Wendy skill tree is.... bad?

[Swiyss]

bro why is this randomly a wolfgang skill tree suggestion topic

[AliceShiki]

7 hours ago, astareus said:

Literally waiting all those days to unlock the skills from her felt like I was getting scammed. And I was basically coping to believe it was a great skill tree, when in reality it is not.

Then don't waste your time waiting to unlock skills? Just play the game and stuff will unlock as you play. It's more fun to do that.

If you really don't wanna play without the skill tree, just use a mod or a console command to instantly get max insight.

[GetNerfedOn]

19 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Here you are. 

At least for me, Wendy's skill tree is still not good enough and need more grinding yet. As for Reese, if can use Rift Elixir, it wouldn't have buried under CC Crown and BS Helmet.

Also, please don't call someone "gaslighting themselves" when they have a valid opinion - that's exactly gaslighting.

 

fair warning: correlation is not causation. While my polls show how satisfied people are with a skill tree and that may be an indicator of the skill tree's quality, unless proper statistical tests are performed and i add questions employing gauge of skill tree quality (which is ahrd to get given for now what we have is subjective to interpretation) we can only assume that people are dissatisfied with Wendy's skill tree and nothing more.

Ergo, people have raised the point that powerful skill trees like Wolfgang's are not necessarily good; that may also imply that despite a character's skill tree being objectively less powerful, they can still be extremely satisfied if it's fun. which begs a full definition or census fo what exactly people consider "good" or "powerful" in a skill tree

[ColdHeaven]

and then my friend who is a wendy main told me wendy is turbo broken, so broken that she can solo an entire tallbird fortress.

Edited March 14, 2025 by ColdHeaven

[Popian]

22 hours ago, Cheggf said:

It doesn't do anything fun or new, it just makes him stronger, more powerful.

I don't disagree that there felt like a missed opportunity for interesting skills, but isn't this the reason why you pick Wolfgang in the first place? There was plenty of feedback about wanting to maintain the gap post planar despite having no idea on what is planned past this first phase.

As for the unmentioned, the dumbbell toss offers good utility, and the whistle is more fun with mods that add less restrictive recruitment opportunities.

[Cheggf]

20 minutes ago, Popian said:

I don't disagree that there felt like a missed opportunity for interesting skills, but isn't this the reason why you pick Wolfgang in the first place? There was plenty of feedback about wanting to maintain the gap post planar despite having no idea on what is planned past this first phase.

The reason you pick Wolfgang is to deal a lot of damage, yet despite that he also gained work efficiency, rowing efficiency, movement speed, slowdown immunity, dumbbells, an unnoticeable amount of winter insulation for some reason, etc. Skill trees are supposed to add on to the character, not change nothing about them. His damage was already perfectly fine and didn't need to be any higher, then they added planar to nerf him, then they gave him a skill tree to revert the nerf except as a joke because half of your freaking skill points and half of your skill tree are being put into "Damage up." over & over & over & over again.

Imagine if Wendy's skill tree didn't give her any of the new stuff it did like night vision, because "you pick Wendy for Abigail's AoE damage". Imagine if her skill tree looked like "5 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "10 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "15 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "20 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "25 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "30 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "35 of Abigail's damage is converted into planar", "All of Abigail's damage is converted into planar". That would freaking blow. That would suck.

Instead what she got, despite Wendy being exclusively a combat character like Wolfgang is exclusively a combat character, is 1-3 skill point to get planar damage. And instead of it just giving her automatic planar damage without you doing anything, you get the planar damage in such a fun way, and you can choose how you get it. You can make a pair of potions that grant +10 planar to Wendy or +10/+100 planar to Abigail, and also either mutate Abigail into a gestalt to completely change how she functions turning her into a single target damage dealer with 10x damage dealt at the cost of no AoE damage, or perform the murder action as a reference to her roots to temporarily buff Abigail.

Wolfgang spends 5 skill points to gain +25 planar damage passively with no thought. Wendy spends 1 skill point to grant +25 planar damage to Abigail when she performs a lore-accurate interaction and 1 skill point to grant herself +10 planar damage as long as she's fighting alongside her sister.

-

Edit: Also, to be clear, Wolfgang gained all that stuff I said in the first paragraph from his controversial rework, not his widely panned skill tree. 

Edited March 14, 2025 by Cheggf

[Tranoze]

On 3/13/2025 at 3:43 AM, astareus said:

I can't use armor, insulation and the wreath at the same time.

Ride a beefalo solve all your problems.

[Cassielu]

54 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Imagine if Wendy's skill tree didn't give her any of the new stuff

You're talking about she have more, not better. The relationship between these two can be positive, but it can also be opposite.

Wendy's skilltree and Wolfgang skilltree both have at least 2/3 of the content that makes my brain scream "Why would I need this? Why am I doing this?" when I see them. They are equally bad as gameplay content, only difference is programmers and artist waste more time on Wendy bring her more bad things.

Edited March 14, 2025 by Cassielu

[Cheggf]

19 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

You're talking about she have more, not better. The relationship between these two can be positive, but it can also be opposite.

Wendy's skilltree and Wolfgang skilltree both have at least 2/3 of the content that makes my brain scream "Why would I need this? Why am I doing this?" when I see them. They are equally bad as gameplay content, only difference is programmers and artist waste more time on Wendy bring her more bad things.

She has more and better, and to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous. 

[Cassielu]

41 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

She has more and better, and to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous. 

The comparison is meaningless; bad thing wouldn't justified by another bad thing.

It's just going to make everything worse because you can always find something worser as excuse.

Edited March 14, 2025 by Cassielu

[Cheggf]

15 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

The comparison is meaningless; bad thing wouldn't justified by another bad thing.

It's just going to make everything seem even worse because people always have something worse to say.

I think you appear to be from opposite land. Everyone is saying that bad skill trees should be changed into good ones, not good ones should be changed into bad ones. 

[Swiyss]

On 3/13/2025 at 11:33 PM, AliceShiki said:

Then don't waste your time waiting to unlock skills? Just play the game and stuff will unlock as you play. It's more fun to do that.

If you really don't wanna play without the skill tree, just use a mod or a console command to instantly get max insight.

Bro you're telling me that I can't criticize something just because there is the possibility of me ignoring it? Everyone got their skill trees, and I like most of them, but Wendy's one is in need of some changes right now, and to say what I think is flawed just shows how I care about it. 

It's actually the opposite. It's not like I'm trying to delete her skill tree or something.

On 3/14/2025 at 1:18 AM, Tranoze said:

Ride a beefalo solve all your problems.

I know but sometime I like to actually play the game by myself you know. We shouldn't make skills and balance the game around everyone having the possibility to use beefalos. They would have to change all movement speed buffs in the game.

[Tranoze]

7 hours ago, astareus said:

I know but sometime I like to actually play the game by myself you know. We shouldn't make skills and balance the game around everyone having the possibility to use beefalos. They would have to change all movement speed buffs in the game.

Same as armor. You can play the game without armor, warm clothes... 

We shouldn't make skills and balance the game around everyone having the possibility to use armor.

That being said, you still can use shield of terror, warm body cloth, and hat.

[readkey]

On 3/14/2025 at 12:06 PM, Cheggf said:

The reason you pick Wolfgang is to deal a lot of damage, yet despite that he also gained work efficiency, rowing efficiency, movement speed, slowdown immunity, dumbbells, an unnoticeable amount of winter insulation for some reason, etc. Skill trees are supposed to add on to the character, not change nothing about them. His damage was already perfectly fine and didn't need to be any higher, then they added planar to nerf him, then they gave him a skill tree to revert the nerf except as a joke because half of your freaking skill points and half of your skill tree are being put into "Damage up." over & over & over & over again.

Honestly I think the purpose of planar damage is not really to nerf Wolfgang, but to allow Klei introduce new and stronger weapons without making the damage number simply higher. That’s why they put the planar damage back in his skill tree - he doesn’t need to lose his purpose after post-rift. 
 

On the other hand since now he deals a flat amount of additional planar damage, there won’t be another Volt Goat Jelly buffed Wolfgang annihilating new bosses with 200 per hit. Basically put the planar damage system is a control measurement for future updates. At least that’s what I think  Klei intended. 

[Cheggf]

18 minutes ago, readkey said:

Honestly I think the purpose of planar damage is not really to nerf Wolfgang, but to allow Klei introduce new and stronger weapons without making the damage number simply higher. That’s why they put the planar damage back in his skill tree - he doesn’t need to lose his purpose after post-rift. 

Which is even dumber than doing it to nerf Wolfgang. I have no idea why Klei saw that there were 10 chest armors, 11 head armors, and 17 weapons, and thought that it would be a really fun idea if they removed player choice & creativity and made it so that instead there's 2 chest armors (basically 1) that look really ugly, 2 head armors (basically 1) that look really ugly, and 2 weapons (basically 1) that don't have any skins.

They instantly started off the bat with a dark sword where an entire half of its damage is planar (38+30), there isn't much room to go up from the very first weapon introduced. 

Edited March 18, 2025 by Cheggf

[AliceShiki]

19 hours ago, astareus said:

Bro you're telling me that I can't criticize something just because there is the possibility of me ignoring it? Everyone got their skill trees, and I like most of them, but Wendy's one is in need of some changes right now, and to say what I think is flawed just shows how I care about it. 

It's actually the opposite. It's not like I'm trying to delete her skill tree or something.

Not a bro.

And I just told you that you shouldn't wait around doing nothing to unlock insight. You should just play the game instead.

That's all I said. Nothing more nothing less.

[Semind]

I liked having cheap and early moggles, easier to unsummon action, aimable ghost bullet and actually having potions instead of ignoring them because I couldn't be bothered to play the 1-minute long minigame (that I had to go out of my way to seek out) for 6 mourning glories.  My Wendy experience was enhanced. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  

1 hour ago, DVGMedia said:

I kind of find the minigame really does still kind of suck.  Like if you really want to use potions  and have the pipspooks set up to be at max potential.  you are basically still playing this minigame for 2 or 3 days to get a few stacks.  I do kind of wish now there was a more automated way to get them. Because to me seeing a pipspook spawn in my set graves means I should go do the quest to top up my glories. instead of my other tasks to progress the game.

I think it's a matter of perspective. I had gotten I would guess about 500 days of Wendy play pre-skilltree, and practically played it like elixirs didn't exist. So from my perspective the update brought in the ability to actually do whole boss fights with Abby out, pipspook's reward was actually a massive jump for me. But to someone who has already committed hours of farming glories, there's not as dramatic of a bump for how overbearing the minigame still is. Makes sense. I won't defend the minigame too hard, but what I will say is that the fact alone that it's mechanically distinct from most of the rest of the game kinda gives it intrinsic value for me as a change of pace. Like, even if in a vacuum it's a dreadfully dull mechanic, it unfortunately gets a few points for stepping away from the 'click-on-a-thing' paradigm that almost everything in DST lives in. It's also why the Archives decoding puzzle doesn't bother me as much as "trial and error this code sequence" theoretically should.


Off-topic,  but in my ongoing journey of removing more and more training wheels, I got my first non-exploit, non-Boss v Boss BQ kill last week. I know it's Wendy, but I still got a bump of happiness from it

Edited March 18, 2025 by Semind
Reply to reply

[GenomeSquirrel]

Does any place have a full outline of what each skill does? Last time I checked the fandom site wasn’t updated.

[SilverSpoon]

On 3/14/2025 at 2:06 PM, Cheggf said:

She has more and better, and to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous. 

I would not say she doesn't get new stuff in her skill tree, but If consider it enough to give each character a "More and Better" of 1.0 by Skill tree, Wendy only got a about 0.7.

• "Blessed Sisturn I-II" are filler skills.
• "Pipspook Quest I-III" is essentially a Wolfgang-ly skill like "Increases Mourning Glories yield by XX%".
• "Mourning Glory III" is just a cheap Meat Effigy.

Compared really good 1.0 skill treesas of Walter, Willow, Winona, or Woodie, her skill tree still need more be grinded. (and Wortox's also needs some tweaking.)

 

By the way, Wilson got 0.01 (Beard Hair Storage).

Edited March 18, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Bumber64]

2 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Does any place have a full outline of what each skill does? Last time I checked the fandom site wasn’t updated.

https://dontstarve.wiki.gg/wiki/Wendy/Don't_Starve_Together#Skill_Tree

[DVGMedia]

3 hours ago, Semind said:

I liked having cheap and early moggles, easier to unsummon action, aimable ghost bullet and actually having potions instead of ignoring them because I couldn't be bothered to play the 1-minute long minigame (that I had to go out of my way to seek out) for 6 mourning glories.  My Wendy experience was enhanced. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I kind of find the minigame really does still kind of suck.  Like if you really want to use potions  and have the pipspooks set up to be at max potential.  you are basically still playing this minigame for 2 or 3 days to get a few stacks.  I do kind of wish now there was a more automated way to get them. Because to me seeing a pipspook spawn in my set graves means I should go do the quest to top up my glories. instead of my other tasks to progress the game.

[Swiyss]

23 hours ago, readkey said:

On the other hand since now he deals a flat amount of additional planar damage, there won’t be another Volt Goat Jelly buffed Wolfgang annihilating new bosses with 200 per hit

OK but, Gestalt Abigail and Lunar Wendy kill Deerclops like 350% faster with a hambat, so.. what's the reason for planar damage again? -It's like they introduced this only to just ignore it recently-.

Another thing is, the rest of the skills in her tree are underwhelming because of that. She has a really overpowered transformation, making her other skills underpowered. The skill tree itself is unbalanced. And Wolfgang has the same issue. Similar to Wendy, Wolfgang has some other minor buffs, like being able to walk 10% faster for example which is at the very least necessary for a skill tree to be fun and interesting to play.

I don't wanna kill Celestial Champion, put in the work to unlock a bunch of skills, and then be instantly overpowered if my journey sucked because the only great skills I had in my gameplay were pipspook and potions QoL, an underwhelming wreath, 2 revive focused skills and grave relocation to make ghosts deal AoE for me, something Abigail can already do. With that in mind, Wendy's skill tree lacks a progression cycle to make the character feel rewarding to be played, which is something the developers didn't take in consideration as they were making her skill tree. -In my opinion, putting yet another revive option in her skill tree and a skill to deal ghost damage after dying was an insult to players who tried not to die in the game-.

18 hours ago, Semind said:

My Wendy experience was enhanced.

I don't disagree with you, my take is that it could've been way better. They could've focused on more QoL and less in power.

Edited March 19, 2025 by astareus

[ConstantBreeze]

Took a long hiatus from the game came back to quite the underwhelming skill tree. I wasn't expecting to be ludicrously overpowered, but I was expecting more than this. I doubt things will change and we will have to do our best to make the most of it. However, even in making the most of it I will still have my complaints.

 

Complaints such as:

What's even the point of the entire sisturn line of upgrades when we have ghastly expirence.

Why would I, as a player, spend 3 out of my 15 points on a downside, if I'm taking half damage, but recieving half healing (from potions) little has changed.

Why would I care about abigial dealing absurd single target damage if she's CONSTANTLY going to target a single minion instead of the boss or targeted enemy (especially if more often than not she gets hit despite her increased evasiveness) sure she one shot that frog, but it's going to take 20 seconds to kill everything when I could have finished everything off at once in 5 seconds.

Why is every potion that's good to use on myself so short in duration if you're good at the game you're probably not going to use distilled vengance/unyielding draught more than twice within 120 seconds before needing to reapply.

Why would I use the team spirit skills when I can use my eyes, notice Abby is maybe not doing great and unsummon/heal her before the problem. The attack at command is more of an attack to command. And it costs three points to do what I could do with a revival of any kind (that Wendy gets a special craft for) and chugging some monster meat.

And if you die near Wendy to make use of the vengeful spirit skill you either made a mistake and should have hugged Abby to let her take agro from a hoard (the only thing vengeful spirit is going to help with) and then ran away or it's too late and you get to deal a little damage before resetting the world or waiting forever for someone to come get you.

 

I feel so restricted with this skill tree, sure all the other ones have an "optimal" set up, but it still feels like there's a little wiggle room. With this one there's almost none. Technically you could switch out affinity if you like gestalt Abby (but I've already made my stance on that "upgrade" clear)

I guess it's kind of "poetic" that Wendy's skilltree feels empty and lifeless, but I don't want it to be poetic I want it to feel like my 15 points are worth more than removing a little bit of tedium from survival and even then rigor mortis doesn't even make you faster. Wolfgang gets a 10% speedbuff at the cost of spawning in, woodie gets one at the cost of some wood and charcoal (that he can give to other players) and I'll give up my entire head slot to... carry things faster? Walk in web and honey without penalty?

[hyoton123]

 

19 minutes ago, ConstantBreeze said:

What's even the point of the entire sisturn line of upgrades when we have ghastly expirence.

Ghastly needs forget me lots which you wont always have (not hard to get though), and sisturn line is about making it more useful than just upgrading abigail.

 

sisturn 3- you dont take the heal penalty when abigail is unsummoned. not always useful, but extremely useful against those specific bosses bc they also tend to wreck abigail anyway aoe or multihits.

 

lunargail- much better vs single targets and benefits more from lunar potion. not always as good as normal abigail, but much less management, and lets you cheese a few bosses.

 

wrath wreath- nonrotting healing, rictus, ruinsvision etc. i think it needs double pot duration to shine.

 

team spirit- escape is incredible for 1 pt no prereq. pop tracks on beefalo, spawn pigs from torches, etc. not needing to die is good.

 

vengeful spirit - yeah this one is bad

 

vigor mortis with wraith wreath - also bad but it’s good on both forms of abby. 

 

i kind of agree it’s restrictive, but it’s functional. most of the upgrades are small or are a bit subtle (picnic casket, shorter pip distance, ESCAPE)

[SilverSpoon]

I'll only write about the parts I don't agree with, I mostly agree with the rest.

1 hour ago, hyoton123 said:

and lets you cheese a few bosses.

That might be out of date. Gestabby used to be able to cheese multiple bosses because she weren't targeted when attacking, but that has now been fixed.

2 hours ago, hyoton123 said:

wrath wreath- nonrotting healing, rictus, ruinsvision etc. i think it needs double pot duration to shine.

Wraith's Wreath are completely underpowered, especially late game. 
Nonrotting healing: Warth Wreath will rot.  rictus: All we need to do is get rictus to bite Abby...  ruinsvision: It helps with mapping, but after that it's just a replaceable　Miner Hat or some other light sources, and be notice that effect will gone every time you take it off.

1 hour ago, hyoton123 said:

most of the upgrades are small or are a bit subtle

That's the problem, other characters got unique game changers, but Wendy didn't get much of one.