State of the game and some thoughts.

[Swiyss]

I wanted to share some thoughts that i'm having about the state of late game right now so i'm just gonna go right at it.

First of all, some resources just seem useless. I've been stacking nighmare fuel and living logs and I don't know what to do with it. What do I do with pig skin? I can kill cthulu on day 5 and never use a single pig skin again. Also, why is the Glass Cutter in the game? Useless item with an amazing skin, it's a tradegy that the brightshade sword just outscales it before we can even use it. I like the idea of an intermediate gear like the dreadstone armor, but the glass cutter need something unique making us feel like we are ACTUALLY choosing paths.

Furthermore, it feels like we are running with a map issue recently and I see more and more megabase streamers relating to this. I actually don't know what to do anymore. Do I make a megabase and get random brightshades all over the decorations, have wagstaff minigame/contructions on top of my buildings and rifts destroying the inhabitable parts of the map or do I locate 200 chests in one place and 2 kitchens and kill bosses repeatedly? Every time I create a new world is easier then ever to reach late game, but the only good thing to do in the late game is building and boss kill, but we can't build everywhere (city-like) like hamlet cause the map has too many dangers, and we also can't choose 1 place to stay only cause it gets really boring.

The boss problem in my view is that we are maybe missing some randomness(?) I like the Dfly having 50/50 chance on spawning more lavaes or enraging, but it's bare bones really. Maybe we need that "raid boss saw too many people around him and screamed" "raid-boss couldn't keep up with the fight and did a spin attack" "raid-boss did the attack 1 second earlier with low health". Again, the new bosses are a prime exemple of what a good fight looks like, so we are in the right path in my view, we just need raid-bosses "reworks", like a random fissure from the gound opens mid-fight with a bunch of screaming shadlings in the way, enraging the boss and making him stronger in some way. Or a glass rain happened and bee queen got her wings cut, so now she's super sickly zombified crawling and mutaded waving her sting all over the place super fast(?). Maybe even give us a reason to fight crab-king again. Klaus deers got possessed by gestalts after he dies and now we fight fire and ice at the same time(?), we could even get a "flingo-addition-mechanism" with wagstaff and the "super-blue-gem-deer" drop to assist in wildfires, or a "summon-fire-from-the-sky" willow perk with the "super-red-gem-deer", heck, even a cave ilumination lamp-circuit fed by ancient and new magic and technology would be great and let's say it costs a ton of resources to make up for the accumulation that we're having. We could even have Charlie "accidentally" letting a shadling cosume a bunnymen for a new fight just like the daywalker. And have them both come back at the war end. 

I think we also need more things like the dreadstone pillar, a very expensive thing for the purpose of decoration only.

Now seriously give me ideas, I can't megabase, but I also don't want ugly concentrated resources. I did a "winter shaft" in my second deciduous biome where I go to in winter to fish lobsters and deep ocean fishes, currently making an aquarium, but it feels weird that I have to change focus because I have 4 scaled chests full of silk and pig skin.

I see too many cases where I just want to create a new world, and experience everything all over again. And I feel more and more like my old worlds are being pushed out because of less replayability. Maybe we ACTUALLY need a "hardmode" to shake things up.

On another note I absolutely loved the new bosses and their design, made my heart rush when I first encountered them (what does he do? wait he jumped behind me wtf, HE'S SPITTING ICE) or when the inkshade crew came out, I got pissed and happy at the same time dying my first death to that chomp attack, really amazing ideas. Klei did a spectacular job on the new mobs and there is a reason there is no complain about it, it's almost perfect and super fun.

I think the core of the problem comes with the old things that are in the game not running at the same pace as the updates. maybe we need a revisit to old SURVIVAL aspects of the game and make them complement the updates.

A great Idea I was discussing before was the addition to merm gear/ pig gear. Like a little "war" event. choose your side kinda of thing just to shift focus a bit. Or we can simply have reasons for some added mobs to exist other than decoration, like the crustashines could crawl the above-average tree trunk for some silky variations to be born on the leaves and new rain protection be added along-side the seastriders nest(?), could also be handcrafted by webber in his skill tree and permanently added to the tree. Maybe a new mini-boss that will help us in the future late-game at the cost of resources, like a mud-fish spawn mini-boss in the swamp that give us players the ability to create or manipulate or simulate a tentacle-like thing that helps us amplify damage against Big Tentacle or even befriend/ease them so they show you the way to the atrium right away fixing the void-walking problem, and later a wormhole replacer/befriender at the cost of lots and lots of tentacle spots. Or a very big catcoon that got affected by too many full moons and now wants to steal our food, but killing this mini-boss grants us the ability to talk to cats(?) npc cat maybe(?) cat got smarter why not(?) Maybe not even a catcoon but merms, pigs, spider, anything that helps us get along more with the world instead of constantly FIGHTING everything like i'm in a never ending jungle abyss. The pearl tasks are one of my favorite moments in the game as a casual player, I know a lot of speedrunners absolutely hate the tasks but it's not made for them even though I think there is stil room for both styles of gameplay, one side just need a tiny more optimization (ocean being dead compared to shipwrek/too many water boulders in the way), the grass raft was an amazing idea added though.

So what we might need is ¹simple things that result in us needing to be ²knowledgeable about them that cost ³plenty of resources for fixing old problems (those problems being either structural like the wormholes or on a big scale of things like the all-time-baser-wilson-guy)

Give us a reason to go out of our way to a specific place like the ruins did. But don't make it too annoying and less rewarding, or else no one's gonna bother it (Rifts further locations are a great start to this).

That's it, please I want ideas from you guys also, make this an "idea bumper" where you can share your creativity here. And also please refine and debate my ideas structurally so we can get to a good ending here.

Bye! Bye!

[Gashzer]

Glass cutter is a great early game weapon for characters such as wortox (can teleport to an fro lunar at will to craft more), woodie (can find lunar fast and go to an fro fast) and walter (can find lunar fast via "straight edge" map method by mapping out world quickly, big woby can assemble altar quickly and extra inventory space with woby means you can carry alot of glass cutters with you so need to travel back less often)

Just because some armour and weapons seem useless or pointless doesnt mean others think the same. Thats why its good to have many options.

Glass cutter is a great weapon to bring into the ruins with you. The higher damage and extra durability vs nightmare creatures makes it quite useful.

[Swiyss]

13 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Glass cutter is a great early game weapon for characters such as wortox (can teleport to an fro lunar at will to craft more), woodie (can find lunar fast and go to an fro fast) and walter (can find lunar fast via "straight edge" map method by mapping out world quickly, big woby can assemble altar quickly and extra inventory space with woby means you can carry alot of glass cutters with you so need to travel back less often)

Just because some armour and weapons seem useless or pointless doesnt mean others think the same. Thats why its good to have many options.

Glass cutter is a great weapon to bring into the ruins with you. The higher damage and extra durability vs nightmare creatures makes it quite useful.

The Idea in which I stem from is that by the time you get some glass cutters it might be useless since you can easily get any amount of dark swords you want by day 5 just by cutting some trees and going in and out of a wormhole, not needing to get to the moon island, assembly of the altars and farming of the moonglass which is limited by the moon island itself. Running to the caves for some extra would just be a waste of time in my view. However a good ruins rush by day 8-12 (assuming you did the moon stone event with or without help at day 11), followed by an archives activation might be on pair with the glass cutter strategy since you can farm moon glass on your way to the archives but I still doubt is worth it. I know that if one has the knowledge of it and decides to take this alternative then it's good, since the item isn't meant to be stronger than the dark sword neither weaker. But I suggest that on top of 150 uses against shadows, we reduce it's defense by 9% as long as the player is hitting it (1 second for the buff to expire) cause it's the moon glass itself so it would make sense, and probably would be a good option and incentivise multiplayer too. On another note the dark sword could actually do the same with lunar creatures too. Maybe I'm just diverging too much but you get me, the game is complex at it's core so some of these items feel a little out of place for me so they could recieve a little push.

Now if you analyze both drawbacks and advantages of these items then they are both equally good, one drains your sanity while the other takes a trip to get a hold of. While both granting 68 damage and good durability. So it seems they are good as they are, however my point still stands on the fact that you can easily use dark swords against the shadow pieces but if you wanna kill the Celestial Champion with glass cutters you'll be missing a lot. That's why I think the item could gain a little something unique to it.

2 minutes ago, xDpromonick9 said:

The Idea in which I stem from is that by the time you get some glass cutters it might be useless since you can easily get any amount of dark swords you want by day 5 just by cutting some trees and going in and out of a wormhole, not needing to get to the moon island, assembly of the altars and farming of the moonglass which is limited by the moon island itself. Running to the caves for some extra would just be a waste of time in my view. However a good ruins rush by day 8-12 (assuming you did the moon stone event with or without help at day 11), followed by an archives activation might be on pair with the glass cutter strategy since you can farm moon glass on your way to the archives but I still doubt is worth it. I know that if one has the knowledge of it and decides to take this alternative then it's good, since the item isn't meant to be stronger than the dark sword neither weaker. But I suggest that on top of 150 uses against shadows, we reduce it's defense by 9% as long as the player is hitting it (1 second for the buff to expire) cause it's the moon glass itself so it would make sense, and probably would be a good option and incentivise multiplayer too. On another note the dark sword could actually do the same with lunar creatures too. Maybe I'm just diverging too much but you get me, the game is complex at it's core so some of these items feel a little out of place for me so they could recieve a little push.

Now if you analyze both drawbacks and advantages of these items then they are both equally good, one drains your sanity while the other takes a trip to get a hold of. While both granting 68 damage and good durability. So it seems they are good as they are, however my point still stands on the fact that you can easily use dark swords against the shadow pieces but if you wanna kill the Celestial Champion with glass cutters you'll be missing a lot. That's why I think the item could gain a little something unique to it.

Also, Woodie can farm indefinite living logs, same as Wormwood. So it seems counterproductive to not use dark swords instead since they are so cheap for boss fights, I would use ham bats early game only for longer fights and mob farming. So every item has it's strenghts it seems except for the glass cutter being a tiny bit on the lower side in my opinion. I'll keep using them for fuelweaver and I'll keep farming them for my early ruins rush but until it's given more love I won't back down cause that terraprisma skin is amazing. Maybe I'm biased because it's my favorite item in Terraria but w/e.

[Swiyss]

5 hours ago, xDpromonick9 said:

The Idea in which I stem from is that by the time you get some glass cutters it might be useless since you can easily get any amount of dark swords you want by day 5 just by cutting some trees and going in and out of a wormhole, not needing to get to the moon island, assembly of the altars and farming of the moonglass which is limited by the moon island itself. Running to the caves for some extra would just be a waste of time in my view. However a good ruins rush by day 8-12 (assuming you did the moon stone event with or without help at day 11), followed by an archives activation might be on pair with the glass cutter strategy since you can farm moon glass on your way to the archives but I still doubt is worth it. I know that if one has the knowledge of it and decides to take this alternative then it's good, since the item isn't meant to be stronger than the dark sword neither weaker. But I suggest that on top of 150 uses against shadows, we reduce it's defense by 9% as long as the player is hitting it (1 second for the buff to expire) cause it's the moon glass itself so it would make sense, and probably would be a good option and incentivise multiplayer too. On another note the dark sword could actually do the same with lunar creatures too. Maybe I'm just diverging too much but you get me, the game is complex at it's core so some of these items feel a little out of place for me so they could recieve a little push.

Now if you analyze both drawbacks and advantages of these items then they are both equally good, one drains your sanity while the other takes a trip to get a hold of. While both granting 68 damage and good durability. So it seems they are good as they are, however my point still stands on the fact that you can easily use dark swords against the shadow pieces but if you wanna kill the Celestial Champion with glass cutters you'll be missing a lot. That's why I think the item could gain a little something unique to it.

Also, Woodie can farm indefinite living logs, same as Wormwood. So it seems counterproductive to not use dark swords instead since they are so cheap for boss fights, I would use ham bats early game only for longer fights and mob farming. So every item has it's strenghts it seems except for the glass cutter being a tiny bit on the lower side in my opinion. I'll keep using them for fuelweaver and I'll keep farming them for my early ruins rush but until it's given more love I won't back down cause that terraprisma skin is amazing. Maybe I'm biased because it's my favorite item in Terraria but w/e.

I'd like to point out that the balance of not only this item is in question but of most early original DS items that aren't even considered right now but could have their place somewhere. I just used the glass cutter as an example,

[Trips]

On 11/15/2023 at 1:39 AM, Gashzer said:

Glass cutter is a great early game weapon for characters such as wortox (can teleport to an fro lunar at will to craft more), woodie (can find lunar fast and go to an fro fast) and walter (can find lunar fast via "straight edge" map method by mapping out world quickly, big woby can assemble altar quickly and extra inventory space with woby means you can carry alot of glass cutters with you so need to travel back less often)

Just because some armour and weapons seem useless or pointless doesnt mean others think the same. Thats why its good to have many options.

Glass cutter is a great weapon to bring into the ruins with you. The higher damage and extra durability vs nightmare creatures makes it quite useful.

Agreed. Not every option the player has needs to be equally viable. I initially thought something like the Cookie Cutter Cap was useless due to it being a 70% reduction head armor, but I realized it was a nice budget option to pair with Marble Armor with Wolfgang due to it having close to double the durability of a football helmet.

If it had the same damage reduction as a football helmet, there wouldn't be any consideration between the two for what you'd use. 


I also planned out my trip to the Lunar Island so that I could take home 15 Glass Cutters and other stuff like bushes with me so I don't have to make repeat trips for a few weapons.
They're nice to have for bringing into the ruins or for farming nightmare fuel for the amulets (I also use stuff like the Lazy Forager or Mag religiously since I have a surplus of NFuel, and I stay insane a lot so that I'm not depleting my supply)

 Also, comparing it to the Brightshade Sword seems unfair. It's like comparing the Dark Sword against the Shadow Reaper: the former is available after killing one Treeguard or chopping a couple totally normal trees, and the latter is quite literally post Ancient Fuelweaver (the boss designed to be the literal endgame before rifts were added). 
 

[Maxil20]

On 11/15/2023 at 4:23 AM, xDpromonick9 said:

but we can't build everywhere (city-like) like hamlet cause the map has too many dangers,

I don’t really agree on this too much. Only one-two areas on a map are genuinely uninhabitable, and thats because it rains meteors that break things in the fields. Otherwise, some areas might take more effort to base in then others, especially decid biomes with the loot stashes, but still work.

The new content has been a bit unfortunate for basing, but not overwhelmingly so. Brightshades can be countered by not using a specific set of plants, and the Wagstaff machines only spawn, at max, in one area at a time. If you intentionally leave the machines there, you will never get any spawning again. Rifts are another ordeal but have been tuned so it is extremely hard for tuem to mess up builds in a base and can be prevented if you really put in the effort to block spawns around the map.

If you want a particular area that needs improvements for building a base, the caves are where there have been issues since the dawn of DST. They are extremely stringy, and have lots of unbreakable objects around, especially in stalagmite biomes with the bat dens, the giant stalagmites, and the nightmare fissures. I’m hoping one day we get a dock turf equivalent for the caves along with ways to break these “permanent” obstacles to help mitigate these issues, as I think cave basing has a lot of untapped potential that is sadly hindered by difficulty in building large scale builds down there at the moment.

[Swiyss]

On 11/17/2023 at 3:05 AM, Maxil20 said:

I don’t really agree on this too much. Only one-two areas on a map are genuinely uninhabitable, and thats because it rains meteors that break things in the fields. Otherwise, some areas might take more effort to base in then others, especially decid biomes with the loot stashes, but still work.

The new content has been a bit unfortunate for basing, but not overwhelmingly so. Brightshades can be countered by not using a specific set of plants, and the Wagstaff machines only spawn, at max, in one area at a time. If you intentionally leave the machines there, you will never get any spawning again. Rifts are another ordeal but have been tuned so it is extremely hard for tuem to mess up builds in a base and can be prevented if you really put in the effort to block spawns around the map.

If you want a particular area that needs improvements for building a base, the caves are where there have been issues since the dawn of DST. They are extremely stringy, and have lots of unbreakable objects around, especially in stalagmite biomes with the bat dens, the giant stalagmites, and the nightmare fissures. I’m hoping one day we get a dock turf equivalent for the caves along with ways to break these “permanent” obstacles to help mitigate these issues, as I think cave basing has a lot of untapped potential that is sadly hindered by difficulty in building large scale builds down there at the moment.

Honestly, yeah that's true. However I still feel like the game could get something related to hamlet. Maybe pighouses that expand once you enter them or advance trading options like the hermit crab.