Game Mechanics Fix old ones army!

[_stripy27_]

Ive always been a fan of the old ones army, it's a tower defence game inside of my favourite game! The thing is, as it is now, it's a grindy mess that takes hours to complete The weapons and armor are really good but take too long to get. To get to betsy, the final boss with all of the good loot, you need to go through the 1st and 2nd tiers. The first tier is useless other than getting you defender medals for tier two. It has no weapons or armor, just a master mode exclusive mount which is a carbon copy of the flying carpet. Tier two's only good for the armor since, even though it has weapons, they arent strong enough to compete with the post mech gear you use to beat it. And after all of that grinding for medals, you reach tier three after golem. This one is too hard. In master/legendary, a second sentry (not from OOA) is needed! And the only sentry at this stage of the game is the staff of the frost hydra... From the ice chest in the dungeon... All that farming to get the betsy loot! Finally! But after you beat the pillars, the weapons are mostly obselete.

Here are the changes I propose to hopefully fix this event:

1: give good loot to first and second tier
The first tier old ones army needs some real loot. Sure, it gives you access to sentries outside of the event, but who uses these? The dark mage needs to drop something good. Maybe a mage weapon that shoots the magic ball that she shoots, a yoyo that leaves a trail of dark magic, a bow that homes into enemies, and an ethereal wyvern summon. These are all just suggestions and not from dungeon defenders, but you get the point. Now for tier two they just need to re ballance the weapons to be as good as hollowed weapons.

2: change when they are fought
Tier one is good where it is, its two and three I dont think are good where they are. Tier two should be fought after WOF, and the loot should be similar strength as hallowed to make it worth while to do it after WOF or after a mech or two. The ogre also would need a small nerf to his health, and maybe some of the enemies. The tier three is the event with all of the best loot, but you barely get to use it. Since it's after golem, the weapons are quickly replaced by the pillar weapons, so I think tier 3 should be after plantera. Betsy would need a small nerf to balance this, but it would make the weapons more useful since they are all best for multi target, and golem having three segments, the weapons would be great against him.

3: change how the progression is
One of the biggest problems with the OOA is that you need to fight both tiers one and two to get to the betsy stuff. I think that at the start of each tier the tavernkeep should give you enough medals to buy a sentry for that tier. This way you only need to do the tiers that have stuff you want, like only the betsy stuff, or you dont want to fight tier one.

4: misc armor and weapon stuff
Firstly, the armor sets should give the set bonus buffs to all OOA sentries, not just the one corresponding sentry. Secondly, they need to add a substitute to staff of the frost hydra. For tier three in harder difficulties it's impossible without staff of the frost hydra. They need to add another sentry around this part of the game to substitute it so you dont have to grind king slimes to get the frozen key. I was thinking a rainbow sentry from empress or give the tempest staff an option to make it a sentry. Otherwise it's almost impossible to beat the event without farming for the frozen key.

If you have any other suggestions, comment below

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

I agree that tier 1 needs a loot buff, it's overall not good (though the war table is quite nice tbh). For tier 2, considering the re-tier (which I agree with), tome of infinite wisdom probably needs a slight buff and the melee drops need sizable ones. I also agree that there should be a better way to get a sentry of the appropriate tier than needing to save medals (though I think this should also be coupled with a nerf so that you actually need to beat a tier to buy its associated armour set, instead of being able to just save medals and skip straight to the armour).

I don't agree with the sentiment that "it's almost impossible to beat the event without the staff of the frost hydra". If you aren't wearing sentry armour, you get very little from non-OOA sentries, and if you are wearing sentry armour, the boosted sentries basically beat the event on their own (especially explosive traps), assuming you have a sentry of the appropriate tier. The most difficulty I've had beating the event was on hardcore master mode, since I was running a tank setup with beetle shell and didn't have a lot of damage output. I ended up needing clinger staff and smart usage of lightning aura stacking to win. I think the scaling in higher difficulties needs to be toned down a bit though (perhaps by lowering the enemy HP). This paragraph is ignoring hoiks, which are also almost a free win. The event being as hard as it is in higher difficulties leads to players choosing to cheese it with hoiks as doing it normally is insanely hard.

Moving from post-golem to post-plantera does basically nothing. imo, the plantera to pillars progression goes like:
Plantera -> (solar eclipse/hardmode dungeon) -> golem -> (duke/empress/pumpkin moon/frost moon/OOA t3/martians) -> cultist -> pillars (with steps in parentheses being optional). All moving it to post-plantera would do is just give the player yet another way to curbstomp golem by skipping ahead in progression.
The whole "pillar loot overshadows other post-golem items" is an issue with the pillars, not the other post-golem events/bosses imo. The best remedy for that imo would be for cultist to be an actual roadblock instead of a pushover, so the player is incentivized to spend time gearing up instead of just skipping straight to pillars.

 

[_stripy27_]

I don't agree with the sentiment that "it's almost impossible to beat the event without the staff of the frost hydra". If you aren't wearing sentry armour, you get very little from non-OOA sentries, and if you are wearing sentry armour, the boosted sentries basically beat the event on their own (especially explosive traps), assuming you have a sentry of the appropriate tier. The most difficulty I've had beating the event was on hardcore master mode, since I was running a tank setup with beetle shell and didn't have a lot of damage output. I ended up needing clinger staff and smart usage of lightning aura stacking to win. I think the scaling in higher difficulties needs to be toned down a bit though (perhaps by lowering the enemy HP). This paragraph is ignoring hoiks, which are also almost a free win. The event being as hard as it is in higher difficulties leads to players choosing to cheese it with hoiks as doing it normally is insanely hard.

Tbh I was playing legendary so yeah idk maybe it's just that much easier in master? Anyway yes the scaling definitely needs to be toned down and I wasn't using hoiks or glitches. I was playing ranger tho with ballista and flameburst so maybe it was just the strat I was using, but with what I was doing hydra was needed. That's why i'm saying OOA armor should boost all sentries, maybe just a smaller amount? I was using full ranged OOA armor but the wrong sentries and stake launcher. Idk, imo it's way to hard without a non OOA sentry to plop down the 5 extra sentries you get with armor and accessories... but then again it was legendary mode, and not using explosive traps, and yes it was insanely hard.

The whole "pillar loot overshadows other post-golem items" is an issue with the pillars, not the other post-golem events/bosses imo. The best remedy for that imo would be for cultist to be an actual roadblock instead of a pushover, so the player is incentivized to spend time gearing up instead of just skipping straight to pillars.

tbh I never thought of it like that but I totally agree, lunatic cultist and the pillars are probably the problem.

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

Tbh I was playing legendary so yeah idk maybe it's just that much easier in master? Anyway yes the scaling definitely needs to be toned down and I wasn't using hoiks or glitches. I was playing ranger tho with ballista and flameburst so maybe it was just the strat I was using, but with what I was doing hydra was needed. That's why i'm saying OOA armor should boost all sentries, maybe just a smaller amount? I was using full ranged OOA armor and stake launcher. Idk, imo it's way to hard without a non OOA sentry to plop down the 5 extra sentries you get with armor and accessories, but then again it was legendary mode...

iirc I've also done it on legendary w/o frost hydra nor OOA armour via lightning aura stacking. Frost hydra does get a lot better if using OOA armour for the extra sentry slots. Queen spider staff also exists as an option, and is surprisingly powerful.

when I tested the sentries against tier 3 OOA (in master), I found that ballistas (and especially flamebursts) did the worst against the OOA. Those tests were done with their respective armour sets (though I will say that lightning auras and flamebursts get smaller buffs from their armour set, especially the latter). Since you were using ranged OOA armour, why not use the explosive traps that get significantly buffed by said armour?

 

[Yousef the H]

one of the main issues with OOA is that you can't help it, most items in it are from Dungeon Defenders 2. Adding terraria-original items into their drops would be really weird since it's supposed to be about DD2, the few non-DD2 items are items that make sense, such as betsy's wings. It's just so much harder to add good stuff that adds more to the game now specially when compared to 1.3

tier 3 OOA isn't all that hard if you have good crowd control, but maybe i just play multiplayer too much.

 

[_stripy27_]

iirc I've also done it on legendary w/o frost hydra nor OOA armour via lightning aura stacking. Frost hydra does get a lot better if using OOA armour for the extra sentry slots. Queen spider staff also exists as an option, and is surprisingly powerful.

when I tested the sentries against tier 3 OOA (in master), I found that ballistas (and especially flamebursts) did the worst against the OOA. Those tests were done with their respective armour sets (though I will say that lightning auras and flamebursts get smaller buffs from their armour set, especially the latter). Since you were using ranged OOA armour, why not use the explosive traps that get significantly buffed by said armour?

Yeah ive never really tried other strats. I just use flameburst for flying enemies and ballista for ground but I didn't realize the aura/explosive traps were any good

 

[Asternove]

So, uh, I was scrolling in your signature, and I can tell you most likely don’t play Summoner. Tier 1 gives:

• Free +1 Sentries (War Table)
• +10% damage & +1 Sentries (Apprentice’s Scarf/Squire’s Shield)
• Ballistae
• Medals for early tier 2 armor

The only real change it could need is the accessories all being available in tier one and having different multiclass bonuses. For example:

• Squire’s Shield: +4 Defense; +8% Summon damage; +1 Sentries
• Huntress’ Buckler: +8% Ranged and Summon damage; +1 Sentries
• Apprentice’s Scarf: +8% Magic and Summon damage; +1 Sentries
• Monk’s Belt: +8% Melee and Summon damage; +1 Sentries

 

[RainbowPotato 🌳🪓]

I feel like there should be more items so it encourages actually doing the evnt.

 

[_stripy27_]

So, uh, I was scrolling in your signature, and I can tell you most likely don’t play Summoner. Tier 1 gives:

• Free +1 Sentries (War Table)
• +10% damage & +1 Sentries (Apprentice’s Scarf/Squire’s Shield)
• Ballistae
• Medals for early tier 2 armor

The only real change it could need is the accessories all being available in tier one and having different multiclass bonuses. For example:

• Squire’s Shield: +4 Defense; +8% Summon damage; +1 Sentries
• Huntress’ Buckler: +8% Ranged and Summon damage; +1 Sentries
• Apprentice’s Scarf: +8% Magic and Summon damage; +1 Sentries
• Monk’s Belt: +8% Melee and Summon damage; +1 Sentries

yeah haven't played summoner yet even though I have 3000+ hours in the game

I am planning on playing a summoner playthrough when 1.4.5 comes out though, so I will be sure to use it's accessories, never really paid too much attention to the accessories tbh. I do regularly use the armor though for ranged, as it gives insane defense and damage when mixed with other available armor sets, and as of recent, I have been playing a ranged/summon hybrid, so the armor is amazing for this.

even with the accessories though, with or without the changes you suggested, I feel like tier one still needs some sort of loot for other classes. armor probably wont happen, but a weapon for each class would be nice and would make tier 1 more than just getting 15 medals.

I also think that my suggested changes in when you fight OOA and being able to skip any tier you want should be implemented if something ever happens to the event.

 

[MoultonLava]

Tier two's only good for the armor since, even though it has weapons, they arent strong enough to compete with the post mech gear you use to beat it.

While the melee weapons do suck REALLY bad, the Tome is destroyer cheese and can be used against Plantera. Phantom Phoenix is even better, usable against all 3 mechs, Plantera, and Golem if you want a challenge. I do agree with other changes, though, because even an OOA fan like me gets tired of it a lot.

 

[_stripy27_]

While the melee weapons do suck REALLY bad, the Tome is destroyer cheese and can be used against Plantera. Phantom Phoenix is even better, usable against all 3 mechs, Plantera, and Golem if you want a challenge. I do agree with other changes, though, because even an OOA fan like me gets tired of it a lot.

agreed. as much as i love the OOA, it gets old when you need to go out your way to fight it just for medals and the next tier