[Suggestion] Allow all characters to re-place W.I.N.bots picked up by mistake

[Jenny 05 Justic]

Hello Klei team,

First, thank you for all your continued work on Don't Starve Together.

I'd like to make a small quality-of-life suggestion regarding the W.I.N.bot, specifically its interaction for non-Winona players.

Currently, the W.I.N.bot is a fantastic automation tool for any base. However, its current mechanics can create a frustrating situation in multiplayer.

The issue is that while only Winona can craft and initially place them, any character can accidentally pick one up. Once picked up, a non-Winona character has no way to place it back down. The only solution is to find the Winona player and have her place it again. This often leads to:

• Unnecessary interruption and coordination between players.

• A broken automation system if the Winona player is offline or away from base.

• General frustration, especially on public servers where players might not know each other.

Proposed Solution:
Allow any character to place a W.I.N.bot they are carrying back onto the ground. This would not grant them the ability to craft new ones or change Winona's unique role; it would simply provide a way to fix a common mistake without requiring Winona's direct involvement.

Since the bot's function (moving items) is entirely passive and doesn't require Winona's presence to work, it behaves more like a base utility than a character-specific power. This change would respect Winona's exclusivity as the crafter while greatly improving the multiplayer experience by removing this point of friction.

Thank you for your time and consideration.❤️

[ShadowDuelist]

But people will start making winbots, switch characters and use them to pick up stuff while they harvest (EG: pigs chopping trees) making it a switch character item.

Wouldn’t it be easier if non-winona players can’t pick it up? And maybe need to disable them by hammering them once or something, to turn them off in case a winona placed them in an inconvenient place.

[Edible Coal]

1 minute ago, ShadowDuelist said:

But people will start making winbots, switch characters and use them to pick up stuff while they harvest (EG: pigs chopping trees) making it a switch character item.

Wouldn’t it be easier if non-winona players can’t pick it up? And maybe need to disable them by hammering them once or something, to turn them off in case a winona placed them in an inconvenient place.

they can pick it up and place it down, but they wont able to give it a new home position, winbot will go back to its deploy posiiton

[Jenny 05 Justic]

39 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

但人们会开始制作温妮机器人，切换角色并在收获时（例如：猪人砍树）利用它们拾取物品，使其成为一种切换角色的工具。

如果非薇诺娜玩家无法拾取它，会不会更方便些？或许还需要用锤子敲击一次来禁用它们，以防薇诺娜将它们放置在不当位置时能够关闭。

That's not quite correct, because this is already possible in the game.

You have always been able to switch to Winona, craft and place a Generator and several W.I.N.bots, then switch to another character (like Woodie or Maxwell) to harvest resources. The bots will continue to work for any character. They have always been designed as a public utility item that functions for everyone, not just Winona.

My suggestion doesn't enable a new strategy; it merely fixes the frustration of accidentally breaking an existing setup.

Furthermore, even if all characters could re-place bots, it wouldn't create the problem you're describing. The key limitation remains: only Winona can craft and place the Charge Station. Any bot picked up would still need to be returned to a Winona-placed Charging Station to function. Other characters can't move or build those.

My suggestion is purely a quality-of-life fix for accidental pick-ups, not a change to the core functionality or strategy.

[SilverSpoon]

15 minutes ago, Jenny 05 Justic said:

That's not quite correct, because this is already possible in the game.

You have always been able to switch to Winona, craft and place a Generator and several W.I.N.bots, then switch to another character (like Woodie or Maxwell) to harvest resources. The bots will continue to work for any character. They have always been designed as a public utility item that functions for everyone, not just Winona.

My suggestion doesn't enable a new strategy; it merely fixes the frustration of accidentally breaking an existing setup.

Furthermore, even if all characters could re-place bots, it wouldn't create the problem you're describing. The key limitation remains: only Winona can craft and place the Charge Station. Any bot picked up would still need to be returned to a Winona-placed Charging Station to function. Other characters can't move or build those.

My suggestion is purely a quality-of-life fix for accidental pick-ups, not a change to the core functionality or strategy.

ShadowDuelist says is well correct, and I think that the misunderstanding is due to the language barrier.

ShadowDuelist's proposal largely solves the problem of characters other than Winona picking up the WINbot and breaking the existing system. Personally, I think fool proof would be better it took several consecutive hammering to neutralize it rather than once.

If characters other than Winona are able to replace WINbot, then Winona place generators in key locations in advance, it make characters other than Winona to use the WINbot as well. I think this is undesirable because it undermines Winona's initiative.

Edited September 9, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Jenny 05 Justic]

7 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

ShadowDuelist 的提议非常正确，我认为误解源于语言障碍。

ShadowDuelist 的方案也基本解决了非温蒂角色误拾 WINbot 导致现有系统崩溃的问题。个人认为防呆机制可以更完善——比如需要连续多次敲击才能解除，而非单次操作。

若允许非温蒂角色重新部署 WINbot，那么温蒂提前在关键位置放置发电机后，其他角色也能使用 WINbot。我认为这会削弱温蒂的独特性，是不可取的。

You raise a fair point. However, if that's the goal, why wouldn't Winona just place the WINbots alongside the generators in those key locations in the first place? The bots themselves aren't significantly harder to craft than the generators.

But I understand your perspective on preserving Winona's agency. Ultimately, the core problem to solve is the accidental pick-up. If the solution is to prevent other characters from picking them up at all (perhaps by requiring multiple hammer hits to "disable" them instead), I could also accept that. This would still fix the main issue we're facing.

[oregu]

9 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

But people will start making winbots, switch characters and use them to pick up stuff while they harvest (EG: pigs chopping trees) making it a switch character item.

Wouldn’t it be easier if non-winona players can’t pick it up? And maybe need to disable them by hammering them once or something, to turn them off in case a winona placed them in an inconvenient place.

Switch characters/items is another thing; Not letting other characters deploy winbots wouldn't affect that. If anything, this more or less saves people who actively play Winona's time because now you have to ask Winona to place the winbot again. If no Winonas, then all you have to do is swap to Winona. Winbots are best left around where they are. There's little benefit of carrying winbots around wherever you go because they're relatively inexpensive.

Edited September 9, 2025 by oregu

[Edible Coal]

12 hours ago, oregu said:

Switch characters/items is another thing; Not letting other characters deploy winbots wouldn't affect that. If anything, this more or less saves people who actively play Winona's time because now you have to ask Winona to place the winbot again. If no Winonas, then all you have to do is swap to Winona. Winbots are best left around where they are. There's little benefit of carrying winbots around wherever you go because they're relatively inexpensive.

i actually would love to have my own winbot when chopping trees or mining rock..

[SilverSpoon]

42 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

i actually would love to have my own winbot when chopping trees or mining rock..

I understand that, but it's also important to give certain characters the initiative to be "good at collecting items." 

The Lazy Forager is not so bad since you can refuel it with Nightmare Fuel.

Edited September 10, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Cruvimaster]

14 hours ago, oregu said:

Switch characters/items is another thing; Not letting other characters deploy winbots wouldn't affect that.

I disagree a bit. I even think all of Winona's machines should stop working after a while, so only Winona can restart them. That would make the character truly meaningful. But I see the same thing happening with Warly's skill tree, just being a buff for Wolfgang and the others.

[Maxil20]

4 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

That would make the character truly meaningful.

Winona is already one of the like top ~3 best characters to play in the endgame. She’s got extreme utility/connivence in the form of item transport/general movement with the telebrella, and things like enlightened strike work wonders for many resource collecting aspects, let alone for combat. She’s in a pretty good spot IMO.

[Cruvimaster]

Just now, Maxil20 said:

Winona is already one of the like top ~3 best characters to play in the endgame. She’s got extreme utility/connivence in the form of item transport/general movement with the telebrella, and things like enlightened strike work wonders for many resource collecting aspects, let alone for combat. She’s in a pretty good spot IMO.

So good that people are playing with other characters and wanting Winona's things without having a Winona.

[Maxil20]

14 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

So good that people are playing with other characters and wanting Winona's things without having a Winona.

I mean you can say this about most characters. Winona’s not really different in that aspect of things people want. She still provides an immense amount of utility herself apart from the Winbots and she’s a go to staple for a lot of players.

[Cruvimaster]

22 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I mean you can say this about most characters. Winona’s not really different in that aspect of things people want. She still provides an immense amount of utility herself apart from the Winbots and she’s a go to staple for a lot of players.

In my view, Klei's mistake was allowing Winona's power generators to have an infinite lifespan. If the maximum allowed was 20 days, and only Winona could reactivate them, topics like this would disappear.

It's not the first topic and it won't be the last one wanting things like this.

 

[Maxil20]

7 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

In my view, Klei's mistake was allowing Winona's power generators to have an infinite lifespan. If the maximum allowed was 20 days, and only Winona could reactivate them, topics like this would disappear.

They only last infinitely with shards, and given that placing fuel items/gems has been around since she was introduced I don’t really see why this would be inconvenient to anyone except ironically Winona herself with teletransport setups.

I myself don’t really think its a considerable deal since most characters already have a passive perk or two to help the party even if they are not around (Maxwell’s magician chest and Walter’s portable tent come to mind). I do feel Winbots are around the level of said passive perk. I personally would want it so players can deploy them only in range of a gen/gemerator, so Winona still gets the advantage of freely portable winbots while accidental misclicks don’t entirely rely on a Winona to come over and fix the issue, while the rest of her kit remains hers since she has a bunch of powerful perks that still incentivizes you to play as her.

 

[oregu]

3 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Winona is already one of the like top ~3 best characters to play in the endgame. She’s got extreme utility/connivence in the form of item transport/general movement with the telebrella, and things like enlightened strike work wonders for many resource collecting aspects, let alone for combat. She’s in a pretty good spot IMO.

I agree, she's probably the most optimal character to play when it comes to general resource gathering, farming (even boss farming?), among other endgame stuff but nobody really talks about it.

Edited September 10, 2025 by oregu

[Cheggf]

Who could have foreseen that everyone constantly complaining about teamwork because of a hypothetical nonexistent player who's constantly swapping characters could have caused the game to get worse? Very unexpected outcome. 

[Frosty_Mentos]

Make them either hammer only for other players like Warly cookwear, or let everyone deploy them. Artificially inflating Winona's gameplay will not make her more popular regardless.