Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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When I was playing with my friends, we did set our characters on mediumcore, thinking it would be fun to loose your items everytime you die. But we quickly realized, that mediumcore characters were not designed for multiplayer:

- Other players can pick up your loot easily, mixing theirs and yours items by accident
- If you don't pick up your items in the next few days, they might disappear magically because the limit of max items in the world has been exceeded and thus your items had been removed to make it possible to spawn other items
- If the host disconnects while your items are lying on the ground, then the items will disappear
(- Besides that, it's also annoying to sort your inventory & equip the right items everytime you die.)

Having players dropping a gift bag or having the gravestone acting like a chest which can be collected quickly by the player might fix things. If you die and get your stuff back, items marked as favorite should stay in the same slots as they were before. Also giving an NPC (Guide, Merchant, Nurse, ...) the ability to retrieve your items on death depending on the cost of your items might also be required, in case of if you die and if the world shuts down, making it impossible to retrieve your items.

Other notes:
- Items loose their favorite marking if you swap between armors/accessories/mounts/etc. It's sometimes pretty annoying since you need to swap between your main armor and e.g. fishing armor, and if you go to your chests to quick stack items, then you might loose your main armor because you moved it accidentally to the chest.
- Fishing appears to yield way too much money, I get gold coins from every chest I obtain, from the anglers quests, etc. which allows me to reach platinum coins pretty quickly even before Hardmode.
- It feels way too easy to missclick one of the slots in your inventory while having a stack of dynamite selected, leaving a hole in your building.
 
There are so many fallen stars, I can have max mana after just a few nights, both at start of a new master and a new expert playthrough.

I don't remember it was that easy to get your mana bar maxed before. Feels like the progression would feel more rewarding if it was more special.

The stars are useful for other purposes, but mana's so easy to upgrade if it's with such a disposable resource.
 
The whips and new summons are really awesome but the summoner class still gets a very raw deal (especially in pre hardmode) compared to what most of the other classes get to survive. I think the problem is that much of the summoner gear is locked behind bosses, events and rare drops (15% bestiary completion for the first whip is not as easy as it sounds especially on Master) .

Anyway, us summoners have learned to do things the hard way over the many years and we will continue to do so, so our happy little slimes can continue to feast on the moonlords carcass but it would be nice just once to get a bit of a break ya know? :guidesigh:

P.S Oh yeah, the requirement to get the Terraprisma?!? No words. :guideconfused:

P.P.S don't want to make it sound like I am complaining. Journeys end is more than I could of dreamt for!
 
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It would be nice if the minions don't automaticly attack the cultists at the dungeon. Also it would be cool if all classes had weapons like Zenith. (I apologize if this was already planned)
Also, if you look at platinum ore, Gold ore, clorophyte ore, these Need 100 to unlock duplication but if you use Ingots instead you Need more ore for all these Ingots instead of unlocking the ore.
 
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Flower Boots

While the Flare combo was arguably overpowered, in their current iteration, Flower Boots are of minimal use.

Even for decoration - in most of my builds, at least, I used flowers on maybe a dozen blocks total, and they would've spawned eventually, anyway. The new Lawn Mower provides another aesthetic option which also reduces enemy spawns. And we have the new seeds from the Dryad, so I really don't know if I'll ever use the Flower Boots again.

I can think of two options which would allow Flower Boots to spawn bait again without unbalancing fishing:

Quick and easy:
The boots generate flowers every tick. Change this to once per second or slower.

Maybe less quick and easy, but probably better:
The boots generate flowers while standing still. Change this so flowers only generate as the player moves off the block. This would also give Fairy Boots a reason to exist - I haven't tried them out, but from the tooltip, I don't understand why anyone would craft them.
Flower Boots could also stop working if the player is moving too fast, or if the player has any other boots equipped. Fairy Boots would remove that limitation.



Band of Starpower

Heroman3003 said:
Mostly this is referring to how plainly critical Band of Starpower in creation of mage accessories, while Panic Amulet is just... kind of only useful for melee, who probably have better defensive options later on. I know its possible to create corruption world and grab it from there, but I really don't like content that just doesn't have direct alternative or way to acquire it without worldhopping
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Leinfors said:
I'd be curious what sort of proposals you'd have for this conundrum. I will note that it is unlikely that I will be able to get new items added to the game entirely . . . I've been given permission to follow up on balance changes (with approval of my changes by Red and Cenx), but not necessarily new content additions.

With the quantity of gear existing as it does, what courses of action would you take?
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Move the Band of Starpower to a Sky crate / Floating Island chest, and move the Crimson Rod to a Blood Moon drop / fishing catch.

Lowers the loot pool by 1 for Shadow Orbs / Crimson Hearts and the evil crates, but makes two very useful items available in all worlds.
 
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Some things I've seen in my current playthrough:

* While Flails are much stronger than before, the "Spin attack" they have is really bad. The range is tiny, it deals very little knockback so it's terrible at keeping things away from you, and the DPS is really low (it's weaker than the ranged thing, that's the opposite of how things should work). I noticed while trying Ball O' Hurt on EoW, that even if it makes me literally immune to the Vile Spit, the DPS is so bad that I had to use the thrown one to not get killed by the body. It really should not deal half as much damage as the thrown thing.

* Beekeeper has been gutted. The loss of autoswing hurt it a ton and the lowered stats pour salt in that wound. It was generally considered to be the worst Queen Bee drop and the only notable thing about it was not being good yet usable for WoF melee, so I don't understand why it got nerfed this much.

* Titan Glove buff is just too late in the game to be impactful. In hardmode most Melee weapons already have autoswing by default, and those that do not don't really benefit that much from it (such as Spears, Paladin's Hammer and North Pole). I can only see this being impactful with the Beam Sword, Obsidian Swordfish, Breaker Blade and Chloro Claymore; and that's just 4 weapons and they are all outclassed by other things in their tier (which already autoswing). It would make much more sense if it were moved to the Feral Claws instead, since there are a lot of mediocre melee pHM weapons that would love the autoswing (Blade of Grass, Beekeeper after the nerf, Night's Edge, Dark Lance, Star Fury, etc).

* In 1.3, the Dart Rifle and Pistol were either incredibly strong enemy killers when used with Crystal Darts; an ammo type that bounces everywhere, pierces and has this pseudo-homing effect, and incredibly strong boss killers when used with Cursed and especially Ichor Darts. In 1.4 the Gun+Dart got an 18% damage up. Why.

* I have no idea why Chik got nerfed when every other HM yoyo that is arguably easier to get got a big buff to damage.

Now, as for untouched things that I feel should be buffed/nerfed:

* The Mace's upgrade is a ripoff of Torches. The chance of inflicting On Fire! seems to be small and it doesn't even last long.

* Mana Flower. You know, the mage accessory that is outclassed by Middle Clicking for Quick Mana. 1.4 gave it 3 new upgrades, one that doesn't really help with anything and I doubt will ever get made over alternatives (the Celestial Magnet one), one that is interesting but will most likely not get used for the Mana Flower effect (the Star Cloak one), and the one we can make with the Putrid Scent which is pretty much useless outside of multiplayer. Arcane Flower should really carry over Putrid Scent's DPS bonuses.

* Night's Edge. Funny, but this was outclassed by Muramasa in 1.3 since that has autoswing. And now Muramasa has been buffed, its rival the Breaker Blade was made way more useful in early Hardmode, and poor Night's Edge got nothing. First of all this needs autoswing desperately, and raising its base damage to 50 like we saw in that Journey Mode teaser sounds reasonable enough; maybe it could let it kill WoF.

* Razorblade Typhoon: Today I will trivialize the Pillars and every other enemy-related encounter by just holding M1. I think the easiest nerf to this thing would be to reduce its lifespan to 2 or 2.5 seconds, since with 6 seconds this thing just encourages braindead spamming.

* Thorn Chakram and Flamarang. To be fair all pre-Hardmode boomerangs are bad, but one can make the argument that the Enchanted and Ice Boomerangs are decent enough to use in caves in Pre-EoC. These two have no excuse at all. Possessed Hatchet treatment when

* Obsidian Horseshoe

* Honey Balloon. Well, every single Honey Comb tinker, but this one stands out specifically, because when you make this you are giving up the massive mobility buff granted by a Double Jump Balloon just to return 20 damage(at most) when you get hit. The easiest buff idea I've seen is to make the Honey Comb grant the Honey buff for 30 seconds when you get hit. Even if that's still outclassed by a Honey Bucket, it's a step in the right direction and it also affects all of the Honey Comb's tinkers that barely get anything from it.

* Panic Necklace and Bee Cloak. In Master Mode I get one or two-shotted. Dealing 3 damage + 30 if a star decides to hit, or 25% movement speed for 5 seconds is not worth one of my slots.

* Cursed Flames ammo: The Ichor ammo has more extraUpdates, a much better debuff and more base damage on the bullet. Cursed ammo has 1 more base damage on the arrow. There seems to be a disparity here.

* Onyx Blaster: This thing does not have a single bad matchup, is only slightly weaker than the Megashark and it can be obtained in your third day in Hardmode. One of the biggest nerf targets right now.

* Adamantite armor: Outclassed by all 3 of the alternative ore armors since their set bonuses are worth much more than just secondary stats. The set bonus needs to be buffed, and it would be nice to see an actually impactful one for rangers. In my mod it increases ammo damage by 25%, that's not so big that it could be overpowered and it fits the theme of the 1.1 ores focusing on stats.

* Frost Armor: Just a set of Mythril armor trying to convince you it's worth a bit more. Compared to Adamantite I guess it does have a bit more defense at the cost of DPS for a Ranger, but for Melee there is 0 reason to craft this.

* Sleepy Octopod. Yeah, this is gonna need way more than increasing that slam damage. It takes a while to slam, it covers a super small area horizontally, only ever works properly when on the ground and the hitbox while "charging" deals very little damage. This could legit be moved to the Dark Mage in pre-Hardmode, it's that bad that even in Pre-Hardmode it wouldn't be that good.

* Terraspark Boots: I guess it was cool to see a pair of Fire-Ice Boots that I bet no one ever thought about before. If these are just Lightning Boots with 2 situational potion effects on it I don't see why I'd bother looking for it, however.

* The second Lava Waders upgrade: This is probably on me but I used my first Lava Waders on this instead of Terraspark and even had it equipped against the Wall of Flesh because I didn't realize the fire trail doesn't actually deal damage. I guess turning it into a combat item is a bit too out there, so I'll just ask for the tooltip to be a bit less misleading since nothing tells you the fire is just a cosmetic effect.
 
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I've actually started playing 3 different worlds when I saw you'd be doing this @Leinfors

- Regular playthrough
- Mastermode playthrough
- Multiplayer playthrough

As of now, I'm taking my time and am still in Pre-Hardmode in each. But there's been some common themes in each that pertain to my playthroughs.

Firstly, I agree with whoever was saying that the cost of Pre-Hardmode armors might just be too high. Progressing through the armors a tier at a time for me is ideal, but I often find myself skipping them (if possible) out of need. In Mastermode, I carefully but quickly attempt to rush Gold/Platinum for the DEF. In multiplayer, it becomes the most tedious thing to attempt to gather all the materials so we (there's only 2 of us) can both have full sets. So we end up rushing weapons instead to kill EoC and EoW as quickly as possible for the Shadow set (or Crimson counterpart). In regular mode, between building on your own, worrying about events, and exploring/mining by yourself -- attempting to tier up becomes a chore you just don't seem to have time for; so I skip to Gold/Plat by just exploring deeper and only focusing on that ore. Add in weapons/tools to the tiering up process and you make the problem worse. I think this was fine in much earlier versions of Terraria where the availability of ore, the cost, and the tiering mattered more because there wasn't as much gameplay beyond tiering itself. I don't have issues tiering to Copper/Tin or Iron/Lead. But Silver/Tungsten and Gold/Platinum are atrocious. Especially in Multiplayer. I'd look at the cost of their tier as a whole, not just the armors.

Secondly, I thought this would be a good time to test out how great Fishing is to tier up with as an alternative to mining in relation to everything that's going on around the player. I saw in another thread a dev or mod arguing that the option to tier up through Fishing is a competitive way to progress without the tedium of mining. And I can safely say now... it's not. At least in Pre-Hardmode where Fishing strength is low, Angler quests can be difficult to survive or even get to, and Crate potions are rare or non-existent. Even after a few full day's of fishing, I don't think I even got 20% of what I might have gotten had I just gone mining (which as previously stated is it's own form of tedium). You just have to be lucky enough to get crates and then be lucky enough that the crate you did fish up has the ore from the tier you need which gets less likely as you tier up. It was an interesting problem to encounter, but the lack of crates has always been my experience anyways -- I assume because treasure is tied to the crates. The treasures are nice, and if you luck out with some of the accessories I can see that as a form of tiering up. I don't necessarily think crates themselves need a bump, but their ability to drop ore and the quantity at which they do definitely does. Honestly, you could double the ore/bar rates and I'd still be skeptical as to whether it'd be enough. Or maybe pieces of the ore-armors can just be flat out added to the treasure pool. Maybe the rods themselves need a good bump to their fishing strength. IDK. Oh, right, and its especially NOT helpful when a crate drops the alternative ore/bar to what you need. REALLY slows down the ability to tier up. Nice way to get those alt ores, but incredibly detrimental if you're using it as a way to "mine".

Thirdly, Stars do seem too plentiful at first. Getting max Mana is no issue in a few nights even in Mastermode or Multiplayer. So maybe that Pre-Hardmode fall rate needs to be looked at. However, I do think their fall rate should remain the same as it is now post-evil biome boss or post-Skeletron. Because at that point you're not using the Stars for Mana, you're using them for Ammo and it can be VERY tedious to acquire enough to justify using a Star Cannon when your access to "Chance Not To Consume Ammo" is so limited. Its too bad you can't introduce anything new, because another solution might be to have a very early Fallen Star tier to offset the ease in which to get full mana. An early decision would have been fun; do I make this magic robe and weapon out of Fallen Stars? Bottle Them? Or use them for max Mana? I also think its these kinds of decisions that make game-play for higher tiers more appealing and make players want to skip the Pre-Hardmode ore armors that much more.

Lastly, for now, buff Shackle? With all the additional enemies, events, and the introduction of Mastermode... there doesn't seem to be anything introduced in Pre-Hardmode that helps with survival at all. I can understand this not being the case in Mastermode for the difficulty, but there are new, dangerous elements introduced across the board. Bloodmoon and Underground Desert come to mind very quickly. I actually feel like most accessories that provide defense could use a small buff, but Shackle stands out to me as one that could use a heavy buff. As it is right now, 1 DEF is perceptively useless throughout the game. And the Shackle doesn't carry over its defensive stats when upgraded. I feel it could provide 3-4 DEF and still be balanced (even if you get another +4 through Warding). I know this is a massive bump and even outdoes some of the other defensive accessories on defense alone. But because all it has is defense, I think that can be better reflected while also not being game-breaking. At the same time, I think it also makes Shackle a competitive option for accessory slots in Pre-Hardmode. If such a bump needs to have some sort of consequence, perhaps its drop rate can be lowered slightly.

I'll have more to write about for Pre-Hardmode soon as I experience and/or test things.
 
Can you buff the drop rate of items dropped by blood moon fishing enemies?

Every time I got a blood moon I put all my focus into fishing and killing these things, after a total of about 5 blood moons I only got 3 fishing poles a blood rain bow, two hamaxes and a magic weapon. It wouldn't be so bad if that blood moon summon wasn't so rare... I've literally never gotten one, the only reason I know the bloody tear exist is because I killed so many blood moon enemies. My character had some pretty good fishing gear too, I had done so much fishing that I got the golden fishing rod in prehardmode, and I really REALLY wanted that vampire frog summon, but sadly didn't get it.

Make it so that when you kill one of the fished up enemies they're guaranteed to drop one of their weapons/tools, alongside the usual chum bait. Maybye also up the drop rate on the bloody tears.
 
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First of all, I would like to say I'm very happy with this update (some of my suggestions got in!), and I love the buffs you gave to mage especially. Here are the ideas I have:

Could you maybe give Meteor Shots local-immunity like you did with the poison staff? They currently are a complete waste of the meteorite required, especially considering only one major gun past the eater of worlds doesn’t fire quickly enough to get destroyed by the i-frames they create (the sniper rifle). Considering they only bounce OR pierce (similar to pre-rework chlorophyte arrows), I don't think local immunity would have any weird interactions. These things were "soft" nerfed by being moved later in progression, so I feel like they desperately need it as they already weren't exactly "good" before the update hit. I understand if doing this would require a number-nerf on them, but at least they'll be usable.

(I'm still in prehardmode in my playthrough so I might be wrong about this next one)
Also, accessories related to water breathing and mobility still don't have any real purpose... except going to that ocean tunnel to get more water breathing and water mobility accessories, which are now useless because you just looted the only area in the entire game that depended on you wearing them to explore. This is a very fleshed out portion of the game with very little reward, so maybe fix that? I guess we'll still have these items for adventure maps.

(again, I might be wrong about this next one)
I didn't see any information in the patch notes that stated that the second phase of the Martian Saucer was reworked, so that probably means that the hitbox is still the size of a demon eye... PLEASE make the hitbox on that thing actually make sense. It's incredibly annoying to fight.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity!
 
I think the penalties for incorrect torch use, and failure to utilise the happiness system, are redundant and only serve to alienate part of the player base. I understand wanting people to use the new mechanics, and I think the rewards for doing so are excellent books granted to those who are already inclined to build/ use aesthetically correct torches.
However, punishing players by making the game more tedious than it was in prior updates (by increasing time spent grinding for money, or lowering drop rates for incorrect torch use) is a bad idea.
Those on the margin, who are pushed to use the systems to avoid penalty will do so begrudgingly and dislike the features even more as a result. And those who like the rewards are using the systems anyway, so punishments do nothing for them either.
These negative consequences seem bizarre for a team who has, in prior updates, understood the balancing needed for new additions to be welcomed by the community (look at 1.2 ores, for instance- marginally better than the older counterparts so that players did not feel like new content made the game worse).
I understand the dev team obviously likes these mechanics, and I truly think they do have a place in terraria- just not in the form of punishing players who play in ways that differs from the idealised way the devs wish.
 
Lucasness said:
I think the penalties for incorrect torch use, and failure to utilise the happiness system, are redundant and only serve to alienate part of the player base.
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I agree that torch affecting luck shouldn't be a thing and it is an unneeded mechanic that just makes the luck mechanic slightly less pleasant, especially when I wan't to use different torches for building. I do like everything else that affects luck though. Speaking of luck I think there should be more of an obvious indicator that the luck mechanic exists since I am now in hardmode and I just now noticed it was a thing. Whether telling the player that luck exists through the guide, item tooltips, or other means is up to you. About happiness, I think it shouldn't be as punishing regarding shop prices. This is especially the case where the percent range scaling of unhappy NPC shop prices (a maximum of a 150% increase to shop prices) is 2x the amount as percent range of happy NPC shop scaling (which is a maximum of a 75% decrease to shop prices). I think it is very punishing to players who just choose not to deal with making houses around the world and play the game as simple as possible. I do like the idea behind the happiness system though and I am having fun building in other places.
 
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JaceDaDorito said:
Whether telling the player that luck exists through the guide, item tooltips, or other means is up to you. About happiness, I think it shouldn't be as punishing regarding shop prices. This is especially the case where the percent range scaling of unhappy NPC shop prices (a maximum of a 150% increase to shop prices) is 2x the amount as percent range of happy NPC shop scaling (which is a maximum of a 75% decrease to shop prices). I think it is very punishing to players who just choose not to deal with making houses around the world and play the game as simple as possible. I do like the idea behind the happiness system though and I am having fun building in other places.
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I'm really bothered by how the traveling merchant seems to be effected by the happiness system, He never seems to be happy, raising the prices of items, and it's not like I can move him to another biome where he might be happier, since its the traveling merchant.
 
Lucasness said:
penalties for incorrect torch use
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Wait, what's "incorrect torch use" anyway - [reads wiki]

...

...

...are you kidding me?

I don't even know where to begin. I remember thinking "huh, I thought that drop was more common" a few times, and now I find out that the reason I was having such bad luck is because there's a new hidden mechanic that's never referenced in-game until hardmode?

I am so not going to say all the things I want to say right now, except: please reconsider everything about this.
 
I bet once 1.4.0.3 or 1.4.1 releases...… this be updated..... but I got something......

please don't rush updates devs…….. ;/ (that was why we had the cant move bug)….. take your time :guidegrin:
 
Marney said:
Wait, what's "incorrect torch use" anyway - [reads wiki]

...

...

...are you kidding me?

I don't even know where to begin. I remember thinking "huh, I thought that drop was more common" a few times, and now I find out that the reason I was having such bad luck is because there's a new hidden mechanic that's never referenced in-game until hardmode?

I am so not going to say all the things I want to say right now, except: please reconsider everything about this.
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Thirding this. I don't know whose idea it was to implement this, but drop rates on rare items are already bad enough as it is. NO, please.

EDIT: Tone and verbage
 
I have found that the 4-Barreled Shotgun makes the Boomstick kinda moot, as the former is just as powerful as the HM Shotgun apart from having more spread, while, for another 35 Gold, you can keep the Minishark to use against enemies that are further away, so the Boomstick is now in an awkward position, apart from being an alternative to the Musket/Undertaker
 
Hey so, I'd like to give some thoughts on luck too.
(Apologies if I come off as a little overly forceful or angry with all this, I'm really just trying to get my point across.)
Now look - I like the general idea behind luck as a hidden mechanic clued into by several different things. I like how it can benefit you as the player in multiple ways by increasing drop chances, increasing rare enemy spawns, or even giving a better chance at getting rarer items from merchants. (I was going to mention damage increases too, but it doesn't seem like it does terribly much there in theory.)
Now I know that this has been brought up here several times already, but I really, really do not like the idea of torch luck. For one, absolutely nothing clues into the inclusion of such a thing. At the very least, Ladybugs have a bestiary entry which hints at their luck relevance and Gnomes have a similar thing with their tooltip. Biome torches have no such thing. Also, I don't like this idea of downright punishing players for decorating their bases with specific torches of all things, especially by including regular torches in the calculation. Now, I would not mind if the torches only gave a buff when placed in their corresponding biome, but reducing luck for placing them in the incorrect biome feels downright cruel.
On to the larger issue of regular gel+wood torches giving downsides when placed in certain biomes, giving a luck subtraction of 2 when placed in snow biomes: Why? I do not see why anyone would think that this was a good idea. 99% of the time, you are using normal torches. Punishing players for playing the game like this without even telling them is not a good thing, period. I personally feel that the absolute, rock-bottom least you could do is to remove normal torches from luck calculation entirely. However, I think that the negative effects of torch luck should be completely omitted, in a perfect world.
A smaller thing I'd like to say as well, perhaps give the Guide a quick tidbit on the idea of luck and how it works? Keep it cryptic if you must, But letting players know a little earlier on that this mechanic exists would be an absolute godsend. The current method of letting people know about this more at the start of hardmode with the Wizard feels a tad cruel.

I love this update so, so much, but this mechanic feels under-thought in certain areas, and I want it to be the absolute best it can possibly be. I hope this helps at least a bit.
 
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