NPCs & Enemies NPCs should sell their rare item drops when at full happiness. Gold/Rare critters should be more common.

[glider521al]

Hi,

So most NPCs have rare novelty items associated with them; for example the painter has the paintball gun, the Party Girl has the party grenade, the princess has the resonance scepter, etc.
Problem is the only way to have a chance to get them in vanilla is for their NPCs holding them to die. This can be done through murder (e.g. eggshells), homicidal negligence (e.g. letting a boss do it), or overly elaborate mechanical swimming pools.

If you don't get the item (often a 1/8 chance), you have to wait till they respawn for about 24 minutes (The Party Girl's respawn time is the worst, since she only has a 1/40 chance to appear the next day).
It's incredibly tedious and not that challenging (also, murdering people for a chance at an item drop is not very child friendly).

So instead, how about making it so the vending NPCs sell their rare items to you once you've made them as happy as possible?
This rewards players for building and trying different neighbour/biome combinations and saves a lot of time for end-game characters.


Gold Critters
Giving gold critters a Terrarium to live in makes great decorations for buildings; unfortunately, they're way too rare.
After about 800 hours (I got the game in 2013) of play, I've only found about 7 of them with the cellphone/Lifeform Analyzer almost always equipped (2 gold birds which I traded with another player, 1 gold mouse, 1 gold squirrel, and 3 gold bunnies).

The Wiki page says their spawn chance is below 1/400 (decreased by a factor of 4 since 1.3).
It's worth making these more common, especially for harder-to-find/slow spawning creatures (e.g. gold bird at least 1/70 birds; gold strider at least 1/30 striders).
They're more useful for decorative buildings than anything else (they're not worth selling, eating or using for bait as there are more reliable common sources for those).

EDIT Note 1: This can happen after Plantera if players are worried about this impacting early game progression (though fishing and slaying bosses would still be much more reliable
sources of gold.

EDIT Note 2: It would be good to increase the spawn rate of uncommon critters in general (e.g. striders). Thanks sora_92.

Thanks for listening !
Looking forward to 1.4.4 !

 

[Sora_92]

Agree with the 1st one, I hate the whole "if you want that, murder your neighbor" thing.
And guess the "sells it when max happy" could be a nicer alt. - though it brings up questions that some of these NPCs - and including some with items they drop upon death - already have their shop full at times - like painter at christmas, or the tavernkeep post golem. so, what would they do?

as for gold critters, I don't think they're that rare in general as "any gold critter", but if you would be looking for something specific, then yes.
I mean, they are rare, but if they would be too common, it would be way too OP to get 10 gold (or a golden delight) often. yes, they can make deco too, but most players probably just sell them, or at least early game when 10 gold can make a very big difference.

that being said, while I seen enough gold bunnies and squirrels and the like, gold versions of already rare critters are crazy rare. not sure if I seen a gold water strider so far for example XD

 

[glider521al]

Thanks for your input Sora_92 !

Agree with the 1st one, I hate the whole "if you want that, murder your neighbor" thing.
And guess the "sells it when max happy" could be a nicer alt. - though it brings up questions that some of these NPCs - and including some with items they drop upon death - already have their shop full at times - like painter at christmas, or the tavernkeep post golem. so, what would they do?

In the case the inventory is full, they could potentially add more inventory slots (chances are their are already new sell items in 1.4 which would lead to an overflow without it); or replace a random slot in their shop inventory each time their menu is opened.

as for gold critters, I don't think they're that rare in general as "any gold critter", but if you would be looking for something specific, then yes.
I mean, they are rare, but if they would be too common, it would be way too OP to get 10 gold (or a golden delight) often. yes, they can make deco too, but most players probably just sell them, or at least early game when 10 gold can make a very big difference.

that being said, while I seen enough gold bunnies and squirrels and the like, gold versions of already rare critters are crazy rare. not sure if I seen a gold water strider so far for example XD

Even early game would have much faster sources of gold. E.g.

• Eye of Cthulhu drops (excluding health potions) are on average worth over 9 gold on normal mode and 19 gold on Master mode.
• Farming monsters
• Random coin portals spawning give 5-15 gold.
• EDIT: Fishing (especially after you find the Angler or fish up a better rod in an appropriate biome).

Furthermore you can't buy weapons from NPCs until you venture deeper into the game anyway.

That said I'd be happy to settle for already slow-spawning spawning/uncommon critters to being gold far more often (e.g. birds/frogs/butterflies/seahorses/striders...) instead of all critters. Alternatively they can become more common after a certain point in the game (e.g. defeating a boss).

 

[Sora_92]

In the case the inventory is full, they could potentially add more inventory slots (chances are their are already new sell items in 1.4 which would lead to an overflow without it); or replace a random slot in their shop inventory each time their menu is opened.

Do you mean the upcoming update? or 1.4?
They could make the shops bigger, but not sure how they would do that, or how to have items appear at random - I mean, you can link them to different moon phases, etc., but that could be a pain if replacing something else you wanted to buy.

Even early game would have much faster sources of gold. E.g.

• Eye of Cthulhu drops (excluding health potions) are on average worth over 9 gold on normal mode and 19 gold on Master mode.
• Farming monsters
• Random coin portals spawning give 5-15 gold.

Furthermore you can't buy weapons from NPCs until you venture deeper into the game anyway.

That said I'd be happy to settle for already slow-spawning spawning/uncommon critters to being gold far more often (e.g. birds/frogs/butterflies/seahorses/striders...) instead of all critters. Alternatively they can become more common after a certain point in the game (e.g. defeating a boss).

I usually like to gear up plenty before facing EoC, or rather, more like, stay pre-bosses for quite a long time early game, and get most stuff I can get before moving on to post EoC - in modded, it would make even more sense, since a bunch of stuff appears, moves in, etc. after EoC.
otherwise like mid-pre-hardmode, BoC would be a much better source of money, since it drops even more crimtane.

farming monsters early game doesn't drops as much money, and gold portals are super rare and random.
not for weapons, but think stuff like mining helmet, etc.
a gold critter or two can be a huge boost to your money early game, which allows you to buy a few useful gadgets early.
there are also some weapons even at the start, like, from traveling merchant.

 

[glider521al]

Do you mean the upcoming update? or 1.4?
They could make the shops bigger, but not sure how they would do that, or how to have items appear at random - I mean, you can link them to different moon phases, etc., but that could be a pain if replacing something else you wanted to buy.


I usually like to gear up plenty before facing EoC, or rather, more like, stay pre-bosses for quite a long time early game, and get most stuff I can get before moving on to post EoC - in modded, it would make even more sense, since a bunch of stuff appears, moves in, etc. after EoC.
otherwise like mid-pre-hardmode, BoC would be a much better source of money, since it drops even more crimtane.

farming monsters early game doesn't drops as much money, and gold portals are super rare and random.
not for weapons, but think stuff like mining helmet, etc.
a gold critter or two can be a huge boost to your money early game, which allows you to buy a few useful gadgets early.
there are also some weapons even at the start, like, from traveling merchant.

Yeah, I meant for the upcoming update*. If the slots can't be increased (which I think they can).


One other reliable source of the exquisitely stuffed buff and money I forgot to mention early game is fishing.
EoC is generally fairly doable for players with low end gear once they've hollowed out enough of the land with explosives and platforms (or built a series of jumpthrough platforms high above the ground with a few solid blocks for master mode spit protection).

There are much bigger sequence breaks than getting extremely lucky with the travelling merchant (like fishing up a boomstick or getting the demon scythe book).
If the extra gold early on is still an issue, than the gold critters could alternatively be more abundant around the time of Plantera/Empress of Light. Or just have the gold variants of uncommon ones increase in spawn chance (which would otherwise never appear after hundreds of hours of play).

 

[Sora_92]

Yeah, I meant for the upcoming update*. If the slots can't be increased (which I think they can).


One other reliable source of the exquisitely stuffed buff and money I forgot to mention early game is fishing.
EoC is generally fairly doable for players with low end gear once they've hollowed out enough of the land with explosives and platforms (or built a series of jumpthrough platforms high above the ground with a few solid blocks for master mode spit protection).

There are much bigger sequence breaks than getting extremely lucky with the travelling merchant (like fishing up a boomstick or getting the demon scythe book).
If the extra gold early on is still an issue, than the gold critters could alternatively be more abundant around the time of Plantera/Empress of Light. Or just have the gold variants of uncommon ones increase in spawn chance (which would otherwise never appear after hundreds of hours of play).

Dunno if it can be increased or not, we'll see.

Fishing is a good source of money and that buff, yes. I honestly didn't try to cook any gold animals so far XD lol
but I think, while there are all sort of sources of money, gold critters aren't a bad one either. not a reliable one, but a nice little boost to your early game savings XD

the post-plantera is an interesting idea though. at that point, extra 10 gold won't matter that much anymore.
but I wonder how to solve rare critters' gold variants though, since the basic critters themselves can be extremely rare as well...

 

[glider521al]

Dunno if it can be increased or not, we'll see.

Fishing is a good source of money and that buff, yes. I honestly didn't try to cook any gold animals so far XD lol
but I think, while there are all sort of sources of money, gold critters aren't a bad one either. not a reliable one, but a nice little boost to your early game savings XD

the post-plantera is an interesting idea though. at that point, extra 10 gold won't matter that much anymore.
but I wonder how to solve rare critters' gold variants though, since the basic critters themselves can be extremely rare as well...

That's a great point actually; increasing the spawn rate of uncommon critters would be great to including their regular variants (e.g. striders); would add some additional variety to the game.
Sorry for the long delay in my reply; it's been a hectic week.

Thanks for discussing and helping to refine the idea pitch. I've updated the original post accordingly!