Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Pssst . . . this is already a thing under certain conditions ;)
u wot? Such a tease. :p
Hopefully the condition isn't self-requiring, like being in that biome.

What about mimics? I suppose they could naturally spawn, but it would be nice to have a dedicated key item you could make for the opposite evil.
I actually totally forgot they could even naturally spawn until I came across one. It's been far too long...
 
u wot? Such a tease. :p
Hopefully the condition isn't self-requiring, like being in that biome.

What about mimics? I suppose they could naturally spawn, but it would be nice to have a dedicated key item you could make for the opposite evil.
I actually totally forgot they could even naturally spawn until I came across one. It's been far too long...

The dryad sells them in the graveyard environment.
 
I feel the meteors arrive a bit late now, or alternatively some of its crafts are underpowered given that it comes later.

Playing expert mode from scratch, have a crimson world. After defeating brain of chtulu, I was mining hellstone and obsidion down below, when a meteor landed.

So I got meteor bars for the first time while already having hellstone bars.

The space gun is alright, but the meteorite hamaxe is worse than the hellstone hamaxe, and since you get them at around the same time, what's the point of the meteorite one now?
 
I just recently start playing a new character as summoner. I think pre-HM whips are not much useful in term of keeping me safe from the incoming enemies. They have too less knockback for a close range weapon, especially in early pre-HM that there is not much mobility. Pickaxe is even more useful in that aspect.

When I replace zoologist whip with jungle whip, it does better job as a melee weapon but still weak as a tools to support summoner. I can kill enemies faster only because the whip itself deal more damage, while my Finch barely did anything. As a summoner using a weapon that improve the performance of minion, the minion should have a main role, not the other way around. I think decrease the whip damage and increase knockback and tag damage should make the whip more fit as a summoner's main weapon.

I haven't try to mainly use whip on bosses yet, but until I can get bee armor, I don't think I can solely rely on a single minion and a whip to take down boss.
 
The slime staff and the leather whip are enough to kill Normal mode Eye of Cthulhu. I know that doesn't make it any easier to get the Slime staff, though.
 
Imagine doing a master mode playthrough as a summoner. It'll be so hard to beat EoC with a finch. Slime staff will be so hard to grind out.
 
Well, I had some extra time today, so I went back to the very beginning, opened up a google document, and wrote down everything that stood out to me/caught my attention. Pretty substantial list!

It will take me a long time to work through all of the groundwork, iterations and testing on the many dozens of things I logged, but I think I've got a pretty good starting point!
 
So I just recently found out that (If the wiki is correct that is) that golden lady bugs provide twice the luck bonus than regular ones. This doesn't quite sit well with me as I feel like keeping some lady bugs in your inventory, regularly releasing one, having to physically touch it, and then catching it with a bug net to be arbitrary and weird enough as it is.
 
Super happy about this update, little things wanna point out though and maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't.

Firstly, I think placeables like doors count as items for the sake of this thread/category and while it probably wasn't considered relevant, I think maybe the QOL change to allow auto-open/close of doors and tall gates when walked through might be something that would fit there.
On that same note, I think it would be great to have a similar quality of life balancing given to trap doors so that they can be auto-opened/closed when 'Player Characters' attempts to jump up or move down through them, and despite 1.4 being intended as the final content update, I think we'd be missing out if there wasn't a wider length alternative to trap-door similarly to how doors have the tall gate alternative since a two block wide vertical tunnel can be a tad difficult to maneuver into from moving horizontally, which is why I always opt for 3 block wide instead if possible. (Obviously themed trap doors and tall gates etc. would be great too, similar to what is available for doors, but that's not my main intention here, just a little side note.)
I know most people will be thinking a change like that just turns trap doors into another platform, and while I am looking for the functionality to be similar, it's more so about it functioning like actuated blocks in a floor/ceiling that enemies, npcs, projectiles etc. aren't going to just climb, jump, fly or fall through like platforms allow. A lot of players including me will often use platforms as a way to jump between floors, to be honest I hardly even turn them into stairs except for npcs or aesthetics, it even lets some light through, but having those platforms in place of an elevator means that enemies who get inside especially during a bloodmoon will just jump up through the platforms because everything is able to pass through a platform. What I propose allows Trap Doors to remain more like a proper floor or ceiling piece but extends their usability and gives players the option to have a more accurate/realistic roof crawlspace or basement which is also better secured, also giving early game players the option to create underground bunkers or *cough* vaults *cough* without as much of the struggle getting out and keeping them separate enough to want to use both Trap Doors like a manhole cover or bunker hatch and platforms as the ladder you use to climb up to it, without taking the extra time to rightclick open and closed your trap door if you want to get out quickly and safely without letting enemies in. Just as much reason and use as regular doors got.

Secondly, I think it would make sense for a lot of rarer item drop rates to be increased further in master mode than they are in expert mode, eg. normal = 0.1% drop chance, expert = 0.25% drop chance, master = 0.5% drop chance. While having new potential expert-only and master-only drops is certainly what I look forward to most, I think it's definitely a fair and also commonly used balance to make playing at an increased difficulty more rewarding and worthwhile, as well as cutting down on the time it takes slogging through enemy farming or world-gen exploring to find certain items that we might want or find helpful in progressing past certain point in our play-through, which on master mode takes long enough already due to enemies having increased health and damage. I mean I've died more than I ever have before in the new master difficulty which I would say likely makes manually farming less viable and afk farming even less so for a number of people, at least especially earlier on when players don't have the gear to be able to handle it. Furthermore, there are some pretty decent things in the game like the Slime Staff, which could prove especially helpful early on, especially as an upgrade to the finch staff (beginning to hate having a birds nest on my head) and especially since summoners hardly have any gear for their class at the start of the game even with 1.4; there's no summoner armor, Finch Staff, Slime Staff and a few whips are all I've been made aware of as of yet for early stuff. Even the rod of discord later down the line, which a lot of players might be really unlucky and unable to find potentially for the whole play-through, at least not without getting lucky or farming for it for a long time. Lemme tell you, my first Rod of Discord in a normal mode world for my first main character took me roughly 3 days of afk farming for most of those 3 days off and on and I wasn't happy about it.
(For the record, it took creating 15 large worlds in 1.4.0.3 to find 1 pyramid in one world, and 2 pyramids in a different world, just so I could get the items I wanted from them)

Lastly, I know this is more pre-1.4, but player Sensors could do with having an option for each of the 4 directions to expand usability and furthermore I think there should be Monster Sensors that also allow for the 4 directions as this can allow players to better organize their wiring contraptions and make use of the space available to them without having to regress back to pressure plates which basically anyone can accidentally trigger or switches which you have to manually find, get to and turn on/off when it suits, removing the possibility for enemies to trigger anything themselves. For example having a player sensor in the roof/ceiling that is pointed down to trigger something as you move upward or having a player sensor in a wall to the left or right so that as you run at a wall it can trigger something, perhaps you even just want a wall or trap to only turn on or off when an enemy is in range of it. While these scenarios can be worked around with the current existing upward facing player sensors, however there will be occasions where a lot of our space is already in use by other items or sensors or wiring, or where placing sensors might mess with the aesthetics and so we'd rather place them somewhere else and basically you either have to opt to not use them at all, or reconfigure your whole setup, potentially re-build your whole base or what have you, just so that your sensor fit's into it both spatially as well as aesthetically.
 
u wot? Such a tease. :p
Hopefully the condition isn't self-requiring, like being in that biome.

What about mimics? I suppose they could naturally spawn, but it would be nice to have a dedicated key item you could make for the opposite evil.
I actually totally forgot they could even naturally spawn until I came across one. It's been far too long...
You can get opposite evil seeds by buying them from the dryad in a gravestone biome.
 
Firstly, I think placeables like doors count as items for the sake of this thread/category and while it probably wasn't considered relevant, I think maybe the QOL change to allow auto-open/close of doors and tall gates when walked through might be something that would fit there.
On this topic, it'd be nice to change how the Smart Door function works a bit. It'd be nice if you had to basically touch the door while holding a movement key in its direction in order for it to open. Currently, it's way too easy to accidentally open a door just by ending up sort of close to it, letting a bunch of zombies in, but going and switching the option on/off all the time is annoying.

Also on the topic of doors, can Goblins please just burst open doors instead of breaking them entirely? It causes NPC housing assignments to break and replacing doors after each Goblin invasion is annoying. On the subject of balance too, during Blood Moons, zombies break into NPC doors far too quickly, there's basically no way of stopping your NPCs from getting massacred unless you build trenches or block doors with, well, blocks.

Also it would be great if NPCs tried to close all their nearby doors when night starts. Or just improving NPC AI in general. I know they aren't "items" per say but I still find NPC AI to be unbalanced in the sense that it's bloody difficult to keep them alive and they still have such terrible pathfinding. During the day often several of my NPCs will walk to the exact same spot in the corner and get essentially stuck there since I assume they're trying to path past the wall. They always stop in that same spot, they never try to go back or anything until night. It feels so robotic... and also makes accessing the NPC behind the other NPC a pain.
 
On this topic, it'd be nice to change how the Smart Door function works a bit. It'd be nice if you had to basically touch the door while holding a movement key in its direction in order for it to open. Currently, it's way too easy to accidentally open a door just by ending up sort of close to it, letting a bunch of zombies in, but going and switching the option on/off all the time is annoying.

Also on the topic of doors, can Goblins please just burst open doors instead of breaking them entirely? It causes NPC housing assignments to break and replacing doors after each Goblin invasion is annoying. On the subject of balance too, during Blood Moons, zombies break into NPC doors far too quickly, there's basically no way of stopping your NPCs from getting massacred unless you build trenches or block doors with, well, blocks.

Also it would be great if NPCs tried to close all their nearby doors when night starts. Or just improving NPC AI in general. I know they aren't "items" per say but I still find NPC AI to be unbalanced in the sense that it's bloody difficult to keep them alive and they still have such terrible pathfinding. During the day often several of my NPCs will walk to the exact same spot in the corner and get essentially stuck there since I assume they're trying to path past the wall. They always stop in that same spot, they never try to go back or anything until night. It feels so robotic... and also makes accessing the NPC behind the other NPC a pain.
consider using actuators.
 
I like the idea being brought up of making the Slime staff a drop from King Slime. Maybe as an upgrade for it, we could have something similar for the Queen Slime too? Like the Slimy Scepter which would summon a Slime Prince/Princess to aid you in battle. Yeah, this is probably a pipe dream but it seemed like a fun idea.
 
honestly the nurse price is soooo incredibly expensive specially in master mode where enemies do a LOT of damage and you need to heal in order to survive otherwise you're pretty much dead really often. I think the price should be lowered at least in half, bc you end up with no money by spending it on the goblin and the nurse.
And that thing above about the insane amount of mineral bars to craft an armor is true i usually skip from cactus to meteorite or get defense by items like hats or rain coats lmao
(also sorry for my bad english)
 
Here are some of my thoughts on mostly Pre-hardmode changes in 1.4.

Finch Staff: This is meant to be the weapon the summoners get at the beginning of the games, and so knowing that it's not always available leaves summoners with no begining gear; let's be honest - who's going to find a slime staff that early on? The knockback also makes it annoying for those who do get it, since the finch keeps knocking enemies onto you.

Lack of Early-game Summoner Armour: Until Bee armour, summoners also find themselves in a bit of a situation - They have little defense and fairly bad weapons. I am a huge fan of the idea of utilizing the rain armour and/or the Obsidian outlaw armour as Summoners armours. They have no function in progression anyway, so why not give them one?

Meteor Gear: As many have said, it feels like the meteor gear in general is just not useful at that point in the game anymore after being moved up. Personally, I like how you can't mine it with bombs anymore, but locking it behind the EoW is a bit far. And this was only done because the meteor amour and gun combo was too powerful.
I think you should make meteors spawn like they did in 1.3, and instead remove the meteor armour's ability with the meteor gun. I always it was a bit starnge for a set bonus anyway, as no other armour in the game specifically buffs a single weapon.
Maybe the new bonus could be something like 5% extra crit with any magic gun, or something like that.

Nights Edge: Lets be honest, the nights edge has been left behind. For all those materials and time spent collecting the swords and fusing them, you just get a standard melee sword with no special abilities, which is outclassed almost immediately by the Breaker Blade. Just giving it a simple projectile would help spark interest in it again.

I think making it do extra damage during nighttime would make players have to switch between the nights edge and breaker blade during hardmode and think about their loadout more wisely
 
I think the not melee post-moonlord weapons should be buffed to make them do more damage than Zenith or add weapons for every class doing that or nerf Zenith because this weapon creates a huge power gap between the classes. Now a class wich is supposed to do the least damage as a trade-off for the highest defense in the game has also the highest damage. Also it doesn't use mana or ammo, wich were in the other classes kind of a trade-off for higher damage.

(Sorry if my English is bad)
 
Meteor Gear: As many have said, it feels like the meteor gear in general is just not useful at that point in the game anymore after being moved up. Personally, I like how you can't mine it with bombs anymore, but locking it behind the EoW is a bit far. And this was only done because the meteor amour and gun combo was too powerful.
I think you should make meteors spawn like they did in 1.3, and instead remove the meteor armour's ability with the meteor gun. I always it was a bit starnge for a set bonus anyway, as no other armour in the game specifically buffs a single weapon.
Maybe the new bonus could be something like 5% extra crit with any magic gun, or something like that.
Why not maybe refigure meteor armor into early game summoning armor? Maybe give it a set bonus meteor head that defends you or something. Or make meteor armor somehow power up all meteor based equipment.
 
For the love of all that is holy, could you please reduce the spawn rate for the Antlion eggs and Rolling Cacti in the underground desert, and maybe reduce the amount of damage from the cacti? It was already dangerous pre-hardmode as it was between all the antlions, but at least manageable once you've gotten to, say, silver armor. Now it's such a death trap that my end-game character in full Solar Flare armor died in a pre-hardmode world from a rolling cactus on a minecart track! I'll look on the screen and see something like 6-8 of each if not more!

Secondly, you probably didn't need to nerf the sturdy fossil gear with how hazardous it is in the underground desert. Anyone that manages to get a decent supply of sturdy fossils early enough to be an upgrade deserve it.

EDIT: My apologies on venting regarding the spawn rate stuff, only realized that this was specifically for items after I'd posted. Still stands regarding the fossil armor though.

Though, since this is item balancing, I feel like there should be a tinker between the Greedy Ring and Treasure Magnet, in fact the latter seems almost like an extra drop planned for the pirate invasion that was relocated.
 
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Why not maybe refigure meteor armor into early game summoning armor? Maybe give it a set bonus meteor head that defends you or something. Or make meteor armor somehow power up all meteor based equipment.

Or remove the part with locking it behind EoW and make a second variant with summoner effects.
 
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