tModLoader The Thorium Mod

[sashakillmagik]

Where can i download the version of this mod 1.6.3.7 ?

 

[Morgoroth]

The bard class are one of the best original ideas of Terraria.

 

[IDGCaptainRussia]

What happened to the Penguin Wand? Why was it removed?

because it was a bad joke, I don't mind it being gone, less Penguin heads lying around as clutter lol

 

[Varadel]

Has anyone else been having issues loading any worlds that have thorium content? I use only a handful of mods and Thorium seems to be the one causing my game to crash before I can load a world. It is incredibly frustrating and has been going on for about a month now.

 

[IDGCaptainRussia]

I'm just gonna toss this one out there because I don't really see why this was changed:
Is there a reason that Ragnarök was renamed? That name has been iconic for a long time with Thorium, at first I thought it was just because the boss got a big rework but than I noticed even the older update names like the one that first added the boss were renamed as well, which is giving me the idea that the choice was alot more personal and there's a deeper meaning behind it, but I clearly can't find anything out in the open about it without joining the discord server

 

[TE_0]

I'm just gonna toss this one out there because I don't really see why this was changed:
Is there a reason that Ragnarök was renamed? That name has been iconic for a long time with Thorium, at first I thought it was just because the boss got a big rework but than I noticed even the older update names like the one that first added the boss were renamed as well, which is giving me the idea that the choice was alot more personal and there's a deeper meaning behind it, but I clearly can't find anything out in the open about it without joining the discord server

I'm interested as well. Ragnarök really fit the nordic theme of the endgame.

I love the mod, I only wish that it was balanced with calamity. Calamity makes this mod obsolete if you play with them together :/

That's the problem of the already stupid unbalanced Calamity.

 

[Xylia]

I'd have to agree with @TE_0 here.

You can't randomly cherry-pick one mod, especially not Calamity and then go (insert mod here) is useless because (mod you're comparing it against) makes it obsolete.

That is a good sign that said mod is stupidly unbalanced. It's among the many reasons I won't touch it.

Thorium adds extra content in sideways directions, and tries to keep more or less in line with Re-Logic's existing content while Calamity just does whatever the frick it wants, and adds stupidly overpowered items and tries to justify it with ridiculous bosses that don't really fit with the rest of the game to the point that you can just trash the Moon Lord in seconds with some of the stuff in Calamity.

EDIT: It is true that certain items in Thorium play with the progression a bit, but I haven't seen anything in Thorium yet that screams "what the frick is this!?" in an overpowered way. So obviously any mod that adds stupidly OP junk is going to make Thorium "seem obsolete".

 

[Squidington]

The only possibly "op" items in Thorium that I can remember off the top of my head are the donator items that can only be made once you beat Thorium's final boss. Even then, those items still don't completely make you a "camp in one spot and own all." Favorite is the bow and even that will get you killed if you just spam it during the solar pillar.

 

[TE_0]

I'd have to agree with @TE_0 here.

You can't randomly cherry-pick one mod, especially not Calamity and then go (insert mod here) is useless because (mod you're comparing it against) makes it obsolete.

That is a good sign that said mod is stupidly unbalanced. It's among the many reasons I won't touch it.

Thorium adds extra content in sideways directions, and tries to keep more or less in line with Re-Logic's existing content while Calamity just does whatever the frick it wants, and adds stupidly overpowered items and tries to justify it with ridiculous bosses that don't really fit with the rest of the game to the point that you can just trash the Moon Lord in seconds with some of the stuff in Calamity.

EDIT: It is true that certain items in Thorium play with the progression a bit, but I haven't seen anything in Thorium yet that screams "what the frick is this!?" in an overpowered way. So obviously any mod that adds stupidly OP junk is going to make Thorium "seem obsolete".

In all honesty, Thorium used to have a few unbalanced items that were good in any situation, but I am happy to see them getting balanced every now and then. It is such a mod that you can just throw at any modpack and be fine, because it is SO respectful to the vanilla balance.

And about calamity, I don't think a goddamn MLP mount or overly shaded hit sponge bosses fit the main game.

Bosses

1 Pre-Hardmode Bosses 1.1 Desert Scourge 1.2 Crabulon 1.3 The Hive Mind 1.4 The Perforators 1.5 The Slime God 2 Hardmode Bosses 2.1 Cryogen 2.2 Aquatic Scourge 2.3 Brimstone Elemental 2.4 Calamitas 2.5 Leviathan and Anahita 2.6 Astrum Aureus 2.7 The Plaguebringer Goliath 2.8 Ravager 2.9 Astrum...

calamitymod.gamepedia.com

Look at this. What even here fits the main game?

 

[TE_0]

The only possibly "op" items in Thorium that I can remember off the top of my head are the donator items that can only be made once you beat Thorium's final boss. Even then, those items still don't completely make you a "camp in one spot and own all." Favorite is the bow and even that will get you killed if you just spam it during the solar pillar.

There used to be the unnerfed darksteel armour which gave you god tier armor piercing and amazing mobility with nice defense. Thank lord it got nerfed because no pre HM armor could be compared to it.

 

[Xylia]

In all honesty, Thorium used to have a few unbalanced items that were good in any situation, but I am happy to see them getting balanced every now and then. It is such a mod that you can just throw at any modpack and be fine, because it is SO respectful to the vanilla balance.

And about calamity, I don't think a goddamn MLP mount or overly shaded hit sponge bosses fit the main game.

Bosses

1 Pre-Hardmode Bosses 1.1 Desert Scourge 1.2 Crabulon 1.3 The Hive Mind 1.4 The Perforators 1.5 The Slime God 2 Hardmode Bosses 2.1 Cryogen 2.2 Aquatic Scourge 2.3 Brimstone Elemental 2.4 Calamitas 2.5 Leviathan and Anahita 2.6 Astrum Aureus 2.7 The Plaguebringer Goliath 2.8 Ravager 2.9 Astrum...

calamitymod.gamepedia.com

Look at this. What even here fits the main game?

Just. WTF.

5 *bleeeeeeeeeeeeep*ing million health? Who thought that was a good idea!? That's some FF13 levels of "MOAR NUMBERS GOTTA HAVE BIG NUMBERS" syndrome right there that many modern RPGs end up falling into. No, you don't need thousands and thousands of health/damage/etc in a properly balanced game.

 

[Stolaire]

Just. WTF.

5 *bleeeeeeeeeeeeep*ing million health? Who thought that was a good idea!? That's some FF13 levels of "MOAR NUMBERS GOTTA HAVE BIG NUMBERS" syndrome right there that many modern RPGs end up falling into. No, you don't need thousands and thousands of health/damage/etc in a properly balanced game.

Ahem... Zenith.

 

[Xylia]

Ahem... Zenith.

Zenith is kinda up there, but it's the "You beat the game, congratulations, here have a developer item".

Because it's kind of, you know, you beat everything in the game and there's nothing left to do other than build so you might as well have a god item.

Calamity, on the other hand, just keeps stacking OP items ontop of OP items ontop of OP items and keeps trying to add bosses that you need these new OP items for and it just gets silly in a hurry.

Think people usually call it "Exponential Power Creep". E.G. Warframe and WoW before they started with stat and level squishes.

 

[leqesai]

Zenith is kinda up there, but it's the "You beat the game, congratulations, here have a developer item".

Because it's kind of, you know, you beat everything in the game and there's nothing left to do other than build so you might as well have a god item.

Calamity, on the other hand, just keeps stacking OP items ontop of OP items ontop of OP items and keeps trying to add bosses that you need these new OP items for and it just gets silly in a hurry.

Think people usually call it "Exponential Power Creep". E.G. Warframe and WoW before they started with stat and level squishes.

Exponential power creep for sure.

It is design-flow when people want to push content purchases and/or don't know how to slow-roll content releases to keep everything relevant. This is most common in MMOs because there is a huge time investment, by the player, that necessitates the purchase of goods.

 

[Xylia]

Exponential power creep for sure.

It is design-flow when people want to push content purchases and/or don't know how to slow-roll content releases to keep everything relevant. This is most common in MMOs because there is a huge time investment, by the player, that necessitates the purchase of goods.

Well, in the case of an MMO, I would argue that Power Creep is more of a result of vertical progression.

You want the player to always be chasing a carrot on a stick to keep them playing, so every so often you release new content so the players will stay subbed, and stay playing. For this to happen, there need to be new goals every so often as players meet goals so they don't quit because they run out of things to do.

FFXI tried to go the side-grade route where the Level Cap was 75 for years and years and all new gear was basically side-grades or very small improvements, sometimes less than 1% of overall performance in power and pieces of gear you'd swap real quick every time you casted a spell or used a weaponskill, etc. This got old, IMO. Some players have rose-tinted glasses, but many players realized that there was no point in slaving away for such gear for such little gains.

So, MMOs like WoW implemented a vertical progression, every X amount of time, new dungeons, raids, etc were introduced with a higher level cap and it kept players chasing new goals.

Problem is, the numbers started getting so ridiculous they had to chop em down and redo the progression curve. This angered some players but most understood why it was necessary to do this every so often.

 

[Nancok]

Well, in the case of an MMO, I would argue that Power Creep is more of a result of vertical progression.

You want the player to always be chasing a carrot on a stick to keep them playing, so every so often you release new content so the players will stay subbed, and stay playing. For this to happen, there need to be new goals every so often as players meet goals so they don't quit because they run out of things to do.

FFXI tried to go the side-grade route where the Level Cap was 75 for years and years and all new gear was basically side-grades or very small improvements, sometimes less than 1% of overall performance in power and pieces of gear you'd swap real quick every time you casted a spell or used a weaponskill, etc. This got old, IMO. Some players have rose-tinted glasses, but many players realized that there was no point in slaving away for such gear for such little gains.

So, MMOs like WoW implemented a vertical progression, every X amount of time, new dungeons, raids, etc were introduced with a higher level cap and it kept players chasing new goals.

Problem is, the numbers started getting so ridiculous they had to chop em down and redo the progression curve. This angered some players but most understood why it was necessary to do this every so often.

The other is to keep numbers small, make health 10 at first lvl, make bosses have 50 health to start with, increase slowly by increments of 2-6 for every level instead of multiplicatively, make characters hp raise by 1 per lvl
The power trip will be lower but balance will be way better, bug fables did a great work with this, you start with 9/10 hp and by the endgame you have 16 hp or so, most stuff are side grades

 

[Xylia]

The other is to keep numbers small, make health 10 at first lvl, make bosses have 50 health to start with, increase slowly by increments of 2-6 for every level instead of multiplicatively, make characters hp raise by 1 per lvl
The power trip will be lower but balance will be way better, bug fables did a great work with this, you start with 9/10 hp and by the endgame you have 16 hp or so, most stuff are side grades

The only thing about having really low numbers, though, is that you have less variance to work with. Old DOS RPGs had this problem, and it's where the "deadly sewer rat" meme comes into play. Say you're a guy who only has 5HP. Well, the smallest hit possible is 1HP until you start going into fractions of HP which is just messy for UIs. This means that a sewer rat can kill you in 5 hits and if you run into two of them, you're going to take a minimum of 2-3 damage which leaves you near death so you have to heal up or camp after fighting two rats.

That, and upgrades and progression needs to be large enough to make the player feel rewarded by their actions. If you go through a game and your characters don't really look or feel all that much more powerful than they did at the start, then what were you doing all game? Remember what I said about FFXI and side-grades? People get bored if they don't notice much reward for their time spent.

There needs to be a balance between these two things, sensible numbers, but yet an actual progression curve where your characters feel more powerful as you go. This doesn't have to be straight up numbers, but the player must feel the difference in strength in their character. Vanilla Terraria does a decent job at this, and I can name several other older games that use smaller (but not THAT small) numbers.

For example, Might and Magic 6 through 8 (not to be confused with Heroes of). You start the game with, IIRC, like 20HP or so. The most tanky of knights will likely end the game with about 700. You start out doing 2-9 damage with a sword, and at the end of the game, you can see melee hits upwards of 90-100. Not a huge progression of numbers, however there's lots of other factors that go into how powerful your characters feel and a lot of it is "under the hood" so to speak -- you can take more hits without dying, and you have access to better spells, and can cast more spells before running out of SP, and spells you learned earlier in the game are more effective as you increase your skills and train in them. You start off being severely hurt by goblins and after a couple levels, you are mowing them down with ease even though your damage output didn't change that much. This continues into the game, perhaps the first time you enter Bootleg Bay, those groups of Cannibals really give you a run for your money, so you decide to go back to an earlier dungeon and see if you can't complete a different quest and gain a levelup or 2 and then yo ucome back to Bootleg Bay and now you're mowing groups of them down. You might not understand why exactly suddenly your characters feel so much more powerful but they just do and it feels awesome even if the numbers didn't shoot up much (one of the reasons I praise Might and Magic's design, the games are addictively fun once you get the hang of them).

EDIT: Also, too much progression not only goes into silly number syndrome, but also... let's say you start the game with 20 or 50 or even 100HP and you take 2 hits to kill the sewer rats. Then you gain a couple levelups and you can kill them in one hit and the damage they do to you isn't even a tenth of a % of your health. That's at level 3. At level 5, you still one-shot them (and will for the rest of the game) and they'll do even less of your HP in damage, but their damage was so low before that it doesn't matter. With an explosive progression system, you trivialize early content way too fast, for no real gain. Earlier parts of the game already get ludicrously easy even at low levels and as you get high levels, the numbers just get silly. One thing that many MMOs do that really gives you more control over difficulty, is difficulty by Level Scaling. What I mean by that, is compare the enemy's level against yours, and apply multipliers based upon that. If you attack something that is less than your level, you deal more damage and take less damage. If you attack something higher level than you, you find it harder to deal damage and they hit you harder. But that only works for games that use Level systems, and it wouldn't work for something like Terraria, admittedly.

 

[Nancok]

The only thing about having really low numbers, though, is that you have less variance to work with. Old DOS RPGs had this problem, and it's where the "deadly sewer rat" meme comes into play. Say you're a guy who only has 5HP. Well, the smallest hit possible is 1HP until you start going into fractions of HP which is just messy for UIs. This means that a sewer rat can kill you in 5 hits and if you run into two of them, you're going to take a minimum of 2-3 damage which leaves you near death so you have to heal up or camp after fighting two rats.

That, and upgrades and progression needs to be large enough to make the player feel rewarded by their actions. If you go through a game and your characters don't really look or feel all that much more powerful than they did at the start, then what were you doing all game? Remember what I said about FFXI and side-grades? People get bored if they don't notice much reward for their time spent.

There needs to be a balance between these two things, sensible numbers, but yet an actual progression curve where your characters feel more powerful as you go. This doesn't have to be straight up numbers, but the player must feel the difference in strength in their character. Vanilla Terraria does a decent job at this, and I can name several other older games that use smaller (but not THAT small) numbers.

For example, Might and Magic 6 through 8 (not to be confused with Heroes of). You start the game with, IIRC, like 20HP or so. The most tanky of knights will likely end the game with about 700. You start out doing 2-9 damage with a sword, and at the end of the game, you can see melee hits upwards of 90-100. Not a huge progression of numbers, however there's lots of other factors that go into how powerful your characters feel and a lot of it is "under the hood" so to speak -- you can take more hits without dying, and you have access to better spells, and can cast more spells before running out of SP, and spells you learned earlier in the game are more effective as you increase your skills and train in them. You start off being severely hurt by goblins and after a couple levels, you are mowing them down with ease even though your damage output didn't change that much. This continues into the game, perhaps the first time you enter Bootleg Bay, those groups of Cannibals really give you a run for your money, so you decide to go back to an earlier dungeon and see if you can't complete a different quest and gain a levelup or 2 and then yo ucome back to Bootleg Bay and now you're mowing groups of them down. You might not understand why exactly suddenly your characters feel so much more powerful but they just do and it feels awesome even if the numbers didn't shoot up much (one of the reasons I praise Might and Magic's design, the games are addictively fun once you get the hang of them).

EDIT: Also, too much progression not only goes into silly number syndrome, but also... let's say you start the game with 20 or 50 or even 100HP and you take 2 hits to kill the sewer rats. Then you gain a couple levelups and you can kill them in one hit and the damage they do to you isn't even a tenth of a % of your health. That's at level 3. At level 5, you still one-shot them (and will for the rest of the game) and they'll do even less of your HP in damage, but their damage was so low before that it doesn't matter. With an explosive progression system, you trivialize early content way too fast, for no real gain. Earlier parts of the game already get ludicrously easy even at low levels and as you get high levels, the numbers just get silly. One thing that many MMOs do that really gives you more control over difficulty, is difficulty by Level Scaling. What I mean by that, is compare the enemy's level against yours, and apply multipliers based upon that. If you attack something that is less than your level, you deal more damage and take less damage. If you attack something higher level than you, you find it harder to deal damage and they hit you harder. But that only works for games that use Level systems, and it wouldn't work for something like Terraria, admittedly.

Ik, that kind of HP handling wouldn't work for all games, my point is to make it as low as possible, in bug fables all enemies present some sort of a treath so there is no "this enemy is super weak it shouldn't deal more than 10% of my health per hit"
It kinda reminds me of plants vs zombies, the money on the display is actually multiplied by 10, so when you have 10 coins, you actually only have 1, this is purely for bloating numbers because the last number will always be 0, this is what i mean, if no enemy can deal damage into the single digits, then having 100 hp becomes fairly bloated for a turn based game, since if an enemy can't even deal 10% of you health in damage, then there isn't much point to having that enemy in the game to begin with (i'm not a hardcore player but that's a bit too low and inconsequential)

 

[Xylia]

since if an enemy can't even deal 10% of you health in damage, then there isn't much point to having that enemy in the game to begin with (i'm not a hardcore player but that's a bit too low and inconsequential)

It's called progression.

Maybe when you first start the game, a sewer rat might deal 10-20% of your health in damage, but as you gain a few levels, you would expect that to go down, and you'd expect to graduate from killing rats. Like maybe you end up killing bears and mythical monsters, and if you wander through a sewer and encounter a lowly rat, you'd expect to just stomp it flat in a couple seconds and it shouldn't really pose a threat to you, it just happened to be in your way. That doesn't mean it shouldn't exist at all just because you got strong enough to just stomp it flat.

 

[Unit One]

Hey folks, this is starting to derail the thread. The power creep comments started off related to Thorium, but now the connection is unclear. If posts could get back to talking about Thorium that would be great.