then setdressing forever I'm just going to throw ideas up on bullet points to get things started. An example of food for thoughts worth a million complaints.

• Woodies quicker picker lines a bit redundant, so my idea is this: Fuse the first three skills to a single one to make them more generally competitive with beavers more interesting skill, and have the last one be a gathering bonus where you can throw lucy to pick up distant items to reuse her animations from the forge. (+Possibly something to make lucy ok for self defense like a regular axe rather than just being a death trap for newbies who look at it and go "Whatever," before fighting with that peaswinger because nothing communicates that she is a useless weapon. There being a skill to make her less useless gives her at least a hint.)
• Wormwoods two berry skills are redundant, what if we fused them to one so players are less skill nerfed trying to use them on a non-juicy berry bush world and instead gave wormwood a rockfruit mastery capstone where wormwood could get a better yield drop table from cracking open rockfruits using fertilizers instead of pickaxes (IE: Fertilizer cracking tends to give both the rock and the fruit, with an elevated chance of sprouts as well.)
• Willsons torch skills are a bit redundant, what he could craft exothermic and endothermic torches that help him ward off the seasons while consolidating the redundant perks. Planar torches for helping people maintain/lose their minds. Possibly a new capstone where he can help dry people off with a torch (Or invent beardhair towels.)

(Ideally here I'd like to focus on stuff that we haven't spent the last three months debating for the sake of well, not beating a dead horse. I won't say its off topic but its a topic I would love to avoid for the sake of we have so many threads on this thing)

[Well-met]

do you not see the extremely obvious flaw here, in that this is more endless development cycles and people are never going to be satisfied for the older characters and will never move on? While there's still half a roster waiting on their turn?

Is the giant floodgate really this hard to see?

[Steorra]

Don't touch Woodie. He is the most perfect one. Please.

I don't hope Wendy's thing happened to Woodie once again.

[Walrusst]

I never said stop working on new things.
Changing 1/5 skill lines to have more meaningful/impactful skills is a tiny effort compared to a full character refresh.
We used to get small character tweaks as a part of other broader updates when it made sense, just like how beefalo functioned saw meaningful improvements in this update when the update as a whole had little to do with them.

Updates are allowed to have minor additions alongside the bigger picture.

[Steorra]

Please give the chance to Wilson rather than Woodie.

I agree that the fast picking perk is a bit weak. But it is still meaningful for some times. Not like the altar for Wendy which is a simple copy of a base kit structure.

[Well-met]

2 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

I never said stop working on new things.

this is not how game development works. Company time is not limitless and efforts have to be focused and redirected toward singular purposes, you see this all the time with klei when they never update ancient things from RoG, the caves or even the pirate monkeys.

In other words, any time spent on X means less time spent on Y. Every finished update automatically went through a course of compromises.

[Walrusst]

They expressed concern about the growing divide between skill trees in a recent thread and demonstrated that they are able to do small changes to other aspects of the game while having a main project however.

I never said have this be the key focus, I said its a great time to brainstorm because these are active concern so while they are still focusing on their big content roadmap, having ideas for small tweaks that deal with redundancies floating around as food for thought is good since they could always include a small change that does something like radically altering how beefalo gamers play the game in an update about skill trees. Little changes can have big impacts when you economize your work.

I don't expect anything I've said to make it in the game in an unchanged form, I just hope by brainstorming I can express what I like about a characters kit, and get where my pain points are on the current state of the game expressed. Months back I spoke a bout portable drying racks on a portable campfire, klei did something far more creative and better than what I asked for. They are the artists, I'm just a silly little guy giving feedback. Sometimes my concerns become something way better than what I imagined my feedback would give, and that's incredible!

Hence why I said brainstorming would be cool, instead of saying each and every change is a strict necessity.
If I haven't convinced you my thoughts here aren't some malevolent takeover attempt, that's fine, I really don't want to take over things or alter the direction of things too heavily, I'm having fun thinking and expressing my thoughts about whats good about the new stuff we have, and re-framing these thoughts over the old stuff, little more.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 minute ago, Walrusst said:

They expressed concern about the growing divide between skill trees in a recent thread and demonstrated that they are able to do small changes to other aspects of the game while having a main project however.

Do you know which thread they said this in?

[Walrusst]

13 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Do you know which thread they said this in?

It sounded like that in the growing divide for skilltrees thread.

2 hours ago, JoeW said:

Yeah. I'm not getting into it all because we still have some things to discuss and decisions to be made. 

But there are a lot of really fair points here, and we're certainly concerned about it too. 

They've clearly chosen what the focus on based on this, but this is also an indicator that there is a little worry too.
So like, talking about a secondary concern in a constructive way is something I thought might have value, especially given their other future plans are something that's secret enough that we can't really give feedback on what we can't imagine.

I didn't want to really dive into a thread complaining on a topic because I'd rather focus on a small aspect of what has people worried and think of ways to make it better. Since like, exploring how we would like to solve something shows what is important to us even if the hyper specifics of what we say isn't always useful. Its the creative process.

[Picklesaurus]

On 2/27/2025 at 6:55 PM, Walrusst said:

Now that the new skill trees have largely overcome the three identical skills paradigm we saw in a lot of older trees with gradually growing bonuses, now is a great time to talk about old characters who have these huge mountains of redundancy.

• Woodie:
  Quickpicker -> 2 skills for 50% and the third one makes it so when Woodie destroys something (tree, boulders, pig houses) their items that can stack drop already stacked, making him able to pick those items quicker,  so 2 big trees chopped by him would each drop a stack with 3 logs, instead of 6 individual logs.
  Weregoose II -> Becomes imune to weather effects on weregoose form.
  Weregoose III -> Protection also applies to other wereforms. 
  Weregoose Mastery -> Allow us to open the map and choose a location we have been to teleport, draining 90% of the Weremeeter and lading in a random place around 40 tiles of the location we chose. 
  Lunar affinity -> now gives Woodie the ability to quickly transform back from wereforms.
  Shadow affinity ->  makes shadow creatures roar upon destransformation.
  
  Weremoose normal punches and charge now deal 35 planar damage + 24,5 normal damage, keeping his damage the same to pre rift enemies but increasing his normal punches and charge damage from 37,5 to 53,9 when fitghing planar enemies, allowing him to proc planar stun states like other planar weapons and not leaving Weremoose with 37,5/0,533 = 70,3 dps for a missed combo rotation which is less than pre rift lance dps ( 34/0,466 = 72,9 dps).
   
• Wormwoods -> I really dont like the plant crafting skills, it feels like it belongs to a crafting station or at least reduced to 2 skills max, or at least have something minor in each that is actually usefull to Wormwood.
   
• Willsons -> Beard food storage now has 33% spoilage reduction.
                 -> Torchs perks applies to any light source wilson interacts with (Lantern, Magiluminescence and Star Caller for example)
                 -> Once per day his transmutations that are not opal gem will cost less items or result in more items.
                  -> Lunar afinitty: mutated beard -> your fully grown beard will sometimes hit an enemy you are fighting.
                  -> Shadow afinitty : Shadow torch: You are now able to refuel your torch with grass, twigs, beard hair and specially nightmare fuel. Burning nightmare fuel on the torch makes it so nightmare creatures wont attack you when holding the torch or when the torch is trow on the floor near you.

[Walrusst]

Just now, Picklesaurus said:

• Wormwoods -> I really dont like the plant crafting skills, it feels like it belongs to a crafting station or at least reduced to 2 skills max, or at least have something minor in each that is actually usefull to Wormwood.
   
• Willsons -> Beard food storage now has 33% spoilage reduction.
                 -> Torchs perks applies to any hold light souce (lanterns for example)
                 -> Once per day his transmutations that are not opal gem will cost less items.
                  -> Lunar transmutation: mutated beard -> your fully grown beard will sometimes hit an enemy you are fighting.
                  -> Shadow transmutation : Shadow torch: You are now able to refuel your torch with grass, twigs and specially nightmare fuel. Burning nightmare fuel on the torch makes it so nightmare creatures wont attack you when holding the torch or when the torch is trow on the floor near you.

With wormwood, I really like the idea of the plant crafts but feel a consolidation would be amazing.
Hell, even something like anenemies to compliment the eyeplant duping would be beautiful just because it would play even more into wormwoods tendency of using traps and indirect damage sources heavily. 

I do like that shadow torch idea as well, given there are a few bosses where throwing one of those down would do a fair bit to help (Especially if it warded off other insanity effects.) It also plays into his aspects where he speedruns by using resource advantages (IE: Not needing to do the mooncaller event) to tackle problems instead of combat bonuses.

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Don't touch Woodie. He is the most perfect one. Please.

I don't hope Wendy's thing happened to Woodie once again.

Perfect? Has 2 skills that are simply the same but divided in 3 (the duration of forms and picking resources faster), has an entire goose branch useless that also ends with a random TP perk that blocks the other 2 final perks of the beaver and moose branches, his affinities are just downside removals...

Is far from perfect

-----------------------------------------------

I think wigfrid's skill tree has little combinations. You either pick the beefalo branch or go full weapons&helmet, her affinities are simply useless, unnecessary point to add 5 planar defense to a character with natural damage reduction and with another perk that gives planar defense to her unique item, the song storage should be in her base kit (not worth carrying 3 songs+ a weapon + 2 materials to craft a new weapon), she should have a skill point to throw her spear or to use inspiration to perform an attack (is weird to have a bar for niche uses)

 

[Steorra]

8 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Perfect? Has 2 skills that are simply the same but divided in 3 (the duration of forms and picking resources faster), has an entire goose branch useless that also ends with a random TP perk that blocks the other 2 final perks of the beaver and moose branches, his affinities are just downside removals...

If you think Woodie's tree is not perfect, please tell people why Wendy should not have a similar tree.

He is perfect. Yes some points you mentioned is true. But they are still meaningful when you need it. Not like other characters' filler skills (Willow's lighter light radius)

And the goose branch, yes it is rarely needed for most player. But it is FUN enough. Also, it is not useless, that's your own playstyle. Some of us do like the goose branch when we only have the mission to explore the map (in multiplayer game).

[aidancode]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Don't touch Woodie. He is the most perfect one. Please.

I don't hope Wendy's thing happened to Woodie once again.

I wouldn't call Woodie's tree perfect since I think it could use some more flexibility: let the player pick the order they unlock the were-form skills (ex: someone picks beaver 3, moose 2 and 3, goose 1 and 3). Still require all three for mastery. Also weregoose 2 is kinda pointless, I'd make it increase map reveal radius by a small amount instead. Woodie's tree meets every standard you could want for the CHARACTER but as a dynamic tool that lets people customize its not particularly effective.

[Steorra]

11 minutes ago, aidancode said:

but as a dynamic tool that lets people customize its not particularly effective.

I guess I could understand your point here, is that regarding the gameplay (or build) diversity?

Could you give a good example to show which tree is good for this aspect?

 

[WilsonHiggs]

9 minutes ago, Steorra said:

If you think Woodie's tree is not perfect, please tell people why Wendy should not have a similar tree.

He is perfect. Yes some points you mentioned is true. But they are still meaningful when you need it. Not like other characters' filler skills (Willow's lighter light radius)

And the goose branch, yes it is rarely needed for most player. But it is FUN enough. Also, it is not useless, that's your own playstyle. Some of us do like the goose branch when we only have the mission to explore the map (in multiplayer game).

You cant be moee biased 

This is what woodie skill tree has:

- 3 points to make forms last longer.

- 1 point, that needs the 3 previous points, to remove the downsides of using the idols

- 3 points to gather some resources slightly faster

- 1 point to make boards cheaper despite having an easy time gathering wood

- 1 point to make helmets that are only useful if you use befriended mobs for combat

- 1 point to craft a cane which is very good, specifically in MP, but useless after winter

- 3 points to deal more damage to the weakest epic mob and a way to summon them

- 3 perks to improve the way beaver farms

- 1 point, which needs the 3 previous points, to unlock an slam atack to gather resources. Unnecessary because the beaver already is superfast and make us uneable to pick other 2 points from the other forms

- 1 point to make the moose walk like a regular character, another to give him hp regeneration and a way to stop the charge which is pretty good and fun.

- 1 point to unlock an atack that is only done in your consecutive 3rd atack and deals more damage in a small radius. Not all the fight let you do this. You cant pick this one if you choosed the beaver one...

- 1 useful skill point to go faster as good. 2 useless points and a 4th one that is also useless outside of niche and not so practical early game strats. If you pick the 4th one you cant pick the moose or beaver mastery

- 1 point as moon affinity to remove his full moon downside

- 1 point as shadow affinity to remove the downside of wereforms draining your sanity

A lot of filler skills and a lot of very useless points, his skill tree is basically making the moose more viable VS the skill tree of wendy which, by your bias, is worst

- 2 skill points to move graves which allow you to farm mourning glory at home and make farms with ghost involved

- 3 skill points to add commands to scare mobs, make abigail invicible to evade damage or to command her to atack in a place which increase her survivability. Also this adds the gimmick of being able to hunt stuff like a death player

- 1 point to make death players deal damage during some seconds.  All right, this one isnt good but is really fitting and only cost 1 point. Useful for noobs

- 3 skill points to make the pipspook minigame faster and getting more mourning glory 

- 1 skill point that adds a basket so you can carry every elixir and some wendy related materials. 1 point that adds a new elixir that removes the punish of losing abigail. 2 points to create more elixirs cheaper 

- 3 points for the sistrum which reduced the sanity drain (even less interaction with her downside since you dont fight sanity monsters), to make the petals last longer and to improve her defense against bosses with more damage to mobs. Not the best branch but still, arent just fillers

- 3 points to revive butterflies and moonmoths, a way to revive like meat effigie and a head slot item that gives too much perks to waste time mentioning them

- 3 affinity perks for the moon which adds planar defense, a new super elixir and a new non aoe form that is easier to keep alive during boss fights

- 3 shadow affinities with new super elixir, extra damage and a boost of damage when murdering mobs

Some perks arent good but there are no filler. I wont say is perfect and i think it should be improved but, since you say woodie's perfect, then this one is the best skill tree in the videogame history

 

[YouKnowWho142]

4 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

You cant be moee biased 

This is what woodie skill tree has:

- 3 points to make forms last longer.

- 1 point, that needs the 3 previous points, to remove the downsides of using the idols

- 3 points to gather some resources slightly faster

- 1 point to make boards cheaper despite having an easy time gathering wood

- 1 point to make helmets that are only useful if you use befriended mobs for combat

- 1 point to craft a cane which is very good, specifically in MP, but useless after winter

- 3 points to deal more damage to the weakest epic mob and a way to summon them

- 3 perks to improve the way beaver farms

- 1 point, which needs the 3 previous points, to unlock an slam atack to gather resources. Unnecessary because the beaver already is superfast and make us uneable to pick other 2 points from the other forms

- 1 point to make the moose walk like a regular character, another to give him hp regeneration and a way to stop the charge which is pretty good and fun.

- 1 point to unlock an atack that is only done in your consecutive 3rd atack and deals more damage in a small radius. Not all the fight let you do this. You cant pick this one if you choosed the beaver one...

- 1 useful skill point to go faster as good. 2 useless points and a 4th one that is also useless outside of niche and not so practical early game strats. If you pick the 4th one you cant pick the moose or beaver mastery

- 1 point as moon affinity to remove his full moon downside

- 1 point as shadow affinity to remove the downside of wereforms draining your sanity

A lot of filler skills and a lot of very useless points, his skill tree is basically making the moose more viable VS the skill tree of wendy which, by your bias, is worst

- 2 skill points to move graves which allow you to farm mourning glory at home and make farms with ghost involved

- 3 skill points to add commands to scare mobs, make abigail invicible to evade damage or to command her to atack in a place which increase her survivability. Also this adds the gimmick of being able to hunt stuff like a death player

- 1 point to make death players deal damage during some seconds.  All right, this one isnt good but is really fitting and only cost 1 point. Useful for noobs

- 3 skill points to make the pipspook minigame faster and getting more mourning glory 

- 1 skill point that adds a basket so you can carry every elixir and some wendy related materials. 1 point that adds a new elixir that removes the punish of losing abigail. 2 points to create more elixirs cheaper 

- 3 points for the sistrum which reduced the sanity drain (even less interaction with her downside since you dont fight sanity monsters), to make the petals last longer and to improve her defense against bosses with more damage to mobs. Not the best branch but still, arent just fillers

- 3 points to revive butterflies and moonmoths, a way to revive like meat effigie and a head slot item that gives too much perks to waste time mentioning them

- 3 affinity perks for the moon which adds planar defense, a new super elixir and a new non aoe form that is easier to keep alive during boss fights

- 3 shadow affinities with new super elixir, extra damage and a boost of damage when murdering mobs

Some perks arent good but there are no filler. I wont say is perfect and i think it should be improved but, since you say woodie's perfect, then this one is the best skill tree in the videogame history

 

This is exactly how I feel about it. Both woodie and Wendy had the same philosophy going into their skill trees with buffing their current playstyle. It’s hard at this point not to see woodie’s skill tree as a worse version of Wendy’s though since Wendy gets a lot more out of her skill tree than woodie

[HowlVoid]

It definitely seems like there was a big shift in skill trees around the time they worked on Winona and Willow.

The first set of skill trees focused on character roles. Look at the first Wormwood skill tree, nothing but farming fluff, some which doesn't even ralate to him. Friendly fruitflies?

Look at Wolfgang, so much combat perks and he didn't have the resource skills at first.

Woodie's gathering skills are obviously because they see him as a resource gatherer rather than what could make woodie more fun and versatile.

Yes, they had a good reason (for willow and winona). Those characters were bland. But it's clear they didn't slowdown after them wether the team noticed or not.

Now we've come far to the first animated skill tree. If they don't come up with a clear benchmark we'll just come full circle with how unfulfilled the refreshes were (they we're doing full reworks by the time we came around Maxwell)

[Steorra]

31 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

You cant be moee biased

Lol.

I'm Woodie main. You must didn't know what you'd talked about.

I'm very satisfied to Woodie's tree. That's why I'm Woodie main.

If Woodie's tree is "need improve" before other characters get their improvement, it's more like you do have bias towards other characters.

[YouKnowWho142]

7 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Lol.

I'm Woodie main. You must didn't know what you'd talked about.

I'm very satisfied to Woodie's tree. That's why I'm Woodie main.

If Woodie's tree is "need improve" before other characters get their improvement, it's more like you do have bias towards other characters.

I wouldn’t say woodie’s skill tree needs an improvement. It knows what it sets out to do and even though it isn’t a lot it does it pretty well, although not in a super interesting way. At the end of the day all it does is remove one of his only downsides and makes the moose slightly stronger (the other masteries are cool but are completely overshadowed)

[WilsonHiggs]

7 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Lol.

I'm Woodie main. You must didn't know what you'd talked about.

I'm very satisfied to Woodie's tree. That's why I'm Woodie main.

If Woodie's tree is "need improve" before other characters get their improvement, it's more like you do have bias towards other characters.

You might like the moose buff it brings and the removal of downsides because that is basically the skill tree. They could have added that perks into the base character and nobody would noticed the difference since nobody uses other configurations because there aren't any which is the opposite of why skill trees are done in videogames 

[Steorra]

33 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

1 point, that needs the 3 previous points, to remove the downsides of using the idols

Main downside fixing without any cost. I have no idea what you complaining here.

34 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

3 points to gather some resources slightly faster

Already gave my point above.

 

34 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

point to make boards cheaper despite having an easy time gathering wood

33% efficiency bonus by 1 point. Which forthe wood is the most frequently using resources for base building. You are trying to say this skill is not good? Seriously?

 

36 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

point to make helmets that are only useful if you use befriended mobs for combat

If you considering no multiplayer game, Wortox's most skills are "completely useless", worse than this skill you mentioned. And do you know that this hat is the perfect item for teammates cave living in early game?

38 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

1 point to craft a cane which is very good, specifically in MP, but useless after wint

For the gameplay of rushing style, this is very important skill because the first autumn is the mostly part of your gameplay. And in the winter you may still going on other business which let you have no time to hunt warlus.

40 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

points to deal more damage to the weakest epic mob and a way to summon them

Selective fact lol. You simply ignored the "time is resources" here. These 3 skills greatly saved Woodie's time for many scenarios.

41 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

1 point, which needs the 3 previous points, to unlock an slam atack to gather resources. Unnecessary because the beaver already is superfast and make us uneable to pick other 2 points from the other forms

Far better than biting marble tree. Could you please use Woodie for a 1000+days game before you give these lack of context arguments?

Though I agree this skill yes "might need buff". Because Winona's enlightened strike destroy no structures, but this skill would. 

It's just need QoL change.

44 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

1 point to unlock an atack that is only done in your consecutive 3rd atack and deals more damage in a small radius. Not all the fight let you do this. You cant pick this one if you choosed the beaver one

Never imagined someone would complain about Woodie's AoE of his weremoose form. I won't take this seriously.

 

Your most argument is lack of context of Woodie's true gameplay in all period of the game. And other seems more like serve for argument only.

 

Leave the "bias" word to yourself. I'm Woodie main. 

8 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

is remove one of his only downsides

I did tired of your lies.

Shadow affinity making Woodie's transformation downside of Sanity reverse into an upside of Ruin Rushing.

Lunar affinity making his downside of Fullmoon be completely fixed.

Transform topper skill fixed his downside of hungry.

"One".

[YouKnowWho142]

11 minutes ago, Steorra said:

I did tired of your lies.

Shadow affinity making Woodie's transformation downside of Sanity reverse into an upside of Ruin Rushing.

Lunar affinity making his downside of Fullmoon be completely fixed.

Transform topper skill fixed his downside of hungry.

"One".

Where did I lie about that? The only two downsides that woodie has over Wilson is increased treeguard spawn rate (can’t spawn treeguards as werebeaver and the skill tree lets him deal double damage to treeguards) and the forced transformation on full moons (which lunar fixes)

I don’t know why you’re being defensive, I already said there’s nothing wrong with woodie’s skill tree, it just isn’t the most exciting thing in the world

[WilsonHiggs]

15 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Main downside fixing without any cost. I have no idea what you complaining here.

Already gave my point above.

 

33% efficiency bonus by 1 point. Which forthe wood is the most frequently using resources for base building. You are trying to say this skill is not good? Seriously?

 

If you considering no multiplayer game, Wortox's most skills are "completely useless", worse than this skill you mentioned. And do you know that this hat is the perfect item for teammates cave living in early game?

For the gameplay of rushing style, this is very important skill because the first autumn is the mostly part of your gameplay. And in the winter you may still going on other business which let you have no time to hunt warlus.

Selective fact lol. You simply ignored the "time is resources" here. These 3 skills greatly saved Woodie's time for many scenarios.

Far better than biting marble tree. Could you please use Woodie for a 1000+days game before you give these lack of context arguments?

Though I agree this skill yes "might need buff". Because Winona's enlightened strike destroy no structures, but this skill would. 

It's just need QoL change.

Never imagined someone would complain about Woodie's AoE of his weremoose form. I won't take this seriously.

 

Your most argument is lack of context of Woodie's true gameplay in all period of the game. And other seems more like serve for argument only.

 

Leave the "bias" word to yourself. I'm Woodie main. 

I did tired of your lies.

Shadow affinity making Woodie's transformation downside of Sanity reverse into an upside of Ruin Rushing.

Lunar affinity making his downside of Fullmoon be completely fixed.

Transform topper skill fixed his downside of hungry.

"One".

Imagine thinking that removing a downside is a good thing...

[Steorra]

3 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Where did I lie about that? The only two downsides that woodie has over Wilson is increased treeguard spawn rate (can’t spawn treeguards as werebeaver and the skill tree lets him deal double damage to treeguards) and the forced transformation on full moons (which lunar fixes)

I don’t know why you’re being defensive, I already said there’s nothing wrong with woodie’s skill tree, it just isn’t the most exciting thing in the world

I already explained why Woodie's downside is not only one like you said.

Towards the Treeguard spawn chance, I personally don't think that's a downside. That's just a feature like Wendy's sanity insistance, which brings benefits to you but also brings trouble.