A little rework of wormwoods crafting branch. This is a branch branch which should should encourage small dips into it because it makes wormwoods small time investing in crafting more viable, as most wormwood builds have a hard time freeing up even a single skill due to how long his skill lines are. Needing 4-5 skills to use a branch, but also requiring a skill point to invest in any branch is a harsh cost to pay. (I would be down to make wormwoods first skill a base kit perk, as its a forced skill for all wormwoods so it practically is base kit, but I'll avoid arguing it too much here.)
So branching out the branch like this reduces the cost of most crafting strategies from four down to two or three does a lot to make crafting wormwood a lot more interesting, useful, and less expensive. So wormwoods who make sacrifices can do interesting crafts. There are two things I need to explain still that aren't self explanatory from the image, so let me get into it.
First is a merge of the berry skills so its not RNG which is useful on a given world, the second is a bit of a weird one that is a new skill:
Seastack Souvenir.
- Learn to duplicate sea sprout starter kits using super growth formula and lichen.
- Sea sprout starter kits can be improved with 8 rocks to add a sea sprout rock to it. This converts the starter kit into a heavy carriable object that can be planted with fewer restrictions.
- Boulder rooted sea sprouts can be planted anywhere sea weed enemies can live, but they can also be planted in fresh water. Sea sprout boulders plug fresh water sources, but can be lifted our of the pond as a heavy object once more.
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Sea weeds grown in fresh water Initially starts enraged, attacking even wormwood, and must be pacified with repeated applications of growth formula, but once its been pacified it becomes a domesticated sea weed that is only hostile to creatures that would attack wormwood while not also being aquatic.
- Unlike winownas catapults, you can't aggro them on a butterfly patch and watch them farm forever. They aren't willing to act offensively like a catapult.
- Domesticated seaweeds become dormant in the winter, and give lichen in addition to the freshwater barnicles in the cave ponds.
- Domesticated seaweeds must be relocated to to enable to pond to be used for fishing or watering cans once more, but become enraged again if left dry before dying and reverting to being boulders and a starter kit. Watering or fertilizing them delays their enraging.
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Domesticated seaweeds enrage if they go 60 days without being fertilized if no wormwood with seastack souvenir exists, or they are replanted planted in salt water without having been fertilized in the past 20 days (Going feral.)
Alternatively, wormwood can use fertilizer to gather small numbers of seedshells from seaweeds, but domesticated seaweeds are completely passive to everything when not enraged, offering no defense but instead giving a source of a new type of distinct weaponry. Or both because its still a high work to utilize skill so it giving a strong benefit is likely fair.
I just find this concept interesting for letting players utilize a resource I've genuinely never seen get mentioned, and enabling a basing style where people can, with a considerable amount of travel time and effort, terraform frog hell into a home with unique benefits, resources, and defenses.
Now, I will acknowledge that a skill like this might work better as a capstone, as its better than the monkeytail/berries skill in a few ways (Overall power, uniqueness,) but I tried to balance it by requiring more complicated resources, and having greater restrictions on how it may be used (Requiring bodies of water to keep it functional.) I would be cool with discussing ways to improve the rest of the branch, but I was more interested in drafting a replacement for one of the duplicate berries skills that I'm advocating for merging.