What off-meta or not widely used skills do you play with or enjoy using?

[slendyproject]

Tell me the benefits of some of the usually ignored skills.

[Gashzer]

Burning bernie - imagine being able to spam combustion or lunar flames to kill hordes of mobs without needing embers? This is what its like to use a fully skilled out big burning bernie.

[Esplanado]

I like using the mosquito branch of Wurt's skill tree since I don't use merms that much

[Cheggf]

I don't watch YouTubers telling me how to play the game and I just play the game so I have no idea what YouTubers told everyone to use, but these are what my skill trees are.

Spoiler

 

Most of these are just what works best for me, but Wurt's tree includes the mosquito stuff because it's funny. The king's quest line is better.

If any of these are "off meta" and you want to know why I'm picking them feel free to ask about specific skills. 

[cybers2001]

44 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

I don't watch YouTubers telling me how to play the game and I just play the game so I have no idea what YouTubers told everyone to use, but these are what my skill trees are.

  Hide contents

 

Most of these are just what works best for me, but Wurt's tree includes the mosquito stuff because it's funny. The king's quest line is better.

If any of these are "off meta" and you want to know why I'm picking them feel free to ask about specific skills. 

Explain your Wolfgang tree or this is an obvious trollpost

Also: No winona?

Edited October 11, 2025 by cybers2001

[Evelo]

Blegh... skill trees.
I use the Saladmander Skill for Wormwood. I don't think it is good, at all. I just think Saladmanders are cute.

[cybers2001]

My off-meta skill: Winona's Shadow Strike.

A far inferior skill compared to its sibling, Enlightened Strike, but does have a few unique advantages:

1) Available pre-rift (can even use on day 1 if you luck out with pure horror).

2) Area of denial. It's constant DoT can interrupt some attacks, like rook or AG charges. AG straight up doesn't know what to do and just dies hilariously when you blast him repeatedly with enlightened + shadow.

[gaymime]

On 10/11/2025 at 11:10 AM, Esplanado said:

I like using the mosquito branch of Wurt's skill tree since I don't use merms that much

wurt catching mosquitoes is really rather cute~

[Crimson Hollow]

walters portable campfire, for some reason i dont see a lot of people using it but it is particularly handy if you do a lot of sailing (or if someone activated a fire/ice staff trap)

[_mylilsunshine_]

8 hours ago, Crimson Hollow said:

walters portable campfire, for some reason i dont see a lot of people using it but it is particularly handy if you do a lot of sailing (or if someone activated a fire/ice staff trap)

because of walter's small belly, it's a great skill when you're constantly on the move and doesn't have a way to preserve food (bundling wrap, insul pack, bearger bin) yet. all i do is eat berries, carrots, and cooked meat instead of being tied down to a crockpot and eating stale meatballs. walter's skills have no misses 

Edited October 13, 2025 by _mylilsunshine_

[readkey]

Wolfgang’s increased max mightiness from gym. 
 

You are able to stay mighty the whole day and that frees up a lot of planning for me because I can fight any time anywhere. 

[Echsrick]

i dont know, what counts as "off meta" in this? what even is the supposed "meta" anyways?

[cybers2001]

11 hours ago, Echsrick said:

i dont know, what counts as "off meta" in this? what even is the supposed "meta" anyways?

Interesting that you take pleasant pastorale here instead of overflowing greed or covetous collector

[Dingle]

32 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Interesting that you take pleasant pastorale here instead of overflowing greed or covetous collector

I didn't see the point in taking Pastorale over Greed until a week or two ago.

It's really nice for early game and rushing, and then you can use the character changer to ditch it for Greed once you have a really good spider soul farm going.

I used a mod to guarantee the killer bee biome, but even then Pastorale is still useful. Sometimes the biome has poor number or spacing of hives, or is in a bad spot for from anything useful. Also, killing bees forever gets kind of tiresome, even with his new tricks. It's nice to be able to supplement it, if nothing else.

12 hours ago, Echsrick said:

i dont know, what counts as "off meta" in this? what even is the supposed "meta" anyways?

Off meta for Wortox would probably be something like not getting Soul Jar, or getting Cloudy Carmen. Or not getting Reverb.

[Radicaljoe]

The only skill I can think of is Shadow Winona 2. It works like a teleport and I get to do stupid stuff constantly with no issues.

Lunar 2 is fine, but it pisses me off mechanically in a way that I refuse to use it until post cc when I can have the teleporters be infinite powered. 

[cybers2001]

42 minutes ago, Dingle said:

I didn't see the point in taking Pastorale over Greed until a week or two ago.

It's really nice for early game and rushing, and then you can use the character changer to ditch it for Greed once you have a really good spider soul farm going.

Oh I do use pastorale as well, but as part of my early game skill tree, where I wouldn't have shadow harvester. But covetous collector is even better for early game as it turns your knabsack into a cheap darksword.

[Dingle]

8 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Oh I do use pastorale as well, but as part of my early game skill tree, where I wouldn't have shadow harvester. But covetous collector is even better for early game as it turns your knabsack into a cheap darksword.

Oh yeah, forgot to consider that as I get lunar affinity for my early game tree. But that's to help with nightmare creatures, ag phase 2, etc. Not sure why he gets shadow affinity.

He could just get piercing 2 instead, or greed. I don't like covetous much personally, seems like the ham bat is still better because it doesn't take 3 inventory slots to hit max power.

Edited October 24, 2025 by Dingle

[Echsrick]

1 hour ago, cybers2001 said:

Interesting that you take pleasant pastorale here instead of overflowing greed or covetous collector

you mean free souls from panflute? thats not meta? i tought its realy good....alsol i will REFUSE bugnet weapon, and i dit try to use soul jar only for it to not realy do anything for me but waste 1 item slot

[cybers2001]

27 minutes ago, Dingle said:

He could just get piercing 2 instead, or greed. I don't like covetous much personally, seems like the ham bat is still better because it doesn't take 3 inventory slots to hit max power.

I'm currently using piggy backpack, and the 4 extra slots become 3 jars + stack of souls. I can make up for the loss of speed by telepoofing around and farming spiders with dark-nabsacks creates a nice feedback loop to ensure I always have tons of souls and silk. (Also you're still giving up one inventory slot for the panflute, technically )

6 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

you mean free souls from panflute? thats not meta? i tought its realy good....alsol i will REFUSE bugnet weapon, and i dit try to use soul jar only for it to not realy do anything for me but waste 1 item slot

It's just so easy to farm souls when you have soul decoy 3 and shadow harvester. Swing by a killer bee biome and get a full stack of souls.

Why don't you like knabsack?

Edited October 24, 2025 by cybers2001

[Echsrick]

5 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

It's just so easy to farm souls when you have soul decoy 3 and shadow harvester. Swing by a killer bee biome and get a full stack of souls.

Why don't you like knabsack?

because i dont want to every day go to bees and kill them so i use the flute to get them anywhere i want

knabsack is just terrible, you need to get way to many souls to get dark sword damage, not to forget, you cant use said souls for your own use or you dont do dark sword damage

[Dingle]

4 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

I'm currently using piggy backpack, and the 4 extra slots become 3 jars + stack of souls. I can make up for the loss of speed by telepoofing around and farming spiders with dark-nabsacks creates a nice feedback loop to ensure I always have tons of souls and silk. (Also you're still giving up one inventory slot for the panflute, technically )

I was comparing the "dont spend 100 of your souls" knabsack to the hambat. Keeping the knabsack at full power is 2.5 jars you can't spend. I tried to like it, but I'd rather have the extra 100 souls for teleporting.

I wouldn't call taking or not taking Covetous meta or not. Lots of people seem to like it. I can see how it would be very useful in public servers, for example.

Panflute is a slot, but it isn't a weapon. You could have that AND covetous if you wanted.

48 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

The only skill I can think of is Shadow Winona 2. It works like a teleport and I get to do stupid stuff constantly with no issues.

Lunar 2 is fine, but it pisses me off mechanically in a way that I refuse to use it until post cc when I can have the teleporters be infinite powered. 

Is that super unpopular? I thought it would be appealing to people as simply just being easier/faster to set up than lunar 2 teleporters.

[Cheggf]

Overflowing Greed sucks, it's such a small increase to the amount of souls you can hold unless you're dedicating your entire inventory to holding soul jars for some reason in which case you don't need it because you have about a trillion souls you can freely take out at any time anyways. Covetous Collector sucks because it's buffing the knabsack which is one of the worst weapons in the game. Most of the stuff on Wortox's skill tree are pretty good but those skills are not. 

[cybers2001]

1 hour ago, Echsrick said:

because i dont want to every day go to bees and kill them so i use the flute to get them anywhere i want

knabsack is just terrible, you need to get way to many souls to get dark sword damage, not to forget, yoxu cant use said souls for your own use or you dont do dark sword damage

Well by 1 stack of souls I meant 40. Would take you about 7 days to get that much with panflute.

And with 3 jars you get up to 55 souls you can use without lowering your damage. And no one says you can't use more than that if you need to sacrifice some dps for healing/food/teleportation.

Edited October 24, 2025 by cybers2001

[NotGabriel]

I don’t care how much quicker a stack of lightbulbs and Werepig are for manure farming, impecaca syrup is so goofy and I love using it as Wormwood. It’s also funny feeding it to my pet beefalo whilst riding it and leaving a long trail. Kinda helpful to help retrace my steps if I’m in the ruins and can’t spare a second to check my map lol

[Dingle]

56 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Overflowing Greed sucks, it's such a small increase to the amount of souls you can hold unless you're dedicating your entire inventory to holding soul jars for some reason in which case you don't need it because you have about a trillion souls you can freely take out at any time anyways. Covetous Collector sucks because it's buffing the knabsack which is one of the worst weapons in the game. Most of the stuff on Wortox's skill tree are pretty good but those skills are not. 

I thought Greed was an absolute must have for me for quite awhile. Having 2 jars to make the cap 30 instead of 20 gave me tons of cushion against overloading. This isn't useful at all if you're Naughty, but I like that inclination less than Neutral.

Now I skip it early game, but I love it for once I can set up whatever giant spider farm I'm going for that game. Eventually it becomes a lot faster than killer bees. At that point, Pastorale becomes really worthless, so I don't know what I'd rather spend the point on.