Expand Your Terraria Empire - Pylons, Town Building, and NPC Happiness

Edit: Oh, also, wonder if Meteor Falls will still troll attempts to build anything trying to be habitable in the outer 2/3rds of the Surface Map till a fake Meteor Biome shield is built, or if this will stop being a thing...?
Presence of NPCs and/or chests already blocks meteorite strikes, and has for a long time.
Also, I really can't quit wondering if Journey Worlds will be allowed to have legit access to Cute Fishron...?
Any item in the game can be obtained in Journey mode.
 
As I read through these updates (out of order) it occurs to me that Journey mode is probably just the thing for the aesthetic builders who are concerned the new happiness system. Since you'll be able to create items for free, it sounds like any worries about prices will be a thing of the past.
Let alone how much stuff we'll be able to find through exploring & scavenge into Research... :D

Presence of NPCs and/or chests already blocks meteorite strikes, and has for a long time.

Any item in the game can be obtained in Journey mode.
NPCs self-shield from Meteor Hits!!? How is this the first i'm hearing of it? I never really wanted to dummy Chest all over the place to stop them... if I had known I could just park NPCs whereever & they'd self-shield from Meteor Hits, i'da never been so adamant on staying near World Spawn to start with... *Facepalms at self...*

Totally glad I can Cute Fishron in Journey Mode too... thank you so much for the response! :D

Now I just gotta hope Cute Fishron & Possessed Hatchet don't end up nerfed in the 1.4 Rebalancing... though Possessed Hatchet might not be a big deal if among the New Items is Great Axes with potential to be new Final Main Weapon Choices...

P.S. Why is my Post Making Box's stuff, including but not Emotes, refusing to work?

Edit: Oh, can we pick the color of our Dungeon Brick & Brick Wall so we can Scavenge it into Research for infinite of it in the color of our choice?
 
Make sure to have Rich Text mode turned ON (far right control button), having it in BB Code mode disables the menu.
Oh... I didn't even know that was On atm... never known Forums to have something like that be toggled on then actually keep it Saved into the On Position persistently before... didn't even know Forums COULD do that before... Thank you so much again! <3

Edit: New Question: If we make NPCs happy enough, can we buy their getups even if it's NOT Halloween? Having to do the 'Computer Clock Time Trick' to get something like this we want is not lazy... :nursesigh:
 
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it poor gameplay. The mechanic literally hasn't even been revealed on a functional level yet and suddenly you think you know every single little detail about it. Just wait for it to come out. If you're still adamantly against it, then you can use a mod to change the game to your preferences.

I personally play with the Magic Storage Mod because I find the usage of chests incredibly hard to organize, but I don't think that chests should be removed from the game entirely. I just use a mod to fix an aspect of the game that I personally do not find enjoyment in. That's why those types of mods exist.

Also, if you seriously legitimately believe that this tiny increase in price that is incredibly simple to fix literally ruins the entirety of Terraria as a whole, then maybe you should find a new game to play. Either that or just get a mod to disable it.
I noticed this argument partway through it, and, reading through the beginning, I think this is where it got out of control.

(Partial) SUMMARY:
One guy feels that the player isn't rewarded properly for giving NPCs good houses because pylons only require that you have the NPCs happy at one point (I think that, for most players, initially building the nice houses is enough incentive to keep the NPCs there).
From here, it turned into an argument about if the devs will balance things properly and if this is a good move still if they don't.

Over all, this is a pretty light-hearted feature, and I think that, aside from speedruns, it will just be a little extra thing that you do if you don't already build.
Not really worth continuing this conversation.
 
I've made this account specifically to echo the same sentiment so many others have already expressed: the town mechanics is very promising, but it's penalizing players using the classic single castle build, and this is why it should be a world option.

To elaborate: Terraria is 9 years old. As evidenced by endless letsplay videos found on youtube and creative compendiums held on this very forum, a lot of people prefer to create a single base where all the NPCs would live. This is the way so many people prefer to enjoy the game, it was estabilished years ago and disincentivizing it now would take away from many people's enjoyment.
Even if devs decide to remove actual penalties and let players choose between a base price and a lower one having a sprawling, lovingly detailed castle would still feel wrong because you still know your NPCs are unhappy. Why should it be that way, after all these years? A change so sudden would look good in a separate game to be honest.

Don't get me wrong - the idea itself is great, it shows that you guys put a lot of thought and effort into it, and the outpost-based gameplay looks really promising now. It's just that single castle gameplay enjoyed by many will start feeling like a morally and economically wrong experience, and it will surely discourage a sizable chunk of players.

So, the proposed solution would be making the whole NPC happiness system a world option. This will make both sides of this controversy happy while requiring little effort, and the finished game will be diverse like never before.
 
THIS IS AWESOME
but i wonder:
1. is it just me or the maps are bigger now?
2. does gem tree actually drop gems when chopped?
3. where should i fight bosses and invations if i can't be near towns?
4. if NPCs in towns died and cause pylons to stop working, does that mean i have to assign them to their previous houses manually after they come back?
THE MOSE IMPORTANT QUESTION OF ALL TIME: When will the wiki update so i can read EVERYTHING about 1.4?
 
I've made this account specifically to echo the same sentiment so many others have already expressed: the town mechanics is very promising, but it's penalizing players using the classic single castle build, and this is why it should be a world option.

To elaborate: Terraria is 9 years old. As evidenced by endless letsplay videos found on youtube and creative compendiums held on this very forum, a lot of people prefer to create a single base where all the NPCs would live. This is the way so many people prefer to enjoy the game, it was estabilished years ago and disincentivizing it now would take away from many people's enjoyment.
Even if devs decide to remove actual penalties and let players choose between a base price and a lower one having a sprawling, lovingly detailed castle would still feel wrong because you still know your NPCs are unhappy. Why should it be that way, after all these years? A change so sudden would look good in a separate game to be honest.

Don't get me wrong - the idea itself is great, it shows that you guys put a lot of thought and effort into it, and the outpost-based gameplay looks really promising now. It's just that single castle gameplay enjoyed by many will start feeling like a morally and economically wrong experience, and it will surely discourage a sizable chunk of players.

So, the proposed solution would be making the whole NPC happiness system a world option. This will make both sides of this controversy happy while requiring little effort, and the finished game will be diverse like never before.
Now that I think about it... will the new Town System affect all 1.4, or just Journey Worlds...?
 
I get your point although I think it's probably for the best so players aren't really forced to go out of their way to get furniture that they normally wouldn't use otherwise.
Well it could be done as a 'bonus' happiness right? To negate either a disliked neighbor or not having enough liked ones or something. Wrong biome ... You could add some options that add 'extra' happiness and then you can pick and choose which methods you like to obtain max happiness.
 
I think this is a great feature! I hope that these 5 days will go by swiftly! I imagine that the reason you wouldn't be able to use Pylons would probably be so you don't just abandon a Town so the invaders kill them all.

And don't forget the ability to make Mini-Biomes so that all NPCs can be suited individually.

But then there are some NPCs like the Nurse who like to have a lot of empty space.
 
Going off the golfing video, we can see that the pylon can be purchased, and costs 8 gold and 50 silver from the golfer, though we don't know how happy he is

we can see here that the building requirements to make an NPC happy are very lax, he just needs to be near an NPC he likes and have some OK space and he's happy enough to sell the pylon, at a reduced cost of 8 gold to boot.
 
Going off the golfing video, we can see that the pylon can be purchased, and costs 8 gold and 50 silver from the golfer, though we don't know how happy he is

we can see here that the building requirements to make an NPC happy are very lax, he just needs to be near an NPC he likes and have some OK space and he's happy enough to sell the pylon, at a reduced cost of 8 gold to boot.
I'm assuming the 8 gold 50 silver is a reduced price as that's the same price that the merchant was selling the forest one in Chippy's video, and in that same video we see the price of the piggy bank is 85 silver. So 15% price reduction?

It does seem the basic requirements for happiness are fairly easy to achieve looking at the houses in both Chippy and Khaios's videos. Just gotta see how hard it swings in the extremes now.
 
I'm assuming the 8 gold 50 silver is a reduced price as that's the same price that the merchant was selling the forest one in Chippy's video, and in that same video we see the price of the piggy bank is 85 silver. So 15% price reduction?

It does seem the basic requirements for happiness are fairly easy to achieve looking at the houses in both Chippy and Khaios's videos. Just gotta see how hard it swings in the extremes now.
and if 8 gold 50 silver is a 15% reduction, logically that means 8 gold is a 20% reduction, but he rated both his neighbor and living space highly, so I'd wager that 25%-30% is the highest price reduction, depending on if there's a spectrum or an yes/neutral/no for biomes., now it remains to be seen if it swings the other way in the same amount.
 
Instead, I notice you can buy a forest pylon from the shop, I wonder if that's a way to get duplicate pylons for whatever reason, or the primary way to get them when you reach enough happiness and you'll need a shop NPC for each biome....
I recall hearing that each Biome type can only have one Pylon in it. Two if you have two "Forest" biomes divided by a Jungle, and place a Pylon in both of those forests, only one of those Pylons will work. ... ... Or you can only place one Pylon in one. I don't know how the mechanics of it work, but basically each Pylon seems to be unique and cannot have a duplicate of itself. I'm okay with that. Just means each Biome is that much more special, and we only need to devote our care and attention to one of each Biome as compared to every instance of a biome.

If anything, I'm also curious about how making a town in an "Evil" biome works. I know that Sunflowers can help offset the quantity of evil in the area, but that might stop working in Hard Mode.
 
Very cool stuff. The happiness requirements don't seem overly grindy or micromanagey and it's a great way to encourage and reward setting up shop in other biomes. Having a form of fast travel relatively early in the game will be really awesome, especially in large worlds. No more twenty minute runs to the ocean and forgetting to reset your spawn point and all that annoyance.
Will Underground Jungle or Underground Corruption be separate biomes from Jungle and Corruption for the purposes of Pylons?
 
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