NPCs & Enemies Bounty hunter NPC: replacing the 1.3 banner system

What do you do with your banners?

  • trash them, or never pick them up in the first place

    Votes: 6 14.0%

  • place them all in one room, like a gallery

    Votes: 13 30.2%

  • place them somewhere nearby as soon as they drop

    Votes: 15 34.9%

  • collect them and store them in chests

    Votes: 9 20.9%
  • Total voters
    43
Baconfry

Baconfry

Terrarian
The new system where banners drop every 50 kills is a welcome solution to the randomized nature of banner drops in 1.2. However, the message that displays when a banner drops is distracting, and 99% of the time, when I get a banner, my inventory is full and I just trash the banner.

So a better system for banners would require an NPC, tentatively called a "bounty hunter", from whom players could claim the banners that they earned by killing enemies. The list of banners you could claim from him/her would be listed similarly to the crafting menu, and you'd still only be able to claim one banner per 50 kills.

This has several benefits.

-Players who don't want to bother with banners won't be distracted by the killcount messages. "<player> has defeated the 1750th <enemy>" has become roughly as exciting to read as "<forum user> also commented on Jetstream's status". (sorry @Jetstream ∞ )

-Players who do collect banners can collect them anytime at their own convenience without having to give them up due to having a full inventory.

-Players who just collect a few types of banners can collect just those types without having to pick up and trash the rest. (For example, collectors of aesthetically attractive banners like medusa and ice elemental banners.)


Aside from allowing the player to claim banners, the bounty hunter could easily be tailored to work as a useful vendor NPC. For starters, the bounty hunter could sell the Lifeform Analyzer instead of the Traveling Merchant, and the Tally Counter instead of having it as a random drop in the Dungeon. Also, he/she could sell the trophies of all bosses that have been killed at least once in the world.

Finally, the bounty hunter would sell a unique item during parties. The Slayer Kit is a placed item that acts like a Piggy Bank, but has only five slots and only stores enemy banners (which still stack). Every player receives the same 50% damage bonus and 25% damage reduction against the monsters whose banners are placed in their Slayer Kit. Essentially, it allows players to constantly carry around five types of banners for free. Very handy if you know you're going to be exploring a specific biome.

Possible names:
Django (Jango Fett, a bounty hunter. Coincidentally, Django is also a bounty hunter.)
Douglas (Douglas J. Falcon, aka Captain Falcon, another bounty hunter)
Aran (Samus Aran, a bounty hunter)
Vannaka (Runescape slayer master)
Inigo (you killed my father, prepare to die)

Deckard (Blade Runner)
Gondar (lol wow)

I admit that while I didn't specify a gender for the Bounty Hunter, a lot of these names lean towards male.

Spawn requirements for the Bounty Hunter: achieve a kill count of at least 1 against five different rare creatures. (alternatively, a killcount of 50 for any creature. let me know which makes more sense)


If there's any feedback you can provide, no matter how minor, please leave a reply to this thread. It can be a suggestion for a new name for the slayer kit item, or more possible names for the NPC, or an adjustment to the items the NPC sells. Literally any reply will help, because the more views this gets, the more likely a developer is to read it. (even a nonsense message completely lacking in content, but don't do that.)

Thank you for reading!
 
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oh :red: a new baconfry suggestion
Baconfry said:
"<forum user> also commented on Jetstream's status". (sorry @Jetstream ∞ )
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oh my god

Anyways, this is an interesting suggestion. It could definitely serve to improve the whole banner situation, as well as the boss trophy drop nonsense. (I'm looking at you, queen bee.)
The slayer kit could certainly help if you wanted to go to a certain biome and do some monster-farming.
 
Baconfry said:
Spawn requirements for the Bounty Hunter: achieve a kill count of at least 1 against five different rare creatures.
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This is a cool idea but I think instead of a kill count of 1 against five different rare creatures, it should just be kill 50 of any type of enemy. I think this would be better since the Bounty Hunter is focused around banners. Plus, he would be pretty hard to unlock, saying that they are RARE creatures
 
Very handy idea, but I have a few questions.
  • What happens when you kill 50 of some enemy before you have obtained the bounty hunter? Possible solutions:
    • The first, and most probable, one is to just have him store it up for when you get him.
    • You obtain it the current way.
  • His requirements seem too hard to complete. Not that killing 5 rare creatures would be that hard, but when banners are very helpful near at the start of the game, where you need any help you can get, you wouldn't be getting any banners. Especially because there aren't that many rare creatures at the beginning of the game. And yes, I do realize that the banners didn't provide bonuses originally so they aren't necessary to early players, but now that they are, I don't think that we should take them away from those early players. Possible solutions:
    • You obtain it the current way before getting the bounty hunter.
    • Lower the requirements to two or three rare kills.
EDIT: Whoops, I writ this comment before you changed it, but didn't finish till after.
 
Something I like about the slayer kit is that it promotes exploration of difficult biomes. I just need to equip a banner and I'll have a much easier time going through it. Looking at you underground jungle.

Also less reliance on traveling merchant RNG is always a good thing.

Perhaps a sold item could be something that grants bonus damage against enemies depending on how many you killed in a row. Or maybe something something that increases the spawn rate of enemies you are under the banner effect for. Just a couple ideas off the top of my head, could probably use some fleshing out.
 
I think their should be a crafting station that the bounty hunter sells that allows you to craft banners into an accessory that will still give you the banner buff
 
As far as I remember, the killcounts are stored in the world file, so all the NPC needs to do is reference the information that's already there.

I'm less familiar with how enemy spawn rates work, but it might be possible to add a toggle on the Slayer Kit to boost the spawn rates of the monsters affected.

Accessory slots are limited and precious, which is why I decided the Slayer Kit would be better off using an independent system from accessories. It's also more efficient in terms of adding only one item to the game (though the mechanics of the item itself might be a bit complex).
 
This is actually a really good idea. 90% of the banners I get just end up going in the trash anyways, especially with really common enemies like slimes or zombies and invasion enemies. And of course, it's REALLY INCONVENIENT to have to keep throwing unwanted banners away when all I'm trying to do is farm some souls or truffle worms. Even though I can just keep throwing them away, it would be really nice if banners weren't forced on me every few minutes.

One problem I might see with this, though, is that it would be a bit confusing to figure out for new players. Of course experienced players would already know that you get a new banner for every 50 kills, but with no message that might be a bit difficult to figure out if you're new. And there's also the problem of what would be done with the banners before you get the Bounty Hunter or if he gets killed, since he'd become the only way to collect banners.
 
Greenie said:
One problem I might see with this, though, is that it would be a bit confusing to figure out for new players. Of course experienced players would already know that you get a new banner for every 50 kills, but with no message that might be a bit difficult to figure out if you're new. And there's also the problem of what would be done with the banners before you get the Bounty Hunter or if he gets killed, since he'd become the only way to collect banners.
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Terraria is generally pretty bad about explaining things, but I think most of the confusion can be circumvented through the bounty hunter's user interface. Just like "status" for the dryad, or "reforge" for the tinkerer, the bounty hunter's special feature would be "banner".

At any rate, it's probably better for players to figure out that 50 kills = one banner by interacting with the bounty hunter's ui than having those annoying announcements going off all the time.

Banners are very much an optional feature in terraria, so most people wouldn't mind not being able to collect banners while waiting for the NPC to respawn. The world still keeps track of kills regardless of whether the NPC is alive.


Another unrelated issue I thought about: on multiplayer worlds, should each player be allowed to claim a number of banners according to the world killcount? Or should they only get credit for their own kills? The latter option would make more sense, but a conversation I had with Solsund (on reddit) made me realize that Terraria is not a simple game to code. It would be nice if the world could keep track of killcounts separately for each character, but we probably want to look for alternative options.
 
I picked the last option on the poll, but if my inventory is full, I'll usually just place them down nearby, instead.

Baconfry said:
Another unrelated issue I thought about: on multiplayer worlds, should each player be allowed to claim a number of banners according to the world killcount? Or should they only get credit for their own kills? The latter option would make more sense, but a conversation I had with Solsund (on reddit) made me realize that Terraria is not a simple game to code. It would be nice if the world could keep track of killcounts separately for each character, but we probably want to look for alternative options.
Click to expand...

Well, the way it currently works is that only the player who gets the 50th kill gets a banner, so I suppose it could just remain that way. When the bounty hunter would stock banners, s/he would have the same banner pool to draw from for all players, and when someone took one it would be gone for everyone else, too. Alternatively, only the player who got the 50th kill would be able to withdraw the respective banner.
 
My primary concerns is that banners are generally useful at the time and the place you receive them, for instance during events: if you're in the middle of a Solar Eclipse and you get that Deadly Sphere banner, you want that up ASAP, but in it's current form, it would require you to go all the way to town, putting your NPCs (including the BH) at risk. On the other hand, if you get caught off-guard by a Solar Eclipse and your Bounty Hunter snuffs it, you don't have access to any of your banners, whether earned before or during the event, until they respawn.

So my suggestion is to add a toggle that allows you to choose between directly receiving banners and storing them at the BH, to accommodate for situations where you need those banners there and then.

Also add Gondar as a name.
 
I want a possible name for the bounty hunter to be Zoro. He is on the wikipedia list of famous fictional bounty hunters so the name is probably famous enough. Just put him in please. Because one piece

But for the suggestion, for me right now I probably wouldn't use him, and to me he would just be another annoying npc that I have to build a house for so he can go away and I can actually get useful npcs. I can kind of see where you're coming from but a message in the bottom for me isn't really that annoying, and it's really really easy to just trash stuff, so honestly I don't really find any of the banner stuff annoying. The trophy selling is pretty good for anyone who wants to collect trophies (personally don't but whatever). Anyway right now for me at least he would be one of the npcs I don't use at all, so he can join the 'basically useless in my opinion' club along with the cyborg, pirate, party girl and the part-time club member the painter (ind of useless, but is rarely useful in building). I don't know, just add some more cool stuff to sell.

SIDE NOTE: so while scrolling through the wiki page on famous fictional bounty hunters I found that Django IS actually a bounty hunter that is separate from Jango fett, so if you want the reference name to be about Jango Fett then change the name from Django to Jango because it will seem like a reference to that other guy. btw here is the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_bounty_hunters

Edit: so apparently Django is a character who appears in spaghetti westerns, and has appeared in 31 different films. The more you know everybody, the more you know
 
No Rick Deckard? Son, I is disappoint. Or maybe I'm just too old and none of you know that awesome movie.

Anyway, any idea that'll stop banners from dropping has my vote.
 
Gotcha! said:
No Rick Deckard? Son, I is disappoint. Or maybe I'm just too old and none of you know that awesome movie.

Anyway, any idea that'll stop banners from dropping has my vote.
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Hey, hey, I watched Blade Runner! My 11th grade English teacher was obsessed with it. I'll add it to the list.

Kazzymodus said:
On the other hand, if you get caught off-guard by a Solar Eclipse and your Bounty Hunter snuffs it, you don't have access to any of your banners, whether earned before or during the event, until they respawn.

So my suggestion is to add a toggle that allows you to choose between directly receiving banners and storing them at the BH, to accommodate for situations where you need those banners there and then.
Click to expand...

Make no mistake, this is a subtle nerf to the effectiveness of banners. The bonuses provided by banners are very powerful, especially in Expert mode, so I think it makes sense to give players a rough time on their first Solar Eclipse before they can claim an item that makes every frankenstein/swamp thing/whatever into their :red:.

However, if there were an item that allowed players to remotely contact and use the services of NPCs, this issue would be resolved pretty easily, since players would be able to claim banners with no danger to the NPC. I think I made a thread on this but I don't remember where I put it :/ something to do with statues of NPCs.

As an alternative to that, there could be a walkie-talkie item that would allow players to right click NPC map icons to talk to them when in the inventory, and would be a new ingredient for the Cell Phone.
 
Baconfry said:
"<player> has defeated the 1750th <enemy>" has become roughly as exciting to read as "<forum user> also commented on Jetstream's status". (sorry @Jetstream ∞ )
Click to expand...
lV91aYT.png

Anyway, I wholeheartedly support this. The amount of blue slime banners I have shouldn't have been allowed to happen.

I personally think that the "achieve a kill count of at least 1 against five different rare creatures" is better than the latter. Having an excessive amount of early game NPC's would be annoying for some.
 
[QUOTE="Jetstream ∞, post: 1188566, member: 686"
Anyway, I wholeheartedly support this. The amount of blue slime banners I have shouldn't have been allowed to happen.

I personally think that the "achieve a kill count of at least 1 against five different rare creatures" is better than the latter. Having an excessive amount of early game NPC's would be annoying for some.[/QUOTE]

I think we should combine the two ideas. How about the player has to kill 50 of 5 different creatures?
 
I really like this idea, the banner annoucements are annoying. I wanted to make a design of what they could look like.
2cn2E7f.png

Some guy thats definately some kinda hunter, he wears a camo shirt and shorts with sandles. Maybe a little too surfer-y?
I imagine to defend himself he'd use some kind of hunting knife which maybe he could drop upon death.
 
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