Game Mechanics Allow Pylons to be used during the Lunar Events

[qwerty3.14]

Well, you started posting ITT by saying it's annoying and must change. So, wings (and by extenstion railroads) aren't good enough for you, that's for sure. What other options we have? Teleporters? They're slightly faster than even Pylons, but are they really "far easier to set up" at the time Lunar Events fire up, i.e. by the time you'll probably have your Pylon Network complete, thus already making Teleporters redundant? No, most certainly not. But then all-time instant travel via Teleporters is a good reward for that extra building effort, and partial functionality of Pylons is good penalty for the lack of it. Consider them as downgrade i mean sidegrade ofc at this point. No hassle, but limited functionality.

Teleporters don't require living npc near them, and aren't limited too one per biome. Setting up teleporters is as simple as flying across the world while using the grand design. Even if pylons weren't disabled for the lunar events it's likely a stray enemy will fly in and kill your npcs disabling the pylon, so teleporters would still better.

 

[Tripoli]

not really care about enjoying the fine scenery of a random tiny forest out of nowehere while dashing through the area in your terraspark boots with the speed of a racing car.

Sometimes i do actually. Plus tracking corruption spread is also a good practical incentive to refrain from using instant travel sometimes. Plus occasional extra drops from mobs and terrain.

because they don't really offer much, usually

There is this general problem with Terraria, i can agree with you. And it wasn't (likely wouldn't be) adressed with updates, as we steer further away from what was called "minecraft in 2d, but not really". Sure there are new bosses here and there, but to me that's only fun for a couple of hours. I almost wish there was a massive agriculture mechanic with hunger and livestock added, but that's likely asking too much.

The problem with pylons and the lunar apocalypse is, that as for one, players get used to using pylons.

I really really hope we both are wrong and they wouldn't. Relogic really shot itself in the foot with this one.

you placed goblin somewhere where he's happy, but suddenly at this one point, it turns out a pain. otherwise it doesn't really matters to travel there since it's rather easy and quick.

Exactly. But my idea is that it doesn't need to be fixed. Players have to figure out ways to solve this instead. Resettle the goblin temporarily in advance for example. Remember, despite the protests devs still insist that Happiness is optional (i don' remember what your opinion on the matter is), so why not taking their advice. Or alternatively pick the towers in right order to get the right weapons you need for ML fight reforged early.

other problem is that the lunar events are very tough to clear. I mean, it's time consuming. since the creatures there are very strong and can pretty much oneshot you here and there. the main way of clering the event is usually slowly chipping away - or how you say it? - the towers. it works. but it's awfully tedious.

Kind of yes. It's meant to be. The main problem i see here judging by my and other players' experience is that lunar tablet is batcrap expensive, so you'll have to complete grind Events for much more time than seems comfortable. Maybe they wanted it to be this way, idk.

you could have a teleporter there, but let's be honest, when there is a pylon in the area, why would you set up a teleporter there you would never likely use outside of the lunar events?

Covered it in another post. Now that i think of it, making teleporter hub to likely locations of towers is a neat idea.

all in all, the lunar events require lots of traveling that is just tedious. you can get there in no time with mounts or high-tier wings, but doing so again and again and again and again and....... is no fun.

I'm ok with wings and other means so can't really relate.

if there is a time when you would need to be able to trevel between your towns the fastest, it might be when the apocalyse is underway and the hero needs to be able to act quick?

You are correct on this one, but if we were to take in-game explanations into account, then consider this: due to a literal Apocalypse going on your NPCs are depressed and out of this happy juice or whatever, that is used to power Pylons.

 

[Sora_92]

@Tripoli

Tracking corruption spread can be done in other ways too, and the surface often wouldn't tell much about it, until it's too late anyway. it might appears fine, but hidden under the ground it spreads, and then...
but you won't see that when running though there.
and if you quaranteened areas, then corruption spread is usually not a concern anymore.

Yeah, it would be nice if other areas would offer stuff too. but I think it's part intentional to have boring areas here and there, because they can be great places for the player to use for something. there was this boring forest far away for example, I used to create a surface hallow with a town too, because the original one spawned though the graveyard and artifical surface corruption, and I wanted to return them the way they were. that boring forest come in quite handy as a new hallow.

by the way, agriculture could be interesting, but it likely wouldn't solve issues with boring areas...


Of course people will use methods that are convinient.
I know that on modded too, I also tend to use all the equipments allowing for quick travel too. Theseus' Thread, Wormhole mirror, Wall-mounted magic mirrors... teleportation potions...
Now we also have ocean and hell teleporting conches on vanilla too. What can be even better than a hellevator? an item that will instantly teleports you there, right?
They are huge QoL things.
Because walking around is not always fun, and is very tedious.
It won't hurt the feeling of discovery, IMO, because you can't aquire or use most of these prior to discovering said areas first.


As for the happiness system debate, I didn't really joined that, because it's kind of a shark-filled water, as someone said.
I'm generally happy with the happiness system, and spread out NPCs. this is actually also makes them having more safety too, since it is usually the center base/town that gets wiped out at events. NPCs living far away are safe.
I really don't care much about prices changing though, you can usually get rich quite fast after you get past a few bosses. it doesn't matters if something costs +5 gold coins more, when you have 30-40 plat in your piggy bank...
and you have the pylons, which are absolutely amazing.
(I do wonder though how will this balance out with mods adding more NPCs, necessarily turning town more crowded. which I don't see as a problem, but would be better if NPCs mind crowding a bit less)

on a side note on quick travel, my game used to crash sometimes when entering new biomes. this was even more so when had overhaul mod eneabled what back then caused crash 90% of the times you entered a desert or the underworld. that's why I was very happy about ways to teleport, so I could get to locations easier that were beyond a desert or something, and, generally, it was very frustrating, when you spent 5-10 minutes walking to your jungle only that the game would crash when you arrived. if it crashed, it would do so with teleporter too, which means sparing that 5-10 minutes walking there only to have the game crash. the game often worked like "today (in-game day), this biome will cause crash. come back tomorrow" and so it was convient to teleport, to avoid wasting time on areas you couldn't go to anyway. or sometimes the crash would occure a bit later, so you could "teleport, set bed there to spawn. exit map. re-enter map. the biome won't cause crash now"

later some helped with that issue by suggesting changing some settings, and I disabled overhaul mod too.
But I have bad experiences with terraria crashes, so I'm happy you can teleport around.

Also, as for reforge, I do think if you know what you're doing, first time you most likely will clear stardust pillar first, then the pillar of your class, and leave the other two for later, and so you would have your weapons early in the event and reforge them if they need to be reforged before tackling the other pillars, and moon lord.


I agree that the moon lord summon item is crazy expensive. you wouldn't use it much to farm moon lord, because you just can't afford it. but the lunar events are hardly any fun when going through there the 5th or 10th time...
it would be good if the summon item would be at least cheaper...



As for teleporter hubs, I used to have one in the world of my first playthrough. it was really useful too. But on modded, with all sorts of other fast travel methods, I would rarely use teleporters. they are a pain to set up.
And in this map for first 1.4 playthough, the pillars' areas are pretty much equal to my jungle town, desert town, tax collector's house (it's not a town, there is no pylon there, the snow pylon I used underground there) and hallow town.
since the towers notoriously appear there, having the pylons so close would be extremely convinient, but no, they don't work.
and what I mean, yes, I could set up 1-1 teleporters to these towns, but there are the pylons already allowing for fast travel there. you don't need a teleporter there outside of the lunar events, when the pylons works well. if you would set up a teleporter, then why the pylons?
you still can set up teleporters to other areas, but I see no point of having both a pylon and a teleporter leading to the same area.
(naturally towers might appear far from towns on other maps, where teleporters to their areas makes sense.)


as for wings & mounts, it's not that they're not good. it's just that teleporting is faster. it might be just a minute to fly there, but if you get oneshot by a nebulla floater the moment you arrived, you have to fly there again. and again. and again. and traveling there so many times will be 1 minute x so many times. which can be quite some time wasted in total, you could save by being able to teleport there.

pylons can spoil players a lot, and suddenly when you can't use them, it's a big pain. especially when they could take you right next to a tower right away. we can argue this is bad. certainly you grown accustomed to having the pylons real quick, and take it for granted, only to find out they don't work at a time when you would really really need them.


We can come up with "lore" why they don't work, like the apocalypse just messed up the pylons. (it doesn't matters is NPCs are happy or not, the pylons only need to have NPCs nearby, it does not matters if they're not happy)
But that still doesn't changes the fact, that suddenly realising they don't work when the lunar apocalypse starts is a big pain.

 

[Tripoli]

@Sora_92 i think we came to some conclusion here. Just a couple of thoughts:

pylons can spoil players a lot

Thanks for framing it this way, that's my concern exactly.

We can come up with "lore" why they don't work, like the apocalypse just messed up the pylons. (it doesn't matters is NPCs are happy or not, the pylons only need to have NPCs nearby, it does not matters if they're not happy)

Frankly i wasn't aware that they work with low happines. But then i just don't use them.

But that still doesn't changes the fact, that suddenly realising they don't work when the lunar apocalypse starts is a big pain.

When it comes to lore and in-game info, this is unfortunately a theme. It's clear to me that 1.4 in its final stages (Happiness was introduced in February) was rushed into existence, possibly because of economic concerns and obviously because of "Moon smiley" memes. Thanks to that a lot of things were very poorly telegraphed. I wouldn't be even surprised that infamous Luck was a thing Red wanted to build something meaningful upon, but later it fell victim to other priorities and then made it into the game without even a note in changelog, resulting in an idiotic debacle. Hell, Happiness itself is more of a placeholder for an actual system. On the other hand much work was certainly put into Bestiary.

as for wings & mounts, it's not that they're not good. it's just that teleporting is faster. it might be just a minute to fly there, but if you get oneshot by a nebulla floater the moment you arrived, you have to fly there again. and again. and again. and traveling there so many times will be 1 minute x so many times. which can be quite some time wasted in total, you could save by being able to teleport there.

Do you speak figuratively or play on Master by a chance? Floaters are notorious but i never got one-shot by them. I guess maybe on Master Pylons would work due to sheer increase in difficulty though. I tried Master and i can confirm that it was a long time since i last thought of early railroad as a necessity. It would then maybe need some Master-exclusive item to unlock Pylons.

 

[Sora_92]

@Tripoli
Certainly we can wonder about whether it is good or bad to spoil players so much with the pylons. but if they do, then it's a sorta rude awekening, when one time they don't work. with most other events that disables them, it matters little, but the lunar apocalypse requires traveling long distances, so you naturally would click on your pylon... only to see it doesn't works.
We can support if with lore, but it won't change the fact, that it's a pain. once you know they work that way, you can try to counter it some way - e.g. teleporters to tower areas - (I just dunno about it when they're the same as a pylon town's area), but the first time you encounter this can hurt a lot.
I love the pylons, they're a huge QoL addition.

I wonder if it would be possible to remind the player prior to trying to fight Lunatic Cultist, that the pylons won't function while the lunar events. that would spoil that "surprise" that defeating lunatic cultist starts the event though. but most players already know about that, even new players, via the wiki, I think.


You need an NPC to be happy to sell the pylon. but once the pylon is placed, it just requires 2 or more NPCs nearby to function. for instence, merchant sells you the forest pylon. then you find the angler and he moves in as the merchant's neighbor, the merchant probably won't sell the pylon because he hates the angler, but the placed pylon will work regardless, because there are enough NPCs nearby. you would likely want to move the angler to the beach later, but this is fine for the time being until you decide to build a town on the beach.


Some changes might been rushed indeed. There are still changes happening though, so some problems probably will be fixed. I get the hate on negative torch luck, and the fact that you wouldn't figure it out until hardmode, because wizard can tell it. I get why it was removed, but then there still are people complainig about positive torch luck "forcing them to do stuff" I think that's kinda silly.
I don't really find increased prices that much a pain, I bought like 3 crystal balls from the wizard the moment I found and freed him, despite they cost like +50%. but when you have several plats, it doesn't really matters? most would gladly throw it at the goblin to break their gadgets 5 times before finally giving a decent new modifier. so, then, why it matters if a still homeless / unhappy NPC charges more?

Plus, I love town NPCs, so I find it interesting to learn more about their likes and dislikes too. I just wish you could protect them better... or make them invulnerable, so monsters won't massacre them all the time...


I actually did not even tried master mode yet. I usually play on normal. I must be a pretty bad fighter indeed, but tower enemies do kill me a few times, especially first time you face the towers on a playthrough.
I decided to try a vanilla master mode playthough just earlier, and EoC just killed me, and got away with like 2% of its HP. it was a fight about as intense as fighting plantera on normal. that really caught me off-guard. I should try building an arena - I nearly never do on normal... it also wiped out my entire forest town... That never happened before on normal...

I'm not a good fighter. Moon Lord still wiped the floor with me like 4-5 times now in 1.4, on normal until I managed to defeat him somehow.
I'm more a builder. I love exporing and adventuring too. And sometimes boss battles can be thrilling, but I prefer battles that are challangin, but not that impossible.

I don't think difficulty matters much regarding pylon functionality. surely, on master mode, those creatures must be crazy tough, but if you're a clumsy fighter, they can be quite tough even on normal XD lol
when thinking about suggestions though, it worths considering all modes though, of course. surely it would be even more necessary on master mode, where you would end up getting one-shot by lunar creatures a lot more. probably.

 

[smeagolheart]

This is the one thing that took me completely by surprise. I understand it's probably easier to code "no pylons at any event", it would make things a lot easier for players if pylons were allowed during the lunar event.

Also I have to mention, going underground without pylons to get some reforges on my newly crafted lunar weapons was such a pain.

You shouldn't have to but I find it's best to build your base close to the surface / underground divide so you can be close to the tinkerer's preferred biome while sticking the mechanic nearby on the surface (snow). Happiness optimization is very restrictive.

 

[Narananas]

Oh no. I expect to be doing Lunar Events tomorrow so this is a nasty surprise. Well actually, I suppose I'm glad I know in advance so I can prepare.

Yes, but I think the main problem here, why to set up a teleporter to the same place you already have a pylon as well? would you use that one teleporter for anything outside of the lunar events?

setting up teleprters to places where you don't have pylons makes sense, but not as much to the same place where you already have pylons, IMO...

I set up a teleporter to my underground pylon after two incidents when it stopped working. The first was when crimson spread to the NPC housing there, and the second was simply one of the NPCs dying to a bat enemy or something. So it's a relief to know I can always get there from one of my base's teleporters if the pylon goes down.

Damn, I guess I'll have to do that or something similar to deal with the lunar events. I've already put in so much work to make an efficient pylon/teleporter network so this is disappointing.

 

[Supah the Peenj]

Yes.