1.3 Expert Hardmode is too hard?

SgtxStiffy

Terrarian
I've been an avid Terraria player for a few years now, having logged around 200 hours overall into the game. I hadn't played since Christmas when I heard about 1.3, so I jumped at the chance to play again. I started up the expert mode with a fresh character, just to see how bad it was. It was way harder then normal, but pre-hardmode wasn't that bad. I enter hardmode, and I'm instantly getting two, three shotted by mobs doing 100+ damage. Okay, that's fair I told myself because all I had was molten armor. Obviously when I get titanium it'll get a lot better.. right?
Wrong. With all 6 accessories set to warding and full hallowed armor (80 defence), I still found myself getting slaughtered by most mobs if I got too gutsy. But, still, I told myself that was fair and I'd just have to play more defensively. I've now reached the point where I've killed all the mechanical bosses and the next boss I need to take on is Plantera. Luckily, the day after I killed skeletron prime, a solar eclipse happened. Great! A chance for me to get a broken hero sword or two to craft the terra blade. I set up a little bit of a farming station, then a mothron appears. After searching up this mysterious mob on the wiki I found out he's the only one who drops the broken hero sword now (horrible change), so I tab back into my game intent on killing this guy, and he hits me (when I have 80 defence, plus the buff from my dryad) for over 100 damage. This thing isn't even categorized as a mini-boss and it has more health (12000) then some pre-hardmode bosses. And it hits a fully geared out person for over 100 damage. It's immune to knockback, so there really is no way to fight it.

They tried to back up their decision of making expert mode this hard by saying, "there's a few new items and you get increased drop rate", which was the reason I initially tried it. Little did I know however, increased drop rate on the extremely rare items (0.50% chance) buffed it up to 0.67% chance. Sure, compared to .50 that's better but in the long run it's really no difference. Even on mothron, who has a 25% chance to drop the broken hero sword, it buffs it to 30%. 5% yet I have to kill something with 2x as much health, more defense and more damage then it's regular mode counterpart?

I'm not sure if I'm just bad, or if I'm missing something about expert mode, but other then the increase in challenge I really don't see why there is even a point to playing on expert.
 
I think the main point is the increased challenge, the extra money drop/expert mode items and higher droprates are just a added bonus but not the main reason of playing.
Also I've heard from quite a lot of expert players that pre hardmode is nice but hardmode kinda gets boring and painful as enemies do that much damage and scale with your gear.
 
It was made to shake things up. Any strategy you had in normal mode, very well may not work. Things hit harder so you have to hone your dodging skills, if one thing doesn't work, try something else. Use potions, heart statues, better arenas, reforge your gear to different stats.

I will say that the road bump from titanium/adamantite gear to hallow was the biggest problem I had.
 
I think the main point is the increased challenge, the extra money drop/expert mode items and higher droprates are just a added bonus but not the main reason of playing.
Also I've heard from quite a lot of expert players that pre hardmode is nice but hardmode kinda gets boring and painful as enemies do that much damage and scale with your gear.
The problem I have with it is I enjoy the extra challenge but it's too challenging to kill regular mobs. Honestly. Killing skeletron prime is easier then killing mothron. For some reason regular mobs do more damage then bosses? I just don't understand why mobs are so powerful.
 
The problem I have with it is I enjoy the extra challenge but it's too challenging to kill regular mobs. Honestly. Killing skeletron prime is easier then killing mothron. For some reason regular mobs do more damage then bosses? I just don't understand why mobs are so powerful.
I think Mothron does a lot of damage in general. Also while it's not immune to knockback, it stops once in a while, so move away from it and attack it then.
 
It was made to shake things up. Any strategy you had in normal mode, very well may not work. Things hit harder so you have to hone your dodging skills, if one thing doesn't work, try something else. Use potions, heart statues, better arenas, reforge your gear to different stats.

I will say that the road bump from titanium/adamantite gear to hallow was the biggest problem I had.

I will agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the new strategies and arenas. I've already created and posted a strategy for taking out The Destroyer (which also works for The Twins and Skeletron Prime) and all sources I've looked at state that using warding in expert mode is without a doubt the best prefix. I have no problem whatsoever with the difficulty of the bosses. It's the difficulty of the mobs that urk me. I'm more scared of a group of mobs then I am of a boss, because frankly it is way more dangerous.

I think Mothron does a lot of damage in general. Also while it's not immune to knockback, it stops once in a while, so move away from it and attack it then.
It dashes at you almost constantly. :p
 
I will agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the new strategies and arenas. I've already created and posted a strategy for taking out The Destroyer (which also works for The Twins and Skeletron Prime) and all sources I've looked at state that using warding in expert mode is without a doubt the best prefix. I have no problem whatsoever with the difficulty of the bosses. It's the difficulty of the mobs that urk me. I'm more scared of a group of mobs then I am of a boss, because frankly it is way more dangerous.

Banners. Banners are your friend. Plus if you farm crimson mimics you can get the flesh knuckles(?) that give 7 defense. 11 with the warding prefix. Also get a summon. if nothing else, its an early warning system.
 
Banners. Banners are your friend. Plus if you farm crimson mimics you can get the flesh knuckles(?) that give 7 defense. 11 with the warding prefix. Also get a summon. if nothing else, its an early warning system.
I have every banner I've achieved set up at my base, or their respective biomes where I do most of my farming.
[DOUBLEPOST=1436560990,1436560874][/DOUBLEPOST]
I have to correct you here, but Mothron is not the only one who drops BHS. It is balanced, check out its other drop.
Unless the wiki is wrong (which it may be, I don't know). And what do you mean it's other drop? The ones that unlock post-plantera?
1.3.0.1: No longer used to directly craft the Terra Blade. Also now only dropped by Mothron, rather than other monsters.
 
No, I don't think so. Though it perhaps would have been better not to gate any items that aren't aesthetic/bragging rights related. When you put stuff in the player might want, it's suddenly about more than just the challenge, and you'll drag a bunch of people through who might not be ready for (or even want) that kind of challenge. Sort of like how WoW players will grind for hundreds of hours, week after week, seeking a mount or some other item that isn't strictly necessary for progression, simply because it's there and they want it. At least the expert-mode exclusives are relatively few.

In my opinion, obviously. It's really hard to tell exactly where to draw these kinds of lines when you're the one actually implementing the content.
 
Honestly I play on expert mode now because I can't live without a 6th accessory slot. Get used to building arenas, they're what you're going to need. Get the honey, the heart lamp, the campfire, brew the potions and there's absolutely no excuse to not brew potions because with the alchemy table that gives you a 33% chance to not consume potion ingredients, as well as the buffed staff of regrowth that makes you more herbs, as well as the planter boxes that make farming clay not needed to make a greenhouse, as well as fireblossom blooming in day and deathweed on full moons instead of blood moons, you will have plenty of potions to work with. Go fishing, make endurance potions, life force potions, etc etc.
First mothron I came across I died, but after learning how to dodge it, it was pretty easy. Wings are kinda necessary imo. If you get a solar eclipse early into hardmode it can suck, but a tip I give to players is to fish for a lot of crates and then open them all once you've killed the wall of flesh and you'll get a lot of the hard-mode ores and bars so it makes spelunking a lot less necessary.
Trash mobs still mostly seem to be trash mobs to me.
 
Betteridges Law of Headlines

You are just going to have to learn more about how the enemies work. "Get good" applies here more than others may want to admit.

Not sure if you're intentionally smashing or not, but I do understand how the enemies work. As I stated in my post, 200 hours of Terraria experience with probably 3/4's of that in hardmode. As you'll see if you read my entire post, I said I don't understand why they made the mobs so strong. Not that I don't understand the mobs.
I hardly ever die, but that's because majority of the time I have to run away cause of how powerful the mobs are, lest I want to just sit around a corner with a yo-yo and hit them when they can't hit me.
 
I gave up some time after killing skeletron. It was just too slow to progress, and I just wasn't enjoying the added challenge. It was a lot more fun for me after I started over with a normal world and wrecked everything by finding a starfury three days in and using it to demolish skeletron (after a couple failures due to me attempting this with 120 health and no arena).
 
The problem with difficulty is that it's subjective. Whilst some people find that expert mode is extremely difficult/frustrating, some people manage quite easily (whether it'd be defeating every boss on the first try or after a few attempts for example). Lowering the difficulty of expert mode would affect those who enjoy the challenge and therefore not solve much.

For some people, there isn't much point in expert mode. If they find normal mode challenging enough for them and they don't wish to invest their time into improving then they should stick with normal mode. For others, they find normal mode too easy and will probably end up only playing on expert from now on. I can't say what mode you should play, as you have to decide that for yourself.
 
Back
Top Bottom