Thread about the equipment balance

[Pticman]

This topic is about the balance of equipment in the game. Recently, I began to pay more and more attention to the fact that despite the rather large number of items in the game, only a small part of them is actively used.  As I see it, this is due to a rather poor balance of items in the game, many of which have not changed since the game's release and require updating to modern realities. I made a list of all equipped items that in my opinion need to change. Share your opinions on the balance in the comments!

All equipment is divided into 7 categories  >

Balanced - items that do not need to be changed, all items not listed here belong to this category
Slightly underpowered - items close to good balance, possible minor buffs
Underpowered - weak items, buffs required.
Highly underpowered - very weak items, need serious buffs or rebalance   
Slightly overpowered - items close to good balance, possible small nerfs
Overpowered - too strong items, nerfs are needed
Highly overpowered - extremely strong items, need serious buffs or rebalance  

 

 

 

Weapons :

Slightly underpowered - Morning Star, Bat Bat Bat, Thulecite Club, Glass Cutter
Underpowered - Trident, Boomerang, Blow Dart, Elektric Dart, Fencing Sword
Highly underpowered - Fire Dart, Fire Staff, Sleep Dart, Tail o Three Cats

Slightly overpowered - Ham Bat, Dark Sword

Armor : 

Slightly underpowered - Dreadstone Armor
Underpowered - Cookie Cutter Cap, Grass Suit
Highly underpowered - Scalemail

Dress items : 

Slightly underpowered - Cat Cap, Rain Hat, Rain Coat, Puffy Vest, Hibearnation Vest
Underpowered - Dapper Vest, Breezy West, Summer Frest, Floral Shirt, Fashion Melon, Ice Cube

Slightly overpowered - Eyebrella

As you can see from my list, I do not think there are overpowered or highly overpowered equipped items in the game, but there are many items inferior to their counterparts, which makes no sense to create even in the early stages of the game. This is most evident in the clothing for  body slot, which in my experience is almost completely outweighed by the effectiveness of the backpack. Do I think the backpack is the problem? No, it's just that the clothing itself isn't efficient enough to compete with it. (Solved by adding a couple of slots for clothing)

Secondly, it's the variety of weapons. And here I think the problem is the small number of strong alternative weapons that can compete with the main "favorites" - a ham bat and a dark sword. Small buffs for most alternative weapons like the tulecite club and bat bat would help achieve a greater balance in different weapon uses. 

As for range wepons, this is a long-standing sore point that should have been addressed long ago. Weapons in this category have extremely rare uses and essentially just litter the weapon crafting tab with their existence. I would either remove them completely, replacing  with interesting alternatives, or rebalance.

That's it for me. I look forward to your opinions on this topic!

[Brago-sama]

I used to use grass suit+football helm lategame as grass is infinite with geckos and it saves on durability of the football helmet, which although is easy to farm, isnt auto like geckos are

But ever since the terraria eye helm... and then dreadstone, its not as useful sadly. Nice skins at least

[GenomeSquirrel]

I’ll take a raincoat over eyebrella, usually by the time spring rolls around I’m using miner hat, night armor, and hand gets a weapon. While in summer I use a spare blue for chilled amulet to handle weather.

[_zwb]

I think the most overpowered type of item is backpacks. All slot clothes is quite useless because you automatically loses 8 slots. Or 14 if you have krampus sack. Even like 4 extra slots would make some of the body clothes worth using.

As for body armours, you can always swap to them when you need to fight, making them somewhat useable.

[Gashzer]

Grass suit is surprisingly useful... im sure many of you carry a stack of flint, twigs and grass at all times on you atleast for the first year. Meaning you always have emergency grass armour available at all times.

I remember fighting dfly and all my football helmets broke towards the end of fight  (my kiting skillz was lacking this time round...), i thought i was gonna die then remembered the grass suit, it kept me alive long enough to win! 

Plus the difference between 0% damage reduction with no armour to 65% reduction of the grass suit is alot more than the difference marble armour and grass suit (30% difference). Grass suit is far far far better than no armour at all!

Grass suit is at the right level of power due to its easy access as emergency armour.

Morning star should do 51 damage, same as tentacle spike, its balanced by the fact volt goat horns are abit awkward to obtain.

Tbh i kinda prefer tentacle spikes over hambats for more reliable general mob killing.

Breezy vest should have a universal tier 1 insulation to both heat/freezing with 35% rain resist. It would be cool to have a jack of all trades, master of none clothing options. (Walters pinecone hat should also have these same stats... as hes kinda a outdoor boy scout survivalist... his gear should be suited to all weather) 

[Baark0]

The lunar Shoevel could've been included in underpowered too, as it stands having a tool that can dig and till soil just isn't that useful, as digging up things isn't all that common unless you're prone to making mistakes while gardening. If it was a combination of shovel + axe I could see it becoming very useful, being a perfect tool for clearing forests, coming only at the drawback of pushing woodie further and further into irrelevancy.

[Helord]

I almost never make ham bat early game. Tentacle spike farms itself since merms almost always fight tentacle near their house.

[Pticman]

4 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Grass suit is surprisingly useful... im sure many of you carry a stack of flint, twigs and grass at all times on you atleast for the first year. Meaning you always have emergency grass armour available at all times.

I remember fighting dfly and all my football helmets broke towards the end of fight  (my kiting skillz was lacking this time round...), i thought i was gonna die then remembered the grass suit, it kept me alive long enough to win! 

Plus the difference between 0% damage reduction with no armour to 65% reduction of the grass suit is alot more than the difference marble armour and grass suit (30% difference). Grass suit is far far far better than no armour at all!

Grass suit is at the right level of power due to its easy access as emergency armour.

Morning star should do 51 damage, same as tentacle spike, its balanced by the fact volt goat horns are abit awkward to obtain.

Tbh i kinda prefer tentacle spikes over hambats for more reliable general mob killing.

Breezy vest should have a universal tier 1 insulation to both heat/freezing with 35% rain resist. It would be cool to have a jack of all trades, master of none clothing options. (Walters pinecone hat should also have these same stats... as hes kinda a outdoor boy scout survivalist... his gear should be suited to all weather) 

Grass Suit has twice as bad protection as wooden armor (60% against 80%), worse durability (150 against 300) and it’s recipe is only slightly cheaper. I don’t know why anybody would really bother crafting it, if only in some super specific circumstances. Even with the buff to 70% reduction it would be fringe armor at best. 

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

The lunar Shoevel could've been included in underpowered too, as it stands having a tool that can dig and till soil just isn't that useful, as digging up things isn't all that common unless you're prone to making mistakes while gardening. If it was a combination of shovel + axe I could see it becoming very useful, being a perfect tool for clearing forests, coming only at the drawback of pushing woodie further and further into irrelevancy.

I agree that the new eguipment feels underwhelming, but as devs mentioned we don’t see the whole picture yet. It might be really good very soon, so I didn’t consider all new stuff in my list.

[Baark0]

43 minutes ago, Pticman said:

I agree that the new eguipment feels underwhelming, but as devs mentioned we don’t see the whole picture yet. It might be really good very soon, so I didn’t consider all new stuff in my list.

Brightshade gear is incredible, simply due to how cheap it is. After your first or 2nd rift, you effectively have infinite husks and brilliance, since you kill brightshades with the sword + armor, and mine brilliance with the pickaxe. The staff is a much cheaper alternative to weather pains during the fuelweaver fight, a little less consistent at killing woven shadows sure, but that's a worthy tradeoff for how cheap they are to make.

The only underwhelming items are the shoevel and the bomb. What makes the brightshade smasher good and the shoevel bad is that the pickaxe is the perfect tool for clearing the ruins; breaks statues in 8 hits instead of 10, very durable, and also functions as a hammer, saving you precious inventory space which makes clearing the ruins much smoother. The shoevel saves inventory space while farming, usually an activity done near bases, meaning the resources to make new shovels/hoes are right near by, and if you desperately need the inventory space you're always able to drop the shovel/hoe on the ground near the farm plot.

The bomb on the other hand has tons of potential, 6 instances of 200 aoe planar damage for 4 husks and 4 brilliance isn't terrible, using them to clear hound mounds, spiders, bees, or other low hp swarming mobs sounds like a massive time save, the only real limiting factor is the infused moon shard cost, meaning you need moonstorm active in order to craft them. They also count as explosives, meaning you can clear out large amount of rocks, trees, or other structures very quickly, unfortunately they don't seem to work on docks, so no moon quay destruction unfortunately.

[Mike23Ua]

I want to talk about something that almost no one discusses, but should equally be an important factor into the game.. & that Seasonal Events.

WintersFeast & Hallowed Nights to be exact. 

These two events may be for a limited time only (or toggled on in world settings) HOWEVER any world that has ever been through WintersFeast or Hallowed Nights at least once, even after the limited time event concludes will still have access to the following features:

Mad Science Lab: on the surface it looks like a cute experimental halloween potion structure, but it’s capable of so much more than that.. renewing mobs, making living logs easier to amass, and since it remains useable after Hallowed Nights ends, it becomes just as valid of a structure as any other.

Gift Wrap (WintersFeast) this craft once learned will completely replace Bundling Wrap, it does everything Bundle Wraps will do at a less expensive cost.. but that’s not ALL that WintersFeast has to offer.. you can build Festive trees and fully decorate them, and as long as those decorated trees remain in your world even after WintersFeast concludes, you can still use the “Sleep next to them” secret Easter egg to have the game randomly “gift” you any number of useful items- Ranging from Tam’o’shanters & Walking Canes, to the Colorful Gems you would normally only get by fighting Dragonfly.

The TL:DR of this post that any world that has been through WF & HN, has easier access to items that would other wise be much harder to obtain.

[Krotux]

good comparisons here

 

I'd say ham bat is the most OP weapon in the game because you just make 1 of them and can beat the **** out of anything except toadstool

[MadMatt]

2 hours ago, Krotux said:

except toadstool

Even the boss that has the most direct counter to it, the most cost-efficient way to kill is using a Hambat lol