Don't Starve Together

Don't Starve Together

Shira, the Animancer
MeepDaMeep 28 Apr, 2022 @ 7:35am
Suggestions
I don't know if you are still active or ever considering working on this character again but I really enjoyed the idea behind it and wanted to toss in some suggestions. I'm making this a discussion due to its length and since its a lot more noticeable than a comment.

I also want to mention, some of these might be problems due to how I play. Despite playing DST off and on for about 3 years now, I am not good at many of the mechanics, namely combat. I consistently play Wortox and Wormwood specifically so I can avoid combat and help out teams with heals and food. That is what this character struck out to me as, a character made to help the team with nightmare fuel and sanity help at the cost of her own.



Suggestions (and explinations):

Her stats seem punishingly low.
Sanity makes sense, as going in and out of insanity is the gimmick. Her hunger however is lower than all the base characters with the closest being Walter, who somewhat (albeit badly) makes up for it through faster cooking. Her health is also 10 points lower than the lowest health character wheeler, who has an entire dodge mechanic to mitigate it. Comparatively, her stats just lead to easy snowball deaths either due to increased hunger management and being stunlocked. Below is what I would suggest to not loose the weaker nature of the character while providing a fighting chance.
Hunger 150 (baseline for most), Sanity 25 (15 sanity regain from shadow creatures to match the 15 sanity drain from skewer... and is a whole number), Health 105 (Provides 5 hp safety net against terrorbeaks and one extra hit from special hounds, but can still be swarmed)

Spirit Bombs are too expensive and ineffective
A easy comparison is bombs to spears, in which both have same damage but you trade aoe for higher cost... the problem is that cost is comparable to a dark sword leading to a massive imbalance in price. The scenario I used for testing is a tier 3 spider nest with 6 spiders and 3 warriors. Assuming all bombs connect with all enemies, 12 bombs (24 nightmare fuel) are needed to clear the nest of spiders. In comparison, 36% durability on one dark sword (5 nightmare fuel) is enough to clear the same amount of spiders. In actual testing, the warriors jumped out of the bomb aoe after approximately 8 to 9 bombs, leading to a quick death.
I would suggest 1 nightmare fuel per bomb while also increasing its range to atleast 2 tiles instead of the 1 tile it seems to currently be. That way you are still sacrificing more nightmare fuel than with a darksword, but the sacrifice is more for safety of range than ease of access.

Knightmare Tower is expensive
I understand the 70 nightmare fuel cost is down from the original 120 and she can gather it quickly, but this character has 2 other uses for nightmare fuel in addition to the various uses outside the character. After 8 tests, on average I'd get enough for 1 tower every 5ish days. These tests involved me starting a new world and doing nothing but sit just at the edge of the darkness in a cave while occasionally eating a mushroom when hungry.
Making it cost 40 nightmare fuel, or 1 stack, would make it so this seems more reachable while only costing 3ish days of monotonous grinding. Obtaining marble and the gem should be challenge enough to make it still take a reasonably long time to get it through normal gameplay. Especially if using multiple spirit bombs and skewers.


Apologies again for this being such a long and mostly negative post. Honestly I love the character and am still playing her. I hope the fact i specifically tested out all I stated here is enough to show that. It's just far too punishing in areas it doesn't need to be, leading to you more hoarding nightmare fuel or getting stuck in the 'stay at base and be a nightmare fuel dispenser' mentality that some Wormwoods fall into with living logs. I hope you are having a good day... and once again sorry for sending an essay your way.
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Backup4now  [developer] 19 Jun, 2022 @ 11:20pm 
While I do not have the programming skills required to continue developing this character beyond simple balance, I do hope that one day I do find someone. I did notice the game was powercrept quite a bit, and the previous ultra-expensive equipment she has access to is no longer competitively viable. I do agree that the bombs are purely an exorbitant cost for convenience, and those can be improved for their cost. However, that would be a temporary solution until I could simply give her more things to build and contribute with, giving her power in the variety of applications.

I'm certainly interested in how other people use the character, and would love to speak with you about your experiences playing her and in what scenarios you find yourself in. For example, I usually get so much nightmare fuel passively that it's trivial to build whatever you want, but it seems you didn't have the same experience. If you're willing, I'd like to have an extended dialogue over DMs to get more data on it.
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