New Unique Hunt Animal + Tallbirds from Hunts

[GelatinousCube]

Currently when following animal tracks we can find Koalaphants, Vargs, Ewecus and during spring rain in the Oasis Desert Volt Goats. We can also encounter Winter Koalaphants during winter. I propose adding two new animals to hunts, one that is exclusive to summer and is new and one that is exclusive to Autumn and is an existing mob.

The summer Hunt animal could be a large aggressive lizard sort of like a monitor lizard or komodo dragon that can breathe fire. Maybe the fire breathing only applies to your character and does a decent amount of damage and sets you on fire (like when you are too close to actual fires or lava pools) but not the actual environment or this creature would just burn down worlds. Perhaps when it dies similar to fire hounds a fire is released so you at least need to be careful of where it dies. This way it doesn't risk just burning valuable or irreplaceable resources but does have a nasty fire attack and you also need to be wary where it dies like fire hounds. I would make it aggressive towards other mobs but it ONLY uses the fire breath on players so that it doesn't just start fires without you even being around. It would alternative between a high damage bite attack and the fire breath every 5 or so attacks which would do less damage but also set you on fire for a few seconds. Drops would be 4 Leafy Meat, 2 regular meat and a new item Lizard teeth of which it drops between 1 and 2 of. These would look like bigger Hounds Teeth with a serrated edge. This new item can be crafted into a new weapon - Serrated Sword.

I have two ideas in regards to what the sword actually does. First off I imagine it being between weaker weapons like spear/battle spear/morning star etc and the stronger ones like Thul Club, Dark Sword and Glass Cutter as far as actual damage is concerned - a mid tier weapon if you will but with the same durability as the Thul Club so it lasts for quite some time. As for the special effect - either it has a small 5% chance to make whatever mob is being attacked by it drop whatever their respective food/meat drop is on each hit (with a limit of being able to do this on a single target a total of 3 times so it isn't abusable on bosses) or it makes mobs have a 50% to drop one additional item upon death from their existing loot pool (with bosses this would need to be strict and perhaps only apply to the lesser drops - royal jelly, malbatross feathers, gems from DFLY etc but not scales, BQ helm, spores etc). So for example with the first effect you could get a total of 3 extra meat when fighting DFly, Deerclops, Malbatross or Bearger  or you could receive up to 3 extra Royal Jelly from BQ, additional Mushrooms from Toadstool and so forth. Using it on animals like Koalaphants or even Pigs and Hounds could provide you with an additional piece of meat or monster meat. As for the second alternative effect instead it has like a 50% chance (maybe higher actually) when killing mobs to drop an additional piece of loot (not food items except for special cases - Royal Jelly) from their loot pool - this would be amazing for stuff like farming Koalaphants, Goats, Hounds, Pigmen etc in order to get more Trunks (yes this is food but also their special drop so I would include it), Goat Horns, Pigskin, Hounds teeth etc or whatever mob drops you are trying to farm. Slurtle/Snurtle farming could also be improved with the sword.

Pretty much the idea is that because the sword is serrated it has a chance of chopping parts of the enemy off during the battle (first effect) or has the potential for you to gain more from the mobs corpse due to it being so sharp and serrated and bisecting the foe upon death (second effect). Maybe there could even be a cool little animation that is literally just the same as the normal death animation for mobs but instead they are cut in half (no goriness literally the death model is just in two pieces instead of whole) to show when an enemy has been killed by the blade.

It would be an amazing weapon for Wigfrid with the first ability (constantly gaining more meat from your battles) and for farming mob drops with anyone with the second ability. Both are strong abilities yes but I would make the Lizard pretty tough to make up for how good the weapon is. Think tougher than Varg or Ewecus - the lizard would be the new strongest "mini-boss" being a bit tougher than Vargs, Ewecus, Treeguards or Spider Queen. Plus the Lizard would be a rare spawn from hunts being as likely to show up as the Ewecus and Varg and only during Summer which massively limits how many you can actually obtain - perhaps it can replace the Ewecus chances in Summer as something with that much wool probably wouldn't be out in the hot sun anyway. You could however use the sword (if it had the second ability) on future Lizards to have a chance at an additional tooth to make more/a new sword.

The other Hunt result I would love to see added to the game would be TALLBIRDS!!!! During Autumn (and maybe only if you have a tallbird egg in your inventory/backpack so you can avoid this if you want - this is problematic if your world has no nests already though..) and only if the Hunt ends in Rockyland or Savannah biomes hunts could have a chance to spawn a Tallbird and its nest. Tallbirds are such awesome creatures but are often pretty rare - if you don't get a Tallbird Fort set piece you can often wind up with only a few nests in your entire world if that - my long term world has a SINGLE tallbird nest =(

Having a way to create more Tallbird Nests (but a very difficult limiting way so that it takes a lot of work just to make one or two) would be amazing so we can repopulate them across our worlds to some extent. We could even then start using them to combat/farm other mobs in the way Tallbird Forts are used but to a lesser extent since it would be very very difficult to get multiple nests set up together.

Thanks for reading! Any suggestions or criticism welcome!

[Chesmu]

I don't like lizards (not the idea or properties, just the art of it), but that's just a personal thing.

These are neat Ideas and would be nice to see them considered.