Originally posted by Pig:

(I tested this and solo tanked a knight and bishop taking 20 damage on day 2 which seems a bit powerful early game if you ask me)

Regarding the beaver forms damage it is true that I had end game in mind, perhaps too much so. Its a mistake I made and evaluating beaver in the early game is something I want to do when I have more time.

I did a brief damage test where I first tanked a knight, then after its death a bishop to see how Woodie's new beaver form compares to other characters. For gear I had the characters use a log suit and a tentacle spike. How exactly did Woodie's new beaver form compare to other characters?


From this we can see that Woodie is stronger, much stronger and ranks favorably compared to other characters and their special abilities. With a bit of strafing a skilled player could achieve no damage taken from the knight. Wendy is the only character who could take no damage using abigail as a shield and WX is in the same spot as wilson, unless he eats a gear recovering the lost 49 health. A skilled Maxwell player might be able to achieve no damage taken utilising his duelists but they are weak and this would be much harder to achieve.

Not noted on this list is that vanilla beaver dies, unable to tank the first knight! With Better Balanced Woodie' beaver form can now compete with other characters in combat.

Notably in singleplayer Beaver did not have health, instead taking damage to the wood meter. After turning back into a human Woodie would have 50 hp. (Technically taking 100 points of damage, much more than other characters on this list.)

Originally posted by Pig:

improving his beaver form however considering the way Woodie was optimized for DST it seems to me that Klei focused his werebeaver form's sanity drain and the form altogether as a result to be his main disadvantage with pinecone sanity made to offset this so you wouldn't go insane every 5 seconds if you were first trying him out.

Regarding beaver I feel like Klei was a little too focused on woodcutting and pvp with beaver. Transforming as he did in singleplayer was not viable (Skipping to the next day with low stats.) and the lower damage feels like a pvp focused change. The sanity drain discourages Woodie from staying in beaver form all the time, somewhat emulates the old low sanity on reversion, and the pinecone sanity helps him with woodcutting, but not much else. The rework seems like it was focused on nerfing its combat ability adding sanity and health, which singleplayer beaver did not have. Klei was probably focusing on pvp balance with the beaver changes, something I am not planning to do as pvp is a flawed gamemode. (Panflute, STS, etc.) Other mods have re-implemented turning back into a human with low stats, something I am in the process of exploring.

Originally posted by Pig:

Woodie clearly has downsides in the later game with this mod and I can see that however in early game he reigns supreme and that is where most make or break moments when werebeaver could truly be overpowering would occur.)

I don't view Woodie as having a drawback with this mod currently, something I am considering adding is the old stat change on transformation back into a human. I don't really view Woodie having a late game downside as the Beaver form is entirely optional for bosses, he can use traditional gear for bosses and do just as well as Wilson. The beaver form is entirely optional, a strength certainly but the main strength is the choice it gives Woodie players to engage enemies with. In Vanilla Beaver is useless in combat depriving players of this choice. I view Woodie as having a better late game with this mod than he does in Vanilla DST as beaver is now viable in combat.

I don't view "make or break" moments as an issue unless its a pvp setting. (Or maybe a pve for games such as a tower defense style game.) Woodie will definitely be able to get wood quicker which, respectively, causes the base to get set up much sooner. It also means servers will get pig huts sooner (getting food, weapons and armor quicker.) this is part of the reason Wigfrid is so strong and, in my opinion, a top tier character. (Helmets that dont cost pigskin mean more huts, means huts are up faster and you get more food and pigskins sooner. Its an extremely strong bonus.) Since this is a pve focused game I would rather buff Woodie to Wickerbottom and Wigfrid esque levels of power. (Wickerbottom is extremely strong and notably is the only character who can solo beequeen.)

If this was a pvp focused game then I would agree with you. Wigfrid/Wicker would have received major nerfs while Woodie modest buffs. Since its not I would rather buff Woodie.

Originally posted by Pig:

So this of course brings to the point of with this mod what is Woodie's main early game drawback.

This is a valid point that I think brings a more important question, does Woodie need an early game downside? The characters were designed firstly to provide a unique experience. Klei accomplishes this with interactions between the character and other in game mechanics. (Similar to Team Fortress 2.) Wes is designed entirely as a "hard mode" character and buffing him would ultimately destroy his original design, but most importantly the unique experience playing him provides.

Woodie/Beaver has downsides in singleplayer that don't translate well to multiplayer (Dropping inventory, fast forwarding time to turn into a human, no health/sanity as beaver, immunity to death as beaver, etc.) and they were ultimately changed or removed. What I am investigating currently is restoring some of the original singleplayer penalties to Woodie and retuning them for a multiplayer environment. (Particuarly the low stats on reverting to human.) Woodie is a character designed to provide a unique playing experience, albeit much stronger with this mod. I wanted to re-implement some of his strengths, especially strengths related to beaver. I did have to rebalance some mechanics for multiplayer. (Charcoal being the biggest rework.) I would like to return some of his original downsides reworking them for a multiplayer environment if possible as Woodie/Beaver doesn't have many downsides with this mod currently.

As always thanks for your feedback and I am looking forward to your opinions.

Wow when I said looking forward to a reply I did not expect this! I really appreciate you taking the time to write all this out and it shows your dedication to this mod which I appreciate. I look forward to your planned changes for Woodie and thank you for putting time and effort into writing this out cause I know you didn't have to!

Originally posted by Pig:

I'm not sure how it would work as I'm no modding expert and some way for the beaver to recover health as well as retain its health between transformations would be required and that might be more complicated than I'm giving credit for

I can understand that dilemma and how esily abuseable it was... clearly I overlooked it. What if the beaver has its own seperate health pool from Woodie. Of which the player would have to manage through some sort of method whether that be as Woodie or beaver I'm not certain but it would fix the dilemma by having the player need to be aware of the conidtion of the seperate forms and plan accordingly rather than have a full restore that could be used any time during combat simply with logs and charcoal.

The seperate health in singleplayer was accomplished due to using the wood meter as beaver's health pool. When Klei ported Woodie to DST the wood meter's role got reversed. (Woodie turns into beaver when wood meter raises to 100 in DS, transforms into beaver when it lowers to 25 in DST.) I am unsure if I could get a "singleplayer" esque Beaver unless I am to reverse/rework the entire wood meter which I don't currently have time to do and would require a rebalance of almost every log meter change I made.

I tried re-implementing the wood meter as a health bar but I don't think it works well for bosses as Beaver would require wood on the ground to stay alive and some bosses burn things (Dragonfly, Klaus.) which falls into the same problem tree based transformation causes (RNG mechanics somewhat outside of the players control requiring an object on the map.) and players can majorly cripple Beaver by stealing the wood he needs to transform. (Killing Beaver in boss fights.) It would also require beavers team mates to avoid wood in a fight it could potentially burn in requiring much more care when a Woodie is on the server fighting a boss as Beaver. Charcoal consumption helped solve object based transformation for his human form by tying it to the inventory but I don't think it can be solved for Beaver unless I give him access to the inventory, something I don't want to do. (Infinite beaver form and ability to equip items in a form that does not have them is a major rebalance and identity change.)

Originally posted by Dreamscape:

Single Player beaver was interesting in that players could transform into him in a dire situation in an attempt to survive. DST does not allow this as Woodie shares the same stats with Beaver and transforming in a dire situation preserves Woodie's potentially low health.

I think this logic on my part is flawed as Beaver form already had existing strengths allowing players to transform into him during a dire situation.

• 95% Damage resistance
  
  
• 240 points of insulation and cooling. (They do not cancel each other out.)
  
  
• 70% water resistance. (And a "weapon" that does not slip out of the hand when wet.)
  
  
• 51 damage infinite lasting "weapon"
  
  
• Nightvision.

Beaver already had strong reasons to be used in a dire situation and patch 1.0.4 added the following.

• Full health restore on Beaver change.
  
  
• Full sanity restore on Beaver change.
  
  
• Full hunger restore on Beaver change.

Beaver had great incentives before and I don't think the health restore works very well as intended. A thought I had was lowering damage resistance but that makes Beaver form useless for boss fights, something I don't want to do. I'll probably remove the health restore but keep the other two as they are not an issue.

Note: The hunger restore does nothing as the meter pauses when in Beaver form. The only situation it would have an effect in is when Woodie is at 0 hunger and turns into a beaver.

As always I appreciate your feedback. Try to exploit/break the game as much as you can so we can quickly find and tweak overpowered/broken mechanics. =)

After a good amount of testing I can say that I can't find anything thats broken aside from the stat values from transforming back being set for players to abuse it to get back to 50 health if they were lower health as beaver. But I don't see that being to big a deal. What is a big deal to me is how I managed to go down into the caves explore the ruins and kill the ancient gaurdian with little to no prep... I think this puts a little emphasis on the fact that if possible a 1 day timer for being in werebeaver mode could be used so its long enough that players won't transform back on a raid boss however short enough to stop abusing exploring by transforming the player back and lowering their stats thus requiring them to prepare for this in advance if extensive beavering is the plan. Not sure how this would work in the real game but on paper it seems like it could work.

Thanks for your feedback and testing. Did not expect more comments so this was a pleasant suprise =)

I also agree with your analysis with the 50 hp; potentially exploitable but its probably not that big of a deal.

I don't think rushing Ancient Guardian is a big issue as it uses rhino AI and is easy to exploit. A quick youtube search and I found this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul2vIxngIx0

I think its an issue with Ancient Guardian itself and not Woodie/Beaver.