Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

[PeacefulPotato]

I would suggest that if you throw a stack of 100 hellfire arrows into the shimmer in hardmode, you get 1 hellstone bar and 100 shimmer arrows. This means you don't get hellstone too early, and the difficulty of getting shimmer arrows does not change as the hellstone is already optional. At the moment the flask of fire is the only consumable item in the game that is non-renewable, and this way the flask of fire will become renewable.
This might already be in the game so if so, I apologize.

 

[Nekohime]

I feel the molten charm is a bit underwelming. It has the same abilities as the Magma Skull now but you cannot use it to make the Obsidian Skull Rose.

 

[NeoPhantom]

I feel the molten charm is a bit underwelming. It has the same abilities as the Magma Skull now but you cannot use it to make the Obsidian Skull Rose.

You cannot use the Molten Skull to make the Lava Waders though.

 

[Nekohime]

You cannot use the Molten Skull to make the Lava Waders though.

You need the obsidian rose anyways, so it is best to craft the molten skull rose until you find water walking boots.

 

[CellarDoor96]

I agree with those saying that the change to the Lucky Horseshoe and Fledgling Wings wasn't really necessary. However I do like having the Celestial Magnet in sky chests, so I'd propose the following: move the Lucky Horseshoe back to underground chests, but keep Fledgling Wings as a secondary item and just increase its chances to something like 1/10.

Also, not balance related exactly but I greatly prefer the name "Fiery Greatsword" to "Volcano". If you really want its name to reflect the new eruption mechanic, you could at least call it "Volcanic Greatsword" or something. "Volcano" is just kind of bland.

 

[Flubman]

I tested ankh shield does give chilled immunity on normal and journey, it could be possible it’s a bug on pc as I tested this on mobile.

I tested on PC, and it works there too.

 

[TheWith3r129]

I'm not sure where you are drawing this conclusion from. Ultimately, Blade of Grass's DPS went UP, not down. Yes, its direct damage per hit was reduced, but it hits 50% more often ,now has boosted Poison DoT and the leaf projectile is added DPS as well that stacks with the primary sword's damage.

From my playthrough, its just really underwhelming. it really cannot hit hard at all, the enemies in its stage of the game are just so much tougher than it can reliably handle when the starfury and fiery greatsword/volcano are also available and have much better output at an easier and slightly riskier cost respectively. like i said, the jungle is unforgiving if youre anywhere below molten, and even then the poison and all make it a challenge. the blade of grass doesnt really feel like an appropriate reward for that, it just feels so weak to even the goblins and the dungeon. i keep going back to the starfury cus again, its just better. i wanna note again as well that despite being pretty unambiguously harder to get, the enchanted sword is pretty much a much worse version of the starfury, and desperately needs something going for it. its way too slow and doesnt have the usefulness of the star.

This is downright not the case. Terra blade now is a significantly better weapon at true melee than it ever was due to blade local iframes. True melee dps for base new terra blade is at 590. True melee dps for old terra blade at base is at 500 (the beam does not hit as the blade inflicts iframes). Both of these scale linearly.

The terra beam itself on the other hand, that is the ranged aspect of the blade, got an overall nerf.

To put it one way:-
The terra beam that we currently have as a beam scales linearly with melee speed with a cap of 4 usetime (15 hits per second). The old terra blade on the other hand has a beam that scales linearly with melee speed with a cap of 14 (slightly over 4 hits per second), and with a base usetime of 26
The old terra beam also has a base damage of 172 which is 202.4% as much as the base terra blade. Going by this, the old terra beam will be better than new terra beam until the new terra beam has a usetime of 6. However, this also requires some expensive speccing which gives the old terra beam an edge anyways. I'll spare myself from typing a big bunch of maths here and just say that accounting for viable loadouts, the new terra beam is only better than the old terra beam when it has 4 accessory slots worth of optimisation into it. The true melee version of the new terra blade however, is always better.

the beam does 50% more dmg than the blade, which is around the blade damage pre-1.4.4. the one in 1.4.1 did 50% more too, 172 is NOT 202% of the base damage of 115, thats 150%. how did you get 202%? on top of the much increased firing speed, just encourages you to use it more ranged because the melee damage adds very little compared to the risk of getting close to a hard-hitting enemy. Like before, it simply isnt really worth the slight damage boost. not to mention all the testing done shows the new terra blade having dramatically lower dps in EVERY aspect. youd think the combined damage of the blade and beam would increase the damage beyond the previous one but it simply does not. in fact, the terra blade doesnt seem to have suffered from the i-frames that much because the old one got a dps of around 1000 for the combined blade and projectile, not 500. I tested destroyer, the old terra blade got DRAMATICALLY higher true melee dps, up to the tens of thousands, the new one never even hit 10k. the twins were fairly similar between 1.4.3 and 1.4.4 but the 1.4.3 version got a higher average and max for true melee, reaching around 3k, the new one never hitting even 2.5k, with the new projectile size providing a slightly better average for ranged dps of around 1k whereas the smaller one hit harder but less accurately for slightly lower dps on average. duke fishron was much more even and while the new terra blade FELT better, the dps just wasnt up to par with the old one by a few hundred dps. skeletron prime initially felt like a win for the new one finally but no, the peak dps of the old one was still just barely outclassed. Tested a few others, similar results, tested the nebula pillar and a little vortex, the new projectile is better at juggling enemies with no kb resistance which is cool but not too big a deal and the old one still overall hits harder. the pierce damage fall off really bottlenecks your cc performance and potential damage output and the dramatically lower base damage combined with that makes it overall a nerf. The true melee simply cannot match any aspect of the previous version, its just overall a little worse because some scenarios had no significant change while others were drastically worse. the true melee isnt good enough, they way overcorrected the damage. like i said before, make the base damage the same as 1.4.1-3 and nerf the projectile to do equal or slightly lesser damage than the blade, see how that feels. the current one is all around just not as good

The new Terra Blade, however, wants you to actually melee but yet gives you some range on the projectile and a buttload of Crowd Control. The Old Terra Blade had some crowd control, but it was mediocre. The beam projectiles, while strong, only pierced twice and a horde of beefy enemies, say Pumpkin or Frost Moon, it was essentially useless. It could still work on Solar Eclipse, sure, but anything beyond that, it's just starting to fall behind

no, see above. the crowd control is totally bottlenecked by damage fall off and can do fine as crowd control but the true melee doesnt hold up, especially on multi-target scenarios like the destroyer and big groups. the old one had the pierce limit sure but it had consistent and reliable damage across the board. the new one does not and it suffers because of it. the old one held up well enough to the pillars, and while the new one does too, it just doesnt have the damage to keep up with the old one. if you can aim your beams with the old one and/or get in close it will outshine the new one by miles

 

[Leinfors]

From my playthrough, its just really underwhelming. it really cannot hit hard at all, the enemies in its stage of the game are just so much tougher than it can reliably handle when the starfury and fiery greatsword/volcano are also available and have much better output at an easier and slightly riskier cost respectively. like i said, the jungle is unforgiving if youre anywhere below molten, and even then the poison and all make it a challenge. the blade of grass doesnt really feel like an appropriate reward for that, it just feels so weak to even the goblins and the dungeon. i keep going back to the starfury cus again, its just better. i wanna note again as well that despite being pretty unambiguously harder to get, the enchanted sword is pretty much a much worse version of the starfury, and desperately needs something going for it. its way too slow and doesnt have the usefulness of the star.

Keep in mind that Blade of Grass can be obtained fairly easily immediately upon starting the game, it has to straddle that balance between not being tier-locked and also feeling Jungle appropriate. However, I don't agree with your assessments of it feeling weak here.

Volcano is not a suitable comparison, because Blade of Grass can be obtained much easier pre-Evil Boss.

It may be that Starfury is too strong, and that is something I have been discussing and looking into.

 

[prosans]

yes in pvp people with it literally cleans the world of me
and the new terra blade seems like it's perfectly good to me

 

[Shyguymask]

The old Terra Blade was simply ridiculous. I almost never used it up-close, it was basically a gun without bullets, or a magic wand without using MP. Sure, you could ginsu anything standing in front of you, but why would you? That invited extra risk for very little benefit unless it was an enemy you knew you could kept knocked back to melee range but not getting hit range.

but why would you?

To deal some of the highest DPS in 1.4.3 to the point of outclassing point-blank Solar Eruption and Starlight among other weapons, thanks to TerraWhip (Terra Blade + Dark Harvest + Durendal), which has been patched out this update for a very good reason. You could simply facetank most threats through sheer damage output and Terra Blade was pretty much the single best performing weapon on Moon events after post-Moon lord drops and maybe a few post-cultist weapons. I don't know how close-range Terra blade performs in 1.4.4, but to say that close-range Terra Blade in 1.4.3 had "very little benefits" is simply false.

 

[TheWith3r129]

Keep in mind that Blade of Grass can be obtained fairly easily immediately upon starting the game, it has to straddle that balance between not being tier-locked and also feeling Jungle appropriate. However, I don't agree with your assessments of it feeling weak here.

Volcano is not a suitable comparison, because Blade of Grass can be obtained much easier pre-Evil Boss.

It may be that Starfury is too strong, and that is something I have been discussing and looking into.

Alright, fair enough i guess. What about the enchanted sword and terra blade? Like i said, enchanted sword feels pretty lacking, not really worth it for how hard to find it can be and how much luck is involved. Its also technically pre-boss as well but never feels like it very often with how much luck is involved in finding it, and as i noted from my testing, the terra blade overall feels weird and in many cases just worse. The damage reduction was way too much of an overcorrection, making it not as viable for single-target and true melee and the damage fall off is too harsh to the point of hurting crowd control potential. The only times it really got better dps was just it hitting more little irrelevant stuff like hungries or plantera’s little tentacle guys, and otherwise it was not much different, which is fine, or worse, which is not fine. Again, i really think its base damage should be brought back up and the beam toned down so that the beam alone doesnt do a whole lot but going in close where youre more at risk greatly increases damage output.

 

[Xylia]

To deal some of the highest DPS in 1.4.3 to the point of outclassing point-blank Solar Eruption and Starlight among other weapons, thanks to TerraWhip (Terra Blade + Dark Harvest + Durendal), which has been patched out this update for a very good reason. You could simply facetank most threats through sheer damage output and Terra Blade was pretty much the single best performing weapon on Moon events after post-Moon lord drops and maybe a few post-cultist weapons. I don't know how close-range Terra blade performs in 1.4.4, but to say that close-range Terra Blade in 1.4.3 had "very little benefits" is simply false.

That sounds a lot more like an exploit than an actual intended game mechanic, hence its nerfing.

I don't count exploits and/or things that appear to be unintended behavior. /shrug

When I said that there was "little benefit" to doing that, I was speaking of normal use of the weapon, IE, using the weapon by itself, for its apparent intended purpose.

Assuming you weren't pulling any kind of cheese like switching between weapons rapidly to stack debuffs, there wasn't really a whole lot of gain with just meleeing with the sword itself.

As an aside, this is among the reasons why I was against Expert, and even Master (or now Legendary) Modes to begin with:

The game just doesn't really appear to be designed for that sort of hardcore content, and stuff seems to be mostly balanced around casual play in Classic Mode. When you start stacking on difficulty, players will look for ways to break that difficulty by finding cheese and then once you've found cheese like this, then that becomes the "de facto" way to do it, and soon you'll have players speaking out about how "OP" something is because they found some cheese combo.

Then it's going to need nerfed, but the difficulty remains and it's just a never-ending cycle of players saying they want difficulty, but yet trying to find anything they can to cheese said difficulty when it just starts getting ridiculous to where such cheese becomes necessary for most players to beat bosses under the ridiculous difficulty.

Never liked that whole meta myself to be honest. Shoulda just stayed with Classic. /shrug

I say the same thing about Savage, Ultimates, Mythic, etc in MMOs... you take the regular content and try to make it hardcore, it becomes more difficult to balance and players are more pressured to find cheese and then the developers have to rush in and try to fix the cheese to maintain their vision of how difficult it should become.

An overwhelming majority of the time, balance problems in MMOs come from the highest difficulty modes and the "elite" players that play that content. You very rarely end up with problems coming from the casual realm.

 

[NeoPhantom]

I’m guessing the reason that the Axe of Regrowth doesnt replant gem trees is because the acorns it plants are created regardless of whether or not you have acorns in your inventory. (Either that or because having it plant different things depending on the tree type it harvested is too annoying to code) (if the later is true, its a shame as the possibility of replanting herb seeds harvested is even more unlikely)

 

[Baconfry]

Hmm, I wanna talk about the North Pole for a moment.

The rework from 1.4.4 gave it a bit more consistent DPS with its projectiles, but I still find it to be a little underwhelming compared to other weapons.
Potentially, yes, it can deal more DPS than any other Frost Moon weapon if every single projectile hits its target. But in practice that seldom happens without a big-brain arena setup.

I ran some tests against Golem and compared the kill times between weapons. I used the Beetle Scale Mail set with Fire Gauntlet and Celestial Shell for damage; the rest were mobility accessories (maybe that's my problem lol). Fights were done on Master Mode and out in the open, with a Sharpening Station active:
North Pole: 1 minute 55 seconds.
Christmas Tree Sword: 1 minute 25 seconds.
Horseman's Blade: 55 seconds.
Terra Blade: 42 seconds (obvious lol but had to for reference).

Golem is one of the most immobile Hardmode bosses, so these weapons particularly shine against him. Or, at least North Pole should, but landing every snowflake projectile would be virtually impossible unless you were invincible and standing still. I was aiming up the entire fight, so while the sheer number of projectiles certainly helped, many of them missed due to the nature of the fight. Given his aforementioned slowness, other faster Hardmode battles would be much more painful with the North Pole.

I'm not particularly asking for a massive buff per se, because I know that one wrong step can make the North Pole super busted. I have some slight suggestions though, if one were to tweak it:
-Make all the projectiles inflict Frostbite, to make the North Pole better at melting crowds.
-Increase the velocity of the spear projectile (perhaps have it launch faster/further depending on player speed, to incentivize movement?).
-Increase the damage of the spear projectile (1.5x to 2x base damage to make up for its short lifespan, and to incentivize actually aiming with it instead of always aiming upwards).
-Give the spear projectile a higher crit chance, for the same reason as above.
-Give the spear projectile and/or snowflakes a tiny AoE explosion upon dissipation (think pre-buff Spirit Flame explosion size, which should give more leniency to projectiles missing; hopefully won't hurt CPU performance).
-Due to how large the spear itself is, it's harder for it to hit twice at close range (upon thrust and return), as the double-hit range is further from the player than other spears. I'd suggest possibly making the projectile spawn a bit closer to the player (and giving it static i-frames to avoid interfering with the spearhead, if it doesn't already). This would kinda take away the identity of the projectile launching at the apex of the spear's reach, but would make the North Pole far better at close quarters combat, as has been done with various swords in 1.4.4.

Even one of these changes should suffice nicely.
The North Pole is the last and strongest 'proper' spear in the game, so I think it deserves some time to shine like other weapons of its tier have.

Forgive my rant and keep up the great work everyone.

I've been testing North Pole as well, and I think I found its niche, which I'm going to call "vertical facetank". It basically gives you obscene levels of DPS in a large vertical area, but the drawback is that you can only dodge by moving up and down. It is actually extremely good against specific bosses when using a full Warding loadout. (You can't be invincible, but you can get pretty damn close!)

0:24 Golem in Master mode using this loadout. In comparison, Starlight is a 0:26 kill using the same equipment.

0:44 Empress of Light in Master mode, far sloppier kill but it's kind of amazing what you can get away with when you have 140+ defense. She's only in the snow curtain half the time but when those snowflakes are hitting, she gets ripped up like tissue paper.

Tried it against Duke Fishron as well, my conclusion was "don't even bother".

Moon Lord? If you set it up before he spawns, you can bring the top eye down to 50% before the first deathray comes out, which was worth it, I think. Second deathray comes out at 40 seconds, and North Pole can finish it off then. And after taking down the other eyes, I was able to get this far with the North Pole before dying (granted I played pretty sloppily, so there is a limit to how much defense stacking will let you get away with).

(in retrospect i should have kept the squire's plating)

In conclusion, North Pole is kind of when you use it the traditional way, but does really well against specific bosses during specific phases using specific loadouts. I do wish it were less specific, but I don't think I'd agree with a generalized buff.

 

[T4GVN]

I love the new true melee feel! Its what the game always needed. I'm really stoked about this update. One suggestion: I think Brand of the Inferno needs some love. Missing out on the hitboxes that weapons like Excalibur and Night's Edge get really hurts. Maybe reduce the damage and give it sweeping hitboxes like other swords get?

 

[Shyguymask]

That sounds a lot more like an exploit than an actual intended game mechanic, hence its nerfing.

Doesn't remove the fact that it was decidedly very powerful and the meta for Melee, though.

When I said that there was "little benefit" to doing that, I was speaking of normal use of the weapon, IE, using the weapon by itself, for its apparent intended purpose.

Even without Whips, 1.4.3 Terra Blade was still very strong at close-range mainly when used with Scale mail. And although I disagreed with them, some have even argued that Whips were unnecessary to maximize 1.4.3 Terra Blade's potential since an offensive setup with Scale Mail already reached what seemed to be the "softcap" for swing speed so to speak. The biggest advantage Whip stacking provided to Terra Blade was that you could invest in Beetle shell & more defensive accessories and still reach extremely fast swing speed.

 

[scientistB]

I've been testing North Pole as well, and I think I found its niche, which I'm going to call "vertical facetank". It basically gives you obscene levels of DPS in a large vertical area, but the drawback is that you can only dodge by moving up and down. It is actually extremely good against specific bosses when using a full Warding loadout. (You can't be invincible, but you can get pretty damn close!)

View attachment 385790
0:24 Golem in Master mode using this loadout. In comparison, Starlight is a 0:26 kill using the same equipment.
View attachment 385791
0:44 Empress of Light in Master mode, far sloppier kill but it's kind of amazing what you can get away with when you have 140+ defense. She's only in the snow curtain half the time but when those snowflakes are hitting, she gets ripped up like tissue paper.

Tried it against Duke Fishron as well, my conclusion was "don't even bother".

Moon Lord? If you set it up before he spawns, you can bring the top eye down to 50% before the first deathray comes out, which was worth it, I think. Second deathray comes out at 40 seconds, and North Pole can finish it off then. And after taking down the other eyes, I was able to get this far with the North Pole before dying (granted I played pretty sloppily, so there is a limit to how much defense stacking will let you get away with).
View attachment 385793
(in retrospect i should have kept the squire's plating)

In conclusion, North Pole is kind of when you use it the traditional way, but does really well against specific bosses during specific phases using specific loadouts. I do wish it were less specific, but I don't think I'd agree with a generalized buff.

These setups are niche indeed but they look incredibly fun regardless. It definitely can be done and achieve hilarious results, but yeah, other than that, it's not exactly something one would use in a general setting.
Appreciate all the experimenting though

 

[Flor3nce2456]

Dear sweet Redigit, can we please PLEASE reduce the NPC Overcrowding search radius? Like, down to 90 or even 60? The intention I believe was to discourage building box hotels, right? I feel like having no more than 3 other NPCs in a 60 block radius should really be sufficient to discourage the compacted boxes.
Just look at this, this is a 60 tile radius circle centered on the Guide. I should totally be able to build a second building on the left there with maybe 2 more NPCs in it without them becoming unhappy or losing happiness over overcrowding.

A bit more freedom in how the Happiness mechanic works would go a long way to making building towns at least a mildly simpler affair.
So far in my new playthrough, I have not encountered any other significant balance issues. Very much looking forward to seeing what the later game is like now.

 

[Flubman]

I could have missed it, but I couldn't find the Ankh Shield change in the patch notes.

 

[Cazmatism]

the beam does 50% more dmg than the blade, which is around the blade damage pre-1.4.4. the one in 1.4.1 did 50% more too, 172 is NOT 202% of the base damage of 115

172 is 202% the base damage of current terra blade, that is 85

on top of the much increased firing speed, just encourages you to use it more ranged because the melee damage adds very little compared to the risk of getting close to a hard-hitting enemy.

Like before, it simply isnt really worth the slight damage boost. not to mention all the testing done shows the new terra blade having dramatically lower dps in EVERY aspect. youd think the combined damage of the blade and beam would increase the damage beyond the previous one but it simply does not. in fact, the terra blade doesnt seem to have suffered from the i-frames that much because the old one got a dps of around 1000 for the combined blade and projectile, not 500. I tested destroyer, the old terra blade got DRAMATICALLY higher true melee dps, up to the tens of thousands, the new one never even hit 10k. the twins were fairly similar between 1.4.3 and 1.4.4 but the 1.4.3 version got a higher average and max for true melee, reaching around 3k, the new one never hitting even 2.5k, with the new projectile size providing a slightly better average for ranged dps of around 1k whereas the smaller one hit harder but less accurately for slightly lower dps on average. duke fishron was much more even and while the new terra blade FELT better, the dps just wasnt up to par with the old one by a few hundred dps. skeletron prime initially felt like a win for the new one finally but no, the peak dps of the old one was still just barely outclassed. Tested a few others, similar results, tested the nebula pillar and a little vortex, the new projectile is better at juggling enemies with no kb resistance which is cool but not too big a deal and the old one still overall hits harder. the pierce damage fall off really bottlenecks your cc performance and potential damage output and the dramatically lower base damage combined with that makes it overall a nerf. The true melee simply cannot match any aspect of the previous version, its just overall a little worse because some scenarios had no significant change while others were drastically worse. the true melee isnt good enough, they way overcorrected the damage. like i said before, make the base damage the same as 1.4.1-3 and nerf the projectile to do equal or slightly lesser damage than the blade, see how that feels. the current one is all around just not as good

I very clearly showed you how the new terra blade got downright buffed in true melee. You are either talking about a whipstacking setup or your testing has been flawed. If these readings have been taken from dps meter, then I'm extremely confident on the latter. Your tests that you show here are

no, see above. the crowd control is totally bottlenecked by damage fall off and can do fine as crowd control but the true melee doesnt hold up, especially on multi-target scenarios like the destroyer and big groups. the old one had the pierce limit sure but it had consistent and reliable damage across the board. the new one does not and it suffers because of it

That's exactly what I said

it just doesnt have the damage to keep up with the old one. if you can aim your beams with the old one and/or get in close it will outshine the new one by miles

The new beam can have actual pillar cc thanks to the size of its terra wave, the old one will not often hit over one enemy outside of solar pillar, and stardust pillar if you have cells stacked up,