Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

[Nicol Bolas]

But as it is, I often have more granite than I know what to do with, while I never have enough marble to build anything I want out of it.

How much farming do you go through to get that much Granite compared to Marble? If you're using so much of this stuff that harvesting multiple biomes worth with the Drill Containment Unit can't satisfy your needs (each biome netting you probably 500 blocks minimum), how much time do you spend sitting there and attacking Granite monsters?

Or have you built some AFK farm to do it for you?

We used to have similar problems with Sunplate Blocks

No, the problem with Sunplate was that you only got maybe 100 blocks in a single small world. A small world holds thousands each of Granite and Marble. So it's not like this stuff is rare or anything.

 

[Gotcha!]

Granite drops from granite enemies because these enemies are -made- out of granite.
So there's no reason why Hoplites and Medusas should carry around marble.

I get the feeling people are going a bit overboard on the 'everything-needs-to-be-renewable-in-a-single-world' thing. Every map contains more marble than one should ever need, but if you still need more you can always pillage another world, and in my opinion that goes for most items.

 

[J Bame]

Granite drops from granite enemies because these enemies are -made- out of granite.
So there's no reason why Hoplites and Medusas should carry around marble.

I get the feeling people are going a bit overboard on the 'everything-needs-to-be-renewable-in-a-single-world' thing. Every map contains more marble than one should ever need, but if you still need more you can always pillage another world, and in my opinion that goes for most items.

This, so much.

I seriously doubt that someone has ever farmed Granite/Rock Golems in the first place. The random Blocks those two Golems drop are already an annoying inventory clutter for me, and if someone really needs so many of those blocks for a colossal build, they are not gonna bother doing boring farming when just making a new world would be so much faster.

 

[Flygoniaks]

I seriously doubt that someone has ever farmed Granite/Rock Golems in the first place. The random Blocks those two Golems drop are already an annoying inventory clutter for me, and if someone really needs so many of those blocks for a colossal build, they are not gonna bother doing boring farming when just making a new world would be so much faster.

Yeah, with stuff like Journey Mode and the Drill Containment Unit existing, I seriously doubt Re-Logic will see this as a problem.

 

[Coolqwerts]

damn 68 pages.

 

[Empty air sandwich]

Flails
One thing I was disappointed in trying out was that with the new flail mechanics, spinning your flail to launch it DOESN'T actually affect the resulting throw in any way whatsoever, like it would incidentally make sense logically. Either you're spinning it for a cool barrier of just low damage and lower knockback, OR you're spamming it forward as fast as possible with no thought to it at all. Those two are practically unrelated attacks.
I thought flails could be made cooler and more functional (especially for melee character terms) if the longer you spin them, the stronger and longer the resulting throw is, to a capped maximum of 7 seconds or whatever. Either the full throw or just the next release hit.

Use 1: you can hold the spin while you let multiple enemies approach you, it will keep trying to stave off ground and air enemies from touching you while you move/jump and wait for them to position themselves more nicely for you, THEN you release the throw to strike many at once which will have compensated damage for the wait. So it actually builds up for a play instead of just stalling, leaving more room for tank-friendly thoughtful skirmishing, over just spamming weapons as soon as possible.
Use 2: you can keep defaulting to pre-emptively spin your flail while the enemy is still far away, already charging the next strike to have not only more damage but also significantly more range (instead of flail range purely being dependant on what tier of flail you're using, which made things unhelpful for them) to snipe flying enemies like eaters/bats by doing charge shots over and over as they go back and forth, or catch other enemies as they come before fighting aggressively, actually serving as a melee-type ranged shot even if it has to be charged every time for it, befitting melee, and also befitting melee it's a shot weapon that comes with a tank barrier for using it.
Maybe they could even get entirely viable for bosses from having the short-range spam + the inactive charging for range. To really go crazy and quadruple down on that, they could get a damage bonus specifically against bosses/minibosses if their projected DPS somehow was too low

 

[Cakeyeater]

Point 1

Spoiler: Strange Plants in hardmode won't be noticed by players

While hardmode has the player revisit many parts of their world to find new things, one of the things the player doesn't do at any point in hardmode is look at ordinary surface plants for anything new. They especially don't care about surface objects that require a pickaxe to break, since they've discovered that all these give are the occasional bait critter, which do not matter for a number of players. Additionally, they have already learned that the important stuff is the herbs, which can be gathered using basically any weapon, so why mine them?

This means that, by the time the player has reached hardmode and can find Strange Plants, they have already been taught to not look to large surface plants for anything useful or interesting. Many will have stopped looking at Terraria's flora at all, and won't even notice that these plants are actually new. Meanwhile, nothing happens during hardmode that would change this behavior. The only other new plants in hardmode are in the Underground Jungle, which the player is actually prompted to explore after defeating the mechanical bosses.

Basically, the player is already conditioned to ignore random bushes by hardmode and there's nothing prompting them to rethink this habit.

Point 2

Spoiler: Dye Trader's new menu option won't be noticed either

There's also the matter of the Dye Trader, and the fact that you cannot give him Strange Plants until entering hardmode. The problem is that the Dye Trader is now the only pre-hardmode NPC to have an entire feature gated behind hardmode (note that NPC vendors having varying store inventories is distinct from having an entire function locked behind progression).

This is an issue because the player has no indication that reaching hardmode unlocks an additional function for the Dye Trader; because no NPC gets more features as time goes on*, this feature ultimately becomes unintuitive. By the time they reach hardmode, a player may have already bought all they want to buy from him or decided that he is not worth their time.

*This is excluding the Party Girl because she requires an easter egg seed.

In other words, the Strange Plants make the Dye Trader behave unlike any other NPC, and the player won't expect a whole new feature to unlock in hardmode.

Solution and conclusion

Spoiler: Why keeping these pre-hardmode is a better option

Both of these issues have the same thing in common: they are inconsistent with how the rest of Terraria changes upon entering hardmode, meaning that, for blind playthroughs, many or even most players won't even be aware of the Strange Plants and their use. They will be confused if they actually find a Strange Plant, and will wonder why this feature was missing.

Letting the player find Strange Plants in pre-hardmode, around the same time when they unlock the Dye Trader, will ensure that these neat animated dyes won't be accidentally missed by players who would enjoy them. Introducing a these plants when players will still be paying attention to plants on the surface lets the player fully enjoy the feature and the game overall.

As for stopping players from selling these dyes for easy money, the easiest solution would be to lower their sell value as others have suggested. Since these dyes can't be obtained from anywhere else in the first place, many players won't be motivated to sell them anyway. Plus, having the plants available from the start gives players more time to get the dye they want!

In conclusion, lowering the price of Strange Dyes will fix any game balance issues without putting an arbitrary restriction on a feature that makes it harder to enjoy.

As for how much the price should be lowered by... all other dyes currently sell for 20 silver, so you can lower the value of Strange Dyes to that for consistency. If you really want to make sure they can't be farmed, make them sell for 7 silver each. This would mean that the 3 dyes you get from the Dye Trader will sell for 1 silver more than the Strange Plant you traded for them.

I disagree with all of these. Firstly, strange plant overrides several ores when using the treasure application of a phone. This makes it incredibly obvious that they exist and are unique. Also, they spawn at many layers, not just the surface, so saying "When the player is still paying attention to plants on the surface" doesn't really make sense, even considering you just might mean, "still keeping an eye out for new things." A new player will always be looking out for new things, and will not be upset that the crazy dyes weren't introduced until after facing the wall of flesh. Then, upon finding a plant, it will immediately draw the player to the dye trader, where they will see the new option. While this does seem a feature unique to the dye trader, it is no more unique than any npc having an extended inventory in hardmode and may, in fact, clue a player in to the fact that other npcs may have had changes to their inventory as a result of the changes. All and all, I think the concerns you have presented aren't as bad as you make them out to be.

 

[MageKing17]

Also, NPCs don't tell you which biome they like until they're actually in it, and I don't think many blind players will constantly shift them around their various towns until they figure out what setup is best.

Uh... you literally just have to talk to them once, then look them up in the Bestiary. Otherwise I never would've bothered putting people in preferred biomes.

 

[Flygoniaks]

Uh... you literally just have to talk to them once, then look them up in the Bestiary. Otherwise I never would've bothered putting people in preferred biomes.

You're absolutely right, I forgot about that! I fully admit my mistake here. Though it is possible that some players won't know about it.

All and all, I think the concerns you have presented aren't as bad as you make them out to be.

Yeah, if you've read my later posts, I have definitely realized that this issue isn't as large of a design flaw as I made it out to be.
However, I still think this change was too drastic for any of the issues that prompted it, and it saps part of the fun out of the game.

I currently think a better solution would be to have Strange Plants available pre-hardmode, albeit at a noticeably lower spawn rate.

 

[JamesDNaux]

On the subject of strange plants:

Just reintroduce the trade button to pre-hardmode and introduce a dialog that says something along the lines of "Come back to me with dye plants after you defeat the Wall of Flesh!"

I was also really confused at first when I couldn't find the plants and the option was gone, I almost thought they'd removed it entirely.

 

[Bird up]

The underground desert in my experience is alright. I find that you can explore it carefully in the beginning of the game to get some decent items. The storm spear is amazing, the ancient chisel is best gotten as early as possible, and the extractinator + bombs means that you can craft a fossil pickaxe very very early, which is better than a platinum pickaxe - good info for those who are stuck in a gold ore world. The golfer is hard to track down as he dies quick often, but once found can be valuable to get an ocean pylon early. My biggest issue is the sand worms in master mode usually mean I have to instantly use a recall potion or I'll die however, assuming I don't have a strong pierce weapon. The cactus and mini larvae are only an issue if you're careless. If you're careful, as I have been, they can be no problem whatsoever. The larvae and cactus boulders are in plain sight, never hidden, and so you can easily prepare before engaging them. I do think there is a little too much though. It's quite literally littered with larvae and cactus boulders. However, I've only died to sand worms in a few hours down there on master mode.

I think it's far too late for this, but I wished there were an underground desert boss like the jungle has bee queen. If you took away the bee queen from the jungle, then it would essentially become what the underground desert is right now. Just a place to go to get a few select items and never return... The jungle even has plantera. It's unfortunate for the underground desert.

 

[Flygoniaks]

The underground desert in my experience is alright. I find that you can explore it carefully in the beginning of the game to get some decent items. The storm spear is amazing, the ancient chisel is best gotten as early as possible, and the extractinator + bombs means that you can craft a fossil pickaxe very very early, which is better than a platinum pickaxe - good info for those who are stuck in a gold ore world. The golfer is hard to track down as he dies quick often, but once found can be valuable to get an ocean pylon early. My biggest issue is the sand worms in master mode usually mean I have to instantly use a recall potion or I'll die however, assuming I don't have a strong pierce weapon. The cactus and mini larvae are only an issue if you're careless. If you're careful, as I have been, they can be no problem whatsoever. The larvae and cactus boulders are in plain sight, never hidden, and so you can easily prepare before engaging them. I do think there is a little too much though. It's quite literally littered with larvae and cactus boulders. However, I've only died to sand worms in a few hours down there on master mode.

I think it's far too late for this, but I wished there were an underground desert boss like the jungle has bee queen. If you took away the bee queen from the jungle, then it would essentially become what the underground desert is right now. Just a place to go to get a few select items and never return... The jungle even has plantera. It's unfortunate for the underground desert.

I don't think this is the right place to post this. This thread is about game balance, particularly minor changes mostly having to do with items. Giving your thoughts on a biome in general is a bit too off-topic. This is not the place to request a new boss, though you are probably right in saying it's too late at this point. Also, the Underground Snow biome doesn't have a boss either.

 

[Isil`Zha]

I don't think this is the right place to post this. This thread is about game balance, particularly minor changes mostly having to do with items. Giving your thoughts on a biome in general is a bit too off-topic. This is not the place to request a new boss, though you are probably right in saying it's too late at this point. Also, the Underground Snow biome doesn't have a boss either.

I happened to pop into this thread to see about the desert, as I didn't see any other thread for world balancing.

Specifically, the underground desert is way overtuned - it is far more deadly than the dungeon (at least on master difficulty.) I feel it's something doable in the scope of hotfixes by fixing some numbers - like capping the total underground desert enemies that can spawn, and toning some of them down. It's filled with swarms of fast moving, hard hitting, near immune to KD, high health monsters. Corrupted desert is even worse. We put our desert house and pylon in a blasted out void about 80 blocks in diameter, with the top covered in sunflowers. Nearly every time we used the pylon to that desert house to hit up those NPCs, 2-3 desert spirits teleport directly into the house within seconds.

We've since decontaminated the entire desert, but it took far more effort than cleaning up any other place.

 

[Flygoniaks]

Specifically, the underground desert is way overtuned - it is far more deadly than the dungeon (at least on master difficulty.) I feel it's something doable in the scope of hotfixes by fixing some numbers - like capping the total underground desert enemies that can spawn, and toning some of them down. It's filled with swarms of fast moving, hard hitting, near immune to KD, high health monsters. Corrupted desert is even worse. We put our desert house and pylon in a blasted out void about 80 blocks in diameter, with the top covered in sunflowers. Nearly every time we used the pylon to that desert house to hit up those NPCs, 2-3 desert spirits teleport directly into the house within seconds.

See, now this is a post that's clearly about balancing. Since Leinfors specializing in item balancing, I'm not sure if he will be able to help with this, but at least your argument is totally clear.
Where to post things is an imperfect science. Considering that I've been talking about the removal of Strange Plants from pre-hardmode, I think this might be an acceptable place to put it.

 

[Isil`Zha]

Yeah, I came looking through the PC section for a thread on general balance, and only found this one. I last played through Terraria in 2012, and jumped straight into master mode with Journey's End, so I can't really say anything about weapon balance, because I don't have a good reference point to what they used to be. I'm currently up to the Lunatic Cultists on our master playthrough, and so I do now have plenty of reference to compare the difficulty of various areas of the game. I find the post-plantera dungeon and the jungle temple much easier to go through than the underground desert.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I find visibility very limited in the underground desert, because so much of it is tiny caves; anywhere that also spawns webbing just makes it worse. The place is littered with larva eggs that spawn larvae that just make any fight you get into that much worse, but, for all that they're larvae, they're also frustratingly sturdy... especially mixed with the other creatures in the UD. Add the worms in this place of many tiny caves and limited mobility, and you're gonna hurt.
Then add boulders. Everywhere. And spikes. Because that's what rolling cacti are: at best, spikes. At worst, boulder traps. And they're easy to accidentally trigger during a hectic charger fight made complicated by accidentally-spawned larvae, when you're getting knocked around and trying to get out of the fracas and OH LOOK BOULDER.
Edit: ... and add, on top of that, that the "boulders" will also often spawn larvae by breaking aggs.
Like I said before: look at the Underground Desert, and think of the cacti as boulder traps... and then ask yourself: does any area really need THAT MANY boulders?

I'm doing an Expert magic-user run now, and I'm about to fight Skeletron (still pre-hm). Yes, I would have liked the chisel numerous times, but no, I got a magic conch for ocean ports and I'm just not going back. It's not worth the hassle, even with a full armament of potions. Too many cacti, and too many larva eggs.

Edit: It might be more viable in a corruption world, where you can get a Vilethorn to deal with things through walls. My playthrough is a crimson world, though.

 

[SsIras]

I find visibility very limited in the underground desert, because so much of it is tiny caves; anywhere that also spawns webbing just makes it worse. The place is littered with larva eggs that spawn larvae that just make any fight you get into that much worse, but, for all that they're larvae, they're also frustratingly sturdy... especially mixed with the other creatures in the UD. Add the worms in this place of many tiny caves and limited mobility, and you're gonna hurt.
Then add boulders. Everywhere. And spikes. Because that's what rolling cacti are: at best, spikes. At worst, boulder traps. And they're easy to accidentally trigger during a hectic charger fight made complicated by accidentally-spawned larvae, when you're getting knocked around and trying to get out of the fracas and OH LOOK BOULDER.
Edit: ... and add, on top of that, that the "boulders" will also often spawn larvae by breaking aggs.
Like I said before: look at the Underground Desert, and think of the cacti as boulder traps... and then ask yourself: does any area really need THAT MANY boulders?

I'm doing an Expert magic-user run now, and I'm about to fight Skeletron (still pre-hm). Yes, I would have liked the chisel numerous times, but no, I got a magic conch for ocean ports and I'm just not going back. It's not worth the hassle, even with a full armament of potions. Too many cacti, and too many larva eggs.

Edit: It might be more viable in a corruption world, where you can get a Vilethorn to deal with things through walls. My playthrough is a crimson world, though.

I think mostly everyone has talked about this. The underground desert is not worth the pain, and I'm pretty sure it will be nerfed quite a bit.
It also doesn't help than a lot of the drops really aren't worth the danger at all. Bast Statue, Magic Conch and Ancient Chisel can be used at any point of the game, but Snake Charmer, Storm Spear and Thunder Zapper are absolutely terrible, even if you're risking going in there early. The former is easily replaceable for some rope, something you get by smashing pots the latter two are massive downgrades to items you can obtain in other places, if they at least were somewhat of a tier skip that were worth adventuring for in the underground desert for a decent power boost, it would be a lot more fun endangering yourself early in the game in order to get them, but the chances of getting worthless items is too big to bother.

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

Master Mode player here & there's a few things I'd like to point out, concerning the Underground Desert.

1. I personally think that it's fine as-is, & shouldn't be changed (for the most part). There's no other place on the map quite like UD & I think nerfing it would take away it's identity.
2. I do, somewhat agree that the items in the Underground Desert, may not be equal to its difficult, however, if resource management is to be taken into account, it is a great place to get Tomb Crawler & Dune Splicer banners early-on, before they become a major issue in Hardmode, with sandstorms; in addition to containing the Magic Conch. If the Encumbering Stone was a better, implemented item, I'd include it, but it's a bit wonky right now, so I'd personally pass. The Ancient Horn is a Mount worth noting also, if you plan on using any of the Lances in the game. Scarab Bombs are pretty decent too, I guess.
3. Underground Desert is one of the many places where the Summoner Class excels, greatly. It's a place that I feel also, starts to sharply expose the major strengths & weakness with each kind of Character Archetype. If a player, or group of players are Metagaming, Summoner Class will play a major role in taming this part of the map early-on, very similar to the role a Summoner plays in the Underground Jungle.

I personally think that skill checks & difficulty spikes, give areas in video games their identity. If the Encumbering Stone was a much better item, I wouldn't want the UD touched at all, but the items being mostly skipable, unless you're Summoner, I'm honestly indifferent to. It could indeed have much better stuff in it.

 

[Isil`Zha]

It's not just that the rewards don't match the difficulty. Nor am I opposed to difficulty spikes. The UD should not be the most dangerous biome, but it is. The dungeon and jungle temple should be more difficult places. Some of it I don't feel is fair difficulty when you get a swarm of those chargers suddenly come flying at you at high speed, and can't really be knocked back or prevented from charging. (Though the wiki notes that when they end up charging like this, may actually be a bug.)

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

It's not just that the rewards don't match the difficulty. Nor am I opposed to difficulty spikes. The UD should not be the most dangerous biome, but it is. The dungeon and jungle temple should be more difficult places. Some of it I don't feel is fair difficulty when you get a swarm of those chargers suddenly come flying at you at high speed, and can't really be knocked back or prevented from charging. (Though the wiki notes that when they end up charging like this, may actually be a bug.)

Underground Desert is sort of a mixed bag, where most of the items are... meh, but the items that are good, if this is the first place you visit, are too good (i.e. Scarab Bombs, Magic Conch, Ancient Chisel). From a Metagaming perspective, if I'm not mistaken, Underground Desert is a great place to go if you wanna unlock The Demolitionist early-on. Once you do, you can just blast through this area & bypass most of it's gimmicks if you really wanted to. I personally think that most of it's difficulty is an illusion, up until Hardmode, but I can certainly understand the frustration if you submit to the gimmicks.

I still remain on the side of slightly improving the items there & leaving it mostly unchanged, but that's only because, over time, people will eventually figure the place out & it's early-game, first take experience is worth keeping. At least that's how I feel about it.