tModLoader A question + a mod idea!

[Larseneil]

Hi! I'm new to the Terraria modding scene - brand new, actually! I have an idea in mind that'll add an alternative to the Hallow, like how the Crimson is an alternative to the Corruption.

Some questions I have;

• Is this tutorial still relevant, or have more recent updates rendered it moot?
• Are there any ways to also code in equivalents to recipes requiring Hallowed-only drops, such as the Hallowed Bars from the Mechanical Bosses, Fairy Dust from Pixies, etc? Such as replacing the Excalibur/True Excalibur in the Terra Blade recipe with my biome's equivalent?
• How easy is the coding language for Terraria to figure out for someone who tends to self-teach for modding? I know JSON (I also mod Starbound on occasion) is easy but sort of fussy.
• I'm asking in the correct place, yes?

Anyway, for those curious, here's my idea;

The Fade: A magic-starved, drained world, its presence in the future of your world signalled by 'Your future is dim.' appearing in the world generation (as opposed to my idea of Hallow presence being signalled by 'Your future is bright!'). It's desaturated and dim, its most prominent colors being various shades of gray.
In the lore I have in mind, it's what happens if the land is saturated so densely by light and magic returning to it with the Wall's death that it simply cannot handle it and burns out, unable to permanently hold it within its soil. In desperation from and ignorance of its condition, it spreads, hungry for more magic to drink in. It has a vampiric sort of theme, with its main class being Magic (since the Hallow is that as well, and both evils are Melee).
It's prefix for stone, sand, etc is going to be 'fade-' or 'dim-', or something along those lines. Examples being Fadestone or Dimstone.
Its bars are Faded Bars, its armor Faded Armor, etc. As a set bonus, Melee and Ranged users will be able to lifesteal, and Magic and Summon users will be able to manasteal, as well as boosting regeneration for those respective stats with a chance for it to be returned to you by damage done.
The enchanted weapon enemy is the Depleted Spear, a thirsty blade upon a pole aglow with white light.
Its 'final' boss would have its own equivalent of the Soaring Insignia.

Bosses!
Brain of Gluttony: Technically a lich of sorts; a large, mutated brain infused with Fade energy, surrounded by a swarm of souls it's consumed and weaponized in its endless hunger for magic and mana. Instead of inflicting countless status effects, it mainly targets your mana and magic usage. It 'damages' your mana before rapidly sucking out your health, and is healed by magic damage (and summons itself more souls for each star of mana you waste). Despite this intimidating gimmick, it's pretty easy to defeat as long as you can do crowd control.

Emperor of Blight: Named after my original idea for the biome before seeing it already exists in other mods! He's a counterpart to the Empress, and can only spawn normally during the day or else he goes berserk. Despite that, it gets very dark when he spawns, with a radius of lit space around him that gets dimmer and dimmer as he loses health. Just like the Brain of Gluttony, he punishes builds that rely exclusively on magic usage by outright stealing your mana stars until one of you dies, summoning small minions for each that he's snatched away. If you kill the minions, you get a star back for each, though!

If any of this piques your interest, I'd appreciate your feedback! I wanna keep the development mostly to myself for the time being unless it gets difficult to figure out.

 

[ShadowGenius]

To answer your questions:
1. It should still be relevant, as it was last updated in April this year.
2. Manually adding new recipes should be trivial. For example, you could add a recipe for the Terra Blade that required the True Nights Edge and whatever weapon you've added. If you wanted to automatically add new recipes that parallel existing recipes but replaced hallow ingredients with your new ingredients, that should be possible as well if you know what you're doing.
3. If you understand the basic principles of programming, C# (which is the language Terraria is written in) shouldn't be too hard to learn. After learning C#, you should take a look at the tModLoader wiki for documentation, modding guides, etc.
4. Yes, you are in the correct place.

For feedback:
Giving life-steal to warriors and rangers but giving mana-steal to mages and summoners doesn't make much sense to me. Life-steal, if not balanced correctly, can be overpowered and broken. Mana-steal, however, seems unnecessary to mages, who have easy access to mana potions, and irrelevant to summoners, who barely need to regenerate mana at all.

Additionally, the bosses punishing you exclusively for using magic weapons seems like a poor design choice. In my opinion, players should be able to play with any playstyle or with any weapon type they want. I know you said that the biome's main class is magic, but I don't think it should be taken in this direction.

 

[Larseneil]

To answer your questions:
1. It should still be relevant, as it was last updated in April this year.
2. Manually adding new recipes should be trivial. For example, you could add a recipe for the Terra Blade that required the True Nights Edge and whatever weapon you've added. If you wanted to automatically add new recipes that parallel existing recipes but replaced hallow ingredients with your new ingredients, that should be possible as well if you know what you're doing.
3. If you understand the basic principles of programming, C# (which is the language Terraria is written in) shouldn't be too hard to learn. After learning C#, you should take a look at the tModLoader wiki for documentation, modding guides, etc.
4. Yes, you are in the correct place.

For feedback:
Giving life-steal to warriors and rangers but giving mana-steal to mages and summoners doesn't make much sense to me. Life-steal, if not balanced correctly, can be overpowered and broken. Mana-steal, however, seems unnecessary to mages, who have easy access to mana potions, and irrelevant to summoners, who barely need to regenerate mana at all.

Additionally, the bosses punishing you exclusively for using magic weapons seems like a poor design choice. In my opinion, players should be able to play with any playstyle or with any weapon type they want. I know you said that the biome's main class is magic, but I don't think it should be taken in this direction.

It's meant to reflect the somewhat vampiric nature of the biome. The magic punishment of the bosses is something that's pretty much 100% going to stay with them conceptually, sorry! They're entities that feast on magic and such, so being strengthened by your magic from you using it on them is me wanting to integrate that tidbit of lore with the potential gameplay.