NPCs & Enemies Lunatic Cultist Rework

Which of the Cultist's New phases is your favorite?


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Solar Cultist.png
Combined Cultist.png
Terra Cultist.png
Vortex Cultist.png
Stardust Cultist.png
Nebula Cultist.png
 
So. This is a very long thread. I do not have time to read all the replies. However! I like this thread's suggestion! Except for one very big issue.

Fighting all four phases in one go would be tedious and boring, even if the order you face them in is randomized. It does not renew the boss, it does not make it a different encounter every time, it just makes it longer.

Instead, I'd suggest you only face two of the pillar-based forms in any given encounter before going into the DPS check phase, chosen randomly. The health breakdowns should be distributed so that you would face roughly 25% of vanilla cultist, 30% of one Celestial, 30% of another, then 15% of a DPS check phase.

Cultist should have higher scaled health as well to account for these, so you can actually let them all fight. The DPS check phase should also begin its waves much sooner to account for less of its health being available for the phase - if you want to do a Nurse skip, then you need to be incredibly powerful or have a lot of resources to do so.
 
So. This is a very long thread. I do not have time to read all the replies. However! I like this thread's suggestion! Except for one very big issue.

Fighting all four phases in one go would be tedious and boring, even if the order you face them in is randomized. It does not renew the boss, it does not make it a different encounter every time, it just makes it longer.

Instead, I'd suggest you only face two of the pillar-based forms in any given encounter before going into the DPS check phase, chosen randomly. The health breakdowns should be distributed so that you would face roughly 25% of vanilla cultist, 30% of one Celestial, 30% of another, then 15% of a DPS check phase.

Cultist should have higher scaled health as well to account for these, so you can actually let them all fight. The DPS check phase should also begin its waves much sooner to account for less of its health being available for the phase - if you want to do a Nurse skip, then you need to be incredibly powerful or have a lot of resources to do so.
Hmm, actually, I think this suggestion is going to get a major update from me soon. I’ll definitely take some of this into consideration, especially considering how much his numbers go up in this difficulty.

(I was already planning on reworking the Stardust Cultist soon, so I may as well make the update even bigger than I originally intended.)
 
If i'm reading this right, he basically has to be killed five times?
Because taking 75% of his health only for him to restore his entire health bar five times sounds absurdly frustrating
 
If i'm reading this right, he basically has to be killed five times?
Because taking 75% of his health only for him to restore his entire health bar five times sounds absurdly frustrating
Yeah, I don’t plan on leaving this thing as is. This suggestion was written before we knew very much about master mode.
 
The thing is, master mode barely changes any ais of bosses, I support this but I also feel like other master mode bosses ais should have some updates
 
The thing is, master mode barely changes any ais of bosses, I support this but I also feel like other master mode bosses ais should have some updates
I couldn't agree more. I did only this boss because to be frank, I'm biased towards him.

I'm actually really really mad at master mode for not doing this for any of the bosses.
 
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I couldn't agree more. I did only this boss because to be frank, I'm biased towards him.

I'm actually really really mad at master mode for not doing this for any of the bosses.
Yeah lets be honest Master Mode kinda sucks it is pure stat inflation seemingly by a relatively flat rate it is kind of sad....
 
This idea is a little more ambitious than what I've suggested before, but I'm sure it won't be too bad. The Lunatic Cultist's attacks are much easier to dodge than other bosses once you've learned them, and as a result, I feel like if a major rework isn't done for this boss, he'll just be killed and immediately forgotten. Plus, bosses with crazy elaborate attacks are usually fun, right?

The Lunatic Cultist now has six distinct phases, denoted by the appearance of his robes (credit to @Bry-ccentric for the awesome sprites, by the way. :happy:). Phases 2-5 are meant to be interchangable and as a result aren't particularly important as to what order they appear in the final version (in fact, it's probably best if the order is randomized every time.)

View attachment 231508
Lunatic Cultist (1st phase, dark blue robes):
Similar to the expert mode fight. The only real difference is that he no longer resists homing attacks. Once he has lost 50% of his HP, he becomes intangible and recovers all of his health before switching to the next phase (if the Phantasm Dragon or Ancient Vision are alive, he remains intangible and doesn't change into the next phase until they are defeated, and cannot summon any more.)

View attachment 231506
Solar Cultist (2nd phase):
He no longer teleports, and uses the following attacks instead of his normal ones:

  • Summons a javelin similar to the Daybreak, before dashing towards the player thrice. The javelin dashes along the same path that the Cultist dashed a few seconds after the Cultist's first dash.
  • The Cultist dashes to a position about 10 blocks above the player before immediately unleashing a rapid storm of projectiles similar to the ones created by the Solar Pillar, the difference being that they can no longer be destroyed.
  • The Cultist creates a summoning circle similar to the one in the first phase. Hitting a fake cultist (or waiting too long) causes him to summon a Crawltipede and creates three hallucinations similar to the Brain of Cthulhu's expert mode ability, the difference being that the hallucinations now periodically fire the destructible homing projectile used by Drakomire Riders (cannot fire this projectile while they are within 15 blocks of the player.)
  • The Cultist stops moving and gathers energy for one second, before releasing a midrange non-damaging pulse that reflects all of the player's projectiles.
  • The Cultist dashes towards the player, stopping about 5 blocks away, before gathering orange dust into a large blade (takes about 0.6 seconds to do so, design could resemble the Tizona as a little nod) and slashing with it.
  • Stabs with a spear that fires a projectile that leaves other projectiles behind it, which fall afterward (similar to the North Pole, but the initial spear projectile isn't affected by gravity and the small projectiles aren't affected by wind.)
Upon losing 75% of his max health, he becomes intangible and heals again, before going into his next phase (he cannot change phases while a crawltipede is alive, and cannot summon any more.)

View attachment 231502
Vortex Cultist (3rd phase):
He regains the ability to teleport, and uses the following attacks instead of his normal ones, attempting to predict where the player is about to be (when applicable):

  • Summons a Phantasm and uses it to fire several arrows into the sky (they resemble a new arrow type with the Vortex Pillar color scheme) which fall down in random patterns for the next 5 seconds.
  • The Cultist warps offscreen and then dashes above the player while firing bullets downwards at a 45 degree angle using an alien version of the SDMG.
  • The Cultist laughs and summons 3 lightning portals above the player identical to the ones summoned by the Vortex Pillar.
  • The Cultist aims with a gun similar to a sniper rifle with a red targeting beam, before firing a very fast and strong bolt of energy which inflicts massive damage.
  • The Cultist creates a summoning circle similar to the one in the first phase. Hitting a fake cultist (or waiting too long) causes him to summon an Alien Larva (which falls to the ground, of course) and creates two clones (cap is four) that teleport towards the player before firing a shotgun blast with a vortex beater, repeating this attack until they die (stats are equal to a storm diver.)
  • The Cultist aims with a bow that looks similar to the Tsunami (but with the vortex aesthetic) and fires five Luminite Arrows which create afterimage lasers 3 times instead of 1.
Upon losing 75% of his max health, he becomes intangible and heals again, before going into his next phase (he cannot change phases while an Alien Larva, Alien Hornet, Alien Queen, or any of his clones are alive, and cannot summon any more.)

View attachment 231503
Nebula Cultist (4th phase):
He keeps his normal teleport, and he uses the following attacks instead of his normal ones.

  • He fires several harmless pink stars (in a similar way to his first forms' Ancient Light attack), which he attacks with hitscan lasers after a while, causing them to send out small shockwaves for 10 blocks.
  • The Cultist charges energy for a few seconds before creating a large pink laser similar to the Phantasmal deathray, sweeping it slowly over 90 degrees.
  • The Cultist creates several pink pillars of energy in random locations 40 blocks below the player which fire upwards after 4 seconds.
  • The Cultist creates a summoning circle similar to the one in the first phase. Hitting a fake cultist (or waiting too long) causes him to summon a Nebula Floater and creates two clones (cap is four) which mimic his movements a few seconds behind, casting Ancient Shadowflames towards the player.
  • The Cultist fires pink shards in 8 directions, which travel for 20 blocks before changing direction towards the player.
  • The Cultist stops in place, and gives himself a nebula Damage Booster (boosts his attack damage by 15% per stack) Health Regen booster (enemies can't regen health, so it just boosts his defense by 10 per stack.) or Mana Regen Booster (boosts his attack speed by 15% per stack). All boosters are capped at three.
  • The Cultist only uses this attack if he has three of each booster. He rapidly fires his boosters towards the player, these boosters have low velocity, homing, and do not disappear until the Cultist next gives himself a booster.
Upon losing 75% of his max health, he becomes intangible and heals again, clearing his boosters, before going into his next phase (he cannot change phases while a Nebula Floater is alive, and cannot summon any more or give himself any boosters, he still makes the homing boosters despawn at the right time, though.)

View attachment 231507
Stardust Cultist (5th phase):
Homing attacks do not target the Cultist in this phase.
His teleport is now instantaneous, and uses the following attacks instead of his normal ones:

  • He fires three rings of 12 Ancient Light projectiles around himself.
  • The Cultist creates a summoning circle similar to the one in the first phase. Hitting a fake cultist (or waiting too long) causes him to summon a Star Cell (or Phantasm Dragon if a Star Cell is alive, or Ancient Vision if both a Star Cell and Phantasm Dragon are alive.) and creates four clones which densely orbit around the cultist, do not attack, and can be killed with about the same durability as an Ancient Vision. (cap is eight clones, if the inner ring has four, then the rest of them create an outer ring that rotates the opposite direction.) (the clones do not inflict contact damage.) The Clones fire a dense cone of 3 ancient light projectiles towards the player on defeat.
  • The Cultist creates several invulnerable Ancient Dooms, and fires hitscan lasers at them to detonate them after a few seconds.
  • The Cultist creates an Ancient Frost, which rapidly fires singular projectiles in random directions at the same rate as the Vortex Beater.
  • The Cultist fires 8 Ancient Flames, which are identical to the first phase.
  • The Cultist creates an Ancient Spark, then teleports to the player's right and creates a second one, then teleports to the player's left and creates a third one, before teleporting below the player and creating a final one.
Upon losing 75% of his max health, he becomes intangible (does not heal) and despawns all clones, before going into his final phase (he cannot change phases while a Star Cell, Phantasm Dragon, or Ancient Vision is alive, and cannot summon any more.)

View attachment 231504
Terrarian Cultist (Final phase):
This phase also starts if you heal from the nurse, which be seen as either an anti-cheese measure or a super-secret way to skip most of the boss fight.

The Cultist stops and begins to draw in green energy which grows in intensity and brightness over the course of 30 seconds. If the player does not kill him over the course of this time limit, he teleports above the player and unleashes a repetition of giant shockwaves which does not stop until the Cultist or the player has been defeated. Defeating this phase results in the end of the boss fight, and the beginning of the Lunar Events!

Possibly could gain some new master mode exclusive drops:


Lunar Fulcrum:
Drops with a 100% chance.
The Lunatic Cultist has only one phase while this is in your inventory.
When equipped as an accessory, it grants one of the following effects depending on which damage type your gear increases most, picks one at random if there is a tie until you either reequip it or break the tie (with one exception):
  • Melee Damage: Striking enemies creates three homing fireballs where the hallucinations would be for them (if the player created hallucinations like the Brain of Cthulhu.) (75 melee damage each, no piercing.) Cooldown of 0.5 seconds.
  • Ranged Damage: Taking damage creates Mini-Vortex Cultist Clones (which resemble Vortex Cultist Clones, but scaled down to the player's size) which dash towards/through the enemy that inflicted the damage before firing a shotgun blast at them. (Dash does 100 ranged damage and pierces, shotgun bullets do 50 ranged damage each with no piercing.)
  • Magic Damage: A trail of four Mini-Nebula Cultist Clones follow you, which mimic your exact movements and fire projectiles identical to the nebula blaze in damage, and accuracy, as well as have a 5% chance of being blue instead of 20%, upon striking an enemy. (cooldown 2 seconds.)
  • Summon Damage: You generate one rotating Mini-Stardust Cultist Clone every second (capped at four) which can block one projectile each. Blocking a projectile destroys the Clone, and fires a homing blue star projectile towards the nearest enemy. (150 summon damage each, do not pierce). (cannot block all projectiles, and hitscan attacks like phantasmal/martian deathrays completely ignore them.)
  • Melee, Ranged, Magic, and Summon damage increased by the same amount: Taking damage causes you to send out a massive shockwave which ignores walls. Has a cooldown of three seconds. (500 damage of a random type.)
Dyeing your Light Pet slot dyes all clones.

Solar Lunatic's Robes/Mask:
Vanity items resembling the robes worn in the Solar Form, drop together with a 10% chance independant of other drops.

Vortex Lunatic's Robes/Mask:
Vanity items resembling the robes worn in the Vortex Form, drop together with a 10% chance independant of other drops.

Nebula Lunatic's Robes/Mask:
Vanity items resembling the robes worn in the Nebula Form, drop together with an 10% chance independant of other drops.

Stardust Lunatic's Robes/Mask:
Vanity items resembling the robes worn in the Solar Form, drop together with a 10% chance independant of other drops.

Terrarian Lunatic's Robes/Mask:
Vanity items resembling the robes worn in the Terrarian Form, drop together with a 10% chance independant of other drops.

Credit to @Sir. Fluff for making these.





I would love this if this was a mod
 
I have a idea: this version of lunatic cultist will be unlockable with a item, is made with 100 each fragment,1 moon Lord summonable item, it is placeable and a master mode - only content, when you interact with it, the next battle with cultist will have this variant.
 
So thinking about this right now the cultist is kind of boring and this suggestion while interesting goes a bit far towards tedium. To resolve that there are a number of ways it could be reworked to be less tedious but still hard.


situation 1:The phased cultist. Here you would fight each phase still but they wouldn't reset their health instead triggering based on the percent health remaining. The invincibility could kick in at health thresholds allowing you to force the player to face each phase but with far more manageable health totals each.


situation 2: Allied assault. As before but rather as each cultist phase is defeated an additional cultist joins the Fray rather than the old one transforming Each additional cultist would have their own health bar Normally the number of clones increases every time you make a mistake. We could have the phases shift at specific thresholds of health of the original cultist. A neat bonus could be that killing each pillar cultist would cause their body at the point of death to be replaced by a appropriately colored pillar of light. The positions where they were killed would then after the final cultists death determine the placement order of the actual pillars with overlapping light pillars randomly breaking ties if needed. The final stage would be triggered when each pillar cultist is killed with the trigger animation absorbing all 4 pillars of light of the defeated cultists. This would punish players taking out all four pillar cultists before reducing the primary cultists health (and thus risking the trigger of another cultist since as soon as the last Cultist spawns the original cultist would become invincible anyways.

situation 3: Optional extra challenge. As you all know the cultist normally doesn't drop loot. Perhaps there would a means to chnage a "regular" cultist battle into an upgraded or more intense cultist battle that acts like the original suggestion. If you need loot I made a suggestion for added Cultist Loot back in 1.3
Diversifying endgame equipment and Boss drops for the cultist I just updated it a bit for 1.4

Another random idea is you could have each extra cultist turn into a pillar aligned phantasmal dragon as otherwise the cultists signature monster wouldn't get much representation.



As another thought perhaps we as community can develop a number of revamped master mode battles into a fixed master mode Mod There is an active Golem Revamp thread. Just imagine if master mode wasn't just pure stat inflation i.e. fake difficulty?
 
So thinking about this right now the cultist is kind of boring and this suggestion while interesting goes a bit far towards tedium. To resolve that there are a number of ways it could be reworked to be less tedious but still hard.


situation 1:The phased cultist. Here you would fight each phase still but they wouldn't reset their health instead triggering based on the percent health remaining. The invincibility could kick in at health thresholds allowing you to force the player to face each phase but with far more manageable health totals each.


situation 2: Allied assault. As before but rather as each cultist phase is defeated an additional cultist joins the Fray rather than the old one transforming Each additional cultist would have their own health bar Normally the number of clones increases every time you make a mistake. We could have the phases shift at specific thresholds of health of the original cultist. A neat bonus could be that killing each pillar cultist would cause their body at the point of death to be replaced by a appropriately colored pillar of light. The positions where they were killed would then after the final cultists death determine the placement order of the actual pillars with overlapping light pillars randomly breaking ties if needed. The final stage would be triggered when each pillar cultist is killed with the trigger animation absorbing all 4 pillars of light of the defeated cultists. This would punish players taking out all four pillar cultists before reducing the primary cultists health (and thus risking the trigger of another cultist since as soon as the last Cultist spawns the original cultist would become invincible anyways.

situation 3: Optional extra challenge. As you all know the cultist normally doesn't drop loot. Perhaps there would a means to chnage a "regular" cultist battle into an upgraded or more intense cultist battle that acts like the original suggestion. If you need loot I made a suggestion for added Cultist Loot back in 1.3
Diversifying endgame equipment and Boss drops for the cultist I just updated it a bit for 1.4

Another random idea is you could have each extra cultist turn into a pillar aligned phantasmal dragon as otherwise the cultists signature monster wouldn't get much representation.



As another thought perhaps we as community can develop a number of revamped master mode battles into a fixed master mode Mod There is an active Golem Revamp thread. Just imagine if master mode wasn't just pure stat inflation i.e. fake difficulty?
For the redesign that will come to this suggestion someday, I was planning on making it so that it just selects the pillar phase based on what armor you're wearing and only uses that pillar phase, the default phase, and the Terrarian phase. I didn't realize how much more health he would have in master already when I wrote this, so I was unaware that it would be so tedious.

I'm probably still going to do the redesign (which will have @The Floof's updated signatures as well as completely redoing the Stardust phase and making the Lunar Fulcrum less convoluted). The Constellation phase based off @Danny Ω's Engineer class will still become a thing if he's still interested in it, but the Hypernova phase may not as what I had in mind for it's respective Alchemist class was probably way, way too ambitious.
 
For the redesign that will come to this suggestion someday, I was planning on making it so that it just selects the pillar phase based on what armor you're wearing and only uses that pillar phase, the default phase, and the Terrarian phase. I didn't realize how much more health he would have in master already when I wrote this, so I was unaware that it would be so tedious.

I'm probably still going to do the redesign (which will have @The Floof's updated signatures as well as completely redoing the Stardust phase and making the Lunar Fulcrum less convoluted). The Constellation phase based off @Danny Ω's Engineer class will still become a thing if he's still interested in it, but the Hypernova phase may not as what I had in mind for it's respective Alchemist class was probably way, way too ambitious.
Hmm Unless it is included in the same mod as the mentioned Engineer class it probably would be a bad idea unless you apply a conditional statement to sense whether that mod is installed or not.
And there was a reason I suggested using HP percentages rather than fresh health since that way it wouldn't be a pure meatshield.
 
Hmm Unless it is included in the same mod as the mentioned Engineer class it probably would be a bad idea unless you apply a conditional statement to sense whether that mod is installed or not.
And there was a reason I suggested using HP percentages rather than fresh health since that way it wouldn't be a pure meatshield.
I don't plan on making this a mod anymore, the reason the Alchemist class is ambitious is because of how mechanically complex it's entire gimmick is. Just planning it would be a huge undertaking. I also do plan on making it just change to the pillar phase at 75% and to the Terrarian phase at 25%.
 
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