Weapons & Equip Lunar-Tier Equipment Upgrade

[astralInferno]

Terraria has a lot of amazing, unique weapons. While the majority of these are magic weapons - nothing else works like the Rainbow Gun, the Life Drain, or the Shadowflame Hex Doll - there are plenty of one-offs spread across the whole game. The Star Cannon used to be top-end gear, the Flying Knife is largely obsolete by the time you get it, and I for one used a Sandgun as my primary weapon when I first started playing. Even further out there are things like the Arkhalis, the Toxikarp, and the Wasp Gun, and that’s without considering weapons you might want to use just for the sake of their aesthetic.


While it’s impractical to add an upgrade item for even most of these weapons, I think there’s a solution. I propose that we add an item or an NPC that boosts the stats of any weapon to make it worth using at final endgame levels. This could be a function of the Ancient Manipulator, an extension of the Reforging Process that costs luminite, or something belonging to a new item or NPC.


You would select any weapon - let’s say a platinum broadsword, give it to the machine/character, use up X luminite, and the weapon would be returned to you as a ‘Lunar Platinum Broadsword’, which would have higher damage, speed, probably greater size, and would have a total DPS similar to the Meowmere and the Star Wrath. (It would be higher than just the sword component, but would be lower than the overall damage. Balancing weapons without effects with weapons with amazing effects would be the single hardest thing about this suggestion.)

Of course, a Lunar Platinum Broadsword would be identical in effect to a Lunar Golden Broadsword, but would look different. For mundane equipment, especially melee and early ranged weapons, this is effectively vanity for weapons.


This could either incorporate or overwrite standard reforging prefixes - you could end up with a Lunar Mythical Golden Shower, or a Lunar Golden Shower could include the stat bonuses already.


The changes would be more impressive (and harder to balance) for later and more complex weapons. The Arkhalis would gain a damage buff and a use speed buff, and perhaps a small size/range increase, trying to retain its unique identity but give it the numbers to compete in the endgame.


With this suggestion, you would be able to select any weapon from all of terraria and wield it against the lunar events with a fairly equal chance of success. You want to use the pee spray against moon-thulhu? Go for it. Want to harpoon him in the eye? You do you, dude. Want to hit him with the Bee Keeper? Dust off the Hive Pack, cause you can.


Now, on the surface this suggestion’s pretty easy: Add one NPC or one item. The actual work would come from working out the stats, as this would require vaguely balanced stats for every item in the game, taking into account their own special abilities, debuffs, and effects. The ideal state of affairs would be to have multiple levels - have the item appear in Hell or the Dungeon, and then let you upgrade weapons to Molten Tier, Mechanical Tier, Plantera Tier, and finally Lunar Tier.


But given how many weapons there are, hoping for one endgame tier of balance is likely out of reach. Still! I like the idea, and I hope you do too.

 

[Chazm]

I'm going to deny my support from this considering the code for all the weapons would be astronomically long and repetitive if the dev team were to accept this.

 

[SolaR]

This is actually not a horrible idea. It would satisfy the true terra blade spammers... hopefully.

 

[Pegboard]

I'm going to deny my support from this considering the code for all the weapons would be astronomically long and repetitive if the dev team were to accept this.

implying they aren't already

 

[Pirtz]

Not really a good suggestion. If you want something that applies to all weapons, you'll have to calculate according to DPS in order to properly upgrade those. Which means all weapons in a certain category would get the same DPS (all magic weapons, all melee, etc.), there's a lot of weapons in Terraria and adding a prefix that makes individual changes would indeed be gruesome. So, let's say you want to upgrade arkhalis. You make that deal, say, 1000 DPS. But that would mean Wooden Hammer will also deal 1000 DPS: now what does that mean? Since wooden hammer is slow af, it would deal 500 damage per hit. Which kinda sucks, since a crit will kill any non-tank endgame player. From a wooden hammer. That kind of BS can be obtained from "small" things like 1000 DPS. But what if we upgrade Amethyst staff to 3600 DPS (last prism DPS)? Use time is 39, so around 40. Which means 2400 damage per hit!
You can't add such a system and expect it not to break the game.
Your thing could work if there was a leveling system, like there will be in Otherworld. But in Terraria, there isn't such a system.
The only option would really be to add weapon upgrades, like you said it was impractical to do. Which is the only thing to do in this game. Each weapon you mentioned requires it's own suggestion though.

 

[Alabaster]

I'm not a coder and know nothing of use to talk against your idea, which is one i would quite enjoy, taken a different route, there could be customisable weapon statistics implemented, with their own limits to prevent oneshotting players (200 dmg is a reasonable cap). In the same manner that you change clothes when you create your character, a slide-down list of attributes (velocity, piercing, usetime, damage type, damage, mana cost, ammo use, swinging animation, etc) could be switched around with a maximum DPS of 3k which would be altered depending on the manacost, piercing and et cetera. (God, I always do this. Why do I never come up with my own awesome suggestions?)

 

[layman9]

Or we could just make the Goblin do this instead of his current broken method of "improving" your stuff.

 

[astralInferno]

This is actually not a horrible idea. It would satisfy the true terra blade spammers... hopefully.

Yeah, the idea is to make fans of every weapon happy.

I'm going to deny my support from this considering the code for all the weapons would be astronomically long and repetitive if the dev team were to accept this.

Fair enough, really. The major problem with the idea is that it requires masses of code and work.

Or we could just make the Goblin do this instead of his current broken method of "improving" your stuff.

Heh, that's a possibility too.

I'm not a coder and know nothing of use to talk against your idea, which is one i would quite enjoy, taken a different route, there could be customisable weapon statistics implemented, with their own limits to prevent oneshotting players (200 dmg is a reasonable cap). In the same manner that you change clothes when you create your character, a slide-down list of attributes (velocity, piercing, usetime, damage type, damage, mana cost, ammo use, swinging animation, etc) could be switched around with a maximum DPS of 3k which would be altered depending on the manacost, piercing and et cetera. (God, I always do this. Why do I never come up with my own awesome suggestions?)

Sounds pretty cool. Make a thread about it, dude.
It'd be super hard to balance, though. Customisable things always are.

Not really a good suggestion. If you want something that applies to all weapons, you'll have to calculate according to DPS in order to properly upgrade those. Which means all weapons in a certain category would get the same DPS (all magic weapons, all melee, etc.), there's a lot of weapons in Terraria and adding a prefix that makes individual changes would indeed be gruesome. So, let's say you want to upgrade arkhalis. You make that deal, say, 1000 DPS. But that would mean Wooden Hammer will also deal 1000 DPS: now what does that mean? Since wooden hammer is slow af, it would deal 500 damage per hit. Which kinda sucks, since a crit will kill any non-tank endgame player. From a wooden hammer. That kind of BS can be obtained from "small" things like 1000 DPS. But what if we upgrade Amethyst staff to 3600 DPS (last prism DPS)? Use time is 39, so around 40. Which means 2400 damage per hit!
You can't add such a system and expect it not to break the game.
Your thing could work if there was a leveling system, like there will be in Otherworld. But in Terraria, there isn't such a system.
The only option would really be to add weapon upgrades, like you said it was impractical to do. Which is the only thing to do in this game. Each weapon you mentioned requires it's own suggestion though.

This problem would happen if you just did it automatically, but I'm suggesting looking at each weapon separately. The idea straight up doesn't work if you try and make blanket changes. To take your examples...
Arkhalis has high DPS, but is super short range. If we assume 1000 DPS is what the Terrarian/Meowmere/Star Wrath do (not true) then it'd probably have 1100 or so - on the one hand, you don't have to aim a projectile, but on the other, you have to be right up in their grill.
The wooden hammer has a little better range, so 1000 dps is fine. But you don't just put all of the buff into the damage. You buff use speed as well. Like I said, all overhead-swing weapons (like swords) without special features would end up with identical stats.
...also, no way in hell would you balance magic weapons around the last prism. You'd balance around the lunar flare, which is quite excessive enough as it is. And, with the same comment as wooden hammer, you would buff speed as well as damage, to prevent the ridiculously unbalanced stats you're worried about.

I will defend this idea from any criticism other than 'That is a RIDICULOUS amount of effort, no way ever no chance.' which I can't really debate.

 

[Pirtz]

This problem would happen if you just did it automatically, but I'm suggesting looking at each weapon separately.

Then... why adding a reforging feature at all? That doesn't make any sense. The way you put this thing (a Lunar prefix on all weapons to make them usable during endgame) is an automatised method to make all weapons viable. When you edit every single item one by one, it's no longer automatised. At that point you might just add new items one by one, it seems easier to do without having to edit everything and making code errors in the process. Out of the hundreds of weapons in Terraria, you might just overlook some of them which will still end up being tried by the playerbase.
Plus, if you change anything else than damage values (and even if you do only that) weapons will play differently: faster firing speed on Musket: doesn't that turn it into a Handgun with a different sprite? Also, why did I choose DPS as a reference point? It's the only thing that regularly scales with tiers (minus crappy overtiered stuff like Keybrand) and with enemy difficulty. However, even orienting it around that, we completely omit the risk to reward ratio. Musket has both higher risk and reward than minishark, as with it you need to make every shot count. Minishark however won't suffer a large drop in damage output if you miss a bullet or two, but it's crappy base damage won't pierce armor as effectively as musket. Same comparison can be made with Sniper Rifle and Uzi. Therefore those two gun pairs will need different max DPSes because otherwise one of them will be outclassed (in this case, Musket, since missing shots is much more punishing + no autofire).
You won't be able to compare space gun to water bolt however, because those things are just too differently played. But you need to balance them around a similar DPS, because that's what an automated process does: it cannot check for all cases.

The only thing you could do is add properly balanced lunar-tiered upgrades to those weapons, one by one.
I also see no point in tiering up ALL weapons. Silver shortsword is just the same thing as platinum shortsword gameplay-wise. Same goes for rainbow rod and magic missile. And nimbus rod and crimson rod. And all the weapon concepts found on several weapons with damage scaling + some other improvements.
Unless you suggest a way of reskinning a weapon (making a sniper rifle take on a musket sprite), there's no way this will work.

I will defend this idea from any criticism other than 'That is a RIDICULOUS amount of effort, no way ever no chance.' which I can't really debate.

That's can honestly be brought up on any thread requiring big changes. But those changes need to be effective and fix a number of problems without creating 5 times as many.
This is my opinion on this.

 

[astralInferno]

It was never intended to be automatised. That wasn't the point. I am basically suggesting lunar-tier upgrades, just you access them through a reforge-style window rather than bloating the crafting and loot table sections.

And there is a point of rainbow rod to magic missile - one is blue and one is rainbow. This suggestion is 50% being able to choose a weapon you like aesthetically and not suffering for it.