Addressing Walter and (Lunar)Wendies progression quirks with the fewest new assets possible!

[Walrusst]

Walters progression in the new updates incredible, there are three key quirks I see.

• The grips skill is almost 100% non-optional unless you intend to be a passive utility helper, you have no progression without this skill.
• The bands skill is almost non-progression until you reach rifts, mostly driving you to play in safer ways that are almost unnecessary.
• There is no progression past the first 16 minutes with the basic slingshot skill.

I propose two changes here to make walter customization more balanced!
First is that the dragonfly scale grip in the files gets added to the slingshot kit skill, acting as the ultimate upgrade for walters who do invest only in basic customization. This uses an already existing asset.

• Base rate of fire 1.4, max (Ramped up) rate of fire ~1.9 gives walters something thats worse than the queen bee grip while still giving basic walter a boss based progression like grip walters, and it makes a ramping grip progression possible for all walters grips skill or not (That way walters who like this playstyle can use the dragon grip on their way to the void grip.)
• Its still worse than taking no extra skills, but it means that Walters progression always has bite even when sacrifices are made.

Walter gets a lunar band called the blooming band, made of live lunar moths and a lune blossom. 

• When firing ammo not made of shadows, the blooming band fires flower petals that do 3 planar damage in addition to your shot. The number of petals increases when firing repeatedly, up to a total of 3 petals, but these petals have a short range that is half of your normal ammos range. This is walters item with a brightshade helm synergy.
  • Right clicks fire far more petals them a fully ramped shot, and the thulecite frames cast applies a weak version of magic rounds effect on petal hits so long as the magic round is non-shadow based.
  • This is intended to be a risky graze bonus that works with lunar walters high dps, making him high risk and very high reward in his lunar path.

Now suddenly the three upgrade kit skills are more closely matched in terms of balance.

For lunar wendy, the key thing is the lack of control over gestalt abigail. So my idea is simple: 

• Wendy can craft enlightening and despair brews at the moon dial using mourning glory during the full and new moon respectively, these are 3 use brews that fill or deplete abagails gestalt timers by a 6 minutes each, allowing wendy to use gestaltagail whenever she wants if she crafts the brews in advance.
• Bath bombed hot springs may always be used for enlightening brews using mourning glory, both allowing her to seek early access to getsalt abagail and to enable wendy to get charges of her if Wendy misses the full moon.
• Forgetme lots can always be crafted with morning glory for despair brews, making it cheaper to use standard abagail in a rifted world.
• Wendy refuses to drink these, but adult survivors have a sanity/insanity effect if given these brews to drink.
  • A cute, minor, optional interaction.
  • Wolfgang has a reversed effect from the brews. Calls the enlightening one something uncle would drink. Woodie/Winowna gains sanity from both brews thinking they are both good. The brews aren't alcoholic, they don't inebriate people, but the sorts of characters that might like that sort of thing get fond memories from the brew.

The issues I bring up are minor, I wouldn't be bothered if they were left be for a while, but I wanted to air my concerns using an actionable suggestion that feels in line with the rest of the game.

[Gashzer]

Full scout/woby Walter build with only the slingshot basic customization is really nice for a melee/utility Walter build. Cheaper ropes and helping horns make log suits convenient to produce. 

Walter is powerful now as a melee fighter. What he lacks in dps he makes back with super cheap healing and easy sanity management with better use of body slot armours.

Silk grip, bone frame and pig sling buff the slingshot enough to make the bee queen fight bareable, I tend to fight bee queen for jelly grip with these basic mods at day 8 anyway. So the slingshot is still functional as a utility weapon for bee queen/phase 3 CC or for freezing broken clockworks. 

You could even swap basic customization mod skills for shatter rounds if you want AOE damage for AFW and leave the slingshot completely unmodded. Or swap out woby here woby there for frame skill to unlock AOE freeze/slow rounds for crowd control then finish off with melee. 

The great thing about Walter's skilltree is that you really don't need to use the slingshot for him to still feel great. So i disagree with you saying the grip skill is non-optional.

[Walrusst]

That is fair.
I was thinking more of more ramping grips in the progression just because its more interesting then the glommer/jelly progression.
It would be obsolete in the grips skill because dragonfly and bee queen are similar caliber enemies. It being in a different skill to allow a similar, but decidedly inferior progression system was an interesting concept.

Still I have noticed watler can be really tanky with a dreadstone helm because his sanity aura resistance lets him heal the helm for almost forever, its just I hadn't imagined trying to wilson things as him because I'd usually have a war beefalo on a salt lick or something as a backup to walters main gameplan if I didn't want to spend ammo on something.

Since even if I was going melee I'd want at least a glommer grip to make it so my area attacks ate less of my time.

[readkey]

16 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Full scout/woby Walter build with only the slingshot basic customization is really nice for a melee/utility Walter build. Cheaper ropes and helping horns make log suits convenient to produce. 

Walter is powerful now as a melee fighter. What he lacks in dps he makes back with super cheap healing and easy sanity management with better use of body slot armours.

Silk grip, bone frame and pig sling buff the slingshot enough to make the bee queen fight bareable, I tend to fight bee queen for jelly grip with these basic mods at day 8 anyway. So the slingshot is still functional as a utility weapon for bee queen/phase 3 CC or for freezing broken clockworks. 

You could even swap basic customization mod skills for shatter rounds if you want AOE damage for AFW and leave the slingshot completely unmodded. Or swap out woby here woby there for frame skill to unlock AOE freeze/slow rounds for crowd control then finish off with melee. 

The great thing about Walter's skilltree is that you really don't need to use the slingshot for him to still feel great. So i disagree with you saying the grip skill is non-optional.

What is great about Walter's skilltree is that you can literally customize to fit in different playstyles. From what I have seen so far that includes:

Slingshot + Woby - upgrade slingshots, ammos and Woby's movement and drying racks

Slingshot + Rider beefalo - same as above but upgrade Woby for utilities such as picking stuff, digging plants and delivery instead

Melee + Woby - upgrade healing and Walter's hat, upgrade slingshot for AOE magic effect, and Woby's movement for travelling

Melee Ornery Beefalo - upgrade slingshot for AOE magic effect and upgrade Woby for utilities

 

Old Base Building, slow pace style - prioritize combat depending on the above

Nomadic - prioritize scouting

Rush - give up most resources heavy ammos and prioritize Woby's movements

[_mylilsunshine_]

37 minutes ago, readkey said:

What is great about Walter's skilltree is that you can literally customize to fit in different playstyles.

recently I've been practicing a 14-day boss-run, killing as much as possible.

here's a tree that I devised for the run:

Spoiler

- no reason to get the affinity rounds, but we still need 02 skills to unlock ammo smith, so I pick the next best things: moonshots and kablooies. i've found that you can often find 1-3 gunpowders in a terrarium chest, meaning 90 kablooies rounds, which is really nice for the crab king sniper fight (shooting him with a scrappy frame, that's 238 damage on a crit). moonshots can help with the bee queen fight if it ever comes to that.

- the only (mini)-boss that i fight with the slingshot is the malevolent rabbit. melee is still king when it comes to resource and time efficiency, especially when we don't have the jelly grip. but i need the scrappy frame, and the thulecite frame can help with freezing larvae in the dfly fight, so i take the skill. if i ever kill bee queen though, i'll take the jelly grip skilll.

- when in a boss-rush, having another you is an amazing advantage, and that's why you pick everything woby related. snacks and racks for bigBy, you don't need much to mainntain her for 14-days. miner woby for the ruins, and forager woby for more food because god knows i struggle with hunger. i find lunar woby infinitely more useful and powerful than shadow, allowing you to quickly map out crucial POIs, and still has a dash for bosses. picker woby is decent for the early game as she can pick up twigs, butterfly wings, resources, etc. for you, i've found that i can generally let her forage a berry and pick it up herself while i'm in timbucktu doing other tasks. inventory management between her and mine is a pain though, so i don't pick it.

- lunar woby is also amazing for the affinity, as most bosses in the game is shadow-aligned and you still need to deal with nightmare creatures.

- cheap rope is cheap rope, and it's faster crafting so it saves some time. i get hit a lot so i might consider picking efficient healing instead.

it's crazy how flexible walter can be now, he's like a little swiss army knife. and his upgrades don't take away from his melee combat ability either, if you can manage to not get hit a lot, you'll manage.

[Walrusst]

My ideas here mostly aimed at amplifying this factor a tiny bit. Since well, the bands aren't very helpful, and well, a middle point between melee walter and pure range walter would be nice.

The wendy part tho, having more control over when abagail is transformed would do so much to make lunar path more viable, even if it was shorter timer based temporary transforms.