Update 1.3.0.3 and Moon Lord

[Grimmsy]

Alright, what I'm getting from the replies is that there is a wide skill difference between the players and that Moon Lord needs some fixes either way.

I gathered from other threads as well that many players find this fight to be boring even if the boss is considered to be "cool". What I see some players neglect is that in order to beat Moon Lord, you have to first defeat the Cultist then the Pillars, and it all adds up. Fail for whatever reason and it's back to square one, making it a tedious experience, which leads to fatigue that cause subsequent fails in the game session.
It's hard to get better at fighting him when players have to restart the whole chain every time they want to fight Moon Lord.

Also noticed that some players say that melee is the way to go while they failed with ranged setups, while others are saying the exact opposite, but a a lot of players used the teleport back to base to heal trick. While that is one of the cheesiest "tactic", simply denying it with no other changes would certainly be bad.
The leech buff is bad as well, at least in my opinion, because it simply denies some gear setups that are weaker than most anyway and made the battle even more boring (spectre reduces damage by a lot while knives have too low damage output to matter much), thus it promotes the use of teleport back to base to heal trick.

I'm pretty sure a lot of players will prefer to use an inventory editor to get the loot rather than to farm this boss over and over again, which is just sad. The final boss is not fun, which is even sadder.

 

[ψeud]

Alright, I've found something interesting.

It's possible to outrun the tongue, the eyes, the Moon Lord, and even those homing Magic MIssiles using the Shrimpy Truffle Mount at low health, full speed.

Therefore, equipping the mount means that when your health drops too low, you will automatically move fast enough to avoid any and all of the Moon Lord's attacks. It's a nice compensation.

I haven't seen the pattern yet, but I've found that flying in a small concentric circle around the Core is good for dodging while you focus on the Hands, and a wide back-and-forth motion over the Head works when you're targeting the Head. When the Core came out, I flew in an zig-zag, moving up and down while flying to the side. I stayed at my maximum range while pelting the Core with Daybreak lances and the Terrarian (dropped on my second kill-If you don't have it, use your next most powerful weapon). If my health ever went down, I used the speed boost from the mount to fly far away from the Moon Lord while shooting the North Pole at it, until the potion sickness debuff wore off. Then, I took a potion and charged back into the fight. Rinse and repeat.

It took around ~6-10 minutes.

 

[JustanotherAnon]

Alright, what I'm getting from the replies is that there is a wide skill difference between the players and that Moon Lord needs some fixes either way.

I gathered from other threads as well that many players find this fight to be boring even if the boss is considered to be "cool". What I see some players neglect is that in order to beat Moon Lord, you have to first defeat the Cultist then the Pillars, and it all adds up. Fail for whatever reason and it's back to square one, making it a tedious experience, which leads to fatigue that cause subsequent fails in the game session.
It's hard to get better at fighting him when players have to restart the whole chain every time they want to fight Moon Lord.

Also noticed that some players say that melee is the way to go while they failed with ranged setups, while others are saying the exact opposite, but a a lot of players used the teleport back to base to heal trick. While that is one of the cheesiest "tactic", simply denying it with no other changes would certainly be bad.
The leech buff is bad as well, at least in my opinion, because it simply denies some gear setups that are weaker than most anyway and made the battle even more boring (spectre reduces damage by a lot while knives have too low damage output to matter much), thus it promotes the use of teleport back to base to heal trick.

I'm pretty sure a lot of players will prefer to use an inventory editor to get the loot rather than to farm this boss over and over again, which is just sad. The final boss is not fun, which is even sadder.

I will admit, despite what I said earlier - the bosses tend to involve race course tricks a little too often. Building an arena is fine - you are setting up the terrain for your own advantage - but perhaps a more "traditional" approach to a sidescroller boss wouldn't be bad either. The whole "run and gun" thing does get a bit samey after awhile. Expert EoC, expert king slime, WoF, Twins, Duke Fishron, ?Moon lord (still haven't reached far into 1.3 HM), all basically involve shooting and running away (or in a giant flying circle.). I think warping back is a fair trick - may seem cheap, but the nurse is there for a reason, and it's not when a slime bumped into me. But I do agree the "running forever and shooting" is slightly over done, despite how cool he and his moveset is.

What we need are bosses like this :3 @3:48:

Spoiler

Though maybe not as hard...after all, it is a "I wanna be the guy" style game, heh.

 

[Father Grigori]

Alright, I've found something interesting.

It's possible to outrun the tongue, the eyes, the Moon Lord, and even those homing Magic MIssiles using the Shrimpy Truffle Mount at low health, full speed.
...
I stayed at my maximum range while pelting the Core with Daybreak lances and the Terrarian (dropped on my second kill-If you don't have it, use your next most powerful weapon).

How nice, but how about for those who haven't managed to beat him yet. It doesn't help talking about beating him with expert gear or gear obtained from beating him. After beating most bosses, I can take them routinely with their gear drops. The first battle is what counts.

The leech buff is bad as well, at least in my opinion, because it simply denies some gear setups that are weaker than most anyway and made the battle even more boring (spectre reduces damage by a lot while knives have too low damage output to matter much), thus it promotes the use of teleport back to base to heal trick.

Exactly. Not only this, but it's limiting the ways to beat him. It won't be a fun battle when there is only one solution to win, and a cheesy solution at that.


One other comment on the journey to that battle; either the predictor or evolution beast attacks with a highly damaging, homing attack that can pass through blocks AND damage you multiple times. In solar armor with solar wings, under the effects of an ironskin potion, 3 of them killed me in seconds. 2 of those characteristics is a great challenge, but all 3 equate to 10 second deaths for buffed tanking characters and a frustrating, unrewarding fight.

 

[DarkScythe]

To be honest, I agree Moon Lord can both be hard to some people and unfairly easy for others. I am a Range user, specifically guns (rarely bows). I've downed moon lord only once out of two battles(first time failure was because I stupidly ran out of coins to heal at the nurse. DAMN), and that is before the 1.3.0.3 update. What I did was set a long sky bridge, position my nurse in a 'house' there, and placed campfire and heart laterns along the bridge and some honey pool at beginning where I start off. I used the Unreal Xenopopper or whatever Martian gun loaded with Chloro bullets and blasted away (I actually found it more useful than the more high damage Vortex Beater gun personally due to the fact you can easily flood the screen with projectile and the extra energy shot from Vortex Beater doesn't seem to home). Took me a long while but I managed to shoot him down with like 120+ HP left for me.

Then when I came here I've raged at how people keep insisting Vampire Knives etc etc. I got mixed reaction at the life steal debuff. I'm happy that melee users are in the same boat as I am now and won't be unfairly easy to the Melee users. But I'm mad that the boss haven't gotten any easier. Hey, if we lose to Moon Lord, how about making it leave behind an item so we can summon him again for a rematch instead of going through the long quest chain again? Maybe not immediately summon him, but after we respawn, give a real time 30 minute delay to the world before allowing next summon (if it was a delay debuff against a single player it can be easily bypassed by switching to another char)?

Just how ridiculous hard to summon the boss itself made me annoyed and I refused to fight it again. I just took the item, dumped it to a spare world copy it and put one copy of the world to a fodler, then 'clone' the Luminite etc whatever by taking item and replacing the world from the backup folder which still had the items until I've got enough to craft my Vortex Set. Call me a cheater for resorting to clone items like this, but I do not think the reward for killing Moon Lord is proportionate to the effort we put in there. (although the Luminite Bullet, which doesn't home like Chloro ammo, is really an awesome bullet. High damage, pierces enemy, and as quick as High Velocity bullet is just an ingredient for awesomeness).

If there's a changes I would like to suggest, it's a) don't make it so damn hard to summon him. Maybe the last pillar we kill drop the summoning item so we can fight him anytime we like b) or alternatively as I suggest, if we lose, make him leave behind the item needed to summon him but at the same time give a time delay for next match against him c) make some of his more dangerous attack more avoidable and preventable (as in dealing enough damage to cancel the attack, like his lasers).

 

[ψeud]

How nice, but how about for those who haven't managed to beat him yet. It doesn't help talking about beating him with expert gear or gear obtained from beating him. After beating most bosses, I can take them routinely with their gear drops. The first battle is what counts.


Exactly. Not only this, but it's limiting the ways to beat him. It won't be a fun battle when there is only one solution to win, and a cheesy solution at that.


One other comment on the journey to that battle; either the predictor or evolution beast attacks with a highly damaging, homing attack that can pass through blocks AND damage you multiple times. In solar armor with solar wings, under the effects of an ironskin potion, 3 of them killed me in seconds. 2 of those characteristics is a great challenge, but all 3 equate to 10 second deaths for buffed tanking characters and a frustrating, unrewarding fight.

...Why doesn't Expert Gear count? Surely you don't expect players to beat the Moon Lord before Duke Fishron, right? Besides, you don't need the Moon Lord gear to kill the Moon Lord. It just makes it easier.

Full buffs, flasks , a 300-500 length campfire+heart lantern multiplatform arena, maxed out prefixes, and high-tier weapons such as the Eruption, the Eye of Cthulu, or the Martian weapons will do, assuming you're not using nurse-heals.


An interesting change to the leech debuff could be that in only takes effect when your health is high enough. That way, you won't be able to keep your health topped with just lifesteal. You'll be needing potions and buffs as well.


I'll agree with you on the Nebula enemies. Those homing balls are a pain. I don't mind as much though, since they're there for the challenge. They're difficult, yes. But all it takes is constant motion to dodge them. You should be able to keep what health you lose with potions.

I'll hazard that the whole Lunar Event-Cultist, Pillars, and all-is a little easier for Mages and Rangers, since their playstyles already include a lot of dodging and weaving. It takes some time for Melee players to adjust since the Melee playstyle doesn't usually require aerial ballet tricks to survive.

I feel like the end-game fight is the game's way of compensating for Melee's tankiness + infinite-ammo ranged projectiles. Most, if not all attempts to tank result in death. All of the weapons strong enough to deal significant damage are range-limited. It's like a danmaku shooter trying not to die when I have to be within attack range the whole time. It's a fun challenge, but some might not appreciate it since "Melee should be able to tank, dammit!". Nope, tanking is now a thing of the past. For now, let us welcome our new dodging overlords.


Also, is it just me, or is Expert Mode Lunar Event as a Melee character extremely hard compared to Expert on Ranged or Magic? This is with pre-Lunar (Shroomite, Spectre) gear.

 

[DarkScythe]

EDIT: forget what I said about shots not homing in. Vortex Beater's extra shot can home if you are using Chloro bullet.

 

[Juno Brier]

I feel like the end-game fight is the game's way of compensating for Melee's tankiness + infinite-ammo ranged projectiles. Most, if not all attempts to tank result in death. All of the weapons strong enough to deal significant damage are range-limited. It's like a danmaku shooter trying not to die when I have to be within attack range the whole time. It's a fun challenge, but some might not appreciate it since "Melee should be able to tank, dammit!". Nope, tanking is now a thing of the past. For now, let us welcome our new dodging overlords.


Also, is it just me, or is Expert Mode Lunar Event as a Melee character extremely hard compared to Expert on Ranged or Magic? This is with pre-Lunar (Shroomite, Spectre) gear.

I've always been used to supplementing my tankiness with mobility, so it wasn't too hard for me to adjust. Not sure about anyone else though.
The whole thing about Cross Necklace and Heart Statues really helps.

As for the Lunar event on Expert, even with Solar armor and Solar weapons, I still have some trouble.
Overall, Vortex is the easiest just because they have no way of attacking through walls, meaning you can just find a good spot and sit your rear down and camp there.

 

[Gotcha!]

I can deal with dying from the Moon Lord since every time I fight him I learn something new. Some day I'll learn a way to kick its arse every single time.
What pretty much pisses me off though is having to go through the cultist and pillar fights again after the Moon Lord stuffs his big laser inside my skull once again.

If the Duke kills you, you return to the ocean, toss another worm in there and try again. Every other boss in Terraria works like this.
If the Moon Lord kills you you can look forward to spend another 30-60 minutes (depends on your skill ofcourse) of killing stuff before you even see the Moon Lord again. And that, that is punishing gameplay. I do not like it, especially because this type of gameplay was never present anywhere in previous versions.

It's simple to solve. They should allow the player to summon the Moon Lord after the pillars have been destroyed.

 

[ψeud]

I can deal with dying from the Moon Lord since every time I fight him I learn something new. Some day I'll learn a way to kick its arse every single time.
What pretty much pisses me off though is having to go through the cultist and pillar fights again after the Moon Lord stuffs his big laser inside my skull once again.

If the Duke kills you, you return to the ocean, toss another worm in there and try again. Every other boss in Terraria works like this.
If the Moon Lord kills you you can look forward to spend another 30-60 minutes (depends on your skill ofcourse) of killing stuff before you even see the Moon Lord again. And that, that is punishing gameplay. I do not like it, especially because this type of gameplay was never present anywhere in previous versions.

It's simple to solve. They should allow the player to summon the Moon Lord after the pillars have been destroyed.

The same thing goes for when you want a specific item drop from the Moon Lord. It's been a pain farming for the Meowmere. All I keep getting is multiple Rainbow Crystal Staffs...

 

[Gotcha!]

The same thing goes for when you want a specific item drop from the Moon Lord. It's been a pain farming for the Meowmere. All I keep getting is multiple Rainbow Crystal Staffs...

And there's that...
He drops 9 different items apparently. Meaning that if RNG favours you highly that you only have to defeat that thing 9 times.
For most people it'd mean defeating that thing 25-50 times before they have all the loot.

 

[Juno Brier]

And there's that...
He drops 9 different items apparently. Meaning that if RNG favours you highly that you only have to defeat that thing 9 times.
For most people it'd mean defeating that thing 25-50 times before they have all the loot.

And that's not even counting how much Luminite you'll need for all the stuff to craft.

 

[Gotcha!]

And that's not even counting how much Luminite you'll need for all the stuff to craft.

Yay. It keeps better and better. xD

Cenx, Red, please allow people to spawn the moon lord after the pillars have been defeated. Or even after the moon lord is defeated once.
This is punishing, grindy and simply completely nuts.

 

[Grimmsy]

Firstly sorry for posting another wall of text, but if you fight Moon Lord you should have the patience to read it.

I personally love the Cultist fight. It's very nicely designed and it is fun and feels like a boss fight. I also very much like the Pillars.
That being said I find the Moon Lord a badly designed boss battle. And it's double disappointing if you play other games that have great boss fight, like Binding of Isaac for instance, in which the battles are certainly hard unless you got lucky with overpowered gear (and in that game overpowered is truly overpowered but even so you can die from one simple mistake, and yet nothing feels unfair). In those games you don't even think of cheesing. The battles are entertaining on their own and since it feels that any failure is the players fault, it's actually making the player want to fight again, to do better.

That is not the case with Moon Lord. I really don't feel like fighting him again. The Cultist and Pillars? Yes, but not the final boss.
And the gear it drops is all over the place. If you get Star Wrath, why would you even use most of the magic weapons dropped when it deals just as much damage, wherever you point at and it costs no mana, allowing for any armor and accessories you want to wear (mages need mana sustaining/regen items to even think of using Last Prism or Lunar Flare, which do underwhelming amount of damage really but cost so much to use).
Why play a glass cannon when you can play a tanky cannon with no ammo required? The mages compared to other classes don't have the damage output to compensate for their frailty in my opinion. (a summoner can now keep the screen clear even against the pillars, between the summons and a vortex beater, it's pretty damn hard to get hit)

As others suggested, it would be a great improvement if the last Pillar destroyed would drop an item that summons Moon Lord. It also bypasses the fatigue caused by doing the whole phase, especially when done multiple times in a game session.

I managed to beat Moon Lord with my summoner (with full Star Dust armor and Vortex Beater with Chloro bullets) with no arena or buffs. It wasn't an intense fight, it was not fun, there was no adrenaline or sense of achievement. Just run and gun, I did not even had the boss on screen at any time after it spawned. Ain't that lovely? A boss battle in which you don't even see the boss. And all because if I so much think of getting closer to it I would pretty much instantly die (if all eyes are out), which was the case with the previous attempt, in which I did have every buff I could have (except the ones granted by NPCs).

An arena that can work well: just make floating boxes of dirt or floating vertical dirt pillars. All over. The beams from the eyes do not go through solid blocks, so you can hide behind those boxes when you see the beams going out. But the lasers do go through solid objects so do not linger in place for too long. Keep in mind that this also makes hitting the boss difficult for you, so it's better suited for summoners since the bulk of the damage is done by the minions (Dragon summon goes through solid blocks and cells warp to target if it's not completely behind cover).

I do wonder what do you guys think of the weapons dropped by Moon Lord, and even the Pillars weapons (except melee which are great). Apart from how cool they look. I personally found them underwhelming, especially the crystal and portal turrets, to which i was looking forward to get the most of all. Are these weapons really reward enough for what you had to go through to get them?

 

[Juno Brier]

Actually, on the whole Moon Lord spawn item issue, I think destroying all four pillars should still spawn him as normal, but you should be able to craft a dedicated Moon Lord spawn item with all four flavors of pillar Fragment.

That way, you don't need to fight all four pillars to summon Moon Lord every time, but you still need to have fought all four pillars to fight him at all.

Also, Lunatic Cultist needs more loot. He's like the pre-1.2 Skeletron in terms of loot drops. Which is fitting, considering he's fought in the same place as Skeletron.

 

[Grimmsy]

It can be also done that fragments from all pillars are needed to summon Moon Lord, but it doesn't automatically spawn after the last pillar. You still have to defeat all of them to fight the boss. But it also provides the possibility to defeat the pillars multiple times so players can later simply fight the boss as many times as they can summon it.

I don't see how the Cultist can drop more loot, since he's the door to the pillars which allow the crafting of pretty much any new offensive item for all classes. Maybe if the devs see the need for a new accessory drop, he should be the prime candidate for it?

 

[ψeud]

Here's an interesting idea: What if crafting all four Monoliths and placing them in a certain pattern allowed you to summon the Moon Lord much like how the Lihzard Altar summons Golem?

 

[Juno Brier]

Here's an interesting idea: What if crafting all four Monoliths and placing them in a certain pattern allowed you to summon the Moon Lord much like how the Lihzard Altar summons Golem.

Maybe be able to craft a special Moon Altar with all four kinds of Fragment, and have an extra item used with it to summon the Moon Lord.
This item could potentially be craftable from more Fragments, and sometimes dropped by the Lunatic Cultist and lunar Pillars, and possibly very rarely dropped by certain enemies accompanying the Pillars. As in, only one type per pillar. I'm thinking Crawltipede, Alien Queen, Predictor, and Stargazer.

 

[Grimmsy]

Maybe be able to craft a special Moon Altar with all four kinds of Fragment, and have an extra item used with it to summon the Moon Lord.
This item could potentially be craftable from more Fragments, and sometimes dropped by the Lunatic Cultist and lunar Pillars, and possibly very rarely dropped by certain enemies accompanying the Pillars. As in, only one type per pillar. I'm thinking Crawltipede, Alien Queen, Predictor, and Stargazer.

You know, that could fix your Cultist loot problem. He could drop the cell required to power the altar that summons Moon Lord. But defeating the Cultist still summons the Pillars as well. I think that would be a good way of handling it without altering the current cycle too much.

Edit: there's little to no need to have drops from pillar enemies. The altar should be crafted from the materials dropped by the pillars. Coding in new fragments and making their graphic representation takes time and there's no need for it in the first place. Inventories get cluttered easy as it is.

 

[ψeud]

You know, that could fix your Cultist loot problem. He could drop the cell required to power the altar that summons Moon Lord. But defeating the Cultist still summons the Pillars as well. I think that would be a good way of handling it without altering the current cycle too much.

Edit: there's little to no need to have drops from pillar enemies. The altar should be crafted from the materials dropped by the pillars. Coding in new fragments and making their graphic representation takes time and there's no need for it in the first place. Inventories get cluttered easy as it is.

*story voice*
You stopped the cultists just in time to prevent them from summoning the Moon Lord. The Lunatic Cultist drops something, but you have no time to examine it-Four Pillars appear, wreaking havoc upon your world.

You fight a fierce battle to destroy the pillars, and one by one, they disappear, leaving behind fragments of their essence. Upon the destruction of the very last pillar, you breathe a sigh of relief. You then return to the altar to examine the Cultist's drop. It is an artefact of some sort, but you know not its purpose.

All of a sudden, the fragments gather around the artefact, circling it in a bright light. The light hurts your eyes, even as you look away. After some time, it fades, and you turn to look. In front of you is the artefact, but something seems different. It calls to you. Speaks to you. You hide it, bury it, and try to ignore it, but soon the voices grow unbearable. One day, you take it, and leave for the Dungeon. You hold the artefact above the altar and speak.

The ground shakes and the air ripples. You are filled with pain and terror like no other. Your mind goes numb. And then... there is the light. When it fades, you can no longer see. The sky is a black darker than ever before. And then you notice it. A towering eldritch beast stands before you. It speaks, but you cannot understand. The words are unpronounceable, unthinkable, and terror floods you even as you draw your weapons and take to the air.

The Ritual is complete. You spoke, and the Moon Lord has answered.

It's nice when things make sense like that.