Game Mechanics Abigail's Flower 🌺[Nerf]

[Xelvaa]

The item isn't overpowered, it's not egregious, and it doesn't necessarily ruin progression, but it certainly sends a bad message.

1. The item can be obtained with almost no adventuring or exploration, whatsoever.
2. The item can sometimes introduce a Player to metagaming in the early stages of gameplay, unintentionally.
3. "Self-Termination" should never be a strategy or "solution", especially without any context.

My minor suggestions.

• Abigail's Flower cannot grow from a Tombstone, unless Grass Blocks are located in the outer lateral thirds of the Map.
  • Jungle and Mushroom Grass are exempt from this restriction.
  • Sky Grass is also excluded from this restriction.
• Abigail's Flower cannot grow from a Tombstone nearest to the center of the World Map [Spawn], unless a Boss has been defeated and a Lantern Night/ Event has occurred.
  • King Slime or EoC being slain raises some restrictions [Spawn].
  • An Evil Boss being slain raises all the suggested restrictions.
• Abigail's Flower cannot grow from a Tombstone on "Evil Grass" unless that Boss has been slain.

Overall, this just discourages Players from building a tall, dirt tower... and tossing themselves from it repeatedly, before actually engaging with anything else the game has to offer.

So basically, you say from the start that the weapon isn't overpowered and doesn't ruin progression, so that means abigail doesn't need a nerf. I don't understand the point of this suggestion

 

[Coleyohley]

I don't think there's a viable answer to this because no matter how many slots you have, other minions are going to contribute more and perform better. Even if you have 100 slots on Abigail, 100 of other pre-hm minions are going to be better (the fact static i-frames are the only reason I had any doubts about this answer is sad).

Funnily enough, Abigail  also has Static iframes, and because her attack speed also increases with minion slots, she also starts having iframe issues at high minion counts; I'm not sure if it's a number achievable in vanilla (then again, neither is 100 slots, but this is all hypothetical anyway), but at a certain point her scaling becomes even worse, which I think is somewhat noteworthy. Her having static also means one person at a time can really use her in multiplayer (because Static iframes are awful), which is rough considering how common she is.

The rest of this post is great, though I will say, nothing about Abigail or her description/tooltips says anything about her getting a scaling boost in hardmode, which is the only time I've ever heard someone say she's genuinely worth using; as such, a new player is never going to consider using her in hardmode considering how poorly she performs prehardmode, and will continue to forget about her.

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

Before I begin, this is a great example of why this place is so frustrating. Not one person seems to wanna address the fact that claiming Abigail's Flower to be "Wood Tier" is extremely disingenuous and leads to unfair assumptions about her actual potential. Either Abigail "sucks" or she doesn't and is a useful Minion to have, y'all can't have it both ways.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here because even Finch Staff also does all of these.

I'm not used to you being this dishonest, and it's pretty disappointing @Shyguymask .

If I must state the obvious, Finch Minions absolutely don't sit on-top of Enemies like Abigail can, and doesn't have nearly as big a HitBox as Abigail, and I refuse to believe that you're not aware of these things. Abigails AI is much easier to control [because she's always sitting behind you] and it's reliably easy to "sandwich" Enemies between yourself and her, trying to predict Finch Minions flight-path is pretty difficult.

However, in a world where none of these things is what you mean, my additional point is that the Player's potential triples once they have access to Abigail [I repeat].

• She can easily pass through walls.
• She has obnoxious line-of-sight range.
  • to include "revenge" upon Player damage range.
• She deals contact damage [by simply existing].
• She can damage up to several Enemies at once.

Making the claim that a Starter Minion that can be obtained on the Surface, practically for free, with several attributes [that no Wooden Tier Weapon has], is just dishonest. Obviously Flinx is a better "Starter Minion", it's Platinum/ Gold Tier. Even more-so, I'm not sure why most of everyone here is pretending like you can just jump into the Underground Tundra and get a Flinx Minion, as if it doesn't need to be farmed and crafted. The Staff alone requires ten [10] Platinum/ Gold Bars to even make, and this is a stupid conversation to even be having with "you", because I know that you know this already.

Abigail = Surface Tier [Surface Jungle Tier, if left up to me].
Finch = Living Tree Tier.
Flinx = Gold, Underground Jungle Tier.

Minions are inherently very useful to have, but Abigail contributes the least and is the least useful out of the early game minions.

...and you can certainly have this opinion, but don't exaggerate and mislead Players by not showcasing at least several of Abigails' pre-Hardmode uses.

In my opinion, Abigail is more "Katana Tier" than she'd ever be "Wood Tier", because Wooden Weapons don't really have any potential. The point of my video was to showcase all the useful things about Abigail that you didn't, for some weird reason.

first off, Abigail objectively sucks in Pre-Hardmode in vanilla...

No she doesn't...

So basically, you say from the start that the weapon isn't overpowered and doesn't ruin progression, so that means abigail doesn't need a nerf. I don't understand the point of this suggestion

...because the Player shouldn't be rewarded for repeatedly "Self-Terminating" at the very start of the game, without having at least explored a different Biome or two, in addition to Abigail tripling the Players potential in abilities [as showcased above].

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

EDIT: Also about the depression thing, I think you're reading into it way too hard. I personally suffer from depression, and the method this weapon is obtained of all ing things is possibly the least offensive 'dark' joke in this entire game. If anything, a flower growing next to a gravestone more represents hope and beauty rising from defeat. Once again, this is a video game and possibly the weirdest thing ever to read into so deeply.

Honestly, this would've been a more honest and constructive conversation to have. If you don't find the effective method of obtaining Abigail's Flower offensive, okay... I respect that. I just figured with everything that happened surrounding the community, and the number of members that suffer from depression, that jokes about death would be distasteful, but I could just be making a big deal out of nothing.

I know someone who's had issues with 'cutting' that said something to the extent of "oh, so you get this item by basically k*lling yourself? Huh...", let's just say I wasn't a fan of hearing a remark like that.

 

[Shyguymask]

[message]

What I know you're trying to avoid addressing, or at least doesn't realize, is that pretty much all of these use cases you're showing out of Abigail only really applies to when you box yourself or otherwise neutralize the enemy with a method that doesn't involve combat. Abigail has zero knockback and has trouble consistently catching up to even a zombie walking in a straight line, as a result she is ineffective at actually defending you from enemies. Knockback and general disruption are at their most important during pre-boss, and Abigail literally doesn't deliver anything on that aspect. And as I implied, Abigail's hitrate goes down the drain if her target moves at all, like a Zombie walking on grass dirts or demon eyes in general.

The fact you have to box yourself and "cheese" enemies for Abigail to be any useful proves that her flaws and limitations holds back her usefulness in actual combat/mobbing massively.

As for boss fights, I'm gonna say it right now, even a wooden bow will perform better than Abigail by herself on Expert EoC, if not by a large amount. She literally gets outdone by a wooden weapon in that department. I don't even think you need to use Frostburn arrows to outperform Abigail.

 

[Dapling]

because the Player shouldn't be rewarded for repeatedly "Self-Terminating" at the very start of the game, without having at least explored a different Biome or two, in addition to Abigail tripling the Players potential in abilities [as showcased above].

You could argue this in the other direction, though, and say that new players should be assisted with a sort of “handicap item” for incidentally dying several times in the same place, no? It is a scenario that has validity, especially for brand new players getting spawncamped. Nerfing it does affect this situation negatively, even if it stops more experienced players.

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

I don't think you can say that abigail is a weapon that you can get with almost no exploration in good faith. The flower takes time to grow, so even if you immediately start off the playthrough by dying a bunch and placing tombstones, you'd still need to wait for it to grow, which would usually happen after you've done a bit of exploring. Abigail isn't even the only powerful earlygame weapon you can get if you are willing to wait around a bit (i.e. "metagame"). Something as simple as finding a grenade and silver coins in a chest, making houses, then buying a bug net to catch critters and selling rabbit stew/grilled squirrel can let you get a near-limitless supply of grenades, which are a significantly more powerful early game weapon that can actually kill things without needing to cheese them in a box.

Also, to answer your question from the video of "which wooden weapon can do this", wooden yoyo. It even has more base damage (though the reduced piercing ability compensates for this). Both weapons let you cheese things in a box if that's what you want to do. But do you know what else can deal with enemies that already can't get to you? Blocks. Just box 'em in and run away, no weapon required.

Note that despite what I have said, she isn't a bad weapon. She's free damage and helps you kill things faster with whatever weapon you were using to actually deal with the enemies (preferably something with knockback), or lets you cheese enemies from a box like a yoyo can. I just don't think she's particularly overtuned, especially since most players won't just intentionally die then wait around doing nothing for a flower to spawn (and if you want to try an ultra-safe strategy, she isn't even the only weapon that can be acquired in this way).

 

[Dapling]

Thank you all for attending my gallery opening. Today's exhibit is a delicately hand-picked collection of positively exquisite photos, taken by yours truly. I call it "Why Abigail's Niche Isn't as Prevalent as You Think". A very artful title, wouldn't you agree? It was quite an adventure, journeying with my Wooden Bow of finest oak. Don't forget my trusty Sword as well!

Spoiler: Why Abigail's Niche Isn't as Prevalent as You Think

(I used flaming arrows to improve visibility, but you can still use regular arrows for all of this)
(by the way, wooden sword has enough knockback to keep crimerae away even with a modifier that reduces speed. try it yourself.)
(also, don't forget that the sloped platforms mechanic has been acknowledged and intentionally kept in the game by the developers explicitly)

 

[J Bame]

Either Abigail "sucks" or she doesn't and is a useful Minion to have, y'all can't have it both ways.

This is because even if abigail is the worst prehardmode minion, 1 Abigail is always better than no Abigail, so if you get her early on its nice to have.

This low standard is the same reason nobody cares about a Finch staff buff anymore, even if its arguably just as bad as abi for mobbing, and before it was found that it is genuinely good against bosses, because its an early game minion that doesnt need to be extremely good.

 

[Tunnel King]

I'm not used to you being this dishonest, and it's pretty disappointing @Shyguymask .

...and you can certainly have this opinion, but don't exaggerate and mislead Players

These are absolutely unacceptable responses, and you should know better, @Toxophilite [East]

This discussion is closed, and the staff will discuss other possible actions.