A lurker's rambling thoughts on 1.3 as a whole

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Evan20000

Terrarian
1.3 came out nearly in sync with my life giving me a lot of free time, so I've been playing it quite obsessively since it came out. I figured the least I could do was offer my thoughts on the state of this wonderful game up to 1.3. Keep in mind my thoughts are reflective on my expert mode playthrough, so if something isn't applicable on Normal, feel free to point that out.

1.3 added a deceptively large amount of content and made some incredible changes that the community has been wanting for a while (SHIFT CLICK!). People have discussed the meat of expert mode's early boss fights to death, so I won't bore you by reiterating that Skeletron is indeed really hard with 280 HP, Specter Boots, Demonite Armor and a Minishark. Instead I want to talk about the new biomes, Marble and Granite. While they add lots of awesome materials to construct your house out of (That marble is gorgeous and the spriters should be proud of themselves), they don't really have much purpose or depth to them aside from building materials. Granted, I can see how it would be hard to integrate them seamlessly into the current progression without feeling really tacked on, but maybe some mid-to-late hardmode love would be nice in the future? Marble weapons made by combining Chlorophite+Marble into a late game throwing-weapon set? Just chucking a few ideas out there. Anyway, the added music makes the Underworld and Goblin Invasions feel brand new. I actually look forward to invasions (both Pirate and Goblin) because of this awesome new music. Speaking of invasions, the new mobs added as you progress to current ones are an awesome idea and I sincerely hope that the devs continue to flesh out this concept. The Goblin Summoner is a fantastic miniboss, as are Mothron and the Pirate Ship. I'm still not entirely convinced that the Martian Saucer's phase 2 laser is intended to be avoided without Rod of Discord, but it's a unique enemy nonetheless (even if I feel it could stand a few tweaks). At the end of the game we hit the much hyped up lunar event, and it doesn't disappoint. The towers each offer unique challenges that I'm firmly convinced that the developers intended each tower to have the easiest time being beaten by the class that tower supports. For instance, Crawltipedes grounding you, enemies reflecting your bullets and the fast-but-durable meteor head clones make the solar tower tough for a ranger, but a melee character can punch through with their high knockback and high defenses. The teleporting enemies in the Nebula section make for tough targets to hit with melee characters, but the amount of homing attacks mages have will have no problems tracking them and so on. This is extremely clever game design in my opinion, and says to me that the devs really put a lot of care into this entire lunar event. 1.3 was delayed so they'd have more time to work on it, and it really shows. Then we get to the final boss of Terraria, something PC players have been thirsty for since 1.1 (As of which point on there was no clear final boss anymore) and he's absolutely incredible. I made a video showcasing how to beat this boss on expert mode that also briefly scratches the surface of how many nuances the player has to work with in that fight, and I firmly believe Moon Lord is one of the best designed final bosses in any game I've played. My biggest concern with 1.3's endgame at the moment is the last of weapon variety among the current classes. While the tower weapons are fantastic additions to the game, most of them are obsoleted once you kill Moon Lord. Why use Vortex Beater once you get the SDMG or use Daybreak when StarWrath exists and so on. In an ideal world, I would love to see the tower drops and Frost/Pumpkin moon drops pushed up to be sidegrades to the Moon Lord's drops. Speaking of the moon events, they're kind of in a weird place now; a lot of players might opt to get lunar weapons before initiating the moon events, after which point most of the moon drops aren't really worth it anymore. I hope that the developers reevaluate the position that the moons sit in (and maybe add new mobs once Moon Lord has been beaten? I can dream, right?) and possibly elevate them to a post-final boss sort of deal. With all of the awesome new additions, you don't need an arena or some elaborate mobtrap to hit wave 17-18 of Frost Moon solo anymore. Overall, 1.3 is an exceptional patch, but introduces a few weapon power-level oddities near the endgame that can easily be fixed.

Sorry for the long ramblings, but 1.3 really made an impression on me and will keep me playing Terraria for quite a long time!
 
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