Catalog of what WX got in their skill tree

[Pruinae]

Basekit Changes:
Alpha, Beta, Gamma changes adding +12 extra pins slots.
8 New circuits: Super-Illumination, Sonic-Invoker, Rangebooster, Redigestion, Spatializer, Blocking, Spin-Cycle, and Chessmaster.

Skill Tree: 
Extra effects added to circuits, with varying degrees of usefulness.
+3 pin slots that make a huge difference.

Better circuits management.
Better charges management.

Teleportation ability different from any other we had before.
Extra Bodies to put circuits on.
Said bodies can keep Beta circuits active (Chorusbox, Super/Illumination, Rangebooster, Spatializer).
Unique revive that costs charges.

Perks to transfer items quickly over long distances.
Perk to explore the map unconventionally faster, can skip a good chunk of sailing.
Ranged Electrical AoE, can stunlock even planar enemies with it.

Ability to sacrifice teleport potential and irl sanity to have very unique minions.
Minions can use hand and chest items.
Minions can use circuits and their respective extra skill tree effects.
Minions have their own 15 inventory slots.
Minions help with fighting and harvesting with varying degrees of success. Huge potential in VERY VERY late game.

Ability to consume nightmare fuel and pure horror to gain temporary full charge.
Faster and passive harvesting of resources at the cost of irl sanity, can collect resources even if unloaded.
18% ~ 24% extra single target damage.
Can use mimicked items unless they are green gem related.
____________________________________________________________________________________

I think that covers everything, right?

Overall, I really love their skill tree. My only complaints would be exploiterators not being AoE, and mimicked green gem items being exempt from the list (come on!! boulderboughs are available at the exact same time, couldn't you just let them have this? lol), but I can live with those.

I really hated the shadow themes from before, the weird shadow tendril, and the shadow harvesting effect really didn't feel like WX to me. I do understand people dissatisfaction with the thematic change to drones, especially since the AoE 25% extra damage effect got effectively nerfed due to it (although auto-grabbers are a direct buff to what we had before), but to me it's such a tiny portion of the skill tree I don't really get the degree of upheaval people are making about it.

Also, Klei kind of hid in the patch notes, but "Auto-Grabber and Exploiterator are now better at keeping up with WX-78" makes so these drones are able to keep up with WX even if they have 3x Super-Accel, magi, cane AND road, they are not just "better" at keeping up, they WILL.

Edited Friday at 11:39 AM by Pruinae

[Picklesaurus]

1 hour ago, Pruinae said:

Also, Klei kind of hid in the patch notes, but "Auto-Grabber and Exploiterator are now better at keeping up with WX-78" makes so these drones are able to keep up with WX even if they have 3x Super-Accel, magi, cane AND road, they are not just "better" at keeping up, they WILL.

Really nice fix, makes using them way more comfortable.

[Baark0]

My main complaint is just that the affinities feel really skippable. Lunar isn't bad, its just very expensive to use at a half decent level, and they don't really do a ton outside of damage. Shadow affinity is kind of just a damage buff, with the option to have some cute but kinda useless drones that just fill your inventory with random garbage. The mimicreep thing is a gimmick at best, requiring you to get a 4th atrium in order to save a mild amount of time grinding resources for equipment. The lack of any planar damage from the possessed atrium is really weird, and the atrium vines is just... why? Like seriously, why does inputting a shadow heart into a robot chassis cause vines holding gold rocks and flint to appear?

Most skill trees are going to be down at least 7 points on all the circuit tinkering skills, meaning you don't have a ton of points to spend on other things. If you want the teleportation skill, which on its own kinda needs the shipping drone to really be useful, then you're going to be down 12-13 skills, so you really don't have the room to waste skills. Its because of this that I find it hard to justify picking either affinity skill, especially when in the early game you wont be able to take very good advantage of either affinity.

[Jussatoon]

1 minute ago, Baark0 said:

My main complaint is just that the affinities feel really skippable. Lunar isn't bad, its just very expensive to use at a half decent level, and they don't really do a ton outside of damage. Shadow affinity is kind of just a damage buff, with the option to have some cute but kinda useless drones that just fill your inventory with random garbage. The mimicreep thing is a gimmick at best, requiring you to get a 4th atrium in order to save a mild amount of time grinding resources for equipment. The lack of any planar damage from the possessed atrium is really weird, and the atrium vines is just... why? Like seriously, why does inputting a shadow heart into a robot chassis cause vines holding gold rocks and flint to appear?

Most skill trees are going to be down at least 7 points on all the circuit tinkering skills, meaning you don't have a ton of points to spend on other things. If you want the teleportation skill, which on its own kinda needs the shipping drone to really be useful, then you're going to be down 12-13 skills, so you really don't have the room to waste skills. Its because of this that I find it hard to justify picking either affinity skill, especially when in the early game you wont be able to take very good advantage of either affinity.

Do you have an ideal vision of what the Shadow Affinity would provide instead?

Personally, I'd like to see the Shadow Battery mechanic expanded on further, especially if it synegized with circuits more. Lunar Vessel technically has more circuit synergy than Shadow Servitor: not only do you make circuit builds for three other minions, but they even share the same Circuit Tinkering effects as you. 

[Waywarbler]

32 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

and the atrium vines is just... why? Like seriously, why does inputting a shadow heart into a robot chassis cause vines holding gold rocks and flint to appear?

I think those aren't vines, but arteries from the atrium pulling stuff out of the ground.

As to WHY, I can only think it's because the fumarole biome is connected to shadows and the ancients, so, you get a discount boulderbough effect with your chassis :P

[flamboyant wolf]

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

 Lunar isn't bad, its just very expensive to use at a half decent level, and they don't really do a ton outside of damage. 

The possesed bodies can help with sailing and crop gardening quite nicely, and can be a decent help with rocks/trees(especially with spin cycle). Also you can store some extra stuff in them, which tbf you could also use transport drones, but still. And you can benefit from their circuits some, for example I always use a chorusbox circuit on at least one of my possesed bodies, because it solves the sanity upkeep for them nicely, and it gives some sanity to me too. Tinkering skills now work on circuits used by possesed bodies, so you could prob use one as a lamp of sorts?

Anyway, I find keeping at least 1 possesed body around to be pretty worthwhile, especially after you get access to beanboosters(helps with maintenance quite a bit!), it's not some huge must have utility, but it's fairly decent at a number of tasks you may partake in.(I guess that ultimately comes down to your playstyle as well, though!)

[Baark0]

4 hours ago, Jussatoon said:

Do you have an ideal vision of what the Shadow Affinity would provide instead?

Personally, I'd like to see the Shadow Battery mechanic expanded on further, especially if it synegized with circuits more. Lunar Vessel technically has more circuit synergy than Shadow Servitor: not only do you make circuit builds for three other minions, but they even share the same Circuit Tinkering effects as you. 

I like the damage buff as it scales quite well with the spin-cycle's attack speed increase, so I'd like to keep that. Ideally it would be a single drone that increases your damage against every enemy in a radius around you, though anything that would make the damage 1) consistent and 2) work vs hoards is all I really want.

I'd also like to expand on the eating nightmare fuel mechanic, as I feel it has a lot of untapped potential for what feels like something klei threw on to WX as an after thought. Either bringing the overcharge mechanic back in some way that isn't just a speed/damage buff, or by having it have some sort of effect on your plugged in circuits.

4 hours ago, Waywarbler said:

I think those aren't vines, but arteries from the atrium pulling stuff out of the ground.

As to WHY, I can only think it's because the fumarole biome is connected to shadows and the ancients, so, you get a discount boulderbough effect with your chassis :P

I mean I guess? Still not fond of it as part of an affinity skill.

3 hours ago, flamboyant wolf said:

The possesed bodies can help with sailing and crop gardening quite nicely, and can be a decent help with rocks/trees(especially with spin cycle). Also you can store some extra stuff in them, which tbf you could also use transport drones, but still. And you can benefit from their circuits some, for example I always use a chorusbox circuit on at least one of my possesed bodies, because it solves the sanity upkeep for them nicely, and it gives some sanity to me too. Tinkering skills now work on circuits used by possesed bodies, so you could prob use one as a lamp of sorts?

Anyway, I find keeping at least 1 possesed body around to be pretty worthwhile, especially after you get access to beanboosters(helps with maintenance quite a bit!), it's not some huge must have utility, but it's fairly decent at a number of tasks you may partake in.(I guess that ultimately comes down to your playstyle as well, though!)

The extra bodies really just aren't helpful for my playstyle. I really dislike micromanaging other entities in this game, since I lack direct control over them which can easily lead to frustration when they do something stupid and waste resources. It's also just so expensive to fully kit them all out. You need a lot of bio data for the circuits, they each need their own source of food, and they all need their own set of armor and weapons and repair kits. It's just a lot of effort when its considerably easier for me to just kill things myself. If I want a minion based character, I'd rather play Wurt or Maxwell, who have incredibly expendable minions.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

You need a lot of bio data for the circuits

While it doesn't completely fix the problem if you keep and knight and a rook as followers you'll have a passive income of bio data.

[ZeRoboButler]

Im sad that the lunar side will never really be something I'll play with again, shadow has more utility and... well the utility is nice, the damage up is negligible aside from a few cases, not to mention the late game impact not being as high but at least I get to play with it earlier. 

Waiting that long to play with minions that are dumb, still break armor, don't use block circuits effectively, die if hunger, sanity, or health bottom out, does less damage, even less if shadow weapons... the amount of good doesn't out-weight the bad and how clunky it is to try to make work. 

3 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

While it doesn't completely fix the problem if you keep and knight and a rook as followers you'll have a passive income of bio data.

this is cool too, honestly, toss out the lunar affinity and I would just make a bunch of clockworks as minions instead. make em' on lunar when im fighting celesital, befriend the army, regroup when some die, back to the fight again. All my robot buds hate clones, we start robot uprisings around here. Infinitely more fun, and less sadness if the things die, purple gems and gears for days vs "ah yes, my work has been flushed down the drain and all ive got to show for it is a smashed chassis". 

[Mysterious box]

32 minutes ago, ZeRoboButler said:

Im sad that the lunar side will never really be something I'll play with again, shadow has more utility and... well the utility is nice, the damage up is negligible aside from a few cases, not to mention the late game impact not being as high but at least I get to play with it earlier. 

Waiting that long to play with minions that are dumb, still break armor, don't use block circuits effectively, die if hunger, sanity, or health bottom out, does less damage, even less if shadow weapons... the amount of good doesn't out-weight the bad and how clunky it is to try to make work. 

this is cool too, honestly, toss out the lunar affinity and I would just make a bunch of clockworks as minions instead. make em' on lunar when im fighting celesital, befriend the army, regroup when some die, back to the fight again. All my robot buds hate clones, we start robot uprisings around here. Infinitely more fun, and less sadness if the things die, purple gems and gears for days vs "ah yes, my work has been flushed down the drain and all ive got to show for it is a smashed chassis". 

To be fair you can create clockworks and each chessmaster circuit increases your follower count on them so you could go that route.

[flamboyant wolf]

2 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

While it doesn't completely fix the problem if you keep and knight and a rook as followers you'll have a passive income of bio data.

You can also put a mole, rabbit and a slurper on a boat, to scan from time to time. Light bugs are also great for scans since they try to stay in the general area they were dropped in, and give 6 biodata. You can also scan a caged bird, for some small but pretty effortless amount of biodata.

[GimplyGoose]

2 hours ago, flamboyant wolf said:

You can also put a mole, rabbit and a slurper on a boat, to scan from time to time. Light bugs are also great for scans since they try to stay in the general area they were dropped in, and give 6 biodata. You can also scan a caged bird, for some small but pretty effortless amount of biodata.

One of the first things I wanted to do was build a zoo after playing WX again for the skill tree. You can also put a spider and a nurse spider in a statue or TINGLE node pen. They are easy to move if you use a trap to catch them into your inventory. If you keep a bird in a cage for biodata, canaries give more biodata than other birds. A firefly is also something you can scan for biodata. A volt goat can also be penned off in walls. A hound, red hound, and blue hound, and krampus can be penned off in a similar way compared to spiders, but are a bit more troublesome to position.

Don't try to pen up and scan catcoons. They only give 2 biodata and they will swat at and disable Jimmy and generally be a nuisance. Most reliable way to scan them is to bribe them with a piece of cut grass and scan them while they are hawking up. Definitely not worth regularly scanning in my opinion.

[flamboyant wolf]

31 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

One of the first things I wanted to do was build a zoo after playing WX again for the skill tree. You can also put a spider and a nurse spider in a statue or TINGLE node pen. They are easy to move if you use a trap to catch them into your inventory. If you keep a bird in a cage for biodata, canaries give more biodata than other birds. A firefly is also something you can scan for biodata. A volt goat can also be penned off in walls. A hound, red hound, and blue hound, and krampus can be penned off in a similar way compared to spiders, but are a bit more troublesome to position.

Don't try to pen up and scan catcoons. They only give 2 biodata and they will swat at and disable Jimmy and generally be a nuisance. Most reliable way to scan them is to bribe them with a piece of cut grass and scan them while they are hawking up. Definitely not worth regularly scanning in my opinion.

Didn't know about canaries giving more data! That's quite nice.