I posted this as a reply to the official patch notes, tho i realized this may be the best place to discuss the changes and the update itself
The new update seems dope as it adds alot of new mechanics and imbues a new breath to what used to be only a noob trap, or something u tried to loop for dragonfruits only, unless u were warly or wormwood, in which case it still was a race about turbo feeding your bird and mindlessly replanting before winter came.
However, despite how happy i am about Klei pumping out new contents and trying to listen as much as possible to the playerbase, i see some crucial flaws:
THE CROPS:
While the new system is very deep, and also allows for synergies between crops to create a sorta of automation, thus rewarding knowledge and skill, it also looks like the game now is rotating alot around this, however it makes sense that if u want good hields you need to invest time and work in it; its still too early to judge how good and changing this is, for sure it looks fun, but I'm afraid it may encourage base sitting, or it may prevent people from exploring or taking long trips, basically creating a loop very similar to the first times of DST where people would just camp close to beefalos and spam rabbit traps with no actual risk or involvement.
BUNNYMEN:
Don't really agree about their lowered carrot chance, i do understand it's meant to slow down their production and force you to farm for carrots but it also means that if you are out of carrots cause RNG hated on you, you cant start their civil wars nomore, making it kinda clunky.
WORMWOOD:
Won't lie, it really looks like wormy may lose some of his flavour now, bumt I'm more than confident that Klei will find a way to still have him as an unique character and new interactions and uniqueness will sprinkle up; if anything, the new seeding system avoids u racing the clock from day 1 up to the first winter where u got stuck in a loop of: rush a base to start planting, harvest, mass feed to a bird, repeat before winter strikes.
This basically meant u were not using much if not any of the products u were planting, while now u have crops AND seeds so you can decide how much you "invest" and how much you use. Time will tell, and if it turns out that our rooty boy is being outclassed by basically everyone with a hoe i think buffs/changes should be made.
WICKERBOTTOM:
I highlited this as hard as i could, cause the nerf hit the granny heavier than afking in the caves during an Antlion attack.
Wicker has always been one of my mains, if not THE main, not cause of tierlists, not cause speedruns, but because it felt so good being able to craft a backpack and a shovel right off the bat, and start my trip to terraform the land, using a pitchfork to carefully and precisely cut lines into the various turfs and place my saplings, bushes and twigs accordingly, turn it into berries and turkey farms, drying racks, etc etc.
Wicker is the defintion of early game base momentum, and that momentum would translate into a huge boost to start megabases, or would allow you to keep refilling the resources during the endgame when u REALLY need those, mostly for decorations or comfort, rather than survival, which leads me to the next point.
People always complained about WX, Wolfgang and Wicker, mostly because they offer alot and dont demand much back as downsides, as long as you know what you are doing, but this, cept wormwood, is true for every survivor; specifically talking about Wicker tho, while she provides huge benefits to the team, what she gives is mostly QoL or basic resources, thus saving time and tedium from some actions.
She can generate food for sure, but that's achievable from pretty much everyone, be it butterflies, rushing lunar, spider farms, pigs/bunny farms, honey and so on.
Another thing that I find important to bring to everyone's attention, is that Wickers have to work way harder than they are credited for, and most people only see the final result, without realizing that you had to: dig up all the bushes, grass and and saplings, replant them 1 by 1, go to the swamp and farm reeds and/or tentacle spots if you are setting up traps or boss kills, find a good source of manure, which in most cases is either rotten edibles or bulbs, if its bulbs that means you need to have the knowledge to fastly spot muddy biome, aka triangulate the ruins entrance or knowing very well the caves world gen pattern, get back to the surface and convert it to manure/rot, fetilize all the stuff 1 by 1, read the book and lose sanity in the process, pick everything 1 by 1, read again and so on, all of this before the first winter and whle collection stuff like gears, rocks and logs (not to mention that the berries wont last for so much anyway).
Is this an impossible task for a veteran? It's not and therefore it's fair you should be rewarded for it, but it shows how such results are not the mere fruit of "right click on the book and ez".
This is a PVE game for the most part, and the AH nerf doesn't affect the PVP aspect anyway, so IMO if you dont like some strat or survivor, simply don't use it.
However, i saw some people complaining that Wickers ruin their fun, and while i personally never really thought about it, I don't know why they are basing with others in the first place if being advantaged for that bothers them, and i also find this silly as this can be applied to every other survivor: Wolfgang ruining the fun soloing dragonfly with a perfect kiting, Wigfrid ruining the fun afk tanking the beefalos and giving you free winter hats, Webber providing 12540 glands so you can keep healing and fixing your mistakes, Wendy handing you over pockets full of butterflies, Maxwell gifting logs etc etc; What do i mean? that the "Problem" isn't Wickerbottom, it's players playing MULTIPLAYER and complaining that other people are being efficent and pulling their own weight.
Sometimes it almost looks as if people are racing their mains against others, so they want X nerfed only so that Y can look better, rather than wanting Y buffed (of course its still a survival so if we keep buffing everything around, without buffing the hostile environment too, things may go south).
At the end of the day, AH was mostly used for twigs and grass, with a nice added early game bonus for bushes, and all those resources go into cosmetic customization or basic stuff, rather than creating a lethal weapon able to abuse any boss or enemy in the game, also now that quite some survivors got reworked, despite wicker being still a very consistent one, if we take AH away from her she loses most of her niche uses and identity (things as lichen and lureplant harvesting, for example, doesnt really exist anymore with the new AH).
What surprised me is that Wicker is as old as the game, and this triple nerf out of the blue, without a real explanation, it's very weird; at first i thought it was either a nerf preparing her to be reworked and rebuffed, or just a nerf to avoid abusing the new crop system and have, this way, unmasked stats about the crops efficency, however this doesn't seem the case seeing how this nerf directly targets grass turfs (stuff grown by AH and harvested makes it requiring to be re fertilized sooner).
Not much to add here, except i trust Klei and i wish they can find a solution to this, be it either having the book not interacting with crops, or having 2 separate books, 1 for crops etc etc, and one for resources such as trees, reeds, grass and saplings and/or bushes.
If wicker will stay gimped, we better expect a nice and juicy rework to bring her shining again.
WINONA:
While winona isn't mentioned in the patch note, seeing as all of this rotates about crops, I'd suggest finally making her spotlight useful, as a source of heat/light for the plants, therefore interacting with them and favouring their growth.
SKINS:
Love the razor skin and it lets me think that maybe, MAYBE, we will finally get a skin for the pitchfork aswell, one of my fav items that never got skinned so far (at least nor that i know of).
TL;DR: Wicker got super gutted especially when megabasing and gathering resources, things that did not add challenge but tedium and slow down her early game boost which is where shes supposed to shine, if you really want to keep the books nerfed the best solution may be to avoid it growings crops, or have 2 separate books for resources and for edibles or crops, wormwood may feel outclassed by the new system where everyone can plant stuff, the system is generally good tho. Winona may use some love for the spotlights working as a growing source for crops and PLEASE make a pitchfork skin.