Unforseen (?) problems with Wagstaff's disappearance

[AuRuS]

First of all let me emphasize that I really REALLY hope that they thought it through and not just decided to randomly get rid of Wagstaff and leave all of the events connected to him as they are in the beta build right now and ship it to main without changes. I wish this entire post loses any sense on the release day as those topics are covered but... yeah we have not seen much in concerning my points in the beta so far.

 

We have seen a ton of complaints how immersion and lore breaking is pearl's eviction, how it makes people sad that they will lose their nicely decorated crabby hermit islands and will need to redo everything or move away from their initial ideas. Frankly, I don't really care about that island myself, however I do see the point. The real problem, however, begins when we try to backtrack and see just how much stuff loses any sense now that Wagstaff is gone.

First of all - moonstorm events. I think that this is straight up the easiest one to fix as right now, the restrained static just spawns out of nowhere (who put it there since Wagstaff is no longer spying on us from the comfort of the lab?) and requires tools that also spawn completely out of the blue to be able to just somehow fix itself and capture the storm. How would I fix that? Honestly I wish after defeating Scion we could get a new recipe in the fabricator that allows us to craft a storm siphonator or something like this using scrap, wires and whatever we would need to acquire a deployable that after for example 30 seconds of defending it from birds as usual, catches the storm drops a restrained static without the tools minigame. Maybe it could also work like the astral detector so that it's reusable and quicker than the old minigame system?

Well, unfortunately I already figured out that making a new skin for the old Wagstaff - perhaps a WX-79 who takes his place as his mechanical assistant - would be much easier than that and keeping everything as it was is less problematic than introducing new mechanics. And that's pretty much what I would expect that the devs do to bandaid-fix the hole that old scientists' disappearance left in the game's continuity as they can't just disable moonstorms entirely after Scion. 

 

Next up - defeating Celestial Champion. I guess this could go on without many changes and still made some sense since the lack of Wagstaff appearing alongside his tall device wouldn't raise any eyebrows. If they kept it as it is and just made CC drop the crown and destroying back into altar pieces instantly after reaching 0 hp it wouldn't be that weird.

 

Most problematic? Lunar-mutated bosses. Yeah, I got no idea how to tackle this without just not making any sense at all and pretending that a ressurected corpse somehow dropping a high-tech device on second death is alright. Propably the previous idea of an "assistant" taking Wagstaff's place and giving you the actual reward makes the most sense here and is pretty much the only option they seem to have to keep it non-weird. I legitemately cannot think of any other solution to that other than WX-79 appearing as the transmission and saying something along the lines of "STILL ON IT? BE GLAD BOSS MADE A LOT OF THESE EALIER SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO FEEL ROBBED" and dropping the spark ark per usual. Pretty uninspiring but I cannot really think of any other way of doing it other than maybe making the spark ark craftable at the fabricator and cranking up the number of pure brilliance that lunar bosses drop to up to 8 or something as a compensation.

Last but not least - machines respawning at the scrapyard. Well, this could actually be explained as "the Wagstaff's lab was still turned on when he got thanos snapped and the machinery keeps "leaking" into the constant once in a blue moon". Either this or again - slapping the assistant bandaid on it as he want's to keep the boss' research going.


All in all, from what we have right now on the beta branch we still get more questions than answers and I would be really glad if I could just hit a delete button on this post on release but since they really seemed to be squeezing in as much as they can for the Klei fest I highly doubt we are getting anything in Wagstaff's place for now and we are just gonna be left with a hole in lore and unexplainable senseless events happening. Truly unfortunate.

[AuRuS]

27 minutes ago, milsonmeow said:

See: the sealed portal that's been over 5 years now and still got nothing important to it.

Well, the portal has never had a use and it doesn't break anything, its a different story

[hhhhddh]

Restrained static fix itself, bosses born with spark ark, junkyard grows experiment table that's how this land work. But hey I like the blueprint of restrained static idea.

In my opinion klei just throw wag away without thinking how weird things related to him will be.

 

[hhhhddh]

Plus, can players who join the game after this unlock the Incomplete Experiment? Astroggles can be substituted by Desert Goggles, but the experiment...? Or new players must choose Winona to learn the experiment by using Calibrated Perceiver?

[AuRuS]

53 minutes ago, hhhhddh said:

Plus, can players who join the game after this unlock the Incomplete Experiment? Astroggles can be substituted by Desert Goggles, but the experiment...? Or new players must choose Winona to learn the experiment by using Calibrated Perceiver?

Good catch, I wonder what happens with that now, perhaps the fabricator is the answer

 

[Well-met]

I don't understand this thread, klei has already covered all of these things you talk about.

[hhhhddh]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

klei has already covered all of these things you talk about

In a wired and nonsense way, as I said:

 

3 hours ago, hhhhddh said:

Restrained static fix itself, bosses born with spark ark, junkyard grows experiment table

if these were automaticly then wagstaff was just standing there and pretend to be busy? And if they were not, no clue now who are in charge of them.

I mean klei did make these things working, but just for gameplay, without noticing how weird it is in story. I know it's a rush to catch up with klei festival but I really hope they fix it after it.

Edited June 11, 2025 by hhhhddh

[Pe Dabliu]

I don't think this is a case of Klei being lazy or anything like that. It's a clear case of lore vs gameplay. If we analise this whole lunar arc lore wise, were not doing all those things multiple times, but we have to have repetition for gameplay loop and all. So those changes don't bother me at all tbh, and actually make some of those tasks better/faster to complete. I know this update is being rushed for the Klei fest and all that, but this specific case doesn't seem to be one of the rushed things 

[Draggofroot]

7 hours ago, milsonmeow said:

That's just Klei doing their Klei stuff (aka keep abandoning things). See: the sealed portal that's been over 5 years now and still got nothing important to it.

Sealed portal absolutely does not need any features, it's perfect the way it is. It's supposed to make you wonder about the portal and what even happens inside the Archives

[Lovens]

I wonder if turning rifts on and off would be broken as well. Right now if you turned the rifts on by giving Wagstaff the shard, then disabled them through the world settings, and then enabled again through the settings, you need to kill CC and give Wagstaff another crown shard to have the rift cycle back on. If you killed the new boss and then decided to turn the lunar rift on, how would you turn it back on if needed if there won't be anyone to give the shard to anymore? 

Edited June 12, 2025 by Lovens

[hhhhddh]

4 hours ago, Pe Dabliu said:

It's a clear case of lore vs gameplay.

There is not necessarily a contradiction between lore and gameplay. let's see the bosses should be unique like Ancient Guardian and Fuelweaver, its lines suggested the ruin part were be replaced by another world, so there's a new AG, new Fuelweaver and other ruin staffs.

But in wag's case, WARBOT just respawn, it's a machine! Not something just grow from the soil! And all wag things just suddenly become automated with no clue how it happens.

Klei is able to make it harmonious between lore and gameplay, they just didn't do it this time. I would rather think it's a rush so they didn't finish it yet, or it's even more disappointing. 

[AuRuS]

12 hours ago, Pe Dabliu said:

It's a clear case of lore vs gameplay. If we analise this whole lunar arc lore wise, were not doing all those things multiple times, but we have to have repetition for gameplay loop and all.

I feel like it's just a missed opportunity to make megabasers' lifes easier as they could provide some solutions to grindy parts of gathering restrained static/spark arks if you have actually finished the game by making it more of a creative mode at that point. For me, it just feels lazy and just like an oversight when mutated bosses drop the ark out of nowhere and warbot respawns for pretty much no reason on the island again, I just feel like this is not a DST only problem, other games had already done it and it just works - like NG+ in Grounded or the forest where you can still farm certain lore bosses by summoning them yourself afterwards instead of being a one-time lore thing.

I'm sure that seeing that Wagstaff's disappearance will lead to some disappointments as people figure out that it actually changes nothing in the world, being only a "cosmetic" thing and making it all seem like a big oversight, only leaving bad taste after finishing the game.