Woodie's Rework

[GMDApple]

Woodie is one of my favorite characters, but he is basically replaced by Maxwell in terms of chopping trees, and only has a slight advantage at getting more logs due to the fact that he needs to eat them to not become a Werebeaver. I used the same seed in the same area, and these are the results of how many logs I got for each character at chopping trees.

Wilson (and other characters): 18 Logs

Woodie: 21 Logs

Maxwell (with one shadow): 24 Logs.

While it may seem like Maxwell is only slightly better at chopping trees than Woodie, let's not forget the fact that he can have more shadows, meaning he can get even more trees chopped down. In addition to this he spawns with 6 nightmare fuel, meaning that he can get 3 Axe Shadows from the start. These are the changes I would make to Woodie in order to make him still be the tree-chopper, but not just be that.

• Hitting a tree reduces the wood meter by 1 instead of 1.5
• Treeguards have a 4% chance to spawn when Woodie chops a tree instead of 1.33%
• Has a x2 damage multiplier against treeguards.
• Living logs restore 60 in the log meter instead of 50, and boards restore 45 wood meter instead of 15
• Eating cut grass removes 15 from the log meter instead of adding 1 to it
• Isn't bothered by the cold - Woodie suffers the damaging effects of freezing at -5 degrees (game unit) instead of 0 degrees (game unit)
• The werebeaver deals 42.5 damage, and has 75% damage reduction.
• Werebeaver has a sanity modifier of -75/min
• Can craft a wooden amulet at a tier 1 magic station, which prevents him from turning into a werebeaver (via making it so that your log meter doesn't drop if you chop a tree). The amulet cannot turn Woodie from a werebeaver back into human form. The crafting recipe is 1 living log, 3 wood, and 2 nightmare fuel. It lasts for 8 minutes (or one in-game day)

These changes would make Woodie a better character to play as. It keeps him as the role of a lumberjack, but allows him to be used in combat as well via werebeaver and damage vs treeguards.

Edits:

V2 - Removed extra log drop and changed werebeaver's sanity drain. Also fixed board's wood meter restoration.

[Felix-The-Ghost]

Though the tree guard damage would be welcomed, similar to how he melts poison birchnut trees, I think Woodie is pretty good considering he can basically choose how much sanity he wants to have (lower with beaver, higher by planting pinecones, etc) unlike Maxwell and isn't frail like him either. He also can gnaw out the stumps for free unlike Maxwell and can break boulders early game without access to flint. I could go on, but point is I enjoy him as is. That said I would appreciate if both forms were highly resistant to freezing since he is a Canadian lumberjack, it makes sense in that regard as well as a game perspective of having inverse resistance from another character (Willow)

[pedregales]

I don't think Woodie needs that many things. His main issue is how difficult it is to maintain and manage werebeaver and human form, specially for events like the full moon. This is why the idea of the amulet that let's you stay human Woodie is amazingly good in my opinion, I also like the idea of Woodie losing log meter by eating grass. With both you could be human Woodie during full moon, or even beaver Woodie whenever you want without having to wait for it to happen. For other ideas I liked, I would change the following:

Quote

 

• Living logs restore 75 wood meter, and instead of 50, and boards restore 60 wood meter instead of 15
• The werebeaver deals 42.5 damage, and has 75% damage reduction.
• Change to werebeaver's sanity drain. It starts at -30 sanity/minute but the rate a which sanity decreases, increases every 1 seconds (ex: after 60 seconds the werebeaver will lose 90 sanity a minute)

 

To:

• Living logs still restore 50 wood meter, but boards restore 30 wood meter instead of 15. I am guessing the reason for boards to only restore 15 instead of 40 (what 4 regular logs would restore) is because of space convenience (you can have 2 stacks of logs in just one stack of boards), so it is a sort of balance, but is too harsh. This way you are losing out a log, but you are still getting space efficiency. Also, living logs restoring 50 is enough, even though they are used for a handful of important items, more often than not you will still have a ton to spare after the first year (if not before), specially if there is a Maxwell or Woodie in the team.
• Werebeaver deals 34 damage, and has 75% damage absortion. Considering the werebeaver has 10% extra speed and is not losing durability on weapons, this might be a bit too good for combat; though I might be wrong because there is no way to restore health as a werebeaver...
• As werebeaver woodie has -75 sanity/minute. This way, he gets insane quickly (around 2 and a half minutes, more or less), but not too quickly. The difference is not that great anyway, but is something.

I would also add:

• Lucy chops trees in half the hits a regular axe does; so, instead of 5 / 10 / 15 hits, Lucy would chop in 3(from 2.5) /  5 / 8(from 7.5) hits. Right now, Lucy gives nothing to Woodie because the faster chopping is an inherent perk of him, she is just an infinite durability axe and that's it. With this Woodie may be able to compete with Maxwell as a tree chopper: the thing he is supposed to do best, and Lucy feels more relevant.

[Felix-The-Ghost]

On the subject of werebeaver I think the meager combat abilities and constant sanity strain make the form weak, so I'm in favor of more damage output/resistance. Maybe beaver form should dig stumps faster or at least lower the "wind-up" animation time for when he's biting stuff.

[GMDApple]

8 hours ago, pedregales said:

I would also add:

• Lucy chops trees in half the hits a regular axe does; so, instead of 5 / 10 / 15 hits, Lucy would chop in 3(from 2.5) /  5 / 8(from 7.5) hits. Right now, Lucy gives nothing to Woodie because the faster chopping is an inherent perk of him, she is just an infinite durability axe and that's it. With this Woodie may be able to compete with Maxwell as a tree chopper: the thing he is supposed to do best, and Lucy feels more relevant.

Woodie already does this.

8 hours ago, pedregales said:

Living logs still restore 50 wood meter, but boards restore 30 wood meter instead of 15. I am guessing the reason for boards to only restore 15 instead of 40 (what 4 regular logs would restore) is because of space convenience (you can have 2 stacks of logs in just one stack of boards), so it is a sort of balance, but is too harsh. This way you are losing out a log, but you are still getting space efficiency. Also, living logs restoring 50 is enough, even though they are used for a handful of important items, more often than not you will still have a ton to spare after the first year (if not before), specially if there is a Maxwell or Woodie in the team.

I think the problem with my thinking is that I confused the fact that logs restore 10 on the beaver meter instead of 15. However I still prefer that boards restore more than 15 (40 in this case) as it is basically crafted with 4 logs, and you're better off bringing 20 logs instead of 10 boards at the moment.

[pedregales]

@GMDApple After reading the wiki: you are right, he does chop in less swings, I thought he only did it faster. My bad xD. Welp, there is nothing to be done for his wood gathering abilities...

[Felix-The-Ghost]

Sounds like you aren't that familiar with him; Lucy isn't just infinite durability, try chopping with a luxury axe and you'll see the difference for sure.

[pedregales]

On 27/11/2017 at 2:26 AM, Felix-The-Ghost said:

Sounds like you aren't that familiar with him; Lucy isn't just infinite durability, try chopping with a luxury axe and you'll see the difference for sure.

You are right, I am no familiar with him. I have tried all characters of DST a few times, but Woodie, along with Webber and Wes, is a character I always avoid because of that lack of control of his (as for Webber, I just don't like the character too much, and Wes is simply hardcore Wilson, I only take him if I want a little extra challenge). After this post I decided to give Woodie a try again. Of course, since Lucy has infinite durability I never found the need to craft another axe (though I had thought on doing it because she is annoying as hell x_x), but is true: she makes Woodie chop trees in half the hits, I thought that was an inherent thing of Woodie because of how GMDApple corrected me, I still I went to the wiki and read both, Woodie and Lucy's page, just to be sure and they mention it like it comes from Woodie, but oh well u_u.

--

Anyway, I am mid-spring (cheated once, to go on with the experiment) with Woodie right now; and as expected, the thing that throws me down is his lack of control. I got killed by deerclops on day 31 because of... a full moon. I was fighting all nice, but was so focused I forgot the full moon, and I transformed mid-battle, since I now deal less damage than a spear, and absorb less damage than a grass armor, the battle got more intense (inevitably longer, and with less room for mistakes), I also didn't have a forest very nearby to become Woodie after the full moon and was afraid the deerclops might despawn (I know, silly fear, but it has happened), so I kept going and lured him into a forest in order to avoid dying from "log starvation", but the sanity drop reached way too dangerous levels and I got too many mobs to attack at once, so I died.

You could "prepare" like with any other character with similar negatives, but when the full moon comes, there is not much preparation to do in order to avoid transforming in case you need to fight Deerclops. It also limits your fighting schedule, want to fight bee queen? Better start maximum 2-3 days before a full moon so you can avoid a bad situation.

[Felix-The-Ghost]

The first full moon in winter will be the hardest since the nights are longer, you can freeze, and if you aren't observant can catch you by surprise.

It is absolutely essential to take notice of the displayed moon phases, so you can carry a handful of living logs on you and simply drop them on the ground before night comes.

As you said if you get caught off-guard (which is usually your fault for not observing the moon phase in previous nights) you can die easily for all kinds of reasons, the most bs being that shadow monsters are inexplicably harder to see in winter despite being mostly black on an ocean of white. I think that is what needs addressing the most.