I want to preface this thread with a note, since I am basically going to trash Webber for the meme to get my point across: I used to main webber and I have hundreds of hours worth of experience with him. Hell, I made a steam guide for him that's on the front page of the most popular of all time tab.
(You can see that here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1164565027 be warned that this is like, a year and a half old now, and the way I narrate things have changed)
So, now with that out of the way, let's get to the main point. Webber sucks.
Now, of course, people are going to jump on me and say "he's OP! He can make an infinite amount of food!"
Yeah but he still sucks, and here's why.
If you want to be viewed as a "good" Webber in any server, you'll need to be constantly spider farming. Spider farming allows for literal chests-full of sanity restoration (silk / top hats), hunger restoration (monster meat), and health restoration (spider glands).
And the real kicker is that with the recent release of Wortox, Webber is now no longer the best character for health restoration, so now he's just viewed as a "meh" sidegrade to Wortox.
Even if we remove Wortox from the topic entirely, Webber is still not that great of a choice to pick as a character after you have more than a hundred hours into the game and you know how to keep your three stats up. The reason? He's boring to play.
Think of it, your sole purpose to a base is to sit at your spider dens and spider farm every night. This also sucks because it's absurdly OP. A competent Webber can live anywhere on the map, by himself, and survive as long as he has a handful of spider dens, because each spider drops fills each three stats respectively. The only real reasons why Webber should leave the spider dens are either to prepare for seasons, or to go fight something. Hell, even hounds aren't a problem because you can use spiders against them. Hell, you can even get away with using spiders alone to deal with hounds after day 100.
To sum things up, there are Webber has two problems:
-Boring to play
-Overshadowed by Wortox (healing)
-Overshadowed by people who know how to keep their hunger and health up.
Now, the fun part. How to solve them.
The game discourages staying near your base 24/7, however this is not the case with your spider dens. A solution that sounds good on paper is to give Webber perks that encourage him to explore, or rather, be less glued to his spiders. Here are some ideas.
Give Webber limited nightvision. As in, during the night, he will be able to see in the dark, however, he will only be able to see things closely nearby. In practical terms, he will be able to see the dark akin to a light radius smaller than a torch, but slightly bigger than Willow's lighter. Being able to walk around in the darkness will allow for more adventuring, however it's still needed to craft a lantern or similar to see more in the dark. However, his sanity drain during the dark should be left unchanged.Rework spider farming entirely. As in, change it's definition. You know how you can command spiders to attack each other? remove that feature entirely. You shouldn't be able to command spiders to attack other spiders, unless you have a spider hat. This allows more room to work with, and gives more emphasis on Webber regarding spiders as friends. Now the question is "how do you spider farm?" I put the rest of this idea in a spoiler because it goes pretty in-depth.
When befriended, spiders could have the chance to weave silk and give it to Webber. After they do this, it have to wait 60 seconds, then it will wait until it randomly decides to do it again. Also, while still being befriended, you could give more meat to a spider to convince it to start weaving silk on the spot. This also allows Webber to walk around and spider farm at the same time so he isn't glued to his spider dens every night.
This removes Webber's ability to easily farm monster meat and spider glands however. So lets look at each of those.
For spider glands, you can replace the need to farm them entirely, and instead use silk (and maybe ash or something) to craft a "Silk Wrap" which could heal for 10 (or 15) HP. To avoid this being too OP, it would only be able to stack up to 5. If this still sounds OP, keep in mind that spider glands stack up to 40, which heal 8 each, and Wortox's souls heal 13-20 each, scaling down depending on the amount of people. Having Silk Wraps would provide a good use for silk, which Webber players usally have too much of more often than not, and it gives a good alternative to Wortox for healing because healing is no longer situational, as other players can carry silk wraps and don't require you to heal them directly.
As for monster meat, you could be able to pick up befriended spiders in the inventory (doesnt stack) and murder them in said inventory for their drops. This would, however, come with the penalty of dealing a big sanity hit to Webber, at around 15 sanity per kill, maybe? Also, a spider in the inventory should have a higher chance of producing monster meat, and/or a lowered chance to drop silk. Maybe a 80% chance for monster meat, 20% for a spider gland.
There, now all three spider drops now have a viable means to produce them, getting rid of the need to spider farm in the "old-school" way.
Give Webber the ability to craft cave spider dens. Cave Spider dens should be able to be crafted with (and this is a subjective recipe for the sake of an example) 1 cave spider eggs, 12 rocks, and 10 silk. Now, what are "Cave Spider Eggs"? They should be new drops that drop when naturally-spawning cave spider dens are mined with a pickaxe. They wouldn't be able to be planted, as their only purpose is for use in Webber's crafting recipe.
This would give Webber the ability to make spiders actually viable in killing bosses and such. The spider spitters and the cave spiders have so much unused potential in mob killing. Also, unlike normal spider dens, crafted Cave Spider dens work similarly to their natural counterpart, as they can't be attacked normally, and must be destroyed with a pickaxe, or mobs with the ability to destroy structures. It's also fire-proof, so that's a plus. However, to deter players from replacing normal spiders entirely, both cave spider counterparts should not be able to weave silk for Webber, nor be picked up.
So, those are all my ideas. Yay? Nay? Klei? Leave some ideas of your own below, or bash me on the head and tell me why I'm wrong.