Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Shimmer is a massive QoL improvement, and greatly improves the game. I know that you want it to be a secret thing, but it's so useful that I actually see that as a waste. I brought over a shimmer bucket in one of my new worlds, and it was great to have. Slimes or crates giving you a bunch of platinum, but not enough to be useful, when you have gold as your ore? Throw them in and suddenly it was a boon rather than a shrug. Want ore staves or hooks while they're still useful but don't want to AFK for gemcorns to grow (and they'll still give you zero gems and maybe another gemcorn, you really should buff the drop rates)? Gem critters help, and so do gem conversions even if they're only downgrades, since having 8 amethysts is better than having five of every gem. Not to mention that the ore conversion lets you actually get the metals that you need for the staff, since you have a 99% chance of getting the ores that don't correspond to the gem you actually found enough of. Five pairs of mining pants but not a single shirt? Shimmer fixes that. Skeleton merchant's alternative look that is slightly less camouflaged in all the darkness? Shimmer. What I'm saying is, shimmer fixes a lot of early game problems, to the point of probably being the most useful when you aren't likely to have it.

It feels like some of the shimmer transmutations were done specifically to fix early game problems, instead of for example making the sapphire staff use either silver or tungsten, but the ones that need it the most won't even know that shimmer exists and if they do they won't know how to take advantage of it without using the wiki since all the recipes are secret. And so is the fact that shimmer transmutations are a thing at all, for that matter - if I hadn't heard of it I would have assumed it was some kind of new hazard after my first dip. Joe Newbie will still be scratching his head wondering where this gold bar thing is so that he can make that ruby staff and finally be a wizard.

Actually, looking at the shimmer list as I was typing this, I realized that it doesn't swap between two ores of the same tier, but rather downgrades the ore which in some cases keeps it in the same tier. That's a bit disappointing. You know what else is disappointing? That the shimmered princess is the second best NPC, but the regular princess is the best NPC so I can't have both. Too bad.

Anyway, to get back on track, shimmer is a good idea and I think it would be even better if it wasn't a secret. When I was reading the early hotfix patch notes and saw that you repeatedly kept nerfing transmutations, I was worried that you were going to nerf it into uselessness, but that seems to have stopped. Thanks for that. Game developers have a tendency to knee jerk nerf things into the ground when they realize that they're actually useful, so I'm happy to see that zombie arm into whoopie cushion isn't the only remaining transmutation.
 
Please let the Steampunker sell Solutions that you already have in your inventory; it is a mess to move her to, let's say Hallow to buy Blue Solution, and then moving her again to another house in the Forest for Green Solution. It also allows to buy Purple and Red Solutions without having to wait (or summon) a Blood Moon, but you obviously have to buy some before, so it isn't broken.
 
I think the health generation rate bonus sitting on chair should be nerfed.with the new vital crystal,the life generation rate is high,which makes kill the boss sitting on chair easily. I think this is too brainless.What about changing the rate from 1.5× to 1.2×?
 
I think the health generation rate bonus sitting on chair should be nerfed.with the new vital crystal,the life generation rate is high,which makes kill the boss sitting on chair easily. I think this is too brainless.What about changing the rate from 1.5× to 1.2×?

I think having the player be pushed off the chair/bed when damaged would be a better solution for that particularly.
 
I think the health generation rate bonus sitting on chair should be nerfed.with the new vital crystal,the life generation rate is high,which makes kill the boss sitting on chair easily. I think this is too brainless.What about changing the rate from 1.5× to 1.2×?
Are you saying sitting on the Terra Toilet is overpowered and that you're not joking about it?

I think having the player be pushed off the chair/bed when damaged would be a better solution for that particularly.
The good news for chairs not being overpowered is that already happens. The bad news is Knockback Immunity stops you from being pushed off. Feels odd that getting attacked doesn't force you out of bed as long as you're using a shield as a pillow though. Seems like you'd at least stand up if an enemy tried to burn you alive.
 
I think the health generation rate bonus sitting on chair should be nerfed.with the new vital crystal,the life generation rate is high,which makes kill the boss sitting on chair easily. I think this is too brainless.What about changing the rate from 1.5× to 1.2×?

Whatever the sitting bonus is, Vital Crystal's bonus is not likely to be impactful enough to be making a difference in this scenario. Its contribution to what sitting can do is only is barely significant, and unlikely to matter here.

It might be that sitting is too strong, but it would have nothing to do with Vital Crystal at least.
 
As a final playthrough, I started a Master mode ranger playthrough (normal seed).

Not much to report, since not much has changed. The Musket change was the biggest difference; before, I'd just go get the musket and kill every boss with it in hardmode except the wall of flesh. But now its not autofire, I found it easier to do damage with the Boomstick and later Pew-Matic Horn. So this went from 'dominating all of pre-hard mode' to 'a great pre-hardmode weapon that gets replaced after a boss or two'.

I didn't notice the spiky ball update until just now, but it makes sense; I scattered a bunch before the Eater of Worlds, and they did enough damage to split it in half, so that's nice.

Star Cannon getting Unreal is nice, I reforged it and gathered all the stars from old worlds I had already beat, it was fun vs wall of flesh.

I had a weird thing with the pew-matic horn. I had it reforged to unreal, but it looked like it was doing single-digit damage sometimes to Angry Bones while the flinx staff was attacking. Is there any way that those two can interfere with each other? I might have just been missing. I didn't have that problem with other combos of ranged weapons and summons.

Edit: The delay on the explosive staff super nerfs it outside of old one's army. It used to be great to spam to just wreck mobs, but now it's more reasonable. Kind of sad, but it's a reasonable nerf.
 
I had a weird thing with the pew-matic horn. I had it reforged to unreal, but it looked like it was doing single-digit damage sometimes to Angry Bones while the flinx staff was attacking. Is there any way that those two can interfere with each other? I might have just been missing. I didn't have that problem with other combos of ranged weapons and summons.
Thing with the Pew-Matic Horn is, its damage is semi-randomized depending on which projectile it shoots out. Gems and stones will deal more damage, while herbs will deal much less. That might explain the occasional low damage. Angry Bones can be pretty tanky which may heighten this effect and make it easier to notice.
 
Thing with the Pew-Matic Horn is, its damage is semi-randomized depending on which projectile it shoots out. Gems and stones will deal more damage, while herbs will deal much less. That might explain the occasional low damage. Angry Bones can be pretty tanky which may heighten this effect and make it easier to notice.
Oh, that makes sense then, thanks! I didn't notice it all the time, so a random effect would make sense.
 
Currently it is possible to farm good modifiers on crafted gear for free by repeatedly de-crafting through shimmer and then re-craft. I think that should not be possible.
 
Currently it is possible to farm good modifiers on crafted gear for free by repeatedly de-crafting through shimmer and then re-craft. I think that should not be possible.
on page 206 of this thread Leinfors already confirm re-logic does not consider this an issue and said to enjoy our prefixes. My guess is due to the time consuming nature of this way of reforging they don't really see it being a huge issue.
 
on page 206 of this thread Leinfors already confirm re-logic does not consider this an issue and said to enjoy our prefixes. My guess is due to the time consuming nature of this way of reforging they don't really see it being a huge issue.
I mostly just decraft my Zenith or c4aft it back together whenever I want to
 
Continuing master mode ranger run:

Dart rifle is still extremely strong and versatile; Skeletron Prime spawned before I had finished getting good armor or fighting queen slime, and I was able to beat it pretty easy with the rifle and a gravitation potion (vs 5 tries vs twins later with other stuff). Honestly, even if you nerfed its damage to 0 and just kept the cursed flames carpet effect it would still be super buff (crystal darts are great underground, too).

Tried the palladium and adamantite repeaters. Palladium compared well vs shotgun and Adamantite repeater was pretty good comparable to the onyx blaster; the repeaters had autofire and better accuracy long-range. I never used them much before so can't compare changes but seem on-par with what else is available.

Got the super star shooter, unreal, to try out the changes, and gathered stars from other worlds. It wasn't as absolutely dominating as I thought it would be; I even died vs destroyer before I realized it only works good there if it's straight-on. Did great vs OOA and pirates but used up so many stars that even hundreds of hours of casual star gathering was used up pretty quickly. But I guess that's kind of the point?

Had frost armor and grabbed ghastly glaive and boy that worked great for exploration, killing (and locating) enemies long-distance or doing extra damage when only one enemy was there.

Tried the new flamethrower and absolutely love it. Cool sprite, and the damage is so consistent, it just makes the bar drain down. Very good vs Queen slime, and is risky but fun vs twins.

It's pretty close to Phantom Phoenix, though, which was already overpowered and got buffed this patch (via On Fire!->Hellfire). Phantom phoenix is basically like a chlorophyte shotbow plus a slow super star shooter; in previous runs I've used it unironically vs the pillars. With the endless quiver, it's already close to flamethrower vs target dummy (I know, doesn't account for piercing) and with cursed arrows, probably better (and that's not using magic quiver or archery potion). Flamethrower is easier to aim and feels stronger vs bosses but is so risky, so I used phantom phoenix vs twins.

I almost always get the OOA tier 2 armor as soon as I can, because it's usually comparable to hallowed or adamantite armor and adds the boost to summon damage. But the Huntress armor only has +20%/+10% increases, while all the Monk has +20/+15 and apprentice has +20/+20. Huntress armor is distinctly worse than frost armor (+26/+11, buffed in 1.4.1) Hallowed armor (+22/+15), titanium armor (+23/+13), adamantite (+22/+17) and even mythril (+19/+17). I don't think it's too much power creep to raise it to +20/+15 to match the other tavernkeep armors. Frost armor might be a little too high, honestly, although it is really hard to get (to me, at least).

Exploding bullets are even better now, thanks. It was fun to use the onyx blaster while on a minecart with exploding bullets and just see master mode enemies rocket into space.
 
on page 206 of this thread Leinfors already confirm re-logic does not consider this an issue and said to enjoy our prefixes. My guess is due to the time consuming nature of this way of reforging they don't really see it being a huge issue.
Yeah and money really isn’t hard to get in this game anyway.
 
I just noticed that you can not get both the Corrupt Grass Wall and the Crimson Grass Wall in the same world (on a normal seed). Maybe you should be able to convert between the two with either the Chlorophyte Extractinator or Shimmer. Also it would be nice if you could throw NPC vanity items into Shimmer to get vanity items which look like the Shimmered NPCs.
 
The forbidden armor is a little embarrassing. It's summon buff can be used by magic class,while the magic buff is hard to use as a summoner.Considering its difficulty to make and its poor set bonus, it's not worthy for summon class to make it. I think the whip buff should be added to set bonus(30%length and 15%speed is great),Which will only be used by summon class,rather than it is just an auxiliary for magic class.
 
The forbidden armor is a little embarrassing. It's summon buff can be used by magic class,while the magic buff is hard to use as a summoner.Considering its difficulty to make and its poor set bonus, it's not worthy for summon class to make it. I think the whip buff should be added to set bonus(30%length and 15%speed is great),Which will only be used by summon class,rather than it is just an auxiliary for magic class.
I suppose the forbidden armor's focus was to use magic alongside minions, so it does it's job well.

Unless Forbidden Armor was changed in 1.4.4, I do think this falls out of the scope of 1.4.4 balance changes
 
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