NPCs & Enemies Terraria's Bosses Like To Break Rules

[totallydeadaccountdude]

Problem 1: Clarity of Summoning Conditions​

Let's make an example. You're a new player. You've just been decked out in Ironclad gear and weapons, and are ready to fight the Eye of Cthulhu, but when you try and summon him... nothing happens, because it's daytime. This isn't apparent at first, but you need to summon them at night. This was a problem I struggled with when I first started, I didn't know what to do, because it wasn't apparent that I had to summon that boss under certain conditions.

Solution to Problem 1: Tooltip Tells the Player When To Summon
​

I'll take the Eye of Cthulhu example I just posted as an example.

Suspicious Looking Eye
Summoning Item
Summons the Eye of Cthulhu
Only consumable at nighttime.

This would help newer players out in a way that isn't intrusive in the game. Rather than being up in your face, it's a simple thing in the item's description that tells the players far more information than right now. This could also apply to stuff like the Worm Bait or Bloody Spine, them saying something like "Only consumable in the Crimson/Corruption".

Problem 2: Varying Punishment For Failures
​

Let's make another example. For some reason, you manage to fail at killing the Eye of Cthulhu in time. What does he do? He flies away. He goes "Oh crap, it's the pigs! Let's blow this popsicle stand!".
Now, what happens if you fail to kill Skeletron in time?
He rearranges your face by going mach 12 in your general direction.
Now, here's the problem with this.
A game should give a consistent punishment for failure. Whether it be the lack of satisfaction of NOT killing said enemy, or watching them turn your character into cherry jello. I personally have NO problem with the whole "Boss killing you if you fail" situation, but I just want it to be consistent.
I'm sure it's incredibly frustrating to have the Eye of Cthulhu fly away when you fail to kill it, but if you fail to kill Skeletron, you're punished with death. The Twins don't do this, the Destroyer don't do this, but Skeletron Prime, Plantera, and Duke Fishron do this. It's inconsistent.

Solution to Problem 2: Consistent Punishment
​

If you fail to kill the enemy in time, the outcome should ALWAYS be one or the other. Either the boss should flee, or you should be killed. This can also apply to enemies like the Eater of Worlds, Wall of Flesh, Golem, and Brain of Cthulhu, too.

Conclusion
​

Now, I understand this can be a bit nit-picky, but it's so inconsistent I can see newer players struggling with this. Summoning bosses is very inconsistent, conditions wise. And the punishment for failing to kill a boss is too inconsistent. It feels unfair that you get a seemingly random punishment for failure. It should be a consistent thing.

 

[LoM2]

On problem 1: Guide already has that covered.
"If you combine lenses at a demon altar, you might be able to find a way to summon a powerful monster. You will want to wait until night before using it, though."

"You can create [worm bait/a bloody spine] with [rotten chunks and vile powder/vertebrae and vicious powder]. Make sure you are in a [corrupt/crimson] area before using it."

Seriously, we literally have a NPC called the Guide- if players ignore him then it's really their fault.

Old man is there to give direction for Skeletron and Guide hints at the summoning of WoF (not as explicit as the first two, but he tells you to go to the underworld and make a sacrifice, leaving the player to discover the voodoo doll itself.) And then the player should have enough experience to figure out the HM bosses. (All that said, I wouldn't mind an addition to the tooltip- I just feel its fundamentally unnecessary.)

On 2: Skeletron only really kills you because it needs you to get out while it respawns the Old Man. Skeletron Prime does so as well to keep it consistent with his earlier form. Plantera and Duke Fishron don't, so I assume you're talking about the fact that they get much harder when you attempt to fight them outside their native biome.

So first of all, while I understand the inconsistency is annoying- the mechanics of the Old Man/Skeletron necessitate you dying, but if the EoC suddenly went berserk and killed you it would feel ridiculously arbitrary, especially to a new player. The way it is right now isn't perfect but it's better than either of the two options. (Also, killing someone right outside their own house really doesn't actually have that much of an effect on them.)

And the Fishron/Plantera thing is honestly one of the better aspects of game design- it encourages you to fight them in their native biome (/depth) without absolutely forcing you to. I don't see how this is actually related to the arbitrary punishment issue though so I'll leave it here.

 

[totallydeadaccountdude]

On problem 1: Guide already has that covered.
"If you combine lenses at a demon altar, you might be able to find a way to summon a powerful monster. You will want to wait until night before using it, though."

"You can create [worm bait/a bloody spine] with [rotten chunks and vile powder/vertebrae and vicious powder]. Make sure you are in a [corrupt/crimson] area before using it."

Seriously, we literally have a NPC called the Guide- if players ignore him then it's really their fault.

Old man is there to give direction for Skeletron and Guide hints at the summoning of WoF (not as explicit as the first two, but he tells you to go to the underworld and make a sacrifice, leaving the player to discover the voodoo doll itself.) And then the player should have enough experience to figure out the HM bosses. (All that said, I wouldn't mind an addition to the tooltip- I just feel its fundamentally unnecessary.)

On 2: Skeletron only really kills you because it needs you to get out while it respawns the Old Man. Skeletron Prime does so as well to keep it consistent with his earlier form. Plantera and Duke Fishron don't, so I assume you're talking about the fact that they get much harder when you attempt to fight them outside their native biome.

So first of all, while I understand the inconsistency is annoying- the mechanics of the Old Man/Skeletron necessitate you dying, but if the EoC suddenly went berserk and killed you it would feel ridiculously arbitrary, especially to a new player. The way it is right now isn't perfect but it's better than either of the two options. (Also, killing someone right outside their own house really doesn't actually have that much of an effect on them.)

And the Fishron/Plantera thing is honestly one of the better aspects of game design- it encourages you to fight them in their native biome (/depth) without absolutely forcing you to. I don't see how this is actually related to the arbitrary punishment issue though so I'll leave it here.

That Guide help tip is sometimes only seeable after clicking the "Help" button multiple times, though. I've done this, tried to get one tip, and had to click it multiple times and still didn't get the help I wanted.
I still think that if you're gonna punish the player for failure, it needs to be consistent throughout the game. It makes players actively think about consequences of running away/forfeiting. If we make the consequence for this inconsistent it just makes it frustrating for newer players. Instead of it being "Oh, I didn't kill it in time, it killed me." it's "What? Bosses didn't kill me last time! What the hell?"

 

[LoM2]

That Guide help tip is sometimes only seeable after clicking the "Help" button multiple times, though. I've done this, tried to get one tip, and had to click it multiple times and still didn't get the help I wanted.
I still think that if you're gonna punish the player for failure, it needs to be consistent throughout the game. It makes players actively think about consequences of running away/forfeiting. If we make the consequence for this inconsistent it just makes it frustrating for newer players. Instead of it being "Oh, I didn't kill it in time, it killed me." it's "What? Bosses didn't kill me last time! What the hell?"

The guide may need to be optimized- either way, he's still there and it'd be foolish not to make use of him. I don't actually care about the tooltips enough to argue this though.

On the failure thing- all of my earlier arguments still stand. Death in Terraria right now is still so arbitrary that I doubt it's going to make anyone think more 'deeply' about the 'consequences of failure'- they wait ten seconds and they respawn at home. I also think you're fundamentally underestimating the 'new player'- some of them may be frustrated they didn't kill the boss, or they died while doing so- I don't think any are mad because 'hey this boss killed me at daytime while this one didn't.

Just to prove my point, you're not a new player raising an issue because you're frustrated, you're a veteran raising an issue because you're concerned others may be frustrated. That's always a slippery slope to go down.

 

[totallydeadaccountdude]

The guide may need to be optimized- either way, he's still there and it'd be foolish not to make use of him. I don't actually care about the tooltips enough to argue this though.

On the failure thing- all of my earlier arguments still stand. Death in Terraria right now is still so arbitrary that I doubt it's going to make anyone think more 'deeply' about the 'consequences of failure'- they wait ten seconds and they respawn at home. I also think you're fundamentally underestimating the 'new player'- some of them may be frustrated they didn't kill the boss, or they died while doing so- I don't think any are mad because 'hey this boss killed me at daytime while this one didn't.

Just to prove my point, you're not a new player raising an issue because you're frustrated, you're a veteran raising an issue because you're concerned others may be frustrated. That's always a slippery slope to go down.

It's still frustrating though. I've had people confirm this too, having recently chatted with a friend of mine who started getting into the game, he was really confused to find that certain bosses just punished you in different ways. He thought equally in that all bosses should punish you in the same way for killing them in time/attempting to fight them outside of normal conditions.

 

[Treesmasher]

With Skeletron, I understand it's killing mechanic. Why the hell would it run away from its own home exactly? It makes perfect sense for it to kill you. As has been said before me, yeah, the current setups for how bosses run away or kill you is a tad bit inconsistent. But that matters little. There is no need for a change. I am fine with the tooltip changes, but nothing else is needed when it comes to how boss battle mechanics end.

 

[Xylia]

I support tooltip changes, I don't see why not.

The Guide needs a bit of a rework, though. It can take a lot of clicks to get the particular piece of information you wanted, and newbies don't likely know that they have to cycle through all of the stuff to make sure they've gotten everything he has to say. Not sure how to rework him exactly, but I've always felt that the Guide is a rather weak newbie help system as he is so vague and obtuse that you end up just going to the wiki or a walkthrough instead.

As for the bosses and their punishment.... I've been outspoken before about how I hate the fact that one has to wait for Night for so many bosses. I am not a fan of waiting in any game. I really don't see the purpose behind requiring Night for all of these bosses to begin with, but I would also have to agree that Death is a non-issue in Terraria. Dump your money in the piggybank and... who cares if you die, again? Though having to pick up the tombstones from your world gets annoying after awhile.

I wish there was a way to turn off tombstone dropping. I hate manually digging up and deleting tombstones. They litter the ground, they look ugly and I really don't need to be reminded of every time the game decided to get cheap on me.

 

[DaPielord]

I actually support this. Killing you if you don't succeed is how most bosses do it.

 

[LoM2]

I actually support this. Killing you if you don't succeed is how most bosses do it.

... No it's not. If we assume 'don't succeed' is equivalent to 'fail to win before time runs out' and not... you know, 'dying', to which being killed is inherent, then a total of two bosses do so (Skeletron/Skeletron Prime).

It's still frustrating though. I've had people confirm this too, having recently chatted with a friend of mine who started getting into the game, he was really confused to find that certain bosses just punished you in different ways. He thought equally in that all bosses should punish you in the same way for killing them in time/attempting to fight them outside of normal conditions.

Confused really isn't at all the same as frustrated, and technically most bosses do punish you in the same way for fighting in unnatural condition, it's just that very few bosses actually have inherent locational conditions.

Disregarding all that, I still don't think any of my arguments have been knocked down yet (except maybe the one about 'new players not complaining' and even so, that's with anecdotal evidence and I highly doubt representative of the playerbase at large).

More importantly, I don't think you've addressed the fact that making many of the earlier bosses insta-kill on timer failure would not make anything better and would in fact feel even more arbitrary than the current system. Until you can either argue that it would somehow be better or you can redesign a new system in which skeletron doesn't have to kill you, the current way is the lesser of the two (very insignificant) evils.

 

[Xylia]

... No it's not. If we assume 'don't succeed' is equivalent to 'fail to win before time runs out' and not... you know, 'dying', to which being killed is inherent, then a total of two bosses do so (Skeletron/Skeletron Prime).


Confused really isn't at all the same as frustrated, and technically most bosses do punish you in the same way for fighting in unnatural condition, it's just that very few bosses actually have inherent locational conditions.

Disregarding all that, I still don't think any of my arguments have been knocked down yet (except maybe the one about 'new players not complaining' and even so, that's with anecdotal evidence and I highly doubt representative of the playerbase at large).

More importantly, I don't think you've addressed the fact that making many of the earlier bosses insta-kill on timer failure would not make anything better and would in fact feel even more arbitrary than the current system. Until you can either argue that it would somehow be better or you can redesign a new system in which skeletron doesn't have to kill you, the current way is the lesser of the two (very insignificant) evils.

I would have to say I hate the insta-kill that Skeletron and his Prime variant have.

Especially on impromptu spawns. I remember one time, he spawned on me impromptu, and at 7:30 I got the message that he was going to spawn, and here it is at 10, 10:30 and I'm like "cmon, cmon... sometime tonight....." and he FINALLY spawned around 11. Given that I wasn't Quite ready for him and I didn't have everything I wanted, I wound up running out of time when he only had like 5k left on him and it was a really cheap death.

I could understand giving him 2x attack or something, but insta-kill is just stupid and I really wish they'd get rid of it.

Now, granted, bosses never spawn impromptu on me anymore as I know how to avoid each one of them, but still. That doesn't make it any less lame.

 

[DaPielord]

... No it's not. If we assume 'don't succeed' is equivalent to 'fail to win before time runs out' and not... you know, 'dying', to which being killed is inherent, then a total of two bosses do so (Skeletron/Skeletron Prime).


Confused really isn't at all the same as frustrated, and technically most bosses do punish you in the same way for fighting in unnatural condition, it's just that very few bosses actually have inherent locational conditions.

Disregarding all that, I still don't think any of my arguments have been knocked down yet (except maybe the one about 'new players not complaining' and even so, that's with anecdotal evidence and I highly doubt representative of the playerbase at large).

More importantly, I don't think you've addressed the fact that making many of the earlier bosses insta-kill on timer failure would not make anything better and would in fact feel even more arbitrary than the current system. Until you can either argue that it would somehow be better or you can redesign a new system in which skeletron doesn't have to kill you, the current way is the lesser of the two (very insignificant) evils.

I mean like plantera and golem.

 

[Orithan]

In regards to the EoC fleeing during the day, it makes sense. It really is a huge Demon Eye, which only appears at night and flees on daybreak. Same as with the EoW and BoC fleeing when you leave their respective biomes - They really aren't that powerful and only really want you out of its biome. I don't get how these bosses would enrage when they are outside their respective biomes. On the other hand, Skeletron should be able to be summoned during the day and not enrage if you don't kill it on time. Skeletron wants to protect the dungeon with its life (heh) and will stop at nothing to do so, but its instadeath enraged form does not make sense. That said, the Skeletron should despawn if you run too far from the dungeon like how the EoW and BoC do.

Into Hardmode, the Mechanical bosses should not run on daybreak and should be allowed to summoned during the day. The difference this time around is that they want you dead and will not stop at anything to kill you. That said, Skeletron Prime should not assume its instakill enraged form during the day and the fight should continue as normal then. Duke Fishron's enraged form should be nerfed to give the player time to realize that they are doing something wrong to teleport back home, because it pretty much instakills you in that state.

 

[Xylia]

Same as with the EoW and BoC fleeing when you leave their respective biomes - They really aren't that powerful and only really want you out of its biome.

That would make sense..... if their underlings behaved the same way. But just a couple days ago, I had a Soul Eater follow me halfway across the map while I was on my minecart track that I laid. Crimeras are also lousy for this, they will NOT leave you alone no matter how far you go.

Duke Fishron's enraged form should be nerfed to give the player time to realize that they are doing something wrong to teleport back home, because it pretty much instakills you in that state.

I've already been rather vocal about how much I HATE the ridiculous limitation on Fishron. The Ocean is just way too small to fight him in. Thankfully, his drops aren't particularly useful nowadays in 1.3, so I only ever had to kill him once and even that was not very fun because of how cramped the ocean biome actually is and how long his stupid sharknadoes take to despawn. Pretty soon, he has most of the area filled up so badly that you can't actually dodge him very well whatsoever because of him constantly trying to ram you and there being sharknadoes everywhere.

This was on a MEDIUM World, mind you. I don't get how he's even possible on a Small World considering the Ocean is even smaller.

 

[ZambiebrainZ]

I've already been rather vocal about how much I HATE the ridiculous limitation on Fishron. The Ocean is just way too small to fight him in. Thankfully, his drops aren't particularly useful nowadays in 1.3, so I only ever had to kill him once and even that was not very fun because of how cramped the ocean biome actually is and how long his stupid sharknadoes take to despawn. Pretty soon, he has most of the area filled up so badly that you can't actually dodge him very well whatsoever because of him constantly trying to ram you and there being sharknadoes everywhere.

This was on a MEDIUM World, mind you. I don't get how he's even possible on a Small World considering the Ocean is even smaller.

I think that the fishron fight is fine. It's an endgame boss, so it should have challenging criterias, and same with plantera, they're fine.

 

[Xylia]

I think that the fishron fight is fine. It's an endgame boss, so it should have challenging criterias, and same with plantera, they're fine.

"Endgame" boss? I find him harder than I find the Moon Lord or the Pillars. The Cultist Leader is a joke compared to Fishron; the Leader just has more HP but doesn't even do a fraction of the damage.

 

[ZambiebrainZ]

"Endgame" boss? I find him harder than I find the Moon Lord or the Pillars. The Cultist Leader is a joke compared to Fishron; the Leader just has more HP but doesn't even do a fraction of the damage.

Many people have different preferences and struggles, so it is justified you find the moon lord and cultist easier, but that doesn't mean it's easier for everyone.

Duke fishron is and isn't an endgame boss at the same time. On one hand, the best time to fight him is later on in hardmode, and his drops assist all terrarians in their final fights.on the other hand though, he is able to kill most endgame players, and can be classified as an "extra" boss, which isn't required to beat.

Duke fishron is a boss that was programmed to always put up a fight, no matter at what level, but some people just find it easier to beat than others.

Also saying he's harder than the cultist and pillars justifies my earlier claims that he is indeed, an endgame boss

 

[Xylia]

Also saying he's harder than the cultist and pillars justifies my earlier claims that he is indeed, an endgame boss

But yet, it is absolutely silly that you can get far superior weapons by killing the easy (by comparison) Cultist Leader and then downing the Pillar of your choice.

The one-and-only drop he has that might be worth anything is his wings... oh wait, we have the Celestial Shell now. I guess we don't need the Fishron Wings anymore....

EDIT: Though his wings are perfect for a dragon aesthetic setup, the only way to get a tail in Terraria.

 

[ZambiebrainZ]

But yet, it is absolutely silly that you can get far superior weapons by killing the easy (by comparison) Cultist Leader and then downing the Pillar of your choice.

but duke fishron can be considered an extra boss. It's there to liven up the ocean a bit, and provide rewards along the way

 

[Xylia]

but duke fishron can be considered an extra boss. It's there to liven up the ocean a bit, and provide rewards along the way

Can't really say it "Livens the Ocean Up" if I never bother with him because the rewards suck in the Reward vs Effort. He takes more effort to kill than later bosses in the progression, but yet he drops worse stuff, unless you're a mage (I couldn't even imagine trying to kill him as a mage lol).

But to each their own, I guess. I think he was better before they added that stupid enrage mechanic, that way you actually had room to fight him with.

 

[No mans sky]

He rearranges your face by going mach 12 in your general direction.

This is the best thing I read in the whole thread but other than that it is true except technically the first one isnt breaking 'rules' its just used to set the mood of fighting the boss. The second one is pretty true as well but then you kinda have to come up for an idea for each boss if you fail to kill them on time. lets take the twins as an example. What would they do to kill you if it becomes day? Explode?! Will it go something like this?!

See now we need an idea for how it will end the battle. But other than that you have a good thread here.