I Don't Understand All the Walani Hate.

[SirBuizelton]

I really hate to be "That one guy" and going against the grain as far as everyone's opinions of things go, but I have to be honest about this.

 

So, I know I'm super late to the party on the whole Walani thing, and it's mostly because I was very reluctant to die, use the teleportato, or simply cheat the character into being unlocked. So eventually I just decided to bid my world farewell and accept that building the teleportato and leaving was my small victory for then (I really did need to get some new gen anyway to see the changes since the update. Really awesome world gen this time around, so far by the way!)

 

But anyway, the point of this thread is that before I'd unlocked her I saw thread after thread and comment after comment in unrelated threads about Walani and how she is apparently the most dreadful character ever added to Don't Starve or something. And I don't really get it.

 

The idea of having a surfboard you can use right off the bat so you don't have to waste wood on a crappy raft is really nice, especially since it leaves your hands free without even having to use a sail! It's really nice! Not only that, but the surfboard is also functionally a retrievable boat! So you don't have to bumble your way all the way back to where you left your boats when you want to leave an island or could even hop off in an emergency if need be! Same goes for if your more conventional watercraft are about to bite the dust and you need a quick way out, yet it's very balanced because the board has super low health.

 

And if that wasn't cool enough, she gains little bits of sanity every time she rides a wave, which is a nice little bonus and gives even more incentive to actually ride them as you go exploring, might even prove to be a nice little solution for those very dire moments. 

 

I can see how people might not like her because they feel she's too easy or something, alright, fine, maybe she does need more of a downside. But I feel like she's supposed to be a rather simple character with some situationally convenient perks, kind of like willow but a lot better imo. I always thought willow was pretty lame to be honest. 

 

I even thought her quotes and personality is pretty cool and funny, not painfully bland like everyone is saying. The voice being a ukulele was really clever and fun too. Predictable, I guess, but still.

 

I dunno. I'm just scratching my head over the idea that I'm the only one I've seen who doesn't have major issues with her.

[Ackzay]

She's boring.

 

No Late game useful perk.

 

Her wardrobe doesn't match her being a surfer. Unless she's suppose to be a cowgirl surfer.

 

 

[Mday]

That surfboard of hers allow her to explore the map without as much support from a established base. If that means finding yaarctopus first before setting up shop I'll say it is a very strong late game perk. Most character won't be able to trade with yaarctopus as often simply because the base isn't any where near yaarctopus.

[rezecib]

I don't think she has any major issues. She's just really underwhelming.

 

The surfboard is useful for the first couple of days, until you build a real boat. Once you build a real boat, there's really no reason to use the surfboard. It's not useful for the 1 sanity per wave (when you could instead make a sand castle or surf 'n' turf or get brainy matter), it's slower, and it's less durable. The advantage of being able to pick it up and take it with you to the other side of the island is negated by how slow it is compared to a real boat with a sail. Any time you lost backtracking to your boat is made up by the improved travel time.

 

And everything else about her is just a small numerical tweak that's hardly noticeable at all.

 

I think she needs some of her perks to be made stronger and to have a drawback. Maybe... make the current surfboard be the "borrowed surfboard", and she can later craft her custom surfboard, which is as fast as an armored boat with a cloth sail, but is costly to build (maybe requiring giant drops that haven't been added yet or something), increases the sanity gain per wave, and doesn't lose durability over time (only from taking damage directly). Then she'd need a real drawback, like having substantial additional hunger loss when wet or something.

 

I'm sure there are better ideas out there, but the main point is that she just doesn't have a real strength and a real weakness. It just feels like a little flavor and some unnoticeable tweaks.

[mitboy]

She is... fine, but I want Surf to be aviable for all characters. 

 

I also don't like that 3 of her perks are based on sainity: Faster drying, just general chillness, and sanity from waves.

I like big stomach and faster starving, though.

[Codsworth]

Well if you ask me, I say I didn't like her because for me she has not a strong "personality" like the other characters. Every other character have perks that makes them completely unique, sometimes even changing the entire gameplay stile (cof* cof* wendy cof* webber cof*) but I don't see this in Walani, So she got an surfboard right but what makes her special? what reason would I have to pick her instead of some character with way more funny playstyles?

 

I don't think she is weak or strong, Wilson is an "easy" character but is still the most used among the expert players, What I think is that she lacks some more distinct perks, or an more unique gameplay...

 

But again that's my opinion.

[CameoAppearance]

I also don't like that 3 of her perks are based on sainity: Faster drying, just general chillness, and sanity from waves.

I like big stomach and faster starving, though.

 

...do you also have this problem with Maxwell? Or Wendy, for that matter, since that's all she has going for her without Abigail?

[mitboy]

...do you also have this problem with Maxwell? Or Wendy, for that matter, since that's all she has going for her without Abigail?

I never really played Maxwell. Just few in-game days.

Wendy seems fine because of Abigail.

[TwitcheryGamer]

...do you also have this problem with Maxwell? Or Wendy, for that matter, since that's all she has going for her without Abigail?

 

 

I never really played Maxwell. Just few in-game days.

Wendy seems fine because of Abigail.

 

Wendy is my favourite character mainly because I suck at keeping my sanity. I don't know, I just do.

Plus, Abigail is helpful. I never really fight anything without help from other creatures anyway (Unless it's a spider or Catcoon or Volt Goat), so her lower damage doesn't even matter to me. Oh gee, a few extra hits to kill things. What a huge con...

[Codsworth]

Wendy is my favourite character mainly because I suck at keeping my sanity. I don't know, I just do.

Plus, Abigail is helpful. I never really fight anything without help from other creatures anyway (Unless it's a spider or Catcoon or Volt Goat), so her lower damage doesn't even matter to me. Oh gee, a few extra hits to kill things. What a huge con...

 

Abigail is one of the most userful "combat tools" in my opnion, wendy's lower damage only matters early where you can't kill a rabit or bird in a single blow.

 

 

And again i'm going off topic, oh geez!

[CameoAppearance]

Yeah, I didn't mean that as an insult to Wendy or Maxwell, it was more that I didn't see what was wrong with having some variety of resistance to sanity loss as a strength. I have difficulty keeping Maxwell alive after using up his night armour or if I foolishly try to fight something while wearing a backpack, but I like playing as Wendy. I do feel the damage debuff when I'm fighting, since I fight things by myself/with only Chester accompanying me fairly often, but I can work around that even without Abigail and having her around is very helpful so long as she doesn't Leeroy Jenkins an entire valley of spider dens.

 

Back on topic: I like Walani, and the surfboard is really handy. I do think her perks and drawbacks are a little bland, though. Partly this is just me being a fan of novelty and preferring characters who require you to tackle everyday survival from a different angle like Webber and Wigfrid, or Wendy and Maxwell. Still, though, even the characters who play similarly to Wilson most of the time, like Wickerbottom and arguably Woodie depending on how much time you spend in beaver form, have somewhat more unique strengths. Being able to make cheap, fast, hands-free boats that you can stow in your inventory or a chest is nice, but it doesn't really stand out as much as Wickerbottom's magic books or the Werebeaver.

[tHe_silent_H]

My main problem with Walani is that she has nothing for vanilla/RoG, where the integration comes, and you start walani off in a vinilla/RoG world, you gonna have a bad time.(compared to say, willow). since you have no real advantages( even Wilson has his beard hair and balanced stats

[SirBuizelton]

I don't think she has any major issues. She's just really underwhelming.

 

The surfboard is useful for the first couple of days, until you build a real boat. Once you build a real boat, there's really no reason to use the surfboard. It's not useful for the 1 sanity per wave (when you could instead make a sand castle or surf 'n' turf or get brainy matter), it's slower, and it's less durable. The advantage of being able to pick it up and take it with you to the other side of the island is negated by how slow it is compared to a real boat with a sail. Any time you lost backtracking to your boat is made up by the improved travel time.

 

And everything else about her is just a small numerical tweak that's hardly noticeable at all.

 

I think she needs some of her perks to be made stronger and to have a drawback. Maybe... make the current surfboard be the "borrowed surfboard", and she can later craft her custom surfboard, which is as fast as an armored boat with a cloth sail, but is costly to build (maybe requiring giant drops that haven't been added yet or something), increases the sanity gain per wave, and doesn't lose durability over time (only from taking damage directly). Then she'd need a real drawback, like having substantial additional hunger loss when wet or something.

 

I'm sure there are better ideas out there, but the main point is that she just doesn't have a real strength and a real weakness. It just feels like a little flavor and some unnoticeable tweaks.

 

I agree with you on a lot of these things, but I slightly disagree with the surfboard being completely useless once you have a regular boat. I can see it being a very useful thing to have around as a very inexpensive way to abandon ship, go retrieve ships that are too damaged to safely ride to shore, it's easy to have spares waiting on a touchstone island, and it's particularly useful for the island that I currently live on in my walani save, where there's a shoal with some shallow water, like a lake of sorts, completely surrounded by land, so it's nice to have a surf board sitting in there so I don't have to waste materials making a whole boat or even a crappy raft.

 

It's situational and strategic and I like that. It's a lot more interesting to me than "Congratulations, you have an infinite torch" character whose bonus is completely null by the time you have a decent amount of sticks and grass, and then all you have left that's significant (aside from abusing the fire sanity) is the major drawback, which is random basefires at low sanity if you don't have an ice flingo.

 

Also, I love the idea of her being able to build upgraded versions of her boards.

[SirBuizelton]

My main problem with Walani is that she has nothing for vanilla/RoG, where the integration comes, and you start walani off in a vinilla/RoG world, you gonna have a bad time.(compared to say, willow). since you have no real advantages( even Wilson has his beard hair and balanced stats

 

But.. You can't even pick Walani if you're starting up a RoG save. Why would you even want to?

 

What does RoG even have to do with a Shipwrecked character I don't understand.

 

There's probably more talk about RoG on the Shipwrecked forum than there is that's actually about Shipwrecked at this point and it's driving me insane.

[SirBuizelton]

Yeah, I didn't mean that as an insult to Wendy or Maxwell, it was more that I didn't see what was wrong with having some variety of resistance to sanity loss as a strength. I have difficulty keeping Maxwell alive after using up his night armour or if I foolishly try to fight something while wearing a backpack, but I like playing as Wendy. I do feel the damage debuff when I'm fighting, since I fight things by myself/with only Chester accompanying me fairly often, but I can work around that even without Abigail and having her around is very helpful so long as she doesn't Leeroy Jenkins an entire valley of spider dens.

 

Back on topic: I like Walani, and the surfboard is really handy. I do think her perks and drawbacks are a little bland, though. Partly this is just me being a fan of novelty and preferring characters who require you to tackle everyday survival from a different angle like Webber and Wigfrid, or Wendy and Maxwell. Still, though, even the characters who play similarly to Wilson most of the time, like Wickerbottom and arguably Woodie depending on how much time you spend in beaver form, have somewhat more unique strengths. Being able to make cheap, fast, hands-free boats that you can stow in your inventory or a chest is nice, but it doesn't really stand out as much as Wickerbottom's magic books or the Werebeaver.

 

I agree with you on so many things here if not just everything. I just want people to consider this: Maybe Walani's purpose isn't to be another extreme sort of character. Maybe she's really all about being an accessible, fun, fairly casual character designed for more relaxed playstyles.

 

I know a lot of people here on the forums have been at this game for a long time and they want new challenges, they want extremes, they want to be overwhelmed by characters that just turn the game completely upside down and make you rethink everything you do. I'm totally on board with that too. I'd love to see characters like that, makes the game so much more fun for me. But maybe they're not the best thing for our first unlockable SW character to be. There are players out there who might want to play more to this tune, and that's cool by me too. And hopefully as characters come out, their skillcaps and the outrageousness of their perks will scale with the time it takes to unleash them upon the shipwrecked world via experience points.

 

Some people might prefer to be eased into a lot of the new concepts they'll be finding in shipwrecked, and who knows. Maybe for those people, when they try the normal characters and just keep finding themselves dying a lot, and when they're near their wits end, they see that they've unlocked this character, give her a try, and it's enough to give them a firmer understanding of some of the mechanics and therefore a lot more enjoyment.

[Mday]

I've just begin my first Walani.game. At day 14 I've found the Slot Machine, Yaarctopus, Woodenthing (hence gears), the location of most island.

 

So here is how I did it:

 

1) Hunger management :

When I found those 10+ berry bushes, I pick all the berries. I also eat a few monster meat and egg etc when I come accross it. However I never have to actively look for food. Hunger is just never a issue to me.

 

2) Exploring:

I spent my first 3 days getting gold/rock/flint and pre build my alchemy engine.  I got unlucky with the amount of twigs I got before I built my science machine. Therefore I get my backpack very late (like day 9 or so at the slot machine island). After I've unlock alchemy engine I pack myself with 20 logs and start surfing right away. That is enough logs to keep me going for the rest of the days. As you can see I still have 6 logs in my inventory.

 

Once I have find the islands with tons of berries I stopped exploring the land. That happens to be the same island where I find most of my gold. My goal is to find Yaarctopus asap so there is no point staying on land unless I needed grass/twigs. I did stop by this island later on for another berry harvest.

 

I got lucky with the slot machine. Spent 10 + coins on it and got a miner hat and 5 logs that is very useful. I forget to grab the net by mistake. If I did take the net with me I could have catch 10 bioluminescences. The miner hat at 65% has never been refueled. Surfing with a touch isn't as bad as it sound. I rarely get hit by a wave. The key is to always surf at the direction where the wave is heading.

 

After using the slot machine and ate 2 monster meat, it is evening and my sanity was at 35. I jumped on my surfboard and keep exploring at night. 2 days later my sanity is at 200 again. +1 sanity/ ride is just OP.

 

The row boat/armoured boat cost a lot more to build in the first place. After that in order to maintain it you have to unlock boat repair kit, which cost 6 grass 2 string and 2 board. It is just way more efficient to use the surboard. Similarly in order to sail at night you need either a sail, boat loatern or miner hat. These does takes awhile to make and maintain. Less time cutting down trees means less time fighting snake and etc on land and more time exploring at sea.

 

The surboard isn't the fastest but it is fast enough that I can to get rid of the sword fish. Sea hounds can keep up with me. I get back to shore, pick up my surfboard and launched at the other side of the island, the hounds are leave behind.

 

It will seems that rain can be an issue for Walani while at sea. That early shower at day 11 brings my wetness to 45 from 0.

[tHe_silent_H]

But.. You can't even pick Walani if you're starting up a RoG save. Why would you even want to?

 

What does RoG even have to do with a Shipwrecked character I don't understand.

 

There's probably more talk about RoG on the Shipwrecked forum than there is that's actually about Shipwrecked at this point and it's driving me insane.

 

(I'm referring to the future of SW) It's getting connected to RoG ala caves style , you start in ROG world then travel to SW, have fun playing walani in RoG till you find the portal, or if you can start in SW have fun in the late-game RoG world with no(real) advantages.

 

also lets compare character specific fight tactics against overwhelimg odds

Wilson: meat effigies for rez, so you can keep going at them(sustained thru balanced stats.

Willow: LIGHT EVERYTHING ON FIRE!

Wolfgang/Wigfreid/WX-78: manmode it with Superior stats

Wendy: Abbigail, Sick 'em

Wes: balloon them to death (but will probs die anyway:P)

Webber: Spider army

Woody: wearbeaver mode

Waxwell: shadow clones

Walani:  ???...die cus you have no advantages and worse stats

[Mday]

(I'm referring to the future of SW) It's getting connected to RoG ala caves style , you start in ROG world then travel to SW, have fun playing walani in RoG till you find the portal, or if you can start in SW have fun in the late-game RoG world with no(real) advantages.

 

also lets compare character specific fight tactics against overwhelimg odds

Wilson: meat effigies for rez, so you can keep going at them(sustained thru balanced stats.

Willow: LIGHT EVERYTHING ON FIRE!

Wolfgang/Wigfreid/WX-78: manmode it with Superior stats

Wendy: Abbigail, Sick 'em

Wes: balloon them to death (but will probs die anyway:P)

Webber: Spider army

Woody: wearbeaver mode

Waxwell: shadow clones

Walani:  ???...die cus you have no advantages and worse stats

Walani can make a surfboard and just run away.

[tHe_silent_H]

Walani can make a surfboard and just run away.

 

Makes surfboard with non-existant shells against deerclops, proceeds to place on ground and go nowhere(R0G/V)

[_Q_]

She should be able to craft fast surfboard with a sail for mid game. Other than that she is quite ok, I'm on day 180 with her.

[Mday]

Makes surfboard with non-existant shells against deerclops, proceeds to place on ground and go nowhere(R0G/V)

Isn't she in SW?

[tHe_silent_H]

Isn't she in SW?

 

read the context of my posts (Post shipwreck integration with RoG/V), if SW was a standalone, this wouldn't be that much a problem, but we all know this isn't the case(Walani was probably designed/conceptualized when SW was still going to be standalone)

[Mday]

But

(I'm referring to the future of SW) It's getting connected to RoG ala caves style , you start in ROG world then travel to SW

Right?
It make sense that if Walani don't wana fight a deerclops she can just jump into whatever the thing is and surf in the SW world?

 

[tHe_silent_H]

But

Right?

It make sense that if Walani don't wana fight a deerclops she can just jump into whatever the thing is and surf in the SW world?

 

you have to find the portal first

[Mday]

you have to find the portal first

Walani have at least 20 days to do that then.

Deerclops don't just come in and visit on day 1 winter anyway. (I wish he would.)