Sprites New summoner equipment ideas (pre-hardmode)

[Finch master]

Like many people on this forum I want to see the summoning class become a bit more complete, but my views on what the summoner class should be are a bit different than what I've seen most people suggest. Summoner weapons are generally quite rare and difficult to obtain, this makes the summoner class quite difficult to play at times because you have to grind to find the weapons and armor you need, many see this as a problem but I think it's befitting of this mysterious class and makes it unique. As such most of the items I will suggest won't be easy to obtain, they'll have complicated crafting recipes or must be obtained in strange and unique ways. This post will focus on pre-hardmode, I willl make a separate post for hardmode.

Before showing any of the new items I want to introduce a slight rework of the class and a new subclass of summoner weapons.

First, all whips should be nerfed. Their main source of value should come from tag damage or other boosting effects, they should not have too much raw damage on their own.

Summon capacity can now be seen when you open your inventory, it will appear next to or above the icon that shows your defense. There will be two separate icons, one for minion capacity and one for monster capacity (new name for sentry capacity.) Monster capacity is shared between sentries and guardians (new summoner sub-class)

Guardians are a new type of summon which are supposed using weapons just like sentries or minions, but unlike the other 2 they have health and can die. Guardians are meant to draw aggro from bosses or enemies to block projectiles or disrupt their movement, some of them will have effects that trigger upon death. When they die they will re-spawn automatically after a small amount of time without needing to be re-summoned. They share the same summon slots as sentries so you cannot have a sentry and a guardian if you only have one monster capacity.

With that out of the way I can introduce all of the items.

Autumn staff
Minion
Summon damage: 17
Knockback: 7
Mana: 7
Summons a leaf tornado to blow your enemies away

7% chance to be dropped when shaking yellow willow or pink sakura trees.

Rarity: Light red

This minion behaves similar to the sharknados from the tempest staff, but they are really slow and have low dps so they are better for keeping enemies away with their knock back early on. Not recommended for boss fights.

Firefly baton
Guardian
Material
Summon damage: 8
Knockback: 2
Mana: 20
Health: 25
Defence: 6
Respawn time: 6 seconds
Summons hexed fireflies to light your way and burn your enemies
Great for conducting firefly orchestras

1% drop from any enemy at night, increases by .5% for every firefly you have nearby, including ones that are stored in bottles.

Rarity: Blue

This will typically be the first guardian a new player obtains, it summons fireflies which take up 1/2 of a monster slot meaning you get 2 fireflies for one summon. The fireflies circle around the character when idle, when they detect an enemy they will fly toward it, upon contact with an enemy they deal damage and inflict the "on-fire" debuff. Because of their low health and defense they will die really fast, but as long as they make contact with the enemy they get value. Against enemies that fire projectiles they can be good on defense by blocking shots, but are ineffective on offense because they will die before they get close enough to deal any damage.

Firefly cloak
Accessory
Material
Increases summon damage of the Firefly baton by 20%
Firefly baton now spawns 3 fireflies per summon instead of 2
Taking damage will reduce the respawn time of all dead fireflies by 1 seconds, respawn time can be reduced by 1 second maximum.
Dead bugs everywhere

Sold by

for 5 gold if you have the firefly baton in your inventory

Rarity: Orange

Ghost glass
Accessory
Material
+7% summon damage
A haunted shard of ghost glass will fight for you

4% chance to drop from

Rarity: Blue

This item is unique because it summons a minion, but it's an accessory not a weapon. The minion summoned by this accessory doesn't take up any minion capacity but functions like a minion, you cannot summon duplicates of this particular minion. It is sort of like a pet, except it attacks enemies.

Tomb crawler staff
Minion
Material
Summon damage: 6
Knockback: 2
Mana: 12
Summons mini Tomb crawlers to fight for you

Crafted:

x20

x5

x15

x7

x5

x1 @

/

Rarity: Blue

The mini tomb crawlers behave just like any other worm npc, they will burrow through the ground to attack enemies. Every summon is a separate worm, they do not combine like stardust dragon staff.

Sea king armor
Armor

Rarity: Orange

Sea king shelmet
6 defense
+14% summon damage
Produces light in water

Crafted:

x1

x1

x1

x2

x10

x1 @

Sea king shellmail
7 defense
+8% summon damage

Crafted:

x3

x15

x1 @

Sea king shoes
+5 defense
+8% summon damage
+5% movement speed

Crafted:

x2

x10

x3 @

Set bonus:
+10% summon damage
+10% movement speed in water
Summons gain 20% increased movement speed and 5% increased attack speed in water.

Total:
+18 defense
+40% summon damage
+5% movement speed
+10% movement speed in water
+20% minion movement speed
+5% minion attack speed
Produces light when underwater

This armor set is a late pre-hardmode alternative to the bee armor, it can only be obtained after Skeletron is defeated because it is crafted at a bewitching table. It doesn't provide any additional minions, but will boost your stats by a high amount, significantly higher than it's competitor, the bee armor.

Lobster rod
Minion
Summon damage: 9
Knockback: 2
Mana: 10
Summons angry lobsters to fight for you

Crafted:

x1

x1

x1

x1

x1

x1

x10 @

Rarity: Orange

The lobsters scurry along the ground and dash through their enemies to deal damage, similar to the raven staff or finch staff. They can latch onto airborne enemies to deal damage for a half a second longer before falling off. They cannot fly but they can walk on background walls like the spider staff. Like the Sea king armor set this summoner weapon is crafted at a bewitching table.

Pearl staff
Sentry
Summon damage: 24 / 30 / 48
Knockback: 6
Mana: 25
Summons a giant oyster to launch pearls at your enemies

5% chance to drop from oysters after skeleton has been beaten.

Rarity: Light red

Summons a giant oyster which launches pearls like a cannon, the Pearls will do different amounts of damage depending on their color.
60% chance for white pearl (minimum damage)
30% chance for black pearl
10% chance for pink pearl (maximum damage)

Golem heart
Guardian
Material
Summon damage: 48
Knockback: 7
Mana: 45
Health: 170
Defense: 36
Respawn time: 20 seconds
Death damage: 36 x 7
Summons a friendly golem to protect you, it explodes upon death.

2.5% chance to drop from

Rarity: Light red

The golem has very slow movement and attack speed but has high health and defense so it can absorb a lot of damage to keep you safe, upon death it explodes releasing several deadly chunks of piercing sharp stone in random directions. In it's base form it's better for dealing with small enemies because he draws their aggression and then smashes them with his attack which deals high area damage with a slow wind up. Against bosses like the Wall of Flesh it will rarely get a chance to land a hit because it is too slow, but upon death the shrapnel will deal massive at close range and will often wipe out an entire wave of the hungry.

Necronomicon
Accessory
+1% summon damage for every unique summoning weapon that you have collected.
Respawn time for all guardians reduced by 20%
You aren't supposed to have this, this book is forbidden

2.5% to appear in shadow chests or obsidian lockboxes.

Rarity: Red

This item tracks all the different summoning weapons that have entered the players inventory, and will increase it's damage boost accordingly. It doesn't count any accessories or whips as summoning weapons, it only counts items that are manually used to summon minions, sentries, or guardians.

That's it for now, please give me feedback, if you like what you see let me know and I will improve upon this by adding more items in the near future.

 

[The Owler]

Some sprites could use some reworking, and some of these items could also be rebalanced, but so far this looks pretty good. I like the concept of a guardian subclass, gives some more uniqueness to the summon class even if the concept would seem annoying.

 

[J Bame]

First, all whips should be nerfed. Their main source of value should come from tag damage or other boosting effects, they should not have too much raw damage on their own.

Weird compromise here, since Whips already have relatively depressing DPS to compensate for the overpowered tags buffs. Only 3 whips are truly reliable as main weapons (Firecracker, Morning Star somewhat and Dark Harvest) and the latter two are already thought to be underpowered.

Guardians are a new type of summon which are supposed using weapons just like sentries or minions, but unlike the other 2 they have health and can die. Guardians are meant to draw aggro from bosses or enemies to block projectiles or disrupt their movement, some of them will have effects that trigger upon death. When they die they will re-spawn automatically after a small amount of time without needing to be re-summoned. They share the same summon slots as sentries so you cannot have a sentry and a guardian if you only have one monster capacity.

Okay, many things I have to say here:
1- Messing with enemy AIs is a lot of work. We used to have a minion that could be targeted by other enemies (the Stardust Guardian) and it literally didn't work (or did, but in a super glitchy and weird way) on anything that wasn't a Fighter AI.
2- It doesn't make a lot of sense that Sentries and Guardians use the same slots given that they'd work much differently. I guess that's because of balancing reasons, but...
3- At what point did Summoner's combat system need to be complicated with extra minions that could double as meatshields? Not to mention that nothing would stop other classes from abusing them too...

Summon damage: 17
Knockback: 7
Mana: 7
Summons a leaf tornado to blow your enemies away

7% chance to be dropped when shaking yellow willow or pink sakura trees.

Rarity: Light red

This minion behaves similar to the sharknados from the tempest staff, but they are really slow and have low dps so they are better for keeping enemies away with their knock back early on. Not recommended for boss fights.

Idk, with that much base damage and the fact that bosses this early on don't really move a lot I would recommend this for boss fights.

If this deals contact damage like the Sharknados do, then summoning them on top of enemies would actually be super strong since they are apparently super slow so they'll stay on them for longer.

Firefly baton
Guardian
Material
Summon damage: 8
Knockback: 2
Mana: 20
Health: 25
Defence: 6
Respawn time: 6 seconds
Summons hexed fireflies to light your way and burn your enemies
Great for conducting firefly orchestras

1% drop from any enemy at night, increases by .5% for every firefly you have nearby, including ones that are stored in bottles.

Rarity: Blue

This will typically be the first guardian a new player obtains, it summons fireflies which take up 1/2 of a monster slot meaning you get 2 fireflies for one summon. The fireflies circle around the character when idle, when they detect an enemy they will fly toward it, upon contact with an enemy they deal damage and inflict the "on-fire" debuff. Because of their low health and defense they will die really fast, but as long as they make contact with the enemy they get value. Against enemies that fire projectiles they can be good on defense by blocking shots, but are ineffective on offense because they will die before they get close enough to deal any damage.

Think about this for a moment: All classes can now constantly spawn two projectile blockers every 6 seconds at literally no cost (unless you really care about the dps from an uninvested sentry). This would be used all the way up to and including Moon Lord due to how good it'd be at blocking projectile

This right here is the problem with Guardians; they will always be a balancing nightmare since other classes can and will abuse them.

Firefly cloak
Accessory
Material
Increases summon damage of the Firefly baton by 20%
Firefly baton now spawns 3 fireflies per summon instead of 2
Taking damage will reduce the respawn time of all dead fireflies by 1 seconds, respawn time can be reduced by 1 second maximum.
Dead bugs everywhere

Sold by

for 5 gold if you have the firefly baton in your inventory

I'm just going to assume the Firefly Baton is well designed for this one.

Only good thing here would be the second effect, assuming there's an unlisted "Fireflies now take 1/3 of a slot"; the other stuff is pretty worthless (it's not meant to deal damage so increasing it is pointless, and reducing the cooldown from 6 to 5 seconds on a hit isn't exactly good).

Ghost glass
Accessory
Material
+7% summon damage
A haunted shard of ghost glass will fight for you

4% chance to drop from

Rarity: Blue

This item is unique because it summons a minion, but it's an accessory not a weapon. The minion summoned by this accessory doesn't take up any minion capacity but functions like a minion, you cannot summon duplicates of this particular minion. It is sort of like a pet, except it attacks enemies.

+1 Minion slot on Pre-EoC that would be this easy to obtain is already super good, it doesn't need to increase damage on top of that.

Tomb crawler staff
Minion
Material
Summon damage: 6
Knockback: 2
Mana: 12
Summons mini Tomb crawlers to fight for you

Crafted:

x20

x5

x15

x7

x5

x1 @

/

Rarity: Blue

The mini tomb crawlers behave just like any other worm npc, they will burrow through the ground to attack enemies. Every summon is a separate worm, they do not combine like stardust dragon staff.

The classic "smaller version of an enemy as a minion" with a super convoluted recipe (why is there Topaz here). Not a fan of this one.

Total:
+18 defense
+40% summon damage
+5% movement speed
+10% movement speed in water
+20% minion movement speed
+5% minion attack speed
Produces light when underwater

This armor set is a late pre-hardmode alternative to the bee armor, it can only be obtained after Skeletron is defeated because it is crafted at a bewitching table. It doesn't provide any additional minions, but will boost your stats by a high amount, significantly higher than it's competitor, the bee armor.

Incredibly bad offensively due to not giving any minion slots at all so that damage stat goes to waste, and +5 defense or +15% movement speed with a super hard condition to fulfill isn't selling it. Increasing minion movement speed is also kindof bad, especially here in Post Skeletron where all minions have projectiles.

Lobster rod
Minion
Summon damage: 9
Knockback: 2
Mana: 10
Summons angry lobsters to fight for you

Crafted:

x1

x1

x1

x1

x1

x1

x10 @

Rarity: Orange

The lobsters scurry along the ground and dash through their enemies to deal damage, similar to the raven staff or finch staff. They can latch onto airborne enemies to deal damage for a half a second longer before falling off. They cannot fly but they can walk on background walls like the spider staff. Like the Sea king armor set this summoner weapon is crafted at a bewitching table.

Cool flavor, but ultimately pointless due to being inbetween Hornet and Imp Staff in progression. It'll just be skipped most of the time.

Pearl staff
Sentry
Summon damage: 24 / 30 / 48
Knockback: 6
Mana: 25
Summons a giant oyster to launch pearls at your enemies

5% chance to drop from oysters after skeleton has been beaten.

Rarity: Light red

Summons a giant oyster which launches pearls like a cannon, the Pearls will do different amounts of damage depending on their color.
60% chance for white pearl (minimum damage)
30% chance for black pearl
10% chance for pink pearl (maximum damage)

Ok, I'm not really sure why you are adding this much content in Post Skeletron when summoner already has enough for that stage in the game, with the problem being that there isn't enough anywhere else.

As for the weapon itself... well we have 4 summoner sentries in Post Skeletron so a fifth is pretty redundant, especially when it's much more tedious to obtain.

Necronomicon
Accessory
+1% summon damage for every unique summoning weapon that you have collected.
Respawn time for all guardians reduced by 20%
You aren't supposed to have this, this book is forbidden

2.5% to appear in shadow chests or obsidian lockboxes.

By the time you'd have collected enough weapons for this to be worth it, you'll already have better stuff to equip in place of a flat damage up. Also it's really weird to have it increase in value over time like this, especially since the more summoning weapons you add to the game the stronger it gets.

 

[RC3432]

If I get the chance, I could mod this on tmodloader and send you the mod file.

 

[The Owler]

If I get the chance, I could mod this on tmodloader and send you the mod file.

Take not of what Bame said, both of you.
Balancing is important, Bame taught me that.

 

[Finch master]

Weird compromise here, since Whips already have relatively depressing DPS to compensate for the overpowered tags buffs. Only 3 whips are truly reliable as main weapons (Firecracker, Morning Star somewhat and Dark Harvest) and the latter two are already thought to be underpowered.



Okay, many things I have to say here:
1- Messing with enemy AIs is a lot of work. We used to have a minion that could be targeted by other enemies (the Stardust Guardian) and it literally didn't work (or did, but in a super glitchy and weird way) on anything that wasn't a Fighter AI.
2- It doesn't make a lot of sense that Sentries and Guardians use the same slots given that they'd work much differently. I guess that's because of balancing reasons, but...
3- At what point did Summoner's combat system need to be complicated with extra minions that could double as meatshields? Not to mention that nothing would stop other classes from abusing them too...



Idk, with that much base damage and the fact that bosses this early on don't really move a lot I would recommend this for boss fights.

If this deals contact damage like the Sharknados do, then summoning them on top of enemies would actually be super strong since they are apparently super slow so they'll stay on them for longer.



Think about this for a moment: All classes can now constantly spawn two projectile blockers every 6 seconds at literally no cost (unless you really care about the dps from an uninvested sentry). This would be used all the way up to and including Moon Lord due to how good it'd be at blocking projectile

This right here is the problem with Guardians; they will always be a balancing nightmare since other classes can and will abuse them.



I'm just going to assume the Firefly Baton is well designed for this one.

Only good thing here would be the second effect, assuming there's an unlisted "Fireflies now take 1/3 of a slot"; the other stuff is pretty worthless (it's not meant to deal damage so increasing it is pointless, and reducing the cooldown from 6 to 5 seconds on a hit isn't exactly good).



+1 Minion slot on Pre-EoC that would be this easy to obtain is already super good, it doesn't need to increase damage on top of that.



The classic "smaller version of an enemy as a minion" with a super convoluted recipe (why is there Topaz here). Not a fan of this one.



Incredibly bad offensively due to not giving any minion slots at all so that damage stat goes to waste, and +5 defense or +15% movement speed with a super hard condition to fulfill isn't selling it. Increasing minion movement speed is also kindof bad, especially here in Post Skeletron where all minions have projectiles.



Cool flavor, but ultimately pointless due to being inbetween Hornet and Imp Staff in progression. It'll just be skipped most of the time.



Ok, I'm not really sure why you are adding this much content in Post Skeletron when summoner already has enough for that stage in the game, with the problem being that there isn't enough anywhere else.

As for the weapon itself... well we have 4 summoner sentries in Post Skeletron so a fifth is pretty redundant, especially when it's much more tedious to obtain.



By the time you'd have collected enough weapons for this to be worth it, you'll already have better stuff to equip in place of a flat damage up. Also it's really weird to have it increase in value over time like this, especially since the more summoning weapons you add to the game the stronger it gets.

Thank you so much for the feedback, I already have some changes I want to make.