Weapons & Equip Making Ground Summons Less Useless

Warriorcurio

Skeletron Prime
There are quite a few ground summons in the game, but they are all quite terrible against most bosses/flying enemies in comparison to the flying summons. Here are a few suggestions to improve on them (no idea how to balance weapon damage so these are only attack style balances).

Vampire Frog Staff

As it stands now, this is quite useless for being so difficult to obtain at that point in the game. I suggest adding some sort of projectile to it, similar to how the Dreadnautilus shoots out blood streams, but less, weaker streams.

Pirate Staff

This is another one of the very rare useless summons. There are three types of pirates spawned from the staff. The mini deadeye should be able to shoot occasional, powerful bullets, similar to how the real deadeye does. The mini captain should be able to shoot rapid, weaker bullets similar to one of the real captain’s attacks. The third one would still be a melee minion. As it is used in hardmode, where wings are practically necessary for most bosses, they would all be able to use their attacks while flying on their parrots, with the melee pirate acting similar to a mini spazmatism from the optic staff. The different types would also be summoned after each other, so it won’t just be either mostly one type or missing one type entirely due to randomness.

Pygmy Staff

Currently, this is mostly just a way to get the deadly sphere/raven staff, since they are both vastly superior. From what I have seen on the wiki, there are 4 types of pygmies that all do the same thing. To add some variety, they would do different things. One would be able to do the current attack used, but with piercing spears. Another would have a faster travelling spear that does no/little piercing and perhaps slightly less damage. Another would shoot a spread of spears that travel at the current spear speed but can’t pierce and do slightly less damage. The final one would be similar to the current ones we have, but instead inflict poison to combine with the others’ venom. Similar to the pirate staff, they would all be able to attack while flying on their spears and be summoned one after another instead of randomly.
 
Summons past mid-prehardmode with no projectile or flight are garbage
Exactly. Summon weapons that can't reach flying enemies are bad summon weapons, unless they have some sort of ranged attack with them. Otherwise, they're just terrible.
 
Summons past mid-prehardmode with no projectile or flight are garbage

No. I haven't done much of the summoner thing in 1.4 but before that the Spiders are the best until you get Deadly Sphere/Xeno Staff.

I do agree with the OP that the Frog is way too weak for what it takes to get it. Also the Pirates and Pygmies are more decorative than anything else.
 
No. I haven't done much of the summoner thing in 1.4 but before that the Spiders are the best until you get Deadly Sphere/Xeno Staff.

I do agree with the OP that the Frog is way too weak for what it takes to get it. Also the Pirates and Pygmies are more decorative than anything else.
Spiders are awful anywhere but underground, they lack any sort of aerial attack whatsoever and more often than not spend 95% of the time sitting around doing nothing. There are far better options available to replace spiders very quickly into hardmode.
 
I rate summons based on aggressiveness. The Spiders are way up there and are only surpassed by damage by the few I mentioned. They can attack aerial creatures, provided you aim the summon towards the creature. Once they latch on i'll take them over most summons any day.

That is of course, if you aren't the summoner type that just sits there and waits...
 
I rate summons based on aggressiveness. The Spiders are way up there and are only surpassed by damage by the few I mentioned. They can attack aerial creatures, provided you aim the summon towards the creature. Once they latch on i'll take them over most summons any day.

That is of course, if you aren't the summoner type that just sits there and waits...
Right, spiders are definitely better than blades or bats which immediately hone in on anything in their line of sight and do constant damage until it's dead. Spiders cannot compare at all in either dps or accuracy.
 
Back
Top Bottom