Quick summary: Moon Lord feels out of place, difficulty wise, in the normal progression of bosses. It's "too hard" for many because of this - it feels like it belongs as an optional boss like the Moons or Fishron, rather than the conclusion of the "expected" progression bosses. It's too easy to get locked into the Moon Lord pre-encounters given how hard he is.
So, I do think the Moon Boss is too hard on Normal (and maybe a little too easy on Expert).
I've beaten him legitimately (as in, running, dodging, hitting him with Solar Eruption and such) on both. I definitely think things like "sitting on spikes" or "slime statues" are rightfully removed as a way of fighting him. While setting up *clever* arenas is one thing, neither of those options really required significant resources or time (not including the possibility that you just never came across an enemy statue). They weren't really clever or anything, they were fairly obviously not within the spirit of the game. Where I think "collecting 100 heart statues and setting up an arena with them" also makes the fight a lot easier, at least it still requires you to not really make any mistakes. You can at least argue it as a legitimate tactic where I think "sit on a spike in a pool of honey" is one of those things where even the people arguing in favor of it know that at that point you aren't really playing a game anymore, you've just kinda given up. At that point the level of challenge (both in setup and execution) is so low that you may as well cheat - and you can! You can get someone to give you the items from the boss, edit them in, whatever. The change removing these methods is to remove the temptation for players who don't want to cheat. Those of us who have shared server don't have to put into place measures to prevent that sort of thing or otherwise act to ensure that the boss is only fought in a way that requires actual effort of some sort.
Because for all of you who say "it doesn't affect other players" - it does on a server. And not only that, but it's a lot harder for a server operator to guarantee people *can't* use something like spikes before this patch, than it is for a solo player to acquire the items if they *really* want them now, by way of cheats. So this didn't really get rid of anything about your ability to fairly easily get all the Moon Lord drops and luminite you wanted. About all it did is maybe make it slightly harder to get the achievement.
But here's the deal: Moon Lord on Normal should absolutely be easier. When I first encountered Frost Moon, Pumpkin Moon, and Fishron, they all felt really hard to me. It's been a long time so I can't tell if they "felt" Moon Lord hard or not. BUT I didn't mind that they were really hard, because they also felt "Optional." Things outside of the main progression.
Moon Lord feels like the culmination of the main progression. Once you kill Golem (who, let's be honest, is really easy. Heck, even Plantera isn't too hard in the grand scheme) the cultists show up. And the Lunatic Cultist is also REALLY easy relative to the moon lord. I mean, he hits hard, but his attacks are all very dodgeable with basically any wings, he summons in case you need hearts, the summon is optional if you don't, etc. I mean, I recognize some people might have difficulty with him, but I'm comparing him to the Moon Lord for a reason, that I'll get to. Then once the cultist is beaten, you get the pillers. You're stuck with them. They're gonna hang out basically forever until you clear them. They aren't terrible hard either. You may have trouble with certain ones if you don't recognize how the particular enemies work, but you can basically just work your way through them eventually, and you basically have to at this point. And then: Moon Lord. And if you haven't read up on him in advance, YOU WILL DIE. This is basically a given.
And this is the problem - Lunatic Cultist and Pillars are pretty easy. You can almost certainly complete them with the gear you used to kill the Golem. You can definitely do so with gear from the golem. I wouldn't try the Moon Lord without weapons from one of the moons or Fishron. Moon Lord is also a lot harder than any of the things preceding him.
Terraria has a progression of EoC->Corruption/Crimson Boss->Skeletron->Wall of Flesh->Mechanical Bosses->Plantera->Golem->Lunatic->Pillars->Moon Lord.
During this progression, each boss is somewhat harder than the previous. Not a lot. And at most points there's a pretty good chance you can beat each boss by the time you get to it. Like most games, the progression should teach you skills that you can use on the next boss. But most of these bosses can be beaten your first time through without a specialized arena and without a full set of buff potions. They'll help, and they'll nearly guarantee you'll win, but they aren't nearly mandatory.
For the Moon Lord they aren't mandatory (I didn't have them) but *most* players aren't going to beat him without them. Moon Lord feels out of place because each of the previous fights, you can get through on grit, reflexes, and a bit of luck. On Moon Lord however, you're going to be crushed without planning and preparation. You can't "just go."
This would be fine if every fight required that kind of preparation, but the previous series of progression fights taught many players "just go" is good enough, and Moon Lord is presented as part of progression.
If Moon Lord were set aside as an optional fight that you couldn't get into nearly-accidentally, if it were something like the Moons or Fishron where you could only summon him with an item, and it didn't feel like normal progression, then I'd say his difficulty was fine. In fact, it might even be a little too easy.
But as the clear culmination of progression, he should sharpen and finalize the lessons players are taught, and he should be an iterative increase in difficulty similar to the decrease from boss to boss before - the final boss is the greatest challenge of any game's progression, yes. But it's also expected that if you get better with each challenge, and you've completed all of the other ones, the final boss should be withing your grasp.
Many Terrarians clearly are finding he's not within their grasp, and it seems to me that's because either there's a couple bosses missing for players to learn on between the Pillars and the Moon Lord, or the gap is just too big between ML and Pillars/Lunatic as compared to the gaps between previous bosses, and he needs toned back a little bit.
I feel that now that Leech is reduced on him, and you can't teleport away to easily survive forever, it might be worth removing some of the buff to his health. Maybe drop it to somewhere between 60-70% of what it is now? This would typically still mean that someone has to learn how to fight him well, because you'll still typically die if you're doing it wrong in that amount of time, but it'll shorten the fight enough that it means less "I was doing fine and then that ONE MISTAKE" from the fight lasting too long for the player, and their focus doesn't hold. It also makes it less of a grind for people who CAN beat it easily, so it feels less annoying, because it is a pain waiting for those eyes to open. Of course there are many other fixes that could improve the fight (my preference for leech, honestly, would've been to make it so leech attacks used against the Moon Lord's leech actually INCREASE its leech amount, so you had to change weapons when targeting that specifically, and homing spells could really mess you up, so it'd feel more tactical to use them) but my main point is: It doesn't fit with progression.
Good afternoon everyone!
The team remains hard at work chasing bugs to squash and things to tweak within the 1.3 update. As always, your feedback is invaluable there - so keep it coming (but remember to keep it mature and respectful of everyone
)!
Without further ado, here is the changelog for 1.3.0.6:
Changes
- Solar Flare armor set Dash ability now only consumes flares when it hits an enemy, and any hit enemy will result in a Solar Radiance explosion!
- Party Girl's spawning chance has been increased
- You can now take Camera Mode pictures of wiring if you hold a mechanical item while taking the pictures
- Fixed certain issues with the Stardust Dragon's damage and rebalanced him to be more in line with other minions
- You can now hide the Moon Charm and Neptune Shell's effects...or put them in vanity!
- The final boss' attacks now use their own cooldown for immunity due to how naughty some of our players have been.
Fixes
- Potentially fixed lag issues when using Steam multiplayer
- Potentially fixed invasions not trigerring when they should (Martian Probes)
- Fixed Money Trough turning 'Quick Stack to All Chests' button invisible
- Fixed Javelins drawing behind doors on all cases
- Fixed Keys of Light / Night not working through autopause
- Fixed nearby crafting stations not updating when you open inventory in autopause
- Fixed 'allow mounting' check not taking player's velocity into account (mounting into ceiling exploit)
- Fixed breathing meter appearing when hanging on to a ceiling that has water in it
- Fixed content files not being compressed
- Fixed Umbrella art not being consistent
- Fixed Solar Eruption item stray pixel
- Fixed Jellyfish expert mode counter hitting you when you can't hit the Jellyfish
- Fixed Drill Containment Unit being able to mine Demon Altars before Hardmode
- Fixed certain Penguins not counting towards the tally
- Fixed Dryad not selling Vicious Powder during the Bloodmoon on Crimtane worlds
- Fixed issue where Shroomite and Psycho Knife stealth would work on mounts
- Fixed issue where Martian Probe would trigger Martian Invasion clientside
- Fixed Cultist Boss summoning issues in multiplayer
tons of crystal bullets?
