Toroic

I like class systems in terms of encouraging cooperation and coordination, but VS's take on them has a lot of flaws. For starters, some classes are just straight up better than others. Hunter is strong early, late, and vs bosses. Blackguard is weak early, vs bosses, and while they get significant bonuses to heavy armor and melee, I'd argue that performance is worse than hunter or commoner using chain and bows. Their unique gear is nice for iron age, but becomes obsolete later. Tailor used to have the unique niche of making the best clothing, and a strong early-midgame option in tailored gambeson, but recent updates gave alternatives to similarly warm clothing. Tailor and Malefactor both have some bonuses in accumulating rusty gears, which is an interesting playstyle but takes a while to pay off and I'd argue doesn't offset their downsides. Clockmaker is weird. Saving a temporal gear here and there is low impact, and tamed locusts are mostly a gimmick. Combat Overhaul makes a number of changes that help put classes are much more even footing, but in vanilla it's hard not to argue for either commoner or hunter, especially if you turn class recipes off. It also makes melee combat and shields much more useful. In general, I don't think gear that doesn't matter lategame is a good perk for a class. Vanilla ranged combat is much stronger than melee combat at all phases of the game, but especially early on. Xskills provides a cool amount of customization, but also has certain skills as vastly more useful and powerful. The lore value-add from the existing classes feels pretty minimal, and many of them don't play differently despite vastly different perks and penalties. Summary: Commoner: Good spot Hunter: Good spot, and a good example of a class supporting a playstyle for the entire length of a world. Malefactor: Needs an overhaul, perks are overwhelmingly early game focused. Stealth and looting focused gameplay could be a cool niche, but is not supported by perks or gear. Blackguard: Could be in a good spot if plate armor and melee combat weren't both less effective and more resource intensive. The issue isn't with the class but with vanilla combat in VS. Tailor: Needs an overhaul, weak early and then slides into irrelevancy. Clockmaker: Needs an overhaul. Enormous thematic potential to make all sorts of cool automation parts, saving 1 of 3 temporal gears on a translocator is trivial, taming locusts is trivial. This class is perhaps the most disappointing because of how cool it could be, vs how mediocre it is in practice.

With what you’ve taught me so far, I think Tailor would be an excellent candidate for a trader based perk. Following the line of reasoning that they would have the least talent for wilderness survival, it would stand to reason that they would have the most talent for negotiating and persuasion. That would probably fix any and all concerns I’d have about tailor.

My balance assumptions are made based on default settings (meaning class-exclusive recipes enabled) and an initial temperate spawn point (and no reason to seek out colder biomes. If you're willing to travel, you want to aim for equatorial or establish a winter base in that region). You make some great points with the trading, having profitable trade goods positions tailor better and is an argument for the repeatable usefulness of the class abilities. You've fully convinced me that tailor is better than I had initially thought. That said, I'd still prefer it is reworked because while there are many strategies to make gears from traders, tailor is still a class that is bad early, peaks in mid-game, and falls off lategame as well. Cold weather gear is something you don't benefit from outside of a biome that experiences winter (and in temperate, only part of the year), and you only need it crafted once and then can repair it indefinitely. Tailored gambesons are excellent armor, and retain value as a "walk around base armor" but again aren't something that you need crafted repeatedly. For multiplayer, a tailor could join in the midgame, craft all the cold weather and aesthetic gear that players would want, and then switch classes and most of their contribution would be made. I believe that a class has flawed design if the benefits are largely external to the class itself, in a way specific to VS almost all tailor's benefits are recipe driven and gained from class-exclusive recipes being off, while their inherent downsides are significant and permanent. The class relies entirely on class-exclusive recipes to not be a strict downgrade from commoner. Contrast with hunter or blackguard which have class-exclusive recipes but do not depend on them for their niche. Honestly, I see tailor even in multiplayer as a flex class for an experienced player where they know it's weak in comparison but want to visually communicate via tailor only clothing that they are surviving with a weak class.

Sharks! They've survived largely unchanged though 5 mass extinctions already, and thus would be very likely to survive The Rot.

I think before they add new classes they need to rework clockmaker and tailor. Clockmaker's bonuses are weak, niche, and lategame on top of that except for the speed bonus it shares with Hunter. There's enormous potential for them to get fun and useful recipes, and I hope they can reach that potential. Tailor's effectively a challenge class. It's worse than commoner at most tasks (mining, harvesting, foraging, combat (health penalty)) in exchange for the ability to make some minor upgrades to clothing items and slightly better Gambeson.

Similar to Valheim and Minecraft, a good strategy is to keep a secondary set of gear you can easily toss on in order to get back to your body and maybe even fight off whatever killed you. This strategy gets stronger the later the game gets and the better your secondary gear becomes. Unlike Minecraft, you can't easily reset your spawn closer to where the danger is, so you'll need to stock up on temporal gears or take it more carefully in the first place. Also don't forget about pillaring up or blocking off enemies. Being able to place a barrier between you and enemies when you're the only one who can dig is powerful.