Expert vs. Master

Pro Superstar

Terrarian
What are your thoughts on Master mode compared to Expert mode? Does the difficulty make combat feel quicker and exciting or slower and grindy to you?

One observation of mine is that even though you lose all your money on death, the extra rewards dropped moves the merchant in earlier and allows the buying of multiple piggy banks encouraged by the happiness system, reducing the punishment on death. A few stabs at the Eye makes NPCs start to feel like alternative storage to me.
 
When I play Master Mode, it almost feels like I'm playing Terraria again for the first time where it was difficult to progress in the early game.

All enemies feel very dangerous and demand proper attention given to avoid dying to them. Even when you get better armor, you still have to be careful around slimes, zombies, skeletons as they can quickly end you if you're not careful. It feels natural for enemies to take a lot more damage to kill due to increased HP. Even when getting strong weapons for a tier, it still can take time to kill enemies and it feels more natural that way.

Aside from that, it feels like the next natural step after you've gotten comfortable with Expert Mode. Expert Mode is also still challenging, but it feels like there is a bit more forgiveness for mistakes overall. With Master Mode, there isn't a lot of room for error, and it feels similar to other games on higher difficulty settings. They leave very little room for error or failure.

Lastly having the relics and pets to serve as trophies of facing bosses with the highest difficulty feels very rewarding. The boss pets are very fun to have around and make playing Master Mode fun along with proof for your own accomplishment.
 
When I play Master Mode, it almost feels like I'm playing Terraria again for the first time where it was difficult to progress in the early game.

All enemies feel very dangerous and demand proper attention given to avoid dying to them. Even when you get better armor, you still have to be careful around slimes, zombies, skeletons as they can quickly end you if you're not careful. It feels natural for enemies to take a lot more damage to kill due to increased HP. Even when getting strong weapons for a tier, it still can take time to kill enemies and it feels more natural that way.

Aside from that, it feels like the next natural step after you've gotten comfortable with Expert Mode. Expert Mode is also still challenging, but it feels like there is a bit more forgiveness for mistakes overall. With Master Mode, there isn't a lot of room for error, and it feels similar to other games on higher difficulty settings. They leave very little room for error or failure.

Lastly having the relics and pets to serve as trophies of facing bosses with the highest difficulty feels very rewarding. The boss pets are very fun to have around and make playing Master Mode fun along with proof for your own accomplishment.
I think it's fair to compare this with BOTW's master mode. It becomes substantially worse and irritating once you get past the first part (wall of flesh) but was excellent until that point. The number of one shots (looking at you, sniper) and the absurd hp makes fighting regular enemies in master hard mode a chore.
 
For me, there were 4 major changes in how I approached the game:

-Early game was intense. I didn't beat Eye of Cthulhu until I had full platinum armor, a sharktooth necklace and a minishark. Even on Expert I could kill Eye of Cthulhu during its random spawns, but here I just turned off the game for a few days before I tried again.
-Early hardmode was insanely hard. I almost always craft a spider staff first. This time, a rock golem was on the way to hardmode, and it would one-shot me every time. There were also Crimson underground monsters on the way, too. I almost gave up several times here, too.
-My usual teleporter tricks for Golem didn't work, as the laser beam was too intense. I had to fight him by kiting with Vampire Knives, and I died a lot.
-Ballistas didn't work at all in Old One's Army, and the Possessed Hatchet was too weak to kill Betsy, so I had to use Lightning Aura sentries and the Flairon. I made a lot of accidental graveyard biomes during this.

The relics were SO fun, and so are the special mounts. I love going into mines or the dungeon in the Toy Tank.

The mechanical bosses, Skeletron and Plantera felt the same as Expert mode. Duke Fishron and Lunatic Cultist felt slightly more difficult, and I haven't defeated the Empress of Light or the Moon Lord yet.
 
What are your thoughts on Master mode compared to Expert mode? Does the difficulty make combat feel quicker and exciting or slower and grindy to you?

One observation of mine is that even though you lose all your money on death, the extra rewards dropped moves the merchant in earlier and allows the buying of multiple piggy banks encouraged by the happiness system, reducing the punishment on death. A few stabs at the Eye makes NPCs start to feel like alternative storage to me.

Quicker and exciting? It depends on what I am fighting. Some battles have definitely become more interesting and require my full attention. Some, like basic slimes or zombies for example the extra HP just kind of makes things linger on. It all depends on the creature. The dmg boost has made some creatures lethal to get hit more than once, or even just once.

This however, was exactly how things were when I began to do Expert Mode although not quite as drastic. I find most fighting to be improved now.
 
As always, just a good old difficulty pump with more number. Nothing more than that. If you're good with this kind of setting, it'll be challenging for sure.

Master mode to me it's like playing expert and mod the game with halve dmg/armor.
 
As always, just a good old difficulty pump with more number. Nothing more than that. If you're good with this kind of setting, it'll be challenging for sure.

Master mode to me it's like playing expert and mod the game with halve dmg/armor.
I think the pre hard mode bosses have updated behavior, and moon lord death ray is a guaranteed kill now. Like I said above, master mode is only fun until wof.
 
I think the pre hard mode bosses have updated behavior, and moon lord death ray is a guaranteed kill now. Like I said above, master mode is only fun until wof.

Beside of HP / Dmg. I didn't... see anything change beside the update one (like King Slime climb on robe) Did you found something nice in AI change?
 
Currently I have no opinion on hardmode as I have only beaten up to BoC. Progress is notably slower, so I'm glad I picked a small world for this playthrough.
I think the pre hard mode bosses have updated behavior, and moon lord death ray is a guaranteed kill now. Like I said above, master mode is only fun until wof.
I haven't noticed any new behavior so far, but damn is Skeletron as hard as ever. And I don't want to go to Hardmode without the dungeon, either. My opinion on Hardmode Master mode may take some time. I'm glad I picked a small world for this playthrough.
 
Not gonna lie, Master Mode seems easier to me than Expert Mode in 1.3. For some reason I kept dying a ton in the lunar pillars when I was playing just before 1.4 came out, and when I got to them in 1.4, I easily killed em. Not sure if I just got way better during my Master Mode playthrough or if it really is easier.
 
It's kinda fairly enjoyable and frustation mixed up, the early game is definitelly hard, but when you have enough dmg to wipe mobs then you can start taking a breath and build stuff, due to sheer ammount of health the bosses also gets, you mostly want to get the mobility and arena to dodge most if not, all of the stuff they can throw at you.

However, the dungeon is super scary now, both pre-hardmode and hardmode, you DON'T want to stay there with a bunch of gold on inventory as it is so easy to lose.
 
Zombie AI is definitely a little different now, idk if that's on all difficulties or just master since I've only touched master since the update. Is minor changes but they seem to jump at places where they never woulda jumped in the past

Expert too (I didn't try normal yet) Most ground enemy now enjoy jumping to catch player. Also if the height is almost enough to hit the player on platform, they'll do it too. (almost because it like to spare 1 block height for odd reason)
 
Zombie AI is definitely a little different now, idk if that's on all difficulties or just master since I've only touched master since the update. Is minor changes but they seem to jump at places where they never woulda jumped in the past
Yup, zombies are definitely smarter.
 
When I play Master Mode, it almost feels like I'm playing Terraria again for the first time where it was difficult to progress in the early game.

All enemies feel very dangerous and demand proper attention given to avoid dying to them. Even when you get better armor, you still have to be careful around slimes, zombies, skeletons as they can quickly end you if you're not careful. It feels natural for enemies to take a lot more damage to kill due to increased HP. Even when getting strong weapons for a tier, it still can take time to kill enemies and it feels more natural that way.

Aside from that, it feels like the next natural step after you've gotten comfortable with Expert Mode. Expert Mode is also still challenging, but it feels like there is a bit more forgiveness for mistakes overall. With Master Mode, there isn't a lot of room for error, and it feels similar to other games on higher difficulty settings. They leave very little room for error or failure.

Lastly having the relics and pets to serve as trophies of facing bosses with the highest difficulty feels very rewarding. The boss pets are very fun to have around and make playing Master Mode fun along with proof for your own accomplishment.
Playing master mode with literally no practice on expert 1.3 (I would always cheat with mods) was an awful idea. Surprisingly, BoC and EoC didn't give me any trouble. Killed them first try. (Again, NO EXPERT PRACTICE) But Skeletron and Queen Bee.
:mad:
They are hard.
Skeletron isn't even killing me with his head spin soft lock, it's just the length of his fight. It lasts so long that I just end up dying because I can't regen fast enough. (Full crimson armor and Band of regen)
I just wasted 125 fallen stars from a star cannon on Skeletron, and got his head down to 1000 health, but he still managed to kill me because I only had 25 h.p. and 30 seconds of potion sickness left.
I decided to try Queen bee.
:red2:
Got her down to half health first try, but she still ended up killing me because I didn't have enough movement.

If you knew how to beat them then telling me how would be kind.
 
Playing master mode with literally no practice on expert 1.3 (I would always cheat with mods) was an awful idea. Surprisingly, BoC and EoC didn't give me any trouble. Killed them first try. (Again, NO EXPERT PRACTICE) But Skeletron and Queen Bee.
:mad:
They are hard.
Skeletron isn't even killing me with his head spin soft lock, it's just the length of his fight. It lasts so long that I just end up dying because I can't regen fast enough. (Full crimson armor and Band of regen)
I just wasted 125 fallen stars from a star cannon on Skeletron, and got his head down to 1000 health, but he still managed to kill me because I only had 25 h.p. and 30 seconds of potion sickness left.
I decided to try Queen bee.
:red2:
Got her down to half health first try, but she still ended up killing me because I didn't have enough movement.

If you knew how to beat them then telling me how would be kind.

Skeletron I hate because my damage outputs always too low to kill it before the night ends so I always cheese it by letting it into dungeon gaurdian mode and riding circles around it in a minecart slowly chipping it's health away... not reccommended because you'll probably be fighting it for over an hour, but you don't really need to dodge anything at that point

Queen Bee is easypeasy if you have a double jump/shield of the cthulhu & a bezoar (not needed, but can save you a ton of health if you get hit alot)
I usually fight her in her own hive, with a row of platforms at honey level, a campfire and a heart lantern.
if your platforms close enough to the honey you can grapple the platform to refresh the honey healing
you can shield of cthulhu dash into her dashes and not take damage, or you can jump over them
for her needles, I'm not really consistent at dodging them but tapping left-rightcan cause her to fire a bit away from you
if theres a cieling you can get under it'll also force her to move around and come closer while firing stingers if you're using shorter ranged weapons, but I'd be careful with that.
Edit: Oh and her defense increases the more health she loses, so if you're using a weak fast hitting weapon to start with, you might want to swap to a heavy hitting weapon towards the end of the fight or the defense increases will really screw you over
 
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Skeletron is one of the easier ones. I usually use Ice Arrows with a Corrupt/or Crimson bow. They are not the strongest DPS but the Ice Buff adds up over time. You will need to have good aim to use this method. Bee Knees is also a great weapon. Just fire at the ground and the bees will home in on Skeletron for you.

The best thing to keep in mind with Skeletron is to dodge his attacks. You almost need the Slime Mount to be able to jump on his head when it's spinning and not take damage.
 
Skeletron is one of the easier ones. I usually use Ice Arrows with a Corrupt/or Crimson bow. They are not the strongest DPS but the Ice Buff adds up over time. You will need to have good aim to use this method. Bee Knees is also a great weapon. Just fire at the ground and the bees will home in on Skeletron for you.

The best thing to keep in mind with Skeletron is to dodge his attacks. You almost need the Slime Mount to be able to jump on his head when it's spinning and not take damage.
I never get Slime rains, and how exactly do I kill Queen bee for bee's knees?
 
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