NPCs & Enemies The Blacksmith (sprites)

[Bluhman]

Don't be letting anyone tell you otherwise. The best defense is a best darned DEFENSE.

The Blacksmith is an NPC encountered fairly shortly before Hardmode, who serves two primary purposes. Firstly, to introduce players to the concepts of how 'class-orientation' works on armor sets, to prepare them for how armor will be handled in that mode. Secondly, he can offer up items that allow players to reforge and specialize their armor for hardmode (i.e. If they want to switch from Ranged to Melee on a set of Cobalt Armor, they can use items from the Blacksmith to change their Helmet to a Mask.)

Where's He Found?
Given that he's supposed to pop up shortly before Hardmode, there's a variety of possibilities that could be considered:

• Buried deep beneath in a hidden forge within the underground Snow biome.
• Found wandering the Jungle in search for rare minerals.
• Enslaved by demons, shackled and hammering away at a blade next to a hellforge.

What's He Do?
He's a standard merchant with his own set of items that he sells:

• Sharpening Station - Same as the existing one, this can be used to give your melee weapons a temporary defense-piercing boost. He sells these for 25 gold each.
• Mythril/Orichalum Anvil - He sells these once you actually get into hardmode for 50 gold. Keep in mind however that you'll of course need to gather up those metals to actually use it for anything that a normal anvil can't do.
• Brigandine Plan - This piece of paper details how to rivet pieces of metal into cloth garments, providing a strong and lightweight armor that's suitable for rangers.
  • Plans are wall-mounted furniture/crafting stations that, when used in conjunction with an anvil, allow the player to reforge helmets and armors into class-appropriate parts. In the case of the Brigandine Plan, this allows the player to turn pieces of armor into Ranged gear.
• Runed Schematics - A chart of magical runes that detail what glyphs and symbols should be etched into armor to increase magical capacity, allowing for pieces of embroidery and equipment for mages.
• Platemail Diagrams - This diagram shows how to hammer smooth plates into a powerful, composite armor of several strong layers of metal, letting the player reforge their armor into the stronger and heavier platemail, suitable for melee combat.

Blacksmith also has a Supply option, where he will offer up a random quarry of low-medium-grade ores that can be used for various purposes. Pre-hardmode, this is usually Copper/Iron tier, while after reaching Hardmode, it's mostly Cobalt-tier.
Optimally he'd also get the ability to also Reforge like the Tinkerer, but his services cost more, at the added bonus of never getting a negative modifier to any weapon he touches. As an added possible downside, he cannot reforge accessories.

What's This About Plans?

Plans are fairly self-explanatory on what they do when you get into hardmode - take a helmet you don't like, and change it into another one suitable for another class. However, what's all this supposed to do pre-hardmode? It's used to take the vanilla ore armors you get prior to hardmode, and turn them into formidable, class-geared suits that can last you well into the early-stages of hardmode, thanks to the various bonuses they offer up. This can apply to any armor set that doesn't already come with a minor class-gearing (i.e. Meteor Armor is slightly Magic-based, Molten Armor is melee-based, etc.) So take Iron Armor for example:

Not even close to the best armor you can get, but its flexible and has considerable potential. But on its own before any extra honing or upgrades, all it does is give 9 defense.

But then take it to an Anvil with the Platemail Diagram. Using a couple of extra bars of metal, you can upgrade it into:

Iron Platemail
Consisting of the individual parts of Iron Cuisses (leg armor), Iron Platemail (torso), and Iron Sallet (helmet), the armor becomes a very formidable suit indeed:

• Total Defense: 20
• 10% extra melee damage (3% sallet and cuisse, and 4% on platemail)
• 3% melee critical bonus (1% each part)
• Full set bonuses: 5% damage and knockback resistance

Using the other plans, the basic Iron armor could also be recrafted into an Iron Brigandine or an Iron Garment, containing its own fitting set of bonuses to Ranged and Magic. Though these alternatives require different materials each:

• Forging new platemail parts will require an extra bar of metal for each part.
• Forging brigandine will require 3 pieces of cloth for the torso and legs, and 2 for the head.
• Forging a mage's garment will require a fallen star for each part.

Getting up to the Gold/Platinum tier, the armors offered will outclass the top-tier of Pre-hardmode (Meteor/Necro/Molten etc.)

edit: hey dumbfart you forgot his stats
Oh right, whoops

HP: 250
Defense: 18
KnockResist: 50%
Attack Method: Does a melee swing of a hefty blacksmith's hammer (much larger head), which can knock enemies way out of the way. It does 20 damage.
Attack Method (Hard): He still has his normal attack for direct combat, but similar to dryad, he can use a special attack, a ground hammer slam, that'll stun any enemies that are nearby. However, he can only do this very infrequently (once every 20 seconds).

Hopefully will get up some guts to sprite Brigandine and Garments to show how those might look stylistically.

 

[Gone]

Interesting idea. I would suggest having him spawn after a boss is defeated. This keeps him from being found too early. I would also come up with more items to sell. The list seems a bit short.

 

[Bluhman]

Interesting idea. I would suggest having him spawn after a boss is defeated. This keeps him from being found too early. I would also come up with more items to sell. The list seems a bit short.

Thanks for the feedback! I wanted him to also be able to sell metal and ores to the player, but that has the potential to be kind of broken, what with the crafting utility and profits of using plentiful metal - hence why the limited 'supply' option exists. Perhaps his functionality could be added to include a set of powerful, but mundane, weapon options. Things like strong longswords and battleaxes or what have you.

The spawn after boss defeat could also be a consideration - though it's a condition that fits too many other characters (dryad, clothier, witch doctor) and we don't want to overwhelm players with too many NPCs to house at once. It has to be after defeating a boss like Queen Bee or Skeletron or something relatively late, because the upgrades he can offer to your equipment are pretty substantial, and again that's a condition already filled by clothier and witchdoctor. His proximity to hardmode, as well as the Mechanic being found deep within the dungeon, makes him sort of her counterpart, being found either deep in the jungle. Or straight-up in the underworld.


Here's another example of upgrading standard Iron armor, this time using the Runed Schematics:

Iron Garment
The Garment consists of Ferrous Trousers, Iron-Lined Garment, and an Iron Circlet, all clearly made for mage-oriented characters.

• Total Defense: 12
• 15% extra Magic Damage (5% per piece)
• 12% extra Magic Regen (4 per piece)
• Set Bonuses: Slightly slowed fall (controllable by pressing down), and 10% chance to have a spell cost no magic on use.

 

[Critical moose]

View attachment 74316
Don't be letting anyone tell you otherwise. The best defense is a best darned DEFENSE.

The Blacksmith is an NPC encountered fairly shortly before Hardmode, who serves two primary purposes. Firstly, to introduce players to the concepts of how 'class-orientation' works on armor sets, to prepare them for how armor will be handled in that mode. Secondly, he can offer up items that allow players to reforge and specialize their armor for hardmode (i.e. If they want to switch from Ranged to Melee on a set of Cobalt Armor, they can use items from the Blacksmith to change their Helmet to a Mask.)

Where's He Found?
Given that he's supposed to pop up shortly before Hardmode, there's a variety of possibilities that could be considered:

• Buried deep beneath in a hidden forge within the underground Snow biome.
• Found wandering the Jungle in search for rare minerals.
• Enslaved by demons, shackled and hammering away at a blade next to a hellforge.

What's He Do?
He's a standard merchant with his own set of items that he sells:

• Sharpening Station - Same as the existing one, this can be used to give your melee weapons a temporary defense-piercing boost. He sells these for 25 gold each.
• Mythril/Orichalum Anvil - He sells these once you actually get into hardmode for 50 gold. Keep in mind however that you'll of course need to gather up those metals to actually use it for anything that a normal anvil can't do.
• Brigandine Plan - This piece of paper details how to rivet pieces of metal into cloth garments, providing a strong and lightweight armor that's suitable for rangers.
  • Plans are wall-mounted furniture/crafting stations that, when used in conjunction with an anvil, allow the player to reforge helmets and armors into class-appropriate parts. In the case of the Brigandine Plan, this allows the player to turn pieces of armor into Ranged gear.
• Runed Schematics - A chart of magical runes that detail what glyphs and symbols should be etched into armor to increase magical capacity, allowing for pieces of embroidery and equipment for mages.
• Platemail Diagrams - This diagram shows how to hammer smooth plates into a powerful, composite armor of several strong layers of metal, letting the player reforge their armor into the stronger and heavier platemail, suitable for melee combat.

Blacksmith also has a Supply option, where he will offer up a random quarry of low-medium-grade ores that can be used for various purposes. Pre-hardmode, this is usually Copper/Iron tier, while after reaching Hardmode, it's mostly Cobalt-tier.
Optimally he'd also get the ability to also Reforge like the Tinkerer, but his services cost more, at the added bonus of never getting a negative modifier to any weapon he touches. As an added possible downside, he cannot reforge accessories.

What's This About Plans?

Plans are fairly self-explanatory on what they do when you get into hardmode - take a helmet you don't like, and change it into another one suitable for another class. However, what's all this supposed to do pre-hardmode? It's used to take the vanilla ore armors you get prior to hardmode, and turn them into formidable, class-geared suits that can last you well into the early-stages of hardmode, thanks to the various bonuses they offer up. This can apply to any armor set that doesn't already come with a minor class-gearing (i.e. Meteor Armor is slightly Magic-based, Molten Armor is melee-based, etc.) So take Iron Armor for example:

View attachment 74320

Not even close to the best armor you can get, but its flexible and has considerable potential. But on its own before any extra honing or upgrades, all it does is give 9 defense.

But then take it to an Anvil with the Platemail Diagram. Using a couple of extra bars of metal, you can upgrade it into:

View attachment 74321
Iron Platemail
Consisting of the individual parts of Iron Cuisses (leg armor), Iron Platemail (torso), and Iron Sallet (helmet), the armor becomes a very formidable suit indeed:

• Total Defense: 20
• 10% extra melee damage (3% sallet and cuisse, and 4% on platemail)
• 3% melee critical bonus (1% each part)
• Full set bonuses: 5% damage and knockback resistance

Using the other plans, the basic Iron armor could also be recrafted into an Iron Brigandine or an Iron Garment, containing its own fitting set of bonuses to Ranged and Magic. Though these alternatives require different materials each:

• Forging new platemail parts will require an extra bar of metal for each part.
• Forging brigandine will require 3 pieces of cloth for the torso and legs, and 2 for the head.
• Forging a mage's garment will require a fallen star for each part.

Getting up to the Gold/Platinum tier, the armors offered will outclass the top-tier of Pre-hardmode (Meteor/Necro/Molten etc.)

edit: hey dumbfart you forgot his stats
Oh right, whoops

HP: 250
Defense: 18
KnockResist: 50%
Attack Method: Does a melee swing of a hefty blacksmith's hammer (much larger head), which can knock enemies way out of the way. It does 20 damage.
Attack Method (Hard): He still has his normal attack for direct combat, but similar to dryad, he can use a special attack, a ground hammer slam, that'll stun any enemies that are nearby. However, he can only do this very infrequently (once every 20 seconds).

Hopefully will get up some guts to sprite Brigandine and Garments to show how those might look stylistically.

But terraria doesn't have real classes. It has type-based damage boosts. People don't have to follow a certain class. And not all armor changes "class" depending on the helmets, like beetle or frost.

And why change the armor? You should just make the right kind in the first place.

 

[Bluhman]

But terraria doesn't have real classes. It has type-based damage boosts. People don't have to follow a certain class. And not all armor changes "class" depending on the helmets, like beetle or frost.

And why change the armor? You should just make the right kind in the first place.

I understand that the damage-types suggested by armors don't entail a flat-out binding to one damage type. The way armors begin to work going into hardmode just strongly suggests sticking to one to make the transition more painless, which can be a concern when the underground areas and infested areas suddenly become capable of two-shotting you - and in addition, if starting fresh in an expert mode world, having those bonuses racking up as soon as possible can help to remove the tedium of dealing with some upgraded enemy patterns (particularly granite elementals.)

As for the beetle/frost armors in relation to changing 'helmets', it's more in the general sense of changing the specific part that might determine what sort of bonus the set offers - after all, for a vast majority of armor sets it's the helmet that determines the most global buff. In other words, I probably should've made it more general by just saying that any armor piece can be modified, so long as the result uses the same materials, apologies.

The armor changing is just a case of quick flexibility - it'll probably be more cost-effective to just have all three helmets (or chestplates if we're talking the beetle set) and switch between them as needed. It's a 'respec' system, without having to go out hunting for a whole other set of ore and metal to create a new part, which, again, can become a concern if you're dealt the wrong hand in terms of weapon drops and accessories.

What it really gets at though is that the Blacksmith is about convenience - he's there to teach the player early on how armor is going to generally work out once you beat the Wall of Flesh. Also it's an excuse to include cool looking outfits earlier on in the game.

 

[Critical moose]

I understand that the damage-types suggested by armors don't entail a flat-out binding to one damage type. The way armors begin to work going into hardmode just strongly suggests sticking to one to make the transition more painless, which can be a concern when the underground areas and infested areas suddenly become capable of two-shotting you - and in addition, if starting fresh in an expert mode world, having those bonuses racking up as soon as possible can help to remove the tedium of dealing with some upgraded enemy patterns (particularly granite elementals.)

As for the beetle/frost armors in relation to changing 'helmets', it's more in the general sense of changing the specific part that might determine what sort of bonus the set offers - after all, for a vast majority of armor sets it's the helmet that determines the most global buff. In other words, I probably should've made it more general by just saying that any armor piece can be modified, so long as the result uses the same materials, apologies.

The armor changing is just a case of quick flexibility - it'll probably be more cost-effective to just have all three helmets (or chestplates if we're talking the beetle set) and switch between them as needed. It's a 'respec' system, without having to go out hunting for a whole other set of ore and metal to create a new part, which, again, can become a concern if you're dealt the wrong hand in terms of weapon drops and accessories.

What it really gets at though is that the Blacksmith is about convenience - he's there to teach the player early on how armor is going to generally work out once you beat the Wall of Flesh. Also it's an excuse to include cool looking outfits earlier on in the game.

ok. do what you want. I love variety, but I dont like it when people associate terraria with definite classes. I pick classes, but I still allow myself to change at any time and use different weapons. ttyl m8

 

[wsxedcrfv]

This is a good idea i hope it gets added in. I wish 1.3 added in more npc's :/