The many problems with Warly, and what his skill tree should improve

[JaxckLl]

11 hours ago, Cheggf said:

These two changes have been on my mind ever since I read them. I hope that if Klei takes anything away from this post it's that these two ideas are the best ideas ever suggested in the 11 year history of Don't Starve and I'm going to be very sad if they aren't implemented. 

Cannot agree with the second one. Crockpot in inventory feels extremely out of line with how literally every other interactable machine works.

[Cheggf]

8 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

Cannot agree with the second one. Crockpot in inventory feels extremely out of line with how literally every other interactable machine works.

DSA Willow can burn things in her inventory to keep warm because she's holding fire. I think that's a lot weirder than a portable crock pot working in your pockets.

Also, they've literally made interactables function inside your inventory in DST. You no longer drop tackle boxes on the ground when you access their contents, they stay in your pockets. And what is Woby's portable drying rack skill if not three drying racks that works from your inventory?

[JaxckLl]

It would have to come down to the rythmn of the character. A change I would massively prefer would be adding a "quick-queue last recipe" hotkey to Crockpots generally, to make spamming recipes much easier. That would save a lot of clicks and would be an improvement that would affect all characters. By default, machines should not be interactable from inventory. Note that I said "machines" there, not portable inventories. Walter's portable drying rack is not a good example as it is not in his inventory, but on Woby. Interacting with the portable drying rack actually takes more clicks than interacting with a normal drying rack as you can't quickly shift-click everything.

Another thought completely unrelated, maybe Warly should get some kind of equippable item that functions like Winona's rose goggles and allows him to find rare seeds in the world by investigating. This would let him jump into farming on day 1, without needing to rework Silk (I still strongly believe Silk needs to be reworked. Spiders are unbelievably strong compared to other renewable sources of meat, plus they are the exclusive unique source of the extremely important Silk. It feels really silly to have to commit to cheesing spiders at some point in the first few months in order to have enough Silk to play the rest of the game).

[_mylilsunshine_]

7 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

It would have to come down to the rythmn of the character. A change I would massively prefer would be adding a "quick-queue last recipe" hotkey to Crockpots generally, to make spamming recipes much easier. That would save a lot of clicks and would be an improvement that would affect all characters. By default, machines should not be interactable from inventory. Note that I said "machines" there, not portable inventories. Walter's portable drying rack is not a good example as it is not in his inventory, but on Woby. Interacting with the portable drying rack actually takes more clicks than interacting with a normal drying rack as you can't quickly shift-click everything.

i don't get what you're saying, you can shift-click meat items into woby's inventory, and then shift-click again while they're in woby's to put them on the racks though? sure opening up woby's inventory also takes clicks but it's not that cumbersome, i think. 

interacting with the portable drying racks is faster than normal drying racks (as long as it's 3 racks) because you don't have to hold the meat, click on individual rack's hitbox, and perform the walking/hanging animation.

[Cheggf]

35 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

It would have to come down to the rythmn of the character. A change I would massively prefer would be adding a "quick-queue last recipe" hotkey to Crockpots generally, to make spamming recipes much easier. That would save a lot of clicks and would be an improvement that would affect all characters. By default, machines should not be interactable from inventory. Note that I said "machines" there, not portable inventories. Walter's portable drying rack is not a good example as it is not in his inventory, but on Woby. Interacting with the portable drying rack actually takes more clicks than interacting with a normal drying rack as you can't quickly shift-click everything.

Another thought completely unrelated, maybe Warly should get some kind of equippable item that functions like Winona's rose goggles and allows him to find rare seeds in the world by investigating. This would let him jump into farming on day 1, without needing to rework Silk (I still strongly believe Silk needs to be reworked. Spiders are unbelievably strong compared to other renewable sources of meat, plus they are the exclusive unique source of the extremely important Silk. It feels really silly to have to commit to cheesing spiders at some point in the first few months in order to have enough Silk to play the rest of the game).

The only difference between three drying racks that function from Woby's inventory and a single crock pot that functions from your inventory is you're spending an inventory slot on a crock pot that functions like a crock pot while Walter's getting three drying racks that function better than real drying racks since you can change your mind about putting things on them and take them back off, all without even needing to have something in his pockets. Whether it's accessed from his inventory or Woby, which is literally just an extension of his inventory, does not matter.

I don't know what you're talking about with being unable to shift click things, since not only can you do that with Woby's drying racks but you can't do that with normal drying racks. With normal drying racks you have to drag items onto them one by one. 

[Guille6785]

43 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

Interacting with the portable drying rack actually takes more clicks than interacting with a normal drying rack as you can't quickly shift-click everything.

I'm sorry, ?????

[Walrusst]

13 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I'm sorry, ?????

I think bro is an action queue addict.

Its the only way his quote makes sense.

[Walrusst]

One skill I expressed the idea for in another thread but IDK if I did it here goes as such:

A crowd pleaser branch focused on making npc's more helpful to warly specifically.

Sovereign Sater:
When serving meals to an animal ruler (Pig king, Rabbit king, etc) gain an extra reward, as well as a discounted craft of that respective species house type (Not needing their death goods.) Meals must fit the rulers diet restrictions. 
A cooldown exists which increases as more and more houses remain of that respective species.
Provides a window where warly is at peace with/can recruit members a species without the normal restriction when a ruler is fed. (Can recruit merms without disguise after serving a feast to the merm king, uniquely can recruit up to two powder monkeys after feeding the monkey queen, who will help him row. Can cook a supreme bannana protein shake to make a single prime mate follower.)

Helpful host:
Can garnish a dish placed on a table to share it with up to four followers, granting them increased move speed and attack interval in addition to the normal effects of the the dish.
Extends the duration of your recruitment greatly.

Possibly another two skills for friend helping dishes, like the banana supreme being a skill and a monster meat based one about being able to temporarily werepig pigs while allowing them to keep their sanity, for a four skill branch.

[Cheggf]

Do you guys think a dish that makes you better at carrying heavy objects is a good idea or a bad idea? My reasoning behind it is I like Warly and I hate moving statues, and that's not very good reasoning, so idk if it's a good idea or not. 

[Walrusst]

46 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Do you guys think a dish that makes you better at carrying heavy objects is a good idea or a bad idea? My reasoning behind it is I like Warly and I hate moving statues, and that's not very good reasoning, so idk if it's a good idea or not. 

Hypnotic dish that makes a beefalo temporarily pretend to be tamed, now you can move heavy objects without actually committing to permanently owning a bull.

[GimplyGoose]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

Do you guys think a dish that makes you better at carrying heavy objects is a good idea or a bad idea? My reasoning behind it is I like Warly and I hate moving statues, and that's not very good reasoning, so idk if it's a good idea or not. 

I'm not totally sold on this idea. If it could be shared, it would be a bit strange seeing characters typically depicted as frail zooming around with heavy objects.

Also, it may also be too similar mechanically to Wolfgang's ability to move heavy objects while mighty.

If there was a food that Warly could make that would allow this, I would prefer it to be mechanically unique to some of the other methods in the game to move heavy objects. I'm not sure what that would look like though. Best I can come up with is a dish that gives you flatu'lift'ence.

[Well-met]

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Do you guys think a dish that makes you better at carrying heavy objects is a good idea or a bad idea? My reasoning behind it is I like Warly and I hate moving statues, and that's not very good reasoning, so idk if it's a good idea or not. 

in this year and age of widespread easymode beefalo taming, anything that provides an alternative to them is an excellent idea.

[Walrusst]

I mean its why my idea of a moderately strong temporary tame came up, since warly is buff focused things that come and go would be nice.
Rather than tying himself down with a permanent bull commitment, you take a lightbulbs and shrooms kibble and make the bull hallucinate a magic journey with you for a day or two then release it back into the wild.

[Cheggf]

7 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

Also, it may also be too similar mechanically to Wolfgang's ability to move heavy objects while mighty.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Although his damage buff dishes and honey spice are already basically the same as Wolfgang mechanically since Wolfgang is just +damage +work efficiency and the dishes are just +damage +work efficiency. But for some reason this feels different, like this one is too much like Wolfgang even though I don't see why that would be the case. Maybe it's because moving the statues quickly is more visually apparent than just dealing more damage or chopping faster.

[Walrusst]

What if warly could season hambats for unique hambat specific effects?

[_mylilsunshine_]

1 hour ago, Walrusst said:

What if warly could season hambats for unique hambat specific effects?

now you're cooking with fire

[Walrusst]

Honey preserves the bat, and gives it a warly-specific swing speed bonus while making it rain fumble immune.

Pepper gives it immense single swing power proportional to how hot you are, but has a tendency to knock you back when swung at high temperatures (A phenomenon known as critical flavor explosions.) Warly resists the knockback, while recovering faster after being blown away. A special critical flavor explosion may be triggered against a certain enraged enemy.

Garlic gives it a block that redirects a quarter of the damage to your hunger. Warly gains increased food effect after blocking an attack. This includes increased effectiveness of any instantaneous magical food effects.

These three are mutually exclusive, but the last seasoning can be applied for a different purpose.

Salt heals the hambat, while increasing the damage. However, each salting decreases its swing speed resulting in the weapon becoming more risky to use. Warly resists the first salt based slowdown, and every third salting after that up to the salt limit. Fully salted hambats look like a big rock instead.

[thetrueprime]

I love a lot of the changes suggested here and would be very happy with changes to my boy that look something like this.

 

What I will say is that while I agree there was the intent for warly to use a variety of meals (that we know isn't real) I have always been resistant to that being fixed because it would give him even less reason to be played long term if he needed the additional maintenance. However with your buffs it does make those worth it already

Instead I always liked another idea to re-add the variety we've talked about where if you manage to keep a particular diet - veg, meat, or fish - it grants increasing buffs to things, like farming buffs for veg

Just because I think this way takes nothing away from what he is now, but gives you more routes to specialise, but only at given times. I just feel like even with the longer time between big meals, better small meals etc - you're going to fall into some pattern towards the end game that you will keep doing to stay fed, which as well as being annoying to fill out your bearger pack with the variety of (instead of the specialised meals for different scenarios I can keep in there next to meaty stews as I do at the moment), that same pattern of food you eat in the end game is no more engaging that the big meals, but more annoying to top up and store. If we are trying to improve warly, it is his endgame that is the weakest at the moment - he must have reasons to exist then over being a swap character. (I agree with early game being rng dependant being bad too but if you focus various routes you can still be very helpful early game I find)

 

Love the seed pack idea. Wouldn't even mind if you don't get the seeds for free but from particular bosses. Would make an early dragon fly on my Todo list if 4-6 pepper seeds were guaranteed!

[Walrusst]

So I'm starting to get a coherent idea for a skill tree.
Going to give my branch ideas here.

• Flavor Wizard (Translated to french of course I just can't be bothered prior to the weekend.)
  • New foods with magic effects, like a 10 minute temporary beefalo tame hypnotic grass pasta, seasoning your ham bat and bat bat for battle, a popper that causes you to explode and be knocked away from the nearest enemy, can be used as a combat dodge, etc.
  • Increased buff for eating foods you are craving (Haven't eaten recently.)
  • Basic concept: The power spiky character buffs that a tree normally wants to have, some utilities that are a nod to people who rush.
• Community Center
  • Being able to establish bonds with the demi-human rulers for a number of benefits, like fast an early seeds, cheap npc houses, recruiting a number of unique followers such as a pigman prep cook, a primape sous chef, as well as bunnyman busser, and possibly a merm one too.
    • Each of these has a unique support role at their station, in addition to being good combat followers that return to their station when they go off shift.
    • The merm and the primape are great for naval expeditions, the merm being able to help tow the boat and the primape serving as a crafting station for useful battle paddles which he can also use to help you row your boat.
  • Restaurant style cooking to make tabled versions of Warlys dishes, can be shared with other players and a small handful of npcs to create hordes of super buffed superhumans.
  • Cook dishes that buff NPCS, learn to give pigs control of their lycanthropy. Extra spices and garnishes too!
  • Logic: Guy studied in france, went back home to start a restaurant and had a number of trained staff. He could easily start again. Given his cooking takes a more to do characters that reduce the busywork and ways to get seeds would do so much to help you get started and off the ground.
• Artisan extraordinaire
  • Unique ways of using seeds and wild plants to create low rate food sources. Stunting birchnut trees to make birchnut bushes, building orchards and sustainable gardens that give familiar farm plants at a low rate (~6 days in season, every 11 days out of season. Faster for weeds.) Some sort of seafood method too but I'm not sure.
  • Learn to cook with unusual ingredients that are normally seen as below edible, like tillweeds, flower petals, fire nettles. (Comes with some weed resistance.) These would be strong, useful utilities rather than focusing on combat power.
  • Logic: Warly is a man of many small cravings rather than a single favorite, having a lot of low rate food sources that are lower maintenance fits him better than a big industrial farm that puts out at most 3 ingredients.
• Volt Whisperer
  • Learn the volt goat lifecycle and learn to create your own second herd.
  • Learn when goats molt their horns and grow new ones. Find goats near the end of their lifespan to gather meat cruelty free. Make a lady and the tramp style pasta to multiply the goats on a rainy day (They tap their horns together that creates an electric arc and pulls a new goat in from a magic vortex, of course.)
  • Ride the goat! They don't let you ride them for long, aren't able to carry heavy loads, but can jump surprisingly long gaps.
  • Cook the lightning! Master electrical damage and create an appetizer that can be force fed to enemies to make them perceive rain. Make a dish that quells charged goats fury allowing them to be ridden as an immensely powerful fighter.
  • Logic: Volt goats are part of his current gameplay legend and claim to be strong. He should be able to play into this as a nod to players history.

I'll flesh these out over the weekend, this is just what I was thinking for now.

[Reiko24]

On 3/19/2025 at 3:31 AM, Walrusst said:

What if warly could season hambats for unique hambat specific effects?

nice, they wouldn’t even need to add a new weapon for him, just giving an old one extra flavor 

[Edible Coal]

2 hours ago, Reiko24 said:

nice, they wouldn’t even need to add a new weapon for him, just giving an old one extra flavor 

extra flavor , get it? cause is spice 

Just now, Edible Coal said:

extra flavor , get it? cause is spice 

tbh cant wait for warly to be a "seasoned" surviour