Can the lazy deserter be changed to work like the sanctum waymark?

[Cruvimaster]

Klei allows players to choose a gameplay style based on their characters. In the early days of DS, everyone was Wilson with different skins. That's changed.

So...

If players want the standard experience, they'll play as Wilson.
If they want slight variations on Wilson, they'll go as Wolfgang (+) or Wes (-).
If they want to use magic, they'll go as Willow, Maxwell, or Wickerbotton.
If they want mobility, they can use WX or Woodie.
If they want teleportation, they'll go as Wortox, Winona, or Wanda.
If they want sidekicks, they'll go as Wendy, Webber, or Wurt.
If they want ranged attacks, they'll go as Walter.

Some characters fall into more than one category. I don't want to exhaust this topic.

And so on.

However, Klei has provided general solutions for all characters. For the continent, it allows faster movement using beefalos. For the most critical part, for some, devs gave everyone teleportation with FrostJaw.

Klei could have given everyone teleportation, but devs chose to create a new character (Wanda) and then gave the best teleportation system to another (Wortox—previously, he was just a Walking Cane). And devs finished by bringing a very good system to another character (Winona).

Edited September 15, 2025 by Cruvimaster

[JeezSorry]

I think it's a neat idea, but it would need to be balanced. Maybe you would have upgrade the deserter in some way? To make it a more fair, you had to prime one of the deserters before being able to teleport to it. Lets say you had one on lunar island and your base, you would have to touch one of them first, then head to the other to be teleported to the previously touched one. Essentially making them one way trips. It wouldn't get rid of the 2 player use, nor would it power creep character teleportation like Wanda, Wortox, etc. But it would give it more versatility in solo play. 

You could increase the sanity cost to teleport. When an upgraded deserter is primed, instead of using a desert stone to teleport, have it be cratered moonrock with an orange gem for the cost. I don't know what the price of the 'upgrade'  would be, but it could be either side, lunar or shadow. Dreadstone and nightmare fuel? Pure brilliance and moonrock? Not sure.

[lowercase skye]

Characters having abilities that can be categorized as simply "teleportation" is not at all an accurate representation of the actual abilities, all of which have radically different use cases:

- Wanda's teleportation allows her to take multiple players, heavy objects, and even travel between shards. Not only this, but the nature of her watches allows her to set a point in time anywhere, then teleport back to it later to resume her task, and simply disassemble and re-build the watch to unbind it once the task is done at no additional cost
- Wortox's teleportation does not require any sort of marker or investment to set up, he's allowed to simply go anywhere on the map that he's seen before. This makes his teleportation perfect both for frequently-traveled paths, and for places you rarely visit and would feel a waste to invest the resources to put a permanent teleportation solution on.
- Winona's teleportation allows her to take an infinite number of items with her, and as many heavy objects as she can fit onto the pad. Whenever I've played with Winonas before, it's far more frequent that I see them use their teleportation for transporting items than as a way to get around the map, though of course they do that a fair bit too.

The Lazy Deserter does not fill any of these niches at all. It requires setting up multiple structures before it can function at all, cannot take heavy objects through, cannot take items from the ground with you, and cannot be freely set as a return point mid-task. Not only that, but all of these characters have access to their teleportation from very early stages of the game: Winter for Wanda, day 1 for Wortox, and a variable point in the first couple seasons for Winona. Meanwhile the Lazy Deserter requires moon rocks, orange gems found in dangerous parts of the caves, desert stones found only in Summer from one specific spot in the entire map, and a hefty hit to your sanity when you actually use it.

It would really be fine.

[ShadowDuelist]

Please, no.

A self-teleporting network for any character should be a limited, grindy, and very late-game feature—and not as good as teleporting characters.
When eternity is your limit and you exist past day 300, yeah, sure, why not? It’s not like beefalos or personal perks matter much by then.
But something as simple as being able to teleport around as any character just by clearing the ruins and waiting for the Antlion to spawn would otherwise destroy a lot of other mechanics in the game.

Using celestial jewels, or something equally grindy and late-game, would be fine.

[Bumber64]

Having to prep them before use is more limiting than it first appears. Assuming you can't prep the deserter you're about to use, you'd need 4 deserters just for a bi-directional teleport. (Or use desert stones each time. Winona's portasol is rechargeable by comparison.) There needs to be a minimum range for teleport, so you don't get sent to the one you intended to use for the return trip. (Less intuitive because you can't stand on them. Try using one on a boat for extra fun.)

If we reduce max sanity to activate, there's a hard limit on the complexity of the network. If you can't maintain the cost for each node in the network simultaneously, you have to exclude some and return to them by other means later. If the cost is 20, Wilson can maintain 7 nodes (but is permanently insane).

That all sounds less practical than just paying purple gems for telelocation the more I think about it. People would only use it as a one-way teleport back to base.

Edited September 16, 2025 by Bumber64

[SilverSpoon]

16 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

Characters having abilities that can be categorized as simply "teleportation" is not at all an accurate representation of the actual abilities, all of which have radically different use cases:

- Wanda's teleportation allows her to take multiple players, heavy objects, and even travel between shards. Not only this, but the nature of her watches allows her to set a point in time anywhere, then teleport back to it later to resume her task, and simply disassemble and re-build the watch to unbind it once the task is done at no additional cost
- Wortox's teleportation does not require any sort of marker or investment to set up, he's allowed to simply go anywhere on the map that he's seen before. This makes his teleportation perfect both for frequently-traveled paths, and for places you rarely visit and would feel a waste to invest the resources to put a permanent teleportation solution on.
- Winona's teleportation allows her to take an infinite number of items with her, and as many heavy objects as she can fit onto the pad. Whenever I've played with Winonas before, it's far more frequent that I see them use their teleportation for transporting items than as a way to get around the map, though of course they do that a fair bit too.

The Lazy Deserter does not fill any of these niches at all. It requires setting up multiple structures before it can function at all, cannot take heavy objects through, cannot take items from the ground with you, and cannot be freely set as a return point mid-task. Not only that, but all of these characters have access to their teleportation from very early stages of the game: Winter for Wanda, day 1 for Wortox, and a variable point in the first couple seasons for Winona. Meanwhile the Lazy Deserter requires moon rocks, orange gems found in dangerous parts of the caves, desert stones found only in Summer from one specific spot in the entire map, and a hefty hit to your sanity when you actually use it.

It would really be fine.

I'm not really in agreement with the opinion that "it's fine because it's late game." That's because power creep will still occur in the late game. As for the added value of teleportation on other characters, that's just added value, and teleportation itself is a major initiative, so I think it will result in a strong relative nerf to those characters.

In any case, I'm against allowing Deserter to operate alone in multiplay. The current Deserter is acceptable because it's well-designed, with teleport characters being the ones who can best utilize it.
On the other hand, I can agree that Deserter should be able to operate alone in soloplay. Making solo play as fun and comfortable as multiplayer is a good direction to go in.

What specifically is the consensus on this topic that everyone can agree on? My consensus is that "it's not OK in multiplayer, but it's OK in solo."

Edited September 16, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[SOS-Ouroboros-K]

20 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

Characters having abilities that can be categorized as simply "teleportation" is not at all an accurate representation of the actual abilities, all of which have radically different use cases:

- Wanda's teleportation allows her to take multiple players, heavy objects, and even travel between shards. Not only this, but the nature of her watches allows her to set a point in time anywhere, then teleport back to it later to resume her task, and simply disassemble and re-build the watch to unbind it once the task is done at no additional cost
- Wortox's teleportation does not require any sort of marker or investment to set up, he's allowed to simply go anywhere on the map that he's seen before. This makes his teleportation perfect both for frequently-traveled paths, and for places you rarely visit and would feel a waste to invest the resources to put a permanent teleportation solution on.
- Winona's teleportation allows her to take an infinite number of items with her, and as many heavy objects as she can fit onto the pad. Whenever I've played with Winonas before, it's far more frequent that I see them use their teleportation for transporting items than as a way to get around the map, though of course they do that a fair bit too.

The Lazy Deserter does not fill any of these niches at all. It requires setting up multiple structures before it can function at all, cannot take heavy objects through, cannot take items from the ground with you, and cannot be freely set as a return point mid-task. Not only that, but all of these characters have access to their teleportation from very early stages of the game: Winter for Wanda, day 1 for Wortox, and a variable point in the first couple seasons for Winona. Meanwhile the Lazy Deserter requires moon rocks, orange gems found in dangerous parts of the caves, desert stones found only in Summer from one specific spot in the entire map, and a hefty hit to your sanity when you actually use it.

It would really be fine.

Bootleg Getaway：

[IAmAFurrz]

On 9/14/2025 at 2:27 PM, Wigfridge2137 said:

maxwell can have full fuel weaver set with the shadow thurible to max dmg from shadow warriors. Together with beefalo when he attacs shadows attacs are more frequent.

well yea, i listed him in the 'he doesnt have to fight' list like wurt and webber.

[loopuleasa]

On 9/13/2025 at 3:29 AM, Oompitie said:

When I first played the beta I noticed that the waymark and lazy deserter have the same animation when being used. I think it would be a nice change if the lazy deserter can be used like the waymark as to make them more usable and available for solo players.

No. Teleportation is really strong and a special character power only available to 3 characters.

[Sesekriri]

Don't Starve Together players when they have to play together to get the full benefit of an item 

[Terser]

20 minutes ago, Sesekriri said:

Don't Starve Together players when they have to play together to get the full benefit of an item 

unless this is merely memeing, solo play has very much been acknowledged by the devs since the start, so additions that are particularly useful for it would not be nonsensical. It is not like there would be no benefit in teleportation that doesn't rely on others, wouldn't need to bother other players as much, so this would benefit multiplayer play as well

[twitchgabo]

I like the idea.  You can always balance it by using gems to do the teleport. We already have plenty of gems in the late game. It would be nice to have something good for using them

[Keigo]

Maybe let us bind ourselves to the lazy deserter and then we can use desert stones to tp to it,that way we have a mini wanda clock on everyone but with the limit of one location and having to carry an extra item.

And please let it by across shards as well.

Edited October 26, 2025 by Keigo