Frost Moon Final Wave in Record Time (Horseman's Blade Semi-Autofarm)

[Z0MG Pixelz]

I suck at building this stuff My record's probably getting to wave 15 at the end of the night
Then again, I can't build this kind of stuff...

Off topic, I know, but I kind of have to take issue with your sig. Being from Canada myself, yes, it is a very peaceful country compared to some, but if you look hard enough you'll see that it really isn't the only country with peace.

Anyway, don't want to derail the thread, so On-topic: I've never really been able to get past like wave 14 i think in the Frost Moon. Perhaps due to lack of preparation on my part IDK.

 

[DicemanX]

Welcome back @Gandalf K! I greatly appreciate you testing out my new arena, because it essentially confirms that there's some issue with my system in not being able to generate consistent sub-1am final wave times! I thought for sure my new set-up would get me to at least 12:30am times. Your choice of mob statues is even better it seems - the 12:21am time is pretty phenomenal. Nicely done!

 

[mindroid]

I think the most important factor is to get the fastest melee speed, not crit strike chance, because that means there is more pumpkins in the air when the frost queen appears, there you can kill her faster since she flies faster than pumkins and daym the areana dicemanX built is freaking amazing, I took the idea that Gandalf K had in having sharks and chests, but added different types of mobs so you constantly hit 4 times in one swing.
I got sub 12 with this, but I have to say, dicemanx your freaking amazing!

 

[DicemanX]

Oh my god @mindroid, are you kidding me?! That is incredible - it completely shatters the record! Nicely done, and I thank you as well for testing this arena to see what it's really capable of (since I cannot seem to make it work as well on my system)!

I most recently swapped the Golem's Eye for a Mechanical Glove, but I'm assuming you went with violent over lucky reforges? Did you also end up using the Fire Gauntlet? I also opt for 8 different mob statues in the mob box to maximize the number of mob spawns.

 

[DicemanX]

this is my new arena, because i want it to look better, so i delete the traps and use only 7 statues.
View attachment 16389
View attachment 16391

Looks very festive - nice work! It would be good to see it in action on video .

 

[ZeroGravitas]

I think the most important factor is to get the fastest melee speed

Interesting. I wonder if the sword's hits per second are still capped at 60 though (1 per tick/frame)? As we were discussing in the T-MEC thread on maximising this. Any chance of measuring/counting the number of pumpkins generated over 1 second, or suchlike?

this is my new arena, because i want it to look better

Very pretty reskin.

I wonder though, guys, what about trying to move the spawn surfaces to different locations? And maybe changing the active one at different points in the event. For example, how would 2 smaller surfaces at either edge of the screen work? Particularly for the early waves, so the new pumpkins are appearing right on top of the mobs. Not sure this layout would work so well for the ice queen though, hence wondering about switching, but it might....?

 

[ZeroGravitas]

i find that if you move your spwan surface to a place where the vertical distance is 15 blocks over you，then the ice queen can only move in horizontal direction, it won't move up and down, its motion track become controllable.

Wow, that's a really massive find for this arena setup! At the absolute minimum that could let you focus spear trap locations to a single row. Too bad dart traps wouldn't be an improvement. Might make it a little easier for minions to hit as they pass...? Erm. Any other end game weapons this might help enable?...

Most important question: Does it help the pumpkins target more easily? I imagine that killing the vertical motion reduces the ice queens overall speed, but then the pumpkin's top speed in each axis might well be independent too. But does it stop them dodging past a clump of projectiles, that would be big.

I guess the vertical movement is just oscillation then, and depends entirely upon a small initial displacement... I imaging the same must be possible with wraiths and other 'floaters'.

 

[MegaSDMGShark]

Too freakin' huge man! (BTW I suck at building).

 

[DicemanX]

It seems as if there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to the choice of mob statues, so perhaps that isn't the limiting factor when it comes to achieving good final wave times. With the three mimic statues one might even expect a worse outcome because once three mimics are summoned no more mimics can spawn until one dies, but then again if it takes upwards of 5 swings to kill one that is probably comparable to summoning a variety of mobs and having them die in 1 hit.

your post remind me about something interesting. several days ago, i find that if you move your spwan surface to a place where the vertical distance is 15 blocks over you，then the ice queen can only move in horizontal direction, it won't move up and down, its motion track become controllable.
just like this picture:
View attachment 16691

This is a great find! It might make it easier for the pumpkins to track and destroy the queens because when they do their figure-8s the pumpkins have a hard time catching up. That could save quite a bit of time, although the big question is whether we'd lose time because of the spawn position(s).

I also wonder whether one spawn surface on one side is as good as two spawn surfaces on both sides when it comes to spawn rate. For the fully automatic moon farm with minions I started with spawns on both sides but whittled it down to one side only without seeing a change in final wave times, so I think having a spawn surface on one side only should work fine.

 

[DicemanX]

according to my early experience, arenas as yours have a great disadvantage: the enemy spawn rate is quite not stable when use horseman's blade, sometimes the spawn rate is very fast but sometimes is very slow. i have to say, arenas with mass of statues can aslo get a high score, but it is full of contingency (at least for me). i do not always pursue the highest score. by contrast, i prefer a stable arena, both stable and can reach a high score. the mimic statue solves the problem perfectly. in fact, the arena i posted above can always reach a score about 12:30-12-50, in many cases, it can not go beyond 1:00 AM. i think you can try it yourself.

Interesting thoughts. Statue spawned mobs aren't supposed to affect the regular spawn rate (unless the world reaches a limit of 200 NPCs), and it seems hard to believe that the mob statue chamber ever comes close to reaching 200. Still, empirical data trumps theory if the data consistently generates better wave times with fewer statues than with a variety of statues, and it's hard to argue against your consistent results!

I'd love to work on this but I'm facing another problem - for some reason I'm lagging behind with final wave times while using the exact same arenas as those used by you guys in breaking the 1am final wave time. It must have something to do with the system I'm playing on, which means that I need to try these arenas on a different system to progress. I will however try your 3 mimic/1 shark statue approach @Gandalf K to see if I can set a personal best on my present machine!

 

[SomeGamer]

Wow im impressed with all the time you put into beating this record! Frost moon is really the hardest event to beat!

 

[DicemanX]

in addition, what reforges are you use? my reforges are all +4% damage, the critical chance finally is up to 40%~50%. in fact, i haven't made many tests on melee speed yet, but according to my early experiences, even if i change all the reforges into +4% melee speed and add more statues, it seems the number of pumpkins won't have a great increasement, and the output is also not increase obviously. it really confused me for a long time, i don't know how could mindriod can get such a high score of 11:42! maybe i should do some further tests. by now, my best record is merely 12:16.

I tested with +4% crit chance on all 5, and +4% melee speed on all 5. The best time I ever got was with increasing melee, but that was a low sample size so take it with a grain of salt. I doubt it can make that big of a difference anyways - it seems the major choke point is with the spawn rate of the mobs, because you can build up such a huge number of pumpkins over the course of the event without having to use that many statues, and that mass of pumpkins can 1-shot everything as a roving mass.

 

[DicemanX]

of cause, one swing of the horseman's blade can only hit 3 monsters, so it's feasible to use less statues in theory, but i didn't expect it has such a good effect. ok, let's end it here, just take a break.

Are you sure only 3 hits per hit? That's interesting if that's the case because we thought it would have been more and we were thinking of trying various ways of maximizing the number of hits. Is this something you discovered through your testing?

I'll definitely keep you posted if I make any further breakthroughs!

to test the limit time of the final wave, i do the test i had posted before:http://www.terrariaonline.com/threa...g-the-final-wave-in-record-time.154083/page-3
again, no mutiplayers, no mods, no any cheats, just only a bug in the game. take it as an entertainment! but i don't think it's the best record, there is still some space to make progress.
if you get some new ideas about “frost moon with the horseman's blade” later, do not forget to tell me! very nice to talk with you and thanks for your excellent arena

View attachment 17268

What was the bug that let you get such good times by the way? Was this in 1.2.3.1?

 

[Scylon]

So I've been trying to make a variation of this work myself, and I have it all functionally working fine.

However, where I am having problems is with the NPC in his little room with the hoik generator. He more often than not ends up getting killed before the event is finished, and then of course the statues stop generating anything for me to hit... Any tips on how to avoid this problem?

I have tried positioning the NPC's room as your original design, as well as under ground below my grind area. Under ground seems to work a little better, because he doesn't get hit by the helicopters, but it seems like no matter where I put it, eventually the NPC ends up getting hit by the Ice Queen wave attacks, or occasionally the Santa-NK1 parachuting presents.

Is there an ideal location to avoid the attacks hitting the NPC? Is there something else that I am missing that will help with this problem??

This is how I have it set up currently, but like I said, the NPC still ends up getting hit eventually.

 

[DicemanX]

Is there an ideal location to avoid the attacks hitting the NPC? Is there something else that I am missing that will help with this problem??

This is how I have it set up currently, but like I said, the NPC still ends up getting hit eventually.View attachment 18283

Your current position for the NPC is such that the NPC will die to Ice Queen projectile attacks. There is only one position where the NPC is safe - at or slightly below your player level, and as far to the side as possible. This is because when the Ice Queens start doing their figure-8's and attack you with projectile attacks, they never actually dip to the player level, so an NPC at player level should never get hit.

Nevertheless, for ultimate safety, have the NPC is a house very far from the arena. NPCs assigned to houses won't leave at night, and you can activate them from very far away. I only put the NPC nearby so that the viewer of my video would know what's happening, but if you're farming for personal purposes the NPC can be far away.

Give it a shot and let me know if you're successful!

 

[Scylon]

Interesting... I didn't think the NPC switch activation would work off-screen... I'll give it a shot and let you know how it turns out.

Thanks for the quick response, and for the awesome design idea to start with! All of your designs are insanely awesome, and just keep getting better!

On a side-note, do you do all of your building in-game, or do you use any editors to do your building?

 

[DicemanX]

Interesting... I didn't think the NPC switch activation would work off-screen... I'll give it a shot and let you know how it turns out.

That's one thing about character NPCs that's going to be key in many future grand designs - the fact that they can work from very far away so long as it is daytime (or at night so long as the house is in view if the NPCs are hoiked from the house).

Thanks for the quick response, and for the awesome design idea to start with! All of your designs are insanely awesome, and just keep getting better!

On a side-note, do you do all of your building in-game, or do you use any editors to do your building?

Thanks for the kind words!

I used to build almost everything in-game ( I went through many Moon arena versions in my world, all built by hand in-game), but recently when working on some of the larger builds I use TEdit to help with a lot of the tedious work. Most of what's engineered is done in-game due to the constant need to immediately test as things are built (there is a lot of trial and error involved). Once a mechanism is worked out TEdit can help create repeating units rapidly, since many contraptions use a lot of repeating units.

 

[Scylon]

So, it seems when I move the NPC's house off of the screen, shortly after starting the grinder, the NPC's housing location shifts somewhere else and the NPC moves there... I think it has to do with the hoiks making the housing invalid when they are activated... I'm going to try making the NPC's housing space a little larger over-all to see if this will compensate...

 

[DicemanX]

So, it seems when I move the NPC's house off of the screen, shortly after starting the grinder, the NPC's housing location shifts somewhere else and the NPC moves there... I think it has to do with the hoiks making the housing invalid when they are activated... I'm going to try making the NPC's housing space a little larger over-all to see if this will compensate...

Ah yes, I should have mentioned that - activating the hoik does indeed invalidate the house and the boot the NPC if the NPC is off-screen. Making the house bigger will solve the problem. Good catch.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

I'm going to try making the NPC's housing space a little larger over-all to see if this will compensate...

I doubt that'll help.

Making the house bigger will solve the problem.

Or maybe it will. You did add a few extra blocks above the engine section (to make turning back on immediate), don't they make it hard to turn it off though?...

Anyway, much as I invented the house engine, they can be a right pain in the arse. Combining them with a moon event seems like madness! I was very surprised Diceman managed to avoid getting his NPC killed immediately (and got them to move in with no troubles too)! I'd probably recommend a simple bird engine for the statue spawns, with 1s timer to continually replenish the birds, in case of them getting killed. Hoik engine is overkill, given that we seem to have found that statue spawn numbers aren't the limiting factor for sword hit rate (hence pumpkin projectile creation).