With the beta going live, many people will be playing Walter, some for the first time. As a long-time Walter main, I know how hard he can be to play, specially since he has basekit stuff that may be hard to notice, or underestimated, that makes his playstyle way smoother, and some of these took me quite a while to learn, like the "tree sanity".
So, I want to make a thread with "basekit" tips to help people that may not know them:
1. Woby's inventory has "implicit" uses: Atleast in early game, you can ignore carrying a backpack and use armor all the time if you want to feel safer. Her extra inventory also makes body insulation less of a pain to wear. And, her inventory persists after death; If you die and need to revive far away, on a meat effigy, or at portal, she can always carry insulation, food, heals, armor, etc.
2. >Trees give as much sanity as Tam and lessens sanity lost< : I think this is one of the most underrated things he has for his sanity. MAKE YOUR BASE WITH TREE AREAS . Its 0 upkeep and a constant sanity buff around the area. You can do this across your base, farms, boss spawns, sanity stations, in ruins, anywhere. Trust me, this **** is insanely useful, try it.
3. Easy early game heals: Butterflies can be killed with slingshot and their wings are a decent quick heal (well, now even better with the Field Medic perk lol). Trail Mix is Walter's favorite food and cheap to make, so its both a decent HP and hunger filler. Walter's tent is a portable healing station out of twigs and grass, and he loses half the hunger using it, so its completely worth "rushing" and carrying.
4. Farming critters: Walter is specially good at farming bunnies, butterflies, birds, moles, etc. You can also do this alternating ctrl + f while doing other tasks. For example, while chopping trees or collecting berries, you can shoot each bird that falls near you. Its tiredsome to do this all the time, but for early game its pretty good.
5. PK is your bestie: morsels>Pig King>gold>gold rounds. Also, pigmen are befriended with morsel for half a day, which you can easily farm from critters.
6. Shadow bunnies: You can get your sanity intentionally lowered to farm these. Its essentially a safe way to gather some monster meat, nightmare fuel, and beard hair.
7. Farming krampus: Its pretty easy to farm these out of killing critters, since you can summon them basically once a day. They are kiteable with the slingshot and give monster meat, which is good for Woby. If you are lucky you could even get a krampus sack on the first autumn or year. You can make a "cheap" farm for this, using an area with rabbit holes, flowers, a feather hat, and even a scarecrow for canaries.
8. "Ignoring fashion": Not gaining sanity from clothes means you can just focus on insulation, armor, or utility. For Winter, you can completely ignore the bother of rushing a Tam o Shanter; For Spring, If you don't have an Eyebrella, Rain Hat or Rain Coat are easy to get if you want to keep your hands free (and tentacles are easy to kill at a distance using the slingshot, for their skin); For Summer, Walter's hat has a base (60) overheating resistance. You can easily go through Summer just with this and a thermal. Also, Walter does NOT lose any sanity from staying in caves, so its also good for Summer.
9. Walter can build a cheap "sanity station": by just telling stories on a campfire surrounded by trees. Ways to upgrade it are of course Lamb's Idol (something worth rushing the first summer), Glommer, Evil Flowers+BQ Crown, etc etc.
10. Enlightened Crown is THE BEST ITEM for Walter: Gestalts on a ranged weapon are free extra damage, and believe it or not, Walter has a pretty solid sanity control. He gains the entirety of sanity auras at all times (not affected by dusk, night, caves, and insane auras), and also gains sanity from magic stuff like Thul Armor, magi, etc. Enlightened Crown is a gamechanger for Walter.
11. Armor while riding Woby: Woby has an "hp bar", when it gets depleted it buck off Walter. This resets after 5 seconds of not taking damage. However, Walter is the one taking the hits, so, by wearing armor you can extend this threshold. Marble armor is by far the best due to its 95% protection (the "Woby bar" goes to 180, for example, you can take 3 consecutive hits from Eye of Terror without getting buck off), but any armor does this to a different degree.
Anyways, I really like playing Walter, imo he has a pretty unique playstyle. I know hes challenging, most people either never played him due to his previous "worse than Wes" reputation, or tried to but got the "2 terrorbeaks" treatment, so I think some of these tips will be useful for many, specially new Walters.
Thanks for reading, please add more tips or tricks in the comments, im sure theres plenty more. I excluded Skill Tree tips because that adds A LOT more to his playstyle and I wanted to keep this as short as possible (also would have been too much yapping lol), but feel free to share any insights on that too!
And, if you have any questions about Walter's mechanics, skill tree, perks, etc feel free to ask those too!
