A balanced willow update proposal

[Czeraphine]

The general consensus seems to be that willow, out of the 11 playable characters, is one of the worst characters in the game -second only to Wes (and arguably so). Having played almost exclusively as willow for about 400 hours on DST, she honestly is not too terrible. She does, however, feel weak compared to other characters. The argument for why she is weak generally fall under these categories:

*Anything she can do, others can do just as well.

-The resources required crafting a torch is much less than the resources required crafting a lighter when they are most useful (which is the early game). Additionally, the torch also offers a slightly larger light radius.

-Her lighter can cook food in her inventory. Others can simply stoke a fire or place a campfire to cook their food. Thusly, this only makes the lighter's ability to cook food in the early game where the player's stock of resources is not as abundant.

-Freezing when insane is just generally inconvenient outside of summer or early autumn which happens to be a relatively small timeframe.

-Her ability to mitigate fire damage by 50% with a 3-second immunity to fire is relatively pointless. Arguably, this can be used for sanity farming, running into a grid of items on fire and staying for a few seconds. Others choose to simply hug a befriended pigman in the middle of the night for a sum total of the greater amount of sanity than willow would obtain hugging multiple fires for the night.

-Bernie is a waste of inventory space.

|| Actual Pros to playing Willow lie below:

-Her ability to cook food in her inventory allows her to be resourceful on longer treks and adventures away from the base. It allows her to save on logs and grass that otherwise would have been wasted just to cook raw food when crockpot food become exhausted. This alone allows her to easily adopt the nomad playstyle much easier than other characters.

-The recipe for the lighter (1 gold, 3 grass (1 rope), and 3 petals) isn't actually all that expensive. The lighter should not be used as a way to light up the night. That's what a lantern is for. It should be used almost exclusively to set things on fire or cook food in the inventory.

-Bernie is not useless. He does not decay back into his primordial components anymore and can be fixed to full with a single use of a sewing kit. This allows the player to have a 1000hp tank that taunts nightmare in your vicinity. To advanced and intermediate players, dealing with nightmare creatures are trivial. However, it's inconvenient if three terrorbeak are chasing you in the middle of winter while you're freezing and unable to place a fire pit. Bernie can help with that easily. He also helps during boss fights when your sanity dips below the nightmare spawn threshold.

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Actual Suggestions:

-Keep the lighter as is but instead, buff her crafting recipe for both the camp fire and endothermic fire. Instead of requiring 2 logs or 2 nitre and 3 grass, I suggest changing it to 1 log or 1 nitre and 2 grass. Or, allow her, exclusively, to be able to hammer down camp fires or endothermic fires to regain back some otherwise lost resources.

-Increase the maximum threshold of sanity gained while standing next to a fire from +11 to +15 at maximum intensity. This would give players more of an incentive to utilise her sanity regeneration by dropping items on the ground and setting them ablaze. One can argue that she can just hug a Firepit all day or night. That would be unproductive, however. And, still, it would not restore as much sanity as expected as the sanity gained is by the minute. OR allow willow to gain +1 to +1.33 sanity/minute passively while holding Bernie in her inventory. This could counteract her extremely low maximum sanity which is justified by her ability to gain sanity at night.

Assuming a full day-night (8 minutes) cycle consisting of half a day and half of dusk/night, relative to wendy (with 200 max sanity) with a top hat on, as follows is the resulting net sanity gained:

*For wendy:

3.3*(4) + ((-5*.75)+3.3)*4 = 13.2 - 1.8 = 11.4 sanity gained throughout the day while being entirely productive

*For willow: (4 clock segments is equal to 2 minutes, 2 logs is equal to 3 minutes, and the maximum stoke of a firepit is 6 minutes)

3.3*4 + (-5+3.3)*2 + (-5+3.3+11*(3/6))*2 = 13.2 - 1.6 + 7.6 = 19.2 sanity gained throughout the day while being a quarter unproductive with 2 logs stoked in a fire pit.

Or, 3.3*(4) + (-5+3.3)*4 = 13.2 - 6.8 = 6.4 sanity gained being entirely productive.

Wendy's existence then becomes more relevant than willow's sanity buff relative to one's productivity level. Additionally, willow freezes when insane.

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tl:dr;

Make her crafting recipe for a camp fire and endothermic fire pit cost 1 less of each resource, and buff her sanity gain by either increasing her max sanity gain from +11 to +15 when near a fire, or make holding Bernie give +1 to 1.33 sanity gained per minute.

[Ecu]

Honestly, she should really just be reverted back to the way she was in Don't Starve.  Her being able to regain massive amount of sanity while around fire is perfectly fine given we have other characters that also have very good sanity gain (Maxwell/Woodie).

[Czeraphine]

I'd be completely fine with a total revert if it wasn't for the "set things on fire when insane" habit, and the relatively broken infinite lighter/total immunity to fire thing. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get them all back. The immunity to fire, though, can be abused so much that only a few pieces of grass or logs dropped extremely close together can heal insane amounts of sanity in a short duration. 

[HamBatter]

Have Willow be radiant, transferring heat to/from other players. Items can be burned instantly on the lighter for warmth/light(?/sanity if Willow?) but has minor burn damage tradeoff if not Willow/fire-immune.

[Arlesienne]

3 hours ago, Ecu said:

Honestly, she should really just be reverted back to the way she was in Don't Starve.  Her being able to regain massive amount of sanity while around fire is perfectly fine given we have other characters that also have very good sanity gain (Maxwell/Woodie).

But if it's not OP, no removal of Bernie. I keep using the guy on other people. He's a lore item, first and foremost, it's nice to have him in the base.

[GiddyGuy]

2 hours ago, Czeraphine said:

I'd be completely fine with a total revert if it wasn't for the "set things on fire when insane" habit, and the relatively broken infinite lighter/total immunity to fire thing. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get them all back. The immunity to fire, though, can be abused so much that only a few pieces of grass or logs dropped extremely close together can heal insane amounts of sanity in a short duration. 

Don't forget lava pools! Sure you have a risk of dying to the Dfly if you're not careful but still it'd be pretty op for newbies.

[Trenix]

I don't believe Willow is bad and I don't agree with any of these suggestions. My girl plays her all the time and she rarely suffers from sanity because it's way too easy for her to gain it back whenever she needs it. Maybe Wendy is better than Willow at times, but what about during spring or winter where you most likely wont use a top hat. Wendy also does less damage. We can always go back and forth with all this but I do want characters to be more beneficial to each other.

I'd like something such as maybe her making an exclusive fire, a bonfire. Contains more fuel, has a larger light radius, and is hotter. We can even add to her by making her cook faster than others. I like to see something more into the lines of more cooperation and benefits toward the team, rather than herself.

[Sinister_Fang]

Honestly, I feel like the only thing Willow needs is the removal of the freezing when low on sanity. But I can't really think of another con to replace it with.

[HamBatter]

2 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Honestly, I feel like the only thing Willow needs is the removal of the freezing when low on sanity. But I can't really think of another con to replace it with.

Would be boring, but replace with heat resistance and negative freezing resistance.

[Czeraphine]

9 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Honestly, I feel like the only thing Willow needs is the removal of the freezing when low on sanity. But I can't really think of another con to replace it with.

 

I'm definitely for this. In the end though, that would make her too strong since she would be all upsides but better than Wilson in that regard. If her freezing was removed when insane, I'd probably replace it with something along the lines of temporarily reduced maximum health or 25% faster hunger drain.

10 hours ago, Trenix said:

I don't believe Willow is bad and I don't agree with any of these suggestions. My girl plays her all the time and she rarely suffers from sanity because it's way too easy for her to gain it back whenever she needs it. Maybe Wendy is better than Willow at times, but what about during spring or winter where you most likely wont use a top hat. Wendy also does less damage. We can always go back and forth with all this but I do want characters to be more beneficial to each other.

I'd like something such as maybe her making an exclusive fire, a bonfire. Contains more fuel, has a larger light radius, and is hotter. We can even add to her by making her cook faster than others. I like to see something more into the lines of more cooperation and benefits toward the team, rather than herself.

 

Yeah, she's really not that bad. Nightmare fuel farming becomes more annoying than other characters because of her freezing to be honest. Also, for argument's sake, wendy's trade-off is insane ability for multi-target clearing such as hounds, spiders, and bees for the reduced ability to kill non-pack mobs like tentacle and giants. The sanity is just a bonus.
Also, an exclusive fire would be amazing. That's close to my original suggestion which is lowering the cost of the camp fire, but instead, increases the efficiency of one by using a different entity. More fuel than a fire pit sounds a bit powerful though haha. But, it makes sense. Faster cooking would definitely be extremely useful and beneficial to other players and even including yourself.

Along the lines of cooperating and benefiting other players, maybe willow can be lovable while she is holding Bernie and gives off a small sanity aura within a certain radius. Or, maybe the special bonfire itself gives off a sanity aura and has the same stats as a firepit

[Trenix]

2 hours ago, Czeraphine said:

Along the lines of cooperating and benefiting other players, maybe willow can be lovable while she is holding Bernie and gives off a small sanity aura within a certain radius. Or, maybe the special bonfire itself gives off a sanity aura and has the same stats as a firepit

Those are some good ideas too. Anything which benefits multiple players for the multiplayer experience. The sanity aura for the bonfire sounds good, just needs to be minor, nothing too extreme.

[Tosh]

I think giving her a marginally cheaper campfire recipe seems fair. 

What about giving her the ability to cook an entire stack of food at once? Maybe not using her lighter though. Being able to cook an entire stack of green caps in a pinch, or cooking all your monster meat in an instant to turn into eggs is incredibly beneficial. 

[Ecu]

Honestly, she should just be reverted to old Willow, keeping Bernie, and not starting random fires when insane (keeping the freezing).  I disagree with giving her special/cheaper campfires, faster cooking, or anything of  that sort.  The whole idea is she is meant to be about fire, so the original design for her makes the most sense.

I do kind of agree with the idea that random fire spawning is kind of an issue in DST, since it would be too large of a detriment in multiplayer.  However, is fire immunity really all that powerful?

[Arlesienne]

52 minutes ago, Ecu said:

However, is fire immunity really all that powerful?

Nope, because even the unnerfed Willow still overheats. FAST.

[Czeraphine]

7 hours ago, Ecu said:

However, is fire immunity really all that powerful?

 

Even though she overheats still (which is actually a good thing in the winter), total immunity to fire would still be extremely powerful. You can actually stand on top of a tightly dropped stack of items that burn for 30 seconds when placed on the ground and just soak the sanity buff instead of running in and out every 3 seconds. It would probably at least double the sanity gained from doing this method in the first place.

[Kitty Cat Meow]

1 hour ago, Czeraphine said:

Even though she overheats still (which is actually a good thing in the winter), total immunity to fire would still be extremely powerful. You can actually stand on top of a tightly dropped stack of items that burn for 30 seconds when placed on the ground and just soak the sanity buff instead of running in and out every 3 seconds. It would probably at least double the sanity gained from doing this method in the first place.

 

You don't need total fire immunity to pull that off. example here:

Spoiler

 

fun fact: rope burns for 30 seconds on the ground while most other items burn for 15 seconds or less, this is likely due to residual code from early ds, when rope burned for a really long time in firepits.

[Czeraphine]

1 minute ago, Billiscool said:

You don't need total fire immunity to pull that off.

 

Step 1: drop 120 wool in the same exact spot

Step 2: Dread about how you can't do step 1 unless you debug spawn it in.

Step ?: Profit?

[Kitty Cat Meow]

Just now, Czeraphine said:

Step 2: Dread about how you can't do step 1 unless you debug spawn it in.

One can place tons of items in the exact same spot using some clever inventory tricks, no cheating required.

[Czeraphine]

1 minute ago, Billiscool said:

One can place tons of items in the exact same spot using some clever inventory tricks, no cheating required.

I'd really like to know this inventory trick if it does actually exist; I've searched far and wide and I've found nothing on it. Maybe you can enlighten me?

[Kitty Cat Meow]

16 minutes ago, Czeraphine said:

I'd really like to know this inventory trick if it does actually exist; I've searched far and wide and I've found nothing on it. Maybe you can enlighten me?

Here you go.

Spoiler

 

 

[Czeraphine]

2 minutes ago, Billiscool said:

Here you go.

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

This is probably the single most important trick a willow main needs to know! Thank you so much for this!

[JohnWatson]

Why are you mates freaking out and acting like Willow being good at something would be really terrible? That's the point of an upside, to be good at something.

[Arlesienne]

Just now, JohnWatson said:

Why are you mates freaking out and acting like Willow being good at something would be really terrible? That's the point of an upside, to be good at something.

A good point. Somehow few have such qualms about Wigfrid or Wickerbottom, say. Unless Willow is the female counterpart of Wes, that is played for more than her perks.

[JohnWatson]

14 minutes ago, Arlesienne said:

A good point. Somehow have such qualms about Wigfrid or Wickerbottom, say. Unless Willow is the female counterpart of Wes, that is played for more than her perks.

It somewhat bothers me a little that my player encounters list is filled with Wigfrids. However, like you have mentioned, having poor stats does not stop some people from playing the character. I play Wilson and Willow more than any other character, for instance. I don't know why, but it's just preference. 

If people play a character for the sole reason that they are better than others, then there's a balance issue. I do believe that Wes should stay as the only "Hard Mode" character so to keep him unique and distinct from the rest.

[Arlesienne]

2 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

It somewhat bothers me a little that my player encounters list is filled with Wigfrids. However, like you have mentioned, having poor stats does not stop some people from playing the character. I play Wilson and Willow more than any other character, for instance. I don't know why, but it's just preference. 

If people play a character for the sole reason that they are better than others, then there's a balance issue. I do believe that Wes should stay as the only "Hard Mode" character so to keep him unique and distinct from the rest.

People often play Wigfrids, since she's powerful, with pretty much no downside since she starts with meat and is geared towards hunting, which you do pretty much anyway as vegetables are less reliable and worth the hassle. Besides, there may be the element of all her warrioress pose.

I play Wes and Willow, because others don't and I like their characters while being perfectly capable of surviving with them. Similarly Woodie is not the most powerful of characters at the moment - his main role, that is getting wood and rocks fast, is challenged by Maxwell's minions - but I know good players maining him due to his personality.