Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Master Mode player here & there's a few things I'd like to point out, concerning the Underground Desert.
  1. I personally think that it's fine as-is, & shouldn't be changed (for the most part). There's no other place on the map quite like UD & I think nerfing it would take away it's identity.
  2. I do, somewhat agree that the items in the Underground Desert, may not be equal to its difficult, however, if resource management is to be taken into account, it is a great place to get Tomb Crawler & Dune Splicer banners early-on, before they become a major issue in Hardmode, with sandstorms; in addition to containing the Magic Conch. If the Encumbering Stone was a better, implemented item, I'd include it, but it's a bit wonky right now, so I'd personally pass. The Ancient Horn is a Mount worth noting also, if you plan on using any of the Lances in the game. Scarab Bombs are pretty decent too, I guess.
  3. Underground Desert is one of the many places where the Summoner Class excels, greatly. It's a place that I feel also, starts to sharply expose the major strengths & weakness with each kind of Character Archetype. If a player, or group of players are Metagaming, Summoner Class will play a major role in taming this part of the map early-on, very similar to the role a Summoner plays in the Underground Jungle.
I personally think that skill checks & difficulty spikes, give areas in video games their identity. If the Encumbering Stone was a much better item, I wouldn't want the UD touched at all, but the items being mostly skipable, unless you're Summoner, I'm honestly indifferent to. It could indeed have much better stuff in it.

Due to the amount of rolling cactus, you can easily die there at hardmode. The items you find there are only really good for pre-hardmode, if not before you get to explore the dungeon/jungle (with the exception of Magic Conch).
Yes, it's possible to go in the biome early game without dying. But it is also possible to go on jungle early game without dying. You can always rig the game in your favor. I like UD too, but I don't think the slight chance of getting Chisel/Conch are worth it. So either you make all rewards very good or you tone it down.
 
The underground desert is not as hard when you get used to the new traps. I got a tough time first, died often, got frustrated. Stopped playing, tried again the next day, explored the entire underground desert without dying once. (Expert mode) I just had to get good and get used to the new traps. Once you figure out how the boulders roll (pun not intended), you can even use them to your advantage.
Having a hook and double-jump with you is mandatory.

As for the treasure in UD being worth the hassle... yeah, I guess that's a different matter. The chisel is absolutely wonderful to have, not sure about the rest...
 
Due to the amount of rolling cactus, you can easily die there at hardmode. The items you find there are only really good for pre-hardmode, if not before you get to explore the dungeon/jungle (with the exception of Magic Conch).
Yes, it's possible to go in the biome early game without dying. But it is also possible to go on jungle early game without dying. You can always rig the game in your favor. I like UD too, but I don't think the slight chance of getting Chisel/Conch are worth it. So either you make all rewards very good or you tone it down.
This is where I feel it gets a bit complicated, only because I don't see a reason for any other Class to return to Underground Desert in Hardmode, aside from Summoners. I personally didn't get an Underground Corrupted Desert in my world, but I'm sure such a thing needs to be considered too. I'm not against buffing the rewards, but I won't pretend that doing so might slightly break the game if not handled properly. I can easily see UD being the obvious choice if the Developers are too heavy-handed in either nerfing the place, or buffing the items. I'd be on board with a, ever-so-slight buff, but am totally against nerfing the UD itself.
 
The issue with the underground desert is that the weapons/armor aren't very good. The weapons are roughly comparable to frozen chest weapons, however the underground desert is much more difficult than the underground tundra.
There's some good items like the conch, ancient chisel, and scarab bombs but the weapon are just underwhelming.
Like for example the giant ant lion charger has 22 defense which reduces every attack's damage by 11. That's kind of stupid when the thunder zapper, and storm spear have a base damage of 12...

The rolling cacti are a little too strong, they are way to common for something that 1 shots you, I would suggest reducing the quantity of them, outside of that I don't think the underground desert needs much of nerf, just buff the weapons.

Also while we're on the subject... the desert tiger staff needs a buff, it has almost no anti air abilities whatsoever, and even against grounded enemies it gets out performed by ravens.
 
Storm Spear and Thunder Zapper are absolutely terrible
I haven't used the spear much but the Thunder Zapper is good - it's roughly equivalent to a high-quality gem staff in terms of single target DPS while being much easier to use (fast use time and fast projectile speed). It's a great weapon for early game.

The problem isn't the weapons IMO - the enemies are just too hard. At the point where you would want the Thunder Zapper, you don't have access to any weapons good enough to reliably fight your way there. Even Vilethorn is underpowered because the enemy defense is high (mainly talking about Giant Chargers here).
 
I haven't used the spear much but the Thunder Zapper is good - it's roughly equivalent to a high-quality gem staff in terms of single target DPS while being much easier to use (fast use time and fast projectile speed). It's a great weapon for early game.

The problem isn't the weapons IMO - the enemies are just too hard. At the point where you would want the Thunder Zapper, you don't have access to any weapons good enough to reliably fight your way there. Even Vilethorn is underpowered because the enemy defense is high (mainly talking about Giant Chargers here).
The thunder zapper has a bit less single target dps than a ruby/amber staff against a target dummy, but as mentioned above it's damage per hit is too low, against something like eye of chtulu's first phase it effectively does half damage.
It's also outclassed by bone throwing knives which are both faster and do more damage per hit.
 
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Yeah against high-defense enemies it's not going to do much. DPS is only part of the equation, but it's hard to quantify how much the fast projectiles and rapid fire help. As an early-game exploration weapon it excels. It's far better than a Diamond Staff for general utility.

If you can get it. Which is really hard.
 
This post was originally about how I talked about a misunderstanding with spawnrates, and how I thought Angry Dandelions were exclusive to Pre-Hardmode. Apparently I was wrong, they still can spawn in Hard Mode, it's just that they spawn significantly rarer than they are listed as (Two Stars). With their rarity (I was playing in 10x Spawn Rate in Journey Mode), I had to make an exclusive area just to find 10 dandelions, and it took me 8 minutes to find 10. Regardless of whether they increase their spawn rates or not, they still should be honest about their spawn rates in the bestiary.

I was trying to finish my bestiary today, and I came across this problem: I haven't encountered any Angry Dandelions throughout my entire playthrough.
Look at the image, then look at my problem. Do you see the issue?
20200624162206_1.jpg


I literally cannot be able to complete the bestiary because of this. In the wiki (and from experience), Angry Dandelions can only spawn during a windy day in
pre-hardmode. Why? Why is this the case? This is literally the only enemy that I have not added to the bestiary, and I had to go onto an AIW for my Universal Pylon.
In the next update, can you please make Angry Dandelions spawn in Hardmode as well?

Sorry, I had to put this here. I did not find any specific category in the Journey's End related section of the forum to put this in. I don't think that this is a bug, so I didn't put it there, and it is in vanilla. If there is a specific place that I should put this in, please let me know so I can move this reply there


Links for Wiki page and "Journey's End Bug Reports" Page:
 
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I literally cannot be able to complete the bestiary because of this. In the wiki (and from experience), Angry Dandelions can only spawn during a windy day in
pre-hardmode.
This is actually terrible design, especially since the bestiary is saved on a per-world basis. It's not a "balance issue" per se, but definitely something that needs reported right away. Though not necessarily a "proper" bug, it is definitely the result of an oversight during development, so posting it where you would post bugs with an explanation of why this is a problem will get it noticed.
Edit: This is a FALSE ALARM, everybody. Angry Dandelions CAN spawn in hardmode, it's just difficult to get them to do so with the other types of enemies that can spawn instead.
 
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Speaking of the Underground Desert, why is the Amber Staff identical to the Ruby Staff and worse than the Diamond Staff when it is significantly harder to get than either? You have to be lucky enough to find an Extractinator, and then explore the dangerous Underground Desert for fossils, so shouldn't it be the strongest of the gem staves to properly reward the player for their work?
 
Speaking of the Underground Desert, why is the Amber Staff identical to the Ruby Staff and worse than the Diamond Staff when it is significantly harder to get than either? You have to be lucky enough to find an Extractinator, and then explore the dangerous Underground Desert for fossils, so shouldn't it be the strongest of the gem staves to properly reward the player for their work?
I think diamond was always meant to be the most powerful gem :p
 
This is actually terrible design, especially since the bestiary is saved on a per-world basis. It's not a "balance issue" per se, but definitely something that needs reported right away. Though not necessarily a "proper" bug, it is definitely the result of an oversight during development, so posting it where you would post bugs with an explanation of why this is a problem will get it noticed.
I "moved" (more as posted) the message in "Journey's End Bug Reports". Hopefully, it gets noticed soon because I feel a little guilty that I "cheated" to get the Universal Pylon, even though I am physically not able to get it. -_-

Ignore this message, will you?
 
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The balance of the Titanium Storm is something we are watching carefully, and its very delicate. On the one hand, we have people reeling over the loss of a half-decade long fan favorite, we don't want the resulting buff to be unusuably bad, especially since its a very dangerous buff to use. On the other, we don't want it to introduce a new source of OP/exploitation either.

We've already fixed one exploit with it, and I've got some other considerations we are looking into. I will, however, say that "occasionally hitting one with a weapon" is a little inaccurate, as the Shards generate once per hit. I suppose it could be multi-hit weapons, but they run out quickly.

Either way: its being watched, and we are trying to make sure its viable and useful but also not overpowered. It has big shoes to fill, and we don't want it to be an utter letdown.

After looking at Titanium armor again, I wonder if it's problem actually lays on it's stats rather than the set bonus. It rivals Chloropyte in damage boosts and is better than Adamntite in some stats (to be fair, I did say these last two are really under powered to being with).
A similar problem shows up with Hallowed armor, it has very high stats and a powerful set bonus.
If armors with powerful set bonus had lower stats, wouldn't that make them more balanced?
 
I have a radical idea for the Chlorophyte armor. Instead of having helmets that have the class bonuses tied to it, what if the helmet, brestplate, and greaves gave Ranged, Magic, and Melee bonuses, while the Crystal did minion damage and provided 2 extra minions? That way it's an option for people who want/like to use weapons of all types and works as a side-grade to Hallowed Armor in some ways, and an upgrade in other ways
 
I have a radical idea for the Chlorophyte armor. Instead of having helmets that have the class bonuses tied to it, what if the helmet, brestplate, and greaves gave Ranged, Magic, and Melee bonuses, while the Crystal did minion damage and provided 2 extra minions? That way it's an option for people who want/like to use weapons of all types and works as a side-grade to Hallowed Armor in some ways, and an upgrade in other ways
While the idea sounds mildly interesting to me, and could be a mod if you wanted it to be, you probably should have read the original rules set by Leinfors more carefully:
It is also very unlikely for me to be able to completely overhaul weapons in the style of the Charged Blaster Cannon or Medusa Head. We are talking stat changes here, rather than overhauls.
This is a thread about balance changes, not requesting complete overhauls of an armor set just because it would be cool. You say nothing about it being too weak or strong.
 
While the idea sounds mildly interesting to me, and could be a mod if you wanted it to be, you probably should have read the original rules set by Leinfors more carefully:

This is a thread about balance changes, not requesting complete overhauls of an armor set just because it would be cool. You say nothing about it being too weak or strong.

Those would be stat changes. Keeping the stats of the Chlorophyte Mask as Melee, and tacking on the stats of the other helmets onto the breastplate and greaves would be stat changes. Big changes, yes, but stat changes nonetheless.

I didn't say anything about it being too weak or too strong because I've read this entire thread and it has already been said that the bonuses weren't as strong as Hallowed Armor's set bonuses; I was avoiding redundancy by repeating what others have already said.
 
I have a radical idea for the Chlorophyte armor. Instead of having helmets that have the class bonuses tied to it, what if the helmet, brestplate, and greaves gave Ranged, Magic, and Melee bonuses, while the Crystal did minion damage and provided 2 extra minions? That way it's an option for people who want/like to use weapons of all types and works as a side-grade to Hallowed Armor in some ways, and an upgrade in other ways

Yeah, I figured suggestions like this are usually the hardest to get through. Leinfors may agree with these changes, but a lot of the time he just says it will be almost impossible to get approval from others.
If it's simple stat improvements or suggestions that fix a very bad balancing problem (such as the On Fire! debuff), it may have a chance.

So it would be easier to suggest to add crit chance to the chloropyte helmets for example, which I support.
I had ideas about the leaf crystal getting specific core changes depending on the helmet, but I know it will probably be turned down, and it's harder to implement anyway.
 
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