How do people feel about the new "shadow war" world changes?

[Maxil20]

For people who are not aware, the new archive biome contains a very unique structure setpiece that basically turns it and the lune caves into a significantly more difficult counterpart. Once you get deep enough, you will eventually stumble upon 3 pedestals, 2 of which have opal gems into them. After slotting in a 3rd opal gem, a long and loud sound plays, which starts what the game refers to as a "Shadow War". The archives will light up with the sentinels being reanimated, and allowing you to interact with the fountains for distilled knowledge, which unlocks critical recipes (mainly the drill/terra pot). Meanwhile, the lune caves will erupt into a constant state of battle with greater gestalts and nightmare beaks spawning constantly. The greater gestalts will not normally target you unless you have a dark sword/night armor equipped, afterwards they can and will attempt to hit you for 180 damage per strike. The nightmarebeaks behave as usual and will attack any player on sight, if a gestalt doesn't get their attention first. At the edge of the lune caves and blue mushtree biomes, various obelisks/fissures will spawn and sprout up, and will behave as normal fissures, spawning nightmares when the nightmare cycle comes into effect.

The changes themselves are cool and I do find them neat, but there is one very key catch: once you start the Shadow War, you CANNOT, under any circumstances, revert it to it's original state. The change is irreversible. The only exception is taking out the opal gems will Undo the effects in the archives, but will not undo the effects in the lune caves. This marks the first real time where a player input will permanently change the world, and it is harder then before changing the world.

I do want to see what people's opinions are on this, since this is a pretty significant change in terms of the content that was provided prior.

Personally coming from a sandbox perspective, I honestly don't know what to think of it. On one hand, it does make it significantly more difficult to use the biome, in terms of both decor and just getting a use out of it in general. However, I did notice that if you have a bone helm equipped and you are not wearing anything shadow themed, the area becomes mostly safe to traverse. It will not anger the greater gestalts, and will prevent the terrorbeaks from attacking you. Since it is a lategame item and the event itself is also lategame, I do think this gives you some ample time to prep for the area to get much harder. I am sad there isn't other alternatives, though, as I would have really liked to try to build something neat in the biome without worrying about the constant mob spawns.

As for the harder aspect, I am happy it leaves most of the world unchanged. While it does make that one area in particular much more difficult, everything else is unaffected, allowing players to get their bearings and prepare to go into the lune caves without being constantly annoyed by stronger mobs by getting set up. This was something I was really concerned about if they were going to make the world harder, and I am happy it is limited to where it's effects go.

Sadly in terms of loot, it doesn't offer any real advantages other then maybe an interesting nightmare fuel farm zone, which is a bit unfortunate. I do believe they will likely add something to it in the future that will have a decent use, or at least make other resources a bit more available.
 

[pyroisshy]

It should probably be tied with the nightmare phase or maybe have the thulecite medallion prevent it?

[Well-met]

What is the benefit of starting the war, other than the "cool factor"?

[QuartzBeam]

11 minutes ago, Well-met said:

What is the benefit of starting the war, other than the "cool factor"?

There is no benefit to starting the war.

Starting the war is a side-effect of powering on the Ancient Archive, which you must do to unlock the 3 recipes (Collected Dust, Terra Firma and Astral Detector). The Astral Detector is, of course, required to advance the storyline, so...

[Well-met]

Just now, QuartzBeam said:

There is no benefit to starting the war.

Starting the war is a side-effect of powering on the Ancient Archive, which you must do to unlock the 3 recipes (Collected Dust, Terra Firma and Astral Detector). The Astral Detector is, of course, required to advance the storyline, so...

oh cool

haven't played FK yet. (best shortcut ever)

[Superwolfkid]

I looked at a video of it from Beard 777 (since he's the only English speaker that's uploading info on the beta) either he bull crapped the numbers and spawned the number of nightmare creatures there or something or its just a coincidence cause HOLY CRAP that's way too many honestly!

I personally feel like the numbers should be toned down a bit, (but that wouldn't really make it a war honestly...) but I have a few ideas for how this could work a bit...(please note that I don't have any visual, audio, or actual experience, im basing this off of things that I heard from others off the forums)

*When the player inserts an opal gem into the pedestal, a little warning will show up similar to the divining rod in ds story mode, maybe something like. "WARNING! unveiling once sacred archives might start a battle between light and dark to uncover it's lost secrets..." "Once this happens, you cannot reverse it. Do you want to continue?"

*The war should have break periods that way the player can pass through at those times to safely enter and leave the archives (similar to the nightmare phases, when the break period is soon over the player will hear a shorter version of the "shadow war" as a warning at least once or twice, then when the break is over, the long version of the shadow war will play causing greater gestalt and nightmare creatures to spawn and attack.

*Both the Gestalts and the Nightmare creatures will not attack the player unless provoked, (walked up towards or attacked)

*The war will have rounds of fighting for the teams, either one side will "win" and the give time for other creatures to spawn, 

 -If the gestalts win the round they will hover over to their side and stand guard until more shadows spawn ignoring you.

-If the shadows win, the shadows will make a b line straight toward the archives gate (ignoring you) and get instant killed once they touch the enterance, (perhaps by a force field or something blocking Charlie's magic from affecting the archives.

(I'll right more later and fix  grammer, I but these are just ideas, what do you think?)

[Primalflower]

I love it! One of the few concepts that i without a doubt like about Terraria is the fact that halfway through the game, the entire world is entirely changed by way of the player's actions, and the previously existing environments are then recontextualized/filled with different creatures than before. The shadow war definitely feels very similar to this, though on an infinitely smaller scale as of now. I hope they continue to build on this "shadow war" state the world is plunged into.

[JimmyJam]

The war is linked to the nightmare cycle so it isnt all the time. But the numbers are crazy and i love it. Cant wait for more wars! haha

[Bluegeist]

Happy to see the story advancing like I was kinda thinking it would. It's like chess, black pieces vs white pieces!

[Mooagain]

Oh boy every time I hear Shadow War I think of the Ducktales season 1 finale

[Zeklo]

It's a huge step in the right direction.

I wouldn't mind them being a bit more bold with the world altering events. They could totally make the next series of updates being about the Lunar & Shadow magic twisting existing content into new stuff once you've conquered both the Fuelweaver and whatever the Lunar stuff is building up to.

Would be pretty awesome I think.

[Monkey Cups]

I think it's interesting. It feels like stuff is actually happening instead of just running through something to have it reset on a new game year.

[WebberMain]

I love it,but i would want more special fighting animations.

Now little off the the topic.

We got a new way to get thulecite.And i think we got it because it will be the only way.I think Klei will take away the power of the atrium to reset the ruins.Why?Because the Atrium will get a new purpose(lorewise propably) and it will be BIG

[Maxil20]

9 hours ago, WebberMain said:

We got a new way to get thulecite.And i think we got it because it will be the only way.I think Klei will take away the power of the atrium to reset the ruins.Why?Because the Atrium will get a new purpose(lorewise propably) and it will be BIG

I would say they might add to it, but not remove it. Getting rid of the way we do ruins regen now would make 60% of the reason to do the fuelweaver pointless, and would also mess with people who might only have 2-3 moth dens total compared to 5-6. In addition, you also wouldn’t be able to get more guardian horns which would mean no additional houndius, as the guardian can only spawn through regenerating the ruins. 

There definitely could be something to do with the gateway, but I doubt it will take away the initial effect.

[bruhmoment23]

I'm betting my money on the Sealed Portal rather than the Gateway. It would be nifty to see the Gateway having alternate use when crossed with the moon power, a pleasant or, not so pleasant surprise for sure.

[Maxposting]

whoopsie doopsie toilet knowledge starts an all-masse war between dark and light

[user1464576869]

It's funny because I recall people being adamant about DST implementing Terraria-kind of progression as an unthinkable sin.
 
I like the idea, it all boils down to implementation. This is a bit underwhelming, as mentioned, step in right direction. Doesn't mean or do much beyond causing terrain to be utterly inhabitable. But it's a fractioned landmark we've just learned about so no real loss either.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

I didnt try it yet but sounds fun and being in a isolate place make it dont disturb people that want a chill day

[Mike23Ua]

I think that causing an event that causes wide-spread map changes will lead to the inevitable separation of the community between who has and who has not completed X task. It seems to me that a lot of this Return of Them Forgotten Knowledge content requires players to jump through particular hoops to do certain things- such as acquiring a rare Gem, killing Crab King etc.. 

Which is GREAT if this is leading up to some end game boss fight, but to me that looks less like a boss fight and more like we are assembling a portal.. possibly to a new event or new location? 

Content that very few people are ever going to actually be able to progress to and enjoy.

As far as the terra-forming of land goes- I highly advise that you play in about 10 different random servers on Xbox live & be amazed at all the random stuff players ALREADY die to.. so making those worlds even harder isnt the best of choices.

But luckily- it only affects a certain Area of the game and doesn’t cause a ripple effect across all of the constant making the starting biomes any harder on less skilled players.

Truthfully though, only Klei knows what content plans they have in the works so it’s anyone’s guess where the game is headed.

Meanwhile I bet Klei are rubbing their hands together gleefully while cackling manically like they’re Possesed Charlie.