After experiencing Walter's skill tree, I find it hard to get into other characters, knowing what they have can't be as good.

[Chewabacca]

While I've felt the same thing, it helps to remember that we were Walter mains even before the skill tree, so we're going to be a bit biased. Of course playing him is more fun than anyone else, that's how it's felt all along. He wouldn't be my most-played character if the things he offered weren't more valuable to me than what everyone else offers. That doesn't mean other characters don't also have fun kits, as long as you accept that they're not going to offer those same things. It also helps for me to double down on the parts of gameplay that Walter can skip out on, because that means that playing other characters means engaging with those parts. For example, I don't farm anymore as Walter, even though I really enjoy the farming mechanic, because I want to double down on the whole nomadic theme and foraging + bird/bat murder gives me enough food to get by. This means that when I'm playing, say, Wurt, who has a skill that gives merms tools that let them hoe in blessedly perfect 3x3 squares, I get my euphoria spike from that area. One day they will make Warly into a character that actually rewards variety in food and has tools that make him an actually better cook over the other survivors, and on that day he will be almost as fun as Walter for me. That being said, I know that you're mainly not asking for personal advice here. So for Klei's information here are the things that make Walter's tree stand out to me as the best:

• as has been frequently mentioned, the amount of personal choice in the tree is huge. Both in that each skill offers something meaningful, and in that they can connect with each other to form coherent builds even when they're not bundled together in a linear path that you have to check off lock after lock to get through. There are two skills that are directly helpful for manufacturing Woby treats, for example, which means that when I take the Woby treats skill I will also take at least one of those skills. Yet if there was a lock on Woby treats forcing me to pick either Twine Twirler or Rack & Roll, it wouldn't feel as good, because that would feel more like Klei shoveling it down my throat. Even if it's good food being shoved down my throat, it feels better to notice for myself how those skills complement each other and choose them myself. The reason that this works as well as it does for Walter is also that, to be honest, the base slingshot is bad enough that he doesn't come into the tree already capable of being a full ranged character, you have to make the choice to build him into one. For some reason I seem to have a bug on my computer which means that even if I have different Walter worlds, I have to use the same tree across all of them (if I pick different skills in a newer world, my older world's tree will be overwritten), which makes this a bit less fun for me in practice, but I see the vision.
• the in-world progression of a lot of the slingshot skills. It feels good to do something to earn power and gives mini-objectives. If the slingshot had jelly grip speed day 1, for example, it wouldn't feel rewarding. I would just go "oh...yippee, I guess I don't actively want to smash this thing when I'm using it. What now?" Instead I get a tense fight with Bee Queen that feels like a fair ask for the prize it gives and neat visual upgrades to mark my progress.
• there are skills that are useful and yet focus more on fun than power. Don't get me wrong, Walter with the tree is powerful even if we're just talking combat. Woby's speed and the upgraded slingshot are huge buffs. But there's also stuff like the left-hand branch of the Woby section. On paper, Helping Horns Woby is just a much worse version of one of Maxwell's workers, but anyone who's played both Maxwell and Walter can tell the difference. The impact of those skills on my playing experience isn't just "+1 berry per berry bush" or whatever, it's that tasks that are usually boring and mundane become more interesting and let me feel like I'm working with my dog to get more.
• the fact that a bunch of the skill tree doesn't focus on combat. I am not hugely into the combat of this game, so trees that try to offer me a bunch of options for combat feel like I'm being asked to pick my favorite flavor of cardboard. People tell me that Willow's tree is good, but all I see when I look at it is a few perks that I'm vaguely interested in, surrounded by ones that are nothing to me. I honestly prefer Wilson's tree to hers. Both with her and Winona, and even with the first version of Walter, it feels like Klei thinks that to get people to play unpopular characters, they have to give them a bunch of flashy combat abilities. And while Walter still has some flashy combat, he has way more than just that to fill out the 15 points.

[DVGMedia]

7 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

 

maybe one day i'll finally be able to add pudgy beef into the e.crown sanity station

It's why I kind of wanted walter to be able to use melee while on woby to have that hybrid style instead of just pure range 

[Crimson Hollow]

4 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

It's why I kind of wanted walter to be able to use melee while on woby to have that hybrid style instead of just pure range 

that suits wigfrid better dont u think?

[Well-met]

it's pathetic to witness in real time the hole klei has dug themselves into.

can we go back to the timeline where they just made new biomes and season stuff after refreshes ended?

 

[Walrusst]

23 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

It's why I kind of wanted walter to be able to use melee while on woby to have that hybrid style instead of just pure range 

I've seen an animation for riding melee weapon use in mods, and I would like it because it would flesh things out a lot.

 

18 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

that suits wigfrid better dont u think?

I've see it in mods, but there isn't a problem with having wigfrid have a feature she can uniquely use on a beefalo where as walter can do something simlar on woby.

Edit: Its sort of scary still how often sane suggestions on walter improvements can come up even in a thread dedicated to how the other characters need to catch up.

[_mylilsunshine_]

44 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

For some reason I seem to have a bug on my computer which means that even if I have different Walter worlds, I have to use the same tree across all of them (if I pick different skills in a newer world, my older world's tree will be overwritten), which makes this a bit less fun for me in practice, but I see the vision.

yooooo i'm going through the same thing! while it's neat that i can change skill tree without celestial idols, it's infuriating that i can't play multiple worlds each with a different tree. maybe we can bug report this?

and yeah i absolutely agree with the rest

[DegenerateFurry]

Walter definitely does have the best skill tree, and I think it's worth noting that his gives you a lot of non-linear options. Down with "you have to take these two mediocre perks for one perk you actually want", please! That's just unsatisfying.

[Chewabacca]

23 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

yooooo i'm going through the same thing! while it's neat that i can change skill tree without celestial idols, it's infuriating that i can't play multiple worlds each with a different tree. maybe we can bug report this?

and yeah i absolutely agree with the rest

Sent the bug report either two or three times by now. Like you, I only have the Don't Starve Alone mod, and I'd be shocked if that was the issue. At this point, especially knowing that other people don't seem to have this issue, I've given up.

[Siren11]

19 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

yooooo i'm going through the same thing! while it's neat that i can change skill tree without celestial idols, it's infuriating that i can't play multiple worlds each with a different tree. maybe we can bug report this?

This really sounds like a mod issue. Maybe you could check and see if you have any mods in common before you make a bug report.

Also since you mentioned that going between shards was a problem, Don’t Starve Alone might be my first guess. That mod causes some wacky issues.

[Chewabacca]

27 minutes ago, Siren11 said:

Also since you mentioned that going between shards was a problem, Don’t Starve Alone might be my first guess. That mod causes some wacky issues.

Oh for ****'s sake. Yeah @_mylilsunshine_ just so you know, unsubbed from DSA and made 2 test worlds, and definitely seems like that's the issue. Thank you for the tip Siren11. Didn't think it was that because I couldn't see how it could be crossing over information from another server but I guess that goes to show what I know about computers. Hopefully the modders will be able to fix this once sent a report and I will not have to play like there are 5 Webbers on my server if I want to actually switch things up.

[Milordo]

2 hours ago, Well-met said:

it's pathetic to witness in real time the hole klei has dug themselves into.

can we go back to the timeline where they just made new biomes and season stuff after refreshes ended?

 

Preach brother, preach 

[Walrusst]

I feel like people being rabidly excited like a flock of koi seeing a person approaching with fish food is less pathetic and more impressive how addictive the new style of update is.
I just hope skill trees stop being the main highlight of an update and starts being an ongoing effort that supports the main focus of the updates.

I would love to see resource and biome improvements that make heavily lived in worlds which a lot of players have joined into to make more locations interesting to base in for example. I was thinking of one for this weekend to try implementing as a mod simply because I felt it would make worlds that are lived in by a lot of players a lot more cozy and less barren. (Its an idea that the community would consider taboo for klei to implement, but one that's trivial for a modder to do once they dig up the resources.)

[Theukon-dos]

4 hours ago, Gashzer said:

See the thing is, base Walter wasn't low. People just never played him differently or took advantage of his upside which is a free beefalo, free chester and sanity drain immunity, all of which are pretty high tier abilities. All you had to do as base Walter was wear pinecone hat and body armour to get around his downside, this made Walter better in melee against high sanity draining bosses as long as you could kite ok-esh

Some Walter players pre-skilltree tamed a beefalo which was so stupid. Then it caught on and people thought he was weak when Walter definitely wasn't. Just because people couldn't live without backpacks...

The fact that you didn't even mention Walter's slingshot just goes to show how horrible he was pre-skill tree.

 

His slingshot had horrible DPS and was the most expensive weapon in the game to use. Beefalo where faster than woby and completely negated his downside in 99.9% of cases, and while Walter did excell against high-sanity drain bosses, there are a very small amount of those overall. Maybe a half-dozen off the top of my head?

 

Walter's only advantage was the extra inventory space from Woby. But now I'm also confused, becuase you say that Walter players taming beefalo was "stupid" becuase they couldn't live without backpacks. But Woby only has 1 extra inventory slot compared to even just the default backpack. So you're arguing that Walter was strong becuase he had more inventory space, but also that you could very easily work around Walter's downside by sacrificing inventory space. I may not be particularly good at math. But I'm pretty sure that's not particularly favorable.

 

 

[Gashzer]

10 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

The fact that you didn't even mention Walter's slingshot just goes to show how horrible he was pre-skill tree.

 

His slingshot had horrible DPS and was the most expensive weapon in the game to use. Beefalo where faster than woby and completely negated his downside in 99.9% of cases, and while Walter did excell against high-sanity drain bosses, there are a very small amount of those overall. Maybe a half-dozen off the top of my head?

 

Walter's only advantage was the extra inventory space from Woby. But now I'm also confused, becuase you say that Walter players taming beefalo was "stupid" becuase they couldn't live without backpacks. But Woby only has 1 extra inventory slot compared to even just the default backpack. So you're arguing that Walter was strong becuase he had more inventory space, but also that you could very easily work around Walter's downside by sacrificing inventory space. I may not be particularly good at math. But I'm pretty sure that's not particularly favorable.

 

 

His pre-skilltree slingshot was never meant to be a proper weapon, it was useful for bee queen and phase 3 CC thats it, otherwise it was better used for utility purposes like aggroing koalafants, killing birds/tentacles/mushgnomes, freezing clockworks. And the slingshot performed great in the niche situations which it was better than melee. Problem was that people thought of it as a weapon instead of a tool. Klei has now made it a weapon after buffing ranged combat in general.

Woby has only one more slot than backpack true. But imagine you could craft a backpack that gave you 240 winter insulation or 100% immunity to rain or 3.3 sanity plus 90% armour wouldnt that be OP? Freeing up the body slot but maintaining the same total inventory as other character functionally gives you "upgraded" backpacks with stronger weather insulation when compared with other characters, which is very strong.

Beefalos are faster than old big woby, but you had to tame a beefalo which is a very involved process and beefalos can die. A rider beefalo is better than an ornery but big woby was fast enough to not need to tame either, beefalos are weaker than hambats even when they become ornery. It's like wolfgang taming an ornery... beefalos are strong for every character including Wolfgang but when character skills make taming beefalos less beneficial like wolfgangs double damage with statue lift or big woby then why would you waste your time?

Wormwood has 20% bloom speed boost, wx has 50% speed boost. These are another 2 characters were taming a beefalo counteracts character abilities. Just tame a beefalo as Wendy instead an be done with it instead of wasting character abilities...

[Theukon-dos]

9 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

His pre-skilltree slingshot was never meant to be a proper weapon, it was useful for bee queen and phase 3 CC thats it, otherwise it was better used for utility purposes like aggroing koalafants, killing birds/tentacles/mushgnomes, freezing clockworks. And the slingshot performed great in the niche situations which it was better than melee. Problem was that people thought of it as a weapon instead of a tool. Klei has now made it a weapon after buffing ranged combat in general.

Woby has only one more slot than backpack true. But imagine you could craft a backpack that gave you 240 winter insulation or 100% immunity to rain or 3.3 sanity plus 90% armour wouldnt that be OP? Freeing up the body slot but maintaining the same total inventory as other character functionally gives you "upgraded" backpacks with stronger weather insulation when compared with other characters, which is very strong.

Beefalos are faster than old big woby, but you had to tame a beefalo which is a very involved process and beefalos can die. A rider beefalo is better than an ornery but big woby was fast enough to not need to tame either, beefalos are weaker than hambats even when they become ornery. It's like wolfgang taming an ornery... beefalos are strong for every character including Wolfgang but when character skills make taming beefalos less beneficial like wolfgangs double damage with statue lift or big woby then why would you waste your time?

Wormwood has 20% bloom speed boost, wx has 50% speed boost. These are another 2 characters were taming a beefalo counteracts character abilities. Just tame a beefalo as Wendy instead an be done with it instead of wasting character abilities...

First thing's first. You can't just say "The slingshot wasn't meant to be a proper weapon", because it very clearly was, and Walter as a character was almost entirely designed around it. He looses sanity when taking damage, so he got a ranged weapon that helps him stay out of opponent's melee range. And Woby gives him a speed boost that; in theory; makes it easier to kite enemies without getting hit. On paper, he was a very cohesive character, but the fact that the Slingshot was so utterly dogwater meant that this cohesiveness fell apart like wet cardboard.

 

Second, that would be incredibly powerful. Except there are factors you're forgetting. For starters, Woby only has more inventory than the basic backpack. Piggybacks and Krampus sacks both have more inventory slots than Woby, giving him a net loss on inventory space instead of a net gain. And second, the head slot still exists. And most characters can still get enough protection from the elements while still wearing a backpack.

 

And third, not only has taming a beefalo been extremely easy ever sense the Year of the Beefalo update, the difference between Walter and everyone else is that Walter didn't loose anything by taming a beefalo. Wolfgang doesn't deal 2x damage while riding a beefalo, and WX can't get the speed boost from overcharge/circuits while riding a beefalo. Walter, however, still has his immunity to insanity auras, still has little woby to bolster his inventory size, beefalo are faster than big woby; Won't buck him off when hit; and serve as a meat shield that will keep him from getting hit. Ergo, completely negating his downside against all but the three enemies that have ranged attacks.

The only thing Walter "looses" by using a beefalo is the perk... that gives him a worse beefalo. They don't conflict with his kit like they do with all your other examples. They're a strict upgrade over his other abilities. By your logic, Wigfrid shouldn't craft ham bats or dark swords because she already starts with the battle spear.

 

 

[Swiyss]

it feels weird that Walter has all of this but Willow can't use Burning Bearnie without sacrificing literally her spell affinity, and Wigfrid has to deal with like 10 of her skills being fillers for items and another 4 for beefalo riding which doesn't even make sense since she can't use her 25% damage on top of them.

[Walrusst]

1 minute ago, astareus said:

it feels weird that Walter has all of this but Willow can't use Burning Bearnie without sacrificing literally her spell affinity, and Wigfrid has to deal with like 10 of her skills being fillers for items and another 4 for beefalo riding which doesn't even make sense since she can't use her 25% damage on top of them.

Both of their issues have been recurring topics here.
Its an interesting idea to think about.....

[Mysterious box]

49 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

His pre-skilltree slingshot was never meant to be a proper weapon, it was useful for bee queen and phase 3 CC thats it, otherwise it was better used for utility purposes like aggroing koalafants, killing birds/tentacles/mushgnomes, freezing clockworks. And the slingshot performed great in the niche situations which it was better than melee. Problem was that people thought of it as a weapon instead of a tool. Klei has now made it a weapon after buffing ranged combat in general.

It's crazy to me how many times this has been said despite the evidence against this theory. If the slingshot was just a tool marble rounds and cursed rounds wouldn't have been made even the original slowdown rounds only really assisted in ranged combat scenarios. Heck the buck hp was clearly added later with the idea you'd take Woby into combat with the slingshot in mind. People misunderstood it as a tool simply because of how terribly overbalanced it was the same was true for Woby whom was mostly replaced by beefalos when it came to long term Walters. Also as mentioned many times before the slingshot wasn't a very good tool either pre skill tree it had very few uses especially in the case of freeze rounds which were just objectively worse than the ice staff.

49 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Beefalos are faster than old big woby, but you had to tame a beefalo which is a very involved process and beefalos can die. A rider beefalo is better than an ornery but big woby was fast enough to not need to tame either, beefalos are weaker than hambats even when they become ornery. It's like wolfgang taming an ornery... beefalos are strong for every character including Wolfgang but when character skills make taming beefalos less beneficial like wolfgangs double damage with statue lift or big woby then why would you waste your time?

Beefalo taming has been made much easier over the years since Woby's release making them cheaper to maintain than big Woby pre skill tree and even then late game items made them far more durable than they already were. The difference for Walter however was that a beefalo gave him access to all the advantages of big Woby and then some he didn't lose some core feature pre skill tree just graduated from a lesser beefalo it's not like he suddenly lost access to Woby's storage. Also though Woby can't die all that meant was that Walter would die in her place.

[Chewabacca]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

The fact that you didn't even mention Walter's slingshot just goes to show how horrible he was pre-skill tree.

 

His slingshot had horrible DPS and was the most expensive weapon in the game to use. Beefalo where faster than woby and completely negated his downside in 99.9% of cases, and while Walter did excell against high-sanity drain bosses, there are a very small amount of those overall. Maybe a half-dozen off the top of my head?

 

Walter's only advantage was the extra inventory space from Woby. But now I'm also confused, becuase you say that Walter players taming beefalo was "stupid" becuase they couldn't live without backpacks. But Woby only has 1 extra inventory slot compared to even just the default backpack. So you're arguing that Walter was strong becuase he had more inventory space, but also that you could very easily work around Walter's downside by sacrificing inventory space. I may not be particularly good at math. But I'm pretty sure that's not particularly favorable.

The slingshot being bad pre-tree didn’t really make Walter an outright horrible character, unless you rank characters by how good they are in combat, which is a different conversation and not one that I’m really qualified to talk about because I’m not a huge fan of DST combat so characters being good at it isn't all that valuable to me. It was handy enough for killing birds for quick meat and gold, and while yes Wickerbottom does exist, the slingshot was more convenient day-to-day.

While I very much did like Woby’s extra inventory, and it’s probably why I stuck to him, that and the slingshot weren’t his only upsides. He was also very easy to manage sanity-wise and his portable tent was dirt-cheap and pretty good for healing quickly if you did screw up. Woby was also available a lot sooner than beefalo, even if she was worse long-term. I’m not going to argue he was amazing or something, but he wasn’t horrible.

[Walrusst]

5 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

The slingshot being bad pre-tree didn’t really make Walter an outright horrible character, unless you rank characters by how good they are in combat....

He was always a great trucker and a support and that getting reinforced in spite of how little other players tend to value this is pretty excellent for the together part of the game.
Even if he is now undeniably on the strong side of the fighters.

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Oh for ****'s sake. Yeah @_mylilsunshine_ just so you know, unsubbed from DSA and made 2 test worlds, and definitely seems like that's the issue. Thank you for the tip Siren11. Didn't think it was that because I couldn't see how it could be crossing over information from another server but I guess that goes to show what I know about computers. Hopefully the modders will be able to fix this once sent a report and I will not have to play like there are 5 Webbers on my server if I want to actually switch things up.

You should go delete your Klei bug reports about the issue now that you know it isn't the game doing it. 

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Walrusst said:

He was always a great trucker and a support and that getting reinforced in spite of how little other players tend to value this is pretty excellent for the together part of the game.
Even if he is now undeniably on the strong side of the fighters.

Personally I wish the game would directly tell people that his healing bonus and flutterstrip sanity gain can be applied to other players if he uses it on them directly. That being said it really is slept on how supportive Walter is from his stories, tents, first aid ability, crowd control ability, and even neat little niche synergies like being able to give characters non perishable monster meats to recruit followers with in the form of Woby treats.

[_mylilsunshine_]

5 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Oh for ****'s sake. Yeah @_mylilsunshine_ just so you know, unsubbed from DSA and made 2 test worlds, and definitely seems like that's the issue. Thank you for the tip Siren11. Didn't think it was that because I couldn't see how it could be crossing over information from another server but I guess that goes to show what I know about computers. Hopefully the modders will be able to fix this once sent a report and I will not have to play like there are 5 Webbers on my server if I want to actually switch things up.

it's such a shame with how noticeable the lag is without DSA too. i can't imagine myself playing without it, i guess i'll stick to just one world for the time being then

[readkey]

On 3/22/2025 at 4:30 AM, DegenerateFurry said:

Walter definitely does have the best skill tree, and I think it's worth noting that his gives you a lot of non-linear options. Down with "you have to take these two mediocre perks for one perk you actually want", please! That's just unsatisfying.

Let me suggest something controversial: 

Non-linear options look awesome for sure, but It is not a good take to make all of the skill trees non-linear.

Reasons are:

1. Non-linear options can cause balance issue easily since they are literally new skills. They can easily over-bloat a character's perks.

2. Some skills are designed to be powerful enough that you must invest more than 1 point to get them. This is what skill "TREE" does as in most games with similar system. Now I understand some people do not like the idea of skill tree from the start, but this is not what we are discussing now, and Klei is obviously not going to redo the whole system.

 

That said, what can Klei do to make linear branches more appealing and feel less like a lazy design? Well, I come up this conclusion when I was messing with skill trees (Thanks Walter for inspiring me to really try that on the others), ironically, mostly with Wolfgang's. 

You see, most players undoubtedly put all 5 points on Planar damage branch, all 3 on Affinity, all 3 on Chore critical hit chance, for obvious reasons. That's 11 points consumed. Usually people take 1 point on Leg Day so that is 1 more point gone. That's why Wolfgang's skill tree is deemed one of the worst design ever. You feel like you only have 3 points.

However when I was playing in a long run world with a similar set up, I slowly felt it is not really worth to put all 3 points on the Chore branch. I love to use Marble suit and thus I value the extra speed of mining Marble shrubs, but I realized that branch has a serious diminishing effect. The 1st point increases your critical chance from 1% to 5%, which is a 5x increase. 2nd point 5% to 10%, 2x increase. And the last point is 10% to 15%, which only gives 1.5x increase.

If you have done chores long enough with Wolfgang, you will find that while the critical chance is helpful, it is not always useful. Sometimes it comes when you are chopping/mining the last 2 hits, which matters very little considering Wolfgang already chop/mine faster than others.

In the end, I changed my approach and only invest 2 points on the Chore branch. I can now put the extra point to something else (I am a sucker for character specific craft so I put into the 3 new dumbells). I still put all 5 points into planar damage branch, because dealing damage is what Wolfgang excels.

Now I am not saying Wolfgang's skill tree is good or what, it just gives me a new perspective on designing skill trees. In conclusion and TLDR, linear branches can be made meaningful enough if they have diminishing effect, as they give players a choice on how far you really want to push in.

This can apply not only to completely linear branches. Wormwood's branches also have a similar design. The last skill on a branch might not always be the most powerful one (still useful of course). Some branches are definitely worth to put all points into them because that's what we choose this character for. For some other branches, we can let the players to decide. After all, this is what skill trees are supposed to be. To give players options.

[Walrusst]

Non linear perks should be a wallet you use to get value out of point savings in the tree part, that much is the obvious smart implementation.

It lets you have a nice coupling of lines and locked clusters you sort of mine/route through for power, and grab bags of life giving utility that are where your saved points go, in broad strokes.
Since lines and locked clusters are better places to put big ticket skills, but small stuff in the bags is just... So incredibly nice.