Weapons & Equip A hardmode version of Meteor Armor Set, Mining Set, and Fishing Gear... and a pre-hardmode version of the flying Drone.

[1wolffan]

I always seem to miss the "Give me cool suggestions" threads, feeds, and such from Red'nCrew. So this time I'm just going to type something out, and hope it just gets noticed. People who have seen some of my posts before will recognize the ideas, and some of the wording.
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This first idea is one that I've been thinking on for a while now, and have tried to share it a few times. I think there should be a hardmode equivalent of Meteor Armor made from Martian Conduit instead. When I first thought of it, I thought "same set bonus, but from a mid-hardmode armor". But after hearing a few people weigh in on that on Reddit, I now think it should just be a set bonus that 'only' "significantly reduces mana-cost for space guns"; rather than nulling it completely like the original armor set, because that's OP. I feel like Martian Invasion would be around the same part of hardmode progression, as a Meteor Fall would be in pre-hardmode. That way, a mid-hardmode defense rating would make sense if it was made from Martian Conduit. Of course, if we're giving space guns a little boost here, maybe a few more energy guns could be considered "space guns" as well:

• Laser Rifle
• Laser Machine Gun
• Heat Ray
• and Charged Blaster Cannon (OP yes, but not unlike other Moon Lord Weapons)
• There could be some others I've missed (or new ones to add to the game) but these are the ones I thought of.

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I've always wondered why we don't have a hardmode version of Mining Armor, or Fishing Gear. Both of them are only really useful in pre-hardmode. I do have a Legendary character in hardmode, and the mining gear with a bunch of "Violent" accessories makes him chew through terrain like nothing else (edit: I was mistaken that melee speed helps with mining, but I'm not going to hide the mistake)... But as soon as he just gets breathed on by literally any hardmode enemy, he's dead. Roughly the same problem with fishing gear too; he still needs the gear to prevent broken lines, and to fish quickly when I need potion supplies or crates.... But as soon as any enemy bumps into him, he's gone too. Fortunately, the set bonus does reduce spawns, but not by enough. So there kind of needs to be some stronger gear for hardmode for both of these situations.

At least with fishing, it could be really easy. Instead of giving you an entire gear-set (which is an option, if you really want), you could just have the angler eventually give a fishing pole that is better than the Golden Rod after enough quests are done in hardmode... or shimmer a Golden Rod while in hardmode, or craft it up with one of the hardmode ores, or craft together a Golden Rod and a Hotline with souls of light and night and some crystals, or just have Duke Fishron drop it if you want to make it much harder to get. This next part is a little hard to explain, so try to sort out what I'm trying to say and what I mean, instead of dwelling on the exact wording I'm using for it. This fishing pole would have about the same fishing power as a Golden Rod + [about half of what the fishing gear set provides], be able to fish in lava, and its lines will never break. I think a full set of armor plus tackle bag and bobber comes to around 35 fishing power, which could be too OP to add in, if it also stacks with the original gear.

Mining Gear on the other hand, is a little harder for me to come up with good ideas on how to get. I do have is a couple silly set-names that make me smile -

• "Construction Worker's Hi-Vis [clothes] because they wear heavy-duty protective gear", (with the bonus of this one also making sense withthe building equipment and accessories already in the game), or
• "Heavy Duty Blasting [gear]" like IRL tunnel-builders, or
• "Welder's [Armor]" because have you SEEN how armored up they can be?!

Sadly, I haven't worked out how to actually aquire it yet. There's always the option to shimmer undead miner gear once you get to hardmode, but I kind of like having to get the stuff from the little undead miner dude... Problem is there aren't too many similarly rare enemies that work thematically for getting gear that makes you mine faster, so here's my big list of possible solutions...

I thought about the pigron guys for rarity, but they don't strike me as something that mines, nor is it really all that rare if you know where to look. Vikings are too common. Mimics and Biome mimics already have pretty good loot tables and don't need much more. Rune Wizards come to mind too, but they already drop magic stuff. I suppose you could add the "mine xx% faster" to the archeologist's vanity set and turn it into an armor set with basic hardmode defense instead for thematic match, but Doctor Bones isn't even hardmode only (besides where's the light that would be on his head come into play?). Maybe you could add mining gear to one of the hardmode dungeon residents, but that's a bit further into hardmode than I'm thinking of. If you were willing to add a Viking Miner, or a sentient Pickaxe similar to the Holy Sword and Cursed Axe, that would solve both theme and rarity; but that's already a bit more involved than you're probably looking for right now. The other solution I can think of, is just having the original undead miner, drop stuff that is good in hardmode, once the world is IN hardmode; don't have to worry about an upgraded pick after that point, just the armor.

EDIT: Someone figured out a good solution in the replies... Rock Golem. It's rare enough that you won't have him everywhere, but common enough you can go looking for him if you want to. Thematically fits because we could imagine that it just beats up the guys who would be doing mining/tunneling work. And finally, after the really cool golem-head planter, it doesn't have any material loot (like the ice golem's frost cores and feathers)

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And finally, a silly little add-in that I feel a lot of people would have fun with...
An RC car version of the Drone, that you can get before hardmode. That's it, just a silly little RC car that you can tool around on the ground with, and jump a bit... maybe a set height of a few blocks or off of slanted blocks, maybe a percentage of the base jumping-height of players, MAYBE (big maybe, I know) it can detect mine-rails and use those as roads (but that might be too complicated to code up quickly). I love the drones but you can't get them until well into hard mode; however I could see a similar mechanic used on a little RC car. Couldn't you totally see the Mechanic or the Tinkerer selling something like that?

 

[Big Sammich]

I don't agree with any of the armor ideas. Fishing and Mining armor are good enough at what they do to not need any Hardmode version, and Meteor Armor's mana usage reduction actually isn't good enough to justify losing the high damage and lifesteal of Spectre Armor, which you will definitely have by this point.

 

[1wolffan]

That's exactly the reason why we need hardmode versions (meaning: similar bonus, but WAY better defense to work against hardmode mobs). You don't want to use any of the armors, because they have awful defense and aren't worth using once you've gotten to hard mode. You have 4 defense on a full fishing set with 15 extra fishing power, or 36 with full "Warding" accessories (including an ankh shield) on Legendary mode; and a mining set with ultrabright helmet is only 6 armor, or since all the same accessory slots are filled with "Violent" accessories, you're total armor is a pitiable 10 (again if you use an ankh-shield). Nobody likes to use them once your in hard mode. They're basically already "not worth it" by late pre-hardmode. So something like it that IS hardmode could be warranted.

Some people would appreciate a set of armor with those capabilities that is comparable in defense with the hardmode armors available later in the game. Because what are you going to do, pick a 4-defense armor that boosts fishing by a mere 15, or just slap on the strongest defense there is or the best armor for the class you're using, and hope the line doesn't snap while you're fishing? If it weren't for loadouts, I know what I'd pick. But if there was fishing gear that provided roughly the same defense as Adamanatite or Titanium, that tweaked your fishing some, people might use that to "just go fishing" somewhere without worrying about getting torn to shreds ("to shreds you say?"). But I didn't suggest fishing ARMOR, I suggested a fishing POLE that does what the fishing armor and two main accessories WOULD do, if you were wearing it.

Mining armor technically has better defense than fishing, but to make the Mining Loadout work, you need to reforge everything to violent (edit: I was mistaken that melee speed helps with mining, but I'm not going to hide the mistake), and you end up with much less armor than you would for fishing. By the time you have a picksaw, you certainly don't need all that much mining boost, but it wouldn't hurt to have it as an option for people when they need to clear large area of tiles, for an arena, or a particularly massive build they're planning on doing. Of course people doing particularly intricate builds usually are going to be on Journey Mode (not always; I've seen some crazy stuff from pre-journey-mode versions). If they're in Journey Mode, they CAN wear a mining kit to dig faster and just have god-mode on. And if they took that journey character far enough, they can just use rockets to clear everything up. But if you have something with enough defense to be able to get smacked a few times while trying to dig around without becoming a fine paste, you might switch to it from time to time in survivial.

You're right, Spectre Armor with the Hood has amazing healing abilities, and the Mask reduces Mana drain by 13%. But tell me you wouldn't at least consider wearing a Martian Conduit set (with better defense stats than Chlorophyte), if it dropped space gun mana cost by 75%-90%. Don't forget, I also suggested to have "space gun" include Laser Machine Guns and other guns that shoot rays too, to make it a little more enticing? Making it with martian conduit puts it right in there with the other specialty armors available around that time, like the various choices you have with shroommite armor that affect either arrows, or bullets, or rockets. This is also where your Spectre armor gives you a choice between being a group healer or have better enemy crowd control. Frankly, with how low the original defense is on Meteor armor, I'd prefer to have the hardmode set-equivelant (roughly with hallowed defense-level instead) available back around where "the jungle grows restless", but then it wouldn't work thematically with the martians, would be harder to sprite well enough to look different from other materials around then, and would probably be too OP that early anyways.

PS: I'm glad you don't disagree with the RC car, though. Sounds fun, right? LOL

 

[Stellar Mastodon 267]

I agree that fishing and mining armor is fairly weak, but there isn’t much way to change that. If you did want a mob to give a new mining set for hardmode I would say either a type of worm or the rock golem. There was the legacy version Vampire Miner but I don’t think that was hardmode.
Fishing, I got nothing.

 

[1wolffan]

Hmm... Yeah, rock golem would be rare enough. And that works well thematically, instead of being the Miner, he just beats them and collects their equipment. lol OH! And he currently only drops stone, and that Golem head. While that planter is pretty cool and fun to mess with, it isn't really a crafting thing (like frost core or frost feather from ice golems) so it wouldn't hurt to add a few other things to him. I think you solved it! I'm gonna go back and add it into the original post now.

Meh, any new fishing stuff can be slotted in reasonably easily with Angler quests. I mean, that's where you get fin-wings, which aren't too bad, so why not a powered up fishing rod that helps in hardmode. That's why I didn't really say anything specific about where to get those things.

 

[Big Sammich]

That's exactly the reason why we need hardmode versions (meaning: similar bonus, but WAY better defense to work against hardmode mobs). You don't want to use any of the armors, because they have awful defense and aren't worth using once you've gotten to hard mode. You have 4 defense on a full fishing set with 15 extra fishing power, or 36 with full "Warding" accessories (including an ankh shield) on Legendary mode; and a mining set with ultrabright helmet is only 6 armor, or since all the same accessory slots are filled with "Violent" accessories, you're total armor is a pitiable 10 (again if you use an ankh-shield). Nobody likes to use them once your in hard mode. They're basically already "not worth it" by late pre-hardmode. So something like it that IS hardmode could be warranted.

Some people would appreciate a set of armor with those capabilities that is comparable in defense with the hardmode armors available later in the game. Because what are you going to do, pick a 4-defense armor that boosts fishing by a mere 15, or just slap on the strongest defense there is or the best armor for the class you're using, and hope the line doesn't snap while you're fishing? If it weren't for loadouts, I know what I'd pick. But if there was fishing gear that provided roughly the same defense as Adamanatite or Titanium, that tweaked your fishing some, people might use that to "just go fishing" somewhere without worrying about getting torn to shreds ("to shreds you say?"). But I didn't suggest fishing ARMOR, I suggested a fishing POLE that does what the fishing armor and two main accessories WOULD do, if you were wearing it.

Mining armor technically has better defense than fishing, but to make the Mining Loadout work, you need to reforge everything to violent, and you end up with much less armor than you would for fishing. By the time you have a picksaw, you certainly don't need all that much mining boost, but it wouldn't hurt to have it as an option for people when they need to clear large area of tiles, for an arena, or a particularly massive build they're planning on doing. Of course people doing particularly intricate builds usually are going to be on Journey Mode (not always; I've seen some crazy stuff from pre-journey-mode versions). If they're in Journey Mode, they CAN wear a mining kit to dig faster and just have god-mode on. And if they took that journey character far enough, they can just use rockets to clear everything up. But if you have something with enough defense to be able to get smacked a few times while trying to dig around without becoming a fine paste, you might switch to it from time to time in survivial.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I do actually choose those "weak" armors when fishing or mining. Combat is already not my primary focus when I'm doing those things, so I don't actually care how much defense I have. With the advent of loadout swapping, I can equip fishing armor or mining armor in my second loadout and just switch back to my main combat setup if I need to. But most of the time I've arranged things so that I don't have to worry about monsters while fishing or mining. A box to sit in while fishing, a decent weapon to blast enemies while mining, a couple minions or sentries for passive cleanup, whichever Expert Mode accessory that gives passive defense I got most recently (Bone Helm, Volatile Gelatin, Spore Sac), and it's all good. If you're not playing higher difficulties, you'll need even fewer defenses to make it work. And that's not even mentioning how you can use Calming Potions or the Peace Candle to reduce enemy count, which I rarely need to do since enemies are not that big a problem while mining, and are only a problem while fishing if they can go through blocks. None of this matters, though, because you can always hotkey over to your main combat loadout to kill an enemy and then switch back.

As a side note, Violent doesn't boost mining speed. It boost Melee speed, which is not the same thing. If you're dying too fast while mining, it might be because you have a bunch of melee speed boosts that aren't helping you.

You're right, Spectre Armor with the Hood has amazing healing abilities, and the Mask reduces Mana drain by 13%. But tell me you wouldn't at least consider wearing a Martian Conduit set (with better defense stats than Chlorophyte), if it dropped space gun mana cost by 75%-90%. Don't forget, I also suggested to have "space gun" include Laser Machine Guns and other guns that shoot rays too, to make it a little more enticing? Making it with martian conduit puts it right in there with the other specialty armors available around that time, like the various choices you have with shroommite armor that affect either arrows, or bullets, or rockets. This is also where your Spectre armor and gives you a choice between being a group healer or have better enemy crowd control. Frankly, with how low the original defense is on Meteor armor, I'd prefer to have the hardmode set-equivelant (roughly with hallowed defense-level instead) available back around where "the jungle grows restless", but then it wouldn't work thematically with the martians, would be harder to sprite well enough to look different from other materials around then, and would probably be too OP that early anyways.

A lot of people don't know this, so I don't hold it against your suggestion, but reducing mana costs isn't nearly as helpful as you think. This writeup by qwerty3.14 from a few years ago explains it better than I could, but tl;dr: for most weapons, even infinite mana wouldn't be as good as some strong damage increases.

But I'm going to take a moment to argue against myself here: do we really need to care about playing optimally all the time? Just because having greatly reduced mana costs is very rarely as useful as just upping your damage, does that mean that everyone should play that way and nobody, not even new players, should want to reduce mana costs? No, of course not. Having super low mana numbers is fun, and having armor that makes a bunch of Magic weapons almost free is also fun. But it does mean that we need to think more carefully about where we're putting this armor, because the truth of the situation here is that unless this Martian Armor that you're suggesting gives the player stats that outcompete Spectre Armor, it will be worse than Spectre Armor. The reason Space Gun is good is because it's a strong, fast weapon with good piercing (for where it is in the game) and great velocity, making it a very reliable option. The free usage that Meteor Armor gives you is less valuable than the fact that it also gives you +27% increased Magic damage, which is the most you get in pre-Hardmode. Space Gun would be good even without Meteor Armor, and other weapons are made better with Meteor Armor as well.

An armor set you get from the Martians will come later in progression than Spectre Armor, which means it'll be expected to be better than Spectre Armor, but if all it gives you is free usage of a couple of weapons, it won't be even close to as good. That's the real problem here. It's not that players will be playing suboptimally, it's that they'll be essentially tricked into thinking that they're getting a better deal, which is bad. How would you feel if you found out your Martian Armor, which you put on in favor of your Spectre Armor since it came later in the game and promised free mana costs on some cool weapons, was actually making it harder for you to beat the final boss?

Upgraded versions of mining armor or fishing gear would, in all likelihood, not actually hurt the game if they were added, so I can't in good conscience say that they shouldn't be added, only that they're unnecessary. But I'm of the opinion that this Martian Armor idea would be harmful to the game.

 

[1wolffan]

A whole bunch of text, that is not necessary to let everyone know who this reply is for...
I did read it, and I am thrilled that you are willing to converse about it, instead of just blasting away.

My 3 loadouts are usually: main battle gear, building/mining gear, and fishing gear. Before hard mode I had loadouts 2 and 3 switched, but changed it now that I do more building than fishing. I truly do like the loadout system, and think it was one of the better additions, right up there with shimmer. But now you know why I felt we needed something slightly better than basic fishing and mining gear... Because even with loadouts their stats can still be pretty sad. lol

I generally have rather basic fishing boxes all over the place too. One by each pylon, then the corrupt/crimson spots are out past living trees from NPC resorts. I usually didn't mind that being the way, until trying getfixedboi. Doesn't matter how good you make your ponds and boxes you only get to fish a time or two before another wraith comes wandering in. lol At least with the fishing 'set-bonus', I just put it all on a rod, instead of a whole new armor-set.

Huh... I seriously thought that because 'Violent' increases melee speed, that it would also increase how fast you swing a pick, and therefore how fast you mine. I just did a test and you are indeed right. It doesn't make a difference. :/ Guess I'm going to go back and change everything in that loadout to warding, so I have my defense back. lol Now that the other guy figured out the best enemy to drop an updated Construction Set, I hope that takes.

I agree that waiting all the way until Martian Madness to get a weaker armor-set isn't all that great. You get Meteor Armor after beating your second required boss in pre-hardmode, so putting a hard-mirrored version of it right around the mechanical bosses (hallowed) would make more sense, progression-wise. I was mostly thinking how meteor and martian furniture all looks similar but with different pallates, and how would be more easy to make an armor sprite that goes with that than not. And of course, since it's hardmode-mirror, that means the basic mana cost boost would also be better, but the set bonus was what I was focusing on trying to explain. Not that any of it matters if there are only 3 or 4 guns that work anyways. Yeah, basically, just a hope that it might take. lol