List of ideas

Wilson is a simple character, so I believe he deserves a simple re-work with no stat changes or crazy power boosts:

• He could use a laboratory station that let's him craft a few things that do minor stuff that could count as QoL improvements (kind of contradictory, eh? Perhaps). Like for example:
  • Heal sick plants in a radius.
  • Attract butterflies and bees in a radius and encourage them to pollinate.
  • Attract fishes in the ocean. Kinda like fish food.
  • Milk volt goats without killing them.
  • extract butter from butterflies.
  • Makes you undetectable to most hostile mobs (exception could include the bosses that you have to trigger and the mechanical chess pieces). Could be useful in the caves to avoid spiders and bats, also to farm bee boxes without equipment.
  • Something to be able to transplant undiggable plants to other places (maybe with some restrictions added, for example, reeds and cacti would need to be planted in their respective turfs, and they take twice as long to re-grow; while light bulb plants cannot be planted in the surface).
  • A healing potion of sorts that he can use on teammates directly.
• An indirect buff would be to add more recipes that need beard hair, but that should come along the way. Simultaneously, his beard should grow faster or yield more hair.
• He heals more health when using healing items (not food items).

What I am going to suggest is not ground-breaking by any means, and has been suggested several times, so feel free to skip?

• His insanity modifier should go from 10% to 40-50%. This modifier can be reduced if there are other players or companions nearby (pigs, bunnymen, Chester, Glommer, even a pet, etc.).
• Has 150 sanity instead of 200.
• While insane he attracts far more nightmare creatures than your average character.
• Speed penalties due to heavy objects only affect him by half (so, piggyback's 10% speed penalty would only count as 5% speed penalty, and marble armor's 30% speed penalty only counts as 15% speed penalty; also applies to statues and chess pieces).
• Mighty Wolfgang changes:
  • Mighty's speed increase needs to be removed. It is not even "intentional" code-wise, but a side-effect of increasing the model's size.
  • He should not be affected at all by any speed penalty from "heavy objects" while in mighty form (piggy back, marble armor, statues, chess pieces, ...).
  • He should have a strong grip (like Wurt I believe) while in this form.
• Wimpy Wolfgang only needs his speed penalty removed (which is also unintentional code-wise).

Just a few quirks that I feel need touching:

• I would reduce her health to 125 hp to compensate for Abby's monstrous power.
• Wendy can give gifts to regular ghosts, and they might drop a mourning glory. Don't know what the gifts could be, but "food" is a good start. This way ghosts could have some use.
• Both Abigail's flower and the sisturn should be moved to her Ectoherbology tab so that they are easier to locate.
• Abigail:
  • Abigail should not "grow" as time goes on. As in, she should start and stay with 600 health, but she should not provide light.
  • Once dead, she should have a cooldown before being able to be summoned again (maybe 10 seconds?) and she starts with 1 hp.
  • Abby's flower should not take an inventory space. There is no reason to drop the flower ever (specially since you can un-summon Abby to avoid confrontation), and yet Wendy can't equip or consume the flower (unlike Willow and Bernie, or Woodie and Lucy). It is just a button taking up an inventory slot. So, I suggest her commanding of Abigail be transplanted into other button commands. You can change Abby's skin/design through the wardrobe, by "giving" her a skinned Abigail flower (you do not lose the flower), or with the clean sweeper.
  • However, to keep Abby's flower (due to it having skins), I would make it the only requirement to keep a Sisturn active (instead of 4 petals). Abby's flower will only last for 6 days after being crafted, regardless of season, and that is the time the sisturn would remain active.
  • Having a sisturn active would reduce Abby's death cooldown to 0 sec (you can insta-summon her after death).
• Ghostly elixirs need to be more balanced:
  • Spectral Cure-All  and Distilled Vengeance are fine.
  • Revenant Restorative should be an insta-heal and not interrupt other elixirs. I'd say 50 hp per use would be fair considering the animation time and that Wendy would have to stop fighting.
  • Unyielding Draught increases Abigail's shield duration from 0.5 sec to 2 sec and also gives 0.5 sec shields to teammates around her whenever she gets hit. Mourning glory cost should be increased from 1 to 3.
  • Nightshade Nostrum increases Abigail's damage per hit by +5 damage, regardless of the time of day (so, instead of doing 15/25/40 she would do 20/30/45 for the duration of the elixir).
  • Vigor Mortis still gives Abby her speed boost but also makes Abby provide light. Only to make it the de-facto cave spelunker potion, plus night spider killer.

Wickerbottom is very versatile. Way too versatile. I hope I can offer a way to "counter" that versatility without breaking the character down.

• Her books should be permanent (unlimited uses), but they should have a cooldown (which may vary between a few seconds to several minutes depending on the book). You can bypass the cooldown by crafting more of said book. If someone other than Wicker uses them, their cooldown is increased. Wurt being an exception, as she can read books on cooldown, and books do not enter cooldown when she uses them.
• Add a feather pencil to the recipe of all of her books.
• No reader should be able to use the books if they do not have the sanity to spend.
• She could make a bookshelf to store her books. 12-16 inventory spaces would be more than enough I believe.
• Lower her health to ~125 hp. Being more frail would encourage the use of the books, plus the current books are good enough to warrant some frailty.
• Give her more books:
  • Freeze every enemy around her.
  • Summon meteorites. If used in caves would cause earthquakes similar to Antlion's rage.
  • Wets everyone around the reader (including the reader and teammates). If near the ocean it would also summon waves around the reader as well. Could be useful to enhance those electric weapons. Be sure to wear wetness protection though.
  • Creates a ring of fire around the reader that does damage every few seconds, and lasts for a few seconds. The ring does no damage to the reader and teammates but does raise their temperature very fast and can set things on fire.
  • The summoning book from The Forge that summons a helping golem would be cool as well.
  • The petrifying tome from The Forge could also work for petrifying enemies AND trees. To differentiate further from freezing: enemies take more damage while petrified (being hit will break petrification, so it is only a 1 hit benefit) and it doesn't work on giants.
  • In general, for Wicker's books, the sky is the limit.

Maxwell is "good" for the most part IMO. The problem he has lies in QoL stuff and how weak the shadow duelists are. With this I hope to improve both aspects and add a little extra spice:

• Shadow tab is always active, no need to drop Codex Umbra to the ground (you can still do it for the animation though).
• Codex Umbra can be equipped in the weapon slot and has two attacks. The main attack has Maxwell attacking from a distance dealing 20-25 damage per hit. The second attack is a cast that let's you select a specific enemy, doing that would summon shadows that do a lot of damage on the selected enemy. After that the book would enter cooldown (the main attack can still be used).
• Shadows:
  • Replace the shadow logger, miner and digger for 1 generalist shadow (shadow worker) that does all the others do depending on what is nearby, or by whatever Maxwell (the player) commands. They would cost 6 nightmare fuel + 20% of your total sanity each.
  • Improve shadow duelists by giving them 80-90% armor + dark sword damage (68 damage per hit). They should also mirror Maxwell's attack pattern (if Maxwell is using ranged weapon, the shadow duelist will use their default attack pattern). However, they would cost 1 dark sword + 1 night armor + 35% of your total sanity each.
  • Add shadow mage that do a bit of damage (I would say 34 damage per hit is fine) from a safe distance. They are as frail as no armor Maxwell though. They would cost 1 telelocator staff + 1 nightmare amulet + 35% of your total sanity each.
• Add a few "dark spells" on the shadow tab that cost nightmare fuel, other magic resources and sanity (not total sanity, just sanity) and with effects similar to:
  • Immunity to indirect damage and other ailments (fire, overheat and freezing damage, but also immunity to grogginess, toadstool's rotting cloud, and can't be frozen by deerclops or Klaus' deer; things like those) for a few minutes.
  • Constantly full stomach, as in, his hunger does not "deplete" for several minutes. However, he can't eat anything while in this state. And after the effect wears off his hunger rate would increase dramatically (x1.5 faster) for up to a minute.
  • Make nightmare creatures neutral to Maxwell. Would only be useful against giants I believe.

Winona is weird... She doesn't feel like the handywoman, and she barely feels like an engineer/inventor. Nonetheless, I will consider her an engineer-type of character.

• Make her trusty tape repair armor instead of clothing. Bonus points if you can include weapons. Make it also work to repair/heal Winona's machines.
• Let her be able to turn on/off her generators.
• Since she doesn't really need 2 generators, remove the GEMerator and replace it for an add-on you can attach to the regular generator. Depending on the gem active, it will affect the machines connected to the generator. Examples:
  • Red gem would make catapults do more splash damage and may burn enemies, while spotlights warm up players. All machines (generator included) are immune to fire while this gem is active.
  • Blue gem would make catapults do ice damage and freeze enemies, while spotlights cool down players.
  • Purple gem would make catapults do way more damage but lose splash damage, while spotlights would induce insanity on nearby players.
  • Green gem would make catapults attack faster, while spotlights would passively heal players.
  • Orange gem would give catapults more health but reduced range, while spotlights will illuminate a much larger area but will not search players instead illuminating their center.
  • Yellow gem would make catapults do electric damage, while spotlights would illuminate a slightly larger radius and recover sanity for players.
• Maybe add a few more machines. But I don't know specifically what? Maybe one that helps grow crops in winter?