Skilltree Predictions: Ideas and Speculation

[GrapeVruit]

Currently, there are 7 characters left on the Skilltree chopping block: WX-78, Wickerbottom, Wes, Maxwell, Webber, Warly, and Wanda. We're not certain who's going to be next in line or how many survivors Klei will bundle together in one update. Same applies to their skills, too. Most of them could be as creative and fun as Walter and Wortox's trees, or as boring and bland as Wilson or Wolfgang's. There's not much to go off right now aside for some brainstorming, speculation, or just a gut feeling. So that's what I want to get down to in this thread. I want to know what you guys are thinking about in these future updates. Your hopes, worries, ideas, what characters will get their trees first, the works. As for me, I've got a few things I'm looking forward to. 

Starting with the order, I think it'd go something like this: Wes, Webber, and Warly for the first update, WX-78 and Wickerbottom for the second, and finally capping it off with Maxwell and Wanda. I don't really have an in-depth reason as to why they'd be in this order, most of it just comes from a gut feeling, but that same gut feeling accurately predicted the last 4 character refreshes in early 2022, so that means I'm basically a prophet :P

As for skill ideas/predictions, here's what I've got:

WX-78 - They'll get skills that make circuit swapping less punishing, either by increasing circuit durability or reducing charge time, reduced scanning time/extra bio data dropped from Jimmy, and the ability to choose which circuits to extract. (Yeah, not the most mind blowing ideas, but I feel like WX's playstyle is like having a lite skilltree with finding and scanning mobs for circuits.)

Wickerbottom - They'll definitely get skills that make books more powerful when read/carried by her, kinda what they did with Winona. I'm thinking a reduced casting animation (Maybe as low as one second?), longer lasting books with reduced sanity loss, books restoring their durability while held or by hitting enemies with them (Would love if they'd incorporate that mechanic from the Forge), and a lunar affinity book that acts like the Joy of Volcanology from Shipwrecked, raining down meteors from where you read it. 

Webber - Skills that stop spiders from lagging out the game, either by preventing befriended spiders from eating meat off the floor or reducing the need to bring tons of spiders by making special units that are much stronger.

Warly - I've been saying this constantly whenever the topic of skilltrees or Warly is mentioned in a thread: Seasoning Hambats. Salt refreshes durability, honey crystals provide a small life leech, and chili flakes can stun mobs by making them sneeze, IDK. 

   

[Echsrick]

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

WX-78 - They'll get skills that make circuit swapping less punishing, either by increasing circuit durability or reducing charge time, reduced scanning time/extra bio data dropped from Jimmy, and the ability to choose which circuits to extract. (Yeah, not the most mind blowing ideas, but I feel like WX's playstyle is like having a lite skilltree with finding and scanning mobs for circuits.)

pretty much what i kind of think maybe some other circuits like planar circuits probably

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

Warly - I've been saying this constantly whenever the topic of skilltrees or Warly is mentioned in a thread: Seasoning Hambats. Salt refreshes durability, honey crystals provide a small life leech, and chili flakes can stun mobs by making them sneeze, IDK. 

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

Wickerbottom - They'll definitely get skills that make books more powerful when read/carried by her, kinda what they did with Winona. I'm thinking a reduced casting animation (Maybe as low as one second?), longer lasting books with reduced sanity loss, books restoring their durability while held or by hitting enemies with them (Would love if they'd incorporate that mechanic from the Forge), and a lunar affinity book that acts like the Joy of Volcanology from Shipwrecked, raining down meteors from where you read it. 

something like sanity reducing when reading or repairing faster inside bookshelfs.....but uhm

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

Joy of Volcanology

no, i fear like that be too destructive

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

Webber - Skills that stop spiders from lagging out the game

that sould not be a skill that just sould be base game...otherwise maybe gettin more switcher doodles when crafting them and befriending more spiders at once

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

Warly - I've been saying this constantly whenever the topic of skilltrees or Warly is mentioned in a thread: Seasoning Hambats. Salt refreshes durability, honey crystals provide a small life leech, and chili flakes can stun mobs by making them sneeze, IDK. 

being able to eat drying rack foods and gettin an upgrate to his backpack so it make things last longer and has drying rack componement aswell....and obligatory planar spices because sadly yes


alsol i think the groupings sould be

warly and webber as next skill trees as these 2 are badly in need of one

maxwell and wicker do make a good pairing

and then wx and wanda both kind of tinkerring with things

wes....i dont know maxwell and wicker just so you know...wormwood being only moon and maxwell probably only being able to get shadow affinity and wormwood was a 3 skilltree so maxwells alsol a 3 skilltree update

[Ev1l]

The thing I want the most from the Warly skill tree is convenience. I think he's a very cool jack of all trades, being decent at combat, resorce gathering & coming prepared for every seasonal enviromental challenge (with hot dragon chilli salad, fish cordon bleu & asparagazpacho). However, most of these are very hard to get your hands on, and they make your gameplay loop very grindy. And even then, sometimes it does really feel like you spend more time prepping than reaping the benefits. Not to mention a lot of useless exclusive dishes (glances at puffed potato purée & monster tartare).

Some ideas I'd like to see implemented are: 

- Higher chance of getting butter/being able to craft butter: I think most people alr have this on their wishlist so I won't go further in detail on it.

- 10% chance of getting a double dish when harvesting a crock pot: Getting extras of your dishes would give you more time to do other stuff before you need to make your next batch. Alleviating the grindy aspect of the character while also taking some pressure on getting food in the early game.

- Food & spice effects lasting longer on Warly: Asparagazpacho, HDCS & Fish Cordon Bleu, although very cool on concept, aren't worth going through the struggle of getting their ingredients when more convenient ways of surviving the elements exist. Each dish lasting about 2-3 days could make more people consider going for them as their seasonal protection of choice, would give more use to some niche dishes and a perk to stay as Warly instead of just making dishes and swapping. Other foods getting a buff from this could also be interesting, like glow-berry mousse lasting 4-6 days. But I'm not sure this could be balanced in a world where chaud froid lasts as long as the seasonal dishes.

[Pruinae]

Klei is legally obliged to release Wes' skill tree April 1st

I hope Wickerbottom's skill tree gives her more practical day-to-day uses to her books, as it stands she only gets to use her items for a small portion of her actual gameplay time which feels very silly to me, please let her be cool everywhere instead of just her farms

My ult is off cooldown, so here's my shameless plug ultimate:

Wes' is already archived though

[DegenerateFurry]

Response to OP in spoiler.

Spoiler

5 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

As for skill ideas/predictions, here's what I've got:

WX-78 - They'll get skills that make circuit swapping less punishing, either by increasing circuit durability or reducing charge time, reduced scanning time/extra bio data dropped from Jimmy, and the ability to choose which circuits to extract. (Yeah, not the most mind blowing ideas, but I feel like WX's playstyle is like having a lite skilltree with finding and scanning mobs for circuits.)

The thing WX-78 absolutely needs is for the swapping of circuits to not drain any charge, or for each notch to take, like, 15 seconds to recharge. Charge is the biggest thing holding WX-78 back. I don't really think increasing circuit durability would be as big of an impact, but I expect Klei to do both (though I'm not counting on them going far enough with recharge speed). 

5 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

Wickerbottom - They'll definitely get skills that make books more powerful when read/carried by her, kinda what they did with Winona. I'm thinking a reduced casting animation (Maybe as low as one second?), longer lasting books with reduced sanity loss, books restoring their durability while held or by hitting enemies with them (Would love if they'd incorporate that mechanic from the Forge), and a lunar affinity book that acts like the Joy of Volcanology from Shipwrecked, raining down meteors from where you read it. 

I like the lunar meteor concept and I also think her having perks to make her books have stronger and additional effects would be cool. Faster caster would be a good perk for her, too. 

One thing that I feel is both essential and a no-brainer for Wicker is spell targeting, exactly like how Maxwell can do it. I fully expect Klei to do it, and it'd make The End Is Nigh! useful for something other than griefing bases and charging WX. Honestly, if they do a meteor spell, cast targeting should be a prerequisite perk just as accidental griefing prevention.

5 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

Webber - Skills that stop spiders from lagging out the game, either by preventing befriended spiders from eating meat off the floor or reducing the need to bring tons of spiders by making special units that are much stronger.

I feel like spider de-laggification is going to be a base kit change for Webber, but these performance tweaks seem inevitable to me. One thing I really like the idea of for Webber's planar perks is spider resurrection. 

5 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

Warly - I've been saying this constantly whenever the topic of skilltrees or Warly is mentioned in a thread: Seasoning Hambats. Salt refreshes durability, honey crystals provide a small life leech, and chili flakes can stun mobs by making them sneeze, IDK. 

A neat idea. Chili flakes could also just heat Warly up while he holds his ham bat for a more passive minor perk if the stun's too strong, perhaps?

 

And now, my own ideas.

Webber

As I said in my response to GrapeVruit, I like the idea of spider resurrection for Webber's planar perks. For his shadow affinity, I think just straight-up copying Wurt's shadow resurrection perk and making any slain spider turn into a Horror Spitter (spitters but with planar damage and resistance) works. These ones can't be healed by nurses.

For his lunar affinity, I'm thinking something a bit different: feed a Spider Queen a Pure Brilliance to simultaneously tame and transform her into a Shattered Queen, which is friendly to Webber like any tamed spider, is quite tanky with its planar defense and has planar damage, and spawns up to four or so Shattered Spiders at once (and will spawn another if one dies). Doesn't turn into a den normally, but if slain, she drops a Shattered Spider Egg, which lets him plant a Shattered Spider Hole. Just came to mind, but it's my take on the popular "let Webber tame Spider Queens!" suggestion. 

 

Warly

1. Number one dream perk: a butcher knife craft. It'd do let's say spear damage, and anything you kill with it (final blow) gets an additional drop chance roll for non-guaranteed drops. Say you kill a buzzard and get a drumstick: if you kill it with the butcher knife, you'll get one extra buzzard drop with the normal drop rates. If you kill a voltgoat, you get two 25% chance rolls instead of the normal one to get a horn, which effectively doubles your chances of getting a horn per goat (and if you're lucky, you can get two horns from one goat). The butcher knife can be used by other characters as a weapon, but only Warly gets the extra drop effects. Combines well with luck mechanics.
   
   Has a subsequent perk that makes any mob that drops a meat item when killed drop one extra meat when killed with the butcher knife. That adds +1 monster meat to every spider (no RNG), +1 meat to every werepig, +1 morsel to every bunny, +1 frog legs to every frog, you get the picture. Not super powerful, but it would mean more food and it represents Warly's skill as a butcher. 
   
   Final perk in this branch gives Warly a chance to critically hit any mob that drops any non-rot edible item, representing his precision with a knife. Combines well with luck mechanics.
    
2. Easy prediction: "take this perk and your spices last twice as long" and "take this perk and your special dishes' effects last twice as long" perks. Hopefully it's one perk, but it's probably two separate ones.
    
3. Easy prediction: planar spices that grant some planar defense and planar damage to whoever eats the dish. I'd like brightshade husks to be used for the lunar spice and pure horror (as a sauce) to be used for the shadow one.
    
4. Hope: a whole bunch of new special effect dishes. Here's some ideas (I am not going to try to make the titles character-appropriate because I do not know any French). Contained in the spoiler below for length.
    
   Spoiler

   Seafood Specials
   See-Weed Salad. Made with two kelp, a pepper, and a carrot, this seaweed salad dish increases your zoom range and map reveal range while you're on a boat. It's like a Horizon Expandinator, but it only works at sea.
   
   Catch of the Day. Two fish meat/pond fish, two salt. It's basically kippered fish. Very long-lasting (jerky-tier) dish worth 50 hunger, but it also makes your fishing more e-fish-ient, not sorry, both increasing your reel-in speed for ocean fish and decreasing the time it takes to catch fish at a pond.

   Captain's Chowder. Made with barnacles, a large fish meat, a potato (or any veggie filler I guess), and a wobster that makes whoever eats it perform all sailing actions twice as efficiently (stronger rowing, faster steering/anchor-pulling/sail-using). Separate perk, requires that you take Seafood Specials.
   
   Vegetarian Vittles
   Gardener's Goulash. This replaces Ratatouille in Warly's portable crock pots (like how Monster Tartare replaces monster lasagna). Its effect makes you harvest one extra item from all food source plants, from banana bushes you pick to giant crops you hammer. Also guarantees an extra seed from crops and hammered giant crops.
   
   Nightberry Mousse. One nightberry and any fruit items that total 2.0+ fruit value. Doubled effect duration compared to eating a nightberry normally (or quadrupled if you have the doubled dish effects perk). It just gives you nightberry effects. Mostly just a way for Warly to use nightberries.
   
   Pomegranate Panettone. One pomegranate, veggies, non-meat filler. Adds a 25-damage small AoE to every second attack (about the same radius as Wormwood's bramble husk perk). A pun on how the French word for pomegranate is spelled grenade. Separate perk, requires that you take Vegetarian Vittles.
   
   Gourmand's Goodies
   Crazy Croissant. Made with dairy, an egg, a veggie (same logic as butter muffin), and a nightmare fuel, it inverts sanity effects from food. A normal player would gain sanity from uncooked green or blue mushrooms after eating this. Warly's use for it is going insane more easily than he normally can since now he can eat high-sanity foods to go nuts. 

   Mellow Macarons. Cookies made with a birchnut, an egg, any fruit (can be a berry), and a veggie. They reduce negative sanity aura effects somewhat when eaten by a player, but their real power comes when you feed it to your beefalo or a bunnyman. It makes beefalo obedience and bunnyman loyalty decay at halved rates for four minutes (or eight if you've got the dish effect increase perk). 

   Redcap Expresso. That's not a typo, it's another pun. It's coffee, you make it with red caps (mushroom coffee is a thing, look it up) and ice. Damages your health a little when you eat (drink?) it, but gives you a speed boost. I'm thinking at minimum 10%, preferably 15% or 20%. Separate perk, requires that you take Gourmand's Goodies.

    

5. Hope: A rework to his seasoning salt. Seasoning salt sucks as it currently is, merely adding 10 HP to your first salted pierogi-tier food eaten (or less for anything that heals less than 40). It's just not worth using. I would prefer to have seasoning salt make any food it's on last significantly longer, like 50% longer or so. 
    
6. Hope: Chef pouch rework, or at least an improvement via perk. Either make it a container item that allows food and spices or make it a head-slot item that allows food and spices. It's not good as a backpack, the chest slot has way too much superior competition. Also, why is it a chest-slot item when a pouch traditionally goes on the belt and would not prevent you from wearing a backpack?
    
7. Hope: A gardening branch.
   
   - Season foods with forget-me-lots for a flat +40 sanity on any dish, tillweeds for a flat +25 HP on any dish, and fire nettles for a higher overheat threshold and decreased damage from fiery sources. Taking the perk also allows you to harvest seeds from weeds for planting. 
   
   - Craftable plant pots (1 manure, 1 shell fragment). They let you replant crops and weeds, so you can move weeds to a weed-specific plot or rearrange your random seed crops into crop combos. Only usable by Warly.
   
   - The ability to passively water crops. How does Warly do this, you ask? Simple: using his chef-tier knowledge of vegetables, he turns a giant pumpkin crop into a gourd jug (doing so gives you seeds, but no pumpkins) using the new spigot this recipe lets him craft with a gear and a log. The spigot sticks out of one end and slowly leaks water, making any farm plot it's pointing towards (1-tile range) stay hydrated even when off-screen. The gourd jug needs to be refilled regularly (right-click it with a watering can), but keeps your crops watered so long as you keep it filled, allowing you to go away and do other stuff. Only Warly knows how to refill it. 
    
8. Not my own idea (it's GrapeVruit's), but ham bat seasoning as described in the OP. Seems pretty great to me. 
    
9. An alignment perk dish for each side . 
   Lune Pie. Made with lune petals, leafy meat, and stonefruit. Makes Gestalts completely ignore the player and provides sleep immunity. 
   
   Icker Jelly. Anything that attacks you gets icker-slowed like with Walter's icky rounds. Made with an Icker Jar and three nightmare fuel. 

Edited March 10 by DegenerateFurry

[flamboyant wolf]

Warly: more of an out-of-tree thing probably, but I want more exclusive dishes, especially ones that make use of local ingredients (for example, lichen salad from foilage and lichen, or some sea dishes from the many sea ingredients etc,) to really get the use out of the portable cooking. Aside from that, I don't have a lot of concrete ideas of what I'd want to see, I like the idea of some butchering skills(getting some more meat and maybe other ingredients from mobs, simple but neat), I like the idea of a beargerbin-like container to store some meals(or maybe chef's pouch could get some buffs).

Wickerbottom: I hope for some books to use in day-to-day, in fights. faster reading would be fire. Is it too much to ask for friendly tentacles? hah.

WX-78: honestly hope for some out-of-the tree adjustments more than anything.

Wes: Balloon boat and Oar!

(Balloon mech!!!!)

 

[aidancode]

I was saddened to see wortox get the op-ification that some skill trees are doing, but wickerbottom and warly I absolutely am all for it. Super excited for them to be utterly gamebreaking. If anyone deserves it it's them.

[PunkShark]

You could argue Wes is next considering the new luck based mechanic they've added in the latest update and so close to April too. The mechanic doesn't really have much use outside of the event yet its quite intricate. Coincidence? Possibly. 

But Wes does need some dire help, he's been a joke all his life which has also made him just not fun in a multiplayer aspect, he adds nothing. The whole thing is that he's a weak unlucky guy who is an easy meal for any danger but the guy has truly never really been a character as much as the others, especially now.

Edited March 10 by PunkShark

[BB Marioni]

WX-78: kit is already packed. Just needs planar synergy, and scrap themed items/abilities. Would be cool if he can ride a clockwork rook.

Wickerbottom: I never really understood why she is a spell caster. As a librarian, her abilities should be more in tune with knowledge. This will also make her have her own abilities that maxwell can't use. (Example: shadow-ology= wickerbottom passively has some form of protection against shadow aligned creatures. Necronomicon= tentacles are passive to wickerbottom, etc)

Wes:

Maxwell: also already packed abilities. Just give him a separate giant tanky shadow monster with planar damage, but cannot be summoned together with duelists, drains his sanity each second, disables any sanity healing food or items, and disappears once sanity hits zero. The rest should just be minor utilities themed on shadow gears)

Webber: also packed already. Just needs qol to avoid laggyness of spider army, and a limited way to deal planar dmg with his spiders. 

Warly: warly needs a lot of improvements. No ideas for now though.

Wanda: no real ideas yet, but hopefully she gets more utility, not a skill tree as boring as wolfgang where all skills just add more damage.