I think there's no denying that some characters who have already been reworked, or were released as "finished" could use some changes here or there to make them more coherent and useful. Here's what I reckon should be done.
Wigfrid:
- Fireproof Falsetto:
- Now grants fire immunity instead of resistance.
- Now grants resistance to overheating damage.
It's no secret that this song is a contender for one of the more useless items in the entire game. Spittlefish require sailing out to a seaweed and having an ocean fishing rod with appropriate bait and lures, and while it's not expensive per se, it is a huge hassle that should be rewarded with something a little more applicable. While one could argue this reduces Willow's niche, the limitations of when a battle song can be used wouldn't make Willow less likely to be picked.
- Goodies:
- Wigfrid can now eat ice cream.
If she's going to make an exception for mushy cake she should make an exception for ice cream. Her diet should be a consistent thing players can keep track of, rather than something that gets changed on a per-needed basis.
Wurt:
- Merms:
- Merms will now attack any non-Merm that hits a Wurt player, excluding players.
While this may seem to be overpowered, it is already incredibly cheap to hire a Merm with any form of food, and let them take a single blow for you. It would provide a marginal boost to actual viability, and mostly just remove that weird inconsistency where Merms don't seem to treat Wurt as one of their own. If Beefalo get angry at things attacking their young, Merms should too. Unlike spiders, Merms won't hold grudges, so there will be plenty of reason to hire them instead of just tanking an enemy's damage.
- Merms:
- Bugfix(?) - Merms will teleport back to their homes if unloaded and not allied to a player. Merms summoned by the king of the Merms will vanish.
The fact that this still hasn't been fixed is honestly ridiculous, especially for a paid character. Merms are clearly able to find their way home, and it's just really unimmersive to have to babysit a Merm all the way back to it's home because you lead it to a nearby forest to chop trees. While you can get around this by making Merm settlements on-location, it's silly to have them follow you so easily through wormholes and teleportations if them getting "lost" is to be intended. These changes could also easily be extended to other followers as well.
- Wetness:
- Wurt will now gain wetness while walking on marsh turf.
- Marsh turf will no longer boost her speed.
- Wurt's base movement speed will be boosted by up to 20% (diminishing) while wet.
Merms are noticeably faster than pigs, and it seems a little odd not to give Wurt some way of attaining that ability, while her boosted marsh speed it too explicitly early-game. It would probably be fine if she were a singleplayer DS character, but in DST using marsh turf instead of roads isn't a good option when playing with friends, meaning it ends up as an underutilized mechanic. I think that directly giving her a bonus for getting wet would open up a new dimension of possibilities in terms of using water balloons or jumping off of boats to try to gain wetness, or adding a patch of marsh turf that you can walk around in every so often to get your speed up. It would carry the downsides of a greater vulnerability to cold/freezing while exploring the swamp early game, but make it a safer place for Wurt during the summer. It also wouldn't step on the toes of the existing survivors much either. Wormwood has plenty of farming related perks, total sanity control, infinite living logs and a mobile source of AOE damage to where there's plenty of reason to play him other than his speed, Wolfgang is used more for his insane damage, and WX gets a better speed boost with cold immunity and light as well.
Woodie:
- Weregoose
- Weregoose now has a base movement speed of 10.
Unlike the other Wereforms, the goose brings little to the table the longer the game goes on for. The Werebeaver can amp up the logging efficiency with Warly buffs, and logs are just generally great to have a lot of, especially if you don't want to deal with Treeguards. The Weremoose may be similar to a Darksword and crown, but it also brings with it a form of AOE damage and kiting in the form of the charge, as well as great synergy with jellybeans, Wortox or Wigfrid allowing him to tank with 90% reduction at no armour cost. The goose on the other hand, is really only used for the lunar island, because late game the speed boost is hopelessly outclassed by walking canes or beefalo, as they can provide higher speed without the downside of setting your hunger to 0, and being locked into a form with no armour or way to attack. The goose should be a viable form of transport even in the late game, especially considering it has no application in combat, unlike beefalo or the walking cane/mag.
- Weremoose
- Weremoose no longer has a speed penalty.
While it is relatively minor, and the form is very cheap compared to gathering armour and weapons, the lack of options and relatively low amount of late game scalability means the moose drops off more than a combat focused form should. While the charge does mitigate this to a degree, the speed penalty really only serves to make kiting with the moose more irritating.
Walter:
- Poop pellets
- Now affect an area of about 1 tile around them.
- Any Wormwood inside the area will be healed for 1 hp.
A fundamentally interesting mechanic is sadly made nigh useless by limiting them to a single target, meaning they cannot be used effectively against bosses that use swarms of enemies, like spider queen, bee queen and dragonfly. Giving them a relatively small range would still require them to be timed well for maximum effectiveness, but make them very handy nonetheless. Letting them heal Wormwood would also enhance those neat multiplayer-focused perks like with Wicker's books and Wurt/Maxwell, by letting players heal wormwood for an extra 8 hp by investing a little more time, as well as allow a form of remote healing, however limited.
- Freeze rounds
- No longer cost a moonrock.
- No longer require a prehastilitator to prototype, instead requiring an alchemy engine.
Moonrocks are too much of a slow-starting resource for such a basic item to have much application. They start off incredibly valuable, being used for the celestial portal, lunar idols, lazy deserters, etc, all items much more important than what is for all intents and purposes just an ice staff that doesn't drain sanity. By the time moonrocks can reasonably be spared for this item, it has already long outlived any usefulness it might have had, as sanity mitigation will almost certainly have been sorted out by then, meaning ice staves will be just as good. Especially when considering the existence of the pan flute, the freeze rounds need to be a cheap enough item to be worth crafting, and I think this change would make it accessible enough to where the cost of a spear makes a significant enough difference for these to be worth making, and for freezing to be considered a more major aspect of Walter.
- Slow-Down Rounds
- Now give 15 rounds
- No longer cost a moonrock.
Same as the previous, moonrocks do not carry a linear enough value for them to be a reasonable ingredient for an item that is relatively niche. Very high value early game, practically worthless late game, only an appropriate ingredient for an ammunition type for a very short amount of time. Purple gems are quite valuable early-game, as they are often obtained through combining 2 other gems, meaning the returns on this recipe are a little low. These changes would make it a much more tempting option and let people better make use of the easier ability to kite melee-focused foes.
Winona:
- Hunger consumption
- Now moves 15% faster when not hungry and no speed penalty when hungry. Moving does not increase hunger drain.
- Can now pick up items, dig, chop, mine, till, pitchfork and hammer 50% faster than other survivors, at the cost of hunger.
- Being hungry slows said tasks down by 25%.
While some people find the hunger mechanic to be irritating when crafting, Winona being an efficient worker when fed would synergize well with her ability to craft useful structures, as efficient food gatherers/teams would be able to eliminate her downside to more quickly gather all the needed materials to actually create her structures, as well as make her fantastic for general late-game basing. While I have now added Wurt onto the list of characters with a speed boost, Winona's would be the most consistently maintainable of all of them, requiring nothing more than the ability to not let your hunger get low. This would make her an appealing option beyond just her structures, and let her take advantage of food in a different way to wolfgang.
- Food consumption
- Now eats 50% faster than other survivors.
- Can eat stale food with no penalties (but not spoiled food(!)).
To make the hunger cost of crafting less of a downside, Winona should be able to mitigate her need to eat on the job. It would be quite thematically appropriate with her not wanting to waste time with lunch breaks, and being eager to get back to work. Her toughness should also let her overlook stale food, as she is more tolerant of bad food than other survivors, and giving this trait to a character that actually needs food on a regular basis would be nice, since it's more of a bonus on WX-78.
- Spotlight
- Tripled light radius.
While not exactly expensive, the lack of temperature control means this item drops off really quickly, especially given the existence of lanterns and miner hats. An actually decent range would make this item fantastic for early base building at night, as well as a neat boon for fighting deerclops or hounds, or even something that can be made use of in the ruins.
Warly:
- Asparagazpacho/Hot dragon chili salad
- Now last for 8 minutes instead of 5.
- Asparagazpacho now only requires 1 ice and 1 asparagus instead of 2 of each.
These recipes have very useful effects, but are ultimately too short-lived for how high their opportunity cost is. Asparagazpacho especially is prohibitively expensive for how many other potential uses ice has, as well as how much ice one must stockpile for this to be a viable form of temperature control, even if it is not used the entire summer. A boost to their duration would make them a little more competitive with thermal stones, and make the lack of heating/cooling time something that can be used a little longer.
- Fish Cordon Bleu
- Now only requires 1 fish and 1 frog leg.
- Now lasts for 8 minutes instead of 5.
Similar to Asparagazpacho, this recipe requires a little too much of resources that are difficult to stockpile, in this cause due to the relatively fast spoil time of frog's legs. While merms can be theoretically farmed for this, the combination of their high HP, kiting attack pattern, and need to swap to a different character to create consistent access makes this a relatively late-game endeavor. Having this be a viable alternative to the eyebrella would be nice, and the need to farm frogs and go fishing would ensure the eyebrella remains much more practical for most players.
- Puffed Potato Soufflé
- Now gives 30 hp instead of 20.
- Now gives 35 sanity instead of 15.
- Now takes 15 days to spoil instead of 10.
This is a highly expensive recipe for how incredibly useful the used ingredients are. The two potatoes can be cooked for 40 health instead, or combined with twigs and ice/mushrooms/other filler to create a dish that also gives 15 sanity, but at a much lower cost than this recipe. These changes would give it a big advantage in terms of spoil time, giving you 50% more time to make use of your potatoes, as well as the superior source of sanity as compared to fancy spiraled tubers, albeit requiring a bird cage or pengull thievery to attain.
- Monster Tartare
- Now gives Webber/Spiders 5 sanity and 10 hp.
- Now takes 15 days to spoil instead of 10.
While by no means a bad dish for Webber, the lack of upsides beyond the high hunger gain make this a little underwhelming for how specific the character combination must be to make use of this particular dish, especially considering meatballs can be made at a better efficiency using any form of filler. The longer spoil time will help compensate for the fact that this dish is best used on characters separate to the chef.
If I forgot any aspect of the reworked characters that are underwhelming, or you think I'm underselling the value of some of these perks, please let me know! I couldn't really think of anything that needs changing about Wendy, since most of the ghost potions seem to have some sort of use, excluding perhaps the movement one. Willow meanwhile doesn't really strike me as particularly unfulfilled in terms of potential, even if her perks are kinda meh (at least in my opinion).