Wormwood

"Mmm...Smells good!"

- Wormwood

Wormwood is a Character exclusive to the Hamlet DLC. He requires no experience to unlock and is immediately available. He appears to be an animate plant of some sort, similar to Treeguards, though he has a green cut stone located on the front of his chest. Wormwood's personality seems to be friendly while a little eccentric, addressing things such as bees as "Buzzers" and birds as "Tweeters."

Wormwood has many unique abilities pertaining to Plants and plant-like Mobs, along with access to several crafting recipes that can help with healing and defense. He is able to plant Seeds without the use of a Farm, and is treated neutrally by Mobs such as the Lureplant and Snaptooth Flytrap. He also seems to have some sort of kinship with plants, addressing most of them as "Friend," or things similar. Because of this, he loses when plants around him die, and gains  when he himself plants them.

Special Power
Wormwood's main ability is a Crafting Tab called "Green Thumb". This gives him the ability to craft 5 items that cannot be crafted by any other character.

The Green Thumb items are:
 * Living Log - When crafted, Wormwood will lose 20.
 * Poison Balm - Cures Poison.
 * Bramble Husk - Provides protection when worn, causes all Mobs around Wormwood to take damage when he is hit, and prevents damage from Brambles and Bramble Traps.
 * Bramble Trap - Behaves similarly to a Tooth Trap, dealing less damage but in a radius around the trap rather than to one target.
 * Compost Wrap - Restores 20.

Wormwood also has a number of other perks, chief of which is the ability to plant Seeds and Crop Seeds without the need of a Farm. Seeds planted this way take six days to grow to reach full growth, and yield the same items as a regular farm would. These seeds can be planted on most turfs, excluding things such as Rocky Turf, Checkerboard Flooring, and Volcanic Turf. The plant is visually similar to the one that appears in farms, and if burned before reaching full growth will yield a Cooked Seeds.

Wormwood also gains 10 from planting most Plants. This includes Seeds planted outside a Farm or Improved Farm, or from planting Grass Tufts, Saplings, Nettle Vines, Coffee Plants, Spiky Bushes, and Tree seeds. He also gains this sanity each time he digs through a Dung Pile without the use of a Shovel, which can result in a total of +30 per pile.

Items such as Crop Seeds and Butterflies will not give sanity, despite their ability to be planted. Along these same lines, planting Seeds in a Farm will not grant the +10.

He can also fertilize himself with Manure, Guano, Bucket-o-poop or Ashes to regain 2. If a Bucket-o-poop is used in this way, the entire bucket will be consumed regardless of the number of uses remaining.

Wormwood blooms in Spring, Monsoon Season and Lush Season over a course of three stages, gaining a faster walking speed and higher hunger drain depending on the stage. This effect increases until 2/3rds of the way through the season, at which point Wormwood's blossom will begin to close and he will revert to his normal form over the last 1/3 of the season. During Lush Season he is immune to the effects of Hay Fever, regardless of what stage of bloom he is in. During the third stage of blooming, Wormwood's flower will open up and a small particle effect of pollen will begin to fall from his head. In addition to this, everywhere he steps in this form will begin to grow small tufts of grass and flowers. This trail of flowers and grass is more than cosmetic, however, and will attract Bees to follow it. This generally results in them attacking Wormwood due to their more aggressive Spring or Monsoon form, so caution should be taken. The bees will play the animation as though pollinating these flowers, but they will not generate honey using them.

Snaptooth Seedlings, Snaptooth Flytraps, Hanging Vines, and Eyeplants are neutral towards him. Snaptooth enemies will still attack Wormwood if he is carrying any meat items with him within their aggro range, so caution should be taken.

No Food item will change his health in any way, so items such as Monster Lasagna can be consumed without taking any damage.

Disadvantages
As said above, Food items will neither increase nor decrease Wormwood's health. This limits the usefulness of items such as Dragonpie and Pierogi, restricting him to healing items such as Compost Wrap, Manure and Honey Poultice.

In addition, Wormwood loses when most plants near him are destroyed within a five-tile radius, even if the damage is not caused by him. There is no sanity drain associated with some plants, such as Weathered Trees, Ferns, Nettle Vines and Spiky Bushes.
 * -2 from burned trees, flowers, seeds, saplings and grass tufts. Saplings, grass tufts, and tree seeds will cause sanity loss even if burned as an item on the ground. The amount of items in the stack does not change the sanity drain.
 * -2 from trees, saplings or grass tufts being knocked over or uprooted by things such as the Hippopotamoose's jumping attack or the stomp from the Old Bell.
 * -5 from picking Flowers or digging up tree stumps, Grass Tufts, Saplings, and Coffee Plants.
 * -15 from chopping down a tree at any growth tier, including burned trees.

Wormwood also catches fire more easily than other characters, and is able to be frozen by the Ice Flingomatic in a similar way to mobs. It will take two projectiles from the Ice Flingomatic in quick succession to freeze him.

In Hamlet worlds, he spawns near three Rocks and four Ancient Walls instead of the hot air balloon (which could otherwise be hammered for resources). There is still a Machete nearby.

Tips

 * Since there is currently no sanity drain for digging up Nettle Vines or Spiky Bushes while there is a sanity gain for planting them, the player can continually dig and re-plant these items until their sanity is full. This type of exploit can also be executed by digging and re-planting Grass Tufts, Saplings or Coffee Plants, but the player will only have a net gain of 5 sanity each time rather than 10.
 * Tier 3 trees should be chopped as often as possible when farming for Logs, as they will drop 2 seeds (besides Birchnut Trees) which can be re-planted for a net sanity gain of 5 or an even break if the player digs up the tree stump as well.
 * When preparing to gather Charcoal, the player can set trees on fire and let them burn off screen to avoid losing sanity. Upon returning to the burned trees, allow Hippopotamoose, Clockwork Rooks, Bearger or other mobs to knock them down if possible. For example, knocking down 5 trees this way will result in a loss of 10 sanity rather than a loss of 75 when using an axe.

Trivia

 * Wormwood's voice is a didgeridoo.
 * Wormwood's quotes appear in a different font and color compared to other characters. The font is Henny Penny and it appears in a green similar to his skin color.
 * Maxameleon has different dialog when Wormwood is the chosen character.
 * Before he was implemented, there were files in the game of an alternate design, which most noticeably had large, curly horns on his head. In addition, the original sound files were replaced in his introductory update with a very different sound.