General Various feedbacks from a 2022 player beating the game for the first time

As stated in the title! I've been playing Wynncraft for quite a while, but very casually, and my runs always ended at some point where I lost interest or just moved on to something else. About a year ago I decided I was kinda done with the game even! I had thought Wardrobe Wonders added some very frightening changes, but then some other more recent developments made me give it another chance:

• corpe released Wynnphony
• Fruma OST

So I hope this tells you what you need to know about my perspective and approach to the game! Now lets get into my big turbo-casual thoughts.

so, Wardrobe Wonders: did it get backpedaled?
I swear there were more changes that freaked me out about this update, like needing to push an extra button to navigate from Store to Wardrobe, or the chat getting spammed with paid feature ads alongside the typical tips, it is v nice that these things haven't shown up, or that I maybe hallucinated them a year ago <3

I do still think that an in-world podium for advertising paid content is kinda scary, but I understand its necessity for broadcasting deal events in the most easily accessible way, I waited for it to tell me ranks were on sale before buying hero+, and it also gives me free chests every once in a while, so I accept these peace offerings <:

However I am still very firm on not spending "loaned" rank ability points, and that there should be a toggle or something to disable them from being offered. Even beating the game I still don't have a level 120 character, so this has, in my experience with the game, been entirely a pay-to-win feature.

The Nivla Woods Questline: its so peak ,,,
I love everything about each and every mission in this series. Aledar and Tasim, while being very cheesy at this point, are lovely characters to be around. i LOVE that there is ACTUALLY an extra cutscene waiting for you back at detlas after you clear the infested pit !! Little details like that kinda make this the height of the game's storytelling for a while. Tasim motif tasim motif tasim motif.

New Mount System: AWESOME
Massive improvement over just gambling !!! I get to feed my horse rocks !!! Running around collecting stat nodes is so fun and cute !!! I ended up investing a lot of time breeding a 900something potential wyvern when I got around to those, though I very very much appreciate the mods people have made to simplify the feeding process and feel like something like that should be available vanilla , like paying a small (but scaling on potential) amount of emeralds to an npc to tell you an ideal feeding queue for a stabled mount. that would be neat !

Grave D- I mean Brothers Return: awesome!!
What a glowup this quest has received in my time with the game!!! Saint's Row Crypt is genuinely one of the biggest highlights of pre-fruma for me, it's such an intricate and well thought out little dungeon for this quest, and all the rekindled mob models aaaah. I love it lots <3 And I hope to see other old quests get similar glowups !!

Charon: how they've massacred my boy...
Idk if this is a hot take? But like, funny plants vs zombies Charon was cute and fun, but I understand the changing focus of the game and his removal. Then 2.0.3 Charon was cool !!! Definitely a kick up the difficulty notch, but he had really cool mechanics and was super cinematic !!! Then I think rekindled world came around and he got turned into a multi-hit and self-destruct spell turret... I have to assume it was some issues with the new mob system... but it's been a year !!! And what's changed now?

He has some more generic spells, and has a bunch of lackeys spawning in the room, one of which heals Charon and all the others to practically full every 12 seconds or so !!! Why ??? The only times I've been able to win the fight now are when he gets stuck on some geometry at the edge of the arena and cannot participate , or I'm massively overleveled !!

Again idk if I sound crazy for saying this, but I'd love to see a return to 2.0.3 Charon in the new rekindled mob format !
Sickass custom spells ! There's even more room for those now !
Wanna give him crazy overpowered henchmen ? Go back to making that the punishment for failing to close the tombs ! This makes even more sense now with that being a feature in the saints row crypt dungeon !!
I wouldn't mind him being a hard fight and still dealing a lot of damage if I didn't have to worry about being able to deal 5k+ at level 23 before the healer dps check !

Bremmyn-Hierra: ...huh!
This little mountain climb that just appeared with no content to its name but a world discovery and a random hidden npc... I am fond of it. Making the climb and just sorta wandering around, It's nice, even when there is no real point to it. I think there should be more areas like this and Little Wood that are just around to be explored , not to serve a game purpose , devoid of even enemies for the most part.

The House of Twain: hmm...
This quest is in a very very odd spot right now. It's pretty dated, but it also feels like there's been... patchwork fixes and changes to it here and there ? Let it be known that I wasn't able to complete this quest my first time around without asking the wiki for help... but this time I wasn't able to figure out without the wiki, and I had already beaten it several times in previous playthroughs! Things keep changing just slightly and I can't tell if they're broken or if that's just the new intent of it. Earlier segments of the house hint to throw things into carpets to get a reaction, but the latter half of the puzzles that actually would've required that ditch it entirely and expect a right click instead ?? I don't know if this is still the case, but even the emergency button in the fireplace no longer worked when I was playing it ! Thas crazy. Imagine losing a hardcore run to the house of twain fireplace.

I think this is one such quest that deserves a Brothers Return level overhaul. Entirely ditch the outdated puzzle concepts and make newer more intuitive ones with custom models and all that ! It would be awesome to see a House of Twain that I look at as fondly as Saint's Row's Crypt :3

Gavel's First Half: environmental fatigue
Welcome to Gavel! We've got sprawling fields dotted with humble farms! A large mining operation off to the side! A spooky swamp with run down wooden buildings! A spookier swamp with even more run down buildings! Not one, not two, but three rundown settlements within those swamps! Dreary death and dismay everywhere you look!
...Oh you've seen all these settings already in Wynn?

I understand this is no small ask, Olux Swamp and the Dark Forest are a huge chunk of the map, but like, that's also kinda the problem, soooo much space dedicated to retreading the same ground that I kinda feel like Nemract perfectly encapsulates. It's not a very fun theme to linger in either. If I'm being honest this is the exact point where most of my previous runs died due to disinterest and not wanting to interact with so much of this dreary arc of the story.
Especially with the creativity we've now seen in Fruma, I believe there is something new and unique that could be done in place of these swamps, and in place of the effect of decay as a whole. Like what about...

Suggestion: Decay -> Venom
Death is a topic thoroughly explored by the corruption, so what if instead, the decay was more of a magically potent illness, spread by the fangs of the parasite and polluting the surrounding area, giving birth to a new ecosystem in the Olux Wastes covered in toxic purple sludge and poisonous mushrooms and all that, giving it more of a purple theming rather than just what appears to be another swamp. Gavel is supposed to be high fantasy right ? Make the evil high fantasy too !

The dark forest can also get a little more purply , but it should also lean much more into the themes that are already there. Make the trees tall twisted and barren of leaves, do some real spirit halloween bs over there !

Gelibord can get a bit more of its own theming instead of being an Olux 2! The people that live there, closer to the heart of the illness of the forest, have learned much about it and are developing ways to combat it. Some practical, some fanatical. Freaky plague doctor setting !

Hollow Serenity: a light in the dark
Just as I was getting fed up with the dark forest's samey dreary quests, I got surprise attacked by one of my FAVORITE QUESTS EVER. The storytelling is phenomenal, I'm so shocked that something of this quality, so compelling, was sitting next to Forbidden Prison, Lazarus Pit, and Memory Paranoia, and how I braced myself for this about latter thinking "oh boy another random rich family that lived here and made some whoopsie" but i couldn't have been more wrong ahbfg. the ending made me do the fuckin cinema hands, I've never been so shaken by a quest's story in this game before , and wouldn't be ever again until Fruma !!

But the story is just one of the things this quest has going for it, solving the mystery around the manor felt intuitive and fun, suddenly needing to find a hiding spot in the crazy scientist's shack was REALLY COOL AND GOOD and I'm afraid its one of those things that's just never going to hit the same as it did on the first playthrough. The boss was cool! even if easy , and obviously for me a big part of that might've been getting its own boss theme that fit so well with the vibe of the plot asbhfdkgjb. I don't think I can gush over this quest enough.

Galleon's Graveyard: perfect conclusion* to the ocean arc
*Haven Antiquity is just like , an extension of the light and dark arc
This is SUCH a fun dungeon and I love that it remixes one of the ocean themes, running and swimming through this dungeon feels so good and dramatic, every single gimmick introduced is super intuitive and fun, the boss ALSO is super fun and has cool gimmicks (which is crazy cause like, isn't this the other guy that got an overhaul in 2.0.3 ? how come he's fine ??), I love that like Infested Pit the events of the dungeon immediately follow its related quest, hype moments and aura yea, I love this one <3

Reincarnation: THE BEST
I am still trying to figure out how they made this fight feel so GOOD. This got me hyped for the rest of the game. Where Corrupter of Worlds was a letdown, Amadel was, fine, Death was spam, BOB arrived to singlehandedly overthrow every single other try at a finale to the Wynn arc deliver the smoothest and most fairly punishing fight... I wanna say in the entire game, I don't even know if any Fruma bosses singlehandedly surpassed the feeling of the Bob fight. I died like six times in a row, but it never felt like it wasn't my fault, like it wasn't something I could learn from next time. I could've just done a few caves, gotten better gear, but damn it felt SO GOOD to just keep throwing myself at it and refining my strategy every time.

I have a VIDEO of my successful attempt here it is


Cinfras: not quite a Detlas2
Though it seems like it tries to be? And is also implied in that one Two cutscene wayy over in Fruma. Perhaps again it is because I am not a serious lategame player, I have no sincere interest in guilds or any of the unique benefits and gameplay they provide.

There should be more casual content centered around Cinfras ! I feel like I didn't spend enough time here to get cozy with it like I am Detlas. My solution to this would also solve another critique I hear brought up frequently since fruma, and paint a stronger parallel between Cinfras and Detlas

Suggestion: Old Friends Questline
A three part questline catching up with Aledar and Tasim !! The first two parts could take place in the light and dark forests, each featuring only one of the two dudes. Tasim has been busying himself with work to take his mind off of his past, and Aledar has been trying to make time to find and meet up with Tasim. I don't have much of a strong idea what these parts would be about. Perhaps they could usurp and overhaul existing quests like how the nivla woods questline came to be. They would however both end on saying that they're headed to Cinfras soon due to a surge of soldier work needing to be done over there.

The third part is where it really goes down. Focusing around Cinfras and BOTH pals, It's a back and forth assisting both of them individually with soldier work around the city, fending off hoards of monsters from kander with Aledar, then running into the bandit that Tasim has been chasing down, etc etc, but the two juuust keep missing eachother.
How does it end? Do they meetup? I think both outcomes could be written in a satisfying way, so perhaps both can happen, depending on your performance and dialogue choices throughout the quest. Perhaps the "didn't meet up" cutscenes could parallel the Recover the Past and The Mercenary ending cutscenes, and the meetup cutscene could parallel the post-Infested Pit cutscene, ough <3

Gavel Second Half: is this , the same world ?
Congrats! You've defeated an incarnation of the hero of Wynn sent as a challenge to find someone he deems worthy of possessing his strength, you are essentially Wynn's new protector, Bak'al's new bane. You've also just become the god of light's best friend, and a tree just monologued to you about how important your mission is, how this ties into even the corruption back in wynn. All the pieces are falling into place with you as the centerpiece, the one that is going to rid the world of the evil influences.
...In the meantime, lets think about none of that. For like twenty five levels. Wanna help a pop-culture reference make the worst legendary knife in the game?

The Canyon arc is such a strange part of the game. It's lore is so self-contained, that one of the secret discoveries is learning about how there is a literal barrier preventing the primary lore from getting in. And yet, that allows it to conclude itself very satisfyingly as well. Qira is a FANTASTIC boss that rivals Bob, truly Gavel's Bob. The Breaking Point is an extremely satisfying quest to tie all of the major plotlines together. Finally meeting Siegfried ! That was cool too ! It gets to do all of these things whereas the Realm War plotline needs to be in little victories and little losses because, there is more game coming! I guess I can't really think of any suggestions to improve it, it just feels strange at first.

Wyverns: a blessing and a curse
Holy moly I can finally stop using the promotional wyvern !! I can become a wyvern rancher master and breed up and ultra powerful one and just fly wherever I want !! This is awesome !!
...aw man I'm never going to bother interacting with the confusing but intricate landscape of the canyons and molten heights and sky islands...
I have been given the ultimate traversal tool and its really fun to use, so if I get annoyed with Molten Heights after trying to find the first quest for more than two minutes, I have an unfortunately effective and entertaining solution that is not learning the lay of the land.
It works as a get out of anything free card too, annoying mobs and parkour challenges are a thing of the past if you allow them to be.
I certainly don't really think wyverns need to be nerfed over this, at the end of the day its the players fault for utilizing it in the way that they do, whether or not that takes away from their own experience, but I wonder what changes could be made to discourage that kind of behavior.

Lootruns: way too well executed
It should not be understated how much time I have spent doing the CotL lootrun because I thought Pure ascended looked nice for my build. I never got it, but damn the journey trying to get it was fun. I've already unlocked all the beacon types. I've done a run for two hours straight and then I post the stats in the wynn discord and make pro players cringe :3

I don't even typically care for gambling stuff in games, as a matter of fact I think my brain is wired incorrectly in a way that I purely hate them, but its not even really about that, lootruns are just so fun to do over and over and over and over , the chance of getting an overpowered weapon is just icing on the cake y'know. They put a freaking number-go-up rougelike in my brainrot game, how can I refuse that.

The Silent Expanse: ...
Hai. I heard you wanted to do content. In the Silent Expanse. Perhaps its primary questline, watch that one dramatic cutscene, or perhaps some secret discoveries, or maybe you just need to make your way from cave to cave. That sounds nice. The green foot is coming though. So cancel those plans.

So, I guess I got here right around the release of 2.2.1, and um, truthfully it is the first and only time I have dreaded seeing rekindled world enemies. Each and every area aside from the ruined olmic city has something massively overpowered. Toxic Waste revels in having that be its entire roster actually. If you aren't a tryhard with a 99% IDs mythic, you cannot do anything in the Silent Expanse that isn't fighting a losing battle with the random roaming enemies, if you aren't in the safety of a cave, or the dungeon ??? these shouldn't feel like safer places than the surface i think ??

I'm not joking about the not being able to do anything. My first attempt at A Journey Further was cut short after getting ambushed by actually threatening roaming enemies, then I guess I missed a quest enemy I needed to kill, and a kantyr guard did it instead, softlocking the quest.
The second time around, I couldn't focus on, what I assume what would've been one of the best and most impactful cutscenes in the game, because a Repurposed Host was crawling all in my face while I was sacrificing my friend. I wanted to kill it but it had seemingly infinite HP or I was doing something wrong. So instead it just crawled around there getting in the way of the scene.
Then I thought, "Oh secret discoveries are fun! Lets do those!" mistake. The most miserable slog of the entire game that was.

• Otherworldly Occurrence has you standing on a singular block for 15 seconds, but the residents of eyeball forest hate that idea.
• The Forest Has Eyes has you traversing a gimmicky and tight parkour up a big tree... while being fired at by dozens of scared eyes. Don't bother trying to kill them, they'll respawn long before you could get to all of them.
• Fate of the Olm has you hunting for tiny objects right next to 100% Green Foot spawn- hey, why are these categorized as normal roaming enemies ??? In any other place they'd be a rare , or at least have lowered spawn rates like wooly rhinos.
  • Salt in the wound is that I realized I couldn't even finish it because of the two player thing , aaaaaughhhh

Sifted around the changelogs since then! Looks like toxulous ripper got a nerf , yay ! And more silent expanse enemies got updated , frightening.
I believe I've heard the argument that this is supposed to feel like entering the endgame, it needs to be challenging and the enemies are supposed to be frightening. Well the most imposing and frightening mob I encountered was right as I stepped foot into the region, an Omnispective Wanderer. Y'know what made that encounter so cool? The flashing texts was one thing, but it also had a massive health bar, and I was already kinda freaking out because I had to go save my friends! Y'know what I had the option to do then? Run away like a baby !! Something that the standard fauna of every other region of Silent Expanse don't seem to understand is good actually.
If you make a heavy-hitting and tanky enemy, make it slow. If you make a fast and heavy-hitting enemy, make it glassy. If you make a fast and tanky enemy, make its attacks wimpy. Doing all three, constantly, for the rest of silent expanse is the recipe that sours the mood I think. There's no weakness for me to exploit, it just feels like I'm in an area catered to the gear of a sweat. Nothing for me to learn from each time I die other than "go get a mythic"

Fruma: polarizingly perfect
The Silent Expanse had me truly worried for the part of the game I'd been fighting all this time to reach. I've never been happier to have been proven wrong.
I probably don't need to say what's been said a million times already. Each and every single quest starting at Queen's Recruit is at least A-Tier, and then invents entirely new tiers for some of the other quests like Apotheosis, The Missing Piece, and Off the Rails. Finishing everything shook me so much it was like the feeling of returning to reality after getting super immersed at a movie theater. I've been rotating various plot points in my head for the past week since beating it basically non-stop ahjbf.
And then there's the mob quality and diversity and balancing (for the most partt) being soooo damn good, the only times things felt overpowered was like , wooly rhinos which are kinda totally justified , and world events and the boss altar , which is fair ! because that just seems to be the norm for that type of content , I don't think I'm the target demographic bhgfjdb.
And then there's the AREAS god DAMN the areas are so unique and well built , I came for the pretty orange forest and stayed for the entire industrial revolution and the prehistoric forest and the massive imposing castle that can be seen from all angles god ahbghjfd IMAGINE IF ELDRITCH OUTLOOK GOT PLAYED UP THAT COOL !!
The music is of course gorgeous, it goes without saying, it was already one of my primary reasons for getting back in the game and needing to see the content tied to it and oh my gosh ahbkjfg was not disappointed.
It makes me wish that the rest of wynn could be just as good as this, and with big quest updates like brother's return, it seems like that might be part of the dev plan , and I'm looking forward to that a lot :3

Adasaurs: ...is that all?
I kept myself spoiler free for the third mount other than knowing of it's existence. When I got it it was... pretty underwhelming. Oh, it is a horse with different stat focus? That doesn't sound bad on paper but... you need to be level 115 to use one, that's kinda insane for a horse2. While I was imagining what they might be, I was thinking something like...

Suggestion: All-Terrain Vehicle
It would be super cool if Adasaurs were given the ability to swim on the surface of water and climb blocks !! probably swimming at like 66% speed and climbing at 33% to keep it balanced. It would make it a solid competitor to the Wyvern, and I think each it would allow each existing mount to fulfill their own niche. Horses are available very early on, and are the fastest of all mounts at the expense of their simplicity. Wyverns are unlocked comfortably entering the endgame and are the easiest to use in most scenarios, but fail when needing to traverse any tight spaces. Adasaurs then come in with the best handling and terrain traversal, applicable in practically any scenario, where a skilled rider can get much more usage than with a Wyvern.



I think that's all my big thoughts !! Well there's also the thing with fruma xp but me and a million others already said that in the discord. Let me know how dumb and skill issue I am :3

 

A lot of wardrobe wonders stuff was changed with community feedback, and Salted was very transparent about Wynncraft's finances and talked about how it isn't really lucrative for him and he lives rather humbly, and if he actually wanted to make money, there's a million better options than a Minecraft server-- the point of the update was to feed Wynncraft's growth as it started to expand to more paid positions (like me) as opposed to relying on passionate volunteers.
I do agree that the podiums SUCK!!! I HATE THEM!!! They always ruin the immersion in towns a little bit, and we unfortunately aren't allowed to put them in an out of the way corner of the city theyre in. I imagine they do genuinely work in guiding players interested in paying for stuff to the right location, but I will never not be a bit peeved by their existence.
Maybe if there was a toggle for them that required you to reach a certain level so something like wynntils didn't just have it off by default and potentially lose customers interested in giving money who don't know how to go about it from missing that? Or like, if you interacted with one you could click a button to hide them??

 

UNOPTIMIZED LOOTRUN AND MUSIC ENJOYER RAAAAHHHH I ALSO VERY MUCH LOVE :D and also very much rotate things in the brain too awawawa.




Also an idea mayhaps to ponder about maybe:

mayhaps could toggle them on and off with a command of sorts? like with all the other ones for vfx, ghosts and what not- maybe like a "/toggle podium" or "storepodium" or.. yeah lol