Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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For the sake of not giving a false impression about the timeline we have for more balance changes, I'm going to be closing this thread again.

I've finished the final batch of balance changes. I do not see any further changes coming, unless one of my post 1.4.1 changes has dramatic backlash (I should hope that will not be the case). I will re-open this thread when the next hotfix comes out just in case.

Its been a good run guys. As I'm sure many of you can see, the list of things which could/should/might be changed is endless. And the timeline for additional changes is not. So after review of everything being discussed, and knowing internally what will and won't be approved, I've settled on the last changes being made and will be taking no other further proposals.

When I do re-open this thread, I do hope you guys understand it will be only a last-second double check of my changes in case something was in error, and that we are really reaching the end of the road. I do love doing this, but as Terraria's updates draw to a close, there just won't be anymore time for it, unfortunately.

Will talk to you guys again when the hotfix and balance adjustments drop. :)
 
Alright guys, here's the last batch of balance changes.

The purpose of this thread, at this point, is if any of these changes were so egregiously out of place that people think that they need to be reverted. I don't . . . think that will be the case here. But I wanted to have one last chance to see if that is the case.

To be fully upfront here, I will not be making additional changes to other balance issues, even ones from previous versions prior to 1.4.1.2. This thread will be left open for a few days to see if anything stands out, and then will be closed for good.

Brand of the Inferno (Buff)
- Use time decreased from 25 to 20 in light of recent buffs to similar tier weapons

Chlorophyte Claymore (Buff)
- Increased damage from 80 to 95 in light of recent buffs to similar tier weapons

Chlorophyte Saber (Buff)
- Increased damage from 48 to 57 in light of recent buffs to similar tier weapons

Christmas Tree Sword (Buff)
- Projectiles now deal 75% of the base damage instead of 50%
Super Star Shooter (Buff)
- Reduced use time from 12 to 18 (THIS IS NOT A NERF!)
- Reduced damage from 70 to 60 (BEAR WITH ME, ITS NOT A NERF)
- Note: Due to immune frame time, this will actually result in higher and more consistent damage, and is actually a buff. The damage decrease was required to offset the significantly increased damage.
Betsy's Wrath (Nerf)
- Partially reverting damage buff from 1.4.1, reducing damage from 110 to 100
Hornet Staff (Buff)
- Increased damage from 11 to 12 (building upon the initial increase in 1.4.1 from 9 to 11)

Vampire Frog Staff (Nerf)
- Reverting damage buff from 1.4.1, reducing damage from 13 to 11. The AI/functionality changes from 1.4.1 have been more than sufficient on their own, and the extra damage was unneeded.

Obsidian Armor (Nerf)
- Reduced the Minion damage bonus on the helmet and legs from 9% to 8% each
- Reduced the Minion damage increase on the set bonus from 25% to 15%
- Reduced the Whip speed increase on the set bonus from 50% to 35%

Spider Staff (Buff)
- Summoning Spiders will now attempt to systematically summon the different types of spiders in order, rather than randomly. Due to immune frame schenanigans, this may result in more consistent damage, though it does not actually increase the maximum potential of the weapon.

Optic Staff (Buff)
- Enemy immune frames caused by Spazmamini and Retinamini attacks have been reduced from 16 to 12
- Increased Spazmamini's movement speed while pursuing enemies

Deadly Sphere Staff (Buff)
- Enemy immune frames caused by Deadly Sphere attacks have been reduced from 10 to 8

Firecracker (Nerf)
- Reduced explosion proc damage from 3x of minion base damage to 2.75x

Cool Whip (Buff)
- Cool Whip now inflicts Frostburn a short duration on hit
- Increased the movement speed of the Snowflake minion by 50%

Desert Tiger Staff (Buff)
- Now "bounces on" its current target if that target is in the air, staying more firmly latched on and dealing damage
- Increased scaling damage per "minion slot" expended slightly (from 33% of base damage to 40% of base damage)

Rainbow Crystal Staff (Buff)
- Partially reverting the damage reduction in 1.4, increasing its damage from 80 to 130
Celestial Starboard (Buff)
- Made some adjustments to improve its handling, while still keeping the fix that made sure that Starboard got full dash distance

Star Cloak and other Star-generating Accessories (Nerf)
- Only creates stars now when taking damage from enemy sources

Black Spot (Buff)
- Slightly increased acceleration, to slightly offset for the loss of overall speed in 1.4.1
Chlorophyte Bars (Buff)
- Reduced crafting recipe from 6 to 5 ore per bar

Chlorophyte Bullets
- Reduced crafting efficiency from 70 bullets per bar to 60 bullets per bar (to roughly maintain parity with the Bar crafting cost change)
Snow Flinx - Removed their Poison immunity
Wall of Flesh - Removed its Poison immunity
Queen Bee - Added Poison immunity
Morning Wood - Added Poison immunity
Twins - Added Poison immunity
Martian Probes - Added Poison immunity
Granite Golem/Elemental - Added On Fire/Hellfire immunity
Betsy - Added On Fire/Hellfire immunity
Frozen Zombies - Added Frostburn Immunity
Clingers - Added Cursed Inferno Immunity
Dark Mage Skeletons - Added Poison immunity
 
On the contrary, I felt I saw a lot of feedback indicating Firecracker was a bit too strong.

During development, we had initially had it at 2.5x, and felt it was a bit too weak, so I settled on this as a minor adjustment middle ground based on the feedback and the 2.5x data we had from before.
 
I like the changes overall. Nothing really jumps at me as out of line but I will say I'm curious to try out the super star shooter now. I used it quite a bit in my run and it already felt pretty strong (even leaving aside what this thing does to the Destroyer :D) so it should be interesting to see how it performs.

Edit: Quick tests using equipment one would craft right after the mechs I find that the SSS is slightly stronger than a megashark with musket balls on a single target (~850 dps vs ~800 dps) while giving the megashark crystal bullets makes it much stronger (~1250 dps). I think that leaves the SSS in a good spot, after all, it does have insane group dps so it makes sense for it to be weaker than the king of single target (at that tier anyway) with it's best bullets.
 
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Hey, just wanna say, good job on this balance patch. I'm happy with the Cool Whip and Hornet buffs (especially now that Wall of Flesh is weak to poison), on top of the immunity adjustments to other staves.
I'm also glad to see the Desert Tiger being reworked so it can take on more than just grounded enemies; I've noticed that it does a good job staying on top of airborne targets.
...Maybe too good though.
(Sorry if these don't embed properly)
Basically I did a test run with the new Tiger and noticed that he just floats over airborne enemies and rarely ever does damage unless he performs the pouncing homing attack. I'm not sure if it was intended for him to act this way, so I just wanted to jot this down here.
The Tiger however did perform very well against a horde of Pillar enemies. It seems he excels in crowds because he has more targets to jump to; against a single boss though, he doesn't know what to do.
Regardless, it's still an improvement to what we had before. I just find this behavior rather funny.
 
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Hey, just wanna say, good job on this balance patch. I'm happy with the Cool Whip and Hornet buffs (especially now that Wall of Flesh is weak to poison), on top of the immunity adjustments to other staves.
I'm also glad to see the Desert Tiger being reworked so it can take on more than just grounded enemies; I've noticed that it does a good job staying on top of airborne targets.
...Maybe too good though.
(Sorry if these don't embed properly)
Basically I did a test run with the new Tiger and noticed that he just floats over airborne enemies and rarely ever does damage unless he performs the pouncing homing attack. I'm not sure if it was intended for him to act this way, so I just wanted to jot this down here.
The Tiger however did perform very well against a horde of Pillar enemies. It seems he excels in crowds because he has more targets to jump to; against a single boss though, he doesn't know what to do.
Regardless, it's still an improvement to what we had before. I just find this behavior rather funny.

Hmm yea it would be nice if it attacked more frequently than this while airborne to match a little bit how often it attacks on ground.
 
I like the change that NPC can still get the space bonus with 2 other NPC nearby. It has a huge impact and will make happy NPC much more easier than before.
However some NPC still cant reach max happiness.
Could e.g. pets (in village range(120)) have a small impact as well?
e.g. somewhere between 1.5% (all 3 needed for max) to 2.5% (2 are enough for max). = factor 0.985 to 0.975
Or as alternative some NPC are dog-people, some are cat-people. Preferred gives 3% (= factor 0.97), bunny 2%, 3rd no impact
Or as alternative a princess in village (120) increase it by 5% for all NPC living there.
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Bonus: asymmetric, not-hard borders:
With the 2-nearby-still-Ok change more NPC can be happy at the same time. Compared to previous version it also gives the player more freedom at the NPC arrangement.
However through the symmetry of love/hate relation, the same distance for crowing and hard borders the player is still limited.
How about some separation? E.g. loved NPC still have an impact in 40 range, liked in 30 (but not in crowding). Hated only in 20 range, disliked only in 15 range.
Instead of hard borders how about some decay? e.g. loved have max impact up to 40 range and 0 in 50 and above. In between some (linear?) transition.
Disliked has max impact up to 15 range and slowly decays to 0 impact in 25 range.
Crowding also depends at the individual distance, if they like the NPC (count <1) or not (count >1 but decays to 1). This will also include not a hard border in between village and house distance. E.g. between 20 and 30 they could be partly in house range and partly in village range (did some post about this here: (outdated, new math need to be done)).
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Or as simple change like/loved have the 1.4.1.0/1 range of 50. Hated/Disliked and crowding have the 1.4.1.2 range of 25.
In real life you can be friends over long distance but dont care about people you dont like in same distance.
 
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I'm not seeing anything about the imp staff in there, so I'm asking for posterity : what kind of iframes are the imps' fireballs using now?

You know what, looks like I forgot to put that one in the changelog somehow.

So the original issue was that Imps did NOT use any form of special immune frames at all (either Static or Local). This I considered a bug, because I made it a point to make at least some sort of adjustment to most/if-not-all minions with piercing projectiles, so it was some sort of oversight.

So in this case, I decided to go with Static, because Local would have been a very substantial potency buff that I was not prepared to balance for.

However, what I DID do was reduce their immune frame count to 6, which is substantially lower than the default of 10.

So as it currently stands, they interfere with each other, but not other piercing weapons, and the immune frames are only 1/10th of a second rather than 1/6th of a second. This is definitely a buff any way you look at it, but I still insist I consider the Static frame change a bug fix rather than a balance buff, at this point.
 
So in this case, I decided to go with Static, because Local would have been a very substantial potency buff that I was not prepared to balance for.

However, what I DID do was reduce their immune frame count to 6, which is substantially lower than the default of 10.

Thanks for the reply! I figured static was where they'd end up at, considering how much imps interfere with one another, there was really no way to give them local frames without making them much stronger. Hopefully they'll desync enough over long fights that the very short immunity will allow them to do better against single targets.

Thanks for all the fish balance changes and bugfixes Leinfors, this game became so much better thanks to you.
 
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small thing, make all explosives that destroy blocks launched from the celebration mk 2 have the capability to destroy all blocks, including blocks like jungle temple stuff
 
small thing, make all explosives that destroy blocks launched from the celebration mk 2 have the capability to destroy all blocks, including blocks like jungle temple stuff
Honestly drill containment unit just needs a buff. It's so expensive and slow compared to explosives.
 
I just checked and the guide is still lying about shadow orbs causing meteorites to fall from the sky. This was changed in 1.4.0.2 and I'm pretty sure this is an oversight.
 
Please I implore you before we cap off terraria can we please get the patch to pump duplication reverted to pre 1.4 behavior or may we please get a Infinite honey bucket/sponge. Ideally we would get both. There is no reason not to have the pump liquid duplication method available since we have countless other methods of liquid duplication and the pump method was the only one automatable. Also having a Infinite Honey bucket/sponge would not only make sense but would be a very nice thing to have.
 
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