Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Yeah, I understand. Soaring Insignia is very popular item, I completely get why people would get defensive about it, it's a really awesome item. I really like it, I just don't want to use it because I think it breaks the game with how much you can do with it.

I do think there are waaay more things in Terraria that need buffs than nerfs, Trust me, I would know, I spent like six hours making two huge compilations of many of them.
 
Oh, something pretty important (at least to me):
Picnic tables can't be decorated with plates and food, which is the whole point of picnic tables in the first place!
If there's any way to fix that, I'd be eternally grateful.

I really wanted this but this is a mechanical limitation of the way Picnic Tables are sprited. A shame, for sure.

Here is a list of my suggestions:

1. Reduce enemy spwan during the Empress of Light combat
Compared to other bosses, enemies spawned more often during the Empress of Light combat. Is that my misconception? Seeing enemies wandering around when fighting against the Empress of Light at daytime is the most terrible thing. There should be less spawn.

Besides, if you can, disable enemy spawn during the Moon Lord combat. Although that hasn't changed much over a long period of time, I'm still trying to put it forward, if this is really the last chance of balance adjustments.

2. Separately count projectiles from the Empress of Light
Is that possible?

3. Duke Fishron become immune when get off the ocean area
Is that possible? This request seems to have been around for quite some time.

1. I'll try to find time to look into the boss spawning stuff.

2. What purpose does "counting" the Empress projectiles serve?

3. Why make Duke immune out of Ocean? He enrages.

Suggested Change(s):
Change drop from a 1/1000 chance from any hardmode enemy during a blood moon to a 1/10 chance from Clown's
- This item's drop conditions feel out of place, not to mention how weak it is. Giving it a reasonable drop rate from Clown's feels more thematically appropriate and more likely to actually see use in a playthrough.

This specific change is really interesting to me, I think it makes perfect sense. The specific drop numbers aside, I'd love to see this change.


There have been a TON of numerical proposals, and I'm not ignoring them, but I'm not prepared to comment on them (mostly because just boosting a sword's damage by 5 might be entirely reasonable but there isn't much to say). I'm keeping track of weapons that frequently are mentioned for getting damage buffs and nerfs, and will be taking that into consideration, along with those proposals.
 
A couple of consistency things that I think could help:

-Right now, bouncy slime and crystal slime do the same damage as Destroyer probes in Normal and Expert, but do 150 damage in Master Mode vs Probe's 120. Suggest nerfing damage from 150 to 120 (these guys are what makes Master Mode Queen Slime so hard!)

-Fiery Greatsword, Muramasa and Lucy would work better with Useturn=false so that they're useful in more boss fights

-Check Pengfish fishing rate: seems consistently lower than other fishing quests over many different playthroughs (could be bad luck???). Also, its tooltip says 'Tundra' without clarifying if it is Surface Tundra or Underground Tundra.

Wishlist:
-Jungle Rose craftable into Obsidian Rose
-Rare chance of non-voodoo demons and non-explosive bunnies in FTW
-Wyverns don't spawn during boss fights and invasions/moons
-Wasp Gun and Nettle Burst removed from Plantera loot pool. Now crafted with Bee Gun+ Chlorophyte and Crystal Vile Shard + Chlorophyte. Shifts it barely a tier (chlorophyte vs plantera drop) and gives more consistency to plantera's crowded loot pool. Both weapons are bad against plantera herself but great against Jungle enemies. There would still be a magic weapon in Plantera's loot pool. Martian Saucer had a similar change which has been great!
 
Wasp Gun and Nettle Burst removed from Plantera loot pool. Now crafted with Bee Gun+ Chlorophyte and Crystal Vile Shard + Chlorophyte.
As unlikely as it'd probably be for this change to be approved, I would really like to see something like this! From what I remember, Plantera is currently one of the bosses with the most varied loot pools in the game, alongside Golem and Moon Lord, which makes trying to get one specific item a massive chore. With how annoying Plantera can be to spawn, this means that getting what you want may take hours of Plantera fights (or you could just get what you want first try if you end up getting lucky, of course)
Removing even two of the items would at the very least increase the chances of getting other items from Plantera, which could be helpful, especially to players aiming to craft the Zenith and thus needed the Seedler (From what I've heard, it and the Moon Lord swords tend to be the things that are most commonly complained about when it comes to crafting the Zenith)

As much as I would like a similar sort of change to be applied to Moon Lord to give players an easier time getting a specific item, there aren't really any weapons that could be tier-shifted to a slightly earlier (or even later) point like the Plantera drops, at least without a major rework that would be even less likely to happen in this small balance update. A similar issue applies to Golem; while some drops could be tier-shifted, there aren't any obvious choices like with Plantera. Instead, I propose that in Expert Mode and Master Mode, Golem and Moon Lord can drop two weapons (and accessories in Golem's case) instead of one. This would have a similar effect to the Plantera change suggested by Mathbrush, in that it makes acquiring the weapon you want easier, while remaining consistent with some other bosses (such as the armor from King/Queen Slime, and Wall of Flesh) and being a smaller change compared to tier-shifting weapons. Since Golem and Moon Lord are the only bosses with more than five drops (after the Plantera change, that is) they're really the only ones left that have a massive amount of potential item drops that could be alleviated with this change. In the case of Moon Lord, its drops could be easily split up into two "groups", similarly to how Wall of Flesh's Treasure Bag drops an Emblem and a weapon; these two groups could each contain one weapon for each class (Star Wrath, S.D.M.G., Last Prism, and Lunar Portal Staff could be one group, and Meowmere, Celebration Mk2, Lunar Flare, and Rainbow Crystal Staff could be the other group, as an example), and Moon Lord always drops one weapon from each group. Unfortunately, Golem doesn't have enough items that could be put into two evenly-sized groups like WoF and Moon Lord, so it would probably just have to drop two items from its entire loot pool, or maybe one weapon and one accessory (though the latter would lead to one group of five items, and one group of two items)

Granted, I don't expect any of these changes to be applied in this update, but it would be really nice to players looking to obtain the right items, and they shouldn't be such massive changes that they are beyond the scope of this update (though of course, that depends on how difficult it actually is to mess with loot tables and add crafting recipes, and whether that's something that can be reasonably done right now).
 
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2. What purpose does "counting" the Empress projectiles serve?
3. Why make Duke immune out of Ocean? He enrages.
I don't quite understand how to express this accurately in English, I'll try my best...

2. That's a bug which has been spreaded widely in Chinese communites for a long time. People can use cannons or toilets to continuously generate projectiles (cannonballs or poops) to reach the projectile upper limmit, which prevents bosses (and any others) from generating projectiles. This can make the Empress of Light almost completely unable to attack. I'm not sure how hard it would be to fix this bug, but it definitely breaks the balance of the game.
Check out this video: [Terraria]大炮神教无伤过白天光之女皇 PE可用_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

3. By building a rhombus minecart track and sitting in a full-speed mechanical cart (in some cases iron cart/wooden cart works too), players can easily escape from the enraged Duke Fishron's chase, which makes them simply defeat the Duke without taking any damage (almost). It doesn't even need much keyboard controlling. It's been known as an easy way to skip the challenge and go straight to the juicy loot. This shouldn't be encouraged at all.
Check out this video:
(by using iron cart, requires a strict size of the track, it won't be that strict by using mech cart)
 
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-Jungle Rose craftable into Obsidian Rose
This reminds me.
Jungle Rose is ridiculously rare for a pretty basic, nice vanity item. Its drop rate was balanced when it was first added, but there are now so many random pieces of Jungle foliage and background objects, and the drop rate for the Rose has not been adjusted to compensate at all to my knowledge. So now, it's a rare drop from an uncommon grass tile in the Jungle. I think it should be fairly reasonable to ask for a boosted drop chance for the Jungle Rose, don't you think?
 
I don't quite understand how to express this accurately in English, I'll try my best...

2. That's a bug which has been spreaded widely in Chinese communites for a long time. People can use cannons or toilets to continuously generate projectiles (cannonballs or poops) to reach the projectile upper limmit, which prevents bosses (and any others) from generating projectiles. This can make the Empress of Light almost completely unable to attack. I'm not sure how hard it would be to fix this bug, but it definitely breaks the balance of the game.
Check out this video: [Terraria]大炮神教无伤过白天光之女皇 PE可用_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

3. By building a rhombus minecart track and sitting in a full-speed mechanical cart (in some cases iron cart/wooden cart works too), players can easily escape from the enraged Duke Fishron's chase, which makes them simply defeat the Duke without taking any damage (almost). It doesn't even need much keyboard controlling. It's been known as an easy way to skip the challenge and go straight to the juicy loot. This shouldn't be encouraged at all.
Check out this video:
(by using iron cart, requires a strict size of the track, it won't be that strict by using mech cart)
Both of these requires precise and complex setups to cheese the bosses as a whole, and talk of boss rework and other major game mechanic changes aren't on the table at this point. Boss skips/cheeses have existed in the game since almost forever.
 
Is it though? I mean, it being useless(it's not actually useless technically it's still a copy of frog legs with a move speed bonus on top of that) without wings doesn't really matter because when are you not going to have wings if you're using this accessory? mobility is paramount in Terraria and an accessory that grants infinite potential vertical mobility is incredible on it's own without the speed boosts it gives. The other alternatives for infinite flight sacrifice player size, and(sometimes) mobility. Tell me this, is there any scenario where this accessory wouldn't be used if you are using wings? Because I have no idea.
Well, this accessory was added in 1.4, until then players could do without infinite wings, and it's not like everyone needs them now. Some prefer to use this slot for a combat accessory, others use mounts in battles or wagons. People don't always want to waste an accessory slot, just to strengthen the wings that occupy a different slot.
 
Any chance the Reindeer Bells could have their drop rate increased or at least be moved to Santa-NK1’s loot table instead of the Ice Queen’s?

It has such a low drop rate than in all the years Ive played the game Ive gotten it ONCE. I even did a summon/mount collector playthrough in which I still failed to get the mount after several hundred event runs… Does this post-plantera mount really deserve such low drop rate when an infinite flight mount is available at the same period from Martians? It was fine before when there were so few mounts and this was the best flying mount… but now it’s just an impossibly hard to get flex mount…

Making it drop by Santa is thematically better for the reindeer, Santas being earlier than Ice Queen make the drop a bit more likely, and the Ice Queen already has another rare drop in the Baby Grinch pet while Santa has no rare drops.
 
I agree the Night's edge buff is a bit much but, I mean. It's Wall of Flesh, staying in specific close ranges without getting bonked by the hungry or the wall is really difficult on expert/master mode, and the contact damage is immense if you fail, while the damage is good, it's just so much riskier than other options like the Star Fury or a yoyo or the Sunfury that few will ever bother.
It's easier than you think.

Night's edge swings in an arc so all the hungries are constantly knocked back. WoF's lasers deal pathetic damage, especially to a melee character with high defense.

You will never touch the wall itself. With lightning boots, by the time it becomes faster than you it will have mere seconds left to live.

The only risk is Hungries that come from below, in a blind spot that Night's Edge cannot hit, but even then most of the time you win the DPS race.

If I had to make any change, it wouldn't be ANOTHER Night's edge buff, but rather getting rid of this:
1641812493482.png


These "Super Hungries" with 150 feel like they just exist to :red: over true melee. 30 more damage than the previous tier doesn't sound like that much, but with how defense works it's a much bigger jump than you'd think. Other classes shoot at the wall from far outside the Super Hungries' range, so getting rid of them will do nothing but make Night's edge more beginner friendly.
Please elaborate on Queen Spider staff, Because the last time I used the thing it sucked so much. Maybe I just didn't notice how good it was?
I tested DPS a while back, Queen Spider is generally underrated.

Deals a lot of damage, has inherent CC due to all the babies running around, and even spreads Acid Venom. I think it's the low velocity against bosses that makes people think it's a bad weapon (not like something obtainable 10 minutes into Hardmode should be good against a boss)
 
I’m going to go against the notion I’m seeing and say that, no, nerfs are not bad for the game.

First of all, aside from a few specific suggestions, I don’t see anyone trying to nerf anything considered just “good”, I see people suggesting nerfs to items that are genuinely overpowered. Obsidian Armor for example isn’t only OP because it lasts the whole gamr, but because it makes late preHardmode summoner outpreform every other class by an unreasonable margin and renders several other sets useless. And you could argue that OP items are fun, and I would agree… for one run. After that point, most players end up using that same OP item over and over and end up having less variety. There’s a quite from a Civilization dev that says that if given the choice, players will optimize the fun out of the game.

It’s also important to remember that nerfs don’t make an item bad inherently. A proper, well rounded nerf puts an item in a reasonable spot relative to other items at its tier. Look at nerfs such as Chlorophyte Shotbow for example. Nerfs will only kill the item if they go too far, and Re-Logic’s pretty good about not doing that (in fact, most nerfed items end up still being overpowered).

That said, it is important to make sure nerfs *are* focused on overpowered items rather than good items, and it’s also important to buff underpowered items. Ideally, every one should land in a range from “usable” to “strong” without being garbage or overpowered.

That out of the way, let’s talk about post-Plantera Melee.

Part of the issue at this stage is that Terra Blade is genuinely overpowered, but the other partnof the issue is that basically everything else is *under*powered. Influx Waver gets one of the worst kill times of any Martian item, Flairon is underwhelming as a Fishron drop, the moon event items just suck. I’ll propose some buffs.

-Influx Waver: Held back by the fact that returning slashes hit inconsistently. I don’t know if this would be possible, but predictive aim or more velocity on the returning slashes would go a long way. A regular old velocity buff to make it easier to hit enemies with would be nice as well.

-Flairon: Please give it 1.4 flail mechanics. It could use a buff to bubble speed and lifespan, allowing more of them to reach and hit an enemy before they expire.

-North Pole: Hurt hard by a mechanic that reduces snowflake damage the more Snowflakes there are. Unneccesary considering there’s already a 180-snowflake cap. It should also despawn the oldest snowflake instead of newest when reaching this point, if possible.

-Christmas Tree Sword: Ultimately trying to fill the same nichr as North Pole, and although it’s slightly better, it’s still not good. Following a proper North Pole buff, it could have the projectiles linger in air for longer, making it less reliable against crowds but easier to kite enemies into the ornaments.

Many other weapons like Horseman’s Blade, Keybrand and Paladin’s Hammer could simply see to use a basic damage buff.
 
I was playing just now and had another idea, a very simple one that makes a lot of sense; Give the Reindeer Bells mount infinite flight time and no altitude dropping i.e. make it just like the Witch's Broom.

The Witch's Broom already has infinite flight, it's only three blocks tall meaning you can use regular doors with it, and it's easier to obtain than both the UFO and Reindeer Bells, so this would just be a nice little buff that doesn't have an effect on balance.
 
Part of the issue at this stage is that Terra Blade is genuinely overpowered
The problem is that people suggest directly nerfing Terra Blade's stats when it's only whip interactions that make it especially overpowered. Simply remove Terrawhip and Terra Blade will be fairly balanced again without needing further nerfs. The Terra Beam isn't that great of a projectile compared to actual Ranged and Magic weapons, it pulls off less single target DPS than Stake Launcher in practice while having way less pierce. It's "Good" at most and far from being overpowered.

As for the blade itself, people use Moon events as examples when not only is it just one pair or events and they ignore the rest of the game, but it has more to do with the moon events themselves being designed to favor and reward close range & facetanking. Not only do the minibosses drop a crap ton of hearts everytime you kill one, but Pumpkings have particularly low contact damage (112 on Master). Terra Blade just happens to be really good in one part of the game in particular because of how it's designed, not because Terra Blade itself is so disgustingly OP that it performs like that everywhere Post-Plantera in general. Terrawhip most likely being gone soon is one hell of a nerf to Terra Blade's close-range DPS already, additionally if there's no more Terrawhip then a Terra Blade user loses the one reason to do Pumpkin Moon anyway (Dark Harvest). To even imagine approaching Terrawhip DPS you'd need to invest heavily into Scale Mail & gauntlet accessories, sacrificing a ton of survivability in the process.

Just remove Terrawhip and Terra Blade won't remotely need direct nerfs after this. If anything, it'll be closer to struggling than dominating outside of moon events relative to some other options that aren't OP either.
 
Not sure if this is the sort of thing you're after, but...
  • Make Angler earring equipable in vanity slots (it is an earring after all)
  • Right-click removal or table-top items optional (for adventure maps)
  • Somehow make luck status viewable (cell phone?)
  • Place potions on plates
  • World globes change all biomes based on tree line, not just forest
  • Music boxes wired at the bottom don't show notes
  • Attach signs & item frames to beams, as with torches and switches
  • Gravity potion/globe + fairy boots = vines
  • Landmines and rockets 1/3 destroy cracked bricks, as grenades do
  • Set throne as spawn point
  • Face banners left/right based on player direction, as with chairs etc.
Thanks.
 
The problem is that people suggest directly nerfing Terra Blade's stats when it's only whip interactions that make it especially overpowered. Simply remove Terrawhip and Terra Blade will be fairly balanced again without needing further nerfs. The Terra Beam isn't that great of a projectile compared to actual Ranged and Magic weapons, it pulls off less single target DPS than Stake Launcher in practice while having way less pierce. It's "Good" at most and far from being overpowered.

As for the blade itself, people use Moon events as examples when not only is it just one pair or events and they ignore the rest of the game, but it has more to do with the moon events themselves being designed to favor and reward close range & facetanking. Not only do the minibosses drop a crap ton of hearts everytime you kill one, but Pumpkings have particularly low contact damage (112 on Master). Terra Blade just happens to be really good in one part of the game in particular because of how it's designed, not because Terra Blade itself is so disgustingly OP that it performs like that everywhere Post-Plantera in general. Terrawhip most likely being gone soon is one hell of a nerf to Terra Blade's close-range DPS already, additionally if there's no more Terrawhip then a Terra Blade user loses the one reason to do Pumpkin Moon anyway (Dark Harvest). To even imagine approaching Terrawhip DPS you'd need to invest heavily into Scale Mail & gauntlet accessories, sacrificing a ton of survivability in the process.

Just remove Terrawhip and Terra Blade won't remotely need direct nerfs after this. If anything, it'll be closer to struggling than dominating outside of moon events relative to some other options that aren't OP either.
Terrawhip?
 
-Flairon: Please give it 1.4 flail mechanics.
Okay, honestly? This.
There's a lot of items like the Golem Fist and Chain Knife that the game considers "flails", but I just call them "punchy launchers".
The Flairon is named like a flail, sprited like a flail... but it isn't an actual flail.
Flails are one of my favorite weapon types and I think having Flairon join its ranks (with the buffs the quoted user suggested) would make the subclass viable throughout the entire game.
Would be nice to see this treatment happen to the Anchor as well, but I won't ask for too much.
 
It's interesting seeing everyone's biases; I've seen people say that soaring insignia is essential and that Pumpkin Moon offers nothing for melee users.

I personally always uses Witch's broom in Expert/Master/MMFTW, and load up with OOA armor, papyrus scarab, necromantic scroll and xeno staff. I couldn't imagine sacrificing the extra DPS just for wings + soaring insignia, especially since you can dodge every endgame boss with just witch's broom. I think soaring insignia is balanced because of the huge opportunity cost. But I can see the perspective where it would be super-powered.

Gelatinous Pillion really is good; it's my main reason for fighting Queen Slime in most playthroughs. I could see it being toned down a little (especially horizontally like someone mentioned), but I hope it retains its usefulness in vertical movement since fishing for frog legs isn't as fun as fighting bosses.
 
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