Items DST Equipment might need a huge buff...

I'm not sure what I would do with Lucy The Axe, I feel like she should have some sort of combat ability, like a right click boomerang attack or something, but I'd rather a more "canon" solution to the issue with her being more a bad axe than a weapon, for the other weapons you can slap on more damage or a faster use time but Lucy is another issue imo
 
I tested all the new weapons against Queen Bee using the same setup I used before when testing a ton of weapons against her.

The Pew-Matic was 80 seconds. For comparison, that's about the same as Boomstick with tungsten bullets, and faster than undertaker and snowball cannon, but slower than demon bow, tendon bow, revolver, musket (57 seconds), minishark (71 seconds), molten fury (31 seconds), and sandgun/star cannon.

The weather pain isn't designed to be a solo weapon, but as a solo weapon it took 124 seconds. That is slower than all other magic weapons except the thunder zapper (129 seconds) and wand of sparking. The crimson rod can solo in 78 seconds.

Lucy the Axe took 60 seconds. That is better than thorn chakram, swordfish, phaseblade, etc. but worse than fiery greatsword (39 seconds), Flamarang, Blade of Grass (54 seconds), Starfury, and Cascade.

Abigail with snapthorn and obsidian armor was 60 seconds; in comparison, finch was 92 seconds, slime couldn't do it at all, flinx was 55, frogs were 45 and imp was 38.

Overall:
-Abigail seems great since she's a preboss weapon and easier to get than flinx staff.
-Lucy wasn't all that bad, although a little more damage wouldn't hurt given the small reach and relative non-utility of true melee weapons.
-Weather Pain is a sidearm, so can do what it wants, but is generally outperformed by crimson rod.
-Pew-Matic is pretty bad. It had occasional big shots but overall is outperformed by any post-boss weapon and several pre-boss weapons.
 
While doing tests and comparisons of the new items, I noticed that Lucy has the exact same stats as the Bee Keeper, but minus the bee and confusion effects. They're also about the same size. Since Deerclops seems to be roughly the same tier as Queen Bee in difficulty, if not higher, this should tell you Lucy definitely needs a buff. Not sure what buff would work, though, other than making her some kind of thrown weapon or boomerang, as some other people have said. At the very least she should have ~150% axe power so she's at least a decent axe.

Similarly, the Ham Bat is just yet another mediocre early hardmode melee weapon. It's slightly better than some of the ore swords, but that isn't saying much because the ore swords are pretty bad and it's also waaaaaaaaaay harder to obtain. Tbh it needs a rework just like Lucy. One suggestion I have would be to make it a melee version of Life Drain that gives a life regen buff when hitting stuff.

The Pew-matic Horn just needs a straight damage buff, it gets worse DPS than the Minishark, which can be obtained before any boss. Sure, you typically won't get the money for the Minishark until mid- to late-prehardmode, but that's roughly the same tier as Pew-matic Horn, and Pew-matic Horn is a boss drop while the Minishark you can just buy. Just a few points of damage would probably be enough to push it over the Minishark and give it a niche, maybe bump it up to 23 or so.

Also not sure where I can talk about this, but although I absolutely love Chester, he kind of makes literally all other pets obsolete (except for vanity). Unsure what could be done about this, if anything. My best suggestion would be to give him his own equip slot but that seems kind of a waste for just 1 item. Maybe some other pets could be turned into storage pets like him? The Shadow Mimic and Hoardragon come to mind (Hoardragon does carry a tiny chest after all).
 
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While doing tests and comparisons of the new items, I noticed that Lucy has the exact same stats as the Bee Keeper, but minus the bee and confusion effects. They're also about the same size. Since Deerclops seems to be roughly the same tier as Queen Bee in difficulty, if not higher, this should tell you Lucy definitely needs a buff. Not sure what buff would work, though, other than making her some kind of thrown weapon or boomerang, as some other people have said. At the very least she should have ~150% axe power so she's at least a decent axe.

Similarly, the Ham Bat is just yet another mediocre early hardmode melee weapon. It's slightly better than some of the ore swords, but that isn't saying much because the ore swords are pretty bad and it's also waaaaaaaaaay harder to obtain. Tbh it needs a rework just like Lucy. One suggestion I have would be to make it a melee version of Life Drain that gives a life regen buff when hitting stuff.

The Pew-matic Horn just needs a straight damage buff, it gets worse DPS than the Minishark, which can be obtained before any boss. Sure, you typically won't get the money for the Minishark until mid- to late-prehardmode, but that's roughly the same tier as Pew-matic Horn, and Pew-matic Horn is a boss drop while the Minishark you can just buy. Just a few points of damage would probably be enough to push it over the Minishark and give it a niche, maybe bump it up to 23 or so.

Also not sure where I can talk about this, but although I absolutely love Chester, he kind of makes literally all other pets obsolete (except for vanity). Unsure what could be done about this, if anything. My best suggestion would be to give him his own equip slot but that seems kind of a waste for just 1 item. Maybe some other pets could be turned into storage pets like him? The Shadow Mimic and Hoardragon come to mind (Hoardragon does carry a tiny chest after all).
I agree in some aspects, I'm just thinking "how much can we rework a weapon from this crossover", because I don't want to go away from what the weapons originally were, I will comment a bit on the melee weapons and how I feel about it as a melee main

Lucy the Axe: She's not unique at all... She actually feels like a bit of a "wasted slot", she can talk but that's it, it feels so strange you have all these cool weapons that drop from Deerclops then Lucy just feels so... disappointing, I wish she could do something besides talk

Ham Bat: This weapon is also just bland, the gimmick is you eat food and it becomes stronger, that's it, it's yet another basic broadsword

Tentacle Spike: Should I even comment on this? It's yet another basic melee broadsword...

Bat Bat: It can randomly heal you, it wants to be a sword version of Vampire Knives if they were kinda bad, I don't know what else to say...

I know none of this is your fault, and this is Hyperkat nitpicking to the absolute extreme, but the melee weapons just feel really bland compared to the other class weapons, that's partly because of melee but I feel like some creative things could've been done to make them feel more unique...
 
The Pew-matic Horn just needs a straight damage buff, it gets worse DPS than the Minishark, which can be obtained before any boss. Sure, you typically won't get the money for the Minishark until mid- to late-prehardmode, but that's roughly the same tier as Pew-matic Horn, and Pew-matic Horn is a boss drop while the Minishark you can just buy. Just a few points of damage would probably be enough to push it over the Minishark and give it a niche, maybe bump it up to 23 or so.
I’d say the pew-matic horn needs a lot more than a minor buff. Deerclops is post worm according to the dictionary, and it has no excuse to do worse than several preboss weapons, or post worm weapons by around double.

Personal thing here but I’d rather pew-matic got a fire rate buff rather than a damage buff, it just *feels* like the kind of thing that should be spammy.
 
Also not sure where I can talk about this, but although I absolutely love Chester, he kind of makes literally all other pets obsolete (except for vanity). Unsure what could be done about this, if anything. My best suggestion would be to give him his own equip slot but that seems kind of a waste for just 1 item. Maybe some other pets could be turned into storage pets like him? The Shadow Mimic and Hoardragon come to mind (Hoardragon does carry a tiny chest after all).
An easy nerf is turning him into a Light Pet, it would add some opportunity cost to him that way. He doesnt emit any light, but it would make sense for the "utility" pets to have a different slot that those that are completely vanity.
 
Visual represenation of all tests done.
1.4.3 items are near tier letters
Items below B may require a buff
Deerclops drops were count to be obtainable around Skeletron
1.4.3 TL.gif

Bone Skull is a good A tier accessory, easily comparable to the Bone Glove

Edit: Don't mind colored walls above weapons, these have a different function
 
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Bat Bat is a pretty cool weapon on paper, but it definitely needs a *major* buff as well.

Bat Bat’s base DPS is 36. Ice Blade’s base DPS is 68, with 17 of that being at range. Ice Blade is also much more disruptive, as well as having autoswing and not being gated behind a 1/250 chance drop.

Even compared to Platinum Broadsword, it’s 36 dps versus 47 with Platinum Broadsword being basically free and having more disruption. The only tangible advantage, offense-wise, that Bat Bat has over it is size.

Neither of these even go to show the competition Bat Bat has with almost any ranged weapon, gem staff or summoner loadout.

Now let’s look at its “lifesteal”. Assuming the wiki is correct, Bat Bat’s lifesteal takes 6 seconds to charge and can hold 2 charges, and restores 5 hp with a 75% chance. Some basic math later and Bat Bat restores *less than one* HP per second. Considering its DPS is somewhere around half that of some of its competition with a number of other advantages as well, this definitely isn’t worth it.

As for burst heals, you spend more than an entire second off your main weapon *and* enter dangerous range for a quick 10 HP, and you can only do this every 12 seconds.

To add insult to injury, Bat Bat is way too rare at 1/250 chance to obtain in a regular seed, meaning you’ll almost never get it before any of its immediate competition.

It’s a really cool weapon in theory, and a fun concept that could add a lot of combat depth. I actually really like it on paper. It’s just not justifiably strong enough to put to use.
 
I jotted down a quick list of buffs I think each weapon needs

Bat Bat: Decrease the use time from 30 to 24, give it autoswing, the charges now build up in 5 seconds instead of 6 seconds

Lucy the Axe: Increase damage from 24 to 30, decrease use time from 20 to 18, decrease tool speed from 20 to 15
(Small wishlist buff: now has a right click where she can be thrown, she has a small homing range(she is sentient after all) and acts like a singular version of Possessed Hatchet)

Ham Bat: Increase damage from 50 to 70, decrease use time from 20 to 17

Tentacle Spike: Increase damage from 19 to 21, decrease use time from 23 to 22, give it autoswing

Weather Pain: Increase speed of the projectile by 10%, increase lifespan by 100%, increase pierce from 10 to 15

(Houndius Shootius: Probably a bit of homing or something on the weapon, no sentry armors really limit this weapon so I’m not too sure)

Pew-Matic Horn: Decrease use time from 24 to 14

Considering when this loot is supposed to be obtained, I’m pretty underwhelmed by Deerclops drops, along with the other weapons in general, I’ll change what each weapon I think needs but this is a general idea
 
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I know this is a thread for weapons, but I just started a new playthrough and thought I might mention my experience with the other items.

Abigail was great, got her right away. Not as good as flinx staff for things like knockback, but good enough that I didn't farm for flinx's.

Magiluminescence looked dumb on paper but was a real game-changer. With the dunerider boots and magiluminescence on sand, I felt like I was running on asphalt! And removing the need for torches so early on was great.

Bone helm was excellent for the underground desert and corruption's weird, hard-to-reach enemies (I haven't done jungle yet, but assume it'll be good there), and was incredible for Tier 1 Old One's Army, since it can attack 5 or more goblins at once and pick off the wyverns.

Both accessories are powerful, but since they compete with other really good loot already in the game (like worm scarf and shield of cthulhu) it feels balanced. I've been using them constantly since I got them and really enjoy them.

I fought Deerclops right after the Eater of Worlds using a Demon bow, bast statue and some potions. It was a hard fight and long but really fun; it felt like I really had to learn the patterns, and the Expert hand made it feel like a real expert fight (otherwise I could just time my jumps over the big ice throw). Grinding for the summon was a bit tedious, but since I had abigail I didn't need the flinx fur for the flinx staff. I got the pewmatic horn and the radio thing, but didn't use either (I'm doing a bows-only run).
 
I jotted down a quick list of buffs I think each weapon needs

Bat Bat: Increase the damage from 18 to 26, decrease the use time from 30 to 24, give it autoswing, the charges now build up in 5 seconds instead of 6 seconds

Lucy the Axe: Increase damage from 24 to 30, decrease use time from 20 to 18, decrease tool speed from 20 to 15
(Small wishlist buff: now has a right click where she can be thrown, she has a small homing range(she is sentient after all) and acts like a singular version of Possessed Hatchet)

Ham Bat: Increase damage from 50 to 70, decrease use time from 20 to 17

Tentacle Spike: Increase damage from 19 to 24, decrease use time from 23 to 19, give it autoswing

Weather Pain: Increase speed of the projectile by 10%, increase lifespan by 100%, increase pierce from 10 to 15

(Houndius Shootius: Probably a bit of homing or something on the weapon, no sentry armors really limit this weapon so I’m not too sure)

Pew-Matic Horn: Decrease use time from 24 to 14

Considering when this loot is supposed to be obtained, I’m pretty underwhelmed by Deerclops drops, along with the other weapons in general, I’ll change what each weapon I think needs but this is a general idea
Kneejerk reaction is that a lot of these seem like overbuffs, especially on Bat Bat. 26 damage on a weapon you can, theoretically, get within literal seconds of starting the game is kind of insane. So is autoswing. Tbh I think the changes to use time and heal charge ought to be enough, though I agree with those saying it needs a higher drop rate as well.

On the other hand I don't think that buff to Ham Bat would really be enough, frankly true melee weapons just aren't going to cut it in hardmode unless they do absolutely crazy amounts of damage, or have some other gimmick. Nothing short of a rework is ever going to save Ham Bat.
 
Kneejerk reaction is that a lot of these seem like overbuffs, especially on Bat Bat. 26 damage on a weapon you can, theoretically, get within literal seconds of starting the game is kind of insane. So is autoswing. Tbh I think the changes to use time and heal charge ought to be enough, though I agree with those saying it needs a higher drop rate as well.

On the other hand I don't think that buff to Ham Bat would really be enough, frankly true melee weapons just aren't going to cut it in hardmode unless they do absolutely crazy amounts of damage, or have some other gimmick. Nothing short of a rework is ever going to save Ham Bat.
Ice Blade can also in theory be obtained extremely early in the game, Ice Blade has more dps, a projectile, and autoswing, but the damage I gave it was overkill now that I look at it, though autoswing would probably be necessary tbh

Tentacle Spike is another one where I gave it stupid buffs even though it can be obtained really early, but it’s also a 1/525 that isn’t on The Constant seed

Ham Bat needs further buffs, someone recommended it should give regen on hit, like Life Drain, that would probably help somewhat with how bad it is, along with the buffs I suggested as it’s currently completely outclassed by Fetid, but yes, it’s a true melee weapon and there’s no much we can really do it being early hardmode
 
Hyperkatmanders, I hope you don't mind, I changed the name of the thread to "DST Equipment", since Mathbrush1's post mentioned feeling like the accessory discussion was out of place. I think this thread can serve fine for both.

I'm going to start some of my considerations today, to lay down some of my thoughts here. I'm going to start at the beginning and work my way up, so this may be somewhat lengthy.

I'll start by saying, overall, I made an effort to avoid "increasing the cap on the meta and power creep", and when in doubt, I err'd weaker than stronger, because I could always uptweak later and make people happier rather than downtweak later and frustrate people with nerfs. I knew full well I'd be having these conversations, and though I had reasons for much of what I did, I also knew I'm only one person and would want to discuss this out with you guys.
Lucy has about the same dps as Fiery Greatsword, but also has less range, and is worse as an axe than Molten Hamaxe, the Ranged weapon has huge damage variance, and it's very hard to even see the tile being thrown... or shot, I haven't played the update yet, but the point is, all the weapons so far are super underwhelming and need a buff
Molten Fury outperforms pewmatic horn by almost twice
Master EoC kill times: Molten Fury and Jester: 26 seconds
Pew-Matic horn kills the very first boss in 50 seconds
Update: Weather Pain is pretty fine as a sidearm

For the sake of pre-HM balancing, I need to establish a standard I used with the balancing here, and you guys may not agree with it, but it's a pre-existing system that I am not going to be attempting to change.



In Terraria's pre-HM, most Molten/Underworld-tier items are "top tier". Though not 100%, they are consistently among the best items available, and almost always out-perform items of the "Dungeon/Jungle/Queen Bee" tier, the same tier at which Deerclops ostensibly falls. This, any comparison in which Deerclops items fall short of Molten tier items is, if anything, intended. The PRIMARY item which I balanced Lucy against was not Fiery Greatsword, but Muramasa (attempting for each to have some advantages over the other), with the understanding that Fiery Greatsword would typically be better than both.

Similarly, Pew-Matic Horn (underpowered or not) should not be approaching Molten Fury or Phoenix Blaster in power.

There is an argument to be made (based on the ease of acquiring Molten tier items at this tier) that this <Molten universal approach is a poor decision. That may be the case, but I'm in no position to overrule and overhaul the entire second half of pre-HM at this time, and so the paradigm will stand (this is also part of the justification for the infamous Reaver Shark nerf . . .). But within the QB/Dungeon tier, I'm open to consideration and evaluation.
Ham Bat is really really bad, it's way worse than Fetid and is even worse than Frostbrand, the range is lackluster and the damage is bad
- Ham Bat is a lot worse than Fetid and Frostbrand(which I consider pretty "meh" in the first place), feels more novelty than anything, the droprate isn't too bad at 4%, but is also more rare than Fetid or Frostbrand, or even Beam Sword
Ham Bat with tier 3 food and 3 sanguine minions kill master destroyer in 35 seconds, while Fetid Baghnakhs only in 19, same loadout based on melee Titanium armor

Fetid Baghnakhs is, almost without a doubt, the worst possible basis for comparison for any where any item should fall in balance.

Baghnakhs are brokenly powerful. Even after I heavily nerfed it's potential upscaling, it's RAW DPS far outstrips any other pre-Mech melee weapon. The weapon honestly should have been nerfed far more than it was, and though it sets an ostensible "ceiling" on melee damage, it should never be treated as the standard.

This is not to say that Ham Bat may not need buffs. But it needs to be compared against other weapons akin to it. I see Frostbrand being thrown around a lot; this is a good choice. I specifically used Beam Sword as part of my consideration. I had the intent that Ham Bat should be doing more "contact DPS" under optimal conditions than Beam Sword, but less DPS when taking perfect-beam use into account. I believe that metric is still accurate, though it may simply be that it should be doing more damage entirely, even taking the projectiles into account. I'll be running some numbers around this.

Believe it or not, at one point in development, I was under the misunderstanding that a Life Drain effect was INTENDED for Ham Bat, and I began re-evaluating it for such. It was only later I found out that the healing effect was meant for Bat Bat (which . . . I'll get back to that), and so there was no such effect added. Have any of you guys looked into Ham Bat's Well Fed systems at all? Some of it's balancing was based on players optimizing around it and using it at it's best tier, where it gains a fairly decent amount of DPS.

However, I'm not opposed to investigating having it grant Life Drain buff on use, nor am I against a damage/use time buff, but the question is how much. I'll also need to clear a Life Drain buff for approval (a simple stat buff requires less authorization, I can just make the change).

I'll also say this: ideally, Ham Bat should not be putting Excalibur to shame. I know that that may be a low bar (and other weapons may have done so already), but part of my trying to remedy the issues of old is trying to at least begin respecting the issue of tier discrepancies that have been here for many years, and not continuing to make the same mistakes. And if I HAVE to make a mistake, I would rather have another pre-HM sword that is not meta, than add another weapon to the pile of weapons that make the post-mech tier non-viable.

So in closing on that subject: If we implement a Life Drain effect, it'll come at the cost of less stat buffs for Ham Bat. If we don't, I'll probably be able to leverage more stat buffs overall.

Am interested to hear ballpark DPS estimates, in addition to the ones already provided, which I've taken notes on.
Abigail's Flower is really good... if it wasn't for the fact she's too slow... she simply needs to be faster, bosses outpace her, Flinx is better on EoC, same for even I think Queen Bee sometimes, she's just so slow

I wanna point out something, but Abigail's Flower feels way too rare on seeds that aren't the constant, I got her to spawn nearly instantly on the seed but I couldn't get her within 5 minutes on 24x speed, and ShyGuyMask said it took him 10 minutes on 24x speed to get her to spawn in
Abigail with 6 and less minion slots seems to be a little bit slow.


Abigail is a really complex discussion, and took more time balancing than any other item in this update. She has like a DOZEN stat factors, and I can adjust most of them. I've heard more feedback than just here that she is too slow, but keep in mind also that her speed increases with every +Minion count expended. I could increase her base speed at the cost of a reduction in her per-cast growth, within reason.

Her Flower's growth rate is something I'm looking VERY closely at, based on feedback. It's also something that is difficult to balance, because (as it is coded), it is PURE RNG, and no matter what I set it to, someone is going to get it 30 seconds in and someone is going to get it 10 days in. If I set it to low, it's trivial, and everyone has it, and if I set it too high, she's too rare and it's not plausible to get her within any reasonable period of time. There is no way to "Scale it" to my knowledge to increase the rate over time in a reasonable way.

I'm currently leaning in favor of a small buff, but I'm still waiting to hear more input here. Also, I'd love any "great ideas" for redoing her tile growth code in a way that is actually do-able. I'm not a very advanced programmer, so I have to run everything by Yorai, we had a lot of dead end ideas here on the "can it be coded reasonably?" front.
- Bat Bat is alright, but is slow and lacks autoswing, which is probably a way to balance out its ability to heal, but is definitely worse than Ice Blade, which has similar damage but is faster and has autoswing, but Bat Bat is also rare and feels novelty, similar to Chain Knife

Bat Bat, somewhat unavoidably, IS a lot like Chain Knife. It's literally a weapon you either do or do not get early enough to be useful. I primarily balance it statistically against it's cousin, Bone Sword, which is a very nice, large sized weapon that can make your early game a lot easier if you get it. Bat Bat is fairly large, has fairly high knockback (higher than Bone Sword), but less DPS overall. This was true even before it's healing ability was added; it did more damage, but still less than Bone Sword in DPS. My approach at the time was "higher knockback, higher damage-per-hit, but less DPS". With the implementation of it's healing ability, I had to dial that damage down even further.

On the subject of the healing . . . this was a tricky one to figure. Original concepts were "1 HP per hit", but if you scale that up, a Bat Bat could, in theory, heal 120 HP per second (about 2.4 Lesser Healing Potions in a minute). And this is a Day 1 available item, and I couldn't justify that much. LifeDrain too would have been a ton of healing for this point in the game.

We had to settle on SOME sort of inconsistent healing. (Hence the "jank" I've seen people describe it's healing as). As it currently stands, the weapon can carry up to 2 "charges" of 5 healing, which recharge every 6 seconds (meaning a maximum possible healing of 50 HP per minute, not counting the extra charge saved up from the beginning). These hits have an RNG on them so you don't typically get "2 heal hits in a row", but it's not high enough to make them rare, so generally speaking, if you are hitting constantly, you should be seeing a healing charge roughly every 6-8 seconds.

We discussed some other possibilities . . . 1 HP heal-on-hit on a 1-second timer, 2 HP heal-on-hit on a 2-second timer, and all of them felt just as awkward. All of the "clean" solutions provided way more healing than this point in the game could afford, and all of the other solutions ended up awkward like this one. I'm open to suggestions, but more for the approach of "cleaning it up" and less "buffing it". It's potential healing is roughly where I want it, it's just awkwardly implemented.
- Tentacle Spike does nothing special I don't think? Another weapon that could be decent but lacks autoswing and is very rare unless you're on The Constant, because it seems to have a 1/525 and on The Constant it seems to be 1/100

At no point was I satisfied with Tentacle Spike. It's source is where I was instructed to put it (rare drop from Corrupt/Crimson enemies) and this is a pretty awkward place for a weapon. Because if you make it too weak, then it's no good for anything after all of the farming, and if it's too strong, it invalidates Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer. I ultimately went with a "Shadow Armor set approach", so that if someone were investing the amount of time to get pieces of Ancient Shadow Armor, they'd likely be picking up a Tentacle Spike as well. The balance between these weapons is extremely subtle; if I add even 2 points of damage, it is roughly equal to Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer (just with subtle differences), and I add 3 points, it is demonstrably superior, aside for being slightly smaller. If I boost it by 2 damage and make all three of them "equal", will that satisfy people? I suspect not, but it wouldn't outright invalidate the items either. Input is appreciated.

I've seen some mention of this weapon being destined to simply be a generic melee weapon with no bells and whistles. Well . . . that's what Tentacle Spike is. I'm not passing blame, but this was a weapon that I did not create, that I had a pre-assigned tier/placement for, and have minimal justification to "redesign", as it is someone else's IP. I feel as if my hands were somewhat tied, and there isn't a whole lot I can do here. It WOULD have been nice if it could be more fancy in some way, but that didn't seem plausible at the time, and honestly, given how early in the game it is, how much could really be done with it? Almost anything "interesting" would likely have to be offset by stat nerfs anyway (shooting some projectile spikes come to mind, but they'd have to be really weak, and go through approval).
I'm not sure what I would do with Lucy The Axe, I feel like she should have some sort of combat ability, like a right click boomerang attack or something, but I'd rather a more "canon" solution to the issue with her being more a bad axe than a weapon, for the other weapons you can slap on more damage or a faster use time but Lucy is another issue imo

While doing tests and comparisons of the new items, I noticed that Lucy has the exact same stats as the Bee Keeper, but minus the bee and confusion effects. They're also about the same size. Since Deerclops seems to be roughly the same tier as Queen Bee in difficulty, if not higher, this should tell you Lucy definitely needs a buff. Not sure what buff would work, though, other than making her some kind of thrown weapon or boomerang, as some other people have said. At the very least she should have ~150% axe power so she's at least a decent axe.

Lucy is not going to have a rework/boomerang functionality. She may be "boring", but her design is also keeping in truth with her item's origins. And tbh, she's also a tool AND she talks, and that makes her fairly unique, given that most tools don't even approach combat viability intent. Her range was a major aspect of her design in the initial process, so much so that I had to have her resprited to be bigger, and she still wasn't big enough IMO, but I'm probably not going to be able to get her resprited again.

So if she is changed, it'll be stat changes (I can probably increase her scale just a little to make her slightly bigger), but it's not going to be a rework. I can also look at her axe power again . . . I thought I had her axe power worked out correctly, it's odd hearing you say she isn't a decent axe. Might have been a mistake there, sometimes a number change is missed when I'm making adjustments.

Just checking, but you guys were aware that Lucy has a +10% critical chance? Just in case that didn't factor into considerations.
I need to go back to the drawing board and see what went wrong here. My numbers at the time seemed alright, but it sounds like either something went wrong somewhere or maybe my math and testing were wrong? The high damage variation IS intended (and in fact, the average damage of the weapon skews higher than the listed damage . . . over time, you will get slightly more higher damage projectiles than lower damage projectiles), but I need to re-evaluate what might have gone wrong here. I'm not even going to quote all of the comments because it sounds like it just needs a straight buff, and I'll discuss some proposed numbers to see what you guys think before it's through.
I've seen a lot of discussion of this weapon as a "side-arm", and I'm glad you guys caught onto that, as it is intended. My primary concern with Weather Pain was that an enterprising Mage could launch a Hurtnado, swap to another weapon for 3 seconds or so, then back to Weather Pain, to keep a consistent amount of "extra damage" in play at once, much like I've used Magnet Sphere for in the past. In fact, Weather Pain's balance is intended very much to be used like an early game Magnet Sphere in a way; only 1 projectile, "cast and forget" targeting, and bonus damage that stacks on top of your other weapons.

With that in mind, I was extremely hesitant to make it too strong. Someone mentioned Crimson Rod; you can use Weather Pain and Crimson Rod TOGETHER! They aren't rivals, they synergize. And unlike nearly every other weapon here, this was my primary fear. Weather Pain should not be viable as a primary weapon, it is designed to supplement, and as a supplement, it might add too much raw potency to previously balanced tiers of Magic weapons.

So I was conservative with it's damage, heavy with it's manage usage, and kept it's duration/longevity somewhat short. Because, like I said before, I'd rather have it too weak and uptweak it a bit later, rather than make it OP as hell and have to nerf it.

Weather Pain: Increase speed of the projectile by 10%, increase lifespan by 100%, increase pierce from 10 to 15

This is a lot of buffs here. A 10% boost to projectile speed probably won't make much of an impact either way, but this is increasing it's potential damage per cast by 50%, and dramatically increasing it's "duration of overlap". I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable doing BOTH, but I'm interested in more thoughts here.

As an aside, did you guys notice the Defense piercing? Thoughts? Did that factor into any of the considerations? I've found that Defense piercing has been a great boon to me with balancing certain weapons, and it seemed like it was a useful one here. But I'm not seeing a whole lot of negative feedback here for Weather Pain, so I guess I'm asking for more feedback, since it does not seem quite as one-sided as other items.
And now for an overpowered item, the Frog Sandwich.

Costs two frogs... and it gives you 8 MINUTES of exqusitely stuffed. Thats insane. All other sources of T3 well fed are either rare drops from enemies or Seafood Dinner, which requires you to commit to fishing.

With this item all you need is a house in the Jungle, then the biome's high spawn rates make that house get full of frogs, and thats how you get as many Sandwiches as you want.

Should:
1- Give 25 minutes of Tier 2 Well Fed
2- Nerf Sauteed frog legs to T1 to keep it in line with other critter food, and nerf Sandwich to T2
3- Make it 1 or 2 minutes of T3 well fed

Believe it or not, I was very torn on how to approach Froggle Bunwich. I actually had a VARIETY of proposals, and ran them by the testers for feedback, but was never quite satisfied with any solution.

For starters, I do want to point out that Well Fed Tier 3 is only 33% more powerful than Well Fed Tier 2. I'm sure you know that, but sometimes it's a good reminder. So there is a question to be had here: are my 2 Frogs worth more as 20 minutes of Tier 2 Well Fed, or worth more as 8 minutes of Tier 3 Well Fed? A 33% increase in relative bonus, but only 40% of the duration. I DID feel that investing 2 at once should provide more power in some regard than just consuming 1 twice, whether that took the form of longer duration or more power.

#1. I'm not averse to 25 minutes of Tier 2. This was one of my initial considerations for Froggle Bunwich, and so shifting to it now would be entirely within my expected power for this item.

#2. I'm LESS comfortable with retroactively nerfing Sauteed Frog Legs now . . . this is expanding the scope of the balance out of 1.4.3 and that is a slippery slope. Most other critters are found in safer, closer to home biomes than Frogs, and so I do think there is some merit to Frogs simply giving more than, say, Squirrels.

#3. I don't think 3 is reasonable. Seafood Dinner is comparably quite easy to get, and gives only 4 minutes, and even that is almost too short to be useful. 2 Minutes of T3 well Fed for 2 Frogs? You'd be sacrificing 90% of the duration for an exceedingly short lived 33% boost. I don't see that one being worth it.

If I had to make a change of the 3 listed, it would be #1, but I'd like to hear more thoughts here before I commit to anything.
 
I'm making this post outside of the first one, because it is more of my own personal musings on an experiment I tried, and I'd like to hear your thoughts without it getting all tied up into the overarching discussion.

Some of you may have noticed that Abigail has a rather unique trait . . . she has (limited) ability to scale up into Hardmode.

"1-minion-with-multiple-cast-counts" are remarkably difficult summons to balance and design, and also feel more personal to me, like they are a "companion" instead of "minions". Desert Tiger was not a great success on that front, but I feel as if response to Abigail has been more positive on the whole, and I hope that this will be more of a success. "Wouldn't it be great if you could bring this companion with you for a significant duration of the game?" A fun thought for me, even if it is not a core design intent with these minions.

With Abigail, most of her major stats scale directly with her minion count investment. She has VERY weak damage with minimal investment, and every extra minion count adds a multiplier on top of that. This scaling damage tapers off towards the end of pre-HM, and isn't quite able to keep up with the highest pre-HM DPS possible with minions.

But, on a whim . . . I gave her a special bonus stat. If the world you are in is in Hardmode, her damage multiplier-per-minion increases dramatically. At this time, it is not quite enough to make her meta or even truly viable. But her damage spikes suddenly, and with heavy summon investment, she should have some viability in early Hardmode, like a bridge into the pre-Mech tier before swapping to other stuff (while other minions like Imps or Hornets may be rendered nearly useless instantly).

I will clarify that this was merely an experiment, and is not meant to be something that I am standing by or "ensuring that it works". If it works, great. If she is somehow TOO strong, then it is just as likely to be removed than anything else. If it doesn't work and she's still too weak, well then chalk it up to a quirk of her stats that didn't quite pan out. This is towards the end of Terraria's lifespan, and I doubt this experiment would have sweeping implications elsewhere in the game, but I thought it would be a nice idea to try out and see how people responded if it did work. If nothing else, it's educational for me for future balancing, whether it be in Terraria or any other game, and I thought it might be fun. Let me know what you think.

As for actually balancing Abigail on the whole . . .

Stats that can be impacted:
- Her base damage
- Her damage increase per minion expended (each minion count is multiplicative, so it can go up quite fast)
- In theory, her damage increase per minion expended WHILE IN HARDMODE. It is an entirely different value.
- Her base speed
- Her speed increase per minion expended (additive, not multiplicative)

There are a few other factors, like some animation duration and "how accurate her tracking is", which are a little more complex and subtle, but she does gain some benefits per cast here (such as her animation ending sooner, so she can move onto the next enemy, etc).

Note that due to how dramatic her damage scaling is, adjustments to her base damage (even a single damage point) might require reducing her scaling to keep things in check. I'm generally rather happy with the current state she is in, but minor adjustments here might be made.

Her speed is easier to adjust, because of how linear it is. If I were to increase her speed slightly, I could simply slightly reduce her speed-per-minion bonus, and it will even out in time.

I'm also going to look into her being able to hit dozens of enemies at once, I think that was an oversight. She should probably have a maximum number, and that number can probably scale with minion count too, but I'll have to clear that with Yorai.
 
So if she is changed, it'll be stat changes (I can probably increase her scale just a little to make her slightly bigger), but it's not going to be a rework. I can also look at her axe power again . . . I thought I had her axe power worked out correctly, it's odd hearing you say she isn't a decent axe. Might have been a mistake there, sometimes a number change is missed when I'm making adjustments.
Her Axe power isn’t the main issue, rather her tool speed is higher(meaning she’s slower) than Molten Hamaxe and Meteor Hamaxe, at 14 and 16 respectively, I understand not wanting to give her a boomerang attack, but a few stat buffs would be appreciated(lowering the use time by a tad, increasing the damage by a bit(I think she has identical stats to Bee Keeper minus the size and bees) and a small size increase would be nice)
 
I'm making this post outside of the first one, because it is more of my own personal musings on an experiment I tried, and I'd like to hear your thoughts without it getting all tied up into the overarching discussion.

Some of you may have noticed that Abigail has a rather unique trait . . . she has (limited) ability to scale up into Hardmode.

"1-minion-with-multiple-cast-counts" are remarkably difficult summons to balance and design, and also feel more personal to me, like they are a "companion" instead of "minions". Desert Tiger was not a great success on that front, but I feel as if response to Abigail has been more positive on the whole, and I hope that this will be more of a success. "Wouldn't it be great if you could bring this companion with you for a significant duration of the game?" A fun thought for me, even if it is not a core design intent with these minions.

With Abigail, most of her major stats scale directly with her minion count investment. She has VERY weak damage with minimal investment, and every extra minion count adds a multiplier on top of that. This scaling damage tapers off towards the end of pre-HM, and isn't quite able to keep up with the highest pre-HM DPS possible with minions.

But, on a whim . . . I gave her a special bonus stat. If the world you are in is in Hardmode, her damage multiplier-per-minion increases dramatically. At this time, it is not quite enough to make her meta or even truly viable. But her damage spikes suddenly, and with heavy summon investment, she should have some viability in early Hardmode, like a bridge into the pre-Mech tier before swapping to other stuff (while other minions like Imps or Hornets may be rendered nearly useless instantly).

I will clarify that this was merely an experiment, and is not meant to be something that I am standing by or "ensuring that it works". If it works, great. If she is somehow TOO strong, then it is just as likely to be removed than anything else. If it doesn't work and she's still too weak, well then chalk it up to a quirk of her stats that didn't quite pan out. This is towards the end of Terraria's lifespan, and I doubt this experiment would have sweeping implications elsewhere in the game, but I thought it would be a nice idea to try out and see how people responded if it did work. If nothing else, it's educational for me for future balancing, whether it be in Terraria or any other game, and I thought it might be fun. Let me know what you think.

As for actually balancing Abigail on the whole . . .

Stats that can be impacted:
- Her base damage
- Her damage increase per minion expended (each minion count is multiplicative, so it can go up quite fast)
- In theory, her damage increase per minion expended WHILE IN HARDMODE. It is an entirely different value.
- Her base speed
- Her speed increase per minion expended (additive, not multiplicative)

There are a few other factors, like some animation duration and "how accurate her tracking is", which are a little more complex and subtle, but she does gain some benefits per cast here (such as her animation ending sooner, so she can move onto the next enemy, etc).

Note that due to how dramatic her damage scaling is, adjustments to her base damage (even a single damage point) might require reducing her scaling to keep things in check. I'm generally rather happy with the current state she is in, but minor adjustments here might be made.

Her speed is easier to adjust, because of how linear it is. If I were to increase her speed slightly, I could simply slightly reduce her speed-per-minion bonus, and it will even out in time.

I'm also going to look into her being able to hit dozens of enemies at once, I think that was an oversight. She should probably have a maximum number, and that number can probably scale with minion count too, but I'll have to clear that with Yorai.
I was a bit hasty on my judgment on Abby, she’s a great minion, the only “issue” is her speed is a bit low, which makes catching faster bosses hard, but she performs decent on Queen Slime and not too terribly on most Pre-Hardmode bosses besides Eye of Cthulhu
 
This is a lot of buffs here. A 10% boost to projectile speed probably won't make much of an impact either way, but this is increasing it's potential damage per cast by 50%, and dramatically increasing it's "duration of overlap". I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable doing BOTH, but I'm interested in more thoughts here.
I think a small boost to projectile speed(like 10% to 20%) would help it catching Bosses like Queen Bee a lot better, and maybe a small increase to pierce from 10 to around 12, I’m not too sure, right now it’s just “ok”, but I’m not too sure on what to do with it myself
 
On the subject of the healing . . . this was a tricky one to figure. Original concepts were "1 HP per hit", but if you scale that up, a Bat Bat could, in theory, heal 120 HP per second (about 2.4 Lesser Healing Potions in a minute). And this is a Day 1 available item, and I couldn't justify that much. LifeDrain too would have been a ton of healing for this point in the game.

We had to settle on SOME sort of inconsistent healing. (Hence the "jank" I've seen people describe it's healing as). As it currently stands, the weapon can carry up to 2 "charges" of 5 healing, which recharge every 6 seconds (meaning a maximum possible healing of 50 HP per minute, not counting the extra charge saved up from the beginning). These hits have an RNG on them so you don't typically get "2 heal hits in a row", but it's not high enough to make them rare, so generally speaking, if you are hitting constantly, you should be seeing a healing charge roughly every 6-8 seconds.

We discussed some other possibilities . . . 1 HP heal-on-hit on a 1-second timer, 2 HP heal-on-hit on a 2-second timer, and all of them felt just as awkward. All of the "clean" solutions provided way more healing than this point in the game could afford, and all of the other solutions ended up awkward like this one. I'm open to suggestions, but more for the approach of "cleaning it up" and less "buffing it". It's potential healing is roughly where I want it, it's just awkwardly implemented.
I’m not sure how you got 120hp/s, if it heals 1hp per hit the maximum per second is 60hp/s, unless I’m missing something because I’m not smart to this game sometimes, but if it heals 1hp per hit that’s only 2hp/s at base stats

But onto the actual “healing” issue is that the healing equates to .8hp/s in practice, which is less than a Band of Regen, my original idea was to lower that “heal charge” from 6 seconds to 4 or 5 seconds(5 seconds=1hp/s, 4 seconds=1.25hp/s) the stats are poor but if you want us the focus on the healing then it needs to have that healing compensated immensely to make up for its sad combat ability
 
Believe it or not, at one point in development, I was under the misunderstanding that a Life Drain effect was INTENDED for Ham Bat, and I began re-evaluating it for such. It was only later I found out that the healing effect was meant for Bat Bat (which . . . I'll get back to that), and so there was no such effect added. Have any of you guys looked into Ham Bat's Well Fed systems at all? Some of it's balancing was based on players optimizing around it and using it at it's best tier, where it gains a fairly decent amount of DPS.

However, I'm not opposed to investigating having it grant Life Drain buff on use, nor am I against a damage/use time buff, but the question is how much. I'll also need to clear a Life Drain buff for approval (a simple stat buff requires less authorization, I can just make the change).
It’s hard to say because Well Fed gives stat buffs, so it’s hard to gauge how strong it becomes with Well Fed, as we’re not sure what’s exactly being affected

As for the Life Drain effect, that would be a “preferred” option to give it a niche over the other weapons like Frostbrand, and it would be more unique as well, if it were simple stat buffs, I’d just remove use turn and lower the use time from 20 to 18, and increase the damage from 50 to 58 and I didn’t even realize that I accidentally made it stronger than Excal by a lot, so it’s hard to make it not as strong, maybe even buff the stats from Well Fed, but I’d rather it gain a Life Drain effect
 
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