add shadow prison cooldown

[Sorceress2024]

1 hour ago, BB Marioni said:

I only ever see the perma prison strategy on bee queen and dragonfly, are they the only basis of how strong a character is? 

Feels like imprisoning other bosses wont make much difference as they could still attack anyway, are already slow by default, or would be easier to fight when they are mobile, like werepig. 

Also, a lot of players I know, including myself are unable to oull this off so easily as recasting prison, resummoning duelists, attackign the enemy, and managing sanity all at the same time is not as easy for causal to mid level players.

Not permenent imprisonment, but using it before the eye of terror/twins charge is good, honestly i feel like you gain more with shadow prison against twins then with dragonfly as with her its just saving time and a panflute use or 2.

Against bq is great, unless you have players with good aoe on your side then its just decent for holding her still if she keeps moving around

[Naifxoxo]

7 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

It's not bad design. Not everything needs a cooldown. Some things are more fun without it. 

Maxwell's cage would be basically useless in boss fights if any of the nerfs here were actually applied. Make it last less long the more you use it on the same enemy? Now it's not worth the sanity and time spent using it. Make it have a longer cooldown than the time it's active? Now it just lets you stop a boss from moving for a couple seconds, which most of them will already do regularly. Not even good for stopping Grumbles or other adds since you can't keep them out of the fight for very long.

And then Maxwell in boss fights goes from one of the more unique combat styles to yet another kite+hold F character, but with a bit of extra DPS from his duelists. 

Horrid idea. Utterly horrid.

weakerbottom has to craft the books , she gets stuck in a long casting animation and she still has a limit on how many times she could use them , while maxwell has an infinite book without cooldown,

 

wx is limited cant swap circuits as much as they want , maxwell isnt limited , 

 

u shouldnt rely on cage spam and cheese all bosses as maxwell , thats the maxwell current gameplay all about cage spam making bosses unable to do anything

[Cruvimaster]

1 hour ago, BB Marioni said:

I only ever see the perma prison strategy on bee queen and dragonfly, are they the only basis of how strong a character is? 

Feels like imprisoning other bosses wont make much difference as they could still attack anyway, are already slow by default, or would be easier to fight when they are mobile, like werepig. 

Also, a lot of players I know, including myself are unable to oull this off so easily as recasting prison, resummoning duelists, attackign the enemy, and managing sanity all at the same time is not as easy for causal to mid level players.

And the interesting thing is that there are already "prisons" to neutralize these two bosses. The first is the most ridiculous: a simple wall that neutralizes all the larvae, leaving a fight where you have to mentally count to 6. For the Bee Queen, there's also a "prison" called the T.I.N.G.L.E. Node. And in both cases, it's much easier and safer with a character that allows the player to make more mistakes, having 200 health.

[remden]

5 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

What this does for the gameplay tho if it delays more than it lasts (bosses gets 6 seconds) it just turns into an obsolete mechanic. 

the duration is 8 for bosses and 16 for non bosses, it would still be able to permanently hold non bosses and stopping a boss for 8 seconds still can be useful

[BB Marioni]

37 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

And the interesting thing is that there are already "prisons" to neutralize these two bosses. The first is the most ridiculous: a simple wall that neutralizes all the larvae, leaving a fight where you have to mentally count to 6. For the Bee Queen, there's also a "prison" called the T.I.N.G.L.E. Node. And in both cases, it's much easier and safer with a character that allows the player to make more mistakes, having 200 health.

TINGLE nodes are insane. Been using them for various purposes since it was released. 

[Mr Giggio]

48 minutes ago, remden said:

the duration is 8 for bosses and 16 for non bosses, it would still be able to permanently hold non bosses and stopping a boss for 8 seconds still can be useful

Even if you are right over this (which I REALLY doubt, I've been playing Maxwell since he got reworked and have at least 7k of my 13k  hours only on him alone) I always counted less time because the animation of shadow Prison takes forever to cast once you can't cancel it and often is cut by stagger if you still didn't kill Fuel weaver. But go on.

Edited March 5 by Mr Giggio

[Uedo]

In the absence of content, the forum does provide.

[Cruvimaster]

The whole problem with Maxwell lies in team gameplay.

Playing alone with William, he's not even the most appealing character to choose. And the devs probably have this information. Managing all of Max's needs in a fight (multitasking) is very laborious. I remember an old video comparing Maxwell vs. Wolfgang against all the bosses, and they were 50% each. However, it's obvious that taking down all the bosses with Wolfgang is much easier, simply by holding down the F key on many of them.

As for the problem of Maxwell ruining the "together" experience, it's the same problem as using a Wurt or Webber with their armies or Volt Goat Chaud-Froid on the whole team. Are you going to remove everything from the game to maintain consistency, or is it just Maxwell that bothers you?

[DegenerateFurry]

3 hours ago, Naifxoxo said:

weakerbottom has to craft the books , she gets stuck in a long casting animation and she still has a limit on how many times she could use them , while maxwell has an infinite book without cooldown,

Wickerbottom has to craft the books, but they self-repair in her bookcase and most don't benefit from more than three subsequent uses, so they're effectively infinite. Maxwell has to refuel his Codex Umbra constantly with nightmare fuel despite never passively going insane. She and Maxwell have equally long casting animations which are equally impossible to cancel (you will get hit if you're not careful), but you choose not to mention it in Maxwell's case. 

3 hours ago, Naifxoxo said:

wx is limited cant swap circuits as much as they want , maxwell isnt limited , 

Maxwell's limited by how much nightmare fuel you have and how capable you are of managing several boiling pots at once.

Also, WX-78 being discouraged from swapping circuits is among the worst character design in this game. They give us a robot character with weak stats and the ability to customize itself for every situation if we put in the work of getting the circuits, only to make swapping circuits drain charge for over a day and significantly damage the circuits? So, we're basically locked into having speed and maybe night vision or light equipped forever, because instead of actually being able to redo our circuitry for different situations, the game is screaming directly into our ears, "NEVER EVER EVER SWAP! ONLY EVER EQUIP THE MOST VERSATILE CIRCUITS!" 

You bringing up WX-78 just shows how limitations can cripple a character's fun value. Thanks for making that point in my favor by mistake.

3 hours ago, Naifxoxo said:

u shouldnt rely on cage spam and cheese all bosses as maxwell , thats the maxwell current gameplay all about cage spam making bosses unable to do anything

And why is this worse than just face-tanking everything as Wolfgang while wearing a marble suit with no speed penalty? How is summon 5-6 duelists -> cage -> fight two terrorbeaks -> re-cage mid-fight -> resummon goons -> re-cage again -> get in some attacks before more nightmare creatures spawn -> repeat worse gameplay than hold F -> eat pierogi -> repeat? 

33 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

The whole problem with Maxwell lies in team gameplay.

Playing alone with William, he's not even the most appealing character to choose. And the devs probably have this information. Managing all of Max's needs in a fight (multitasking) is very laborious. I remember an old video comparing Maxwell vs. Wolfgang against all the bosses, and they were 50% each. However, it's obvious that taking down all the bosses with Wolfgang is much easier, simply by holding down the F key on many of them.

As for the problem of Maxwell ruining the "together" experience, it's the same problem as using a Wurt or Webber with their armies or Volt Goat Chaud-Froid on the whole team. Are you going to remove everything from the game to maintain consistency, or is it just Maxwell that bothers you?

Yeah, that's kinda the thing here: people say Maxwell ruins boss fights when the reality's that any character ruins boss fights because they're not set up to vary their difficulty level depending on how many players are present, so adding more players (especially playing powerful characters like Maxwell, Wurt, Webber, Warly, or Wolfgang) will inherently make the fight much easier. 

Edited March 5 by DegenerateFurry

[Bumber64]

10 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

Just by the fact you want to make a core action of a role for a char to be relevant equivalent a niche item that is relevant for like 2-3 bosses if not Wortox says it all

Odd that he didn't get this core ability until somewhat recently. Considering he was apparently designed as a boss killer, and definitely not a resource harvester.

Imagine if Wortox's soul pierce required killing live mobs to activate each time, and the damage rapidly fell off on bosses to the point of worthlessness. Thankfully Klei designed him as a boss killer, so they didn't go and do just that, since he's not the absolute best at moving around and such.

Feels like you're underselling the utility of stopping a boss in its tracks for any length of time. As if trapping bosses was a common occurrence outside cheese. Much like Walter, he can prevent stuff from reaching him while possessing non-melee options. (You also get gloomerang conveniently soon after skull helm. The weapon that damages based on distance, with the negation of insanity cost.)

Edited March 6 by Bumber64

[GimplyGoose]

I think if Maxwell originally had a cooldown on his shadow prison, it would have been fine and people wouldn't be advocating to remove the cooldown. But... Putting a cooldown on now, ~3 years later, would upset a lot of people. Nerfs are almost never a fun thing.

[Bumber64]

12 hours ago, BB Marioni said:

Also, a lot of players I know, including myself are unable to oull this off so easily as recasting prison, resummoning duelists, attackign the enemy, and managing sanity all at the same time is not as easy for causal to mid level players.

If Wendy could launch icky rounds for the cost of NMF, we could likewise speak of the difficulty of managing ickies, Abigail, and attacking all at the same time.

But Maxwell isn't Wendy with ickies. He's Wendy with ickies + worker merms + Wicker's books + dapper top hat, and only his own health drawback. And that still isn't his skill tree.

(What if we took shadow prison from Maxwell and gave it to Wendy? Think of all the happy Wendy players.)

Edited March 6 by Bumber64

[Hi.]

No? Bosses don't stay in the prison that long and Prisons drain sainity and can be a real problem if you dont have sainty/FW gear. Why do people want to nerf random things that were fine as is? Idk maybe it's just me.

 

also I swear a lot of the people in this thread have never played Maxwell before 😭

Edited March 6 by Hi.

[Volt Warly]

Don't have to use it if don't like it.

[BB Marioni]

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

If Wendy could launch icky rounds for the cost of NMF, we could likewise speak of the difficulty of managing ickies, Abigail, and attacking all at the same time.

But Maxwell isn't Wendy with ickies. He's Wendy with ickies + worker merms + Wicker's books + dapper top hat, and only his own health drawback. And that still isn't his skill tree.

(What if we took shadow prison from Maxwell and gave it to Wendy? Think of all the happy Wendy players.)

Sure, if wendy had some form of cc, would also be fine. 

 

The analogy is far off though. He has 6 "merms" max, which as a wurt is not enough, wickers books are from a different character, so wendy can have catapults or other things from other characters loke warly food, etc, and the dapper part is just soo subjective, wendy has her wreath. No technically wendy has most of what maxwell has, plus potions, plus aoe damage, plus a damage debuff. How does this make maxwell more OP? Or are we only measuring single target boss dps as basis in this survival game that has other enemies and environmental obstacles than just bosses?

He just seems OP for a boss rusher who also rushes ruins, which is not every player in DST.

[Mike23Ua]

Honestly they just really need to nerf the PC version of the games Point & Click abilities, this game is 1000% harder trying to play with a controller. Obviously things are going to appear busted when you can just scroll over onto a target and place abilities, on console I have trouble even lining the enemies up inside the ability radius.

And if PC were heavily nerfed, they’d have just as much trouble doing it too… then the characters wouldn’t need silly nerfs & cooldown timers. 😎

[DegenerateFurry]

24 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Honestly they just really need to nerf the PC version of the games Point & Click abilities, this game is 1000% harder trying to play with a controller. Obviously things are going to appear busted when you can just scroll over onto a target and place abilities, on console I have trouble even lining the enemies up inside the ability radius.

And if PC were heavily nerfed, they’d have just as much trouble doing it too… then the characters wouldn’t need silly nerfs & cooldown timers. 😎

Or maybe instead of ruining the experience for PC players, they could make it better for console players? 

[Frosty_Mentos]

On 3/5/2026 at 3:52 AM, Naifxoxo said:

ppl who like maxwell is because hes meta , not because its a very cute and fun character, thats how meta works , because its not balanced.

I don't play Maxwell because of meta, I play Maxwell because he's generally fun and diverse. I liked idea of Maxwell in singleplayer as well, just that it wasn't as great as this one. He is frail but convenient, even while having his spells you still need to care about being one shotted by majority of high damage enemies especially rift ones. 

If anything is "meta" by metrics it's Wendy, not because of gameplay but rather she just is cool and convenient as well. I think Maxwell is like less than 5% of playerbase compared to half of it being Wendy.

[Mr Giggio]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I don't play Maxwell because of meta, I play Maxwell because he's generally fun and diverse. I liked idea of Maxwell in singleplayer as well, just that it wasn't as great as this one. He is frail but convenient, even while having his spells you still need to care about being one shotted by majority of high damage enemies especially rift ones. 

If anything is "meta" by metrics it's Wendy, not because of gameplay but rather she just is cool and convenient as well. I think Maxwell is like less than 5% of playerbase compared to half of it being Wendy.

The concept of mage/shadowmancer is fantastic, they nailed the Umbra animations, the synergy with fuel weaver set is fantastic, overall such a amazing concept I just can't get enough off of it, and people just projecting a meta thing, augh

[Bumber64]

10 hours ago, BB Marioni said:

The analogy is far off though. He has 6 "merms" max, which as a wurt is not enough, wickers books are from a different character, so wendy can have catapults or other things from other characters loke warly food, etc, and the dapper part is just soo subjective, wendy has her wreath. No technically wendy has most of what maxwell has, plus potions, plus aoe damage, plus a damage debuff. How does this make maxwell more OP? Or are we only measuring single target boss dps as basis in this survival game that has other enemies and environmental obstacles than just bosses?

He just seems OP for a boss rusher who also rushes ruins, which is not every player in DST.

4-6 workers is plenty when he has the convenience of summoning and dismissing them at will. They can also collect items from the ocean like Polly. Merms require houses and vegetables. (You certainly can't re-summon them from a fish they drop when they die. You're taking a trip back to the swamp.)

But Wendy can't read Wicker books, Wurt can't use the book's actual effects, and Wickerbottom can't summon helpers to harvest. Only Maxwell gives you instant growth and harvesting without having to swap chars ever again. (You'd think Wormwood would get something great here, but he gets mushroom planters instead.)

The dapper is his basic passive perk, giving you the Tam o' Shanter buff for free without head slot, and giving no drain from dark sword / night armor. Normally this comes as compensation for "you lose sanity when hurt", "half stats from food", "0.75x damage to sanity monsters", etc., but here it's given like Woody's beard. (It's tempting to say that it's because his abilities cost sanity, but recall that Wicker only gets extra capacity, and can't even sleep her sanity back.)

The top hat storage is effectively a somewhat inferior small Woby, giving you extra storage in solo, or acting like There Woby if you have a receiving player.

The wraith's wreath costs insight points, as do most of the things that give her "most of what Maxwell has" like scaring mobs. If Wendy was Maxwell, the game loop of farming Ghastly Experience would be replaced with just wearing good equipment. Maybe Maxwell's skill tree will give him Willow's Biden Blast or a shadow teleport, and then he'll finally be playable for everyone.

Maxwell's OP because he's a jack of all trades, master of most of them. Clearly OP Wolfgang can smack bosses harder with less skill, but we can see that Klei didn't start piling farming, minions, and crowd control perks onto him. Wortox, Wanda, and Walter do the bosses and ruins with player skill required, but were still not given minions and farming. Only Maxwell.

Edited March 6 by Bumber64

[DegenerateFurry]

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

4-6 workers is plenty when he has the convenience of summoning and dismissing them at will. They can also collect items from the ocean like Polly. Merms require houses and vegetables. (You certainly can't re-summon them from a fish they drop when they die. You're taking a trip back to the swamp.)

But Wendy can't read Wicker books, Wurt can't use the book's actual effects, and Wickerbottom can't summon helpers to harvest. Only Maxwell gives you instant growth and harvesting without having to swap chars ever again. (You'd think Wormwood would get something great here, but he gets mushroom planters instead.)

The dapper is his basic passive perk, giving you the Tam o' Shanter buff for free without head slot, and giving no drain from dark sword / night armor. Normally this comes as compensation for "you lose sanity when hurt", "half stats from food", "0.75x damage to sanity monsters", etc., but here it's given like Woody's beard. (It's tempting to say that it's because his abilities cost sanity, but recall that Wicker only gets extra capacity, and can't even sleep her sanity back.)

The top hat storage is effectively a somewhat inferior small Woby, giving you extra storage in solo, or acting like There Woby if you have a receiving player.

The wraith's wreath costs insight points, as do most of the things that give her "most of what Maxwell has" like scaring mobs. If Wendy was Maxwell, the game loop of farming Ghastly Experience would be replaced with just wearing good equipment. Maybe Maxwell's skill tree will give him Willow's Biden Blast or a shadow teleport, and then he'll finally be playable for everyone.

Maxwell's OP because he's a jack of all trades, master of most of them. Clearly OP Wolfgang can smack bosses harder with less skill, but we can see that Klei didn't start piling farming, minions, and crowd control perks onto him. Wortox, Wanda, and Walter do the bosses and ruins with player skill required, but were still not given minions and farming. Only Maxwell.

In what way does this negatively impact you when you play someone else?

[Seero]

idk why everyone's replying to this extremely low-effort thread but I will, for the sake of defending the other side...

Just a flat, 15 second cooldown? Way to make shadow prison nearly useless. it does nothing to make it more interesting, it just makes it less fun. You don't even take the effort to consider the very real downside of using 5 duelists and shadow prison while fighting a boss (hint: terrorbeak)

4 minutes ago, Seero said:

idk why everyone's replying to this extremely low-effort thread but I will, for the sake of defending the other side...

Just a flat, 15 second cooldown? Way to make shadow prison nearly useless. it does nothing to make it more interesting, it just makes it less fun. You don't even take the effort to consider the very real downside of using 5 duelists and shadow prison while fighting a boss (hint: terrorbeak)

You know what's more fun? Micromanaging a boss with shadow prison while managing sanity, health, armor, hitting the boss yourself, your own duelists and making sure they stay alive, and those terrorbeaks that will inevitably spawn. Yes. this is fun when people aren't yapping in your ear about how ass it allegedly is. 

[Naifxoxo]

22 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Wickerbottom has to craft the books, but they self-repair in her bookcase and most don't benefit from more than three subsequent uses, so they're effectively infinite. Maxwell has to refuel his Codex Umbra constantly with nightmare fuel despite never passively going insane. She and Maxwell have equally long casting animations which are equally impossible to cancel (you will get hit if you're not careful), but you choose not to mention it in Maxwell's case. 

Maxwell's limited by how much nightmare fuel you have and how capable you are of managing several boiling pots at once.

Also, WX-78 being discouraged from swapping circuits is among the worst character design in this game. They give us a robot character with weak stats and the ability to customize itself for every situation if we put in the work of getting the circuits, only to make swapping circuits drain charge for over a day and significantly damage the circuits? So, we're basically locked into having speed and maybe night vision or light equipped forever, because instead of actually being able to redo our circuitry for different situations, the game is screaming directly into our ears, "NEVER EVER EVER SWAP! ONLY EVER EQUIP THE MOST VERSATILE CIRCUITS!" 

You bringing up WX-78 just shows how limitations can cripple a character's fun value. Thanks for making that point in my favor by mistake.

And why is this worse than just face-tanking everything as Wolfgang while wearing a marble suit with no speed penalty? How is summon 5-6 duelists -> cage -> fight two terrorbeaks -> re-cage mid-fight -> resummon goons -> re-cage again -> get in some attacks before more nightmare creatures spawn -> repeat worse gameplay than hold F -> eat pierogi -> repeat? 

Yeah, that's kinda the thing here: people say Maxwell ruins boss fights when the reality's that any character ruins boss fights because they're not set up to vary their difficulty level depending on how many players are present, so adding more players (especially playing powerful characters like Maxwell, Wurt, Webber, Warly, or Wolfgang) will inherently make the fight much easier. 

lol u think her having to return the books everysingle time to base and wait for recharge is easier than slamming 1 shadow creature and repair 25-50% of the book lol , i wouldnt mind if maxwell has to do the same thing like of he needs to drop the book at base for it to refuel , but the way it is now its unfair , he spawns with a free book that is infinite and will never run out . has multiple uses , resource gatherers , fighters , traps , jail , takes less inventory space it literally takes 1 space to do all of that, no cooldowns , look at how much benefits with 0 downsides 

 

while weakerbottom wastes so much inventory space since everysingle book only does like 1 thing if she wanted to carry more books, with all that they r still only have 2-3 uses before they break , u gonna end up with like 4-5 books with 33% durability that u cant even use or get rid until u get back to base, they still take so much space even tho u cant even benefit from them anymore,  js for the fact that u cant get rid of them , theres noway to teleport the books to base and continue ur adventure, or recharge 

Edited March 6 by Naifxoxo

[Ridley]

For the Wickerbottom book ordeal, I hope they change it so everyone can read the books. Not much of a librarian atm.

[Seero]

Just now, Ridley said:

For the Wickerbottom book ordeal, I hope they change it so everyone can read the books. Not much of a librarian atm.

ehhh idk. i don't want maxwell to lose that buff, but to give everyone that buff? Guarantee wickerbottom gets another winona situation (btw winona is no longer a swap character) where she becomes a swap character. Currently she is a swap character but only for maxwell, and I think that's ok.