Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Leinfors said:
As I had been hoping, I got approval to do a bit of a preview from the balance change log for 1.4.1!

I decided to select the Accessory section, because I think it has a nice mix of minor stuff, quality of life, and some fun tinker boosts that I think will be appreciated by people of many classes, rather than selecting something like Melee.

The whole balance changelog is about 27 pages long. The following section is 2.5 pages of that. I hope you all enjoy. :)


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Accessories​

Band of Regeneration/Charm of Myths (Buff)
- Increased healing gain from 0.5 HP per second to 1 HP per second

Band of Starpower/Panic Necklace (Buff)
- (Cross-listing from Crafting Changes) Band of Starpower and Panic Necklace are now more easily available in all worlds. They can be crafted in a Graveyard at a Tinkerer's Workshop, by taking one of them and combining it with a Life or Mana Crystal. Band of Starpower + Life Crystal = Panic Necklace. Panic Necklace + Mana Crystal = Band of Starpower.

Bone Glove (Rework)
- This item has been completely overhauled and turned into an accessory
- When equipped, the player will shoot Crossbones towards their cursor whenever they are attacking, once per second. Consider it like a sword projectile, except it works for every weapon.
- The bones deal 25 class-neutral damage, but additionally ignore up to 25 enemy defense.
- Now also has vanity visibility in the Gloves spot
- Note: In practice, this should allow the Bone Gloves to be simultaneously viable for more classes than just Ranged, and also give it a bit more longevity

Brain of Confusion (Nerf)
- Reduced the Critical chance bonus of the Mind Trick buff from 20% to 10%.
- Reduced the duration of Mind Trick by 1 second

Celestial Cuffs (Buff)
- Now has the +20 mana bonus that its component accessories granted

Diving Helmet and all of its tinkers (Buff)
- Increased the breath capacity bonus by 50%

Feral Claws and Titan Glove (Rework / Buff)
- Moved the "gives autoswing for Melee weapons" perk to Feral Claws, making it available earlier for players. This perk still continues up the tinker chain, it is simply no longer present on Titan Glove specifically
- Titan Glove now has a new perk that increases the size of (eligible) melee weapons by 10%. This perk is also present on all of its tinkers; however, the effect does not stack.

Fledgling Wings and Lucky Horseshoe (Re-Tiering)
- The Lucky Horseshoe is no longer found in Sky Chests, and has been added to the underground Gold Chest loot pool
- In its place, Fledgling Wings have been added to Sky Chests and Sky Crates

Flesh Knuckles/Berserker Gloves (Buff)
- Defense increased from 7 to 8

Fire Gauntlet (Buff)
- Increased the 10% Damage and Melee Speed bonus to 12%
- Gains the new benefit added to the Titan Glove (see Titan Glove)
- Gains the new benefit added to the Magma Stone (see Magma Stone)

Hero Shield (Buff)
- Defense increased from 7 to 10

Honeycomb (and Bee Cloak, Honey Balloon, Stinger Necklace, and Sweetheart Necklace) (Buff / Rework)
- The base damage of the Bees generated by these has been increased from 7 to 13. If using a Hive Pack, this damage is 18.
- This damage is multiplied by 1.5x in Expert mode, and 2x in Master mode
- Additionally, if hit while wearing any of these accessories, the player gains the Honey buff for 5 seconds

Jellyfish Necklace and all of its tinkers (Buff)
- Now lets off an extremely faint glow when out of water (less than the Shadow Orb light pet)
- Dramatically increased the brightness when in water

Lava Charm (Buff)
- Doubled its spawn rate, giving it a 1/20 chance to be found in Lava-layer chests or Lava fishing crates

Magma Stone (Buff)
- Now inflicts a special version of On Fire that deals 15 DPS instead of 4

Molten Quiver (Buff)
- Technically a bug fix, but Wooden Arrows converted to Flaming Arrows by using this accessory now properly gain the +2 damage that Flaming Arrows have. This bonus is only applied to Wooden Arrows, if using the Quiver with superior arrows it will not apply the bonus (as it would be using the superior damage bonus of those arrows instead)

Obsidian Rose (Buff)
- Increased the lava damage reduction from 30 to 45. This change applies to all of its tinkers, however, as a consequence, lava damage has been moved to its own immunity timer, as the change would allow lava to very easily be reduced to 1 damage with the proper loadout.
- Is now a component in the Lava Waders, extending its lava damage reduction to the Lava Waders, Hellfire Treads, and Terraspark Boots. This change is retroactive for people who have already crafted those items, of course!

Panic Necklace/Sweetheart Necklace (Buff)
- Increased duration of the Panic! buff from 5 to 8 seconds

Pygmy Necklace (Re-Tiering)
- Is now sold by the Witch Doctor in pre-Hardmode, giving summoning accessories some earlier-game accessibility (he still only sells it at night, however!)

Star Cloak, Bee Cloak, Star Veil, and Mana Cloak (Buff)
- The base damage of the Stars generated by these accessories has been increased from 30 to 75. In addition, these stars will ignore up to 25 enemy defense.
- This damage is multiplied by 2x in Expert mode, and 3x in Master mode (the defense penetration remains unchanged)
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WOW, those changes really impacted me, including the lucky horshoe bed fledgling wing stop thing, nice! this whole list I agree with
 
Loving the accessory changes -- dare I hope that the Finch staff will escape from Journey mode to the early game?

With that said, one minor note: the fact that Duke is accessible earlier in the game doesn't really factor into the balancing, to me. He is tiered at post-Golem, and so for balancing purposes, I treat his gear as such. I don't take points away from potential power due to said accessibility, even if the weapon is otherwise still overpowered.
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Yeah, I'd been seeing and hearing about everybody beating the Duke before Golem... got stomped 4-5 times, with a definite sense of "nope, not fast enough or tough enough". And this was a Melee build, I tried both Squire and Turtle armor, but I was clearly out of my league. The Celestial Shell might well be what I need for that edge -- power and speed. The upcoming buffs to defensive accessories will also be welcome here.
 
Derpling Ω said:
There is no guarantee you get a living tree, there is no guarantee that living tree will have a chest, and finally, there is no guarantee that chest will even have the staff (it's a 1/3 chance)
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Well that isn’t at all tied to what I was saying to mental mouse, he said could you make it so it isn’t only in journey mode, so yeah that’s what I was telling them.
 
Greybrynn said:
You and get them in living trees, they replace the living wands in the chest...
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Greybrynn said:
Well that isn’t at all tied to what I was saying to mental mouse, he said could you make it so it isn’t only in journey mode, so yeah that’s what I was telling them.
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The Wiki doesn't support the "replace the living wands", which would be a bad trade anyway. But yeah, 1 in 3 chance of being in one of the rarest chests in the game, is barely there. (The only rarer chests I can think of are the Pyramid and the Biome chests.)

ETA: I'd much rather see the Finch staff in the Sky Chests (and crates). I could even see crafting it with 20 Souls of Flight to get Fledgling Wings.
 
Mental Mouse said:
The Wiki doesn't support the "replace the living wands", which would be a bad trade anyway. But yeah, 1 in 3 chance of being in one of the rarest chests in the game, is barely there. (The only rarer chests I can think of are the Pyramid and the Biome chests.)

ETA: I'd much rather see the Finch staff in the Sky Chests (and crates). I could even see crafting it with 20 Souls of Flight to get Fledgling Wings.
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1. Scratch that I swear I remembered reading that here, sorry I’m not always right(this was to the finch staff replacing wands)
2. Why does urban need to do that fledgling wings are sooo horrible is see why they are prehardmode
 
Greybrynn said:
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2. Why does urban need to do that fledgling wings are sooo horrible is see why they are prehardmode
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If you don't have a Giant Harpy Feather, that would let you get sorta-wings as soon as you can kill a couple of Wyverns.

If you made them pre-Hardmode, they're competing with the pre-Hardmode movement accessories, and I'd expect them to be a balance threat. They'd probably have to be more-or-less Molten tier (like the Terraspark Boots), which is thematically dubious.
 
Some part of me is sad because while Pygmy Necklace is going to be moved and help summoners' progression a bunch, it is going to be locked behind Queen Bee, which is already notorious for being Summoner's main powerhouse in Pre-Hardmode. And there is no reasonable design-wise alternative to Witch Doctor in order to get that accessory.

Other than that, awesome changes ahead! In terms of accessories seems like most if not all cases got covered :happy:
 
Leinfors said:
As I had been hoping, I got approval to do a bit of a preview from the balance change log for 1.4.1!

I decided to select the Accessory section, because I think it has a nice mix of minor stuff, quality of life, and some fun tinker boosts that I think will be appreciated by people of many classes, rather than selecting something like Melee.

The whole balance changelog is about 27 pages long. The following section is 2.5 pages of that. I hope you all enjoy. :)


index.php


Accessories​

Band of Regeneration/Charm of Myths (Buff)
- Increased healing gain from 0.5 HP per second to 1 HP per second

Band of Starpower/Panic Necklace (Buff)
- (Cross-listing from Crafting Changes) Band of Starpower and Panic Necklace are now more easily available in all worlds. They can be crafted in a Graveyard at a Tinkerer's Workshop, by taking one of them and combining it with a Life or Mana Crystal. Band of Starpower + Life Crystal = Panic Necklace. Panic Necklace + Mana Crystal = Band of Starpower.

Bone Glove (Rework)
- This item has been completely overhauled and turned into an accessory
- When equipped, the player will shoot Crossbones towards their cursor whenever they are attacking, once per second. Consider it like a sword projectile, except it works for every weapon.
- The bones deal 25 class-neutral damage, but additionally ignore up to 25 enemy defense.
- Now also has vanity visibility in the Gloves spot
- Note: In practice, this should allow the Bone Gloves to be simultaneously viable for more classes than just Ranged, and also give it a bit more longevity

Brain of Confusion (Nerf)
- Reduced the Critical chance bonus of the Mind Trick buff from 20% to 10%.
- Reduced the duration of Mind Trick by 1 second

Celestial Cuffs (Buff)
- Now has the +20 mana bonus that its component accessories granted

Diving Helmet and all of its tinkers (Buff)
- Increased the breath capacity bonus by 50%

Feral Claws and Titan Glove (Rework / Buff)
- Moved the "gives autoswing for Melee weapons" perk to Feral Claws, making it available earlier for players. This perk still continues up the tinker chain, it is simply no longer present on Titan Glove specifically
- Titan Glove now has a new perk that increases the size of (eligible) melee weapons by 10%. This perk is also present on all of its tinkers; however, the effect does not stack.

Fledgling Wings and Lucky Horseshoe (Re-Tiering)
- The Lucky Horseshoe is no longer found in Sky Chests, and has been added to the underground Gold Chest loot pool
- In its place, Fledgling Wings have been added to Sky Chests and Sky Crates

Flesh Knuckles/Berserker Gloves (Buff)
- Defense increased from 7 to 8

Fire Gauntlet (Buff)
- Increased the 10% Damage and Melee Speed bonus to 12%
- Gains the new benefit added to the Titan Glove (see Titan Glove)
- Gains the new benefit added to the Magma Stone (see Magma Stone)

Hero Shield (Buff)
- Defense increased from 7 to 10

Honeycomb (and Bee Cloak, Honey Balloon, Stinger Necklace, and Sweetheart Necklace) (Buff / Rework)
- The base damage of the Bees generated by these has been increased from 7 to 13. If using a Hive Pack, this damage is 18.
- This damage is multiplied by 1.5x in Expert mode, and 2x in Master mode
- Additionally, if hit while wearing any of these accessories, the player gains the Honey buff for 5 seconds

Jellyfish Necklace and all of its tinkers (Buff)
- Now lets off an extremely faint glow when out of water (less than the Shadow Orb light pet)
- Dramatically increased the brightness when in water

Lava Charm (Buff)
- Doubled its spawn rate, giving it a 1/20 chance to be found in Lava-layer chests or Lava fishing crates

Magma Stone (Buff)
- Now inflicts a special version of On Fire that deals 15 DPS instead of 4

Molten Quiver (Buff)
- Technically a bug fix, but Wooden Arrows converted to Flaming Arrows by using this accessory now properly gain the +2 damage that Flaming Arrows have. This bonus is only applied to Wooden Arrows, if using the Quiver with superior arrows it will not apply the bonus (as it would be using the superior damage bonus of those arrows instead)

Obsidian Rose (Buff)
- Increased the lava damage reduction from 30 to 45. This change applies to all of its tinkers, however, as a consequence, lava damage has been moved to its own immunity timer, as the change would allow lava to very easily be reduced to 1 damage with the proper loadout.
- Is now a component in the Lava Waders, extending its lava damage reduction to the Lava Waders, Hellfire Treads, and Terraspark Boots. This change is retroactive for people who have already crafted those items, of course!

Panic Necklace/Sweetheart Necklace (Buff)
- Increased duration of the Panic! buff from 5 to 8 seconds

Pygmy Necklace (Re-Tiering)
- Is now sold by the Witch Doctor in pre-Hardmode, giving summoning accessories some earlier-game accessibility (he still only sells it at night, however!)

Star Cloak, Bee Cloak, Star Veil, and Mana Cloak (Buff)
- The base damage of the Stars generated by these accessories has been increased from 30 to 75. In addition, these stars will ignore up to 25 enemy defense.
- This damage is multiplied by 2x in Expert mode, and 3x in Master mode (the defense penetration remains unchanged)
1p0Qnvl.png


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are these all the accessory changes?
 
Mental Mouse said:
If you don't have a Giant Harpy Feather, that would let you get sorta-wings as soon as you can kill a couple of Wyverns.

If you made them pre-Hardmode, they're competing with the pre-Hardmode movement accessories, and I'd expect them to be a balance threat. They'd probably have to be more-or-less Molten tier (like the Terraspark Boots), which is thematically dubious.
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Well... you would probably have enough harpy feathers to craft demon or angel wings for it, and plus why waste 20 souls of flight for that, and plus you can buy leaf wings, although they aren’t great, they are still good until You can get better wings
 
Leinfors said:
Fledgling Wings and Lucky Horseshoe (Re-Tiering)
- The Lucky Horseshoe is no longer found in Sky Chests, and has been added to the underground Gold Chest loot pool
- In its place, Fledgling Wings have been added to Sky Chests and Sky Crates

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Most of the changes on this are great, but with this one in particular, I’m not convinced.

-Even with Fledgeling Wings being very short, they would still be able to massively boost prehardmode movement. Wing synergy with Balloon, Bottle and Rocket Boot accessories (Balloons and Rocket Boots increase wing flight time) as well as the glide and fall damage immunity, is kind of overpowered for the state of the game you find them.

-Lucky Horseshoe being moved to Gold Chests is more RNG and clutter early game, it makes it just slightly more difficult to find loot like Hermes Boots.

-A lot of powercreep with this. You have access to fall damage immunity potentially the second you start, and as I already mentioned, you have a huge mobility accessory available the second you find Gravitation Potions, which could potentially also be immediately.

Not trying to crash the party or anything, but I figured I should bring this up as I find this a bit questionable.

Everything else on here is very exciting, love the Pygmy Necklace change in particular. Good work.
 
SsIras said:
The only question that I have is if Molten Quiver's flaming arrows gain the On Fire! 2.0 buff (either way, the difference would be very small).
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It is not. This was not a change that was made lightly in the first place, and it was mostly done based on the evaluation that Melee is typically underpowered for much of progression. This was intended as one of many minor "boosts" to Melee to help it reclaim a little bit of its lost edge. If that extended to Ranged-Arrows as well, then not only would that be buffing one of the STRONGEST classes in the game, but it would effectively be nullifying all of the gain made to Melee.

If Melee catching up with Ranged is the goal, and I buff both Melee and Ranged the same amount, then there is no net gain towards the goal.

It may be perceived as inconsistent, and I can acknowledge this to be the a tricky issue. However, the same arguments that aided the missing 2% being brought back to Fire Gauntlets worked because Melee needed the love. Won't work the same on Ranged. I'm hoping the +2 damage fix will be at least a moderate compensation.

CrabBar said:
Some part of me is sad because while Pygmy Necklace is going to be moved and help summoners' progression a bunch, it is going to be locked behind Queen Bee, which is already notorious for being Summoner's main powerhouse in Pre-Hardmode. And there is no reasonable design-wise alternative to Witch Doctor in order to get that accessory.

Other than that, awesome changes ahead! In terms of accessories seems like most if not all cases got covered :happy:
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I see you identified the same issue I had. It would have been great to put it elsewhere. The Dungeon would have been a perfect location, and its even "almost" there (a little skull), but wasn't quite. I didn't want to stick it behind Queen Bee, but it was the only spot that worked, thematically.

Sir. Fluff said:
are these all the accessory changes?
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Yes, this is it for accessories, though as I said, its only about 10% of the entire balance changelog.

whoneedsnamestbh said:
Most of the changes on this are great, but with this one in particular, I’m not convinced.

-Even with Fledgeling Wings being very short, they would still be able to massively boost prehardmode movement. Wing synergy with Balloon, Bottle and Rocket Boot accessories (Balloons and Rocket Boots increase wing flight time) as well as the glide and fall damage immunity, is kind of overpowered for the state of the game you find them.

-Lucky Horseshoe being moved to Gold Chests is more RNG and clutter early game, it makes it just slightly more difficult to find loot like Hermes Boots.

-A lot of powercreep with this. You have access to fall damage immunity potentially the second you start, and as I already mentioned, you have a huge mobility accessory available the second you find Gravitation Potions, which could potentially also be immediately.
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I don't disagree that there is a powercreep element to this to some degree. On the other hand: Lucky Horseshoe was a SEVERELY undervalued item at the Sky-Chest tier. I don't think it quite earned its keep there, and its tinker, the laughable Obsidian Horseshoe, was almost a sort of weird reverse-progression item, since Obsidian comes before Sky-Chest tier. Early-game exploration is the time when sacrificing a slot for fall immunity would be the most desirable; in my mind, this puts Lucky Horseshoe into a position of relative value, something I feel it did not have before. Furthermore, there was no good place to put Fledgling Wings, which are oft demanded by collectible-seekers, and would have been a joke in Hardmode.

In an ideal world, we might have done some work to "re-tier" the Sky Chest tier goods, perhaps adding back in some sort of lock. I don't know what that would have been. As it stands, Gravitation Potions and other cheesy methods of early discovery will deliver high dividends. So it always has been.

As for the rest of the boosts, I do think some of it enters into the world of power creep, buuuut, I mostly focused on buffing under-whelming gear that wasn't often used, improved accessibility of limited resource accessories, or made strategic buffs that would trickle down (mostly to Melee or Magic) in favorable ways. Ranged set a high bar that the other classes have been chasing ever since.

As a side note, diluting the Gold Chest loot pool with more contents was actually an intended goal. That loot pool is one of the most important and available in the game, and its grown rather stale. I consider that a pro, rather than a con.
 
Leinfors said:
I don't disagree that there is a powercreep element to this to some degree. On the other hand: Lucky Horseshoe was a SEVERELY undervalued item at the Sky-Chest tier. I don't think it quite earned its keep there, and its tinker, the laughable Obsidian Horseshoe, was almost a sort of weird reverse-progression item, since Obsidian comes before Sky-Chest tier. Early-game exploration is the time when sacrificing a slot for fall immunity would be the most desirable; in my mind, this puts Lucky Horseshoe into a position of relative value, something I feel it did not have before. Furthermore, there was no good place to put Fledgling Wings, which are oft demanded by collectible-seekers, and would have been a joke in Hardmode.
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That‘s fair, I didn’t really consider the Horseshoe’s relative power as to me it’s always just been “you get this from the sky”. When you put it this way, it makes a lot more sense.

Still think Fledgelings are a bit strong though. I may suggest bringing down the Fledgeling Wing’s ability a little bit, but on the other hand I know most balance changes are set by now. Whatever goes I guess
 
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In my assessment, Fledgling Wings are basically "glide time + fall immunity and a tiny bit of jump boost".

Did you know that Fledgling Wings have about half the flight power of a pair of Rocket Boots?

If we establish as a baseline that "fall immunity at Sky Chest tier is not sufficient" (which is my position, based on years of feedback and my own gameplay), then we can discount that element of Fledgling Wings immediately as an even trade with Lucky Horseshoe. That one is a freebie.

So where does that leave us?
1. Minor increase to jump height
2. Glide time (increase to horizontal distance and slowing of vertical fall time)

So lets see:
1. The boost to Jump Height is less than that Rocket Boots or Balloon combos, to say nothing of those same combinations in tandem with Frog Leg-variants. We're adding a bit here, but its taking another accessory slot, so realistically, we aren't adding much and nothing you couldn't get before. I consider this a minor boost at best. And I think, in a scenario where we actually nerfed this? It would just hurt Journey players and wouldn't resolve your concern.
2. Glide/hover is the biggest selling point of Fledgling Wings. They give somewhat unprecedented control of fall velocity, and they dramatically boost horizontal distance. This is ultimately the major selling point of Fledgling. And I'd say the crux of it, even. This is THE advantage it gives over Lucky Horseshoe, and it as powerful one indeed, but how can it even be nerfed, aside from removing it outright?

Anyway, I hear what you are saying. There is validity to it. I think this solution will be an improvement overall, however, and I'm pretty satisfied with it.
 
Most of these seem like fine changes, but please be cautious when it comes to the Fledgling Wings. Pre-hardmode wings are a very, very slippery slope when balancing, and I know for certain that many mods have failed at balancing them well. I've close to always found that they're either ridiculously good, or complete garbage. So again, please be careful with that decision.
 
Leinfors said:
In my assessment, Fledgling Wings are basically "glide time + fall immunity and a tiny bit of jump boost".

Did you know that Fledgling Wings have about half the flight power of a pair of Rocket Boots?

If we establish as a baseline that "fall immunity at Sky Chest tier is not sufficient" (which is my position, based on years of feedback and my own gameplay), then we can discount that element of Fledgling Wings immediately as an even trade with Lucky Horseshoe. That one is a freebie.

So where does that leave us?
1. Minor increase to jump height
2. Glide time (increase to horizontal distance and slowing of vertical fall time)

So lets see:
1. The boost to Jump Height is less than that Rocket Boots or Balloon combos, to say nothing of those same combinations in tandem with Frog Leg-variants. We're adding a bit here, but its taking another accessory slot, so realistically, we aren't adding much and nothing you couldn't get before. I consider this a minor boost at best. And I think, in a scenario where we actually nerfed this? It would just hurt Journey players and wouldn't resolve your concern.
2. Glide/hover is the biggest selling point of Fledgling Wings. They give somewhat unprecedented control of fall velocity, and they dramatically boost horizontal distance. This is ultimately the major selling point of Fledgling. And I'd say the crux of it, even. This is THE advantage it gives over Lucky Horseshoe, and it as powerful one indeed, but how can it even be nerfed, aside from removing it outright?

Anyway, I hear what you are saying. There is validity to it. I think this solution will be an improvement overall, however, and I'm pretty satisfied with it.
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Yeah, I guess it makes sense that a stat nerf wouldn’t really work.

What about an obtainability nerf? Simply by making Gravitation Potion harder to come by? Gravitation Potion could be cut from Cavern Chest loot, which would put them a little later in progression because then the player would have to either obtain Fireblossom or break into the dungeon first. This would mean you *could* still get to the Sky Islands early, but it would take more effort, and the easy and free solution of using Gravity Potions would come a little later on.

If this doesn’t work for any reason, or if you can’t make any more changes I’d get that, but I figured I’d suggest it.
 
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