What is your main critique with the lunar vs shadow arc so far?

[GelatinousCube]

1 hour ago, goblinball said:

Tbh no matter what you do ppl WILL get upset by it and complain simply because you are inconveniencing and challenging them in a field/place/season which they’ve already mastered and they don’t want to lose that mastery and control over that part of the game

say what you want about pirate monkey raids and their execution but the amount of ppl who were upset simply by the presence of a new threat in the ocean which wasn’t there before is a good example of how this just doesn’t work

the only way to make this idea of new threats later in progression work is to make them not actually threatening or inconveniencing at all. That’s why terraria works, stuff like hm and the post plant dungeon just add weak enemies and new powerful loot to places you wouldn’t really go to anymore in the first place (and even if they are powerful and kill you, it’s no big deal since you respawn near-instantly and only lose coins anyways).

this just really doesn’t work in a survival game at all since obviously this new stuff NEEDS to be threatening and tough to survive through otherwise it’s kinda failing at being a survival game, but it can’t be threatening for the reasons I stated earlier. Why try to survive and progress if your reward will just be making it harder to survive?

I get where you're coming from and you're right about some players but I personally would love more challenges especially late game I just don't want them to destroy my base.

I'd love blizzards and other similar effects. Other than the destructive element I quite like moon storms for example. 

I also liked the concept of the raids just not the execution and the curse/trinkets. If that element was just removed and they couldn't stun lock you quite as bad I'd love the raids. 

I know some people have said they wouldn't want this but I wouldn't mind stuff that somewhat blocks or restricts access to certain structures or areas temporarily and requires you to clear the snow or whatever first. I just don't want outright destruction.

I agree overall with what you're saying but I think there are definitely plenty of ways to add challenges/difficulty without outright anti-basing/destructive elements or this whole planar nonsense.

[Ryusuta]

It's hard to pin it down when the entire thing has been pretty half-baked so far. I'm a bit hard-pressed to find specific things I enjoy about it. I guess the scythe is cool. But not remotely worth the penalties of activating the event.

And I think that's the main thing... Tiny rewards for MASSIVE tradeoffs. Brightshade Plants are annoying enough on the surface. But then the caves having not one, but TWO excessive downsides? Yeah, I'm content just picking grass manually if it means I don't have to deal with acid rain and boulders.

Charlie and Wagstaff are supposed to make you WANT to be on their side. But if anything, they show more and more that I'm justified in being on "Team Survivors."

[Scrimbles]

5 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Wasn't Antlion a God of Destruction in early UM?

Even then, it was still totally avoidable if you just feed Antlion her rocks, or kill her.

[_zwb]

1) Base destruction. The rifts update features a disaster/destruction theme, which fits the "uncompromising wilderness survival game of all time" on paper. However this disaster happens in the sandbox stage of the game, where spending hours and hours on base building is the main focus of gameplay. An update that makes your efforts wasted is definitely not going to be welcomed here.

The volcano from shipwrecked and the aporkalypse from hamlet are also destruction themed, but the destruction is avoidable if you stay away from base. Not like the deadly brightshades that spawns every 5s on your plants(you know, the most common element in base design). It also stops you from gardening related content, which is fun to play after RWYS update. And boulders, I love getting my base destroyed in seconds with no warning at all, please add more

2) Limited choice. It seems that the devs started to lean towards "you SHOULD play the game this way" design, which is quite concerning.

Take Nightmare Werepig for an example, to start the fight, a Pick/Axe is required. Personally I love Pick/Axe, it saves me a lot of time clearing the ruins late game. However I'm forced to use this item or I cannot engage with the new content, that's just annoying, it's like fishing in the oasis, you fish in the lake or you struggle.

The same goes for new armour and weapons. You use the new items or get shredded by new enemies. It simply limits creativity and character diversity. The character choice just doesn't matter now because everyone uses the same items and play the same way.

[Mysterious box]

7 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Yeah, because the ocean stunk and Klei went out of their way to make it harder despite already being infamous for not having much out there. You are right in saying that there will always be people who will complain, but the complaints about pirate raids were and still are extremely valid. 

Very true but I think the point they were making was about people who hated the very idea of pirate raids rather than the faults with the system. (And there are quite afew faults) 

Regardless of any variation on how it was implemented assuming the core stayed the same there was always going to be complaints about it making the ocean less safe for boat basing or boating in general.

[goblinball]

4 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Very true but I think the point they were making was about people who hated the very idea of pirate raids rather than the faults with the system. (And there are quite afew faults) 

Regardless of any variation on how it was implemented assuming the core stayed the same there was always going to be complaints about it making the ocean less safe for boat basing or boating in general.

 

[abrocator]

19 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Weird, it’s a complaint you can throw at genres, particularly ones without a scarce economy and with shallow weapon differences.

I dunno, maybe I’m old school. I don’t play a wide variety of games these days.

[Neu7ral]

-Make them midgame conent, such fun stuff you can get at midgame by doing this, gives incentive to progress in the game.
-Make a way to counter the spread of brightshades, a machine, or a magic thingy wingy, anything.
-Make lunar rifts become something that doesn't leaves an ugly bald spot in your world.

[bloopah]

1 hour ago, Neu7ral said:

-Make them midgame conent, such fun stuff you can get at midgame by doing this, gives incentive to progress in the game.

I'd love for Klei to completely rework the Lunar questline to make it much less tedious and without having to fight C r a b  K i n g (or at least make it a better fight). As it stands now, for the Shadow side you have to fix and afterwards break Statues with missing heads/missing nose in the new moon and kill the Shadow Pieces, mine 8 Fossils, kill the Ancient Guardian and get the key, find the Atrium and insert the key to rebuild, resurrect and kill the Ancient Fuelweaver and afterwards make the Nightware Merepig destroy its pillars to give the Dreadstone to Charlie to activate the Shadow Rift. Not that bad, in my opinion.

But for the Lunar side, you have to go to the Ruins to obtain both a Star Caller Staff and a Deconstruction Staff, repair the Moon Stone and insert the Star Caller, wait for a full moon to turn the Star Caller into a Moon Caller and deconstruct it for the Iridescent Gem (the last five steps can be skipped by going Wilson and directly crafting it with some gems from the Ruins), go into the Caves again to find the Blue Mushtree Forest and the Lunar Grotto as well as the Archive connected to it, socket the Iridescent Gem into a pedestal, do the Archive "puzzle" and obtain the Blueprint from the Blue Fountain of Knowledge for the Astral Detecter, go onto the surface and dig up the Celestial Sanctum pieces akin to Eyes of Ender, put them on a boat and find the Lunar Island to carry them onto a Celestial Fissure with two others next to it, mine the Inviting Formations for the Celestial Altar pieces and put them in a Celestial Fissure, find a Bottle bobbing in the ocean to find where Pearl's Island is, do 7 tasks along with repairing her house to obtain Pearl's Pearl, prepare to fight Crab King by going on a Moose/Goose, Volt Goat and Blue Hound rampage (the latter of which is optional if you rob graves or collect some Blue Gems from the Ruins) locate Crab King with the Astral Detector, have the worst fight imaginable kill Crab King to obtain the Celestial Tribute, put it near the other two Altars, locate Wagstaff in the Lunar Storms, either farm for a single Potato or fish for the Desert Goggles blueprint to actually have a chance at successfully doing the Wagstaff Tower Defense minigame three times, successfully do the Wagstaff Tower Defense minigame three times (and have a migraine while doing so if you're alone), catch Moongleams and mine Infused Shards, build the Lunar Siphonator to summon the Celestial Champion, kill the Celestial Champion and do a Where's Waldo search for the Enlightened Shard among the Moon Shards and finally give said Shard to Wagstaff to activate the Lunar Rift.

Yeah. Now that I wrote each step (out loud?) I believe a rework is very urgent.

[_zwb]

31 minutes ago, bloopah said:

I'd love for Klei to completely rework the Lunar questline to make it much less tedious and without having to fight C r a b  K i n g (or at least make it a better fight). As it stands now, for the Shadow side you have to fix and afterwards break Statues with missing heads/missing nose in the new moon and kill the Shadow Pieces, mine 8 Fossils, kill the Ancient Guardian and get the key, find the Atrium and insert the key to rebuild, resurrect and kill the Ancient Fuelweaver and afterwards make the Nightware Merepig destroy its pillars to give the Dreadstone to Charlie to activate the Shadow Rift. Not that bad, in my opinion.

But for the Lunar side, you have to go to the Ruins to obtain both a Star Caller Staff and a Deconstruction Staff, repair the Moon Stone and insert the Star Caller, wait for a full moon to turn the Star Caller into a Moon Caller and deconstruct it for the Iridescent Gem (the last five steps can be skipped by going Wilson and directly crafting it with some gems from the Ruins), go into the Caves again to find the Blue Mushtree Forest and the Lunar Grotto as well as the Archive connected to it, socket the Iridescent Gem into a pedestal, do the Archive "puzzle" and obtain the Blueprint from the Blue Fountain of Knowledge for the Astral Detecter, go onto the surface and dig up the Celestial Sanctum pieces akin to Eyes of Ender, put them on a boat and find the Lunar Island to carry them onto a Celestial Fissure with two others next to it, mine the Inviting Formations for the Celestial Altar pieces and put them in a Celestial Fissure, find a Bottle bobbing in the ocean to find where Pearl's Island is, do 7 tasks along with repairing her house to obtain Pearl's Pearl, prepare to fight Crab King by going on a Moose/Goose, Volt Goat and Blue Hound rampage (the latter of which is optional if you rob graves or collect some Blue Gems from the Ruins) locate Crab King with the Astral Detector, have the worst fight imaginable kill Crab King to obtain the Celestial Tribute, put it near the other two Altars, locate Wagstaff in the Lunar Storms, either farm for a single Potato or fish for the Desert Goggles blueprint to actually have a chance at successfully doing the Wagstaff Tower Defense minigame three times, successfully do the Wagstaff Tower Defense minigame three times (and have a migraine while doing so if you're alone), catch Moongleams and mine Infused Shards, build the Lunar Siphonator to summon the Celestial Champion, kill the Celestial Champion and do a Where's Waldo search for the Enlightened Shard among the Moon Shards and finally give said Shard to Wagstaff to activate the Lunar Rift.

Yeah. Now that I wrote each step (out loud?) I believe a rework is very urgent.

Also let's compare the rewards for FW and CC questlines:

For FW you get:

Figure sketches allowing you to farm dark sword and night armour easily; Awesome ruins items from AG; The ruins gets regenrated so about 40 thulecite, 20 gems and 200 gold from frazzled wires and lots of gears; finally the bone helm, bone armour and potentially a houndius shootius.

On the lunar side you get:

Shell bells, shell bells and more shell bells; a garbage weapon that gets destroyed by moon quay cannons; several stacks of moon shard; and finally a crown and a crown shard;

Yeah that was definitely worth my time doing stupid chores for Pearl, CRAB KING and Wagstaff Don't Starve.

[abrocator]

39 minutes ago, _zwb said:

; and finally a crown and a crown shard;

That becomes Small Mario if someone sneezes on your sanity (no light)

[mblt]

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

-snip-

This feels like bias. Sure ruins refreshing, ruins loot and AG loot is very powerful, but that doesn't exactly mean that lunar things are worthless. You're not exactly being fair in giving them a chance to emphasize their power.

The lunar questline may have a lot of steps, complications and frustrations but it doesn't consists of only boss fights, compared to the shadow questline. It just takes longer and once you know how to efficiently do things, it's really not as bad as it seems. I won't defend the crab king fight as I do see it's universally hated, though I'd like to compare the fight's level of preparation to that of Fuelweaver

The lunar questline gives you a lot of wonderful utilities and options, this is on top of the shadow questline too so you're getting both benefits from both questlines

I'll mention that once you complete the CC questline, you only need to do the moonstorm events again in order to fight CC once more, not needing to do every single step a second time.

Ignoring the shell bells as they don't provide tactical advantage and are as good as decoration for beach-like builds...

Celestial Portal is the sole reason you can change characters within a world, allowing you to do things you couldn't when locked with one character, Warly's spices and Volt Goat Jelly, Winona's machines for example

Glass Cutters are the Dark Sword parallel and they're both really good at being weapons, dealing the same damage. Sure the Glass Cutter has less durability but it also doesn't have any sanity drain, and you can mass produce them if you use CC's phase 3 to farm moon shards. The durability gets doubled when used against shadow creatures, FW and Shadow Pieces included, so repeat fights are easier in this regard. It has a very beautiful skin too

The crown is very powerful, it's not just a crown. The additional shard simply allows you to start the lunar rifts without deconstructing a crown first. Even then crown shards can be used as permanent light sources for Mushroom Lights when you do deconstruct crowns

The crown feels like an upgrade to the Mining Hat; No durability, produces light as long as you're above 85% sanity, grants you additional DPS with small gestalts summoned with each attack as long as you're above 85% sanity, sure it drains sanity by 1 for each hit but it's something that can be fixed with having sanity food ready. Even so, the +10 sanity per minute is one of the highest sanity regen headgears in the game, minus Bee Queen Crown as that requires something else to gain sanity from. It also provides you immunity to gestalts, much as the Bone Helmet gives you immunity to nightmare creatures. That's a lot for one hat and that's not even going into what it's best used for yet.

I personally think the rewards are fine, as I stated earlier in another post, it's just usage, making the most of it and all.

[Capybara007]

11 minutes ago, mblt said:

This feels like bias.

No, your comment feels like bias, like how you compare ck to fw prep despite people hating on ck because he is a poorly designed not fun boss unlike fw

glass cutters having no sanity drain is not a real upside lets be real, people dont like them because they cost a board and you need to complete the quest to craft them everywhere unlike dswords

and celestial orb/portal is not part of the cc quest, if so, ruins are part of the fw quest aswell (you said that fw quest is just 2 bosses)

[landromat]

Shoevel doesn't sound like it worth the effort

[mblt]

38 minutes ago, Capybara007 said:

No, your comment feels like bias, like how you compare ck to fw prep despite people hating on ck because he is a poorly designed not fun boss unlike fw

glass cutters having no sanity drain is not a real upside lets be real, people dont like them because they cost a board and you need to complete the quest to craft them everywhere unlike dswords

and celestial orb is not part of the cc quest, if so, ruins are part of the fw quest aswell (you said that fw quest is just 2 bosses)

I'm simply defending the value of the rewards, not saying anything is bad

The actual fights themselves are very different yes, I'm talking about the preparations, you do a lot of it and have a lot of item management during the fights

Glass Cutters are good for needing to worry about sanity less, they're still an alternative to Dark Sword damage, considering how much you can eventually get.

Edit: Sure they require boards to make, but once you're at the stage of beating CC, boards shouldn't be an issue especially with Bearger's polite lumberjacking business. On that aspect, living logs shouldn't be an issue for Dark Swords either. Being able to craft a lot of them and anywhere after the CC kill is precisely when they start being more reliable and more common, not that Glass Cutters are a post-CC item, just that CC is very good at farming the materials to make them. The cost of Glass Cutters and Dark Swords are good for what they do.

Orb is part of the quest, last stage of Lunar Siphonator requires it. I'd like to say the ruins are part of the looting optional from the questline, you can separate it from the AG fight. The questline is technically 3 bosses, you just have a lot more benefits if you include the ruins.

Edit: Not that the questline is entirely composed of the bosses, just that the times they occur within the questline are very frequent as there are much less steps needed to proceed through the questline. 

[Cruvimaster]

 

Both updates punish Wanda disproportionately compared to other characters, especially Wolfgang. 

[Theukon-dos]

5 hours ago, mblt said:

I'm simply defending the value of the rewards, not saying anything is bad

The actual fights themselves are very different yes, I'm talking about the preparations, you do a lot of it and have a lot of item management during the fights

Glass Cutters are good for needing to worry about sanity less, they're still an alternative to Dark Sword damage, considering how much you can eventually get.

Edit: Sure they require boards to make, but once you're at the stage of beating CC, boards shouldn't be an issue especially with Bearger's polite lumberjacking business. On that aspect, living logs shouldn't be an issue for Dark Swords either. Being able to craft a lot of them and anywhere after the CC kill is precisely when they start being more reliable and more common, not that Glass Cutters are a post-CC item, just that CC is very good at farming the materials to make them. The cost of Glass Cutters and Dark Swords are good for what they do.

Orb is part of the quest, last stage of Lunar Siphonator requires it. I'd like to say the ruins are part of the looting optional from the questline, you can separate it from the AG fight. The questline is technically 3 bosses, you just have a lot more benefits if you include the ruins.

Edit: Not that the questline is entirely composed of the bosses, just that the times they occur within the questline are very frequent as there are much less steps needed to proceed through the questline. 

Nobody's saying that Ancient Fuelweaver doesn't require a lot of prep. But they also don't effectively insta-gib you with a single spell. Also, CK is the pen-ultimate boss, so it should be compared to the shadow pieces, not fuelweaver. 

And while I do agree that boards for cutters aren't awful, that doesn't change the fact that 

1. Sanity is completely trivial to manage, even with the sword's drain

2. You can't prototype glass cutters, thus need to go to lunar every time you want more until you beat CC.

 

Yes, the Orb's part of the CC quest line, but the celestial postern are absolutely not. At that point, you should also include the Alchemy Engine in both the lunar and shadow questlines.

And the crown; while not useless; is still not nearly as powerful as the fuelweaver's drops are. Oh, you got a bit of extra light and DPS from the crown? That's cute, but Bone Armor turns you into Senator Armstrong. 

[mblt]

15 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Nobody's saying that Ancient Fuelweaver doesn't require a lot of prep. But they also don't effectively insta-gib you with a single spell. Also, CK is the pen-ultimate boss, so it should be compared to the shadow pieces, not fuelweaver. 

And while I do agree that boards for cutters aren't awful, that doesn't change the fact that 

1. Sanity is completely trivial to manage, even with the sword's drain

2. You can't prototype glass cutters, thus need to go to lunar every time you want more until you beat CC.

 

Yes, the Orb's part of the CC quest line, but the celestial postern are absolutely not. At that point, you should also include the Alchemy Engine in both the lunar and shadow questlines.

And the crown; while not useless; is still not nearly as powerful as the fuelweaver's drops are. Oh, you got a bit of extra light and DPS from the crown? That's cute, but Bone Armor turns you into Senator Armstrong. 

Yeah... CK Being a pen-ultimate vs Shadow Pieces being a pen-ultimate is very notable, as it's the fight right before CC, very awful fight but that's simply when you fight them within the questlines, once more both fights themselves do take quite a lot of preparing beforehand in provisions which is the point I'm trying to make, and messing up a single time is disasterous and/or a massive setback in both. Comparing Shadow Pieces to CK is a bit unfair seeing how early you can fight Shadow Pieces as it requires very little steps, vs all the steps required for CK.

Glass Cutters pre-CC is quite hard to invest in yes. They're not exactly reliable to get until you beat CC, the glass shards more specifically. That's why I mentioned right after the CC kill is when they can be more common and more reliable. Phase 3 just litters glass shards everywhere and you'd no longer be bound to needing the altar to make them, and glass shards would barely become an issue if farmed during the phase. They're extra Dark Sword damage weapons which feels like a nice side-grade. They're not bad at all, sure Dark Swords are very reliable to get, that doesn't exactly mean avoid Glass Cutters forever.

The orb is mandatory for the questline and what it can do isn't, but I'll still say it is one of the rewards for partaking in the questline, that is finding and obtaining the Celestial Orb itself, something you'd have to do in order to even spawn CC.

Both crown and Bone Armor are very good items and rather similar yes! Even if they are used differently they still have their amazing uses. Both last forever and helps in combat, they can feel like the parallel between offensive and defensive. The extra DPS with the crown helps in all fights as things simple die faster with the bonus 42 damage on top of current damage every swing. The management requiring that you stay above 85% sanity which will be tough as all hits given drain it by 1.  Bone Armor completely negating damage is a very good way to simply... Not take any damage which means quite a lot of great things, the management being that it won't block any damage within the cooldown as getting hit would trigger it, implying you don't have another Bone Armor to immediately switch to, but that requires multiple FW kills, much like multiple permanent Mushroom Lights requiring multiple CC kills. A helmet would help with the Bone Armor much like a body armor would help with the crown. 

What I'm trying to say is the lunar questline's rewards don't suck, even if the shadow questline has much better rewards, both are good! Even if one side is better than the other. The existence of the greater one doesn't make the lesser one into a zero. 

[Ryusuta]

This isn't strictly relevant, but why are you two hyphenating the word "penultimate,"?

[mblt]

2 minutes ago, Ryusuta said:

 

You're not supposed to? ups... I rarely see the word so I didn't know about proper usage. Oh well. 

[Ryusuta]

Just now, mblt said:

You're not supposed to? ups... I rarely see the word so I didn't know about proper usage. Oh well. 

No worries. It's no biggie at all. =)

At least you didn't use "dice" as singular.

[_zwb]

13 hours ago, mblt said:

This feels like bias. Sure ruins refreshing, ruins loot and AG loot is very powerful, but that doesn't exactly mean that lunar things are worthless. You're not exactly being fair in giving them a chance to emphasize their power.

The lunar questline may have a lot of steps, complications and frustrations but it doesn't consists of only boss fights, compared to the shadow questline. It just takes longer and once you know how to efficiently do things, it's really not as bad as it seems. I won't defend the crab king fight as I do see it's universally hated, though I'd like to compare the fight's level of preparation to that of Fuelweaver

The lunar questline gives you a lot of wonderful utilities and options, this is on top of the shadow questline too so you're getting both benefits from both questlines

I'll mention that once you complete the CC questline, you only need to do the moonstorm events again in order to fight CC once more, not needing to do every single step a second time.

Ignoring the shell bells as they don't provide tactical advantage and are as good as decoration for beach-like builds...

Celestial Portal is the sole reason you can change characters within a world, allowing you to do things you couldn't when locked with one character, Warly's spices and Volt Goat Jelly, Winona's machines for example

Glass Cutters are the Dark Sword parallel and they're both really good at being weapons, dealing the same damage. Sure the Glass Cutter has less durability but it also doesn't have any sanity drain, and you can mass produce them if you use CC's phase 3 to farm moon shards. The durability gets doubled when used against shadow creatures, FW and Shadow Pieces included, so repeat fights are easier in this regard. It has a very beautiful skin too

The crown is very powerful, it's not just a crown. The additional shard simply allows you to start the lunar rifts without deconstructing a crown first. Even then crown shards can be used as permanent light sources for Mushroom Lights when you do deconstruct crowns

The crown feels like an upgrade to the Mining Hat; No durability, produces light as long as you're above 85% sanity, grants you additional DPS with small gestalts summoned with each attack as long as you're above 85% sanity, sure it drains sanity by 1 for each hit but it's something that can be fixed with having sanity food ready. Even so, the +10 sanity per minute is one of the highest sanity regen headgears in the game, minus Bee Queen Crown as that requires something else to gain sanity from. It also provides you immunity to gestalts, much as the Bone Helmet gives you immunity to nightmare creatures. That's a lot for one hat and that's not even going into what it's best used for yet.

I personally think the rewards are fine, as I stated earlier in another post, it's just usage, making the most of it and all.

I'm not saying the rewards themselves are bad, but there aren't enough rewards for all the tasks we completed.

Boss availability:

Yes you need to kill two (4 actually) bosses but they can be automated. Use catapults to mass farm shadow atriums and a single anenemy to kill AG off screen. If you want to fight them manually it can be enjoyable. On the lunar side ... Wagstaff mini game is just 100% tedium. He always spawns next to spider den/tentacle/merm house etc; he always ask for tools that haven't appeared yet; the birds spawns so quickly and the multitasking is just too exhausting.

Ugh, why don't he do this himself?

Shell bells: I suck at art so they're useless to me, and you don't even need to obtain the pearl to farm for shell bells: just repeat the garbage collecting task over and over.

Glass cutter: it's pretty good but the only problem is it's not prototype-able, so dark sword wins by availability.

Celestial Portal: you don't even need to go to the lunar island for it. It's all available at the celestial orb.

The crown. Yes "permanent light op" but you got that by just summoning the moon storm. Also glow caps...you need to kill T O A D S T O O L, one of the worst boss in this game. Nope thank you. Even if I use glow caps I'd rather just use winter's feast light bulbs.

[GenomeSquirrel]

I’ve actually grown to like glass cutters, I can monopolize all the glass and no one cares or notices, and I don’t need to rely on wormwood or tree guards. Still disappointed they never made glass armor or accessories.

[gamehun20]

1 minute ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

I’ve actually grown to like glass cutters, I can monopolize all the glass and no one cares or notices, and I don’t need to rely on wormwood or tree guards. Still disappointed they never made glass armor or accessories.

And I think now you can use the glass cutters even better for the broken clockworks because those are shadow aligned 

[mblt]

9 minutes ago, _zwb said:

I'm not saying the rewards themselves are bad, but there aren't enough rewards for all the tasks we completed.

Boss availability:

Yes you need to kill two (4 actually) bosses but they can be automated. Use catapults to mass farm shadow atriums and a single anenemy to kill AG of screen. If you want to fight then manually it can be enjoyable. On the lunar side ... Wagstaff mini game is just 100% tedium. He always spawns next to spider den/tentacle/merm house etc; he always ask for tools that haven't appeared yet; the birds spawns so quickly and the multitasking is just too exhausting.

Ugh, why don't he do this himself?

Shell bells: I suck at art so they're useless to me, and you don't even need to obtain the pearl to farm for shell bells: just repeat the garbage collecting task over and over.

Glass cutter: it's pretty good but the only problem is it's not prototype-able, so dark sword wins by availability.

Celestial Portal: you don't even need to go to the lunar island for it. It's all available at the celestial orb.

The crown. Yes "permanent light op" but you got that by just summoning the moon storm. Also glow caps...you need to kill T O A D S T O O L, one of the worst boss in this game. Nope thank you. Even if I use glow caps I'd rather just use winter's feast light bulbs.

You can automate AG with an anenemy? That's... Actually funny, who would win? Giant beast, guardian of the Ancient Key within the ruins or s t a r f i s h?

The minigames do get annoying but I do appreciate that the CC resummoning loop starts there, everything else you only really needed to do once like bringing the altar pieces to the island and the CK fight, at least for CC and not CK's drops.

I personally haven't had too much trouble with the minigames (As a Wormwood player, bramble husks are just so nice for immediately clearing groups of birds) but I can absolutely see why people would complain about it, I imagine it was tuned for beating with multiple people much like a lot of aspects of the game, but it translates into being very messy when you're doing every single task solo, that is mostly defending the static from birds and supplying the correct tools, juggling the priority is stressful. If the spawn rate of birds changed depending on player count I'd very much welcome that. If you use Brightshade items the event does go much more smoothly when soloing with the helmet, armor and staff set bonus, that'd imply you've already beaten CC and have dealt with the rifts though, which means the rifts are already active and you've already completed the lunar questline.

Fair with the shell bells, they can help tend to crops but you may have the fruit fly for that. It's mostly junk and if people find use for it, more power to them.

Yeah... Glass Cutter isn't really something you can commonly have pre-CC, pre-CC the conditions are just too sparse, the renewable glass being every 20 days or very rarely within the caves and you'd have to go to the island to make them. Post-CC does change this a lot though, portable crafting station and glass barely being of worry. You wouldn't even need to activate the rifts to have this happen.

Correct about the portal, accessibility is very immediate, it just needs the meteor it comes in to drop which is as good as chance until day 50, then you can use it. Other than that it's a component for summoning CC and picking it up is technically engaging in the storyline, it existing for the questline is why you can use it.

The permanent full moons while storms are active? Yes but it gives you enlightenment once it's night which dealing with Gestalts anywhere can be tedious,  but the crown makes you immune to them? Did I get that correctly...? I don't exactly understand what you mean by that, sorry.

Ah yes... Toadstool, the big froge. I'd divide them and the drops from the questline rewards as they don't exactly have much relevance? The drops would only be more valuable when you have shards at your disposal. If you already have killed them and have Mushroom Lights, the shards would synergies with them very well by letting them be on permanently. That's if you have Mushroom Lights. If you haven't killed Toadstool then sure, you wouldn't exactly need crown shards and yes they'd be pretty hard to find use of in that state, that is until you get the Mushroom Lights. The crown would be much more valuable not in a deconstructed state in this regard. Otherwise the initial shard from CC is just for starting the rift.