Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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I had a big point regarding balance, but I have forgotten.

Either way, I still have some small things I would like to give feedback on;

Sandstorms in a bottle in particular (but also flying carpets) seem like they should be obtainable from desert/mirage crates, or pyramids should be a little more common, I feel. The fact that the bundle of balloons is already very unlikely to be acquired without fishing or world-hopping makes it stand out as a pretty odd item. That you can't create it in most worlds feels pretty bad to me. Most people don't seem to want to go out of their way in creating a new world to get certain gear, especially for one that is this rare and only relevant pretty early, when "excavating" a world with a character is still pretty laborious. Fishing is pretty doable early hardmode, and maybe at least the chance could be nice to some players.
In addition, maybe the Pharoah's set could have a seperate chance to appear in pyramids along with a guaranteed sandstorm in a bottle or Flying carpet? Most people seem pretty bummed about the set (Though I personally don't really mind).
The coingun. I understand that it's supposed to be a rare weapon and that you seldom see it, and this may be due to personal experience, but I think it may be a bit too rare. The way it is now, if you were to only kill pirates each invasion, you would have a 1.5% chance of obtaining the coin gun each invasion. This chance it probably a little higher because of stray pirates at the end of the invasion, pirate captains and the flying Dutchman, but it still feels rarer than it should be. A little bump in its drop rate would seem appropriate for the item. Doubling the chance (Maybe excludively for expert (& master) mode) would increase it to around 3%~ per invasion, which seems a little more reasonable. Considering that most players don't fight the pirate invasion that often during a playthrough, it would still make it an exciting occurence for most players to get one, while also making the item more attainable for people that really want to get it. Considering the uniqueness of the weapon, I can see more people wanting to go for it. Its novelty makes it rarity slightly more frustrating than things like the Stellar Tune from the Empress of Light (which would have a higher drop rate per boss/event compared to the coin gun). In the end, however, I may have personal bias due to my own luck, as I have multiple Lucky Coins and no coin guns, while the coin gun is only supposed to drop half as often as the lucky coing.
The only biome spreader that you can't get in the world of the opposite world evil appears to be purple/red solution. Considering most of the "unobtainable" world evil items for any given world are in some way connected to the graveyard, it might be nice to add a way to get it there somehow. One way of doing this would be the Steampunker selling the solution of the opposite world evil in the graveyard (possibly only during a solar eclipse/blood moon, as the moment you would obtain it normally), or a crafting recipe for red solution <-> purple solution at ecto mist and, say, a bottle? Or maybe the Steampunk Boiler to keep up the connection with the Steampunker? I get that the opposite world evil should not be easy to spread, but considering that the Steampunker is already not the easiest NPC to get and that you have tons of money in hardmode for evil seeds, it would mostly be a quality of live change.
Bone serpent kites are fairly hard to obtain compared to the others, it seems. Although I've only tried to obtain one in hardmode, so I might be slightly biased. I understand that it's nice to have the drop rate the same for all kites, but considering that bone serpents spawn way less frequent than the others that drop it, it feels a little too rare compared to the other kites. Now, it's not so unique compared to the coin gun or the pyramid loot, so its difficulty in obtaining is not that bad, but it still feels a little rare than it should be.
Also, yes, this is pretty specific.
Maybe the only person that noticed/cared about this; Seahorses don't seem to spawn that often for me. I think people still consider water striders rarer, but I've been able to farm for golden water striders, but I have only caught two seahorses so far. I think it's a little difficult to get them to spawn reliably without killing the dolphins and sea turtles, since they can't be caught and take up "critter space" for the max number.
Golem is fine imo.

Thanks Leinfor and the rest of the team for the continued support! It's really awesome that there is another patch for this sort of top-notch quality :p

Rocketjay said:
Just use spoiler tags for your paragraphs to make it easier to read instead of posting multiple times.
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Also, thanks for the tip Rocketjay! It looks a lot better this way :pinky:
 
Clentaminator
It's the best purification tool hands down, but when purifying a corruption / crimson biome with the green solution, often times that biome spreads back in a few in-game days, it's crazy fast. ( Spreading the hallow instead fixes this issue, but often times i want a pure biome, not a hallow or evil biome )
It'd be great if the Clentaminator also slows down the spread again, but i believe that's out of scope for this thread. Instead just increase the range and width of the Clentaminator a bit more, so it purifys deeper and you have to re-purify it less often.

"Thrown Water" items - (Un)Holy Water, Blood Water
I think their use case isn't purifying or replacing a biome, but just spreading and creating their corresponding biome. I thought about mentioning them because i think they're underused, haven't seen anyone using them, maybe it's just because people forget about them. If you can quickly create a new biome through them, maybe more people use them. Just increasing their radius by 3-4 blocks would help.

Portal Gun
Why is it that when you already have a portal gun in your inventory and you open Moon Lords Treasure Bag, you won't get another one?

Reindeer Bells
I also think this item's underused. It's pretty difficult to get as well. It's roughly at the point when you can also farm for the UFO mount too. I suggest buffing it's flight time by a lot, or even give it infinite flight time for all the trouble it's worth.

Strange Brew
It's a unique item, but it's also barely used. I've also never seen any mage use this. I guess it's because people assume it replaces both mana potions and health potions, but then they realise they can't constantly replenish their mana with this due to potion sickness. But this item is more like a health potion with an added effect, it's not ment to replace your mana potions, i think. It restores a lot of mana, but the health is quite lacking.
I suggest moving this to Hardmode and increasing the health to 130 or something. Early HM even some non-mage users can buy it when they're missing 150 hp potions.
Another more interesting idea i had, was to change it completely. Keep it pre-hardmode, but instead of healing mana, it's only a health potion, that restores 150 hp over 30 seconds - 5hp per second. Not health regeneration exactly, since when you get hit you stop regenerating for a bit and you don't regenerate under damaging debuffs, but this ignores all that and just heals you constantly but slowly. It still gives you a 60 second potion sickness cooldown. The difference will be do you instantly healing yourself with 90/100 hp and surviving an incoming attack, or are you playing safe enough that you won't get hit as much so you can heal yourself even more.
 
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Now then, for some reactions!

The Star Breaker said:
I suggest moving this to Hardmode and increasing the health to 130 or something. Early HM even some non-mage users can buy it when they're missing 150 hp potions.
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I would personally be against this particular change. I have used strange brews sparingly, as I tend to use multiple weapons and not sticking to a class. Having an off-hand mage weapon can be pretty fun with Strange Brews. I do think the proposed change would make the item more accessible, but less interesting for a lot of players.
The Star Breaker said:
Keep it pre-hardmode, but instead of healing mana, it's only a health potion, that restores 150 hp for 30 seconds - 5hp per second.
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Honestly, this change is pretty interesting (though I assume you mean 150 health over 30 seconds). Balance might be pretty difficult considering the time allowed for the changes. But this would allow for more strategies. (Though it would really feel like a new item, and lose the old odd brew).

Flubman said:
Maybe increase Magma Stone's drop chance? I don't really see a point in it being so rare.
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Magma Stones do become less rare once in hardmode due to lava bats having a 2% drop rate compared to the 0.67% of hellbats. It used to only really be nessecary for the hardmode accessory of the fire gauntlet, though. If people would really like it for things such as the molten skull, it could be bumped up a little bit to give it more preHM accessibility, but I would be fine with it as an item that players find on occassion before Wall of Flesh and that is pretty attainable afterwards.

People seem pretty concerned about the difficulty of queen slime. I have gotten pretty adapt at fighting her, being able to defeat her before the mech bosses without much of an arena. I use a tactic where I don't run away from her much, but there is a lot of things going on in her fight, so it's pretty skill-intensive compared to a few later bosses, or it can feel this way at least.
scientistB said:
make Queen Slime a little more lenient; at the very least, lower her acceleration or flying speed, or cause her to slow down/stop midair when charging her projectile burst
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When tackling the queen slime, I found that one of the most difficult things was dodging her bouncy projectiles, as they tend to come back (though I think these would be less of a problem with an appropriate arena. (I wonder if honey slows them down?)). Still, it might help slowing these projectiles, giving slightly more time to dodge. Since they slow down during their bouncing around, it would also give a bit more time to process all the info during the fight? If I understand Terraria's physics correctly, this may also cause them to bounce less high and help in dodging when fighting on platforms above the ground.

Also, I saw something about the sell price of stained glass compared to gems (Dunno how to reply to a thing on another page in an edit, oops). A simple fix (in case you feel it needs to be fixed) would be to make the sell price around 20 copper per wall for all walls. This would make it slightly more profitable to sell walls than the amethysts themselves and make it more expensive as walls for all other gems. Considering that creating the walls still takes a bit of effort though (and that I always seem to be short on sand), I think that it doesn't have to be that bad. If this really is a far more general technique to make money than I am aware of, putting the sell price at 1 silver per wall would make most gems slightly less profitable than selling straight rubies. You can also figure it out per wall, of course, but I just wanted to propose an easy solution~
 
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Pirate Ship Mount should launch cannonballs at enemies in a similar blunt manner as the Toy Tank fires homing missiles.
 
As it stands, there's not that many reasons to craft an Obsidian Horseshoe. By the time most players get to mine obsidian, they'll likely have gotten Gravitation Potions or just built straight up to a floating island, where the Fledgling Wings pretty much invalidate the Lucky Horseshoe and one can just put the Obsidian Skull needed to craft a Horseshoe towards ultimately either an Ankh Shield or the Terraspark Boots. The Obsidian Shield, for instance inherits the defense boost of both the Cobalt Shield and the Obsidian Skull, while the Obsidian Horseshoe doesn't inherent the Skull's point of defense. I understand that the Obsidian Horseshoe is at an awkward tier and buffing it or adding it to some recipe could be difficult. Regardless, I think that one potential idea of a buff could be to let the Obsidian Horseshoe inherent the Obsidian Skull's defense point. It wouldn't be much of a buff, but it would help give the old Obsidian Horseshoe some use after, what, 1.1 came out years ago? Wow, I miss using the Obsidian Horseshoe.

scientistB said:
...Make Queen Slime a little more lenient; at the very least, lower her acceleration or flying speed, or cause her to slow down/stop midair when charging her projectile burst.
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Yeah, for a boss meant to be fought before the Mechanical Bosses, Queen Slime hits really hard and fast even with full Warding and Spider Armor. (Important Disclaimer: I play on Expert Mode only.) I definitely agree with making Queen Slime more lenient, since even with the Amphibian Boots (which themselves are apparently contentious for being too mobile) and decent dodging I had to run away from her a few times to heal. Lowering her acceleration or have her slow down while charging a projectile burst would help make the fight more manageable for the point she is in the game.
 
MrD108 said:
On the one hand, everyone complains that the items in Queen Slime are too strong for her level, and on the other hand, everyone complains that Queen Slime is too strong for her level.
Doesn't that balance out, giving us very valuable rewards for a very difficult challenge?
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Sounds exactly like Duke Fishron. To add to this, both Queen Slime and Duke Fishron are optional bosses that aren't required for progression. You can just skip them if you find them too hard, the only thing you miss out on is extremely good loot. It would be another thing if Queen is required to spawn the mech bosses or has material required for crafting the Drax.

Edit: If everyone wants to talk about difficulty spikes, Expert Skeletron is a helluva time.

Edit2: Now that I think about it, Slime staff definitely needs to be a Drop from King Slime. Queen Slime has one for her loot drops and it makes her ver worthwhile. King Slime is so easy to skip and most of his gear isn't good enough to justify beating him. Slime staff can also get a slight damage buff, I-frame fix, and AI fixes to go along with this.
 
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MrD108 said:
On the one hand, everyone complains that the items in Queen Slime are too strong for her level, and on the other hand, everyone complains that Queen Slime is too strong for her level.
Doesn't that balance out, giving us very valuable rewards for a very difficult challenge?
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I would agree, but if I'm not mistaken, Queenie was intended to be a beginning-hardmode boss. Duke is technically fightable at any time in hardmode too, but he wasn't intended to be fought early and his gear is tiered as such.
And if I'm wrong about Queenie's intended tier in the game, I'll concede.
 
Rocketjay said:
Edit: If everyone wants to talk about difficulty spikes, Expert Skeletron is a helluva time.
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Yea, he's pretty much a pre-hm superboss of sorts on expert mode, except you actually need to fight him to progress

scientistB said:
I would agree, but if I'm not mistaken, Queenie was intended to be a beginning-hardmode boss. Duke is technically fightable at any time in hardmode too, but he wasn't intended to be fought early and his gear is tiered as such.
And if I'm wrong about Queenie's intended tier in the game, I'll concede.
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No, queen slime is universally considered pre-mech, you have that right
 
I would also like to mention two interesting but too rare weapons. It's about Bloody Machete and Bladed Glove.
These are Halloween weapons, but instead of dropping from the Goodie Bag (same as Christmas items drop from Gifts), they are dropped directly by enemies during Halloween. The problem is that they have a strange drop requirement for "weak enemies", which only works on Classic mode. In Expert Mode, the number of enemies dropping these weapons is very limited, not to mention Hardmode. I'm not sure if these two weapons can be obtained generally in Master mode. Besides, the problem is also the time to get them. You have a chance to get these weapons right away if you play during Halloween. But that's it. In 1.4 it was possible to trigger Halloween at any time, but it only applies to Hardmode, where the number of enemies dropping these weapons drops, and the weapons themselves are no longer usable at the Pumpkin Moon stage.

I have some ideas on how to improve the situation of these weapons.
1. Remove the requirement to drop by "weak enemies", let any enemies at any point in the game of Hallowen can drop them.
2. Assign them to Halloween enemies and give a normal drop chance.
3. Move them to Goodie Bag, same as Christmas weapons.
4. Separate them from Halloween and add them to normal gameplay. Bloody Machete can be dropped by enemies of the Blood Moon, and Bladed Glove can, for example, be sold by a Zoologist at a graveyard at night (maybe even only on a Full or Blood Moon)
 
This is something I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet, but is it possible to add a monolith for the Constant shader effect? The monoliths are all made to provide a background and shader effect in a certain radius for builds and it is suprising that the Constant while having such an effect does not have its own monolith. While the vanity item exists, the effect is only applied for the player and not for a place. I think it'll be greatly useful for making DST themed/otherworldly aesthetic builds in non Constant worlds, like an adventure map could have a location that looks off or strange due to a Constant monolith in the area, without requiring the vanity item to be on the player. As an added function it could provide the reverse effect on the Constant - creating a sphere of normalancy in a strange world.

While on the topic of shader effects, can we get one for Duke Fishron phase 3? I rather like the background removal+deep dark night effect it provides.

Also making the Graveyard biome effect into a Monolith would be exceedingly convinient for the very obvious reason that itd create the effect without mob spawns (very useful for builds) and if possible, null out the graveyard effect while leaving mobspawns intact (useful for boss arenas)
 
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MrD108 said:
I have some ideas on how to improve the situation of these weapons.
1. Remove the requirement to drop by "weak enemies", let any enemies at any point in the game of Hallowen can drop them.
2. Assign them to Halloween enemies and give a normal drop chance.
3. Move them to Goodie Bag, same as Christmas weapons.
4. Separate them from Halloween and add them to normal gameplay. Bloody Machete can be dropped by enemies of the Blood Moon, and Bladed Glove can, for example, be sold by a Zoologist at a graveyard at night (maybe even only on a Full or Blood Moon)
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The bladed glove could now also be be obtained from wooden chests (though it would maybe need some DMG nerf) or could be crafted in graveyard at an iron/lead anvil and could have a recipe simillar to the coffin minecart.
 
I think the requirements for a Pirate Invasion occurring at random should be changed to 1 mech boss being defeated because it’s not fun when the pirates arrive at the start of hardmode on harder difficulties. This change could be exclusive to Expert and Master Mode. If this change would be made the player would be well prepared for the invasion once it happens. On recent Master Mode playthroughs the pirates have arrived before I was prepared to deal with them and it resulted in me getting spawn camped by the pirates.
 
Exactly invasions! I almost forgot the most important.
In 1.4.0.5, the chance of a Pirate Invasion occurring after defeating them at least once has been reduced. Please, I beg you to introduce a reduced chance mechanic for the Goblin Invasion. This is the worst invasion, after the first defeat, it does not give you anything interesting, and it appears constantly and continuously, blocking pylons, blocking cities, it is a nightmare.
Please, let the chance of her occurrence drop drastically after the first defeat.
 
mythteller said:
The coingun. I understand that it's supposed to be a rare weapon and that you seldom see it, and this may be due to personal experience, but I think it may be a bit too rare.
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Actually no. Got 2 of it (first one after 2nd inv). With 10~ pirate staffs, 8 rings after like 20~ invasions but damn only one coin and discount card (the item I was seeking for).
>Flubman said :
> increase Magma Stone's drop chance
No need. It's already have quite big drop rate(including the fact of common spawn of hellbats) and as you continued your opinion by
> It's not OP at the point in the game where you can get it, and it's used in a lot of tinkers.
Only with gauntlet and quiver. There's no strict task of combining them except the way where you will want to wear one gauntlet and one quiver more so you will be forced to craft it to avoid same item in slots restriction
Please increase the drop rate of bananarang (maybe in exchange of decreased from 4 to 3 pieces stacks)
It's not funny when it appears when you already have decent weapon (got 4 and 3pieces on same blood moon but damn while I was using Death Sickle! Also there's exactly no time for advanced grinding for it cause on first hand you are overwhelmed with general ore\bars\armor\weapon making and on second - you have evil biomes which are spreading at speed of light until the defeating of Plantera. (For clean up using clentaminator you have at least one mechanic to defeat and further more first part of previous sentence is what supposed to be here)
 
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Another small change I would advocate ist to change the drop chance of the turtle mount. With around 10 percent, your chance to get it are rather low (because goldencratesthemselves are quite rare). The turtle mount can be really useful in the beginning, but it becomes useless rather fast, as even only flippers at least allow you to still keep a normal horizontal tempo (at the cost of an accessoire slot). Maybe 20 percent from gold crates or a re-tiering to iron crates could be thought about? Otherwise it becomes outdated, before it gets its own time to shine.
 
It's not really about balance, and there's no chance of coming in the next update as it includes new content, but I really wanted to mention it. The Goblin Invasion (which shows up too often) in Hardmode gets one new enemy, the Summoner Goblin (who doesn't drop a summoner weapon).
What if there was also another one, namely the Armored Fighting Rhino. I don't know why, but rhinoceros suits me goblins. This would be four-legged enemies charging at the player but not fitting into the doorway. And he could drop himself like a mount. Maybe a Goblin Warrior could ride him sometimes.
 
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