should maxwell be allowed to keep reading wicker's books?

[Arepantera]

1 hour ago, Nikki Darks said:

She does have an identity though, her items are her core identity. 

She is the embodiment of the word "utility". She is a jack of all trades, a book for every occasion.

As to what she can do that others cannot. She greatly and rapidly amasses a vast variety of resources.

Pigskin? Lunar Grimoire. Grass and Twigs? Silviculture. Specific boss drops? On Tentacles. Etc, etc.

She is just the "Jack of all trades" character of DST, and it's what Wickerbottom players like about her.

Being able to quickly provide more grass and twigs for my friends right after they picked them all.

Quickly summoning a full moon in case they need the light or want to do the staff quest.

Help do more damage with my bees or farm a boss with my tentacles.

Don't be disingenuous like the other people on this post. She has an identity and an appeal.

She doesn't have an identity, a character's gets their identity by their abilities to do something desirable that others cannot and by their drawbacks. Wormwood is a character with tons of identity, his ability to manipulate his sanity, his ability to create living logs and high quality armor from day 1, hell even his drawback alone gives him insane amounts of identity. 

She isn't even an utility character. If you want an example of a good utility character, you could look at wanda and wortox. Being able to revive others for free? Being able to give others the best form of movement aka TP even between shardst? Being able to heal the whole group and negate the need of healing food? Being able to revive people for free without any consequences? Being able to pick up items that people lost, quickly complete pearl's tasks,quickly complete the chess pieces, without even sweating? Now THAT'S utility. 

Again, that's not something unique to her. A golden shovel can also do the same thing for pretty much all intents and purposes. Having your base generate 100 twigs every 3 or 4 days, while having your friends use 80 twigs every 3 or 4 days has the same effect as wicker using her books to fill 4 chests with twigs. If the base is made by decent players, then by all intents and purposes wicker becomes useless.

Pigskin? The same characters that can mass farm spiders can also mass farm werepigs. Grass and twigs? Golden shovel. Though I'll admit that tentacle traps are nice for farming some bosses

Is she tho? I'm not so sure about that. She just generates resources and then has some cute gimmicks in her other less used books. Combat wise she's below average, when it comes to travelling and qol stuff she's just average. for something to be a jack of all trades it'd have to be good at everything but not the best at anything and that description doesn't fit wicker.

Golden shovel.

See, this is one of the reasons for why earlier I said her books are at best a clutch for players that are bad at planning, darkness should be the first thing players should learn how to deal with, having a full moon early on is cute and all but everyone should have a miner hat or a lantern in their inventory at all times, even when there are eternal full moons, since they'll need it should they go to the caves. It's nice to be able to help my friend who only has 1 hour and 20 minutes of total playtime from death because he forgot to recharge his lantern with a full moon, but if the argument in favor of something requires players to be bad, then it's not a good argument.

Those bees are useless 80% of the time. The coat of carrots is a semi useless item and it accomplishes the same thing.

I'm not being disingenuous, my arguments are sincere and from my point of view logical as well. If anything, you to me seem disingenuous since you seem to be using that label to disqualify valid criticism towards the character without actually adressing the arguments presented.


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1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

Strange you just described skill tree abilities and people seem to love those.

Explain that, because that made no sense.

 

 

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

Also let's really examine her kit beyond just her speedy growth abilities which mind you are still really amazing at all stages of the game. Light book that can allow crops to grow at night if you want to properly farm or just want to fight in an area with relying on just a lantern or other light equipment, temperature book that allows you to move long term without taking a break for heating up stones or raising your temp with fire, grumble bees to help you with day to day combat, boom to extinguish fires caused by lightning or wildfires while generating a free fire staff, book that slows enemies down which more or less translates to increased movement speed in a fight, and turning off darkness and easy farming of moon related events. You guys act like she has nothing to offer beyond just the standard resource generation she does but it's just a flimsy excuse.

The funniest part is you guys keep claiming removing it from Maxwell won't make a difference while clinging so hard to her supposedly useless abilities it's just so blatantly obvious that it's kinda impressive.

A light whose ability to help in farming is useless because it gets powercrept by her farming books, even if you want giant crops for the extra seeds, you'll get more in less time if you just use her farming books alongside your caged bird. If you want to fight in an arena without relying on light equipment, you could just put down a structure that gives light, also you don't even have to equip the lantern, you can just leave it on the ground while you equip your normal gear, strategy that unlike that book, works in the caves. Her temperature book might be the most useless of them all, it requires a thermal stone to be made, which you might as well be using instead of that book, the funniest thing is that very rarely will you see a wicker whose playstyle incorporates that book, everyone just uses thermals because they're that good. Those grumble bees are almost useless, sure they can help against weak mobs and weaker bosses, however you shouldn't an issue against those to begin with, against the enemies that actually matter, those bees don't help at all. Lightnings and wildfires aren't an issue as long as your base has the minimum requirements to be considered good, even if it happens outside of your base, you can just unload the area to prevent the fire from spreading, extremely niche book. Slowing down enemies doesn't "more or less translates to increased movement speed in a fight", increased movement speed is a hundred times better, it's not even a comparison. Increased movement speed directly translates to increased DPS everytime because you can afford to attack more and dodge later, increased movement speed directly translates to having an easier time dealing with boss mechanics that require positioning, like getting warbot's legs. So basaically decreasing the enemy's speed doesn't "more or less trasnlate to increased movement speed in a fight". It's only good application is for youtube videos where you see AG stunned for a very long time. Only for youtube videos because no one else does it since AG is already such an easy boss. Turning off dakrness is cute but that's it. Then it loses it's "wicker-only" value once you reach the mid game, so it's only good during the early game when the players are not good at world progression. I don't "act lke she has nothing to offer", I say it because I'm pretty sure it's true, a flimsy excuse would be to say that she's a bigger character than she actually is by mentioning extremely weak and niche items that no one ever uses because, again, everyone knows they're weak and niche. 

The funniest part is that I'm not even a part of that "you guys" that you're trying to pile me with. I'm not a "maxwell main" or whatever group it seems like you're beefing with since you're sayinng stuff like "clinging so hard to her supposedly useless abilities". Those abilities are useless and will remain useless whether she could use them or not, ask for a rework that makes her interesting instead. 

[Bumber64]

19 hours ago, Tranoze said:

This. I think everyone should be able to read at least one of Wicker book. Wilson - science book, Willow - fire book...

I don't think we can expect Wormwood to read anything. He has a limited vocabulary to begin with.

I guess he could use his own powers while simply looking at pictures?

[Nikki Darks]

4 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

I don't think we can expect Wormwood to read anything. He has a limited vocabulary to begin with.

I guess he could use his own powers while simply looking at pictures?

Would be cool if every survivor could read her books like Wurt does, where they'd have their favourite books which increase sanity, and least favourite which decrease it.

Wormwood could see the pretty plant pictures in Horticulture and Silviculture and gain a bunch of sanity from it!

[gaymime]

31 minutes ago, Nikki Darks said:

Would be cool if every survivor could read her books like Wurt does, where they'd have their favourite books which increase sanity, and least favourite which decrease it.

Wormwood could see the pretty plant pictures in Horticulture and Silviculture and gain a bunch of sanity from it!

that actually would be cute and would be a way for wicker to share without encouraging pick n' swap behaviour

[Nikki Darks]

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

that actually would be cute and would be a way for wicker to share without encouraging pick n' swap behaviour

She IS a librarian and librarians lend books

[Tranoze]

4 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I don't think we can expect Wormwood to read anything. He has a limited vocabulary to begin with.

I guess he could use his own powers while simply looking at pictures?

All character in DST except Wes can read, with the proof that they can read words written on signs.

Maybe Wes can silently read but other than that, reading skill is not a problem here.

[Naifxoxo]

On 5/21/2026 at 5:30 AM, SpookyXy said:

How many years have we been having this discussion?

Personally, I think it's cool and thematic fitting that Maxwell can use Wicker's books but there's no denying it has a negative impact on the perception of Wicker as a character (being a swap character for Maxwell). I hope they keep the feature but make the penalties for Maxwell more harsh and don't let him read any affinity books. Maybe Wicker can get something like WX's tinkering skills where the books have stronger effects when cast by her that Maxwell can't access. But if Klei decide to revoke Maxwell's reading privleges all together I won't lose sleep over it.

we found the maxwell abuser and weakerbottom switcher

On 5/21/2026 at 9:03 PM, Ridley said:

 

I don't intend to argue about this, but do you see a contradiction in these two statements?

if maxsmell can read weakerbottom books weakerbottom should read his books too , if lore is mentioned then why does weakerbottom has 250 sanity while maxsmell has only 200 , 

[Bumber64]

On 5/23/2026 at 5:28 AM, Tranoze said:

All character in DST except Wes can read, with the proof that they can read words written on signs.

Doesn't imply understanding. He's lacking in vocabulary for personal use, which means he certainly doesn't have definitions for technical jargon.