Game Mechanics The Skyblock Seed. Mapmaker's Thoughts.

[Freedbot]

I was suggested to comment on Red's profile posts involving the Skyblock suggestion. Consider this a "tweetlonger" I guess. I'm one of the more active Skyblock map makers. I've corroborated with a few of the other authors as well. We've all tried making suggestions for little tweaks in the past for improving skyblock viability, but not much came of it. I'll attempt to be concise. I can always elaborate when asked. I dearly hope other experienced map makers and Skyblock players can comment as well. I don't expect anything to come of this, but this is addressed to @Redigit🌳. Apologies for the ping, but you did ask. Ideally, I'd suggest looking at existing maps like SkyTerra, Brutal Skyblock, Shimmerblock, or Shimmering Skies and seeing what makes them tick, but here's the jist.

1. The ideology: Skyblock isn't a bunch of large floating biomes. It's putting as little as possible in world to beat the game (1-3 micro-islands)... ideally while getting all useful items, killing all bosses, and completing the bestiary.

2. Renewability: Check this wiki list. It's not completely accurate when considering shimmer or pre-hardmode mimics, but covers all the concerns and then some. In regards to balance vs availability, simply making things available later works quite a bit. Hellstone crates (the hardmode version) is an obvious example for hellstone. Biome crates for locked biome chests. Some demon altar crafting alternative could be locked by the dungeon or in shimmer. Similarly, the hellforge would need to be craftable or dropped by a boss. I'll stop here. I have many ideas.

3. The Start: All you need to begin is a block to spawn on, some way to get renewable blocks, and whatever else that can't be made to beat the game. Examples: a planted acorn (slow), mushroom grass (slow depending on mud supply). Granite. A solidifier and just enough blocks to start spawning slimes (most fun way we currently have). Shimmer and just enough blocks to spawn mobs (pre-hard mimic drops and treasure slimes). As ChiefLogan will mention, one method is to play mediumcore or journey and shimmer your starting gear for blocks. It's all about the reward of the grind. I suggest different starting islands based on secret seed combinations. Players would love a couple more ways to get blocks from literally nothing, any old decoration block works as long as it doesn't involve a crafting table/furnace. People often suggest things like cheaper fertilizer with poo from a wooden toilet to grow more starting trees/mushrooms/grass/etc.

4. Biome Availability: This is 2 parts: blocks, and biome requirements. Stone, dirt, and sand are easy with shimmer, but impossible without it unless you start with some. Some biomes are easy, others are very convoluted to recreate. Even just the 1,500 blocks for a desert is a tall order. The dungeon has many checks that could be eased up on in hindsight. Underground dessert for example became "easy" in certain maps recently since it no longer checks for a vertical line of 50 wall above the spawn block. Just 1 sandstone wall hit with vile/vicious powder and any kind of block/platform below it. Boom, desert mobs. "Easy", but very obscure. Your average player just wants a consistent craftable/shimmerable wall with a little skull on the icon. The jungle temple also needs attention. Normally you need the natural wall, unminable brick, and altar pre-placed in world for lihzahrds to spawn. Snow currently requires snow globes or jungle mimics (tons of blocks locked by these guys), both are only useful in hardmode. Jungle mimic vomit and pre-hardmode mimics are awesome, and skyblock players would love to see more like it.

5. The Grind: Again, I suggest modifying this through the starting island on different secret seed combinations. Some people want to play a super hardcore grindfest fishing simulator. Others just want a unique take on casual normal gameplay with extra building involved. Some don't need a dungeon to beat the game. Others want to complete everything. Still, most agree on which resource grind activities are too much. Early pre-fishing blocks and ores. I'd say simply increasing the treasure slime spawn rate resolves this. Heart crystals/fruit. I think a simple rate adjustment in SOME skyblock seed combinations would fix that... And of course, fishing. It got drastically better with the last updates, particularly with the fishing quest rewards being made mutually exclusive... assuming the sand is available to get the Angler. Assuming an angler is possible, then I'd say fishing is easily resolved just by having a means to make crate potions and having an increased worm and golden worm spawn rates on multiple block types. Back to fertilizer, if only it didn't require bones, and if ash could be made by smelting wood... Then tons of grindy block and biome spread work could be sped up with it.

Edit: Fixed failure to hyperlink the non-renewable items wiki page.

 

[Contragor]

Fully support this initiative! Agree with all key points identified above!

Skyblock is one of the challenges that inspires creativity, unorthodox thinking, elegant solutions

It has a long lasting impact on Terraria replaybility and absolutely needs some Devs love. It would be great to see a refined version of skyblock where the ENTIRE world could be recreated with just a few starting blocks.

I'm a small YouTuber with only around 9k subs but constantly getting asked for more SkyBlock content. Food for thought.

Cheers!

 

[ChiefLogan]

Going to piggyback off this thread for my own response to Red instead of making my own thread. Also a note to Red - Freedbot is perhaps the most knowledgable person on earth when it comes to Terraria skyblocks, if you have questions about this little niche of the Terraria community then he's the best person to ask.

As someone who has created a skyblock map/video series with a moderate following I have a few ideas for how a skyblock seed could work. I think Shimmer is the way to go purely for the amount of freedom it gives the player, so assuming that's the core mechanic and is available on the starter island, the next challenge is giving the player a renewable source of blocks. In my own map I use the fact that you respawn with tools on mediumcore to allow infinite copper and wood at the cost of respawn time. However for an official map I think this is needlessly cruel. I'd personally go for something that can't be turned into a workbench or furniture to make the map more challenging and require some out-of-the-box thinking (cactus is available later for this - see Shimmering Skies by Freedbot). Poo blocks are an option for this if the player has a toilet and access to some food (I have long resisted the urge to create a sequel to ShimmerBlock called terBlock).

As long as the player has enough blocks to spawn mobs, there's only one more thing that stops them from progressing all the way to Moon Lord - the jungle temple. Most skyblock maps fix this with a very minimal jungle temple pre-built on the map. In my own I use a single Lihzahrd block, wall and altar for this which also acts as an indicator for where the old man will spawn. Freedbot even managed to remove the need for a Lihzahrd block through some secret seed magic that I'm almost certain isn't intended. I'd prefer to see a way to forego the need for a pre-set jungle temple entirely. Whether that's being able to make an artificial temple pre-golem or spawn golem without a temple would be up to you. A rather evil thought would be to make Plantera and Golem spawn at the same time or as some sort of chimera, kind of like Mechdusa in the GFB seed (Plantera with Golem fists instead of tentacles anyone?).

There's a few more small additions/tweaks that would make skyblock as a whole much more complete, including:
- A way to create dungeon bricks or get dungeon items without needing them (one idea I had for this is getting bones from hardmode skeletons and making dungeon blocks craftable with bones + stone at a heavy work bench in a graveyard)
- A way to create a demon/crimson altar or another station that acts in the same way (this would unlock evil bosses, the only bosses currently unspawnable on Freedbot and I's maps)
- A way to obtain hellstone and a hellstone forge (hellstone crates would make a lot of sense as suggested by Freedbot)

The above changes would be nice QoL features in any map, not just skyblock ones.

Lastly I'd like to shamelessly self-plug my first ShimmerBlock video, because having the creator of my favourite game watch something I created in said game would be pretty cool.

 

[MyJorts]

I'm a big supporter of the skyblock community, and Freedbot is really a great source of info on this sort of thing. It's a super niche, but very technical aspect. Abusing the game to its limit sort of thing.

Anyway, there's definitely a few changes that could be made to the base game, such as the aforementioned dungeon spawn mechanics, but that's effort in an area that's not entirely needed. Either way, definitely consider these changes for a skyblock seed, as a vastly different type of playstyle that's officially recognized could be a really fun avenue to invite more players into and explore together with!

 

[ZapdosGuy29]

Many of Terraria's mechanics, according to the developers, are so visceral and convolutedly introduced into the game that they cannot be changed with seeds. This is likely to create a dissonance between the expectations of players who play with SkyBlock-maps mechanics (it is a very small, unspoken percentage of players, which can be ignored) and the final result. Analyzing the generation of existing seeds, we can, for example, highlight the uncompromising generation of Jungle Temple or Dungeon. There are a lot of such limitations, in my outsider's view of the game, which is normal.


Given the capabilities and limitations of the seeds mechanic, Terraria's philosophy towards simplicity and accessibility for the player, and the existing SkyBlock-maps options, the main tasks that a possible future seed should fulfill are:
1 - Possess enough resources so that the average player, playing in a SkyBlock-seeded world, can successfully defeat Moon Lord.
2 - Preferably have the ability to obtain the maximum number of items and achievements in such a world. Ideally, a completely locked bestiary. It is necessary to take into account hundreds upon hundreds of game mechanics that can reduce the number of starting resources and make gameplay more comprehensive and committed to the idea of SkyBlock.
3 - Add an unusual structure to the generation, inherent to SkyBlock-maps, but not beyond the possibilities of seeds. For example, if you can't change the generation of a Dungeon, but you can change its position, why not make it hang in the air.
4 - Some resources that do not have an alternate way of obtaining that is available to the player in SkyBlock-map should be given a timely opportunity to appear. Right now, items like Shoe Spikes, Band of Regeneration, Enchanted Sword, Hellforge, Hellstone, and others can either be obtained via shimmer or be exclusive to world generation.
5 - The main problem with SkyBlock-maps is the inevitable grind of biomes and fishing. Players have to wait a long time for biomes to spread out enough to start interacting with them. Players have to spend time doing a lot of fishing because they want to get crystal hearts, ore, and accessories. It needs to be solved, or at least downplayed.
6 - Shimmer is a very powerful item in the hands of a SkyBlock player. It provides an alternate, parallel gameplay for SkyBlock, and, it would be a good idea to keep it in the SkyBlock world, but distancing it away from the player to, initially, show the player and the inner workings of the game for a SkyBlock walkthrough without Shimmer. This way, the player has more opportunities to achieve his goal in his liminal situation.

Overall, I like the idea of adding a seed that utilizes SkyBlock mechanics in gameplay. The way I envision it should be, relative to existing skyblock-maps, a casual adventure that doesn't drag the player into the forums and wiki too deeply. An analogy can be made:
if existing maps are classic skyblocks,

the planned seed should provide something similar to that:

Yes, it's easier, but it's more affordable for the average player.

Thank you for your attention, forum reader. Play SkyTerra and other SkyBlock maps for Terraria.

Translated by auto-translator

 

[Tsormein]

Hello, longtime member of the SkyTerra community here! I wanted to throw in my two cents to support the thread, so here's what I got.

To be upfront, I don't think Terraria should have an official skyblock, at least not like the ones the community designs. We're a community of challenge-seekers, and unlike a casual audience, we'll put up with any difficult, obscure, or obtuse mechanic to make a challenge as hard as possible. The minimalist designs we come up with are a natural fit for our own interests, but... not the community at large. I think, rather, an official skyblock should be similar to the "Floating Island" world type from pre-1.18 versions of Minecraft. In this type of world generation islands of land spawn with large empty spaces separating them - a casual balance between the challenging skyblock map and traditional world generation. For the young or novice players, this provides them an in-built challenge more suitable for their experience, while the older, more hardcore players can play this as a more relaxed, but still "challenging," world. It's certainly not Skyterra or Shimmerblock, but the players that determined to challenge themselves should be more than capable of navigating the steam workshop by that time.

Obviously, there's no easy solution here. Creating a whole new form of world generation from scratch is a massive task, and creating a skyblock suitable for both a casual and dedicated audience may as well be impossible. I personally don't expect an official skyblock map/worldgen to ever exist, but I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong anyways.

 

[Freedbot]

Yes, it's very true. The skyblock community in Terraria is incredibly small and hasn't gotten much of the public eye. Much, much smaller, even proportionately, than the Minecraft skyblock community that started it. Even in the group of skyblock "enjoyers" there's more people who want to watch youtubers play skyblock then actually play it themselves. While I think the second picture is a bit extreme, and I can't imagine massive floating biomes making anyone happy, I agree with the principle. A secret seed would have to be far more forgiving to players than the typical existing skyblock map. Even a 120 block starting island will seem like a continent compared to the 27 or less blocks that most maps start with. Of course the size depends on how easy and fast players can get more blocks. I think basic things like jungle, corruption etc., players can make on their own. The dungeon... with anything similar to current complex biome requirements, it would have to be a premade island with just enough structure to fight mobs in, maybe 400 blocks. Skyblock maps also don't factor in lost blocks from dropping or crafting mistakes, hence why renewability is important. Different progression from secret seed mixing is cool, but narrowing the scope... if a skyblock seed were to become a thing, what would be needed is a "baby mode" skyblock seed, and a few little tweaks to mechanics for viability and reduced dependence on obscurity. Of course nothing here can be allowed to affect how the base game is played.

Edit: It's worth noting. Exploration in skyblocks is BAD. No one can or wants to hunt things down in the void. The easy solutions people have found if multiple islands are necessary is to put them in sight of each other, put them only in straight lines from the starting island, put pylons on the islands with no NPC's there to teleport too, or put valid housing on the islands. In the last two cases it allows natural discovery while showing up precisely on the map. Furthermore, getting to the edges of such maps takes forever. In my maps I hacked the actual world size down to 2,000x800 tiles. Again, this is an extreme example, and makes WoF and Fishron a bit tougher. I don't actually suggest smaller worlds as a feature. Having an angler as the starting NPC, and perhaps being able to fish up Mr. Fishron elsewhere could be a thought though.

 

[Redigit🌳]

Thanks for all the great feedback. I’ve been watching a few videos about this and have been taking notes for what would need to be done to make a skyblock seed a possibility.

I appreciate the insight about making this world type more casual friendly, as I wouldn’t want to make something as hardcore and grindy as what I’ve been seeing.

Gonna have to read over this a few times and really think about the questions that have been brought up

 

[Freedbot]

We're all here to support. Everyone who's posted knows the all the various limitations for the "gamemode" as well as what struggles come up frequently with the player base, but we don't want to just flood information and opinions. We also all have tons of ideas (and constantly disagree with each other ) on how we'd do it, but it would be very rude to try and dictate.

 

[Swami]

Hello, as an experienced Skyblock player, I do have some thoughts.

Firstly, as everyone has already said, fishing and biomes(*) are very disproportionately grindy. The biome spread time is fine itself, but when the only thing you can do is wait for it to spread, it does start to feel quite slow. Fishing however is much worse. SkyTerra does come with some life crystals scattered in biome chests and such, which are a good QOL addition, but that's still post Plantera. You need to spend a mind-numbing amount of time fishing to get full life, and many players will just never get there. You also need to fish for those same crates to get armour, important items, and of course fishing quests. A good way to fix the huge biome grind would be to take the Minecraft route - have a bunch of floating biome islands everywhere - perhaps these would be good for biome chests to spawn on rather than having a huge dungeon dump.

The very first thing that should be considered, is fixing the fishing grind. I can't really come up with any real solutions, but I know that for an official map, it does need to change. I do enjoy the idea of having to fish to progress, but the life crystal grind is too slow, and very mundane.

Another thing that should be considered is max completion.
• Capability for a full bestiary is almost a given; you can fill the bestiary in any other seed, so this shouldn't be different.
• Zenith is an iconic weapon, and without help from the map, it is unobtainable. Perhaps think about a way to fix this without making it feel too cheaty.

It should also be reasonably possible for beginners. Hardmode isn't all that unbalanced, so it's mostly just lightly tweaking pre-hardmode, although without spending absurd amounts of time waiting or fishing, the armour scene can get pretty dry sometimes.

For an unofficial challenge map, versatility is not important - it is (usually) made purely for difficulty, however for an official seed made to cover a huge audience, it is very important. It should be equally balanced for all classes by each landmark, so people don't feel forced to play a specific class/build.


I think the Steam Workshop (or Curseforge) are perfectly fine for getting these custom maps, and as Tsormein said, by the time a player would even think about Skyblock, they should be more than capable of obtaining those themselves, and if not, there are tutorials and the likes all over the place anyway. With this in mind, it is very easy to dismiss the idea of an official generation, however our friends over on gaming consoles unfortunately can't use either of these, so they have to miss out. With a secret seed, console players could join in on the fun too (at least by creating their own worlds - cross platform would of course let them join PC players' custom worlds).

To Red, I think that, before you think about brainstorming, you should download a Skyblock map and mess around for yourself, or at the very least, watch a long, boring playthrough of one. You can read and listen to endless thoughts/complaints about it, but without either playing it or watching someone play it, it will always feel like conjecture.

* (asterisk from earlier) Biome grinding isn't really all *that* bad, however specifically in the underground jungle, it takes far too long to get chlorophyte without making a whole world of mud down there.

I do hope that my endless blabber has been of some help.

 

[Freedbot]

Swami, you'd be surprised actually. While steam support is nonexistent for console players, anything with 1.4.4 running can also run skyblock maps. The Curseforge downloads of all the listed maps work (I believe still) on consoles and mobile.

The many islands route can work, but players constantly miss things, even on the same island. Looking through the void has proven difficult in skyblock maps even with signs explicitly telling people where to go and what to get there.

Very good point on fair class play. I didn't think to bring that up even though it's quite important.

 

[Impostor]

I mainly support a Skyblock seed just so those on console and mobile to be able to easily obtain it

While steam support is nonexistent for console players, anything with 1.4.4 running can also run skyblock maps. The Curseforge downloads of all the listed maps work (I believe still) on consoles and mobile.

Wasn't aware that curseforge allowed transfer of them to console and mobile though, Thanks for the head's up on that


I think a Skyblock Seed should have a decently sized island that isn't too tiny. Something along the lines of a 1.1 Floating Island without the Ore Brick house in the center (Just replace that with a small lake of water or shimmer, with maybe a solidifier to the side). I know most Skyblock seeds are like only 20 blocks or so, But you could easily modify the island to be smaller if you'd like, along with a nice callback to older versions of Terraria

 

[Talamar1]

I would also further that the tmod "Better Skyblock" from Masamotto17 is also a good example of how you can generate a skyblock world and include mod content (in this case, it is Calamity compatible). That aspect would obviously fall under the per view of the Tmod guys but the randomness of the procedurally generated map makes it a fun hide and seek challenge... unfortunately my wife thought it would be fun to do our first attempt on a large world... "it will be fun" she said.....

But I do agree, Freedbot has done an outstanding job with their maps and with the inclusion of Shimmer, it was a real challenge (I'll admit, I had to ask for help) because you really do need to read all the change notes to see how to do some of the things.

I also like the idea of a sparse island map just for a change up.

 

[thisisabadname]

This may be too much effort that is better spent elsewhere. Skyblock maps are interesting and force you to think outside the box but at their core, they are just grindfests. A very small amount of the community would be interested in trying skyblock out while everyone would enjoy say, new mechanics, balance changes, and improvements to current mechanics and seeds. You will also need to make sure it works well with the other seeds and that it doesn't ruin the get fixed boi experience. Imo it's just too much work for how niche it is.

 

[Freedbot]

This may be too much effort that is better spent elsewhere. Skyblock maps are interesting and force you to think outside the box but at their core, they are just grindfests.

To get a working skyblock seed is probably considerably less work than it took to make the remix seed, but yes, it would be very easy to screw up. It's less code and more thinking. As for the grindfest, again yes, the idea is to NOT be a grindfest like existing maps. The tedious tasks of getting blocks, fishing for health, and building biomes prevent skyblock from being more mainstream. It's really not much to fix it though. Imagine fertilizer being more available and working to spread grass faster. Scarab dirt bombs for building the world. Stone scarab bombs even. What if the grave digger shovel made zombies drop dirt on kill? These are just examples that are easy to implement (except maybe fertilizer), don't hurt/change the main game, and improve skyblock living drastically.

 

[Nimta]

honestly I think it's more interesting as a challenge or such if your options are very limited. it's not very fun when things are technically possible but are more tedious (lookin at YOU terra caelum, and all your fishing)

 

[Kisk]

I'd like to pipe in on this as not a map builder but one of your potential Official Terraria Skyblock Map players.
I LOVED playing Minecraft Skyblock with my friends and family. I love watching a good skyblock series as well.
The dirt bomb grind puts me off o_o, I wondered about crafting dirt out of poo and hay, and having multiple upgrades to an extractinator opening access to some of the multiple blocks necessary for progression. A whole world made out of poo if you will. ^_^
I love the fishing but find the current man hours required a tad excessive.

Ideally, I would love a Terraria Skyblock experience that lets me complete my bestiary, achievements and my Journey mode duplication encyclopedia .

 

[jimbojones27]

Some items in Terraria seem to be infinitely renewable for not many reasons. Cobwebs, crystal shards, coral, shells, dye plants and gemstones for example. Along with these we have weapons and tools that are obtainable through farming enemies. If they further expanded some of these items uses it would help enrich the skyblock playthrough by having lots of different ways to complete the game.

For example vampire knives could be created with 100 bloodroot and 1000 death weed. This would emphasise farming over killing enemies, which I believe is a core part of skyblock. Ash blocks from Red strange plant and bone. Bone sword can be crafted into 150 bone. Fireblossom + demonite/crimtane -> hellstone ore.

There's a lot you could do with some altered crafting trees and a lot of fun creating them.

I think skyblock in terraria can feel quite linear so these extra crafting trees can help make the route you take through the challenge more unique. Also will help for a skyblock player who is more of a completionist rather than just playing through the game until moonlord.

 

[Freedbot]

...The dirt bomb grind puts me off o_o, I wondered about crafting dirt out of poo and hay, and having multiple upgrades to an extractinator...I love the fishing but find the current man hours required a tad excessive.
Ideally, I would love a Terraria Skyblock experience that lets me complete my bestiary, achievements and my Journey mode duplication encyclopedia .

The dirt grind is real, yes. It gets better with an explosion proof block like dungeon brick or hardmode ore to target, and the gravedigger shovel or sticky tnt, but the return on investment is still low, beats the old alternative of "you just can't have dirt". Also shimmering dirt from loot crate ore helps. Fishing also got much better in the last 1.4.4 hotfixes, especially with angler accessories being all mutually exclusive. Heart crystals are still the fishing bottleneck. The bestiary only has a few tricky mobs... Examples: dungeon mobs if you don't have one, marble mobs and spiders if you don't have shimmer, and those pesky gnomes. The only way to manually spawn those is brown solution.

...For example vampire knives could be created with 100 bloodroot and 1000 death weed. This would emphasise farming over killing enemies, which I believe is a core part of skyblock. Ash blocks from Red strange plant and bone. Bone sword can be crafted into 150 bone. Fireblossom + demonite/crimtane -> hellstone ore....

I think skyblock in terraria can feel quite linear so these extra crafting trees can help make the route you take through the challenge more unique. Also will help for a skyblock player who is more of a completionist rather than just playing through the game until moonlord.

While I'm groaning at those example recipes of yours, I very strongly agree with the sentiment that gameplay in current skyblock is too linear and is in need of alternate methods... And yes, some grinding and obsessive completionism go hand in hand with skyblock gameplay and more variety of ways to grind for more completionism is welcome.

Fun Fact: The first Terraria Skyblock I'm aware of is by Fencedin. It predated dirt bombs and most current vanilla methods, so it was a full on mod. Some of the recipes for accessories that couldn't be fished back then used dyes. Cactus flower pink was a real pain, but fun.

 

[jimbojones27]

While I'm groaning at those example recipes of yours, I very strongly agree with the sentiment that gameplay in current skyblock is too linear and is in need of alternate methods... And yes, some grinding and obsessive completionism go hand in hand with skyblock gameplay and more variety of ways to grind for more completionism is welcome.

Hahahhahahha these were thought up in about 30 seconds! But using already renewable items would probably make it much easier to implement- a few new renewability mechanics wouldn't be bad tho. Love the idea of the pink cactus flowers.

Perhaps when mixing skyblock seeds with others you can get a more or less grindy version of skyblock. Skyblock X Getfixed boi will kill you whilst celebration mk10 would make the skyblock experience much easier.