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The Firestarter - Overpowered?


Varick
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Alert! IF YOU ARE NEW, BEWARE. THAR BE SPOILERS BELOW! (Can someone tell me how to do that sneaky, hide the spoilers with an expandable link thing?)

I know that there is another thread that discusses all of the characters and says who's best - this thread is specifically about whether or not Willow is overpowered. =)

I'm a bit new at this, but so far, I get the feeling that Willow The Firestarter is a bit overpowered, especially compared with the other characters. My first time playing with her I lasted 28 days and only died because I committed suicide to see starving would actually be like (other times I'd died in fights). With Wilson and Wendy I found the game to be much more difficult, both in the very beginning and a decent ways into the game, as they are much less forgiving characters.

To be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. The other characters still have draws to them, and if I feel like going for a challenge, I can choose them. However, I am naturally drawn to Willow since I know the game will be easier with her.

Here's what I think of their comparative strengths and weaknesses (that I know of).

Willow - The clear winner as far as surviving (or shall I say, not starving?) goes.

Biggest strengths:

1) Doesn't take fire damage

2) Doesn't die at night

Biggest weakness:

1) Can't grow a beard

Verdict: Her two strengths make her an extremely forgiving character. In fact, it's almost impossible to die with her unless you get into a very stupid fight or do something even more stupid with food. Her weakness would doesn't effect the game one bit - the meat effigy is only useful if, y'know, she could actuall die. However, it certainly does suck not to be able to grow a beard. Maybe a high research item could be researching a grow a beard formula???

Wilson - About the same as Wendy

Strengths:

1) That fly beard

2) Have you seen that beard????

Weaknesses:

1) Takes fire damage/dies at night without a light

Verdict: Pretty clear. His beard may make him an awesome character to play in general, but Willow is way easier.

Wendy - Same as Wilson

Strengths:

1) Ghostie, ghostie! Boooo!

Weaknesses:

1) Fire damage/dies at night without light

2) Ghostie, ghostie, stay away! You hurt, dernit!

Verdict: Abigail the Ghost (interesting she doesn't have a 'W' name, maybe that's why she died???) may be nice, but you can get tons of pigs without risking walking into them and getting hurt on accident, and they're reliable. Besides the fun creepy factor, Wendy loses.

I haven't unlocked any more than that yet, so we'll see if my opinion changes. In any case, so far Willow kicks butt as far as staying alive easily as a beginner goes.

Now, obviously this could change easily with updates:

1) Maybe it'll become way easier to accidentally burn forests down with Willow? Maybe, and this would be one of my suggestions, Willow starting a random fire could nearby ground, and that ground has to get a lot of manure to revive. Nothing can grow on that ground until it is fixed.

2) Other characters could gain more powers (or might have ones I don't know of yet). What happens when you bring Wendy into a grave with Abigail? Can you find Abigail's grave? (DON'T ANSWER THOSE QUESTIONS =P) Could having an epic beard make Wilson get on easy terms with the beefalo somehow? What kinda cool benefits could come from that? Maybe Willow's insanity meter (whenever that arrives) ticks down faster than most?

Small sidenote - I'm very excited to see how winter and insanity meter come into play. I'd expect Wendy's insanity meter to drop a ton every time she sees Abigail. Or maybe the longer she goes without her it drops, since company keeps her sane? In the winter, will Willow get another huge boost thanks to her firestarting skills against the cold? Will Wilson's epic beard protect him from the cold? Can Wilson make a fake Tom Hanks out of volleyball to keep his sanity?

Anyway, I'll shut up now and leave it to the community. What do you all think?

Edited by Varick
Grammar mistake
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you forgot to compare her to wolfgang the best character.

because

200 HP

200 belly

and he hits harder.

Hey, thanks for the comment, good to know what the last guy is. I didn't forget him though, I haven't unlocked him yet, haha. And even with that, he would still die quickly at night, making him worse than Willow, though a much closer match than anyone else. Chances are you could find a patch of fireflies before dying, but it would still be much more difficult than with Willow.

Try this, [noparse]

X

[/noparse].

Thanks! Done!

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Hey, thanks for the comment, good to know what the last guy is. I didn't forget him though, I haven't unlocked him yet, haha. And even with that, he would still die quickly at night, making him worse than Willow, though a much closer match than anyone else. Chances are you could find a patch of fireflies before dying, but it would still be much more difficult than with Willow.

Thanks! Done!

the thing is you just take 2 wood and some grass to live though the night.

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Willow is resource efficient but I think you overstate her benefits. She starts fires under her so you don't have to use 4 grass and a twig every night, or a couple logs. On the other hand if you try to depend on that to actually walk around at night your going to have to be really careful because if you get too near a tree, a blade of grass, wilsons beard . . . boom! Fire. It's also not a constant light, more of a chance to let you light a campfire if your careless.

Wilson's beard is so cheap I never use him as a meat effigy equals an extra life, which in a survival game is about as soft core as you can get. If I hear your playing wilson I don't care how many days you "survived" because I have to assume you revived a lot. Which isn't fair as wilson players who don't use the effigy get a bad reputation anyway.

Wendy on the other hand looks useless. I tried her out but . . . I don't travel about at night so her ghost companion just sits there in camp doing NOTHING. If only that ghost gave off light or stayed around during the day . . .

Wolfgang is a beast. I always am at a toss up between whether I want to play him or willow. Willow is better if your trying to conserve resources and farm, and wilson may be better for hunting since he's so strong and has such a huge stomach.

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Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I'm looking forward to trying out Wolfgang now, haha. And yeah, I suppose that Willow seemed so useful to me because I'm a bit careless. I often forget to make sure I have the right materials on me to make a quick light when I'm out resource gathering, and in a pinch her light is a lifesaver. If, however, you're not silly like I am, then you probably did much better. So I suppose it really depends on your game style, which makes me a lot happier about the comparative strengths and weaknesses,

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Seems to me that the devs are far more interested in the characters having unique looks and original, creative, and/or non-overlapping "powers" vs. trying to be "balanced". Who cares about character balance in a leaderboard-less, non-multiplayer game anyway? Picking a character should be about liking the look/aesthetic of the character, or being intrigued by their special power(s), and not about picking the "best" character.

If anything, I'd argue that maybe they should scale Wolfgang back a bit, since his combat and hunger advantages make him the clear-cut best character at the moment (from a mechanics standpoint), overshadowing the interesting personalities of Wilson, Willow, and Wendy.

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While I find the firestarter ability handy, I would not consider it overpowered. It only takes a minute or so to collect enough resources for several nights worth of fire. It saves some resources and thus time, but that is all it effectively does. It also brings the risk of setting things on fire with it. If I compare firestarting to Wilson his beard for resurrection and Wolfgang his beast status, I honestly think it might be slightly underpowered since it only saves a few resources while adding a risk.

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i think the characters are also a kind of difficulty setting in a way, since you START with wilson and his effigies, think of that as easy mode, and from there, you can gradually unlock the others, for various effects on gameplay.

regarding wendy's ghost twin sister abigail, she's a rather effective mob deterrent, ultimately she can aggro mobs and kill them if they run into her. helps when the hounds come at night, and you aren't prepared.

also, I regularly play as wilson( only other char unlocked is willow) and I don't use effigies because my game crashes when they trigger for me, leading to permadeath anyway, and no exp gain to boot.

Though my bug thread says it's been fixed, i'm not sure if I'm brave enough to test that out just yet, I wanna get to day 65-80 first just so I can unlock the others first before I start tinkering with effigies again.

ALSO, using a tent lets you swap between unlocked chars, so you can technically make a bunch of effigies with wilson and then switch to another char and still be able to use the effigies. so ultimately, using the effigies is a personal preference.

Edited by qwerm
oh god, I love deer jerky!
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