Klei Please think the skill trees for less popular characters through more carefully. (Warly Tree)

[maro47]

I really wish for Klei to not fall into their own trap again, and would rather they avoid making these skill trees without any consideration for why some characters have such a low play rate and are generally a nuisance to play due to how restrictive and inaccessible their kit is. Characters like wurt and warly are very good examples. Even though wurts already had her skill tree, it didn't really fix any of her issues that cause her play rate to be so low, not to say that they are incapable of fixing characters, as they demonstrated they very well could with the previous skill tree, where they added some minor but useful QoL changes and straight-up buffed the damage output of Walter's base kit, turning him into a pretty decent character even without his new skills. Thus, I hope for Klei to not only implement new stuff with warly's skill tree, but also take a look back at his base kit and maybe fix or add some skills that could boost his early game, and have his upsides be more rewarding—all the while making his new skills interact with his base ones for more interesting gameplay. Since I think it really sucks for warly to have one of the worst downsides and have his kit be restricted to some difficult ingredients or tedious crop farming, essentially turning him into a wilson with more downsides than upsides in the early game.

With that said here are some of my suggestions.

Chef's Grace I
Any numerical buffs gained from food (all of Warly's spices, jelly, and a new speed drink) are now 10-50% more effective for Warly, depending on the number of unique recipes Warly has eaten in the past 3 days. For each unique food Warly has eaten in the past 2-3 days, he gains +10%.
Chef's Grace II
Stat-regenerative effects gained from food are now also increased by 10-50% (regenerative ticking effects, not flat healing gained from eating food; includes new drinks, Forget-Me-Lot tea, and jellybeans). 

Scent of Home
All effects, numerical buffs, and stat-regenerative effects Warly has activated through consuming food are now shared with nearby allies unless they walk too far from warly. Special effects like hot dragon salad, fish cordon and his other unique food dishes will apply to nearby allies (although probably with the exception of nightmare pie since I think it could cause more harm than good in the wrong hands). These effects will remain on nearby allies unless they walk away from Warly. Numerical buffs and regenerative effects are 50% less effective and will become 10% less effective for each additional player near Warly. For example, if there is 1 player near Warly, they'd get 50% of his numerical buffs and regen effects. If there are 2 players, each would receive 40%, and this continues until a cap of 30%. Players can still grant themselves the buffs by eating the same food as Warly, and these will stack with Warly's AOE buff.

This might sound overpowered, but it isn’t as insane as it sounds. For example, chili flakes grant a 20% damage boost. This value increases by 10-50% (depending on Chef's Grace I), giving Warly a 22-30% damage boost. His ally would then receive an 11-15% damage boost (50% of warly's numerical buffs), which might sound like a lot, but these values decrease based on the number of allies benefiting from Warly’s buff and only persist when near warly as a trade off. If the ally eats the chili flakes as well, their damage would increase by 20%, so in total they would have a 31-35% damage increase with warlys aoe buff assuming that there is only 1 ally near warly and warly has eaten the chili flakes as well. 

To complement these skills (or simply give him something new), Warly could have a drink crafting station that will use early game accesible ingredients where he can make the following drinks: a early game accessible movement speed drink (energy drink or coffee? yea not sure here), sanity regen drink, and health regen drink. These would tie perfectly into his previously mentioned skills.
All of the above skills would make his kit much cheaper and more accessible since he would only need to make food for himself to impact his team. If warly however goes through the extra time and trouble to cook for the entire team instead, it would allow for his food buffs to be more effective than if he were to only cook for himself.
This also gives players an incentive to use him as an actual character, instead of just mass farming ingredients and cooking his exclusive food, only to switch back to another character.

As for scripting, I’m sure the team can manage it, especially since they were able to pull off all of the planar stuff.

Shadow and Lunar Affinity
For his Shadow and Lunar affinity, I would suggest granting him spices that provide planar defense and attack, along with special effects (tied to Chef's Grace and Scent of Home skills) depending on the affinity. Having this be locked behind rifts shouldn’t be a huge problem, as long as Klei focuses on adding stuff to make him a little more engaging in the early game, instead of locking recipes behind difficult crop farming, have their effects only be useful in specific seasons or expensive ingredients. 

Some filler/utility skills could be something like:

Certified Butcher/Agriculturist
50%chance for an additional item drop from enemies or crops he harvests/hammers. This only works on items that are crockpot ingredients (volt horn, n-fuel, meat, etc.).

Mighty pepper
Warly now starts off with a pepper in his inventory

Food Stash
Gives chef’s pouch more space and effectiveness.

Spice expert
+1 spices gained from crafting them.

Some of these skills might not really fit the aesthetic of the game or might be too strong, but I definitely think that some of them help fix his character—making him less of a late-game-only switch character and rewarding you when you know how to deal with his downsides, all the while making his kit more accessible. Warly might be a tough nut to crack when it comes to implementing a skill tree for him compared to other characters, but that shouldn't mean he gets a lazy one. It would be wise to think outside the box for his tree, so I think granting him some skills outside of his chef gimmick would probably be for the best. The skill tree should aim to fix issues with his base kit while also adding more flavor to his core gameplay and mechanics -all the while strengthening him so he can keep up with other characters. I think granting him a cheap, early-game-accessible, speed-granting consumable would make him significantly stronger than he is now—or honestly, I believe just having him start off with a pepper in his inventory (as a base kit update) would make him much more consistent and early-game-friendly.

Guille did an exceptional job explaining Warly's issues, core gameplay and how to fix Warly's kit.

 

[Cheggf]

33 minutes ago, maro47 said:

Chef's Grace I
Any numerical buffs gained from food (all of Warly's spices, jelly, and a new speed drink) are now 10-50% more effective for Warly, depending on the number of unique recipes Warly has eaten in the past 3 days. For each unique food Warly has eaten in the past 2-3 days, he gains +10%.
Chef's Grace II
Stat-regenerative effects gained from food are now also increased by 10-50% (regenerative ticking effects, not flat healing gained from eating food; includes new drinks, Forget-Me-Lot tea, and jellybeans). 

I think naturally encouraging variety is better than trying to brute force it like this. This would just make everyone completely ignore every dish except for meatballs & meaty stew as they usually do, then when they want to fight a boss they'd make 3 other random easy to make dishes like fistful of jam, ratatoullie, and bunny stew, then just chug those down real quick before they actually buff up. It'd just be a little annoying. 

[Cruvimaster]

The problem with Warly, in my opinion, is that he keeps the disadvantages and transfers the advantages to the other characters. That's why he's a character to keep swapping on the portal.

The recipe bonuses should be only for him or at least have double the effect for him.

If skill trees remain just improving Wolfgang, nothing will change.

[WilsonHiggs]

Just now, Cruvimaster said:

The problem with Warly, in my opinion, is that he keeps the disadvantages and transfers the advantages to the other characters. That's why he's a character to keep swapping on the portal.

The recipe bonuses should be only for him or at least have double the effect for him.

I don't see the problem as long as the character itself is fun by itself 

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, maro47 said:

Mighty pepper
Warly now starts off with a pepper in his inventory

Red flag.

[Cruvimaster]

42 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

I don't see the problem as long as the character itself is fun by itself 

Warly has the same basic problem as Wickerbottom.

The care that Klei took in Winona's skill tree provides guidance on the future of Warly and Wickerbottom.

[Maxil20]

9 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

The care that Klei took in Winona's skill tree provides guidance on the future of Warly and Wickerbottom.

But that’s what others are saying, though. Winona’s kit for other characters had only recieved minor nerfs (if anything, it actually further helped survivors via making the spotlights a genuine tool that her and others use alongside the winbots), but her personal arsenal increased substansually and made her a much more fun character to play. Yes, you could still just swap to Winona, make her structures, and then call it a day, but now you have several incentives for using her structures, including much more reliable portability, significantly better function, and exclucive perks such as the telepads.

Warly can get a similar treatment of exclucive perks (heck, the post mentioned references quite a few personal ones, especially him getting significantly longer buff duration increases from dishes he makes) without removing the current teamwide ones, and I think that is generally the best approach for everyone. You make new playstyles, and you don’t compromise existing ones.

[Mike23Ua]

Warly needs an entire character overhaul, do not get me wrong…. In single player don’t starve where every character had boring and fairly basic skills… Warly was alright.

But THEN Reworks (such as Wendy’s) and Skill Trees (such as Woodies) and Re-re-re-reworks/skill trees (Exclusively Winona) have drastically changed that.

What Warly should be to me is the WintersFeast Masonry oven, the WintersFeast Tables you can place foods onto so everyone can “feast” and gain buffs from the same meal.

He ALSO needs Wilson’s Transmutation skill of being able to turn meat into morsels or Vice versa (really dumb that Wilson has this before the cooking character but okay…)

Give the guy a chefs Machete like a tool he can use as both a melee weapon and a device to “dice” foods into more proportions.

As Warly stands right now- he’s my least favorite character in the entirety of DST and I’d legit rather play Wes or Walter first.

[Mysterious box]

18 hours ago, maro47 said:

I really wish for Klei to not fall into their own trap again, and would rather they avoid making these skill trees without any consideration for why some characters have such a low play rate and are generally a nuisance to play due to how restrictive and inaccessible their kit is. Characters like wurt and warly are very good examples. Even though wurts already had her skill tree, it didn't really fix any of her issues that cause her play rate to be so low

Personally I don't think they really had much choice in the case of Wurt like they definitely could have added more in terms of variety in her skill tree but it's the core of her gameplay loop that's unpopular which I feel like is the real reason her play rate is so low rather than her skill set being unappealing it can more or less be summarized as:

• Wurt being at odds with pigs makes her less popular on public servers since a vast amount of them like the base at the pig king
• Wurt being unable to eat meat can be very problematic for the average player on pubs as often less experienced players tend to prioritize berries and pick them as they go leaving less experienced Wurts lacking in food in the early days if they don't start soon enough and sometimes even making more experienced Wurts take extra food detours.
• Unlike most characters who are mostly carried by their perks in the early game these days Wurt has to build up to it which conflicts with people who want shorter play sessions
• Wurt needs to put in additonal effort to relocate merms into caves or other biomes for easier access when playing with other players if she wants them to help her
• A lot of Wurt offers the team is only really useful if the team themselves are willing to engage with Wurt which often people just don't for one reason or another

To put it simply most people play on pubs or group servers and Wurt isn't very good for that sort of thing unless you play alone or with a somewhat fixed friend group but there's nothing really wrong with that it's what makes her unique.

On the topic of Warly I've gone on about my thoughts on him in the past Imore or less do agree his biggest fault is his reliance on the farming system as it's too much tedium to access the majority of his dishes which stings all the more considering how almost all of his ability based dishes have just been powercrept by character abilities and skills that bypass that tedium at this point. Also while it doesn't really "need" to be fixed it's also a shame that Warly's downside actually feels like it encourages less variety in what you eat rather than more but that's more so a issue with crockpot food balance than Warly himself.

[_mylilsunshine_]

21 hours ago, maro47 said:

I really wish for Klei to not fall into their own trap again, and would rather they avoid making these skill trees without any consideration for why some characters have such a low play rate and are generally a nuisance to play due to how restrictive and inaccessible their kit is. Characters like wurt and warly are very good examples. Even though wurts already had her skill tree, it didn't really fix any of her issues that cause her play rate to be so low, not to say that they are incapable of fixing characters, as they demonstrated they very well could with the previous skill tree, where they added some minor but useful QoL changes and straight-up buffed the damage output of Walter's base kit, turning him into a pretty decent character even without his new skills.

Not a Warly enjoyer, or Wurt, but I want to talk a bit about Walter.

There were some changes to his basekit, but most of them are QoL though, like how you can feed and open Woby's inventory while riding her, and a hunger meter.

Other changes are big Woby has an insulation value now (180, better than a Tam O' but worse than a Beef hat), Walter's nighttime story sanity aura scales with audience size, and Walter's slingshot has a slight attack speed increase/animation change (?). Those are not game-changing enough to make Walter a decent character without his new skills though.

I do think that Warly, like an impure ball of clay filled with debris, can benefit from basekit changes that smooth him out as a character, like Guille suggested, and then have his skills shape him into different playstyles/roles.

[GamePlayer42]

1 hour ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

and Walter's slingshot has a slight attack speed increase/animation change (?). Those are not game-changing enough to make Walter a decent character without his new skills though.

what it was is hitspeed ramping up when uninterrupted (with skill tree you can achieve the hitspeed buff with a charged bullet). personally that alone is quite a significant change to his damage output

[_mylilsunshine_]

4 minutes ago, GamePlayer42 said:

what it was is hitspeed ramping up when uninterrupted (with skill tree you can achieve the hitspeed buff with a charged bullet). personally that alone is quite a significant change to his damage output

Really? Hitspeed ramp in the basekit without the grips? Because you still need at least 01 skill to have access to the Silk grip which enables ramping though. Or am I missing something can you elaborate on that?

[Keller Max]

1) Overhaul his hunger mechanic to be more about variety rather than the hunger value.

2) Give him personal perks that will encourage players to stick to playing him without swapping.

3) Something to help him with early farming. Like other already suggested, Warly can start in the constant with a gift wrap that contains 5 Pepper, 5 Garlic, 5 Onion Seeds and maybe two Honeycombs or another 5 seeds. (Toma Root seeds?).

[GamePlayer42]

8 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

Really? Hitspeed ramp in the basekit without the grips? Because you still need at least 01 skill to have access to the Silk grip which enables ramping though. Or am I missing something can you elaborate on that?

my bad, was misinformed by someone, just tested it ingame and your right

[Dr. Safety]

I main Warly and I'm not at all worried about his skill tree. He has the best potential, even before his tree. He just needs more incentives to play, and maybe more food related/farming perks.

I think the worst thing would be giving him gorge style cooking. Having to do that in base game would be one of those novelties that seems really cool to play with for like 15 days during the beta, but extremely tedious if you want to actually play Warly.

[tothewaywhite]

On 4/28/2025 at 7:24 PM, Cruvimaster said:

Warly has the same basic problem as Wickerbottom.

The care that Klei took in Winona's skill tree provides guidance on the future of Warly and Wickerbottom.

approve. but winona(with no skill tree) is not like wicker or warly. books and dishes are just toooooo powerful which isn't any random catapult or tape could compare. that will be another problem: unless nerf all the books or dishes. but nerfing........ we all know that would not be welcomed. or make maxwell could only read a book a time? like consuming 90% of the duability and make wicker unchanged. but warly well, that's another problem. which is, restoring book's durability is always slower than cooking some dishes. oter character can gather enough ingredient and swich to warly and switch back.

[WendyHater9000]

I wanna share some ideas to make a Warley not a swapable character.

1. Add feast mentioned above.

• Able to feed several ppl
• Only able to be cooked by Warley.
• Portable like kit, and u can place it down, but can only be placed by Warly(This is the key to make it Warley unswapable)
• Will rot overtime(tho u can wrap it by bundle wrap)

2. Add Weapon and Tool only accessible by Warley, and able to get special food materials by him

• Mob killed by Warley will remain as corpse for 30 sec.
• Chef machete:Harvest special loot from mobs. 
• Example: Ham from pigman, Grassgator tail from grassgator, spider leg from spider. And you can make chef only food with them .
• Bosses can be harvested by chef machete too, making some special meal that can fill Warley's special food meter.
• Example: Warley will get 100 deerclop food meter after eating it's special meal, able to use make Warley strike with cold effect which cost 2 point each strike.
• Chef scythe: U can get special loot from farm plant if using this as tool.
• You can still mass produce special food and store food mentioned above, but this will make u needed to spend time on this character, not just swapping instantly after crafting.

3. Make Weapon exclusive to Warley by cooking.

• Using Beef horn, meat, garlic to make Tomahawk. Work as weapon and axe.
• Rhino Pickaxe: Made by rhino horn and something else, able to mine and with some special ability
• And food weapon above can be seasoned by horror spices or brishade spices to add planar dmg

 

[FillerText]

One common suggestion I dislike is giving Warly some form of "infinite food glitch" ability like getting more loot from mobs or "dicing" them into 2 ingredients with the same crockpot value. I don't think Warly should be about getting a lot of food compared to being able to weave normally inedible ingredients like bones, nightmare fuel, horns, and onions into something actually meaningful. We already have countless food farms that don't even require a specified character to use. Warly's hypothetical perks of that kind would be an early game gimmick that loses utility at an accelerated pace the longer the world goes on.

[Edible Coal]

58 minutes ago, FillerText said:

One common suggestion I dislike is giving Warly some form of "infinite food glitch" ability like getting more loot from mobs or "dicing" them into 2 ingredients with the same crockpot value. I don't think Warly should be about getting a lot of food compared to being able to weave normally inedible ingredients like bones, nightmare fuel, horns, and onions into something actually meaningful. We already have countless food farms that don't even require a specified character to use. Warly's hypothetical perks of that kind would be an early game gimmick that loses utility at an accelerated pace the longer the world goes on.

yeah, he needs more utility that helps with daily stuff or battle, surviving in dst with enough food is the lease challenging thing in the game

[Echsrick]

well thankfully the most popular character got its skill tree allready so warly thankfully dont have to share that spot...so it can only be better? but problem comes from what could be made realy? just more food? would be kind of boring, more spice gain from spice craft i guess is an easy way....heres something, warly can eat drying rack food now...not alot but its something, predictable for moon and shadow perk would be to just add moon and shadow spices doin there extra damage vs opposide and extra defense on same side of the spice, like what else could it be? obviously warly sould get more benefit from his food so a skill to increase his first dish by.....10%? stat gain, and the second meatballs would then be what it would have been normaly, and spice timer increase for himself, popular thing i seen is that he gets increased meat gain from slain enemies, or goat herding skill...otherwise what else is there?