Rate the Weapon: Day Ten - Gem Staves

[Ami]

Inspired by another topic, it occurs to me that many of us think weapons are bad or unusable, simply because we know what we like. But, do we know what we DON'T like? What's a worthy investment of your time and resources? In the case of polls which have multiple items bunched together, such as the ore swords, pick only the best one. If you love silver sword, but think iron sword is a waste of the bars, vote as if this were a poll for silver sword. I'll be logging these in a spreadsheet and making a compilation of which items users think are good, bad, OP, or a waste of space.
If they're bad, what would make them better? Lower cost? Autoswing? Projectiles? Different attack animation?
If they're OP, what would make them balanced?

Day Ten: Amethyst staff, Topaz staff, Sapphire staff, Emerald staff, Ruby staff, Diamond staff, Amber staff

Back in the day, these were super OP. However, the nerf bat hit 'em hard, and I've been reluctant to give normal mode magic a try since. The illumination is great, and it's super easy to get to 200 mana early in a game, if you're on the surface anyways (looking for moonglow, deathweed). The nerfs are complemented by a massive barrier to entry by requiring 8 of a gem type and requiring an ore type that may not be in your world (Sapphire staff uses silver bars only. No tungsten). While you could use an extractinator to acquire missing gems or to generate the whole 10 bars of foreign metal, you could also bomb a meteor and have a diamond staff that fires faster, costs zero mana, and higher DPS.

Sadly, I don't think these guys will ever hold a candle to space gun.

Day 7 - Pistols - 4.12 - (33 votes)
Day 8 - Covered in BEES! - 3.84 - (20 votes)
Day 4 - Normal Yoyos - 3.7 - (10 votes)
Day 5 - Normal Boomerangs - 3.47 - (17 votes) - Well balanced votes
Day 2 - Ore Bows - 3.41 - (24 votes)
Day 3 - Grenades - 3.28 - (21 votes) - Much avid support and apathy
Day 9 - Throwing knife/shuriken family - 2.8 (10 votes)
Day 1 - Ore Swords - 2.41 - (17 votes) - Everyone agrees these are not very good, but have no idea how to improve them.
Day 6 - Normal Flails - 2.04 - (23 votes) - RIP old yoyos.

Today is the last day for normal mode group items. After this, the polls are going to change up to single hardmode items.

 

[SteveisNoob]

These weapons, especially the Ruby and Diamond Staves, are very good weapons with their low mana cost, high damage and piercing ability. These weapons are also essential for a Mage playtrough, and can make great improvement into a normal playtrough too. But, unfortunalety they're not as good as Meteor stuff, which might make the grind for them needless.

So, my vote is 3, if I have resources to spare...

 

[Aurora3500]

Throwing my vote to 5, most of the time.

These quickly became my favorite weapon when they were introduced in 1.2. And I find them extremely useful throughout most of Pre-hardmode using them up until the Underworld. I still find myself relying on them in Expert Mode as well when I'm broke on money and unable to buy a minishark for the moment. If I get super lucky with a powerful weapon such as the Arkhalis, then that's a rare circumstance where I don't end up crafting the weapon. But most of the time, they are very useful to me. Even with just a Sapphire/Emerald Staff depending on the type of ore in the World, and how much extra ore gotten from fishing/silt.

 

[Xakk]

The bread and butter of the magic class, right here. In the beginning Terraria's magic weapons were for a large part locked away in the dungeon. Besides the Space Gun and Vilethorn, your mana was useless before Skeletron, and updates til 1.3 didn't change that much. If you're going magic from game start you're going to need one of these, and they are very reliable weapons. The moderately paced projectiles are easy to lead with, have a fat hitbox, shed light like a torch, and hit fairly hard. Upper tiers are autofire so you can hit flighty targets. Another good thing that's slightly off topic is, even after Normal Mode, and after the staves have carried you partway into Hard (easily), there are more staves just like them going on up through hardmode, so a mage will never want for a long stick that shoots a ball of light.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

If you're playing a mage, you will want to build a gemstave.
Its a direct upgrade from the pathetic wand of sparking, and your next good magic weapon is made of meteorite, which requires a bit of progression to get, and is a bit dangerous to mine.
Skippable as any other class, but a dedicated mage is going to want a stave.

So 5 I guess. Not too important for the other classes, but a must have for a proper mage run.

The amber staff is kind of weird though; its made of rarer materials than the diamond / ruby stave, yet it performs worse.

It needs to deal 25 damage and pierces 2 enemies to make up for its rarity, as if you can build a demonite tier pickaxe you can probably build a better magic weapon.

 

[Ami]

You can mine meteorite with bombs. Are you not allowed to use bombs/dynamite in a class playthrough?

You can mine fossils with a reavershark, which does not require you defeat any bosses.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, you can use bombs. There are still meteorite heads, which pack a punch on expert, so you still need a good weapon. Early game bombs can be precious, and you still can't step on meteorite unless you make a risky venture to the lower caverns.
And you still have to get a meteorite to spawn by breaking a shadow orb which is in a dangerous early game zone.

Reaver shark is random, and it depends on how much time you want to spend fishing. You still need an extractinator.
The amber staff's stats just does not justify the effort nor the build path in acquiring it.

 

[Ezel]

If I have the gems, I make a staff. Once I made an Amethyst and Ruby Staff in one of my magic playthroughs.

 

[ManaUser]

I was excited when I first learned to make these, as they're pretty much the first magic weapon you get (this was before the wand of sparking... and let's be honest that sucks anyway), but they're just not that good compared to other options. The space gun is available before your first boss fight if you so choose and blows them away, especially combined with the armor for unlimited mana. I'll still make one if I find the ingredients and I'm trying to focus on magic, but they're very, very skippable.

I was a bit disappointed that the amber gem staff added more recently is weaker than diamond, I'd have thought this would be a good opportunity to give staves a boost, considering the later availability of the material (study fossil). I would definitely like to see gem staves buffed a bit, or more good options for pre-hardmode magic in general.

 

[SteveisNoob]

I currently started a new expert run with a friend, and when I found 10 saphires and 40 silver ore, I was... Yay, best day ever!

 

[Xylia]

Rarely.

One, I don't do magic playthroughs often.
Two, only the Ruby/Diamond Staves are really worth it.
Three, Finding Diamonds and Rubies is not the easiest thing in the world to do, let alone EIGHT of them.
Four, you're forced on using ONE or the OTHER kind of staff. Ruby staff requires gold, Diamond staff requires platinum. IMO, they should have made the metal bars interchangeable.

When you combine these points together, you usually get into a situation where you end up waiting a good long time to get an actual magic weapon to start a magic playthrough with.

And the Amber Staff is very lol-worthy itself, because of the sheer material cost, and the fact that like the Throwing Weapons, Fossils are difficult to mine and by the time you can get them, you already have far better weapons.

 

[Snickerbobble]

I went with option 4, often. Sometimes I just don't have the materials to make ruby or diamond and just use something else. They're probably the best weapons of their tier, though. Gold/Platinum swords and bows just can't keep up in terms of DPS. Even better when you have the wizard hat, diamond robes, and meteor leggings, for a crazy damage, crit, and mana boost. The staff is great without the armor but it's FANTASTIC with it.

An early pre-hardmode set up. 2800 HP down in about 17 seconds, which is about 165 DPS. Not bad for a pre-boss weapon. I wonder if this could still be used to tank the expert version? Maybe with an ironskin and endurance, and some wardings. You could get second form's damage down to about 3-8 per hit. Get a good amount of health and some regeneration stuff and it should be ezpz.

 

[Xakk]

@Xylia: Getting the ore and gems for any staff is made rather trivial with the acquisition of an Extractinator. Just keep dumping silt in until you have what you need. If you're not finding them in Chests, there's almost always more than one set up in the UG Desert now, and in Normal Mode, very little keeping you from it. At the point of acquiring an Extractinator and playing a mage I simply skip straight to Diamond (as it gives you all ores, not just the ones your world spawns with), which in my current playthrough was slightly before or after fighting EoW. At a certain point I stop mining normal mode ores unless they're in the way, and simply harvest swathes of slush and silt when I come on them, as they are potentially every ore. And iron doesn't throw itself onto your pickaxe to be harvested.

 

[S3V3N7HR33]

You don't need these staves if the Water Bolt exists. You could also just get full Meteor Amor and/or Space Gun easily, just with a bomb and a hammer.

You can mine meteorite with bombs. Are you not allowed to use bombs/dynamite in a class playthrough?

The Vilethorn is also a pretty good substitute that don't need a million hours of mining.

 

[Xylia]

@Xylia: Getting the ore and gems for any staff is made rather trivial with the acquisition of an Extractinator. Just keep dumping silt in until you have what you need. If you're not finding them in Chests, there's almost always more than one set up in the UG Desert now, and in Normal Mode, very little keeping you from it. At the point of acquiring an Extractinator and playing a mage I simply skip straight to Diamond (as it gives you all ores, not just the ones your world spawns with), which in my current playthrough was slightly before or after fighting EoW. At a certain point I stop mining normal mode ores unless they're in the way, and simply harvest swathes of slush and silt when I come on them, as they are potentially every ore. And iron doesn't throw itself onto your pickaxe to be harvested.

Trying to get 40 Platinum Ore (if your world spawned with Gold) with the Extractinator takes forever. In fact, on my flooded world playthrough, I've probably extracted ~800 Fossils/Slush/Silt by now and I'm not entirely sure I have 40 Platinum/8 Diamonds. I'll have to check.

Yes, you get gems, money and ore out of the extractinator... but you know what? It isn't really enough that you can stop mining entirely, lol. Out of 560 fossils, I was hoping to get some iron or lead for minecart rail. I got 40 Iron and 30 Lead ores. That's it.

Again, Fossils need a EoW/BoC pickaxe or better to mine, and trying to get 500+ Silt/Slush takes forever. And trying to get Diamonds by Extractinator, well Wiki says you have a 1/300 chance of getting a diamond from an Extractinator and you'd need to do that eight times.

You're probably more likely to find the diamonds while spelunking, lol.

 

[Snickerbobble]

Trying to get 40 Platinum Ore (if your world spawned with Gold) with the Extractinator takes forever. In fact, on my flooded world playthrough, I've probably extracted ~800 Fossils/Slush/Silt by now and I'm not entirely sure I have 40 Platinum/8 Diamonds. I'll have to check.

Yes, you get gems, money and ore out of the extractinator... but you know what? It isn't really enough that you can stop mining entirely, lol. Out of 560 fossils, I was hoping to get some iron or lead for minecart rail. I got 40 Iron and 30 Lead ores. That's it.

Again, Fossils need a EoW/BoC pickaxe or better to mine, and trying to get 500+ Silt/Slush takes forever. And trying to get Diamonds by Extractinator, well Wiki says you have a 1/300 chance of getting a diamond from an Extractinator and you'd need to do that eight times.

You're probably more likely to find the diamonds while spelunking, lol.

You get "1.18" diamonds each time though, but that's an average. Now and then you'll get 2, maybe more rarely even 3? I'm pretty sure I once got 3 from one silt.

Assuming you get a diamond roll for every 300 silt blocks (which is the average), it would take you an average of 2,034 blocks. It could take less, it could take more, but odds are at about 2 stacks of silt, you should probably have enough. Platinum/Gold is a 1/26 chance also at 1.18, so that's about 4.5 ore per 100 silt. You need 40 ore, so on average 889 silt. But you will be obtaining this anyway when going for diamonds, so after 2 stacks of silt you should probably have enough platinum then for two.

Extractinator is there to help get you a few more ore/gems along with what you normally find, so you might not even need so much silt. Usually I only need to process enough to get 3 or 4 more diamonds if I haven't found enough. Silt is EVERYWHERE, though. Find a clump and there's easily 50-100 blocks. It's not like you're processing natural demonite

Sometimes it requires less or more effort, but it's an earlygame weapon that can last you a fair bit into hardmode. Not absolutely needed but nice to have. I mean, just LOOK at that gif I posted! All that delicious crit during the transformation. The only pre-hardmode weapons that would have been more effective are probably only the Star Cannon and maybe Demon Scythe and Phoenix Blaster! It wrecks all pre-hardmode bosses, and will pierce through the WoF's Hungries.

 

[ManaUser]

It's all down to play style I think. Some like to advance quickly, others prefer to take it slow and prepare extensively. If you're in the latter camp, extactonating 2 full stacks of silt might be perfectly reasonable, while to people in the first group it would be an excessive amount of work for a small advantage.

 

[Xylia]

It's all down to play style I think. Some like to advance quickly, others prefer to take it slow and prepare extensively. If you're in the latter camp, extactonating 2 full stacks of silt might be perfectly reasonable, while to people in the first group it would be an excessive amount of work for a small advantage.

I like to take it slow and prepare, but dude, that's a bit ridiculous for preparation. I suppose it's because I'm a more melee/ranger type person and I rarely touch magic unless I see a water bolt, lol.

 

[ManaUser]

Well there's a range... some people like to take it really slow and really prepare.

I'm not quite that extreme, but do make a point of collecting silt when I find it. I probably do run a couple stacks through the gizmo per world on average, but not normally by the time gem staves become obsolete.

 

[Xylia]

Well there's a range... some people like to take it really slow and really prepare.

I'm not quite that extreme, but do make a point of collecting silt when I find it. I probably do run a couple stacks through the gizmo per world on average, but not normally by the time gem staves become obsolete.

Same here. Usually the staff is kinda "meh" compared to other weapons I'm using so I don't bother, lol. The one time I wanted to do a magic-only playthrough and I decided to go for a staff asap... it was a gold world and the stupid extractinator refused to give me any diamonds and IIRC, I wound up using the Space Gun all the way to Water Bolt and then Flamelash.