Xylia
Terrarian
So.....it's time to talk about the Underground Desert.
When you look at the biome once you've explored it in its entirety, I don't know about anybody else, but excluding the monsters, it looks like a New Player's Heaven. The caves are tiny and there are lots of them close together, there's a good amount of underground cabins with loot in them, there's a ton of ore in the place perfect for making your starter sets of armor, and with the exception of the fossils, the blocks are weak and easy to tunnel through.
.....But the problem is......
The monsters are just too insanely powerful to think about going there early-game. They have way too much defense, and they hit way too hard. One of the flying mobs hits a new character for ~30 damage and a Cactus Sword hits them for 1-2 damage in return. A new player isn't going to last in here.
Meanwhile, the biome itself offers very little of anything new (except the fossils, and two new blocks).
So, to actually give this zone some PURPOSE, I propose rebalancing (with Early-game in mind):
1). Reduce the defense and attack of the mobs to make them appropriate for early-game spelunking. It'd make sense that a character would tunnel through easy stuff like sand and sandstone before moving onto harder stone, right?
2). Make desert fossils easier to mine. I don't understand why they are gated behind the EoW/BoC Pickaxes. I'd say gate them behind Silver Pickaxes, or maybe Gold.
3). Make the Fossil Armor a little easier to make (cut the requirements in half)
That way, you'd have a very nice early-game starter biome that screams "GO HERE FIRST" and you'd have a nice set of armor comparable to Silver/Gold Armor but with some sweet bonuses for those new throwing weapons that many people just skip in favor of yo-yos. By the time you can actually acquire Fossil Plate, it is already out-classed by Shadow/Crimson Armor as you can't get Fossil Plate until you get the Pickaxes from EoW/BoC, right?
Every time I think about the Underground Desert, I can't help but to think it is a mish-mash of ideas thrown together that doesn't have any clear purpose in mind other than "it looked cool so we just threw it in". The terrain of the biome says "Early Game!" but the Fossils and the Mobs in there say "Hah! Don't even try it until Post-Crimson/Corruption!" and the Loot in there says "Early Game!" as the same stuff that is found there, is found in caves where the worst you fight is a skeleton or mother slime (unless you run into a nymph).
When you look at the biome once you've explored it in its entirety, I don't know about anybody else, but excluding the monsters, it looks like a New Player's Heaven. The caves are tiny and there are lots of them close together, there's a good amount of underground cabins with loot in them, there's a ton of ore in the place perfect for making your starter sets of armor, and with the exception of the fossils, the blocks are weak and easy to tunnel through.
.....But the problem is......
The monsters are just too insanely powerful to think about going there early-game. They have way too much defense, and they hit way too hard. One of the flying mobs hits a new character for ~30 damage and a Cactus Sword hits them for 1-2 damage in return. A new player isn't going to last in here.
Meanwhile, the biome itself offers very little of anything new (except the fossils, and two new blocks).
So, to actually give this zone some PURPOSE, I propose rebalancing (with Early-game in mind):
1). Reduce the defense and attack of the mobs to make them appropriate for early-game spelunking. It'd make sense that a character would tunnel through easy stuff like sand and sandstone before moving onto harder stone, right?
2). Make desert fossils easier to mine. I don't understand why they are gated behind the EoW/BoC Pickaxes. I'd say gate them behind Silver Pickaxes, or maybe Gold.
3). Make the Fossil Armor a little easier to make (cut the requirements in half)
That way, you'd have a very nice early-game starter biome that screams "GO HERE FIRST" and you'd have a nice set of armor comparable to Silver/Gold Armor but with some sweet bonuses for those new throwing weapons that many people just skip in favor of yo-yos. By the time you can actually acquire Fossil Plate, it is already out-classed by Shadow/Crimson Armor as you can't get Fossil Plate until you get the Pickaxes from EoW/BoC, right?
Every time I think about the Underground Desert, I can't help but to think it is a mish-mash of ideas thrown together that doesn't have any clear purpose in mind other than "it looked cool so we just threw it in". The terrain of the biome says "Early Game!" but the Fossils and the Mobs in there say "Hah! Don't even try it until Post-Crimson/Corruption!" and the Loot in there says "Early Game!" as the same stuff that is found there, is found in caves where the worst you fight is a skeleton or mother slime (unless you run into a nymph).
