WX in Single-Player Don't Starve has an abundance of methods to have consistent overcharge.
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Thunderbirds in Hamlet
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Hurricane Season from SW
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Moslings in RoG
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Classic Ruins Charging Station for base game
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Telelocator Stave methods in base-game DS.
For only 16 Lightning Strikes, WX can easily get 40-60-80 days worth of overcharge in the matter of minutes for very little cost. DST's WX, on the other hand, received a change to his overcharge way back when, where the more WX is striked by lightning, the less charge he gets out of it. For two Wickerbottom books, you can get easily get about 20 days of overcharge, making it fairly balanced in comparison to before, but causes WX to rely on Wickerbottom for his charge.
Some more details here on the rates, specifically for Wickerbottom's book from CarlZalph's post:
For if you read Wickerbottom books in succession:
Here's a more complete table showing all of the number of reads, up to using 3 books:
Minimum Average Maximum
1) 4.6459655535 5.4802979726 6.1496724959
2) 7.3401161812 8.3029218607 9.0798845593
3) 9.4578947156 10.4868285996 11.3248135671
4) 11.2619376465 12.3337533642 13.2138527151
5) 12.8607306203 13.9635652556 14.8755414118
6) 14.3116850627 15.4384543528 16.3759117059
7) 15.6495673464 16.7956133776 17.7541917653
8) 16.8973290466 18.0593821893 19.0359274302
9) 18.0710661932 19.2467196569 20.2388495547
10) 19.1825847153 20.3700016717 21.3758571474
11) 20.2408492224 21.4385874052 22.4566797136
12) 21.2528574052 22.4597580445 23.4888698826
13) 22.2241960939 23.4393103794 24.4784291093
14) 23.1594101368 24.3819487174 25.4302196843
15) 24.0622558047 25.2915530327 26.3482459727
^Reads
All time in standard in-game days of 480 real-world seconds, under the assumption that all strikes hit WX-78.
For if you let Wickerbottom read once, let the charge drain, and read it again:
Here's a chart showing reading it once, letting it drain, and then doing it again:
1) 4.6459655535 5.4802979726 6.1496724959
2) 9.291931107 10.9605959452 12.2993449918
3) 13.9378966605 16.4408939178 18.4490174877
4) 18.583862214 21.9211918904 24.5986899836
5) 23.2298277675 27.401489863 30.7483624795
6) 27.875793321 32.8817878356 36.8980349754
7) 32.5217588745 38.3620858082 43.0477074713
8) 37.167724428 43.8423837808 49.1973799672
9) 41.8136899815 49.3226817534 55.3470524631
10) 46.459655535 54.802979726 61.496724959
11) 51.1056210885 60.2832776986 67.6463974549
12) 55.751586642 65.7635756712 73.7960699508
13) 60.3975521955 71.2438736438 79.9457424467
14) 65.043517749 76.7241716164 86.0954149426
15) 69.6894833025 82.204469589 92.2450874385
Much more value doing it this way, though you'll want some sort of sanity regeneration like wearing the bee queen hat doing it.
DST Counterpart
Unlike his Single-player counterpart, WX only has three reliable ways of getting overcharged:
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Wickerbottom's The End is Nigh
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Moslings during Spring.
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Telelocator Staves.
I wanted to figure out a way to always be overcharged without relying on Wickerbottom, as I play do play DST solo for a large chunk of my own time.
Given what's available, The End is Nigh is obviously the best way for WX to gain overcharge, but it's not possible if you play DST solo like me (unless you use an alt, which kinda defeats the purpose of this post).
Moslings during Spring can maybe net WX 30 days worth of overcharge, but you're going to have to pen in ~20 moslings to get adequate charge. It would also take either a full day to get 10 days worth of charge, or 2 full days to get 15 days worth of charge. Via Moslings, you'd be able to get 15 days of charge in Spring (the first 5 are getting your 20 Moslings), and at the end of the season, get yourself another 15 days worth of charge for the Summer, to which the Moslings would despawn.
With Autumn and Winter being the only seasons where WX is charge-less, you'd have to rely on Telelocator Staves. However, I was really discouraged after doing the math to see how many Telelocator Staves I would need to maintain overcharge.
Assuming I did 30 days worth of overcharge via Moslings (15 days in Spring, and 15 days for Summer) this is what the rest of the year would have looked like:
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For 40 days worth of "ideal" charge, it would cost me 42 Telelocator staves [78 Living Logs, 78 Purple Gems, 156 Nightmare Fuel] (10 days Autumn, another 10 days in Autumn, 15 in Winter, and the first 5 days of Spring).
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For 40 days worth of "frugal" charge, it would cost me about 23 Telelocator Staves [46 Living Logs, 46 Purple Gems, 92 Nightmare Fuel] (if I charged myself every 5 days) .
My math:
Ideal Charge Math:
10 days Autumn, 10 more days Autumn, 15 Winter, first 5 days of Spring translates to 3 reads + 3 reads + 6 reads + 1 read = 13 reads
13 reads * 16 lightning strikes = 208 total strikes
208 total strikes / 5 strikers per staff = 41.6 total Telelocator Staffs (Rounded up to 42)
Frugal Charge Math:
Looked at second chart to see avg. 40 days charge, got 7 reads.
7 reads * 16 lightning strikes = 112 total lightning strikes
112 total strikes / 5 strikes per staff = 22.4 total Telelocator Staffs (Rounded up to 23)
Conclusion
While I could do this, too much of my time would be spent gathering the resources to do this, and not enough time to actually enjoy being overcharged, even for a late-game player like myself (assuming I don't change characters, as that's typically my motto and would defeat the purpose of this post as well. Changing characters as WX also costs gears since he drops them upon a despawn at the same rates as if he died. I don't have much gears in the first place as WX since I'm always using them).
This was the best I could come up to minimize the costs for a legitimate, year-round overcharge as WX, and my ultimate conclusion was that if I really wanted overcharge through Telelocator Staves, I would have to plan those charge sessions. It's better to be overcharged sparingly and would probably only be of interest to me during Winter to avoid freezing.
Not only that, Telelocator Staves and Foci are actually a great method of transportation on a server, since standing in the center of one focus will transport you to another focus instead of the one you're standing under (learned this from reddit), making me even more reluctant to wanting to use the Staves to charge WX.
Why bring this up?
It's because WX will eventually get a rework, and the New NEW Reign beta that's coming soon may or may not bring forth alternative methods of summoning lightning strikes that WX can utilize. I'd love to see more viable ways for WX to gain overcharge, and I'm of course not asking for something that's on par with Wickerbottom's The End is Nigh. Rather, it'd be something to expand the methods for which a WX has to overcharge himself, just like his single-player counterpart. By no means am I saying for the recursive function of WX's overcharge to change, as I think it's balanced as is.
I'd be great if I could be an Independent Robot that don't need no Wickerbottom to charge himself throughout the year and wanted to voice my input on this particular area as I've gotten to 1145 days almost solely as WX (only ~2 days were Wendy). In this world, I was able to always be overcharged for a relatively little, but time-consuming cost thanks to a bug feature in the game (8 days of the 70 days were spent charging myself throughout the year).
What are people's thoughts on this? I think people are going to disagree with me on this one a lot though.
TLDR:
More options/ways for WX to solo overcharge himself like his single-player counterpart would be nice. WX was never nerfed in DS, but has several ways of gaining overcharge, ie, Thunderbirds, Moslings, Hurricane Season, Ruins Charge Station, and Telelocator Staves for 40-60-80 days worth of charge. In DST, it's costs an arm and a leg to do the same thing. I was able to always be overcharged in a solo Day 1145 world, but it was because of a bug feature present in the game.
