I still hold out the hope that Acacia will get an update to make her interactable without a temporary potion. I completely agree with how unique her interactions are and really just want to play around and see what stories or interesting stuff I can generate with it
Yeah, I'd like that for there to be an expansion in content for her as well, but the developers says they want her to just be a wandering threat that chases the player. I'm not exactly sure why though, for one thing there isn't really any reason to even go to the deep woods, EXCEPT to find her, so her chasing and killing you for going there doesn't really mean much since players don't have a reason to risk getting killed by her, like she isn't protecting anything valuable. Second, because of the way the survival aspects of the game are designed, THE most dangerous thing in the game is sanity and weather, and that will always be more dangerous then Acacia, especially with a million slimes every other tile just spam slowing you and breaking all your clothing hitting you for 1 or 0 damage so you freeze to death faster. Just getting the deep woods takes an entire in game day, and with how limiting the inventory capacity is, bringing a tent, food, spare clothes because of how quickly stuff breaks, and means to have a fire burdens you so much just to be able to survive one day away from silverpine. So, the annoying survival mechanics are way more threatening and dangerous then her, and I'm sure like myself, 99% of players of this game don't even interact with content outside of silverpine. You can see this by how many people are asking about dungeons for the first time ever now that the potions that let you talk to Acacia are found there. Frankly, the survival and combat in this game has always been it's weakest points and feel super tacked on and basic, and as a result, are just far more dangerous then Acacia is, making the idea of her being a threat laughable. The real threat is the weather trying to kill you while you go out looking for her, lmao.
Though honestly I'd prefer the other NPC's just being brought up to her level.
Yeah, I was EXTREMELY disappointed when I worked for hours to get an item in the first two dungeons to get Acacia not to murder me, just to learn it was all the potions I had been skipping. I DESPISE the PvE content in this game. The slimes and bats make me rage so hard because I just do NOT care and want to get past them. I went through the trouble of getting the game to generate plate mail armor for my character and 3 star weapons, it still felt awful getting around with the slows and confusion. All so I could interact with a character I couldn't actually interact with. I was not happy at all during the last patch and I admit that I am still salty about it. The whole experience was AWFUL. I will never do a dungeon again.
The slime range attacks should be negated/nullified if you have armor points over a certain amount IMO.
I really dislike how separated the gameplay itself is from the AI component. Even a Weapon/Armor crafting system that uses the LLM would be a step in the right direction.
Though, to be positive. I DO think that interact-able NPCs outside of town is a good idea overall.