Woodie middle branch/axe tree buff ideas to make up for the fuelweaver L

[Walrusst]

Simple idea: Revamp Woodies on-foot skills a little to make it so on foot woodie has more utility outside of his moose/or in addition to the moose in combat, so his middle branch skills are about as dense as newer skill trees.
 

• Treeguard feller 1: New bonus: Add woodies unarmed damage to attacks made with tools (Items which do a job in the world, like pickaxes, shovels, hammers... Even if you would often be using a multi-tool or a pick just due to those having the best damage.)
  • This makes lucy a little less bad for self defense (Even if she is still seldom your best option,) but makes it so lucy is driven to use new and different items to defend himself from other characters, as stuff like the pick/axe and moonglass cutter would be standout options for woodie.
  • Stuff like the basic two pickaxes would have approximately the same number of hits to kill as a spear. Its very minor early game and its only later it will have a typical effect that's greater than simply saving a single inventory slot.
• Treeguard feller 2: Learn to sharpen lucy with axe materials around the constant (Gold, moonglass, thulecite,) each material increases lucies damage by 5 and her damage versus plants by 33%, making this a collect them all quest.
  • I'm unsure how or if these would wear off, but the idea is that a fully sharpened lucy would be a mediocre weapon at most points of progression, but against tree-guards and similar enemies she gains a power spike that makes her uniquely valuable for self defense.
  • I presented it as a collect them all instead of an in order thing, but I could see people giving this a strict ordering too.
  • OUR BOYS HERBICIDE BABY. (No wormwood please don't cry.)
• Treeguard feller 3: Not sure if this needs much given how easily it kills things like bee queen still, but you could probably broaden the lucy sharpening minigame to fit late game post-rifts content I just don't feel confident saying this is wise.
• Quicker Picker: Fuse to one skill (As its been power crept to death at this point.)
• Slicker Picker (quicker picker 2's spot): You can throw lucy at items on the ground to fetch them. Lucy will guide towards and catch extra wood pieces when fetching wood and sticks.
• Thicker Sticker: Lucy can be thrown to get her stuck in giants. Lucy stores bonus damage while logged in a target from the damage done with tools, or woodies moose form. Various actions (Like pulling her out on foot, or moose charging as the moose) can dislodge lucy to deal the stored damage to the giant.
  • Charging over floor lucy as moose bounces her in the direction you charge, letting you get her stuck in a giant again. (Its not a dumb toss, it sort of aims at the giant if possible.) 
  • Tool damage storing is stronger than moose damage storing. Its a soft combat gimmick for the moose, but a strong bonus for woodie (and his friends) pummeling something with a pick/axe.
  • Stored damage is buffed by treeguard feller 2's sharpening.

Most of these make relatively minor day to day utility growth where you can sweat not carrying dedicated weapons as often, but the idea behind  thicker sticker is to give woodie a gimmick that gives him combat scaling past the point where the moose falls off. Since while the moose is perfect early game this gives woodie progression and more gameplay to manage during boss fights.

Given, y'know, the moose does eventually start to fall off and you can't do inventory management. Juggling lucy with your charge gives you a little more fun stuff to do.

At the same time, the beaver and the goose see a lot less use because of the pressure there is to maximize woodies combat power with the moose. So I decided to draft methods of scaling damage via tools instead of weapons to kill enemies are there to come up a moose alternative that is fun and has teeth to it.
So there is a human woodie fighting style, and a moose woodie fighting style. Both have hands and scaling.

(i'm not against his affinities teaching him better idols or anything like that mind you,  i just wanted to focus on a funny idea I had for the fun of it in the hopes it inspires people to think about ways that definitively make these non-were skills feel as peak as the wereskills.)

(NOTE: I'm not demanding this immediately because of the cheese nerf, rather, I'm using the cheese nerf to bring up thoughts I had twoards fleshing out two branches of a skill tree that were kinda feeling old and under the weather, as a general part of my beliefs that some skill trees could use like 2-3 real skills worth of content to feel as good as the modern ones. Its just I felt the timing and the opportunity was good here.)

[Hollow soul 3]

I'm just surprised they thought this should be a priority. How long has woddies tree been out now? With all the other problems, this is what they wanted to spend time fixing?

What chads, great job. 10/10.

[Anthony_L3hr]

I suggested a while back that Woodie's tree guard Feller Branch to be renamed to "Force of Nature" with Lucy being the only tool to do extra damage towards plant-like mobs, in addition to your latest suggestions. And I'm liking the ideas here to give Lucy some much more needed love.  I also really like the idea of Lucy being thrown and latching onto giants/mobs to give her more combat utility. I miss being able to throw Lucy back during the Forge.

[Waywarbler]

56 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

I'm just surprised they thought this should be a priority. How long has woddies tree been out now? With all the other problems, this is what they wanted to spend time fixing?

What chads, great job. 10/10.

I mean, afaik they just changed ruins/atrium turf from "soft" to "hard" so plants can't be on it, and this was done due to complaints of regrowth happening on it. It is a little odd that ruins tiles have been "soft" all these years though.

[Walrusst]

I'm sort of neutral on weird stuff of the past being fixed moving forward,  I'd rather like to use the  discourse this fix has caused to brainstorm a more hype future.

Keep things positive.

[Jakepeng99]

Doesnt make sense as compensation.

[Walrusst]

I admit its sort of a shoehorn in the OP since now that woodie mains are hurting, here is something nice I had been thinking about for a while.
Making the intended way of fighting giants a bit more involved/hype at the bonus of it being a bit more strong is still something I'd call "Compensation" for having one of your main tricks for dealing with/beating giants nerfed to hell. Its just not a very parallel form of it.

True straight on compensation would be replacing one cheese with another cheese, but giving it a little zest and twist is more interesting.

Still, compensation was only a part of the reason I thought for bringing it up because I had mixed multiple reasons for making the post. Its an older idea than the nerf.
Since you know, not everything needs a singular reason, but sometimes there is a good time to mention something.

[Cheggf]

5 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

I'm just surprised they thought this should be a priority. How long has woddies tree been out now? With all the other problems, this is what they wanted to spend time fixing?

What chads, great job. 10/10.

I'm wondering how you're aware of the change without even reading the patch notes or looking at any of the threads discussing it, because both of those would make it abundantly clear that nobody at Klei cares about Woodie doing this.

[layangan putus]

5 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

I'm just surprised they thought this should be a priority. How long has woddies tree been out now? With all the other problems, this is what they wanted to spend time fixing?

What chads, great job. 10/10.

The official patch [Game Update] - 660872 released in 03/18/25 clearly states "Fixed being able to plant on the following turfs: Ancient Stonework, Ancient Flooring, Ancient Tilework and Ancient Brickwork (and imitations). This also makes world regrowth not happen on them." meaning Woodie's idols-AFW cheese is just a collateral damage. I believe the dev purpose of fixing that is to prevent trees regrowth on such floors as QoL for base builders.

 

Sooner or later, every bug will be fixed so perhaps someday there would be no room for exploits or cheeses that rely on certain bug. This may dishearten a part of the community with natural tendency to play outside the rules. The only way to compromise this thing if it needs one that dev should create an alternative (example: Spelunker's Bridge Kit) or keep the bug if it doesn't disrupt other playstyles. Question is which one should they prioritize? Fixing bug or supporting the disruptors?

[Cassielu]

There's nothing to make up for, you can still use tree army on AFW, you just can't plant them in the ancient gateway room.

[Semind]

8 hours ago, Cassielu said:

There's nothing to make up for, you can still use tree army on AFW, you just can't plant them in the ancient gateway room.

Are you able to because they're plantable outside the AFW arena? Or can you change the tiles outside the arena? I'm curious because I thought it must be impossible to plant trees in the Atrium whatsoever with this update.

[Hollow soul 3]

1 hour ago, Semind said:

Are you able to because they're plantable outside the AFW arena? Or can you change the tiles outside the arena? I'm curious because I thought it must be impossible to plant trees in the Atrium whatsoever with this update.

I think you would probably plant them outside, agro them to follow, put them to sleep, and get one of afw's hits to make them hostile. I dont know if they hoard or not though. If you move a few at a time, you could place them in the circle where the spikes drop, but that might be a hassle to scale.