Expand Your Terraria Empire - Pylons, Town Building, and NPC Happiness

Loki said:
"OMG my Tinkerer hates the Desert = I am going to pay more" - that isn't what it says. To MAXIMIZE his happiness, maybe... but not to "get him to neutral"... this is why there are multiple happiness levers to pull. I've also missed the mountains of complaints over the years about <NPC> that only sells <item> when in <biome>, which one could argue is much more closely related to "progression" than coins... but that's another topic. :)
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If this is an answer to my posts, then again I want to clarify that I do not care that prices will be higher. I am purely concerned about the aspect that my beautiful builds will now make NPCs miserable. And the only way to make them happy is to fulfill specific requirements that ruin ideas for other builds. For example, a house in the desert or an oil rig or a flying base. Of course, you can simply ignore complaints and settle NPC in places that they do not like. But it feels like cruelty. And I do not want to be cruel to the NPC. That is why I build them big, beautiful houses, not boxes.
 
I'm definitely excited about this update. If I have one minor issue with the NPC happiness system, it's that it doesn't actually prevent commieblocks. It just prevents having too many commieblocks in one place. Personally, I'd love to be rewarded if I give them fancy furniture, or even something that fits their theme. Even if it's something entirely cosmetic, like additional dialogue. Otherwise I have no complaints.

I see alot of people concerned about the price increases if the NPCs aren't happy, and I'm a bit confused since money becomes trivial after hardmode. However, I understand where they're coming from, since the goblino casino has siphoned many a platinum coin. Will happiness affect reforges?
 
Pendromeda said:
I'm definitely excited about this update. If I have one minor issue with the NPC happiness system, it's that it doesn't actually prevent commieblocks. It just prevents having too many commieblocks in one place. Personally, I'd love to be rewarded if I give them fancy furniture, or even something that fits their theme. Even if it's something entirely cosmetic, like additional dialogue. Otherwise I have no complaints.

I see alot of people concerned about the price increases if the NPCs aren't happy, and I'm a bit confused since money becomes trivial after hardmode. However, I understand where they're coming from, since the goblino casino has siphoned many a platinum coin. Will happiness affect reforges?
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Yeah, they said earlier reforges are affected.
 
When I first saw these pylons, it reminded me those from terraria otherworld that cleans the area from corruption.
 
Loki said:


Happy Friday Terrarians!

Remember a few State of the Game's ago when we mentioned that we were working on something pretty cool that would potentially change the way that people approach certain aspects of the game? Well, the time has come to give you a peek behind the curtain at Terraria HQ and let you in on some juicy details surrounding this new feature coming to Journey's End!


Building has always been a staple of the Terraria experience - but functionally-speaking, there has never been any real reward to making fun creations outside of the adoration of the community. Similarly, everyone builds their central base and sort of shoves everything there... sure, some folks build in other biomes, but only for fun. What if we told you that Journey's End is going to change all of this up, raising building up to being a core gameplay feature with its own rewards?

Introducing...


THE TERRARIA TOWNS SYSTEM​


Towns will reward building like never before. Taking the time to spruce up your base(s), plan for NPC placement, and building bases in multiple locations will now provide you a variety of benefits that have never before been available. Of course you don't HAVE to partake in this new system, but we think you will find the positives in doing so to be quite tempting indeed. :cool:


Excited? Scared? Let's take a few minutes to dive into how this new approach to building works, shall we?

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TREAT 'EM RIGHT! - NPC HAPPINESS​


During Journey's End development, we conducted a focus group with all of the Terraria NPCs. Outside of some very strange requests (no, Guide, we cannot 'remove all doors at night'), their feedback was very clear: they are tired of being shoved into tiny cubicles or L shaped tubes and they want you to know this!

In order to help raise NPC morale so that they could be at their very best - and to reward players who go that extra mile to treat their NPCs with the respect they deserve, we are introducing the NPC Happiness System. How does it work? What does this mean for you? Read on....


What affects NPC Happiness?
  • NPC's are happier when you locate them in biomes that they prefer​
  • NPC's are happier when they like their neighbors​
  • NPC's are happier when they are not overcrowded with other NPCs​

Adding nice furniture and aesthetics doesn't directly affect NPC Happiness... but it sure will make you feel better about yourself when your friends come over for a visit. ;)


What Happens if my NPCs are Happy/Unhappy?
  • NPC Shop prices will adjust based upon how happy each NPC is at the time​
  • If you make an NPC happy enough, you will gain access to a Pylon for that Biome (more on this below!)​
How can I tell if my NPCs are Happy?
  • You will notice a new dialogue option for Happiness for each NPC​
  • This will give you hints about what might make them happier as well!​

View attachment 268753

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DIVERSIFY & SPREAD OUT - BIOME BASES & TOWNS​


Pretty much everyone does the same thing when base building right? A big central area right at the initial spawn point... crammed with NPCs and crafting stations and storage and more. At best, people stick up a single room with a bed for boss fight respawns. We can do better than this, and what about all of the other poor biomes that would love to have you set up shop in their neck of the woods, and - again - those poor NPCs may not want to live in the Forest Biome!

But wait, there's more! If you group at least 3 NPCs together in a given location, it will be recognized as being a Town. Towns are not subject to enemy spawning - outside of invasion events - and you will get to hear the super cool town music when you visit!



All together, with Journey's End in conjunction with the Happiness System, you will be rewarded for building multiple bases across the scope of your world like never before!

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Forest Base

View attachment 268762
Underground Base

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Snow/Ice Base​



Well, that is great and all, but how will you get around your world to visit your now happy, but far-flung NPCs? Let's bring it all together and close out with the brand new Pylons!



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ROADS, WE WON'T NEED ROADS - INTRODUCING PYLONS​


We briefly mentioned these mysterious Pylons in our section on things you can get with happy NPCs. So what are these, and why should you care? Well, if you have enough happy NPCs in a given biome, you will unlock the use of a Pylon for that biome. Pylons allow you to instantly teleport from one Pylon to another! With Pylons in place, your "big central base" now becomes an interconnected network of cool outposts all over the world, allowing you to get around quickly without the need to lay tracks or teleporters... and providing you a home away from home wherever you are!


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PYLON INSTRUCTION MANUAL

You can only have one Pylon of a given biome type placed at a time (so you can not have, for example, an Ocean Pylon at both Oceans)

Pylons must be placed in their aligned biome in order to function (you can place them anywhere else, but they will not work!)

Pylons must also have two nearby (and living) NPCs in order to function - again, the idea here is to reward building those bases/towns! :)

Pylons cannot be used during Boss Battles or Invasion Events!

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Pylons are quite easy to use. Once placed in their aligned biome, you simply click on a nearby pylon. This will take you to the map screen where you can locate another placed pylon to which you want to teleport, click it and off you go!



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That's all for today! Look forward to more Terraria: Journey's End Feature Articles throughout the next few weeks up until Launch Day, May 16th, 2020!​
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Nice Update
 
Will the item duplication will be fixed in 1.4 i do hope so id like to see speedruns where theres no duplication glitching
 
I'm not even thinking about the prices, just "now exactly which types of pylons exist so I can think out the fast travel points, is there one for hell and why do I think the tax collector loves it"

Derunih said:
I hated having to find ways to keep enemies from teleporting in, or from just phasing/digging through the walls. If we can protect the towns more reliably, and actually make safe havens, that would be welcome. The wall-defying enemies is usually only an issue during events though, but I can imagine a pigron just ducking in to my underground town and murdering everyone.
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I think we already have enough to make an absolutely safe fortress, here's some details I remember
  • Wraiths/Reapers are unique because they just go through blocks like there's nothing you can do, but actually, if you just let the floor be floor then make your actual house some 6+ blocks off the ground onto the air (either literally floating into the air, or just make the floor be a house/hillcave/livingtree empty first floor and decorate it any way and put all the things and NPCs starting from the 2nd floor), the Wraiths/Reapers can't climb up to it because of the gap of solid blocks and will be stuck in the air, so your base is Wraith-/Reaper-proof if you start it this way. (you can make two doors out on the sides of the 2nd floor with outside platforms diagonally or vertically going up to the doors, or you can make down holes from the second floor onto the first as platforms or trapdoors or rope. On the side of the building you can put traps or bubble-held lava to kill flying monsters that keep hugging the building. You can make a lava pitfall, on the entire width of the house or two pits by the two sides, placed below the first floor, and monsters will gladly jump down on it anytime you're chilling above in the house because they're trying to reach your horizontal position)
  • Doors can be made to only open to one side by putting a furniture/woodbeam/platform on one side, or by putting the door 2 blocks above outside solid ground (or more) so you can't normal-walk up to it anymore, monsters can't hit it open while jumping
  • Monsters inside events (blood moon, eclipse) can still spawn where you placed background walls to skip directly inside your base, so they can skip a tower to spawn directly inside a room, but still, monsters can only spawn offscreen in a ring from you with a minimum and maximum distance (they need to be 63-84 blocks sideways from your current spot to spawn), so basically if you size the entire house THIN enough so staying inside on either extreme side still places the 63rd block onto an acceptable non-defense-bypassing point outside, they can't skip inside
  • Monsters can sometimes spawn on top of roofs (Wraiths/Reapers will immediately crawl down and kills your dudes, for everything else they just clog up the spawn limit and look silly when you fly up and see 6 monsters having a party on top of your house), but you can actually prevent them from spawning on top of roofs too, by either making the roofs too short for a monster to spawn (while standing at the lowest ground level, no nearby house has a roof reaching the 34th block above your ground), or just fixing it to be too HIGH for a monster to spawn (build it straight up like a tower until the 46th from the highest ground, or a couple more if you can jump from there)
  • (You can't get a pigron to spawn for the underground towns because having 3+ NPCs nearby will stop monster spawns outside of events, and I think that neither blood moons or eclipses have any monster effect like that when underground)

I've made a few impenetrable bases like that and the only problem is that eclipse mothron just flies to you through blocks no matter what, you HAVE to get out and fight it whenever it appears. I don't care about putting a thing to disable events, just mothron from spawning
terrariabase.pngterrariabaseb.png

But lately I've been thinking to just make a normal big vanity city with a big rising hill and more buildings inside the hill for fun (and thanks to pylons there's more reason to make cute constructions all throughout too) and instead of making a battle-focused mainbase, I'll just make to the side of the start an event arena to go to whenever an event is on, since monsters won't even spawn outside of events in towns, and the event arena would need to be a separate place to your mainbase anyway when doing something like a boss fight or the Frost Moon otherwise all your NPCs die everytime
terrariaarena.png
 
Just logged in to say I love this new feature!
Also....reading through the 13 pages so far. If you remove the extremely vocal complaints of like ~3 people you will find most folks think this sounds awesome!
Complaining about the economy in Terraria is disingenuous folks. Gold is so easy to get it's practically trivial and even if the shops gave you a 200% hike it wouldn't really make that big a difference.
Thanks for the work devs! Me and my kids will love this. I know it!
 
shamurai7 said:
Just logged in to say I love this new feature!
Also....reading through the 13 pages so far. If you remove the extremely vocal complaints of like ~3 people you will find most folks think this sounds awesome!
Complaining about the economy in Terraria is disingenuous folks. Gold is so easy to get it's practically trivial and even if the shops gave you a 200% hike it wouldn't really make that big a difference.
Thanks for the work devs! Me and my kids will love this. I know it!
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Now I will disagree with something like 200% being no big deal, if someone ignores it and got a huge 200% price increase, that'd cause problems in the early game trying to afford key weapons like the mini-shark.

Now if its a much more modest amount like I expect, it won't be a big deal, but tripling the price would be a huge deal.
 
What other ways are there to boost an NPC's happiness?
  • Sunflowers? It'd make sense, they give the "Happy" buff.
  • Furniture? Sure, a table and a chair is great, but what if they also have their own bed, fireplace, and bookshelf? Maybe a painting or two to pretty up the place? A window (counted as "background monster-proof walls that let in light")?
  • In these times of people being told to stay in their house and not move like we were a bunch of Terraria NPCs, let's think about what we like having. A bathtub, a toilet, an ale keg, and a garden (think: trees) so we can take some fresh air anyway! So perhaps if such conveniences are within a given radius of the house, it'd count as comfier and boost happiness too. Perhaps they could work like buffs, but only for NPCs, and when querying housing we see the happiness buffs a house gets?
  • Perhaps some NPCs like specific types of furniture more than the average. I can see the guide liking crafting stations of all sorts, the clothier liking having a loom, the dye trader a dye vat, the wizard liking alchemy table, crystal ball, bookshelf, star in a lantern, etc. But also the party girl liking disco balls, bubble machines, etc., the nurse liking heart lanterns, the angler likes the jellyfish jars, etc.
  • Also specific furniture themes. Maybe the dryad likes living wood furniture, the merchant likes marble and RICH mahogany, the wizard like skyware, the nurse likes glass (easy to clean and keep sterile), the party girl likes slime (it's bouncy!) and honey (it's sweet!), the pirate captain likes palmwood, etc.
With enough things like this, one could offset the penalties from wrong biome or crowdedness and keep the NPCs happy in a big central base -- just one that has themed rooms for the NPCs and offer comfortable amenities that help it look like a nice appartment building rather than a cheap NPC prison.
 
Terraria:"We must construct additional Pylons!"
Me:"Not enough Minerals!"

Terraria back then:"Also Try Minecraft!"
Terraria later:"Also Try Starcraft!"
Me:"Enemy Warp in detected!"
 
The idea sounds awesome.

One worry I have is if NPC's all have 1 biome they like, and 1 set of neighbors they like, there will be just one good way to build things.

It would be nicer if each NPC likes at least 2 or more biomes, and likes at least more than 3 possible neighbors, so that you can have some choice, and some change between different games, of which NPCs you put where for optimal happiness.
 
I think that Pylons should be able to be enabled and disabled through the use of wires so that people creating adventure maps can have a quick travel system to implement into their maps. Just imagine an adventure map with a small village on an island in the middle of the map, and you have to teleport to each biome one by one and return a magical gemstone to its shrine at the end of each biome to restore the natural balance, and to make sure you do it in order, the gemstone holder activates a wire leading to a new pylon so that you can travel there now.
 
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