NPCs & Enemies Giving Love to the pirate invasion

J Bame

J Bame

Terrarian
Right now the Pirate Invasion has 3 big problems:

1- The event has unfair elements that make it a chore to get through compared to the Goblin Invasion.
Why isn't the Goblin army unfair? The tanky Goblin Warriors are very slow. Goblin archers/sorcerers have a slow firing speed and slow projectiles. On their own these enemies are very simple but together they are a threat: The slow bulky warriors tank for the frail ranged units.

Let's look at their pirate invasion equivalents: Pirate Corsairs are much, much faster than Goblin Warriors. Crossbowers shoot from afar, hit for hundreds of damage and inflict On Fire. Deadeyes shoot a fast bullet from afar. It's no wonder people always cheese this event with these guys all around.

And don't even get me started on the Pirate Captain, this enemy ruins the invasion for me. It has thousands of HP and almost no delay before it starts shooting. When it spawns you must keep it locked down with your weapons. Let him breathe for a fraction of a second and he will shoot tons of bullets with hundreds of damage each. Oh yeah, and he can instakill you with a cannonball with no warning if you get close. And he has thousands of HP. Have fun.

In short: Goblin army has loads of weak enemies. Pirate Invasions have lots of overpowered enemies. Let's change this.
  1. Reduce Crossbower's sight range (she will have to get closer to shoot), reduce damage from 80/160/240 to 65/130/195.
  2. Reduce Pirate Deadeye's bullet velocity.
  3. Reduce Pirate Corsair's spawn rate slightly
  4. Add a 1 second delay to Pirate Captain before he starts attacking; Cannonball attack has a 2 second delay, but much faster velocity.
Tones down all the enemies to make them more manageable out in the open. Removes Pirate Captain's instant attacks, and reworks the cannonball attack: Higher velocity gives it more range and makes it harder to dodge, but the startup delay makes it far more reliable.

2- There are not enough incentives to do the event.
Not to say there aren't any, but they also aren't too big. Cutlass isn't very strong, Coin gun is a gimmick and Pirate Staff will forever suck. Greedy Ring and its components are not bad at all, but skippable. Gold Furniture and the Pirate Sets are nice but ultimately they are just decoration.

But wait, There is an entire NPC from the event! An NPC that sells all Vanity and Decoration items...

Yeah. Let's give the Pirate NPC some extra items:

First off, the Pirate Captain has a cool gun. I can't use that gun. I wanna use that gun.

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The Plunderer
  • 29 damage
  • 11 Use time
  • Minor spread
  • Sold for 50 gold
Every 20th shot, the Plunderer fires a Cannonball. It consumes the cannonball like it would consume any ammo, inheriting the 300 bonus damage. The cannonball pierces 3 enemies, exploding on the third or on contact with a tile. If there are no Cannonballs in the inventory it will not shoot this cannonball.

Next up, a lot of us want a Hardmode upgrade to Obsidian Armor. We can kill two birds with one stone here, no new items needed:

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Pirate Hat
  • 9 defense
  • 10% increased summon damage and whip range
  • Cost increased from 5 gold to 35
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Pirate Shirt
  • 11 defense
  • 10% increased summon damage
  • Increased maximum number of minions by 1
  • Cost increased from 5 gold to 35
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Pirate Pants
  • 9 defense
  • 10% increased summon damage
  • 10% increased movement and whip speed
  • Cost increased from 5 gold to 35
Set Bonus: 20% increased whip range and speed.

And now finally, two items with a new unique function:

Treasure Map
  • Sold for 50 gold
  • Consumable
  • When used, reveals all chests in the map. The chests will be revealed on the map with full brightness; you will see a bunch of bright dots where chests are.
Extremely useful for when you simply want to world-cross for certain chest items you didnt get while exploring in Pre-Hardmode.

Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Sold for 5 platinum after Plantera has been defeated.
  • Consumable
  • When used, reveals the entire map. Sections revealed by the item have lower brightness than those explored by the player.
An item like this has supposedly been rejected for being too overpowered, to what I ask: What exactly is overpowered about revealing the entire map, way past the point where you do any exploration in the game?

3- The event is very easy to cheese.
None of the enemies or their projectiles go through blocks. What a lot of people end up doing is build a floating box where the pirates wont reach and make a little hole to poke at them until the event ends. That's no fun. In a Goblin Army if yo try to do this Goblin Sorcerers end up forcing you out.

In 1.4 it seems the Pirate's Curse was created to alleviate this issue, but that enemy has problems of its own: It only spawns when killing a Pirate Captain, who is only an uncommon spawn at best and that you'll likely be cheesing to begin with. This makes the Pirate Curses uncommon spawns too, so you can hide safely and then only back out when one spawns. Second, it's really weak. It's just a Pirate Corsair with the ability to go through blocks. It won't be taking you out of cover for long.

Then we have the Flying Dutchman, the boss of the Event. Every single time that ship spawns it ends up getting stuck in one of my houses. It's not very good at its job. And of course its shots dont go through blocks either.

Let's get to fixin'

First off, change Pirate Curse's spawn conditions. Instead of always spawning from a Pirate Captain, it should have a 10% chance of spawning from any pirate killed during the event. If the Pirate killed didnt have line of sight with the player, this chance increases to 25%. Now the Pirate's Curse will be a more common, block piercing enemy the Invasion desperately needed.

Second nerf the HP from 1000/2000/3000 to 800/1600/2400. Just a little nerf to compensate for it being more common.

Now for the Flying Dutchman, give its cannonballs Star Wrath's block piercing mechanics; Star Wrath's stars go through blocks until reaching the height of their destination. With this change Flying Dutchman's cannonballs will go through blocks until being near the player. May not be necessary after the Pirate's Curse change, but just in case.
 
These are three good points in my opinion.

I dont really like the idea of a treasure map that reveals ALL the chests in the world, however perhaps there could be a treasure map that can be dropped from the enemies and holding that treasure map would show the location of one treasure.
 
I personally don't like the Treasure Map idea, though I think you're onto something. I agree with Olle that one unopened treasure per map would be more balanced.
I LOVE the Dead Sea Scrolls idea - I think putting it post-moonlord keeps it balanced and extremely useful for endgame characters.
 
Sillygal said:
I personally don't like the Treasure Map idea, though I think you're onto something. I agree with Olle that one unopened treasure per map would be more balanced.
I LOVE the Dead Sea Scrolls idea - I think putting it post-moonlord keeps it balanced and extremely useful for endgame characters.
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Why would it be unbalanced? What is overpowered about revealing chests with prehardmode loot in the middle of hardmode?

It's the same thing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. What does it revealing the whole map allow you to do that makes it overpowered?
 
J Bame said:
Why would it be unbalanced? What is overpowered about revealing chests with prehardmode loot in the middle of hardmode?

It's the same thing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. What does it revealing the whole map allow you to do that makes it overpowered?
Click to expand...
I would say
1: In reference to chests treasure map, searching for specific accessories and chest loot becomes trivial and a tunnel mining exibition, rather than the natural cave exploration Terraria tries to encourage with its cave systems, branching rooms, tiny off shoots, gem rooms, etc.
2: The same thing basically goes for Dead Sea Scrolls, but putting it post-moonlord allows it to be a tool for creativity and building rather than farming and searching.
These are just my opinions, but I think the Treasure Map would break the entire Underground experience, and Dead Sea Scrolls would become a distraction if anything before Moon Lord.
 
That's the whole point. There is nothing to explore for in Hardmode, so these items make things like finding X prehardmode accessory trivial.
It would be overpowered if it was prehardmode, where there is a ton of exploration and every item is on-tier, but by the time you are in hardmode you'll have already explored for everything you'd need.

This is a convenience for when you couldn't find a pair of Ice Skates in the Ice Biome or whatever.
 
What if the Treasure Map only revealed about 5 to 10 chests around the player. It would make it a sort of upgrade to fairies and in my opinion would be more balanced.

I also agree with making the Dead Sea Scrolls Post-Moonlord. After fighting Plantera you still have to do some exploring to find the Jungle Temple, Life Fruit, and possibly Chlorophyte. Once you finish the game there’s really no reason to hide parts of the world from the player.
 
Russ Guss Doodles said:
What if the Treasure Map only revealed about 5 to 10 chests around the player. It would make it a sort of upgrade to fairies and in my opinion would more balanced.
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paying 50 gold to reveal 5-10 chests the mayority of which will have items that are already obsolete...
Not to mention the extra programming work of differentiating chests that are unopened and the loads of calculating needed to determine which chests in the map are closest to the player.

This makes the item useless and much harder to implement.
Russ Guss Doodles said:
After fighting Plantera you still have to do some exploring to find the Jungle Temple.
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Finding the Jungle Temple is not hard. 9 times out of 10 you'll find it while searching for Ivy Chests or Hives. In those times where RNG screws you over and puts it in the most obscure corner of the jungle, paying 5 whole platinum to find it seems perfectly fair.

One thing that WOULD be extremely good is revealing every Plantera bulb on the map. Which... is not useful because the item is post plantera. Something that finds plantera is not very useful when you have already defeated plantera.
 
J Bame said:
paying 50 gold to reveal 5-10 chests the mayority of which will have items that are already obsolete...
Click to expand...
Just decrease the price, you’re the one that came up with it.

J Bame said:
Not to mention the extra programming work of differentiating chests that are unopened and the loads of calculating needed to determine which chests in the map are closest to the player.

This makes the item useless and much harder to implement.
Click to expand...
Wouldn’t coding to differentiate between placed, looted, and un-opened chests have to be done if all chests were revealed? Either solution would not be easy to code and implement.
 
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Russ Guss Doodles said:
Just decrease the price, you’re the one that came up with it.


Wouldn’t coding to differentiate between placed, looted, and un-opened chests have to be done if all chests were revealed? Either solution would not be easy to code and implement.
Click to expand...

if it already reveals every chest on the map, what difference does it make if it reveals chests that you placed, it's not a fairy (which would desperately need something like that, because those are limited to finding just one)
 
Russ Guss Doodles said:
Wouldn’t coding to differentiate between placed, looted, and un-opened chests have to be done if all chests were revealed? Either solution would not be easy to code and implement.
Click to expand...
No it would just reveal every chest, no distinction needed because you will know which chests you haven't looted, they'll just be dots in a black map
 
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