Game Mechanics [Tobbvald's Tinkering] Early Hardmode Progression (The Missing Thread)

Tovlyn

Skeletron Prime
Introduction

Greetings once more! This thread marks the final previously existing thread, one that I have been neglecting for a long time due to my dissatisfaction with the previous version on TO. But now I finally feel ready to make a new attempt with it. The concept in theory is simple, I feel that the Hardmode ore-tiers are imbalanced and need reworking.

0cHjutS.png


Summary For Lazy People

-New progression for early Hardmode

-The 6 armors are rebalanced to one single tier

-Introducing one mechanical boss for each of the 3 evil biomes

-Behemech

-A way to acquire "Off-World" Hallow-tier loot.


0cHjutS.png


When Entering Hardmode

Upon defeating WoF Hardmode is initiated, but with it comes a completely different hell. I'm referring to the Early Hardmode Grind. I don't know how many of you guys are having this issue with it, but I for one see lots of problems with how this part of the game is currently handled.

To put it simply, EHM is a more strict version of the start of Terraria, with forced tiering, spontaneous bossbattles to stress the player through the quite frankly useless first tiers and then use Adamantite for about one fight and then drop that armor as well. I feel that giving the player a plethora of armors, but put them in a chain of progression overshadowed by difficult bosses sends mixed signals. First order of business would be to create some structure in how this progression is handled.

The Armor

Randomly deciding how many boring (The old sets without abilities) and how many fun (The new sets) armors the player will get can turn into a real letdown, so I think that the armors should be reset to a single tier stat-wise and that the original trio should get abilities of their own. The stats would be somewhere between the strongest and the weakest and fluctuate slightly depending on the armor and which ability is has, the point is that they should all be equal in power.

Cobalt_Bar.png
Cobalt
: Abilty - Swiftness: Upon a successful hit will this armor grant the wearer the ability to double-tap any direction for a swift dash in any direction, -even up and down! Similar in length and speed to Tabi, which does stack with the Swiftness buff. The buff would last approximately 10 seconds.

Palladium_Bar.png
Palladium
: Ability - Regeneration: See current ability.

Mythril_Bar.png
Mythril
: Ability - Mythril Shrapnel. Attacks are showered in Mythril-like particles. When hitting the target the enemy will launch between 3 and 7 small piercing shrapnels in all directions and hurt nearby enemies. This ability would of course have greater effect on larger crowds or with piercing damage.

Orichalcum_Bar.png
Orichalcum
: Ability - Flower Petals: See current ability.

Adamantite_Bar.png
Adamantite
: Steeling. Successfully hitting an enemy makes the player glow red and take half damage for 10 seconds. (Only during this state will the pulsating effect currently always present on adamantite appear.)

Titanium_Bar.png
Titanium
: Ability - Shadow Dodge: See current ability.


I feel that these changes would not only increase the usage of the more boring sets but also make this part of the game more unique, with 6 different armor-abilities to choose from this would be the most customizable tier of the game, and would allow for some quirky combos even in late-game if one would feel like it.

One thing to note is that the tools will remain tiered. This will more or less force the players to at least try and experiment with all sets. You might say that it then undermines the original intent of this thread, but I feel that though the mechanic stays, the purpose has changed. The abilities are synched in such a way that no matter which set you get the ability will be equal to the alternative. -And if you still are dissatisfied with the 3 sets provided by mining there's always the option to go fish for crates.

0cHjutS.png


The Mechanical Five

In vanilla there are 3 of them, even though there are two separate bosses. I feel that this irregularity needs some attention.
The Five Mechanical bosses would be divided into 3 different tiers, and one from each tier is required to move on to the Jungle.
Furthermore, these bosses will only start appearing at night after having crafted at least one of the six armors.​


Tier One: The Twins


-Little has changed with this fight. They would be the easiest of the five, but not too easy. Drops ingots and souls/equivalent corresponding to the playthrough; Hallowed bars for Hallow-world, Cybernetic for Cyber and so on.

Tier Two: Skeletron Prime

-The middle-tier. More difficult than The Twins, but not a bigger threat than the final three. It drops ingots and souls/equivalents corresponding to world.

Tier Three: The Destroyer, Motherboard, Behemech

-The final tier. These bosses are hard. The Destroyer will of course be buffed accordingly. The thing that sets these three apart from the others is the loot they drop. They all drop the equivalent to souls of Might, but from there things differ. These three bosses drop ingots according to the origin of the boss. Meaning that Motherboard drop Cybernetic Ingots, Behemech drops Covert Bars and so on. This will allow the player to enter the Jungle with any gear they wish. Of course, the crafting recipe for each of the 3 summoning items are the same as they are right now, so in order to do that one would have to first plant and grind that evil for its crafting component.

Before we move on I would just like to bring up that details on Motherboard can be found at the Owner's thread
Thanks to @Zoomo for allowing me to borrow his boss-concept.

0cHjutS.png


Behemech

I have been alluding to this boss for a time now, and it has also been one of the things preventing me from posting this thread sooner than it was. It is of course no other than Behemech (placeholdername).

6pCeKbo.png


This boss builds on the same concept as the other mechanicals, take the previous fight, take an element of the fight and make it stronger/different. The thing that separates Behemech from Behemoth is that missile launcher on its back. The original fight had two phases, this one has two different attack-patterns instead.

Attack-Pattern One: This phase throws you back to Phase One of the original fight. Behemech will use that missile launcher to hail down a steady rain of missiles over a large area on and outside of the screen, similar to Santa-NK. While in this mode Behemech will try to float just out of reach and generally move as little as possible, letting the player dance around trying to avoid its rain of missiles.

Attack-Pattern Two: This Attack-Pattern consists of it doing U-shaped dives trying to ram the player. It takes a short break between dives to fire lasers directly aimed at the player with the weapon on its tail.

It switches between these phases as it wishes, sometimes longer between breaking pattern than other. Rince and repeat until defeated or the sun comes up and it escapes. That is the general gist of the fight. If you have any questions or ideas be sure to bring those up in your feedback.

0cHjutS.png


Thanks for reading!

Like I said, this was the last of the original threads that I have any intention of remaking. From this point I am free to do new things!
Feedback and suggestions are as always welcome, and I look forward to hearing your opinions on this idea.
 
Last edited:
Introduction

Greetings once more! This thread marks the final previously existing thread, one that I have been neglecting for a long time due to my dissatisfaction with the previous version on TO. But now I finally feel ready to make a new attempt with it. The concept in theory is simple, I feel that the Hardmode ore-tiers are imbalanced and need reworking.

0cHjutS.png


Summary For Lazy People

-New progression for early Hardmode

-The 6 armors are rebalanced to one single tier

-Introducing one mechanical boss for each of the 3 evil biomes

-Behemech

-A way to acquire "Off-World" Hallow-tier loot.


0cHjutS.png


When Entering Hardmode

Upon defeating WoF Hardmode is initiated, but with it comes a completely different hell. I'm referring to the Early Hardmode Grind. I don't know how many of you guys are having this issue with it, but I for one see lots of problems with how this part of the game is currently handled.

To put it simply, EHM is a more strict version of the start of Terraria, with forced tiering, spontaneous bossbattles to stress the player through the quite frankly useless first tiers and then use Adamantite for about one fight and then drop that armor as well. I feel that giving the player a plethora of armors, but put them in a chain of progression overshadowed by difficult bosses sends mixed signals. First order of business would be to create some structure in how this progression is handled.

The Armor

Randomly deciding how many boring (The old sets without abilities) and how many fun (The new sets) armors the player will get can turn into a real letdown, so I think that the armors should be reset to a single tier stat-wise and that the original trio should get abilities of their own. The stats would be somewhere between the strongest and the weakest and fluctuate slightly depending on the armor and which ability is has, the point is that they should all be equal in power.

Cobalt_Bar.png
Cobalt
: Abilty - Swiftness: Upon a successful hit will this armor grant the wearer the ability to double-tap any direction for a swift dash in any direction, -even up and down! Similar in length and speed to Tabi, which does stack with the Swiftness buff.

Palladium_Bar.png
Paladium
: Ability - Regeneration: See current ability.

Mythril_Bar.png
Mythril
: Ability - Mythril Shrapnel. Attacks are showered in Mythril-like particles. When hitting the target the enemy will launch between 3 and 7 small piercing shrapnels in all directions and hurt nearby enemies. This ability would of course have greater effect on larger crowds or with piercing damage.

Orichalcum_Bar.png
Orichalcum
: Ability - Flower Petals: See current ability.

Adamantite_Bar.png
Adamantite
: Steeling. Successfully hitting an enemy makes the player glow red and take half damage for 10 seconds. (Only during this state will the pulsating effect currently always present on adamantite appear.)

Titanium_Bar.png
Titanium
: Ability - Shadow Dodge: See current ability.


I feel that these changes would not only increase the usage of the more boring sets but also make this part of the game more unique, with 6 different armor-abilities to choose from this would be the most customizable tier of the game, and would allow for some quirky combos even in late-game if one would feel like it.

One thing to note is that the tools will remain tiered. This will more or less force the players to at least try and experiment with all sets. You might say that it then undermines the original intent of this thread, but I feel that though the mechanic stays, the purpose has changed. The abilities are synched in such a way that no matter which set you get the ability will be equal to the alternative. -And if you still are dissatisfied with the 3 sets provided by mining there's always the option to go fish for crates.

0cHjutS.png


The Mechanical Five

In vanilla there are 3 of them, even though there are two separate bosses. I feel that this irregularity needs some attention.
The Five Mechanical bosses would be divided into 3 different tiers, and one from each tier is required to move on to the Jungle.
Furthermore, these bosses will only start appearing at night after having crafted at least one of the six armors.​


Tier One: The Twins


-Little has changed with this fight. They would be the easiest of the five, but not too easy. Drops ingots and souls/equivalent corresponding to the playthrough; Hallowed bars for Hallow-world, Cybernetic for Cyber and so on.

Tier Two: Skeletron Prime

-The middle-tier. More difficult than The Twins, but not a bigger threat than the final three. It drops ingots and souls/equivalents corresponding to world.

Tier Three: The Destroyer, Motherboard, Behemech

-The final tier. These bosses are hard. The Destroyer will of course be buffed accordingly. The thing that sets these three apart from the others is the loot they drop. They all drop the equivalent to souls of Might, but from there things differ. These three bosses drop ingots according to the origin of the boss. Meaning that Motherboard drop Cybernetic Ingots, Behemech drops Covert Bars and so on. This will allow the player to enter the Jungle with any gear they wish. Of course, the crafting recipe for each of the 3 summoning items are the same as they are right now, so in order to do that one would have to first plant and grind that evil for its crafting component.

Before we move on I would just like to bring up that details on Motherboard can be found at the Owner's thread
Thanks to @Zoomo for allowing me to borrow his boss-concept.

0cHjutS.png


Behemech

I have been alluding to this boss for a time now, and it has also been one of the things preventing me from posting this thread sooner than it was. It is of course no other than Behemech (placeholdername).

6pCeKbo.png


This boss builds on the same concept as the other mechanicals, take the previous fight, take an element of the fight and make it stronger/different. The thing that separates Behemech from Behemoth is that missile launcher on its back. The original fight had two phases, this one has two different attack-patterns instead.

Attack-Pattern One: This phase throws you back to Phase One of the original fight. Behemech will use that missile launcher to hail down a steady rain of missiles over a large area on and outside of the screen, similar to Santa-NK. While in this mode Behemech will try to float just out of reach and generally move as little as possible, letting the player dance around trying to avoid its rain of missiles.

Attack-Pattern Two: This Attack-Pattern consists of it doing U-shaped dives trying to ram the player. It takes a short break between dives to fire lasers directly aimed at the player with the weapon on its tail.

It switches between these phases as it wishes, sometimes longer between breaking pattern than other. Rince and repeat until defeated or the sun comes up and it escapes. That is the general gist of the fight. If you have any questions or ideas be sure to bring those up in your feedback.

0cHjutS.png


Thanks for reading!

Like I said, this was the last of the original threads that I have any intention of remaking. From this point I am free to do new things!
Feedback and suggestions are as always welcome, and I look forward to hearing your opinions on this idea.
All of this looks great! Nice job man!
 
Beautiful work, you really have done it again. There's just too much beauty in this thread, it's kind of hard to put words together without taking out some super adhesive glue from my drawer. Supported, most definitely. The only thing missing about this idea is its implementation into Terraria!
 
This looks really good. The one thing I have a problem with is the Behemech sprite.
Behemoth Phase 2-1.png
Behemech.png

The Behemech's wings are just big blocks of color, and the metal parts in them don't look good at all. It has no legs (Which may be intentional but looks odd) and it's body looks too thin. Aside from those, it looks really good. The neck looks right and the frames for the wings are great. I'll try to make an example of some improvements.
 
Behemech has awoken!

Really glad to see another part of this! I love this just as much as your other threads, it would be pretty amazing if they were added.


Tobbvald's Tinkering is finally complete! Woohoo!
Behemech's name should be changed (as stated by saying "placeholder") because the other Tier 3 bosses have names that are like a thing/occupation. I was thinking something like Pest Controller maybe.

(now to make a Tobbvald's Tinkering mod)

(Good luck)

Maybe The Exterminator? Although that kinda sounds like a Destroyer ripoff :p
 
Tobbvald, this is amazing. If this was implemented, I would use Cobalt armor all the up until the point I got Chlorophyte. May I also suggest that the buff increases attack speed for a bit?

You said Behemech is a placeholder name... Do you already have a name in mind? If not: maybe The Pollinator? (Ok now that I think about it that sounds really derpy)
 
Tobbvald, this is amazing. If this was implemented, I would use Cobalt armor all the up until the point I got Chlorophyte. May I also suggest that the buff increases attack speed for a bit?

You said Behemech is a placeholder name... Do you already have a name in mind? If not: maybe The Pollinator? (Ok now that I think about it that sounds really derpy)
Yeah, I thought Cobalt needed some love after all these years of neglction, and I figured the best alternative ability to regen would be movement-based to keep it class-neutral.

All name-ideas are welcome. I feel that the current name works, but it doesn't strike me as something I would keep if something better arises.
 
Yeah, I thought Cobalt needed some love after all these years of neglction, and I figured the best alternative ability to regen would be movement-based to keep it class-neutral.

All name-ideas are welcome. I feel that the current name works, but it doesn't strike me as something I would keep if something better arises.
I guess this isnt all that important, but i was suggesting was that it increases attack speed for ALL weapons as well as increasing movement speed. Just a thought.
 
I guess this isnt all that important, but i was suggesting was that it increases attack speed for ALL weapons as well as increasing movement speed. Just a thought.
I think that'd be a bad idea, because the reason I made it this way is because the armors still are alternatives to each other. Only Orichalcum and Mythril should have directly offensive buffs. The other pairs should remain defensive.
 
Looks good! I especially like the new Mythril set, and how it parallels Orichalcum in a way.

I can provide a few more additional candidates for 1.1 armor set bonuses, if you'd like. http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/cobalt-mythril-adamantite-brainstorming-thread.1734/
Yep! I figured it'd be a good move to try and counter the new sets' abilites since they are after all acquired in a certain order, and because they are alts.

Glad you like it! -But to be honest, as long as any similarly tiered set of abilities are given to the sets I'm content.
 
I personally think that the early normalmode tier armor should get this sort of treatment alongside this given that they get shunned to the side by experienced players anyways, but good suggestion anyhow. I like the new armor effects - gives me a reason to go for 1.1 HM armor instead of jumping straight to Adamantite and then to Hallowed if none of the 1.2 armor is available.
 
Early normalmode armor is pointless, you can easily go to the corruption and farm ancient shadow armor immediately (provided you have a corruption )
 
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