what do you want for WX's skilltree?

[viblym]

WX is canonically nonbinary and uses They/Them

I see a lot of suggestions for repairable circuits or lasers or something but they feel very much like minor complaints about swapping circuits (They're incredibly cheap to craft and swap, the only ones that take a bit of work to replace would be Beanbooster and Electrification circuits.) I do think while basekit WX could use QOL, I'd despise for any of it to be skill tree perks for WX, you see how superficial many of Winona's perks are and it's a bit disheartening to imagine an entire perk dedicated to... circuit durability. Besides seasonal ones, not many players have a reason to regularly swap circuits out, and they aren't dynamic enough (in my opinion) to need extra durability. WX needs a looottt of work, their gameplay is boring, and having a higher hp stat doesn't exactly make you powerful, nor is it exactly fun. Their skill tree needs a lot of meat to it (ironically) to make them more interesting in gameplay.

I also pray that we don't get any circuits locked behind skills (affinity circuits might get a pass) since Klei did say that we would get more circuits over time. I had a similar issue with Walter's skill tree where he had ammunition added to his kit that I felt really should have just been added to his character as the game's content enabled you to. But we don't have the glory of character content being updated alongside game content, and we have to wait for designated character updates for any changes to take place.

A lot of ideas that I do have for a WX skill tree would require either fundamentally changing a few things about how you interact with them, utilizing charges for certain abilities is certainly something, but it'd disrupt the purpose of circuits (passive abilities that don't take up space for other things like equipment to utilize).

I know TarnishedMaxx wants WX to have a multitool arm that can be swapped out via radial menu to access different things like axes, pickaxes, shovels, etcetera. Which sounds neat. The mech in concept is neat to toy with but concept art alone doesn't tell me what it would do (beyond having headlights), so I cannot gauge if it would be fun to engage with. More utility is always welcome, a versatile character that doesn't rely on typical resources to achieve things is always unique, especially since WX has a heavy emphasis on self-improvement, I like not having to slow down to cobble things together to work towards goals, WX is a very fast paced character and that's the type of people they attract. People pick acceleration circuits because acceleration circuits will always matter, same with nightvision (outside of specific instances like moonstorms where a player might want to make more space). A multitool would be good since it would give them a way to interact with their environment in a way that doesn't loose its novelty, it can also have improvements to allow the collection of harder materials like dreadstone (who likes rushing Daywalker? Many!) I do think that something of this sort would step on Woodie's toes as far as perks go, but Woodie is not just his axe, and he is not just his werebeaver, there will always be appealing factors to Woodie that are not his gathering, even if it is a major draw.

Circuits being made more dynamic is another thing I absolutely want, ideally if circuits got buffed in their skill tree I'd prefer for it to be 1-2 perks, and not a perk to buff each circuit (one perk could buff stat circuits, and the other circuit could buff the reactive ones)
Hardy/Super Hardy - Adds damage reduction
Processing/Super Processing - Sanity resistance (monsters and magic)
Gastrogain/Super Gastrogain - More hunger from foods and negative effect buffers (wont loose sanity or health)
Acceleration/Super Acceleration - Attack speed increase
Electrification - Electric damage
Nightvision - Highlights potential threats (think Infroggles/Spectoggles)
Thermal - Cook on WX. Grill robot.
Refrigerant - Enhances spoilage reduction to that of a salt box, lower threshold to create ice when wet
Beanbooster - Enhanced regen rates
Chorusbox - Larger radius and stronger regeneration rate
Illumination - iii wish I had something for this but I genuinely have no idea.

That's just a small list I thought of with a few thoughts ^^
Overall I just don't want their skill tree to just be circuits, they could be improved but they should not be the spotlight in WX's skill tree.

There's also concepts like overclocking/overcharging, but those would require a full rework over just a skill tree. Which honestly wouldn't be that bad.

[Walrusst]

Circuit upgrades where you can use thematically appropriate boss resources to shrink seldom used large circuits would be big (+These sorts of murder quests can be quite fun, look at walter.)
But yeah, I made an effort to correct my mistakes with wx whenever I spotted a mistake with what I said regarding them. I don't really know if I'm the one being corrected there given I haven't reread the whole thread but just being clear I wasn't purposefully making mistakes if I made any.

I'm still going to put forward my simplification of the circuits/charge situation since charging them being repairing them both lets you retain broken circuits (Since they are just out of charge) and adds some interesting implied semantics for how you play with them (Where slotting in circuits can give power spikes like health circuits giving a big sudden health surge.)

[qwp18]

2 hours ago, viblym said:

Circuits being made more dynamic is another thing I absolutely want, ideally if circuits got buffed in their skill tree I'd prefer for it to be 1-2 perks, and not a perk to buff each circuit (one perk could buff stat circuits, and the other circuit could buff the reactive ones)
Hardy/Super Hardy - Adds damage reduction
Processing/Super Processing - Sanity resistance (monsters and magic)
Gastrogain/Super Gastrogain - More hunger from foods and negative effect buffers (wont loose sanity or health)
Acceleration/Super Acceleration - Attack speed increase
Electrification - Electric damage
Nightvision - Highlights potential threats (think Infroggles/Spectoggles)
Thermal - Cook on WX. Grill robot.
Refrigerant - Enhances spoilage reduction to that of a salt box, lower threshold to create ice when wet
Beanbooster - Enhanced regen rates
Chorusbox - Larger radius and stronger regeneration rate

Whenever I thought of a wx skill tree, my mind never stumbled upon giving circuits additional side benefits that are still on theme, but I absolutely love this idea. I could definitely see myself venturing out to trying other circuits with these. 

I also hate saying this but I think giving circuits diminishing returns could potentially be more healthy, to encourage mixing and matching rather than just going all in on one. This is probably just an issue with the super acceleration circuit though, and I still feel unsure about this idea. 

[Mysterious box]

Probably a hottake and perhaps too hard to implement but I'd love if they leaned further into Wx being customizable by making his individual skills not very strong but have the skills cause a widespread change based on the combination you choose and to further lean into this let him freely change his skill points unlike other characters to compensate this design direction. 

[Well-met]

Odds are klei will give him back his pre-work gears eating mechanic via the tree

[Cheggf]

35 minutes ago, qwp18 said:

Whenever I thought of a wx skill tree, my mind never stumbled upon giving circuits additional side benefits that are still on theme, but I absolutely love this idea. I could definitely see myself venturing out to trying other circuits with these. 

I also hate saying this but I think giving circuits diminishing returns could potentially be more healthy, to encourage mixing and matching rather than just going all in on one. This is probably just an issue with the super acceleration circuit though, and I still feel unsure about this idea. 

Every single stackable circuit he has already has diminishing returns except for that thorns one that nobody uses. The accelerant circuit increases your speed by 25/40/50%, causing each circuit to make you 25%, 12%, and 7% than the last. The super-hardy circuit increases your health by a flat 150, causing each circuit to make you have 120%, 54%, and 35% more health than the last (even ignoring how useless having 575 health is). Etc.

[lowercase skye]

WX is canonically nonbinary and uses They/Them

I'm honestly of the opinion that all you have to do to make WX-78 instantly 10x more interesting is just giving them even 1 extra circuit slot. WX-78's rework was very intentionally designed to make sure you can only have ONE cool circuit equipped EVER:

Most cool circuits take 3 slots, while the night vision circuit takes 4. This is to make sure you cannot have the night vision circuit equipped at the same time as something cool.
Acceleration circuits take 2 slots. So if you put on 2 then you've used 4 of your slots. This is to make sure you cannot have two acceleration circuits at the same time as something cool.
The thermal/refrigerant circuits take 3 slots. This is to make sure that half your slots are taken up for half the year, so that you cannot have anything cool equipped.
Etc.

There's just this constant lame design of making sure you're always just ooone slot short of being able to do the cool loadout you want, so all WX-78 ends up ever being is one decent perk + a speed boost / some stat augmentation via the cheaper circuits. Genuinely just give them 1 extra slot for circuits so that they can have a 3 slot and a 4 slot equipped at the same time, and you've instantly made them far far more interesting to play as and figure out combinations of circuits for. But personally I'd be even happier if Klei took the usual skill tree approach to power and gave them even more extra slots than that, I just want more creativity to be allowed! I don't want to just use thermal/refrigerant circuit + 1 speed circuit + 1 hardy circuit CONSTANTLY!

[Brewsterpigeon]

I love ideas surrounding putting the circuits into other devices, but especially into Jimmy!

 

What if Jimmy could have certain chips placed inside of him? Thermal circuit would create a heat radius around him, same with the cold one, you could make him a portable flashlight or give him a sanity-boosting or even healing aura with the beanbooster circuit, perhaps with a balancing factor of either a time limit or a complete destruction upon removal of any chips inside? Maybe he can only have one chip of any size inside.

 

I also like the idea of putting him into some sort of offense mode where he'll scan anything WX targets and while actively scanning perform some sort of debuff to them like a slowdown or damage vulnerability - maybe this in tandem with the above idea would make him pair well with a speedboosting chip to make him able to keep up with creatures almost perfectly? Maybe he could get some unique-to-him circuits too like a little laser he can fire at targets or act as a fan to dry WX off in a pinch - maybe he could use the fan attachment to blow directly into sails and speed up boats too making Jimmy a big fan of boats. It could be cool to be able to make Jimmy target a friend too so he can dry them off, heat/cool them or follow them with a light if desired. Or he could get a Flash/"camera" mod that temporarily blinds non-boss (or even boss? Idk) enemies into losing aggro for a moment. Perhaps a remote control of some kind for Jimmy would make inputting these kinds of things easier, like by right clicking it in the Inventory opening a small menu with a few options like "go home" and "stay put" and "follow target".

 

Ooh - what if Jimmy holds a certain amount of charge that drains over time when he has chips inside, and when it hits zero he'll drop the chips and go back to his normal scan-only-and-be-slow mode, and WX could steal charges from him. Maybe he could have a charging station that needs to be fueled like a flingomatic.

Maybe that charging station could even count as "home" for him, and with an Inventory Chip you could fill him with 4 slots of items and press the "home" button on his remote to send him there where he'll promptly dump the items and start charging himself, then you could call him back to continue to help you manage your inventory when you're away from home.

I think right now the huge downtime of regaining charge sucks. It discourages swapping except maybe once a season for the temperature chips because every time circuits are removed you have to wait so long to get it back - I feel like it'd be very cool if, at some cost, WX could rapidly transition from collect-stuff mode to go-fast mode to hardcore-offense mode - being able to adapt to situations rapidly seems like a cool idea.

 

Maybe there could be a Quick-Swap Circuit board where you could preset a 6-circuit set and swap it with your equipped 6-circuit set at little or no cost to WX's current charge level. So instead of being locked onto Moggle/Speed you could be in Moggle/Speed normally but quickswap between that and your offense circuit set or to your panic "I'm gonna die increase my maximum health aaaa!" circuit set

 

Combining some of these ideas, maybe a Jimmy with both a Thermal Circuit and an Inventory Circuit could hold your Thermal stone and heat it up for you, or a Refrigerant Circuit plus Inventory could keep your food insulated (and chill your Thermal stone). As a side effect you could Thermal Circuit + fill his Inventory with berries to more quickly produce rot if need be. Perhaps one could set Jimmy to stay in one place as a standing heat/cold source, or to continually Chorusbox some plants or act as a small sanity aura for players. Maybe all mobs in the game can be scanned, and scanned mobs will have a slightly increased chance to drop their "rare" drop(s) or take a little increased damage from WX, perhaps with a limited memory of 5 or so mobs.

Just some spitballed ideas and kind of all over the plave but i think these could be pretty cool to see.

 

[Walrusst]

2 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

I'm honestly of the opinion that all you have to do to make WX-78 instantly 10x more interesting is just giving them even 1 extra circuit slot. WX-78's rework was very intentionally designed to make sure you can only have ONE cool circuit equipped EVER:

My circuits as charge carriers idea actually pretty trivially balances this.
If the circuits are where your charge comes from and not you, being able to equip more circuits, whether its via the invokable multitools, jimmy, your armor, or an extra slot would be far more balanced because its always got a cost.

Put a acceleration circuit to your electric whip tool? Well that speed circuits burning charge a lot of the time when you are standing still whipping something.
Equip a large roster of always active passive circuits that make auras and night vision and stuff? Well you might need to make extra wheels of evil to keep them all running and carry extra copies.
(Note: Circuit charge would almost make it necessary for wx to have a circuit bank to store circuits in, but that was something that people would cheer regardless because circuit swappings fun even if its inventory space heavy.)

I still think the basic light source circuit probably deserves to be like two slots since its honestly kinda small relative to *Ignore a season,* *free moggles,* and *Stackable walking cane.*
When times a resource, more slots can be worked/balanced around since there's value to being economical and not spamming all slots.
Circuit swappings more valuable since it lets you use more banked energy/resources, and you kinda have to do a little swapping.

[Dr.Webber]

I want them to be able to craft new types of robots also being able to put at least the drone master circuit in in Jimmy to separate him from other bio scannilizers with the potential of using other circuits such as the heating circuit to use as a heat lamp or the freezing circuit to cool you down or the illumination circuit to have a wider ray of scanning and maybe even giving Jimmy different mechanical husks to use as a Mech around to do different task

also, what if WX could scan other players in order to either make new circuits or hardware upgrades in inspired and improving upon certain aspects of them in true WX fashion based on how their rework changed them also I think it would be cool if you repair  broken clockwork with scrap, causing a permanently, loyal and stronger version of clockworks 

I think the alignments should be be able to use lunar and shadow power sources as just that

also, another thing I think should be in the alignments is WX be able to adapt to become stronger the more and more damage you take for shadow it could take the form of something similar to how the shadow clock works advance and stage having three stages outside the base form and for the lunar equivalent, it’ll be like a hardware upgrade that the more force applied restructures itself to be able to disperse the energy from a hit more and more efficiently

[Laguna]

 

21 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

If the special circuits acted more like temporary buffs and went on a cool down before being used again

Ewn no, please no. Why? To force players to not use only speed? I personally like to keep changing and trying new combinations, but almost always 1 speed circuit is there. I would totally drop WX if that happened.

[Edible Coal]

7 hours ago, Brewsterpigeon said:

I love ideas surrounding putting the circuits into other devices, but especially into Jimmy!

 

What if Jimmy could have certain chips placed inside of him? Thermal circuit would create a heat radius around him, same with the cold one, you could make him a portable flashlight or give him a sanity-boosting or even healing aura with the beanbooster circuit, perhaps with a balancing factor of either a time limit or a complete destruction upon removal of any chips inside? Maybe he can only have one chip of any size inside.

 

I also like the idea of putting him into some sort of offense mode where he'll scan anything WX targets and while actively scanning perform some sort of debuff to them like a slowdown or damage vulnerability - maybe this in tandem with the above idea would make him pair well with a speedboosting chip to make him able to keep up with creatures almost perfectly? Maybe he could get some unique-to-him circuits too like a little laser he can fire at targets or act as a fan to dry WX off in a pinch - maybe he could use the fan attachment to blow directly into sails and speed up boats too making Jimmy a big fan of boats. It could be cool to be able to make Jimmy target a friend too so he can dry them off, heat/cool them or follow them with a light if desired. Or he could get a Flash/"camera" mod that temporarily blinds non-boss (or even boss? Idk) enemies into losing aggro for a moment. Perhaps a remote control of some kind for Jimmy would make inputting these kinds of things easier, like by right clicking it in the Inventory opening a small menu with a few options like "go home" and "stay put" and "follow target".

 

Ooh - what if Jimmy holds a certain amount of charge that drains over time when he has chips inside, and when it hits zero he'll drop the chips and go back to his normal scan-only-and-be-slow mode, and WX could steal charges from him. Maybe he could have a charging station that needs to be fueled like a flingomatic.

Maybe that charging station could even count as "home" for him, and with an Inventory Chip you could fill him with 4 slots of items and press the "home" button on his remote to send him there where he'll promptly dump the items and start charging himself, then you could call him back to continue to help you manage your inventory when you're away from home.

I think right now the huge downtime of regaining charge sucks. It discourages swapping except maybe once a season for the temperature chips because every time circuits are removed you have to wait so long to get it back - I feel like it'd be very cool if, at some cost, WX could rapidly transition from collect-stuff mode to go-fast mode to hardcore-offense mode - being able to adapt to situations rapidly seems like a cool idea.

 

Maybe there could be a Quick-Swap Circuit board where you could preset a 6-circuit set and swap it with your equipped 6-circuit set at little or no cost to WX's current charge level. So instead of being locked onto Moggle/Speed you could be in Moggle/Speed normally but quickswap between that and your offense circuit set or to your panic "I'm gonna die increase my maximum health aaaa!" circuit set

 

Combining some of these ideas, maybe a Jimmy with both a Thermal Circuit and an Inventory Circuit could hold your Thermal stone and heat it up for you, or a Refrigerant Circuit plus Inventory could keep your food insulated (and chill your Thermal stone). As a side effect you could Thermal Circuit + fill his Inventory with berries to more quickly produce rot if need be. Perhaps one could set Jimmy to stay in one place as a standing heat/cold source, or to continually Chorusbox some plants or act as a small sanity aura for players. Maybe all mobs in the game can be scanned, and scanned mobs will have a slightly increased chance to drop their "rare" drop(s) or take a little increased damage from WX, perhaps with a limited memory of 5 or so mobs.

Just some spitballed ideas and kind of all over the plave but i think these could be pretty cool to see.

 

nice! i would like jimmy to use circuits too

[Laguna]

Buffs and interactions between the circuits would be great, as already mentioned. I would also like to see Jimmy receive new features such as: being able to chop and mine (nothing like Maxwell and more like Woby), or working as a lightning rod or even accumulating electricity periodically, to recharge WX's circuits more easily. Or maybe an update to combat, in which he attacks randomly between some strong and weaker attacks.

[GrapeVruit]

57 minutes ago, Laguna said:

 

Ewn no, please no. Why? To force players to not use only speed? I personally like to keep changing and trying new combinations, but almost always 1 speed circuit is there. I would totally drop WX if that happened.

Uh, yeah, that's the point, to switch things up and not rely on the same circuit combo, to put some thought in when to use your buffs and where instead of sticking with the same combo all game. I think it's pretty lame for a character to have buffs that last indefinitely, especially one's that ignore mechanics like darkness and freezing, which is why I found the old WX so boring to play. 

[Laguna]

7 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

Uh, yeah, that's the point, to switch things up and not rely on the same circuit combo, to put some thought in when to use your buffs and where instead of sticking with the same combo all game. I think it's pretty lame for a character to have buffs that last indefinitely, especially one's that ignore mechanics like darkness and freezing, which is why I found the old WX so boring to play. 

Yes, of course it needs a change in the circuits but forcing players to play in a certain way is never a good idea. An interaction between the circuits as many have already suggested would be the best in my opinion.

 

[GrapeVruit]

Just now, Laguna said:

Yes, of course it needs a change in the circuits but forcing players to play in a certain way is never a good idea. An interaction between the circuits as many have already suggested would be the best in my opinion.

 

The intent wasn't to force players to play in a certain way, if anything, it could encourage them to try other circuit combos while some were recharging. Like, if night vision's down, why not use illumination? Or if speed's down, I could use a Super Hardy buff to offset damage I take from hard to dodge attacks? In my head, I wanted them to be like Warly's food buffs, buffs that give you a nominal power boost but have to be planned ahead of time and last for a limited amount of time. Instead of permanent buffs, you need to think when you should opt to use them.

[BalkanCockroach]

Living artifact v.2 and possibly more c slots.

[WilsonHiggs]

20 hours ago, Evelo said:

Probably a water protection talent that increases the minimum wetness required to suffer injury from 15 to 20-30 depending on skill investment.

I really wish klei stops removing the few downside are left in the game...

 

My biggest wx skill tree wish IS outside of their skill tree: a rework of how circuits work. Makes no sense to break a circuit after just 4 uses, makes no sense to have 0 upkeep if you never change circuits, makes 0 sense to lose energy when you are using all the circuits but losing It when removing the circuits and Timmy takes forever to scan stuff like shadows

Current wx discourage changing builds. I wish circuits have different energy consumption values and you need to overeat to fill the energy bar or use electric milk, Winona's generators and lightning rod for a better recharge

Circuits should have way more durability. Is cool needing to recraft circuits but right now isn't worth to take advantage of circuits with specific uses like the thermal or the music one

I wish the new skill tree also brings more variety of cool circuits to have better stuff to choose instead of the flat boring stats we have right now...

14 hours ago, Well-met said:

Odds are klei will give him back his pre-work gears eating mechanic via the tree

Won't make any sense when you raise their stats via circuits and they keept the eating mechanic but just as a super food 

8 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

Living artifact v.2 and possibly more c slots.

It shouldn't be exclusive of wx. In Hamlet was cool because you obtain it by killing 2 bosses. Dst has better potential for a cooler quest 

[Laguna]

10 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

Instead of permanent buffs, you need to think when you should opt to use them.

I don't think that would be very popular.

30 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

I think it's pretty lame for a character to have buffs that last indefinitely

It doesn't make sense dude, that's part of his "upside", even if some are too useful.
What if Wigfrid only had his 25% bonus after singing? If Abigail could only attack under certain conditions?

I don't want a skill tree that makes him worse, I want one that makes him better.

 

[Johnny_Waffles]

19 hours ago, Pruinae said:

(Those are things from their rework that got scrapped)


This last one eyes look too friendly tho
I want the menacing robot to look more menacing

This was actually a scrapped thing for Winona's rework, idk why they keep scrapping it I think it would be fun if properly balanced.

[Well-met]

6 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

I think it's pretty lame for a character to have buffs that last indefinitely

I mean that was always his purpose no? even before skill tree

[Walrusst]

The three key fatigue points I see is.

• Certain conceptually cool sets always being a small ways away.
• People wanting to swap buffs more without fear of breaking the circuits from the swap penalties.
• A lot of the buffs being permanently solved problems so long as you equip them.

The simplest two step thing I can think of is:
Practically permanent-> Long lasting and reusable. (So the problem solver buffs have maintenance.)
More interesting and rapidly swapped ways of wielding circuits in unintended ways. (Relives pressure from the cumbersome circuit removal tool, and lets you limit break on simultaneously equipped circuits in wanted ways.)

[qwp18]

21 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Every single stackable circuit he has already has diminishing returns except for that thorns one that nobody uses. The accelerant circuit increases your speed by 25/40/50%, causing each circuit to make you 25%, 12%, and 7% than the last. The super-hardy circuit increases your health by a flat 150, causing each circuit to make you have 120%, 54%, and 35% more health than the last (even ignoring how useless having 575 health is). Etc.

Oh I was unaware of this, thank you so much for informing me and sorry for the misinfo! Crazy that even with this a lot of players just end up stacking up on one circuit (acceleration), but i guess there isn't that much of an incentive to use the others than the small handfull... 

[Walrusst]

18 hours ago, qwp18 said:

Oh I was unaware of this, thank you so much for informing me and sorry for the misinfo! Crazy that even with this a lot of players just end up stacking up on one circuit (acceleration), but i guess there isn't that much of an incentive to use the others than the small handfull... 

Well I would say people genuinely overvalue flat "Objective" values when sharp thresholds/margins often matter just as much or more.

There is a speed/reaction threshhold needed for every dodge in the game, and each dodge gets increasingly less difficult as you exceed these thresholds as the human performance margin needed to dodge gets easier and easier. Many dodges take many stacked speed bonuses for a normal character to make (Such as some of the faster nightmare pieces attacks,) so being able to have stacked speed without giving up armor/backpack/your weapon slot is insane.

So while each walking upgrade objectively saves less travel time than the last, it does providing increasingly more utility and protection in tight situations where going fast is powerful in a way that doesn't track linearly with the objective increases.
Since, every time you can do something new, you gain a new power spike.

 

[Primalflower]

WX is canonically nonbinary and uses They/Them

Something i've always wanted for wx-78's skill tree is to make it so somehow the energy meter that they have is more involved. I kind of like what uncompromising mode does with them in the sense that it makes the energy meter more intertwined with wx's hunger, although I think it's cumbersome how it makes the circuits far more of an active investment. IDK, I think it'd be fun if there were more things in WX's kit that made it feel like you were playing as a robot with weird and different internals.