Will “the holy trinity” finally receive proper refreshes?

[Guille6785]

I apologize beforehand if this thread comes off as inflammatory, that isn't my intention, so forgive me if my tone seems that way. I'm making this thread out of genuine concern over the future of these 3 characters, and since a few days ago JoeW shared in a different thread that the team is concerned about the wildly varying quality of the skill trees so far, it just occurred to me that there is a genuine possibility of them finally getting the proper treatment that, in my opinion, they should've received back with their refreshes.

Spoiler

Some background since most people haven't been playing the game that long: Back in 2017, there was a concept that floated around the DST community called “the holy trinity”, which is the idea that the characters Wolfgang, WX-78 and Wickerbottom formed a sort of “big three” among the character roster because of their power levels supposedly far exceeding that of all the other characters. This concept was popularized by one youtuber in particular (whose name is irrelevant), but the point is that this idea was extremely pervasive in the community, and many years later (I joined the community in late 2020) you could still find people in discussions bringing up the holy trinity as if its existence was a mere fact that everyone agreed with.

Needless to say, I don't believe the holy trinity was ever really a thing, but that's kind of a given and not really the point of this thread. The important part is that it seems that this idea of “the holy trinity” seems to have been so pervasive that it ended up (indirectly) influencing the way the developers approached the refreshes of those 3 characters when they eventually came around. Keep in mind that at the end of the day this is basically speculation on my part, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the refreshes of Wolfgang, WX-78, and Wickerbottom were the only refreshes that implemented objective nerfs: Wolfgang lost his scaling speed and stats, Wickerbottom got an additional downside of spawning nightmare creatures when reading books at low sanity (and not long before this she had the horticulture nerf), and WX-78 lost basically their entire kit, with system overload being completely scrapped as well as no longer being able to permanently upgrade their stats via eating gears.

Were these major nerfs? Were the things they got in return enough to compensate for them? This doesn't matter for now; the point I'm making is that it seems like too much of a coincidence that the exact 3 characters that formed part of a pervasive concept in the DST community just so happened to be the same 3 characters to ever be directly nerfed. To my knowledge, the developers never made any official statements that could serve as proof for what I'm saying, but if I am correct, this is something that they had been planning for a long time, as all the way back when Warly was introduced (two and a half years before Wolfgang's refresh) Vito had emphasized that Wolfgang's refresh would “balance him out”.

 

This pretty much ended being the case verbatim when the infamous Wolfgang refresh came out, arguably the most controversial update DST ever had until that point, if not still the most controversial one date. If you weren't around back then, the initial Wolfgang refresh was essentially just Toroic's Wolfgang Rework/Uncompromising Mode Wolfgang (mods) with a few extra items in the form of the dumbells and the gym, alongside the aforementioned nerfs. This upset a lot of people (including me), but it's important to understand why: Wolfgang essentially got “cheated out of a refresh”; the character objectively had problems, especially when it came to teamplay, but rather than addressing those problems the update focused almost exclusively on “balancing him out”, rather than giving him more things to be helpful with, which had largely been the expectation for refreshes up until that point.

This is in addition to the fact that, plain and simply, Wolfgang didn't even need to be “rebalanced”. This was my opinion back then, and it is still my opinion now in 2025, even though I received harassment from dozens of people for daring to say it: Pre-refresh Wolfgang was not a strong character; I believe most of the people who cried for him to be nerfed were either just repeating what was the common sentiment in the community or were being deliberately bad-faith (back then you saw tons of comments along the lines of “I really hope Wolfgang gets nerfed just so those tryhard Wolfgang speedrunners cry about it!”, I'm not joking).

This was especially disheartening because I was really hoping Wolfgang would get something to make him appealing to a team beyond “big number good”. The ensuing Wolfgang re-rework and the eventual Wolfgang skill tree made him more tolerable to play as, but unfortunately even with these updates Wolfgang hasn't had any of his actual issues addressed. Pre-refresh he at least required some game knowledge to make efficient use of his buffs, but post-refresh he is nothing more than a super-Wilson who gets increased stats at all times that surpass what he could achieve pre-refresh, with a boring, linear skill tree that basically consists of “upgrade this 5 times to get more of X”. It makes me sad that this was once was a character who I loved playing as in a variety of scenarios but who I now can only ever get myself to pick whenever I'm doing some speedrun, since that's the only environment in which a boringly designed character like him can thrive.

 

WX-78 was a character who, depending on who you ask, was also cheated out of a refresh. To me, getting a system overload was one of the most satisfying things you could get in the original Don't Starve, and there used to be many ways to trigger them. Getting weeks' worth of overload from hammering a pseudoscience station (removed from DST) was one thing, but you could even do things like kill yourself on purpose to receive the overload from the lightning that strikes when you revive from a touch stone (was possible in DST but only in multiplayer, by standing next to a touch stone when someone else revived). Overload had already been heavily nerfed in DST numbers-wise and the upgrades from gears were never that important to me, but the important question to me is this: Why did these things even have to be removed in the first place? Wasn't the point of the refreshes to improve on the character fantasy and update the character to be more in line with the multiplayer environment?

Regardless of whether you like or don't like WX's refresh, what you can't deny is the fact that WX was essentially deleted and replaced with a different character, not expanded upon. I would've loved an overcharge meter, a way to “store” your overcharge, get overloaded for a shorter period of time from touching lightning rods, etc. Instead, WX-78 got one of the most milquetoast refreshes imaginable: You're now exactly the same as Wilson, but you can buff yourself with extremely simple things such as sanity regeneration, extra health, speed, etc., a small number at a time, and these upgrades are permanent as long as you don't get wet. Unfortunately, you're not even encouraged to hot-swap circuits because if you take them out you lose your charge and they lose durability, so I really do mean it when I say you're Wilson but you just set-and-forget a handful of semi-permanent upgrades.

WX's refresh was hotly discussed when it came out, but now that it's been a few years and I've been able to gather other people's opinions, I can say that I'm not the only one who was disappointed by the direction it took. However, I'm not just sad because WX got a mediocre refresh; I'm upset because that mediocre refresh was most likely the intentional result of the developers believing in the “holy trinity”, and thus being too scared of giving WX a refresh that was a straight buff. If this was the case, then the developers prioritized balance over addressing the issues with the character and making them more fun. In essence, WX-78 got cheated out of a refresh.

 

Wickerbottom wasn't nearly as bad as the other two characters because her base kit was mostly left untouched, with the exception of books now spawning a guaranteed nightmare creature when read while insane. This nerf left a bad taste in my mouth because it essentially only targeted the Bee Queen tentacle farm, an extremely old method to kill Bee Queen that was long obsolete at the time because fire farms and catapult setups were both faster and safer, so it really came off to me as the developers being wildly out of touch with the community. Nevertheless, I'm disappointed with Wickerbottom's refresh because it seems like her status as one of “the big three” might've resulted in Klei giving her an extremely milquetoast refresh that was too scared to give her anything impactful out of what looks like fear of making her “too good”:

Wickerbottom was a character who suffered too much from her books only being useful in stationary setups; for example, tentacles were generally too costly and risky to use them for situations like right before a hound wave while being away from base, so you only ever made a bunch of them and read them all at once next to a boss spawner to create a farm; naturally spawning resources were generally too far apart for applied horticulture do any meaningful, so you only ever used that book around your own farms; the reading animation for sleepytime stories was likely to get you killed if you tried using it for things like the Dragonfly fight, so you only ever used it for bird/krampus farming setups, etc.

My hope was that Wicker would get the ability to obtain free casts for her books while on the go, or even the possibility of empowering her books like she could in the forge, and instead, the exact same thing as WX-78 and Wolfgang happened: None of her core issues were addressed, and the refresh arguably made her existing issues worse, likely as a result of not wanting to buff the character too much. To make a long story short, Wickerbottom's refresh only gave her new books, as well as the book case, a stationary structure. Not only are many of her new books like Overcoming Arachnophobia, Pyrokinetics Explained and Lux Aeterna really boring and mediocre, but she got even more books that encourage the exact same gameplay loop of only spamming books near your farms, such as The Angler's Survival Guide, which is best spammed near trawler nets. This is compounded even more by the addition of the bookcase, which further encourages simply right-clicking from a pile of books that now keeps regenerating. Wicker is a character who essentially only exists when around a pile to books to spam, such as reading stacks of horticulture books inside a bookcase around a stone fruit farm, etc.

This isn't to say her refresh didn't add good things: The Everything Encyclopedia was an excellent addition, doubling down on her science-up perk and taking it to the next level with an incredibly unique upside. Practical Rain Rituals and Lunar Grimoire are examples of books that don't require spamming from a bookcase to get value out of them, and you can even use them effectively away from base, and Apicultural Notes is certainly one of the books of all time. As I said, Wicker didn't have it nearly as bad as either Wolfgang or WX-78, but the problem I'm bringing forward here is certainly still present. Wickerbottom got cheated out of a refresh, not because her refresh was bad, but because there was much more that deserved to be done with her kit but the developers seemed to have being afraid to give her the proper refresh treatment, likely as a result of misunderstanding the community's perception towards the character. She could've been refreshed much more similarly to Maxwell, a character whose refresh gave him almost everything you could ever imagine, and who just so happened to be a pretty unpopular character in comparison who never had a reputation in the larger community for being strong.

With that wall of text over, the point I'm making should be pretty clear by now: These characters deserve more love. They are not overpowered, they were never overpowered, they are characters with fun ideas but real problems who deserve to have their problems addressed and their character fantasies improved. Klei shouldn't decide who does and doesn't get to be fun to play based on outdated ideas about balance; they should work on making characters the best they can be and then let balance be subservient to that, not the other way around. As I mentioned, this seems to be a concern to them now, so I'm really hoping these three characters will get the treatment they deserve sooner or later, be it with their upcoming skill trees (in the case of Wicker and WX) or potential skill tree refreshes (Wolfgang could really use one, and a re-rework would be good while at that ngl).

(I hope this post isn't too controversial, I do appreciate any feedback though)

[flamboyant wolf]

I really really hope WX-78's circuit system could get reworked at least a bit outside of the tree, and for some of the lesser interesting circuits to get some adjustments. I really really love how UM handled it all, and it would be awesome to see something similar in the base game.

I absolutely adore the idea of WX-78's kit, but the way it works mechanically , the system just kinda ends up sabotaging itself unfortunately.

[FourthLess]

Having overcharge come back in some way would be neat but the main thing I want from WX's update is the improvements to the effects circuits provide, be it some just being more effective or having a more interesting effect, and having a lot less punishment from switching out circuits.

 

I think it would be a great opportunity to add a skill that changes durability from usage to duration based alongside other tweaks so it would be a *choice* people could opt into so people who like plugging in circuits and forgetting about them could still enjoy the character and those who want a more dynamic potential could also get what they want

 

Also we could use, like, more circuits in general, you know. Preferrably a few more from some rarer materials for a sense of character progression 

Quote

 I really really love how UM handled it all

Thank you 

 

[WilsonHiggs]

Even if they were op that isnt an excuse to make such skill tree as Wolfgang’s, which ironically gave him a way higher dps against some enemies, when they can add fun but not strong perks

Edit. I hope they make changes to wx's base mechanics outside of the skill tree. Right now the design punish you for wanting to change your circuits which is the opposite of the intention. I also hope their skill tree adds more non flar stats circuits

[lowercase skye]

In my opinion the concept of "the big three" was, more than anything, just a consequence of DST being treated as if it was some kind of competitive hero shooter rather than a survival sandbox. Those characters fit certain arbitrary "roles" very cleanly with pretty decent power behind them, so a lot of people just decided yeah these are the best you should always play them. I'm glad that the attitude has dissipated in more recent years, and I do really hope Klei reconsiders how their reworks were handled.

[somethin]

I agree on WX78 part. Last time I played him he's just Wilson with permanent cane and night vision most of the time. Is that powerful? Yeah, kinda, if you can live with nightvision eyestrain everyday. Is it fun or at least not boring? Heck no. The worst part is even if I can swap circuits around without durability it won't change how I would play, since what almost all of the circuit does is stat based, and ones that don't is way too undertuned to make a difference ex. The shock circuit.

[WilsonHiggs]

29 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

In my opinion the concept of "the big three" was, more than anything, just a consequence of DST being treated as if it was some kind of competitive hero shooter rather than a survival sandbox. Those characters fit certain arbitrary "roles" very cleanly with pretty decent power behind them, so a lot of people just decided yeah these are the best you should always play them. I'm glad that the attitude has dissipated in more recent years, and I do really hope Klei reconsiders how their reworks were handled.

Iirc this comes from before dst... in ds the characters were waaaaaay weaker and even annoying like willow being simply wilson but that burn your base when insane

So having these 3 characters having, not only weak downsides, but interesting and strong upsides made them look overpowered. Overpowered considering that the average character is nearly trying to kill himself

[Cheggf]

They completely killed Wolfgang & WX. While I was never a fan of WX, I did enjoy Wolfgang a lot and he was one of my top 5 favorite characters. Now I never pick him since he's so boring. Objectively he's stronger than he was all that time ago, but he's just so much more boring. You used to make a bunch of choices with the old Wolfgang. You could spend a bit more time making better food sources so that you have enough food to stay mighty and just run around with a speed boost, you could save the food and not go mighty to stretch it out, you could even starve yourself and stay wimpy so that you really conserve food. Now there's none of that, you just carry a boring item in one of your slots, then when it's time to do something you watch a boring looping animation for awhile, then you just get free buffs for no thought. You don't think about when to go mighty or how your food situation is right now and how it can be later, it's just lift weights then do whatever. Old Wolfgang was so simple yet so complex, new Wolfgang is just simple. He also has the most boring skill tree ever, throughout the entire thing he has like 3 skills that aren't just "Number go up!".

I'd love if Wolfgang was changed into a fun character again. I really like his sprite, voice, and quotes, but as he is right now he's just Wilson who needs to go through a bunch of annoying animations so I never pick him any more. 

14 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Iirc this comes from before dst... in ds the characters were waaaaaay weaker and even annoying like willow being simply wilson but that burn your base when insane

So having these 3 characters having, not only weak downsides, but interesting and strong upsides made them look overpowered. Overpowered considering that the average character is nearly trying to kill himself

No, this is from DST. I don't even think the YouTuber that Guille is referring to has ever played Don't Starve. You're right about Don't Starve having much less overpowered characters (typically), but their downsides were still not that big. Most characters have the same downsides, with notable exceptions being Wes' & Warly's who are arguably more severe in DST (Wes doesn't work slower & has higher stats, Warly can eat non-crockpot foods & gets higher stats on first food consumptions), and Willow's who are notably actually a thing that exists in DSA.

[WilsonHiggs]

17 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

They completely killed Wolfgang & WX. While I was never a fan of WX, I did enjoy Wolfgang a lot and he was one of my top 5 favorite characters. Now I never pick him since he's so boring. Objectively he's stronger than he was all that time ago, but he's just so much more boring. You used to make a bunch of choices with the old Wolfgang. You could spend a bit more time making better food sources so that you have enough food to stay mighty and just run around with a speed boost, you could save the food and not go mighty to stretch it out, you could even starve yourself and stay wimpy so that you really conserve food. Now there's none of that, you just carry a boring item in one of your slots, then when it's time to do something you watch a boring looping animation for awhile, then you just get free buffs for no thought. You don't think about when to go mighty or how your food situation is right now and how it can be later, it's just lift weights then do whatever. Old Wolfgang was so simple yet so complex, new Wolfgang is just simple. He also has the most boring skill tree ever, throughout the entire thing he has like 3 skills that aren't just "Number go up!".

I'd love if Wolfgang was changed into a fun character again. I really like his sprite, voice, and quotes, but as he is right now he's just Wilson who needs to go through a bunch of annoying animations so I never pick him any more. 

No, this is from DST. I don't even think the YouTuber that Guille is referring to has ever played Don't Starve. You're right about Don't Starve having much less overpowered characters (typically), but their downsides were still not that big. Most characters have the same downsides, with notable exceptions being Wes' & Warly's who are arguably more severe in DST (Wes doesn't work slower & has higher stats, Warly can eat non-crockpot foods & gets higher stats on first food consumptions), and Willow's who are notably actually a thing that exists in DSA.

Sure, that awful youtuber came at the start of dst but the characters at that time, except for woodie and maybe willow, where directly ported from ds and the vision was that, these 3 were the only worthy characters and only because klei gave them something interesting with the update "stranger new powers".

Warly came waaaay after that. Im talking about the time when abigail hunted wendy; woodie, the 1st character with interesting mechanics was added; willow didnt have her lighter; wes couldnt blow a balloon or wolfgang wasnt that mighty. Iirc not even wigfrid existed at the time since strange new powers was before RoG

The youtuber just overexagerated, made his low sanity stuff and, i guess, made popular something obvious about the roster

Gladly klei improved their awful character design and added fun stuff with wigfrid, wheeler, wormwood, woodlegs and wagstaff

[Prinha]

I'm a megabaser, Wicker and Wolfgang are my mains and I use WX regularly.
I remember the "Holy Trinity" thing so I might be old.

 

Wolfgang

I, too, think that Wolfgang is extremly boring and linear while arguably being stronger than he was before since his 2x multiplier is static now where it used to deteriorate immediately with the old system. As for the non intentional former speed boost that has been at the heart of all of those old "balance" discussions. I couldn't care less and never did. "It was never intentional." Ok, and?. "It made kiting with Wolfgang easier than other characters." Ok, and? Everybody has access to roads and a magi which is more than enough to kite everything. But in general speed in this game generates fun no matter where it's coming from. Wolfgang's compensation with the +10% speed in normal form doesn't do it for me though. I'd never take it, if he didn't have so few useful skills.

I don't much care for perfection, efficiency or challenge when fighting bosses. I simply throw a ton of ressources at them. I prefer to kill them decently fast and safely.

Perks like speed in marble armor or carrying around sculptures are almost meaningless to me though they do come up occasionally.

Haven't seen a use for the additional dumbells outside of the old crabking cheese and since I play alone the whistle doesn't do anything for me. Wolfgang is like the one character who needs followers the least.

 

WX

WX has a different playstyle now, I agree. But I disagree on the rest.

Old WX can eat gears for a permanent upgrade to his base stats, death not withstanding. He didn't care for spoilage, took damage when wet and had the overcharge gimmick.

His overcharge was extremly strong in Hamlet and situational anywhere else. Also what did it even do? It gave you ungodly speed (fun!) and a small permanent light radius (good) while constantly emitting a very annoying electricity hum sound (No thanks!).

Now you can have slightly less ungodly speed and permanent moggle vision in your first autumn without relying on other players and best of all without the annoying electricity hum. That clearly adressed the issue of the availability of his overcharge. 

But it didn't stop there. Instead there's now a plethora of useful upgrades that make your WX experience completly customizable. You can triple up on speed or be independant of thermal stones in Winter/Summer. Charly can be turned into a non issue and yes you can also upgrade your base stats if you want to. That might be useful for newer players for me that's a waste of a slot.

And he can still eat gear for Hunger, Sanity and Health. As a megabaser I have so many excess gears lying around carrying a stack as non perishable superfood while doing long trips from base has meaning. I also saw Glermz once build a heart made out ~100 telltale hearts on stream. Yep, WX with a stack of gears was his choice for that occasion.
Most notably WX on public servers is no longer Wilson who eats everyone's gears.

The smaller aggro radius on clockworks is convenient and I like convenient things but hardly has meaning aside from that. 

He still doesn't care for spoilage and wetness is a much more meaningful downside now. 

I never played WX outside Hamlet before the update but play him regularly now.


Wicker
 

Ahh, Wicker. I'm talked out. She's one of my favourites of all time. The first character I played when my friend first gifted me a copy of the game. 
So about her refresh. The bookcase is just so good, the rainbook is just so good. It simply overshadows anything else imo.

Her ability to massgrow certain things was arguably one of the strongest abilities in DS. Wether it's coffee or nettles she just turned some challenges into non issues. In DST her role was more of a base ressource farm kind of gal and I didn't really enjoy that. Particularly since by building lureplant farms in unloaded areas (like the caves) one can cut down on the grass/twig farming considerably. With the advent of RWYS this perk became even less interesting. Massfarming crops is easy for anyone now. 

So we are left with her creative book uses. She's a build enabler. Krampus farms, feather farms, fish farms, tentacle traps and combinations of those. You seem to dislike these stationary things because they are opposed to a nomadic very early game playstyle. But not every character is the same. I would HATE HATE HATE if Wicker no longer enabled these in favour of rushing this or that boss a little easier. There's already so many characters who do that. 

And thank the lord she no longer relys on reed traps even before the advent of monkey tails.

I remember that I was pleased with the shadow spawning mechanic. Before that the sanity cost of books hardly mattered at all. 

And yes a bunch of the new books are gimmicky, underwhelming or situational at best. I think that's the standard for DST. There's many items that are very situational, emergency only and otherwise highly outclassed by other stuff.
 

[kehun]

Yeah i really hope for some good skill tree for WX i think that with each update he is becoming even weaker xD (Nightberry <3) 

I really dislike his rework same for Wolfgang skilltree 

[Guille6785]

7 hours ago, Prinha said:

bongus

To be clear the point of the post wasn't to argue that the refreshes were bad or that they left the characters in a worse state (or that you shouldn't like them/play them), it was to explain why they specifically deserve a proper update because their initial ones were most likely influenced by misinformation and external factors that resulted in refreshes that weren't as good as I would've expected them to be if not for said factors

[Prinha]

3 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

To be clear the point of the post wasn't to argue that the refreshes were bad or that they left the characters in a worse state (or that you shouldn't like them/play them), it was to explain why they specifically deserve a proper update because their initial ones were most likely influenced by misinformation and external factors that resulted in refreshes that weren't as good as I would've expected them to be if not for said factors

I understand. You argue that those characters didn't get a strong fun update due to community influence on the process.
And I wholeheartedly agree with that notion when it comes to Wolfgang. Wether or not that has been driven by a certain "Holy trinity" narrative or not is kinda besides the point though there is merit in such an observation. A thing to consider going forward. Klei is also probably learning from all these skill tree additions and refreshes. I do think they got much better over time (mostly).

There is subjective judgement in your statements namely what is/isn't fun or strong. You consider the changes to WX nerfs and I get that a fully upgraded WX with permanent overcharge is stronger than what the current WX can achieve, so from that angle yes the changes were a nerf. However considering the difficulty/upkeep of achieving permanent overcharge in a solo DST world, I happen to think that the change is more kind of a buff. While WX can no longer be a statsponge on crack with inbuild charly-protection, speed and light are now way more accesible than they used to be. And I never saw his refresh as the kind of "nerf" that Wolfgang recieved, more like a change that made him worthwhile to start with or switch to.

And on Wicker's update, I can just say, that it is much much better than I ever hoped it would be. I expected her to get the Wolfgang treatment instead she got really good stuff while keeping her former gameplay intact. I happen to disagree on the idea that she got "cheated out of proper refresh". 

[Jakepeng99]

They should have made Wolfgangs strength more related to carrying out chores than just damage, with the downside of managing his strength and hunger (his hunger downside got removed for some reason)

[Echsrick]

who? you mean wolfgang, wicker, and wx? are they not outdated? i declare a NEW trinity, better....that would be clearly.....HMMMMMM......


warlys spicy meatballs
no wortox?
wigfried

yea thats a good trio i belive