My Experience Playing Wes/Hopes For His Skill Tree

[GrapeVruit]

Let me just start this thread with this: I love playing Wes. No, this isn't some sort of a joke, a late April Fools prank, or someone typing this up whilst I'm being held against my will, I genuinely find his gameplay and character to be quite endearing. In an era where a lot of the cast has access to powerful abilities, 2x damage, fire bending, teleportation, easy healing/revives, AoE attacks, or powerful minions, it's really refreshing to play as someone who doesn't have that luxury.

His stats are 75 across the board, he does 25% less damage, takes longer to chop trees, mine rocks, and hammer structures, can't speak to alert of upcoming dangers or to tend to plants, and despite being one of the lucky few to learn the dark arts of Balloonamancy, most of his character exclusive crafts aren't that great. While there's a lot of negatives going on in Wes' kit, a good chunk of these can be twisted into something good. While his low hunger and sanity mean he's more susceptible to starvation and insanity respectively, he also doesn't need as much hunger or sanity restoring items to get back in the safe zone. All it takes is picking 3 flowers, eating a single cooked green cap, or fighting a nightmare creature, and you'll be back to being sane. This makes Wes one of the best characters when it comes to sanity manipulation, and during day-to-day survival, insanity wasn't something I ever struggled with. The same also applies to his hunger, as even things with low hunger value like berries, vegetables, and most 37.5 hunger crock pot foods, will fill you up incredibly fast, making food management pretty easy. While he’s a much less efficient worker, tools last much longer in the mime’s hands, which also applies to weapons, allowing Wes to achieve the same damage as characters while outputting it at a lower rate. And for certain weapons, like the Thulecite Club, he can actually use it more efficiently due to having extra chances to spawn shadow tentacles!  Though, having 75 health isn't something you can just brush off...which leads me into combat!

Because Wes has the combined physique of a wooden toothpick and a piece of bubble gum, and hits as hard as wet pool noodle, combat encounters become much more deadly. Even fighting a couple of spiders can spell doom for you if you're not careful. However, his weakness in combat is one of the reasons that makes him so fun, IMO. Unlike other characters, you can't always put on some armor and go in swinging at anything that comes in your way. Sometimes you have to change your approach, use the tools that the game provides, and consider which battles are worth taking, something that Kevin Forbes envisioned for the combat loop in Don't Starve all the way back in its beta. 

There have been times where I’ve used rock lobsters to clear out certain parts of the ruins, explosives to make certain raid bosses much more squishy, or an insane amount of killer bees to deal with Crab King. While some may see the latter two as cheese strats, with DST being a sandbox survival game, there’s a multitude of ways to go about solving a certain problem, and something that’s called cheese implies it’s a strategy the developers didn’t intend for you to do, IMO. And for the times where hand-to-hand combat is a necessity, you get some of the most adrenaline inducing combat the game has to offer. These fights go on much longer compared to other characters, and against certain bosses, their fights become incredibly tense. And once you down one of these guys as Wes, you get a rush of dopamine coursing through your body no other character could hope to replicate. I remember beating CC late at night in my college dorm room and screaming at the top of my lungs once it fell. I’d say that right there is the hidden upside to playing Wes, that and the fact he has the best skin sets in the entire game. 

 

Really my only problem with Wes is how he fares in multiplayer, as having a character that’s solely designed to be mostly downsides, isn’t a good teammate to have when you’re working together with other people. While he has some helpful perks, like drawing away aggro from hounds, his balloon hat having lightning insulation, and the balloon vest preventing players from losing health from drowning, they’re things that don’t come up often enough to always be useful, and that’s what I want them to look at in Wes’ skill tree, giving him perks that make him more useful on a team while not providing much, if not anything for himself. Not giving him perks that make him harder, not perks that are entirely useless, perks that give his teammates an incredible amount of support. Klei has already established in the lore that Wes’ bad luck gives others great fortune, so maybe having a Wes around could buff the drop chances of rare items? Maybe play into his role as an entertainer, have him give buffs to his team like extra movement speed, work efficiency, or attack speed? The idea being that Wes’ antics puts the survivors in a good mood that gives them a boost. These ideas aren’t perfect, but the idea is there at least. Instead of being a joke, turn Wes into the ultimate support character, someone who provides great benefit to others while not gaining much in return. That way, he wouldn’t be seen as a detriment on most teams while also still being challenging to those that pilot him. I really look forward to the day where people go from saying “Oh, it’s Wes…” to “Oh, it’s Wes!” whenever he joins a pub.

[fivedo6859]

I think the point about Wes forcing players to use more of the game’s systems is actually really true. A lot of characters can brute force encounters, while Wes makes positioning, preparation, and resource use feel way more meaningful. The support focused skill tree idea also sounds much healthier for multiplayer than simply buffing his stats.

 

[gaymime]

4 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

-snip-

thankyou<3 i often have to gird myself when "wes" is in the title because so many people use him as an excuse to be cruel in public without much(if any) pushback. i greatly appreciate your take on the topic.

[GrapeVruit]

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

thankyou<3 i often have to gird myself when "wes" is in the title because so many people use him as an excuse to be cruel in public without much(if any) pushback. i greatly appreciate your take on the topic.

No problem! I just want him to be better in a group setting and less of a joke. Like, we've all heard of the "Wes is bad joke" so many times that we have to be sick of it now, right?

[Ridley]

I like a character with a low sanity threshold, but how does a smaller stomach help with food management? Aren't you having to eat less efficient foods more frequently?

I like the Wes as a team player idea.

[GrapeVruit]

2 minutes ago, Ridley said:

I like a character with a low sanity threshold, but how does a smaller stomach help with food management? Aren't you having to eat less efficient foods more frequently?

I like the Wes as a team player idea.

Maybe I used the wrong words, but when I meant easier food management I meant that as Wes being able to survive off of scraps, or foods that restore less hunger. I found that I didn't need to worry about hunting or making high hunger dishes since I had a much smaller stomach, so not having to worry about that saved me a ton of time. In my current run, I've barely used the crockpot and instead have been sustaining myself with corn, as it restores 25 hunger, has a fast eating animation, and doesn't require any prep, just pick it out of the ground and eat.

[gaymime]

1 hour ago, Ridley said:

I like a character with a low sanity threshold, but how does a smaller stomach help with food management? Aren't you having to eat less efficient foods more frequently?

I like the Wes as a team player idea.

well wes can quite easily survive on seeds, they dont fill almost any of the other characters' stomachs but for him they are as filling(percentage-wise) as berries are for others and most people dont bother with seeds so they are readily abundant. stuff like that