Possibilities for wickerbottom skill tree

[Rouanet]

With every character receiving skill trees sooner or later, I began thinking about our favorite librarian wickerbottom. A few years ago she was undisputedly one of the best characters in the game alongside Wolfgang, but since her rework adding the bookcase people started playing her as a swap character for Maxwell. Imo, her skill tree should be focused on having enough perks to differentiate herself from Maxwell, which won't solve the problem entirely, but should make her a more appealing choice.

 

Now that the intro is over, I'm going to give my ideas on what those insights could be, and for thematic purposes I suggest organizing them as a book summary.

 

Efficient reading 1, 2, 3: absolutely necessary to differentiate her from Maxwell, for the first insight she could make the animation faster (to play the effects of her books at around the same time as a pan flute), and for insights 2 and 3 increase the effects of her books, e.g. summoning more mobs, accelerating plant growth, having effects last longer etc.

Easy reading 1, 2, 3: because every skill tree needs a somewhat useless ability, reduce the sanity drain from book reading.

Magic bookcase 1, 2: wicker can craft upgrades to the bookcase similar to portal parafernalia. For tier 1, it doubles as a tier 1 magic crafting station, increases the amount of books it can store and increases regeneration speed a little. For tier 2, the same thing but a little stronger, essentially having an Alchemy engine and a shadow manipulator in the same spot.

The blueprint book: creates a blueprint of her last crafted recipe.

Written amulets 1, 2, 3: for 2 papyrus + 1 gem (not the amulets), wicker can create books which Maxwell cant read with similar effects to the amulets of each gem.

Tier 1: life giving amulet (area healing), chill amulet (area temperature drop), nightmare amulet (area temporary insanity).

Tier 2: lazy forager (pick up every item on screen), magiluminescence (speed and light for all players for a short time).

Tier 3: construction amulet (every player in the area halves the cost of their next craft).

Merm/plant/spider/ocean researcher: gives wickerbottom neutrality against merms/lureplants and sea weeds/spiders/powder monkeys and pirate raids.

The next part of the skill tree is kind of a reach, but if wigfrid can have beefalo taming skills, why not?

Experienced sailor 1, 2, 3 (pre requisite: ocean researcher).

Tier 1: unlocks all think tank recipes, rotates the sails faster.

Tier 2: the boat moves faster when wicker is controlling the steering wheel.

Tier 3: rarer items appear when wickerbottom resurfaces a sunken chest.

Experienced fisherwoman 1, 2 (pre requisite: ocean researcher).

Tier 1: heavier fish appear more often around wicker.

Tier 2: rarer fish appear more often around wicker (also applies to bundles fished in the oasis).

Lunar affinity 1: crafts a lunar wicker exclusive book that drops sanity to 0 and swaps sanity for enlightenment for a while.

Shadow affinity 1: crafts a shadow wicker exclusive book that drops sanity to 0 and makes nightmare creatures neutral against her for a while.

Lunar/shadow affinity 2: creates a book that turns all damage from lunar/shadow weapons into planar damage and increases lunar/shadow armor planar defense by 5 for a while.

 

I know it's not great, but I believe there are some valid ideas on there. What do you think could be added/swapped/scrapped from this list?

[dois raios]

I hope the shadow affinity will make her able to use books without being harassed by the shadow creatures XD

You may be able to kill fuelweaver in the first year and negate this downside using bone helm, but it is very inconvenient until then.

Also, as other people suggested (sorry I dont remember who exactly), give her an item able to transform blueprints, scrapbook pages, recipes, sketches, etc into papyrus.

And for last, a pouch for the books, some characters are receiving pouches to store their special items, why not one for the books too?

And expanding the pouch idea: It could also be upgradeable in late game, so it also restores durability, making it easy to travel without the need to change the books for new ones.

These are the things I, myself, in my opinion, in my experience, miss when I occasionally play her.

[Rouanet]

15 minutes ago, dois raios said:

Also, as other people suggested (sorry I dont remember who exactly), give her an item able to transform blueprints, scrapbook pages, recipes, sketches, etc into papyrus.

This item already exists, it's the cartographers desk. But I agree on making a book pouch, idk why I didnt think of that beforehand

[dois raios]

24 minutes ago, Rouanet said:

This item already exists,

It is a structure, not an item

Edited May 21, 2025 by dois raios

[Crazy Gorilla]

3 hours ago, Rouanet said:

But since her rework adding the bookcase people started playing her as a swap character for Maxwell. Her skill tree should be focused on having enough perks to differentiate herself from Maxwell.

She shouldnt have to compete with Maxwell in the first place. It doesnt make any sense that maxwell exclusively can just use all of her books. I know Klei doesnt really do nerfing for skill trees, but they should seriously just remove this already.

Personally I hope she gets a mixture of books and new abilities. I dont think a bunch of new books would be good enough unlike the rework due to the restrictive nature of skill trees. I dont know what kind of new perks she would get, its pretty hard to think of non-book related perks for her, but I think a lot of these ideas would be good, I like the idea of a book pouch. I would be surprised if she didnt get a cheaper papyrus craft like woodies boards and walters rope.

[GenomeSquirrel]

What led to Wickerbottom's "downfall" was mostly the world growing around her.

Other characters got stronger.

Stone fruit is so productive that her growth books aren't needed

The crop system was redesigned explicitly so her books wouldn't help.

But even treating plants as a focus, there's still some varied potential for skill trees, ie. books that fertilize plants, that add large amounts of all nutrient types to farm plots, books that have the tree jam effect, books that spawn strange seeds and support their growth and output. I haven't thought out what I might want for other branches, she definitely has angels towards weather manipulation, making people comfy, and spawning odd mobs.

[Frashaw27]

I would personally have her lean into being able to learn many things like being able to prototype certain unprototypables so she can become a vast repository of knowledge. I would also have the affinities effect her various books in different ways. Like End of The World has now summons a lot more then just lightning with using it and possibly the lunar grimoire would be able to turn the above world sanity into enlightenment for a day with the lunar side. I thoink expanding on the potential of certain books would be more interesting then just adding some new book that people may or may not use.

[Cassielu]

3 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Wickerbottom's "downfall"

Words can't express my confusion.

[Rouanet]

16 hours ago, Cassielu said:

Words can't express my confusion.

How so? In my original post I said wicker became a swap character for Maxwell, and GenomeSquirrel just added more reasons for why this happened. Her "downfall" is that she was once a top 2 character and now basically no one plays her

[GimplyGoose]

19 hours ago, Frashaw27 said:

I would personally have her lean into being able to learn many things like being able to prototype certain unprototypables so she can become a vast repository of knowledge. I would also have the affinities effect her various books in different ways. Like End of The World has now summons a lot more then just lightning with using it and possibly the lunar grimoire would be able to turn the above world sanity into enlightenment for a day with the lunar side. I thoink expanding on the potential of certain books would be more interesting then just adding some new book that people may or may not use.

I think it would be pretty interesting if the shadow/lunar affinity gave Wickerbottom's access to the ancient pseudoscience/celestial crafting respectively. I don't think it would be OP, but it would sure be convenient. It would add access to some items that would normally be locked off or difficult to acquire in a caves/forest only playthrough.