Game Mechanics Pre-hardmode Mage is terrible ~Sorbet Cafe

[trya]

it absolutely is a "modded" thing, this is what Calamity does, it gives you a starter bag of items and takes away the joy of finding your first weapons. It's one of the things that made me instantly dislike Calamity. It's definitely not a "natural" thing for Terraria. Most of the time when you kill a boss you will get a random item and not have the choice to choose, and that's one of my favourite parts of the game. I wouldn't pick the flairon or RBT over the Tsunami but the game is gracious enough to give me those weapons and let me have some variety in the weapons I use (I wouldn't fight fishron twice because aside from the tempest staff the tsunami is only mildly better than the alternatives and I like variety.)

oh, you think looking for a spear or wand of sparking or anything else is "fun?" I couldn't find anything at all. I got 15 radars in a row, and no wand of sparking or spear.

 

[ggyt]

oh, you think looking for a spear or wand of sparking or anything else is "fun?" I couldn't find anything at all. I got 15 radars in a row, and no wand of sparking or spear.

Unless I'm trying to complete the cellphone or doing a summoner playthrough I never search for specific items from wooden chests. I think getting random items is most of the fun: getting an umbrella for example feels great and makes exploration much smoother, but it only feels that because it's something you don't get every time.

 

[Dapling]

Unless I'm trying to complete the cellphone or doing a summoner playthrough I never search for specific items from wooden chests. I think getting random items is most of the fun: getting an umbrella for example feels great and makes exploration much smoother, but it only feels that because it's something you don't get every time.

I mean, Featherfall Potion is like a souped up version of one in every way (to the point that fledgeling wings actually reduce your total jump height with it if you use it with some other specific mobility accessories) so I’m not actually sure it’s as dependant on rarity as you think. Unless you mean the SUPER early game where you haven’t roped up to a floating island and boxed yourself in yet.

 

[ggyt]

I mean, Featherfall Potion is like a souped up version of one in every way (to the point that fledgeling wings actually reduce your total jump height with it if you use it with some other specific mobility accessories) so I’m not actually sure it’s as dependant on rarity as you think. Unless you mean the SUPER early game where you haven’t roped up to a floating island and boxed yourself in yet.

Yeah I meant the super early game, like for just general cave exploration so you don't have to rope/throw glow sticks everywhere.

 

[TerrarianJake🌳]

I think I'd love to see a rework of mana as a whole, even if its out of scope of terraria 1...
like, something more dynamic... akin to whip stacking. some sort of multi-weapon mana system where using more types of magic increases your damage.
I... am surprisingly out of ideas regarding a more in depth mana system aside from "reward the player for using more magic weapons" but I'd love to hear more ideas

 

[Dapling]

I think I'd love to see a rework of mana as a whole, even if its out of scope of terraria 1...
like, something more dynamic... akin to whip stacking. some sort of multi-weapon mana system where using more types of magic increases your damage.
I... am surprisingly out of ideas regarding a more in depth mana system aside from "reward the player for using more magic weapons" but I'd love to hear more ideas

Back when I was thinking of how to redesign every class to be ridiculously overly-complex for fun (and also conceptualized three new ones called Alchemist, Gourmet, and Architect) mage's rework was having 4 mana slots you could put various "Arcana" into which each had their own pools with different mechanics. Infernal Mana for example could only be refilled by spending other mana like Astral Mana (Astral being similar to vanilla's mana system). You would manually swap between them.

Obviously this doesn't fit the current landscape of the game, but it does sound neat for a hypothetical sequel or spinoff.

 

[Mille Marteaux]

But, i believe i narrowed down our problems here. We need more prehardmode magic weapons. Give us one or two more options for preboss, add a weapon you can craft with Demonite/Crimtane, give us something better than Space Gun right after the evil bosses.

pretty much this yeah. earlygame weapon availability is kinda zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

after actually playing through to get a fair assessment there wasn't really a point in time i ever really felt weak, i just felt frustrated getting my foot in the door because i didn't get a wand of sparking so i had to dig down for gem staves. once i got even an amethyst staff online i was doing much better, and making an amber then later diamond staff felt like a meaningful upgrade since i gained the ability to mob, it fired faster, and it had stronger knockback

i think a simple craft of wood and fallen stars or a mana crystal to get a quick little 10 damage weapon on par with wooden bows would go a long way

magic has access to homing weapons both incredibly early and incredibly consistently, it's a bit of a powerhouse in that regard. weather pain rules

i stand by the opinion that mana flower could get an upgrade to reduce mana sickness timers or something though but even when i did bother putting one on it didnt really do anything other than let me not have to wait 5 seconds before i can continue spamming homing projectiles. my mana gripes might just be a problem with earlygame mana potions since i'd rather just use a regen band/potion and treat it like a stamina meter, getting into a mana sinkhole is hard with supers but painfully easy with regular ones

maybe let it be able to be combined with philosopher's stone to get the effect for mana sickness instead of potion sickness? idk

 

[Yousef the H]

i already made this thread about the same issue a while back, infact, it's down here in the similar threads. The issue with mage was heavily discussed here, and i agree with most of the points argued down here, i just want to mention book of skulls exists, and i honestly think it deserves a buff admist all of this lol.

 

[TwentY!]

the mage weapons are fine. the diamond staff isn't hard to obtain, if you have gold you con mine a ton of silt and get an extractinator and you can get all gems and pre-HM ores, letting you also get some extra money.

I have never used the thunder zapper because i usually have an overpowered staff when i get it, but it seems like another gem staff but slightly different.

bee gun is powerful with its homing, and using the hive pack, which is garanteed with the bee gun on expert and master, just makes it more overpowered

wand of sparking is easy to find if you search enough trees and caves, and its also a decent starting weapon, designed so it is for when people have almost no mana

grey zaphinator is a luck find and also overpowered for when you can get it, great for non-boss enemies

vilethorn is overpowered, dealing a ton of damage to one enemy and being great for crowd control

demon scythe is really easy to get once you hit the underworld, and it is also overpowered enough to cheese the eater of worlds when you have an inferno potion

crimson rod is great for invasions if you stick near to the cloud

overall, just dont play exclusively mage because it it a little hard to get the weapons in the beginning, and youll be fine.

 

[Asternove]

bee gun is powerful with its homing, and using the hive pack, which is garanteed with the bee gun on expert and master, just makes it more overpowered

Global I-Frames:

 

[Dapling]

Global I-Frames:

Hive Pack is actually the main reason that bees don’t have Static iframes yet which is very depressing to me.

Bee Gun is hurt most by this because it has only 9 damage and can only hit 6 times per second because of global iframes which gives it some of the most pitiful base dps in the entire game despite the number of projectiles.
It deals 56 base dps and this number is absolutely slaughtered by enemy defense so badly it’s not even funny. Reminder grenades have infinite pierce and deal 60 damage every single hit. Which means grenades have comparable multitarget yet do more damage than a full second of bee gun hits when they hit ONCE assuming the enemy doesn’t have defense (which, I remind you, hurts bee gun way more than it hurts grenades.)

 

[Golden Heretic Snakeboat]

Hive Pack is actually the main reason that bees don’t have Static iframes yet which is very depressing to me.

wait, what does hive pack have to do with bee weapons not having static i-frames

 

[Coleyohley]

wait, what does hive pack have to do with bee weapons not having static i-frames

Giant Bees use a separate projectile ID and would no longer share iframes with normal bees if all of them were given Static iframes. The devs don't want that because it would be such a huge DPS boost that the Hive Pack would be an almost mandatory accessory choice when using the Bee weapons.

There  is a way to make separate projectile IDs inflict shared static iframes but the developers don't seem to use it.

 

[MoultonLava]

wait, what does hive pack have to do with bee weapons not having static i-frames

Hive Pack causes the bees to sometimes become big bees, which pierce one more time. This gives the enemy global I-frames, causing the other bees to be unable to hit the enemy for longer.

 

[Dapling]

There  is a way to make separate projectile IDs use shared static iframes but the developers don't seem to use it.

The devs have used it in exactly one case as far as I know and it was Stardust Dragon.
Also thanks for explaining the bees thing. That’s exactly what I was referring to.

 

[MoultonLava]

Yeah. The things that I can think of that have Global I-frames of the top of my head are:
All bee weapons with the exception of the Wasp Gun
All yoyos with the exception of the Terrarian's projectiles
All traps

 

[Coleyohley]

The devs have used it in exactly one case as far as I know and it was Stardust Dragon.

The Stardust Dragon uses its own horrific abomination of shared local iframes that makes Yoraiz0r want to pull his beautiful hair out whenever he has to work with it. Shared Static is much simpler and much less of a pain to work with, though I don't think the developers know about it.

 

[Moonlit_Shadow]

In my opinion, though it may seem rather drastic, a good way to fix gem staves is to remove the gems from the gem staff crafting recipes (renaming them to be metal staves instead, so platinum staff instead of diamond staff), add lead and iron staves (and add staves for the HM ores?), then move the gems to make demonite/crimtane and hellstone staves instead. Beyond that, a velocity upgrade or light homing as well as a damage buff could make them on par with the other classes. With gem staves being better and easier to obtain, pre-skeletron mage would have actually viable options aside from skipping progression for a demon scythe.

The way I think mana could be fixed is with a "color" system, where you have 3-6 different colors of mana, and you can use maybe an easily craftable station (maybe like lead/iron and a mana crystal) or early NPC (maybe obtained after using one mana crystal) to assign weapons to different colors. Each color would basically be its own mana bar, so this system would force you to constantly switch weapons, which I think would play well on mage's theme of unique and diverse weapons.

I know this suggestion's kind of crazy but I think it has something going for it, right?

 

[Asternove]

In my opinion, though it may seem rather drastic, a good way to fix gem staves is to remove the gems from the gem staff crafting recipes (renaming them to be metal staves instead, so platinum staff instead of diamond staff), add lead and iron staves (and add staves for the HM ores?), then move the gems to make demonite/crimtane and hellstone staves instead. Beyond that, a velocity upgrade or light homing as well as a damage buff could make them on par with the other classes. With gem staves being better and easier to obtain, pre-skeletron mage would have actually viable options aside from skipping progression for a demon scythe.

Eh… I don’t think this is necessary. Just make new weapons be cool.

The way I think mana could be fixed is with a "color" system, where you have 3-6 different colors of mana, and you can use maybe an easily craftable station (maybe like lead/iron and a mana crystal) or early NPC (maybe obtained after using one mana crystal) to assign weapons to different colors. Each color would basically be its own mana bar, so this system would force you to constantly switch weapons, which I think would play well on mage's theme of unique and diverse weapons.

I think this might be really cool if done right.