Items DST Equipment might need a huge buff...

Houndius Shootius would be good, but there is zero sentry-focused summoner equipment until OOA tier 2, at which point the tier 2 Tavernkeep sentries and Queen Spider Staff are far stronger. What it desperately needs is a sentry accessory or armour available before WoF.

For example you could make Hercules Beetle give a sentry slot instead of increasing summon damage and make it available the moment you get Witch Doctor (right now it's just a clone of Summoner Emblem), or maybe you could give Bee armour a sentry slot.
 
Houndius Shootius would be good, but there is zero sentry-focused summoner equipment until OOA tier 2, at which point the tier 2 Tavernkeep sentries and Queen Spider Staff are far stronger. What it desperately needs is a sentry accessory or armour available before WoF.

For example you could make Hercules Beetle give a sentry slot instead of increasing summon damage and make it available the moment you get Witch Doctor (right now it's just a clone of Summoner Emblem), or maybe you could give Bee armour a sentry slot.

That's a reasonable assessment but it's entirely outside of the scope of what I can work on through this discussion. Additional new content, or overhauling old content to "work" with 1.4.3 content is not something I suspect we will be seeing.

In the past, my inquiries for +Sentry on other Summoner armors were turned down, and this would fall directly into a general Balance Discussion/Patch, which I do not have approval to begin.
 
I also vote for 'faster' for the Pew-Matic. Since it's hard to aim, faster firing would make it easier to adjust the stream, especially against fast bosses.

I wanted to 'report' on a first playthrough with the new items:

Overall, I loved it. Great expansion! Things I used:
-Abigail was a great early summon. Since I wasn't summoner-focused, she became less useful in hardmode.
-I crafted the magiluminescence as soon as possible. I used it up until I got wings and the Ogre light pet.
-I got all the drops from Deerclops except Houndius Shootius.
--Used Bone Helm all the way through early hardmode (replacing it with volatile gelatin). Switched to Bone Glove for Dungeon, where the helm did poorly.
--Didn't use Pewmatic due to arrow-only playthrough.
--Used Weather Pain until hardmode, especially in dungeon and jungle and even in Underworld. Even as non-mage, it was a great way to clear out enemies.
--Used chest pet entire game, only switching it out with the new teddy bear at the end.
--Used Lucy as my melee (sidearm) weapon, replacing Murasama, and kept it until breaker blade. Used Lucy as my axe the whole game for the fun quotes. Really cute. Wish it had a bit more knockback to make it work as a 'keep off!' button, but increasing range should help like you've mentioned.
-Used radio thing occasionally for fun. Used eyebrella once and put it away forever.
-Never found ham bat or tentacle spike, but didn't farm for it. Got a bat bat in hardmode, played around with it a little but too weak then.
-Used froggie bunwich once, but mostly stuck to seafood dinner.

Vanity stuff:
-Found monster meat, would have used it if not for chest pet. Didn't find glommer.
-Spent money on one of the new hairdos and used familiar wig the whole time. Very cool.-Saw garland but didn't craft it. Saw The Bereaved for sale but didn't buy it.
-Didn't notice the beard in the stylist inventory, but now I wish I had. Saw gentleman's set at crafting loom.
 
-Found monster meat, would have used it if not for chest pet.
I feel this and I'm thinking more and more that it's a problem. The game has over 40 pets in it, but most of them are never going to get used now because Chester is just better. Sure you can just use a Money Trough instead but then, if you're like me, you'll always have that nagging feeling that you're wasting an inventory slot.

Someone mentioned the idea of making him a light pet, which I suppose is an okay idea, though not the best. My suggestion would be to have him actually not count as a pet at all, but instead be more like a minion that you summon by using the item manually. Similar to minions, he would then follow you permanently until you die or log out, but he wouldn't take up any minion slots or your pet slot. Sure this would mean you'd now have to carry around the bone in your inventory, but he'd still be better than the Money Trough since he's permanent.
 
So, I've played with this update for some time and here're my recommendations.

1. I got Bat Bat when it was meant to be obtained (very early-game) and it is pretty good for that period of the game. However, it soon gets outclassed by other melee weapons (like an Ice Blade, Starfury, or Storm Spear) which definitely shouldn't be the case for such a rare item. I agree with others that its healing capabilities should be buffed to make it a good option. After all, it's a true melee weapon with not the best stats, so healing with it consistently would still be a bit challenging. (I know that I haven't said anything new, but I think that my feedback is still a bit useful).

2. I like your idea of Tentacle Spike being a good, but be hard to get melee weapon (like with Ancient Shadow Armor), however, I don't think that Light's Bane is a good comparison. Shadow armor is a post-EoW armor, so it's quite powerful compared to pre-EoW armors. Light's Bane, on the other hand, is a post-EoC sword (and can actually be obtained pre-boss if you want to mine Demonite), so grinding for a weapon with around the same stats won't matter much. I think that you should compare Tentacle spike to Blade of Grass to balance it correctly (It definitely should not be identical to it, but it's a more reasonable comparison). Also, I don't really think, that it should be changed much from it's DST alternative. Yeah, it can be a bit boring, but I think that it staying canonically-accurate matters more. (It may have a fun gimmick, but definitely not something like shooting projectiles).

3. I do agree that Froggle Bunwich needs a nerf. And I agree with CrabBar's idea of changing Froggle's recipe. It does need to require something other than Frogs to make it more different to Sauteed Frog Legs.

4. Abigail's Ghost used to be a bit too powerful in some cases (mainly in Hardmode when she was a good alternative to Blade Staff or Sanguine Staff when paired with Firecracker), but now (even though I haven't tested it yet) it should be fine.

5. I think that making Chester available in pre-hardmode makes Money Trough much less useful. I would actually ask to move him in early Hardmode to make him a bit more balanced (it can drop from snow biome enemies in early hardmode, maybe from Ice Golem). And also I was very disappointed when I found out that Chester is a pet. It means that you have to sacrifice your favourite pet to use him. And in this scenario I'll prefer to use a Money Trough since using the pet I want is important fir me (but a lot of people won't care since they put effectiveness above cosmetics). I agree with J Bame's idea of making him a light pet. Then you'll have to switch from one '"utility pet" to another. And on "The Constant" seed where darkness is dangerous, this decision will be even more impactful. Although I am a bit afraid, that this change won't make Money Trough farming much more useful...

6. And here's something I don't think anyone mentioned here (although it's not very fitting for the title of this thread, but I think it's still a suitable place for it). I'm not a fan of Deerclops not despawning mechanic. It allows you to cheese him (it may take some time, but you can potentially defeat him pre-boss by running to the snow biome over and over again) and get his items. As far as I know, he doesn't despawn in Don't Starve, but this mechanic doesn't fit Terraria that much. And since you're against cheesing bosses (as you've fixed a lot of various cheesing methods in 1.4), I think you should make him despawn when every player is killed. Right now this boss is in a good position of being a pre-hardmode Duke Fishron (you can fight him early, but it requires you to be skilled), but the challenge is nearly ruined because of him not despawning.

These issues aside, this update is amazing! Good job Re-Logic!
 
You know, it was only when I was trying to think of alternative recipes for Froggle Bunwich that I realized Terraria doesn't actually have bread in it. There are food items that visually have bread in them, but they're all drops from enemies. I think hay might be the closest thing that already exists in Terraria, but even if it's wheat hay it's the wrong part of the plant...

Though the fact that other bread items are drops makes me think that it might be better to make Froggle Bunwich a drop too, a la Apple Pie, Steak, etc. It might be weird for it to drop from frogs themselves, but maybe from some other jungle mob, like piranhas? Idk, if man eaters can drop pre-made cups of coffee complete with saucer then I don't see why piranhas can't drop pre-made sandwiches made of frogs.
 
You know, it was only when I was trying to think of alternative recipes for Froggle Bunwich that I realized Terraria doesn't actually have bread in it. There are food items that visually have bread in them, but they're all drops from enemies. I think hay might be the closest thing that already exists in Terraria, but even if it's wheat hay it's the wrong part of the plant...

This fact was not lost upon us while we discussed recipe alternatives to Froggle Bunwich. There was no alternative solution which we were satisfied with.
 
So since there was some inquiry about the impact of Well Fed's extra effect on Ham Bat.

Basically, in addition to the standard Well Fed stat bonuses, it applies an extra damage bonus on the end damage (though this damage is not reflected on the Item's damage value, for reasons which I'm not quite sure). This bonus is more pronounced with higher tiers of Well Fed.

The damage listed like "52 (54)" indicates the listed damage on the item first and the actual damage dealt in parenthesis. I also ran some tests with theoretical Ham Bats with 60 and 65 base damage.

Not Well Fed (Base Damage)Tier 1Tier 2Tier 3
5052 (54)53 (58)55 (63)
6063 (66)64 (70)66 (75)
6568 (71)69 (75)71 (81)

All other things being equal, (not taking including the Melee Speed/Crit bonuses from Well Fed into account for simplicity's sake), a "65 base damage Ham Bat with Well Fed Tier 3" deals 81 damage/243 DPS even though it only has a "listed" 71 damage/213 DPS.

So in essence, one can expect Ham Bat to do roughly 4%/9%/14% more damage than "listed" with Tier 1-3 Well Fed. (This is on top of all of the other myriad bonuses from Well Fed, which are otherwise equally applied to other weapons) Assuming we do not remove this mechanic, this should be taken into consideration with proposed values for the weapon.
 
You know, it was only when I was trying to think of alternative recipes for Froggle Bunwich that I realized Terraria doesn't actually have bread in it. There are food items that visually have bread in them, but they're all drops from enemies. I think hay might be the closest thing that already exists in Terraria, but even if it's wheat hay it's the wrong part of the plant...

Though the fact that other bread items are drops makes me think that it might be better to make Froggle Bunwich a drop too, a la Apple Pie, Steak, etc. It might be weird for it to drop from frogs themselves, but maybe from some other jungle mob, like piranhas? Idk, if man eaters can drop pre-made cups of coffee complete with saucer then I don't see why piranhas can't drop pre-made sandwiches made of frogs.
Perhaps Arapaimas instead of Piranhas. This locks it to hardmode and they otherwise have no actual drops of value unless you stick a water-based grinding machine in an Ocean biome for Pirate Maps, and that's not even that offensive since we can already farm Bacon from Pigron Statues to begin with.

From there you have to ask if you want to balance the drop rate around theoretical Ocean grinding or not though (and honestly speaking you probably do), but from the Seafood Dinner discussion earlier, it's probably not really an issue I'd dwell on for too long.
 
I'll mention (because it doesn't seem to be noticed often) but Lucy has a +10% critical chance which was PART of why I left her as she was; her DPS is a bit higher with that crit rate taken into consideration, but I'll admit I wanted very hard NOT to step on the toes of Muramasa (How you doing Muramasa, anyone?). But I think her range warrants a further increase.

I want to avoid making her into a Falcon Blade 2.0 (it has a 120 DPS "offset" by short range, but was easily Day 1 available and had identical DPS to what Night's Edge has NOW)

Improving her Axe-ing speed is a secondary concern but one I still want to address, so I'm certain there will at least be a buff there. Worst case scenario, she's a really good axe and . . . no real harm is done.

On the whole though, I don't see Lucy's changes being particularly dramatic, just enough Damage/Speed to make her range worthwhile. Also I'm experimenting with increasing her size just a little (but I have a hard limit on this before scale starts to look ugly, and I can't get her resprited again right now).


Unrelated:
Do you guys think Pew-Matic would be more fun if it were faster or stronger? There's a range of viability that can be done either way, and I'm curious what other's opinions are. I tried out a "faster but not stronger" Pew-Matic and it's pretty fun, but people might like a slow bruiser better (the current speed, just hitting harder).











(I'm procrastinating having to look at the Raven piercing problem, save me)
A fast Pew-matic sounds more fun due to the reasons whoneedsnamestbh described.
 
Honestly if you end up going with a potential life regen mechanic, then Ham Bat doesn't really need the food-buff gimmick anymore. Extra damage doesn't really make that much difference on a true melee weapon, since the low survivability still won't be worth it unless you give it crazy DPS like the Baghnakhs. Which as you've said is not a very good idea. Basically, since true melee weapons make every fight essentially come down to a DPS race, they're worthless if you can't win the DPS race, but then if you always win the DPS race, they're too good. There's no real middle ground, since they minimize the factor of dodging due to their short range.

A regen-over-time is actually a good solution to this because, since it's time based, it forces the player to actually dodge in order to draw out the fight so they can get the most value out of their regen, instead of always staying in close to get as much damage as possible. If the regen buff lasts for a bit after each hit (even just 1 second), then it could force the player into a kind of hit-and-run playstyle that would be pretty unique in Terraria.

(This is also why I've always wanted Vampire Knives to give a set healing per hit instead of healing per damage, especially since they can't have their usetime modified. Would be much more balanced than what we have right now.)

Actually, now that I think of it, if we want to keep the food-buff gimmick, then what if instead of a damage buff, each level of food gives a regen buff? Something like at Well Fed you get 1 HP/s when hitting enemies, Plenty Satisfied 1.5 HP/s, Exquisitely Stuffed 2 HP/s.
 
Actually, now that I think of it, if we want to keep the food-buff gimmick, then what if instead of a damage buff, each level of food gives a regen buff? Something like at Well Fed you get 1 HP/s when hitting enemies, Plenty Satisfied 1.5 HP/s, Exquisitely Stuffed 2 HP/s.

I don't know about that but I was considering asking if the LifeDrain-on-kill buff could be more potent depending on your current tier of Well Fed.

Really, if we remove the whole extra damage mechanic, it's just going to take the form of more damage outright, so I'm not sure if there is much gain to that. It's certainly never going to be a Baghnakhs, that's for sure.
 
That's a reasonable assessment but it's entirely outside of the scope of what I can work on through this discussion. Additional new content, or overhauling old content to "work" with 1.4.3 content is not something I suspect we will be seeing.

In the past, my inquiries for +Sentry on other Summoner armors were turned down, and this would fall directly into a general Balance Discussion/Patch, which I do not have approval to begin.
I think what Houndius Shootius could really use is a projectile speed increase. That would effectively increase its DPS a bit by making its shots more likely to hit enemies.

Again, I think rebalancing both frog-themed foods would be good for the game. In hindsight, I think that my proposal to make both Tier 1 might've been too extreme, but I do think that Sauteed should be Tier 1 and that Froggle should be at a lower tier than it is (and possibly with a decreased duration). Again, the Tier 2 and Tier 3 buffs are quite powerful, and having easy, near-unlimited access to them sounds kind of broken.
 
I don't know about that but I was considering asking if the LifeDrain-on-kill buff could be more potent depending on your current tier of Well Fed.

Really, if we remove the whole extra damage mechanic, it's just going to take the form of more damage outright, so I'm not sure if there is much gain to that. It's certainly never going to be a Baghnakhs, that's for sure.
Giving it a small base damage buff and then just tying the food level to life drain would be fine tbh, not to mention it would make its gimmick a bit simpler to understand. Tying food level to both damage and life drain would also be okay but would be less elegant imo.
 
My input is that giving the Pew-matic Horn a significantly lower UT than you proposed (maybe 15 instead of 20) and giving it a slight damage increase (20-21 instead of 19) would probably be a good choice.

Also, I agree with TOMKA's sentiment that not making Deerclops despawn when it kills you is way too forgiving, even if it's more faithful to Deerclops' behavior in Don't Starve. I think losing a bit of faithfulness to the source material is a fair price to pay for not making the boss a pushover in the context of Terraria. I'd also suggest decreasing its health scaling on higher difficulties. As is, Expert Deerclops has significantly more HP than Expert wall of Flesh, and Master Deerclops has greatly more HP than Master Wall of Flesh.
 
Do you guys think Pew-Matic would be more fun if it were faster or stronger? There's a range of viability that can be done either way, and I'm curious what other's opinions are. I tried out a "faster but not stronger" Pew-Matic and it's pretty fun, but people might like a slow bruiser better (the current speed, just hitting harder).
Definitely faster, I feel like it being called “Pew-matic” makes it sound really fast and funny
 
As is, Expert Deerclops has significantly more HP than Expert wall of Flesh, and Master Deerclops has greatly more HP than Master Wall of Flesh.
I can agree with this as well. It feels very much like an oversight to make his HP scale by 100% per difficulty like an enemy rather than a boss, and it makes his health end up way too high in Master.

That said, his expert HP value of 14k actually felt reasonable. He’s less defensive than Skeletron or Queen Bee and much more consistently hittable than both and Wall of Flesh, and because the boss forces you within a 30-block range, it’s not all that hard to consistently land every hit compared to really any other prehardmode boss. I agree he needs less scaling, but if I were in charge, I’d say something in the realm of 9k -> 12k -> 15k.

As for him not despawning on death, yeah that feels kind of bad. It’s a cool reference to DST, but for a boss with like four separate anti-cheese mechanics, it feels really weird that he just *lets* you teleport home, heal, and come back without him disappearing, or return the fight after dying in singleplayer. It kind of trivializes the fight in a sense, and I don’t think that’s worth the DST reference.
 
Anyways, I just watched this video:

I do share his concern that Abigail is so strong that it renders all other pre-Hardmode summons useless. Leinfors, have you done tests to see if a pre-Hardmode, "maxed out" Abigail outperforms things like pre-Hardmode, "maxxed out" Vampire Frog Staff, Hornet Staff, and Imp Staff (By "maxxed out," I mean using all the available summoner gear/slots that you can get pre-Hardmode)? It'd be weird for something that you can easily get before fighting any boss could outperform items you aren't supposed to get until well into the game.

And yes, the uploader acknowledged that this video was made right before Abigail was nerfed in 1.4.3.1, but he doesn't think that Abigail has been nerfed hard enough.
 
I do share his concern that Abigail is so strong that it renders all other pre-Hardmode summons useless.
That's overrating it especially after the hotfix which made it far weaker against Brain of Cthulhu. TRAE Discord has done DPS tests and Abigail is pretty much never the number 1 choice for any fight, only exception being Queen Slime as there is a shocking lack of alternatives (meaning: none) until Blade/Sanguine at the time.

Also, to make it simple, Svings is not considered a reliable source for item discussion when it comes to viability.
 
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