Simple idea: Revamp Woodies on-foot skills a little to make it so on foot woodie has more utility outside of his moose/or in addition to the moose in combat, so his middle branch skills are about as dense as newer skill trees.
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Treeguard feller 1: New bonus: Add woodies unarmed damage to attacks made with tools (Items which do a job in the world, like pickaxes, shovels, hammers... Even if you would often be using a multi-tool or a pick just due to those having the best damage.)
- This makes lucy a little less bad for self defense (Even if she is still seldom your best option,) but makes it so lucy is driven to use new and different items to defend himself from other characters, as stuff like the pick/axe and moonglass cutter would be standout options for woodie.
- Stuff like the basic two pickaxes would have approximately the same number of hits to kill as a spear. Its very minor early game and its only later it will have a typical effect that's greater than simply saving a single inventory slot.
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Treeguard feller 2: Learn to sharpen lucy with axe materials around the constant (Gold, moonglass, thulecite,) each material increases lucies damage by 5 and her damage versus plants by 33%, making this a collect them all quest.
- I'm unsure how or if these would wear off, but the idea is that a fully sharpened lucy would be a mediocre weapon at most points of progression, but against tree-guards and similar enemies she gains a power spike that makes her uniquely valuable for self defense.
- I presented it as a collect them all instead of an in order thing, but I could see people giving this a strict ordering too.
- OUR BOYS HERBICIDE BABY. (No wormwood please don't cry.)
- Treeguard feller 3: Not sure if this needs much given how easily it kills things like bee queen still, but you could probably broaden the lucy sharpening minigame to fit late game post-rifts content I just don't feel confident saying this is wise.
- Quicker Picker: Fuse to one skill (As its been power crept to death at this point.)
- Slicker Picker (quicker picker 2's spot): You can throw lucy at items on the ground to fetch them. Lucy will guide towards and catch extra wood pieces when fetching wood and sticks.
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Thicker Sticker: Lucy can be thrown to get her stuck in giants. Lucy stores bonus damage while logged in a target from the damage done with tools, or woodies moose form. Various actions (Like pulling her out on foot, or moose charging as the moose) can dislodge lucy to deal the stored damage to the giant.
- Charging over floor lucy as moose bounces her in the direction you charge, letting you get her stuck in a giant again. (Its not a dumb toss, it sort of aims at the giant if possible.)
- Tool damage storing is stronger than moose damage storing. Its a soft combat gimmick for the moose, but a strong bonus for woodie (and his friends) pummeling something with a pick/axe.
- Stored damage is buffed by treeguard feller 2's sharpening.
Most of these make relatively minor day to day utility growth where you can sweat not carrying dedicated weapons as often, but the idea behind thicker sticker is to give woodie a gimmick that gives him combat scaling past the point where the moose falls off. Since while the moose is perfect early game this gives woodie progression and more gameplay to manage during boss fights.
Given, y'know, the moose does eventually start to fall off and you can't do inventory management. Juggling lucy with your charge gives you a little more fun stuff to do.
At the same time, the beaver and the goose see a lot less use because of the pressure there is to maximize woodies combat power with the moose. So I decided to draft methods of scaling damage via tools instead of weapons to kill enemies are there to come up a moose alternative that is fun and has teeth to it.
So there is a human woodie fighting style, and a moose woodie fighting style. Both have hands and scaling.
(i'm not against his affinities teaching him better idols or anything like that mind you, i just wanted to focus on a funny idea I had for the fun of it in the hopes it inspires people to think about ways that definitively make these non-were skills feel as peak as the wereskills.)
(NOTE: I'm not demanding this immediately because of the cheese nerf, rather, I'm using the cheese nerf to bring up thoughts I had twoards fleshing out two branches of a skill tree that were kinda feeling old and under the weather, as a general part of my beliefs that some skill trees could use like 2-3 real skills worth of content to feel as good as the modern ones. Its just I felt the timing and the opportunity was good here.)