1.3 Expert Hardmode is too hard?

I'd definitely wait until I had access to the Lihzahrd Temple, Chlorophyte, and Lihzahrd traps with which to build a nice arena before worrying about Expert Hardmode Eclipses. Not coincidentally, that's also when you'll get access to Solar Tablets and Solar Tablet Fragments.

Still haven't beat plantera yet, but I set up some heart statues & honey, and with Chloro gear & bullets, Holy Stormbow when Mothron showed up, the second eclipse went a lot better. Only got killed the few times she did the "sticking to you until you die" thing. Managed to get the sickle, shell, and Terra blade, woo!

And I guess that's the answer to OP's question, isn't it? No, it's not too hard, if you're not able to beat something, you're just not using every advantage. There are definitely a few mechanics that feel (are) cheap, but you can do it!
 
I was waiting days for a solar eclipse, and finally got what I wished for. With hallowed armor and a megashark, my body is not ready. Mothron is a serious mofo. Maybe a little too serious. Cant even outrun the damn thing on a mechanical minecart, and it will often do the cheapass "death vortex" thing like skeltron's head spin.

And this is the kind of horse:red: people are trying to avoid when they're "cheesing" certain bosses.
 
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.
You should have a gun, even on a melle build
 
And this is the kind of horse:red: people are trying to avoid when they're "cheesing" certain bosses.

For the record, I managed to assemble my first master ninja gear in 700 hrs or so of play. Unlike the Cthulu Shield, it WILL get you out of these situations.
 
I'm on my third legit let's play as a dedicated class (this time ranger), and I must say if expert mode got any easier I'd probably not enjoy it at all.

Of course, there is a valid discussion in the type of difficulty. Just slamming higher numbers at the board isn't the best way to increase difficulty. Proper hard mode should mean much better AI, more intricate rules to boss battles, and interesting mechanics that further develop your capabilities within the game. There is difficulty for difficulty's sake, and difficulty designed for a more intense challenge. Although I enjoy expert, I'll be the first to admit that some fights fall into the former. Moon lord for instance isn't really a challenge so much as a spam fest.
 
I'm on my third legit let's play as a dedicated class (this time ranger), and I must say if expert mode got any easier I'd probably not enjoy it at all.

Of course, there is a valid discussion in the type of difficulty. Just slamming higher numbers at the board isn't the best way to increase difficulty. Proper hard mode should mean much better AI, more intricate rules to boss battles, and interesting mechanics that further develop your capabilities within the game. There is difficulty for difficulty's sake, and difficulty designed for a more intense challenge. Although I enjoy expert, I'll be the first to admit that some fights fall into the former. Moon lord for instance isn't really a challenge so much as a spam fest.

Lol. You're playing a ranger-class. Game doesn't get much easier than that aside from turning on GODMODE.
 
I'm on my third legit let's play as a dedicated class (this time ranger), and I must say if expert mode got any easier I'd probably not enjoy it at all.

Of course, there is a valid discussion in the type of difficulty. Just slamming higher numbers at the board isn't the best way to increase difficulty. Proper hard mode should mean much better AI, more intricate rules to boss battles, and interesting mechanics that further develop your capabilities within the game. There is difficulty for difficulty's sake, and difficulty designed for a more intense challenge. Although I enjoy expert, I'll be the first to admit that some fights fall into the former. Moon lord for instance isn't really a challenge so much as a spam fest.
Very much this.

Expert Mode isn't REALLY "harder". It's just more tedious and annoying...
 
Lol. You're playing a ranger-class. Game doesn't get much easier than that aside from turning on GODMODE.

I am indeed playing ranger class, because I've already completed summoner class and melee class. HONESTLY if you can do it as a summoner legit, you can do it with anyone! Having only limited summoner gear for progression hurts a LOT and you have to get really creative.

But I'm always up for masochism (wait I meant challenge....)
 
Proper hard mode should mean much better AI....

I've seen this argument used many times over the years, and I believe it's seriously flawed.

For one thing, it's a little too easy for people who don't really understand AI or how it's implemented in games to say, "Well, the developers should make the AI better." Sometimes this is a valid criticism if the AI is clearly bad, but mostly it's just wishful thinking.

More importantly though, and onto the flaw I'm referring to: It's nearly always a bad idea to purposely cripple a game's AI, creating a mediocre, less effective version for use in a game's "normal" difficulty while reserving the fully functional AI for the "hard" difficulty. Normal difficulty is how most people will play, it's how critics and pretty much everyone else will judge the game, and so developers will nearly always want the AI at its best and on display for the majority of players.

There are some exceptions, such as the AI in 4X or RTS games, but even there it's far preferable to handicap the AI with penalties (like -50% resource production) rather than actually reducing the ability of the AI to make decisions and solve problems.
 
I've seen this argument used many times over the years, and I believe it's seriously flawed.

For one thing, it's a little too easy for people who don't really understand AI or how it's implemented in games to say, "Well, the developers should make the AI better." Sometimes this is a valid criticism if the AI is clearly bad, but mostly it's just wishful thinking.

More importantly though, and onto the flaw I'm referring to: It's nearly always a bad idea to purposely cripple a game's AI, creating a mediocre, less effective version for use in a game's "normal" difficulty while reserving the fully functional AI for the "hard" difficulty. Normal difficulty is how most people will play, it's how critics and pretty much everyone else will judge the game, and so developers will nearly always want the AI at its best and on display for the majority of players.

There are some exceptions, such as the AI in 4X or RTS games, but even there it's far preferable to handicap the AI with penalties (like -50% resource production) rather than actually reducing the ability of the AI to make decisions and solve problems.

I agree with not crippling AI for the sake of normal mode, and that's where it gets tricky. Normal AI should be done in such a way that bosses are interesting and provide a challenge (otherwise what's the point of playing a game). Difficult bosses in harder modes SHOULD provide AI that requires mastery (or close to it) of the games mechanics that you wouldn't rightfully expect from a lower difficulty. Nobody is saying to cripple AI.

A perfect example in my mind is Eye of Cthulu in expert mode vs normal mode. For a newer player to terraria, the eye in normal mode provides sufficient challenge. If you take that same player and ask them to beat expert mode eye they WILL struggle. I don't feel eye in normal is crippled because it lacks the extra ai features, and as such is a perfect example of how it should be.

I still stand by my opinion that throwing extra numbers and calling it "more difficult" is lazy at best.
 
Oh, I agree. When I played Borderlands back when and got into the New Game+ mode or whatever it was called, then realized that I had to headshot enemies 5-6 times because of their insane HP bloat, I was pretty salty. That's just one example among many.
 
Oh, I agree. When I played Borderlands back when and got into the New Game+ mode or whatever it was called, then realized that I had to headshot enemies 5-6 times because of their insane HP bloat, I was pretty salty. That's just one example among many.

Amen to that! I understand realism and games don't really go hand in hand BUT COME ON IT WAS HIS BRAIN MEAT!?
 
I've seen this argument used many times over the years, and I believe it's seriously flawed.

For one thing, it's a little too easy for people who don't really understand AI or how it's implemented in games to say, "Well, the developers should make the AI better." Sometimes this is a valid criticism if the AI is clearly bad, but mostly it's just wishful thinking.

More importantly though, and onto the flaw I'm referring to: It's nearly always a bad idea to purposely cripple a game's AI, creating a mediocre, less effective version for use in a game's "normal" difficulty while reserving the fully functional AI for the "hard" difficulty. Normal difficulty is how most people will play, it's how critics and pretty much everyone else will judge the game, and so developers will nearly always want the AI at its best and on display for the majority of players.

There are some exceptions, such as the AI in 4X or RTS games, but even there it's far preferable to handicap the AI with penalties (like -50% resource production) rather than actually reducing the ability of the AI to make decisions and solve problems.
I don't think anyone is asking the ReLogic team to put in some herculean amounts of genius-level intellectual effort on this particular matter.

Nobody cares if Zombies are programmed to jump and dodge attacks like a boss. But I think a majority of us can agree that after all the hype about how AI was going to be changed up for Expert Mode, we all went in with an expectation of playing at the very least a wildly different game.
 
yeah, increasing damage is kind of a cheap way to add difficulty. when i heard about better AI i figured mobs would be smarter and not jump into lava as much. but all they did was give them new abilities, which falls under the category of "abilities and powers" rather than "artificial intelligence".
 
yeah, increasing damage is kind of a cheap way to add difficulty. when i heard about better AI i figured mobs would be smarter and not jump into lava as much. but all they did was give them new abilities, which falls under the category of "abilities and powers" rather than "artificial intelligence".

Artificial difficulty is the lazy-man's way to pad gameplay time.
 
You have to agree though expert mode skeletron is awesome and you really need to be good to beat him.
 
Here's a fun way to handle Expert/Hard Mode: Complete the game on Normal mode for the most part, including farming Moon Lord for weapons.

I find most of the events of Expert/Hard Mode passable now that I've got a complete set of Solar Flare armor, and I've got all Warding gear, including a Celestial Shell, and in my inventory, I've got a Legendary Star Wrath, Legendary Meowmere, Godly Terrarian (combined with a Yoyo Bag), Mythical Stardust Dragon Staff, and a Cell Phone and Rod of Discord for :red:ing around. And for the occasional bit of destruction, a Pwnhammer for all my hammering needs, a Laser Drill (dropped by Martian UFO) for precision drilling and tree cutting, and for extreme destruction, a Drill Containment Unit. Oh, I left out my Martian Ride Key, for the UFO mount.
 
I don't think anyone is asking the ReLogic team to put in some herculean amounts of genius-level intellectual effort on this particular matter.

Nobody cares if Zombies are programmed to jump and dodge attacks like a boss. But I think a majority of us can agree that after all the hype about how AI was going to be changed up for Expert Mode, we all went in with an expectation of playing at the very least a wildly different game.

I really didn't pay much attention to the hype, although I did see the Drill Containment Unit preview and the teaser trailer just prior to release. Over the years, I've learned a few tricks that serve me well when it comes to computer games. One is to ignore hype and simply put a game out of my mind until it's actually released/updated, no matter how cool that game is.

Terraria has really surprised me. I'm thirty-two years old, and I tend to prefer hideously complex old strategy and 4X games (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion II, Jagged Alliance, X-COM, etc.) and extremely old-school, mostly turn-based RPGs and dungeon crawlers.

Yet Terraria, which started out so humbly with "borrowed" Final Fantasy placeholder sprites and extremely basic graphics and gameplay, has come a very long way, and is now one of my favorite and most-played games of all time. I have almost 2,000 hours logged on Steam, about half of which are actually at the keyboard (I don't AFK farm excessively, I just leave the game running 24/7 while I'm into it).

On the topic of the AI, there's only so much you can expect from what is at its core a simple 2D platforming action game. I haven't noticed any big difference in AI, either, but realistically there's not much more for them to do other than try to bumrush/get a hit in on the player. I suppose they could run away when badly injured or try to dodge behind blocks?
 
Here's a fun way to handle Expert/Hard Mode: Complete the game on Normal mode for the most part, including farming Moon Lord for weapons.

I find most of the events of Expert/Hard Mode passable now that I've got a complete set of Solar Flare armor, and I've got all Warding gear, including a Celestial Shell, and in my inventory, I've got a Legendary Star Wrath, Legendary Meowmere, Godly Terrarian (combined with a Yoyo Bag), Mythical Stardust Dragon Staff, and a Cell Phone and Rod of Discord for :red:ing around. And for the occasional bit of destruction, a Pwnhammer for all my hammering needs, a Laser Drill (dropped by Martian UFO) for precision drilling and tree cutting, and for extreme destruction, a Drill Containment Unit. Oh, I left out my Martian Ride Key, for the UFO mount.
I wouldn't find that fun, it defeats the porpoise.

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