Lunar Hail seems pointless

[ButterStuffed]

I just don't get what the point of it is.

All it does is force me to start paying attention to shadows on the ground to avoid taking a fairly negligible amount of damage. It happens often enough that I have just stopped making an effort to avoid the hail at all. It's not fun to be prompted to play a game of hail dodgeball every couple of days in exchange for keeping your health. If I'm going to be dealing with hail, I would rather be punished due to my negligence to prepare rather than my immediate attention and ability to spot where rocks are going to fall.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything that could be realistically adjusted in the beta to make it at all interesting. Any ideas?

[Maxil20]

I’ve played quite a bit with the hail, and I don’t mind it too much. It only lasts around 30 seconds, and isn’t too bad to deal with. In particular, holding/being in an umbralla’s radius directly makes you immune to the moon glass hits, which makes it pretty easy to pop for ~30 seconds and lose 1-2% of durability every 2 days or so.

I like it quite a bit in particular in that in exchange for dealing with that while the rift is open, rain practically ceases to exist. Spring in particular practically loses all of the rains provided, only having a small ~5 day period when a rift isn’t up to cause storms, making it pretty easy to get work done throughout the season.

I think the main gripe I have with it is damaging/hurting mobs in particular. It just feels a bit eh gameplay wise. I don’t like the idea that I’m putting my deer pen/glommer/fruit fly/slurpers at risk because I did the cardinal sin of visiting them when the game decided to pop up a lunar hailstorm as I was passing by.

[Spino43]

Lunar hail is... fine for me, I think. At least on the surface you have natural light, so using eyebrella with armor is perfectly viable. Much better than acid rain really, not only is it continuous damage, eat through your gear, but also in a place with constant darkness.

Hail killing mobs is annoying, a simple fix would be for the shards to not damage mobs, really.

[GelatinousCube]

I don't like it replacing Rain altogether as it doesn't provide wetness right? Doesn't this just remove extra damage against wet targets from electric weapons etc?

Also I'm sure everyone knows how I feel about it damaging mobs by now right....? haha

[SonicDen220]

Hail completely replaces normal rain and doesn't cause wetness? Klei indirectly nerfing morning star yet again and again... Not that you'd already have any reason to use it anymore because planar weapons are there to replace every other weapon, but still, it's the sentiment that matters.

[ADM]

I really liked the hail from SW as it was allowing for a nice source of ice you build yourself, so it’s of course not littering the world with items too, it melts. When I first saw the pieces of moon glass falling my first thought was "OH GOD NO", but pfew it breaks. However those big pieces of glass are quite ugly for a heil debris… and rather pointless yeah. I think it wouldn’t be too bad to take some inspiration from SW and create tiny pieces of infused shards only and actually allow them to drop as items but make them disappear when they spoil, so that you can get those special shards from here and not just the storm. That can be mighty useful for a Wilson or skip a part of the CC waiting if it passively keeps happening. And in general prettier than the big blocks of glass falling.

 

Also yes please justice for the pets that get eliminated by it :/

[Jakepeng99]

I thought it was all planar dsmage so it went through armour.

8 hours ago, GelatinousCube said:

I don't like it replacing Rain altogether as it doesn't provide wetness right? Doesn't this just remove extra damage against wet targets from electric weapons etc?

Also I'm sure everyone knows how I feel about it damaging mobs by now right....? haha

I never knew that, replacing rain seems pretty...dumb. Hail and rain should br able to happen at the same time, same as how it actually does.

[GelatinousCube]

59 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I thought it was all planar dsmage so it went through armour.

I never knew that, replacing rain seems pretty...dumb. Hail and rain should br able to happen at the same time, same as how it actually does.

Comsole and no personal experience with it so I'm not sure this is definitely the case but from posts on the forum this seems to be the case. That or rain instead of hail becomes very rare.

[ButterStuffed]

10 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I like it quite a bit in particular in that in exchange for dealing with that while the rift is open, rain practically ceases to exist. Spring in particular practically loses all of the rains provided, only having a small ~5 day period when a rift isn’t up to cause storms, making it pretty easy to get work done throughout the season.

For me this is just another reason I don't like the current iteration of Lunar Hail. Rain makes flowers grow, Volt Goat herds can be created, electric damage gets boosted, farm plots stay wet, mushrooms regrow, etc.

If hail was isolated to Winter and/or was an uncommon variation of Spring rain then I would be less bothered by it. Maybe it could accompany Crystal Deerclops?

[Fufuji]

Hails damaging mobs seems dumb, and hails damaging only characters not mobs also seems dumb. 

[GelatinousCube]

7 minutes ago, Fufuji said:

Hails damaging mobs seems dumb, and hails damaging only characters not mobs also seems dumb. 

Would be awesome if instead it did neither and had some other unique effect like stopping mobs exiting their dens/houses and making them run back in when it starts or something like that. Purely off the top of my head and I'm sure something better could be suggested.

Maybe it could be like acid rain and cover certain plants in ice or something that requires mining to free them but provides ice in thr process (like nitre with ponds from acid rain).

[Mike23Ua]

2 minutes ago, Fufuji said:

Hails damaging mobs seems dumb, and hails damaging only characters not mobs also seems dumb. 

It’s because it’s a half-baked gameplay mechanic that tries to add a new weather effect into the game but it doesn’t really “do” much.

let me explain: Spring causes rain, but that’s not ALL that it does, it also causes wetness, which lowers sanity and makes your tools wet to slip out your hands, in addition to this… Rabbit Holes seal off and they stop spawning for the season, Moose/Goose spawn and take up nesting areas, Frog Rain happens.. & lightning strikes make you need to rush items like Eyebrella and lightning rods, there’s a lot more going on then JUST having to manage a personal status bar.

[Fufuji]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

It’s because it’s a half-baked gameplay mechanic that tries to add a new weather effect into the game but it doesn’t really “do” much.

let me explain: Spring causes rain, but that’s not ALL that it does, it also causes wetness, which lowers sanity and makes your tools wet to slip out your hands, in addition to this… Rabbit Holes seal off and they stop spawning for the season, Moose/Goose spawn and take up nesting areas, Frog Rain happens.. & lightning strikes make you need to rush items like Eyebrella and lightning rods, there’s a lot more going on then JUST having to manage a personal status bar.

Yes. And now umbralla is used both in the Forest and the Caves. More ways to prevent hails could be implemented, and hails could have improved artwork and tweaked effects. 

[chaosmonkey]

I like the hail mechanic; it seems very fitting. My only gripe is that it cancels/replaces rain. I would love if hail were in addition to rain.

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, ButterStuffed said:

For me this is just another reason I don't like the current iteration of Lunar Hail. Rain makes flowers grow, Volt Goat herds can be created, electric damage gets boosted, farm plots stay wet, mushrooms regrow, etc.

If hail was isolated to Winter and/or was an uncommon variation of Spring rain then I would be less bothered by it. Maybe it could accompany Crystal Deerclops?

I suppose that is fair, albeit that hasn't bothered me too much. Cave acid rain also completely stops rain and lasts for the entire duration of the cave rift just like the lunar rifts, and there wasn't really any major concern for that. Again, there's still a window for spring to have normal rain, and that time period can easily regow all the flowers thanks to the extreme regrowth effect of spring and find a few goats if you are in dire need of renewing herds.

I think the main issue is you don't really have a way to consistently proc the wet effect for electric weapons except for rain, and I do wish that was changed to be more reliable. If the new effects are going to completely replace normal rain, then I would hope something like water balloons (or even the watering can) can get an effect of temporarily making mobs wet for a duration. Would be kinda neat to carry a morning star with a watering can to keep them wet, similar to using ichor weapons then swapping to your main weapon in Terraria.

[goblinball]

Maybe making them less common outside of winter would be nice 

I mean it makes sense since yknow hail is like a winter thing and winter doesn’t really have rain anyways so you wouldn’t be missing out on much 

Or maybe make them dependent on the moon cycle or smth idk 

Idk I just miss my rain man

[Shunky]

When can we have a roof

[lenship2]

6 minutes ago, Shunky said:

When can we have a roof

when you plant above average trees

[GelatinousCube]

Just thought of another idea, it could make all mobs run back to/stay in their houses AND any mob that doesn't have a house enters panic mode (like from bee Queen screeches) so grass geckos, koalas, gaters etc just run around like crazy during hail. Would make it harder to interact with them and look like they're dodging the hail themselves. 

[ShadowbirdRH]

I've a simple suggestion for this. Have trees, possibly excluding spiky and twiggy varieties, protect against hail, and give creatures a behavior to huddle under nearby trees for protection. This would also clue in players that this would be a viable defense, and in events of tree scarcity, trigger fighting over shelter, maybe finally give gobblers an opportunity to demonstrate that 20 damage power they're said to have. Creatures without trees nearby would panic like homeless pigmen in low light.

[-Variant]

3 hours ago, ShadowbirdRH said:

I've a simple suggestion for this. Have trees, possibly excluding spiky and twiggy varieties, protect against hail

This parts already a thing! Same applies to tree canopies.