tModLoader Piercing Projectile Fix

Leafia Barrett

Terrarian
This is a simple mod that enables projectiles that use normal piercing to hit a target without rendering it invulnerable to the player's other projectiles.

For example, let's say you tried to use Meteor Shot in a Boomstick. With the vanilla behavior, this would happen:
piercing_1.png

Only one would connect, and the rest would pass through. The reason for this is because the vanilla behavior for piercing projectiles renders the target immune to the player's projectiles for 10 frames (1/6 of a second). For some mods, including well-known mods like Calamity and Thorium, this causes some weapons/armors to function incorrectly or not at all (such as Thorium's Pyromancer mage armor, which creates a gigantic piercing projectile for its set effect). With this mod, however, the result is this:
piercing_2.png

All projectiles connect with the target. This fixes the aforementioned Pyromancer oversight and any related oversight; it also allows piercing ammo like Meteor Shot to be used in shotguns and fast-firing weapons without any issue. Note that it only affects projectiles using the vanilla piercing behavior; any nonstandard behavior, such as the Last Prism's piercing laser, will not be changed. It should work with all modded projectiles given that circumstance, but if a projectile is relying on vanilla piercing behavior to function correctly, this may cause issues; I don't know of any projectiles that function like that off the top of my head, though.

Download Link

Version History:
1.0 - Release.
1.1 - Adjusted minion behavior to work correctly with the new piercing mechanics.
1.2 - Added a list of projectiles exempt from the fix, to prevent flamethrower-like weapons from being overpowered.
 
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Why does this kind of thing take modders to fix and the actual Terraria devs can't do it? Seriously. They should be ashamed of themselves. This is good, and it's often times minor improvement mods like this that turn out to be some of the most "must have" mods. Thank you for this.
The Devs won't fix this because piercing ammo not getting multiple hits was part of the balancing for the game. If the piercing ammo was able to do the exact same as the regular ammo types, but would ALSO go through multiple enemies, there would be no point in using non-piercing ammo. The devs made it this way as a balance choice, but I admit, I really do like this mod :)
 
I honestly was always bothered by this in vanilla, I wonder why vanilla behaves like this. (obviously balance reasons, but still)
 
IIRC, when they were making the "piercing" damage type, they sorta cheated it by causing the ammo to give the invulnerability debuff until it left the hitbox of the individual enemies. They never fixed it after that, which is why summoning weapons tend to have a similar problem...
 
I have implemented such kind of mod few weeks ago, but eventually disabled it after trying it with Nimbus Rod and Golden Shower. Weapons which rely on invincibility frames after piercing hit became too overpowered.
Radenium said:
Why does this kind of thing take modders to fix and the actual Terraria devs can't do it? Seriously. They should be ashamed of themselves.
BTW, Terraria devs created all the mechanics laying under this mod.

Maybe, it would be better to set new piercing mechanics to projectile on its initialisation rather than on first NPC hit.
 
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The Devs won't fix this because piercing ammo not getting multiple hits was part of the balancing for the game. If the piercing ammo was able to do the exact same as the regular ammo types, but would ALSO go through multiple enemies, there would be no point in using non-piercing ammo. The devs made it this way as a balance choice, but I admit, I really do like this mod :)
Yeah, having played with it now, it also affects a lot of magic weapons that use piercing as balance. Holy :red:. I don't mind overpowered stuff but I'm even considering not using it because my God, you can just totally wreck stuff hard with it. Nothing against Leafia of course, but it does throw balance way out of whack, most likely unintentionally.
 
Yeah, having played with it now, it also affects a lot of magic weapons that use piercing as balance. Holy :red:. I don't mind overpowered stuff but I'm even considering not using it because my God, you can just totally wreck stuff hard with it. Nothing against Leafia of course, but it does throw balance way out of whack, most likely unintentionally.
Care to explain? If you have specific examples, I may be able to fix it. I made this because the same behavior that throws balance out of whack also breaks some things unless handled carefully.
 
A lot of modded stuff basically. Thorium's Bloodboil and Prismatic Spray, to name a couple. Since it basically makes all the piercing entities do damage, this means that every tick of these weapons is capable of causing damage, It badly destroyed Martian Saucers in under 5 seconds.
 
A lot of modded stuff basically. Thorium's Bloodboil and Prismatic Spray, to name a couple. Since it basically makes all the piercing entities do damage, this means that every tick of these weapons is capable of causing damage, It badly destroyed Martian Saucers in under 5 seconds.
Oh, mother:red:er. I know why this is happening, and there's no way to fix it other than just make a huge list of projectiles that aren't changed by the fix. I'll update once that's dealt with. Can you name any others?
 
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I've added a cursory list of exempt projectiles; if anyone finds any other busted weapons, contact me and I'll add them to the list.
 
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