IDG's Ultimate Modded Content Mod Tier List

IDGCaptainRussia

IDGCaptainRussia

Skeletron
So... My name is IDGCaptainRussia94, I've been around the block much longer than many, but not as long as others, and I've seen and played alot of mods.
With the release of 1.4, I decided to try to compile a complete list of all (as of me writing this: 1.3.5) content mods and rank them based on gameplay, sprites, features. I will be dipping a bit into more personal experiences with these mods too, so be warned on that.

In the coming of 1.4 TMODLoader, many, many works are going to be left in the dust by bygone authors, I want to reflect on everything I've played up to that point and bring one last bit of light to those being left behind.

Why Content mods? Because Content mods are the main staple of terraria modding (ok that's not a fair statement LOL). But more like the fact that they are usually expansions of some kind or another.
I donno, I wanted an excuse to write about mods with bosses.
speaking of which, here's the rules I will be abiding by:
-Mod must have a decent variety of content, a new mods barely get by on this. But like no mod that adds 3 items and bam: content mod.
-And have at least 1 boss, a boss makes the experience complete
-Only mods that I have played, this is obvious, else this would be a blind review
-I will be doing them alphabetically; this may hint people into what's next of course.

S:
A: Antiaris,Consolaria,
B: Bismuth,Celestial Skies,Crystilium,
C: Ancients Awakened,Alchemist NPC,Calamity,Beyond the Forgotten Ages,Emphatic Untamed Calamity,DataMod,Ammongst the Cosmos
D: Cosmetic Variety,Agherium,AFKPETS,Disarray (Old),Chen's Gradius,
E: Apotheosis and friends,
F: Dynascape,Archaea,
The list is pretty long and I'll be trying to write an entry each day or 2, I may update this as well, so without further ado lets begin:
Disclaimer: I judged all of these mods on a single metric of being a well designed, fun and interesting, balanced, playable content mod. Many of the low scoring mods are mods that have taken great hits to these areas and have brought down said single metric score. It is worth noting that some entries are judged based on design choices that the devs made that affect the mod as a whole, such as Amongst the Cosmos having poor balance due to the author having created no medium for criticism and feedback. Or other cases such as example mod being meant as a tech demo, or apoth and friends being meant as a funny meme, getting a low rating.
thx @HS_Seraph for the idea to add this disclaimer
 
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#1: AFKPETS
by @Sir AFK

Right... I guess we're starting off pretty rough for these first few entries.
Yes, this is a content mod, it has a wide variety of items, accessories and... bosses

AFKPETS is a mod I've scratched my head on for more than a few occasions, it's a mod that follows in the line of Alchemist NPC where it aims to do one strong point (in this case: pet items) but also does alot of other things that go off the rails, however the rails this mod chooses to go on afterwords are really, weird. The mod is full of strange anime, waifu (there is literally a waifu npc that keeps calling out to you as their senpai, they sell mini-boss summons from this mod so they have a functional purpose), and Yandere references that I think very, very few people are going to get, the mod has sprites that are straight out of other games combined with custom ones that were designed to fit terraria. It has an accessory with one of the most confusing "where the hell do I get these items from" crafting receipes ever (there's no public wiki for that, you have to join a discord to find out more which kinda sucks).

And the bosses...
Where do I even, start...

This mod has some of the most questionable content and design choices I think I've ever seen, ever, in my time playing mods. For starters the mod has alot of meme hell going on (Anyone want a washing machine with James's Hat from Chippy's Gaming?) or maybe Issac suddenly appears when your exploring and you die. (There's alot of this kinda of stuff happening)

However I think one of the things about the boss fights are, they just feel like a ton of thrown in, disorganized bullet hells with very little queues into what the hell is even going on half the time. There's a few interesting moments like when your given a quiz or tested in a non-fight type of way, but that also leads up to the 2nd problem: There's more dialog going on here than in a Telltale Game during these fights as well, you gotta read all of that when the fight is over and it kinda feels jarring to do so. You think S.Cal talks alot oh, OH you have seen NOTHING until you've played this mod lol.

As far as items go, this mod is surprisingly fairly well balanced, there's no objectively overpowered items or features I could remember while playing it. It has quite a few unique items and features as well (there's an item that lets you search modded and vanilla terraria wikis, that's really neat) but this kind of content is overshadowed by the stuff that's gonna make people "I'll pass"
And finally, if you like pets this mod has more than enough for you!

EDIT: Decided to bump this one to C-, C+ was a bit too generous given the content, it's not bad but it's not great either/is highly weighed down

EDIT: 7/17/2020: After having realized that Hellion's fight basically needs to be remade, it helped me realize that AFKPET'S bosses are... very poorly designed (seriously, try to no-hit all of them), and because of that I'm going to demote the mod down to D tier. Items are still good, but this mod has alot of short comings in many areas, no offense Sir AFK please.

I'll give it a:
D

It isn't terrible, but I know alot of people will avoid playing with this one for all the reasons listed above. It's a bit too strange and confusing for most people.

Post Edit: there is an unofficial but outdated wiki for this mod, but otherwise the mod is beyond the scope of SirAFK's ability to make a wiki for, so atleast we have something AFKPETS Un-official Wiki
 
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#2: Agherium
by @ActuallyImTurquoise

Oh boy, who remembers this mod! Not alot of people I bet.
Agherium was one of, if not the first mod @ActuallyImTurquoise released, this mod was more or less the stepping stones that would later lead up to Varia, but we'll get to that one later.

Now please do bare with me this is an pretty old mod, you can't even download it anymore, and it has been years since I played with it, so this review might be pretty short.
As you would expect from an early mod, it was pretty rough the corners, had some MSPaint level sprites (god how far Turquoise has come) and of course, like all of his work: had original music (thou it wasn't really all that great, it was clearly beginner work)

The bosses were... well I remember there being a slime boss I think? The fallen angel was here too but it was a HE and it largely played like a bullet hell, there was a spider queen that had a decent accessory. They weren't terrible but the mod was pretty medicore, even know I'm having trouble remembering anything from it. Maybe that should be a hint that it should be best left in the past.

Yeah it's... Literally the first version of Varia, Turquise say it himself too! So while you can't DL it off the browser anymore, you can still download it off Turquise's Github and try it out if your interested in seeing how Varia has changed for the better: ISalliga/agherium-mod

EDIT 7/17/2020: Decided to move this mod down to D, it's a really old mod sure, but if you were to go play it now, it wouldn't hold up too well, even Turquoise himself feels he's made alot of mistakes here and I agree.

I'll give it a:
D+

It's highly unmemorable (atleast for me), kinda medicore, but not that terrible. An average mod
 
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#3: Alchemist NPC
by @VVV101 (simply better know as Greg)

Yeah there's not alot I can say about this one, this is one of the most popular QoL mods that alot of people (including myself) run in every playthrough
The mean appeal is reduced grinding through just buying potions, you can also buy boss bags, unlock accessories and buy those too, and build building materals!

Like AFKPets this mod goes astray with some of its content, but I generally feel it's better and more rounded overall. And if you don't want that content you can install the Lite Version, which is pretty awesome on Greg's part!

So... why is this even on the list? I just said it was a QoL mod...

It's on the list because it has 2 bosses and a wide arange of content. You: Bosses?
Yes, this mod has bosses, both of which are basically glorified memey Dungeon Guardians. They aren't very good, but they drop some of the best items in modded Terraria if beaten!

Due to the QoL elements of this mod being very solid, the extra content being pretty good (I personally love the post-moonlord armor from this mod!) and overall content provided:

EDIT: Decided that this mod has a bit too much bloat and the really bad bosses bring it down too much to be given a B, so I've moved it to a C
Lite version exists, but given that's still a separate mod, if I was judging that, it would likely be a B+ or an A-

I'll give it a:
C

Most of what AFKPETS does wrong is done right in Alchemist NPC, but it's still fairly weird and questionable, if you don't want those thou, you have a lite version!
 
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#4: Amongst the Cosmos (aka Turquic Unleashed)
by @Adam Turquoise (this is a different person from the above mentioned Turquoise)

This one, oh boy this one makes me mad for stupid reasons I cannot fathom. I'll explain why.

Amongst the Cosmos is very unknown content mod, at its peak it had 16K downloads well over the course of a year and had undergone a massive overhaul in its lifespan as well.
The mod takes a heavy focus on Lovecraftian horror (it gets rather deep at times) and a large focus on souls-like difficulty, where the bosses end you even faster than Calamity Death Mode does, infact there's a boss that keeps you from getting over 200 HP until you beat it.

Content wise it's... a really good mod infact, it has cool items, cool accessories, and some really good spritework tbh. Has good mechanics, effects, and doesn't really intrude much on normal gameplay! (Think Calamity, but without the vanilla changes). I would honestly tier this one really high because I really enjoyed it, but...

Sadly there's a catch that is going to cost it heavily...

The mod Author: Adam (who is now know as Master_Weller as of this review) pulled the mod from the browser as of recently. The reason I'm angry is because despite this mod's decent size, presentation, great spritework, and being the little hidden gem it is. The author for some, weird reason, never ever bothered to make a forum page, a discord, or a wiki, or ANYTHING at all! He is an active lurker on the forums who doesn't even post so this choice really baffles me. He removed the mod likely after I "found" his forums account which leads me to believe that he has social problems.

These problems that the author has, is what ultimately killed this mod from having a chance... In order for a mod to properly grow, you need info on the mod, you need feedback on the mod, you need people to "know" about your mod.
Adam did none of these things, so if not for people like me, Amongst the Cosmos would be decaying in the Cosmos, light-years away from anyone to ever find it... This hurts me, alot...

I am a strong believer in "once you put it on the internet, everyone has a right to have it", as such, I promote warehousing and don't want to see his work lost, and have provided a link to the most recent version, AS WELL as an older version which had very different bosses!

EDIT: This mod does not work online, it will refuse to even load on the server's end, and thus loses points because of that too

EDIT: 7/17/2020: Thanks to the insight of =FFR= Osiris I realized that the bosses here are... not that good, Splinterwood is basically impossible to beat without cheesing him and the rest are easily able to 2shot you. not to mention how annoying the enemy spawns are in this mod like the prehardmode and post plantera enemies. I had to disable them after a while they just wouldn't stop spawning, especially during events.


Current
Older

I'll give it a:
C-

This would have easily been an A tier mod if not for the above issues, Adam, if you care to read this, please... Tell me why you choose this?

PS: this mod has recently gotten a massive reboot, and an overhaul, so take this ranking with a grain of salt.
 
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#5: Ancients Awakened
Lead by @Alphakip (And many other people, this is the first massive content mod on this list)

Ancients Awakened, Ancients Awakened... Ancients Awakened!

Where do I even start with you? I've been playing this mod since it first launched into public beta on the mod browser. And even before that point I had already stumbled apon the heralds of its coming, such as a design document on google, composed music on youtube, and mentions of the mod on reddit. You were advertised and praised as the coming "Calamity Killer", a title that has been passed onto another upcoming mod of late.

Then first day the mod finally released, I added it to my modpack

My first experiences with AAMod were simply a very, very mixed bag. The mod already done some really cool things I hadn't seen other mods do yet, like the mire and inferno biome's special effects, glowing ores, and the mechanics of the Equinox Worms with the Enchanted Sundial
But at the same time everything else felt like Tremor if sometimes even worse, bland and boring, and some things were flat out busted or broken. In the originally version the Broodmother was using Mothron AI and would constantly despawn for no reason!

As time went on AAMod slowly started to iron out its faulty content, remove unneeded content (Cya Later Emperior Fishron, you sure aged well when you returned in Calamity!) and improved the generally overall content.

Then the big update (1.1? I don't remember what the number was) that basically reworked everything came, this included removing throwing damage in favor of not breaking when 1.4 comes. And this is where the rest of the review will take place.

Ancients Awakened is a large (2nd largest memory wise) mod that adds... Well... Alot of content for the 4 vanilla classes, the mod as a ton of bosses, some good, some not, and a story that starts to kick into high gear past Moonlord.

Gameplay wise AAMod kinda feels like a Calamity Clone (even has had the kind of drama too, oof) on the surface but sticks more true to Terraria's roots as more of an expansion (the mod adds 2 evil biomes both of which have similar properties to the crimson and corruption of vanilla) that doesn't really alter vanilla mechanics. Like Calamity AAMod has full original music for all its bosses. The mod also loves animated sprites, almost every boss has a fully animated spritework to go along with them (this must have taken ages to do). The Main mechanic thou is the expert mode 2nd phase of all the major bosses, AKA the "awakened" states, which adds alot of flavor to the mod's fights!

Ancients Awakened is a fun mod that I think everyone should give a shot, it has alot to do and for the work of many different people collaborating on one project, I think Ancients Awakened came out well and deserves its spot in Terraria history, and being an actively supported mod, we will be seeing it in 1.4

EDIT 7/17/2020: In hindsight, AAMOD is alot more generic than I originally reviewed it as, it's not quite on par with Calamity, but it comes really close, drama and all.

I'll give it a:
C+

It's a very solid experience that is clearly made by people who are passionate about it, even though it has some small short comings from being too similar to other mods and a large dev group involved.

EDIT: I have decided to move this one down to B, since A- was a little bit too generous, still a very solid mod, but not quite A tier

Edit: 9/10/2020
DISCLAIMER: Due to the recent drama on the Ancients Awakened discord, the AA devs have taken the mod down from the browser. It is currently unknown what will happen to it. Do not ask what happened to it here as the forums do not allow off-site drama, if your curious what happened you should be able to find some answers with a google search.
 
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#6: Antiaris
by @zadum4ivii (and some others as well)

This is one of 2 mods born from discontinuation of Tremor, with the other one being Split, they are more-or-less the Starlight River-type mods of yesteryear.
This mod has concluded development as well, and it is unsure if it will be updated to 1.4, it is open source so others are free to do so if they want to try.

Antiaris... is a mod I didn't really explore super well, but it's pretty clear how much passion went into what was made for it, as well a few mechanic changes that will catch you off guard (magmahearts are needed to go from 300 HP to 400, another risk-reward system to go to hell!)

I didn't really invest my time with the pirate so I may have missed alot of content on that, Antiaris has a quest system with nice rewards, it has quite possibly one of the best time-stops in modded Terraria, it only has 2 bosses, but both of them are quality and worth your time.

It seemed to suffer from some problems with other mods thou, so some items seemed to not work at all when I was playing with it.
Also... The guide house won't play very well with other mods if they generate stuff at the spawn, IE Bismuth for example.

I'll give it a:
A-

A very solid, Terraria-esk mod that fits well into any play through and offers content that surpasses its originator, but doesn't have enough stand-out content going for it to be remembered.
Keep in mind this was the first time i played with this one, it wasn't super memorable to me, might be to others, so I'll give an A- because I know it was very popular around the time it came out for good reasons.
 
IDGCaptainRussia said:
It seemed to suffer from some problems with other mods thou, so some items seemed to not work at all when I was playing with it.
Also... The guide house won't play very well with other mods if they generate stuff at the spawn, IE Bismuth for example.
Click to expand...
Yeah.. also there used to be a mod conflict where Antiaris made the hydra boss from my mod invincible.
 
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#7: Apotheosis and friends
by @Terry N. Muse (And a few others I think)

And now we get into what I consider one of the first actually :red: mods. I get this this mod is a joke, a Calamity joke, but the fact that it has bosses means I gotta put it on here.

There's not too much to this one, but I'll keep it brief, this mod adds content that largely applies to the post-Calamity endgame, and also to Terry's signature weapon in said mod: the Apotheosis, which has alot of different versions with some crafting recipes able to complete with Minecraft's GregTech in terms of bat :red: nuts (the page even reads you should just, cheat them in since they are nearly impossible craft normally)

Gameplay wise, there is none, this mod gives us THE LORDE back, but that's about the best thing it does, the rest is what would happen you decided make everything super mega cheap and overpowered with extremely terrible game design: Empowered Chibi Devourer is basically LORDE but with a phase 2 that's Deathmode only, when phase 2 starts thou, they literally fill the screen with every projectile from Calamity.

And if you somehow do manage to beat them... They just flat out call player.KillMe() on you, and you die, and they drop nothing.
Terry is genius at making stuff that pisses other people off that's for sure.

That's kinda it, this is mod that was intentionally designed to be bad, frustrating, and a "meme" to Calamity's endgame. As a joke it's pretty funny but as a mod that more or less advertises itself as an expansion it's trash.

EDIT: This mod is... rather weird, this mod reminds of MUGEN characters who have no gameplay but rather just toy around with overpowered ideas for the sake of being overpowered, balance does not exist.
And this mod, like those characters, is not something I really enjoy.

I'll give it a:
E-

I would consider this mod "For Collectors Only", and nothing else.
 
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IDGCaptainRussia said:
#7: Apotheosis and friends
by @Terry N. Muse (And a few others I think)

And now we get into what I consider one of the first actually :red: mods. I get this this mod is a joke, a Calamity joke, but the fact that it has bosses means I gotta put it on here.

There's not too much to this one, but I'll keep it brief, this mod adds content that largely applies to the post-Calamity endgame, and also to Terry's signature weapon in said mod: the Apotheosis, which has alot of different versions with some crafting recipes able to complete with Minecraft's GregTech in terms of bat :red: nuts (the page even reads you should just, cheat them in since they are nearly impossible craft normally)

Gameplay wise, there is none, this mod gives us THE LORDE back, but that's about the best thing it does, the rest is what would happen you decided make everything super mega cheap and overpowered with extremely terrible game design: Empowered Chibi Devourer is basically LORDE but with a phase 2 that's Deathmode only, when phase 2 starts thou, they literally fill the screen with every projectile from Calamity.

And if you somehow do manage to beat them... They just flat out call player.KillMe() on you, and you die, and they drop nothing.
Terry is genius at making stuff that pisses other people off that's for sure.

That's kinda it, this is mod that was intentionally designed to be bad, frustrating, and a "meme" to Calamity's endgame. As a joke it's pretty funny but as a mod that more or less advertises itself as an expansion it's trash.

I'll give it a:
E-

I would consider this mod "For Collectors Only", and nothing else.
Click to expand...
Giving Apotheosis and Friends an E- while giving AlchemNPC a B and AFK Pets a C+? Sounds about right.
 
steviegt6 said:
Still don't understand how you could give Alchemist NPC a B.
Click to expand...
I rate mods based on everything about them, Alchemist NPC is pretty much a standard for people who want potions easily these days. Is it overpowered? Sure, but it's still enjoyable non the less
It was the first mod to do so, so it ultimately got popular because of it, people still use it because it does its QoL elements pretty well.
That's why I gave it a B, despite the bosses and some of the other content being, meh or eh at best
 
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