How I'd rework WX's shadow affinity

[Baark0]

I had some ideas pop up in a car ride and wanted to get them out there in case a modder wanted to make their own version of WX's shadow affinity.

First off, progression is no longer split between nightmare fuel + pure horror, and shadow atriums + possessed atriums. Instead its now one big progression tree, going from nightmare fuel to pure horror to a shadow atrium and finally the possessed atrium. You'll get access to 1 drone starting with nightmare fuel, gaining 1 extra drone following the aforementioned progression.

A drone's function changes depending on if the chassis its connected to is inhabited or not. While inhabited, they'll function like exploiterator drones, and they'll function like grabber drones when in an inactive body. Exploiter drones now instantly provide their damage buff to any nearby enemies. Their damage is reduced to 5% per drone to make up for the lack of a damage ramp and AoE, and because having a possessed atrium will now cause your attacks to deal an extra 5 planar damage to nearby enemies. This is on top of the 20% damage buff from having all 4 drones, the planar damage doesn't stack, and it will be active when at least 1 drone is currently present.

Eating nightmare fuel in addition to making your charge act as if its full will now also a provide a 1.1x multipler to applicable circuits you currently have plugged in. The buff lasts until the overcharge effect wears off, and eating pure horror will grant the buffs for longer. The number boosted in general will be the first one that comes to mind, however the specifics can be found in the spoiler below:

Spoiler

Super-hardy, super-gastrogain, super-processing, and their lesser variants will have their alpha tinkering effects multiplied instead of the circuit's base stats, as messing with stats can lead to annoying scenarios where restoring stats after the buff wears off restores more thanks to percentages.

Beanbooster circuits has the same sanity buffs as super processing, and healing occurs every 27 seconds.

Thermal/refrigerant circuits provide more heating/cooling to nearby players.

Super-accelerant circuits provide a up to 5% speed due to each circuit providing less and less speed. Regular accelerant only provides 2.5% more.

Electrification circuits deal extra damage both on regular hits and the charged explosion.

Illuminant and super-illuminant increase the size of the light circle, not the cone.

Rangebooster circuits provide more vision range.

Chorusbox provides a larger sanity aura.

Sonic-invoker's fear effect lasts longer, specifically changes how long enemies panic for when the waves end.

Redigestion circuit nutribricks will be infused with shadows for extra flavor, providing an extra 1.87 hunger and 0.1 health. This sucks so in addition to that, they'll fuel your shadow charge meter by 10%.

Blocking circuit now provides 88% damage reduction.

Spin-cycle spins per second is increased. Notably, only the base spins per second changes. The bonus spin-speed from gamma tinkering 2 is not affected by nightmare fuel overcharging.

Chessmaster circuit will increase the damage of allied clockworks.

Opteoelectronic and spatializer don't gain anything due to their effects not being applicable.

Any chassis with a possessed atrium implanted will not count towards the maximum amount of chassis WX can have existing in the world. Additionally, your inventory, equipped items, and plugged in circuits will transfer to any chassis you attempt to transfer consciousness too, as long as both your active chassis and the chassis you're trying to teleport to have a possessed atrium implanted inside them. In the case of other chassis having items/plugged in circuits, the inventory of the first chassis to have a heart plugged in will be prioritized when transferring. Other chassis will make room where necessary to fit your items, equipped items, and plugged in circuits. Stats will also transfer accordingly.

Finally, the mimicreep and boulderbough mechanics are removed. They're weird, make no sense thematically, and provide nothing new to WX's gameplay loop.

Any and all numbers provided should not be focused on, as I haven't done any math to see if the numbers would be weak, balanced, or overtuned. I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on my ideas.

[zelancr]

On 5/3/2026 at 12:16 PM, Baark0 said:

I had some ideas pop up in a car ride and wanted to get them out there in case a modder wanted to make their own version of WX's shadow affinity.

First off, progression is no longer split between nightmare fuel + pure horror, and shadow atriums + possessed atriums. Instead its now one big progression tree, going from nightmare fuel to pure horror to a shadow atrium and finally the possessed atrium. You'll get access to 1 drone starting with nightmare fuel, gaining 1 extra drone following the aforementioned progression.

A drone's function changes depending on if the chassis its connected to is inhabited or not. While inhabited, they'll function like exploiterator drones, and they'll function like grabber drones when in an inactive body. Exploiter drones now instantly provide their damage buff to any nearby enemies. Their damage is reduced to 5% per drone to make up for the lack of a damage ramp and AoE, and because having a possessed atrium will now cause your attacks to deal an extra 5 planar damage to nearby enemies. This is on top of the 20% damage buff from having all 4 drones, the planar damage doesn't stack, and it will be active when at least 1 drone is currently present.

Eating nightmare fuel in addition to making your charge act as if its full will now also a provide a 1.1x multipler to applicable circuits you currently have plugged in. The buff lasts until the overcharge effect wears off, and eating pure horror will grant the buffs for longer. The number boosted in general will be the first one that comes to mind, however the specifics can be found in the spoiler below:

  Reveal hidden contents

Super-hardy, super-gastrogain, super-processing, and their lesser variants will have their alpha tinkering effects multiplied instead of the circuit's base stats, as messing with stats can lead to annoying scenarios where restoring stats after the buff wears off restores more thanks to percentages.

Beanbooster circuits has the same sanity buffs as super processing, and healing occurs every 27 seconds.

Thermal/refrigerant circuits provide more heating/cooling to nearby players.

Super-accelerant circuits provide a up to 5% speed due to each circuit providing less and less speed. Regular accelerant only provides 2.5% more.

Electrification circuits deal extra damage both on regular hits and the charged explosion.

Illuminant and super-illuminant increase the size of the light circle, not the cone.

Rangebooster circuits provide more vision range.

Chorusbox provides a larger sanity aura.

Sonic-invoker's fear effect lasts longer, specifically changes how long enemies panic for when the waves end.

Redigestion circuit nutribricks will be infused with shadows for extra flavor, providing an extra 1.87 hunger and 0.1 health. This sucks so in addition to that, they'll fuel your shadow charge meter by 10%.

Blocking circuit now provides 88% damage reduction.

Spin-cycle spins per second is increased. Notably, only the base spins per second changes. The bonus spin-speed from gamma tinkering 2 is not affected by nightmare fuel overcharging.

Chessmaster circuit will increase the damage of allied clockworks.

Opteoelectronic and spatializer don't gain anything due to their effects not being applicable.

Any chassis with a possessed atrium implanted will not count towards the maximum amount of chassis WX can have existing in the world. Additionally, your inventory, equipped items, and plugged in circuits will transfer to any chassis you attempt to transfer consciousness too, as long as both your active chassis and the chassis you're trying to teleport to have a possessed atrium implanted inside them. In the case of other chassis having items/plugged in circuits, the inventory of the first chassis to have a heart plugged in will be prioritized when transferring. Other chassis will make room where necessary to fit your items, equipped items, and plugged in circuits. Stats will also transfer accordingly.

Finally, the mimicreep and boulderbough mechanics are removed. They're weird, make no sense thematically, and provide nothing new to WX's gameplay loop.

Any and all numbers provided should not be focused on, as I haven't done any math to see if the numbers would be weak, balanced, or overtuned. I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts  fnf game on my ideas.

The unified progression makes sense and should feel more coherent, but the inventory and circuit transfer between possessed chassis sounds potentially abusable. Have you considered adding a cooldown or cost to switching to keep it balanced?

 

[Baark0]

2 hours ago, zelancr said:

The unified progression makes sense and should feel more coherent, but the inventory and circuit transfer between possessed chassis sounds potentially abusable. Have you considered adding a cooldown or cost to switching to keep it balanced?

 

Abusable how? The intent was to allow the player to freely teleport in the late game after they've gotten around to setting up a bunch of chassis with possessed atriums. It might be a little too powerful, but considering Wanda can set up a theoretically infinite number of group wide teleports that can be reused infinitely, it didn't seem like it'd be too much to let the player teleport freely with WX at the cost of having to farm a bunch of possessed atriums. I feel like it'd be similar to Winona in terms of set up, but I don't blame anyone for thinking it might be too strong.

[WendyHater9000]

Klei should really move on instead of polishing stuff from 9/10 to 9.5/10 while consuming more time.

They don’t got much time for shadow arc 2.