#10: Bismuth
by
@Kazzinak @Bassalt @BRIPE @Nokilos996 @Rekstri @Efromomr
Ah Bismuth, this is a mod I did honestly really enjoy, it has alot of really great ideas and I was getting Minecraft Twlight Forest vibes from it, it felt like a real nostalgia trip to an older time.
Ironically, this mod is a redux of a TAPI mod of the same name! Go figure!
In Bismuth you spawn in the middle of an imperial city, this mod adds a few neat world-gen structures to your world, do bare in mind it WILL NOT play nice with other mods that add similar structures thou. When you spawn in you should spawn with a token that you can craft into a class token and select your class (should you choose to play an RPG game, you won't be able to exit your starting house until you pick RPG or non-RPG modes).
You take part in quests for town NPCs, can make branching choices, and fight a few bosses, some of which can be missed in a play through depending on your choices! The mod has great sprites that completely match Terraria's style and fit right in. There's some new mechanics involved, and the mod has a very awesome UI system for your character book! The mod also has a really neat usage of treasure hunting via locked boxes you find with mirrors in your world, these are how you get the Dwarven coins!
Now onto the bad things: This mod doesn't work online at all. The worldgen can badly affect other mods, the rpg system tends to not work for no reason somethings (even though you beat X boss it still says you need to beat X boss to buy the skill). The Divine items grant more perks as you gain more favor with the city, but they tend to bug out and lose said favor (it doesn't seem to properly save)
Then there's questionable items of design and balance, two of which you can find before you've even beaten any of the other bosses in one of the mod's key structures: The Underground Labyrinth.
A pair of wings that are very, very slightly worse than Angel wings, I feel these are only given to the player to help deal with the boss fought here, nothing else. Comes off as bad design as you can keep them after the fight is over hell, you don't even NEED to do the fight at all, you get them for practically free since the only dangers in the Labyrinth are spike blocks.
Then there's this OP thing: one of these items is a Quiver that causes you to fire a 2nd arrow with every attack (this at the start of the game btw), and if that wasn't enough, you ALSO gain a 15% arrow damage bonus!
That completely outclasses the hardmode Magic Quiver:
Magic Quiver
And to make it even worse, there's a item later in this mod, that does the 2 arrow thing, but only with a CHANCE of doing it.
Yeah a hardmode item later in the mod that's WORSE than this item, wtf?
I think the most overpowered offender thou, would have to be the Banshee head, this thing takes away ALL of an npc's defense and a solid 10% of their HP per NPC affected
Imagine this: Imagine being able to remove all of a Dungeon Guardian's defense, or take away 800000+ HP off S.Cal just by equiping this on, and then taking it off (it only works once per NPC thou, but that's besides the point)
You get this very early into the game, but it remains good, too good for the entire game.
The mod also doesn't explain what some things are, like I didn't realize the "blast furnace" was the furnace in the Smith's shop.
This mod lacks decent hardmode gear, or it's not easily noticeable by the player, by the time I discovered the Bismuthium Ore, I was way too strong for it.
Then we have the structures, from what I learned there's an item that lets you destroy them, but again, the mod didn't tell you this or how to get it, so I ended up Fargo-nuking the desert village because I needed some space to fight crap without all the tribe
getting in the way and giving me that stupid debuff.
Turns out... that didn't change anything, they kept spawning from where the totem used to be and I STILL got the debuff!
Finally, the worst part of it all: this mod is on the verge of being discontinued, the devs don't visit the forums anymore, and from what I heard they don't have time/interest to work on it anymore as well from life stuff.
Alass:
I'll give this one a:
B+
A really great mod with some glaring issues. This hurts me, because I really want to see Bismuth continue, I loved where it was going it just has some serious problems that need addressing.
Edit: Decided to bump this up to a B+, I like it more than AA