The Hexagonal Donut
Plantera
This suggestion is no longer relevant, as the changes to the way the Broken Hero Sword drops have basically fixed the issue.
Teeeeeeeechnically, this is largely a revamp to Solar Eclipse drops, however because it's also a complete revamp for True/Terra weapon crafting, it makes the most sense (at least to me) to put it in Equipment.
So anyway, what are these "shards" I speak of? Quite simple, really- I'm aiming to take a bit of the edge off of Broken Hero Sword grinding by tying it to a very common drop that you need lots of (thus actually tying it to the quantity of monsters killed) instead of a rare drop you need a few of. This also aims to fix the whole issue with making other varieties of True Weaponry, namely the need for extra drop types.
NOTE: This thread goes largely under the assumption that Cyber and the entirety of Tobbvald's Tinkering is taken into account. If you haven't seen those suggestions yet, I seriously recommend checking them out- they're pretty sweet.
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And that about covers it for now. As time goes on I might add new varieties of essences to this list, either to accommodate my other ideas or to change recipes for existing things to be more suitable. Suggestions, comments, and feedback in general welcome!
(Yes, you're allowed to use this idea as a base for your own ideas; in fact, I'd be very happy if you did.)
Teeeeeeeechnically, this is largely a revamp to Solar Eclipse drops, however because it's also a complete revamp for True/Terra weapon crafting, it makes the most sense (at least to me) to put it in Equipment.
So anyway, what are these "shards" I speak of? Quite simple, really- I'm aiming to take a bit of the edge off of Broken Hero Sword grinding by tying it to a very common drop that you need lots of (thus actually tying it to the quantity of monsters killed) instead of a rare drop you need a few of. This also aims to fix the whole issue with making other varieties of True Weaponry, namely the need for extra drop types.
NOTE: This thread goes largely under the assumption that Cyber and the entirety of Tobbvald's Tinkering is taken into account. If you haven't seen those suggestions yet, I seriously recommend checking them out- they're pretty sweet.
Essence Shards are quite simple, and the very core of this suggestion. Any Solar Eclipse enemy has a 90% chance to drop 1 or 2 of these when killed, meaning you can very quickly accumulate a lot. These act as a replacement for Broken Hero Swords, which would be removed completely and replaced with another item I'll get to shortly, but come in much greater quantities. Why, you ask? Because you need a lot of them.
"The basic essence of power"
"The basic essence of power"
Something that occurred to me when coming up with this idea is, combining a broken sword with a non-broken one to make the non-broken one much more powerful doesn't exactly make sense, in two senses- first off, no new material is added to the True swords, just an added aura, which means it's not simply a case of forging the Hero Sword into the weapon; second, it's clearly not a case of taking the energies from the sword and imbuing the biome weapon with them to improve said weapon, as it's probably safe to say a simple anvil can't do that. As such, I came up with two solutions to this problem- the first is Essence Shards, and the second is the Arcane Essence Altar.
The Arcane Essence Altar is a crafting station that's fairly simple to craft- 20 Tier 10 Bars (Hallowed, Cybernetic, or Covert), 25 Essence Shards, a Mythril/Orichalcum Anvil, and 20 of any biome's imbuement material (Crystal Shards, Beam Reactors, Cinder Sap, Cursed Flames, Ichor, or Miasma). This Altar has two primary purposes- the crafting of advanced essences, and the imbuement of objects with said essences. (Additionally, it also functions as a Tier 2 anvil, a Tier 3 furnace, and a Demon Altar all in one, crafting-wise.) It's bigger than a standard anvil (about the size of a Demon Altar), but has the bonus of allowing much more compact crafting and means you don't have to keep a Demon Altar around for the rare cases you need one. More importantly though, it enables you to craft your True and Terra weapons, as well as Ria, and anything else that might use Essence Shards.
And no, smashing it will not spawn new ores.
The Arcane Essence Altar is a crafting station that's fairly simple to craft- 20 Tier 10 Bars (Hallowed, Cybernetic, or Covert), 25 Essence Shards, a Mythril/Orichalcum Anvil, and 20 of any biome's imbuement material (Crystal Shards, Beam Reactors, Cinder Sap, Cursed Flames, Ichor, or Miasma). This Altar has two primary purposes- the crafting of advanced essences, and the imbuement of objects with said essences. (Additionally, it also functions as a Tier 2 anvil, a Tier 3 furnace, and a Demon Altar all in one, crafting-wise.) It's bigger than a standard anvil (about the size of a Demon Altar), but has the bonus of allowing much more compact crafting and means you don't have to keep a Demon Altar around for the rare cases you need one. More importantly though, it enables you to craft your True and Terra weapons, as well as Ria, and anything else that might use Essence Shards.
And no, smashing it will not spawn new ores.
Next up we have 6 different types of essence you can craft straight from Essence Shards, and you can probably guess what exactly they're supposed to represent.
There's one type of Essence for each Infection- Darkness for Corruption, Light for Hallow, Order for Cyber, Chaos for Crimson, Life for Covert, and Death for Contagion. Each is made with 50 Essence Shards, 20 of their respective elemental component (souls, cores, or runes), and 2 of their respective specialty component (shards, orbs, or links). For instance, an Essence of Darkness would be made with 50 Essence Shards, 20 Souls of Night, and 2 Dark Shards, while an Essence of Life would be made with 50 Essence Shards, 20 Life Runes, and 2 Links of Life.
These special essences would replace the Broken Hero Swords in the crafting recipes for their respective True Swords- Darkness for True Night's Edge, Light for True Excalibur, etc. This has two benefits- first off, it gives another usage for a biome's specialty components, which thus far are basically useless if you're not a melee user. But there's a second advantage- it takes away the whole "Broken Hero x" trend and allows any True Weapon to use whatever Essence they warrant. (In other words, if a staff equivalent to Night's Edge was introduced, it could be made into a True Weapon using just an Essence of Darkness instead requiring the addition of a Broken Hero Staff.) This is a massive boon because it means for any given True weapon you don't have to wait for the RNG to decide to give you a specialized component, and you don't need extra broken weapon types to be added to the drop pool to add other variants of True Weapons, such as bows, staves, or tomes.
But wait, then how do you craft the Terra Weapons?
"Concentrated essence of an infectious element"
There's one type of Essence for each Infection- Darkness for Corruption, Light for Hallow, Order for Cyber, Chaos for Crimson, Life for Covert, and Death for Contagion. Each is made with 50 Essence Shards, 20 of their respective elemental component (souls, cores, or runes), and 2 of their respective specialty component (shards, orbs, or links). For instance, an Essence of Darkness would be made with 50 Essence Shards, 20 Souls of Night, and 2 Dark Shards, while an Essence of Life would be made with 50 Essence Shards, 20 Life Runes, and 2 Links of Life.
These special essences would replace the Broken Hero Swords in the crafting recipes for their respective True Swords- Darkness for True Night's Edge, Light for True Excalibur, etc. This has two benefits- first off, it gives another usage for a biome's specialty components, which thus far are basically useless if you're not a melee user. But there's a second advantage- it takes away the whole "Broken Hero x" trend and allows any True Weapon to use whatever Essence they warrant. (In other words, if a staff equivalent to Night's Edge was introduced, it could be made into a True Weapon using just an Essence of Darkness instead requiring the addition of a Broken Hero Staff.) This is a massive boon because it means for any given True weapon you don't have to wait for the RNG to decide to give you a specialized component, and you don't need extra broken weapon types to be added to the drop pool to add other variants of True Weapons, such as bows, staves, or tomes.
But wait, then how do you craft the Terra Weapons?
"Concentrated essence of an infectious element"
This is how you craft Terra Weapons. As I mentioned before, Broken Hero Swords would be removed completely from the Solar Eclipse drop pool, and instead any existing swords would be replaced with a different item. This is that item- Balanced Essence. It has three varieties, one for each set of Infections, and each Balanced Essence variety is used to make its corresponding Terra Blade- Hallow/Corruption for the normal Terra Blade, Cyber/Crimson for the Terra Cleaver, and Covert/Contagion for the Terra Brand. The respective version can also be applied to other Terra-style weapons, though some could also use any of the three.
Balanced Essences are crafted in a similar fashion to the previous biome essences, but using 1 evil biome essence, 1 anti-evil biomes essence, 10 more Essence Shards, and 5 of the two biomes' imbuement ingredients. For instance, an Essence of Chaos, an Essence of Order, 10 Essence Shards, 5 Ichor, and 5 Beam Reactors. The essences and imbuement ingredients must correspond; sorry, no Corruption/Covert combos.
It's important to note that while the different Balanced Essences would share the same basic info in-game, their sprites would differ based on the variety- purple and cyan for Corruption/Hallow, red and white for Crimson/Cyber, and green and orange for Contagion/Covert. Unfortunately, I don't currently have sprites handy to demonstrate this, but I should get to it eventually.
In case it wasn't clear, ultimately the Balanced Essence is here to allow any Terra-style weapon to exist without adding extra drops to the pool. That means no need for Broken Vigilante Tomes or anything like that. This also makes it very easy to add new weapons along that vein, as it means that if you got plenty of Essence Shards already, you don't have to get more Solar Eclipses to get your hands on new components.
It's also noteworthy that unlike the original setup, the cost to upgrade actually scales- you need a total of 4 biome essences to get your Terra weapons, versus the 3 swords you need normally. This trend continues into the next tier.
"Perfectly balanced essences of opposite nature"
Balanced Essences are crafted in a similar fashion to the previous biome essences, but using 1 evil biome essence, 1 anti-evil biomes essence, 10 more Essence Shards, and 5 of the two biomes' imbuement ingredients. For instance, an Essence of Chaos, an Essence of Order, 10 Essence Shards, 5 Ichor, and 5 Beam Reactors. The essences and imbuement ingredients must correspond; sorry, no Corruption/Covert combos.
It's important to note that while the different Balanced Essences would share the same basic info in-game, their sprites would differ based on the variety- purple and cyan for Corruption/Hallow, red and white for Crimson/Cyber, and green and orange for Contagion/Covert. Unfortunately, I don't currently have sprites handy to demonstrate this, but I should get to it eventually.
In case it wasn't clear, ultimately the Balanced Essence is here to allow any Terra-style weapon to exist without adding extra drops to the pool. That means no need for Broken Vigilante Tomes or anything like that. This also makes it very easy to add new weapons along that vein, as it means that if you got plenty of Essence Shards already, you don't have to get more Solar Eclipses to get your hands on new components.
It's also noteworthy that unlike the original setup, the cost to upgrade actually scales- you need a total of 4 biome essences to get your Terra weapons, versus the 3 swords you need normally. This trend continues into the next tier.
"Perfectly balanced essences of opposite nature"
And finally, we reach the ultimate in essences. Essence of Eternity is one additional component for crafting Ria (note that this one is completely optional, but I feel it makes sense), and the culmination of all those essences you've crafted already. As you can probably guess, Essence of Eternity is a fusion of the three varieties of Balanced Essence, and is the essence of everything.
These have two uses- one is for crafting Ria, and the other is for possibly the silliest thing a crafting component like this can be used for. I'll get to what that is later. For right now, Ria. Essence of Eternity would merely be added (only 1, as with all the other essences) to its existing recipe (as proposed by Tobbvald), and crafting it is fairly straightforward- 1 Balanced Essence of each flavor, 5 Ectoplasm, and 3 of each boss soul/core/rune. (You can use any mix of souls, cores, and runes, so long as you come out at 3 Might-variant, 3 Fright-variant, and 3 Sight-variant.)
Now, with that out of the way, let's alleviate the slightly serious tone of this thread with some silliness. You can throw Essences of Eternity! Yes, I'm serious here. When you throw an Essence of Eternity, it'll explode on contact with any block, but yet won't actually do anything. Or will it? Upon exploding, it doesn't actually damage anything, but instead randomly converts blocks within ~8 tiles into other variants- for instance, converting stone into one of the six different Infection stones, or converting dirt into other soil types (sand, mud, snow, ash), and so on. It'll also drop the 6 Biome Essences, so you only lose some Essence Shards, some souls, and some Ectoplasm. Could be very useful, or completely useless. Take your pick. (Likewise, Biome Essences and Balanced Essences will do something similar, with the former converting blocks into the biome/world's respective counterpart (basically a larger-radius Water that also works on Dungeon Brick and woods) and the latter doing the same, but randomizing between the two, and additionally randomizing ores.)
"The essence of all that exists"
These have two uses- one is for crafting Ria, and the other is for possibly the silliest thing a crafting component like this can be used for. I'll get to what that is later. For right now, Ria. Essence of Eternity would merely be added (only 1, as with all the other essences) to its existing recipe (as proposed by Tobbvald), and crafting it is fairly straightforward- 1 Balanced Essence of each flavor, 5 Ectoplasm, and 3 of each boss soul/core/rune. (You can use any mix of souls, cores, and runes, so long as you come out at 3 Might-variant, 3 Fright-variant, and 3 Sight-variant.)
Now, with that out of the way, let's alleviate the slightly serious tone of this thread with some silliness. You can throw Essences of Eternity! Yes, I'm serious here. When you throw an Essence of Eternity, it'll explode on contact with any block, but yet won't actually do anything. Or will it? Upon exploding, it doesn't actually damage anything, but instead randomly converts blocks within ~8 tiles into other variants- for instance, converting stone into one of the six different Infection stones, or converting dirt into other soil types (sand, mud, snow, ash), and so on. It'll also drop the 6 Biome Essences, so you only lose some Essence Shards, some souls, and some Ectoplasm. Could be very useful, or completely useless. Take your pick. (Likewise, Biome Essences and Balanced Essences will do something similar, with the former converting blocks into the biome/world's respective counterpart (basically a larger-radius Water that also works on Dungeon Brick and woods) and the latter doing the same, but randomizing between the two, and additionally randomizing ores.)
"The essence of all that exists"
And here's the extra Essence types! Currently only used for keymolds.
There are four additional essences that can be crafted- Earth for the Desert, Frost for Ice, Fire for the Underworld, and Vegetation for the Jungle. Each one is made from resources from the biome they correspond to. Because of the massive variety between these biomes, naming a general recipe is next to impossible, so instead, have four separate ones:
"Concentrated essence of the elements"
There are four additional essences that can be crafted- Earth for the Desert, Frost for Ice, Fire for the Underworld, and Vegetation for the Jungle. Each one is made from resources from the biome they correspond to. Because of the massive variety between these biomes, naming a general recipe is next to impossible, so instead, have four separate ones:
- Essence of Earth: 10 Essence Shards, 50 Sand, 1 Evil Mummy Drop (Dark Shard, Orb of Anarchy, or Link of Death), and 1 Anti-Evil Mummy Drop (Light Shard, Orb of Order, or Link of Life)
- Essence of Frost: 10 Essence Shards, 1 Frost Core
- Essense of Fire: 10 Essence Shards, 50 Living Fire Blocks
- Essence of Vegetation: 10 Essence Shards, 3 Stingers, 3 Jungle Spores, 15 Chlorophyte Ore
"Concentrated essence of the elements"
And that about covers it for now. As time goes on I might add new varieties of essences to this list, either to accommodate my other ideas or to change recipes for existing things to be more suitable. Suggestions, comments, and feedback in general welcome!
(Yes, you're allowed to use this idea as a base for your own ideas; in fact, I'd be very happy if you did.)
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