Make Mushlights Prototypable

[fpx007]

Spoiler

Recently I just returned to this game, and I find a lot of changes have taken place, especially many rare blueprint recipes become prototypeble now. e.g. fashion goggle, waterflow can. However, mushlights are still not.

I think mushlights should be made prototypable in the next QoL update.

Currently toad skins have 3 utilities: making mushlights, glowcaps and napsacks. Each of those utility requires a rare blueprint. That is to say, toad skins are useless without rare blueprints.

And at the moment, toad skins are obtainable from 2 sources: toadstool (basic/misery) and loot stash. So if you defeat klaus, open loot stash and get a toad skin, the item may be completely useless because you don't have the required rare blueprints. To make it useable, you need to either defeat toadstool or get one of the respective rare blueprints from loot stash. Everyone knows how painful it is to defeat the toadstool, while getting the matching rare blueprint from loot stash is highly RNG dependent. (Spoiler below is for probability calculation) So under many circumstances, they are placed in storage for a really long time. And by the time you finally have access to these blueprints, you have probably forgotten the existance of that toad skin.

Spoiler

The chance is 2/9 * 50% = 1/9, 2/9 is for 2 matching blueprints(mushlight and glowcap) from 9 possible blueprints in pool. That means you are expected to get one of these blueprints, you need to defeat Klaus 9 times mathematically. Counting the already defeated Klaus, you are expected to get it 8 winters later if winter's feast is off and you haven't get one of those blueprints before!

The other reason for this proposal is that almost any other rare loot from loot stash has at least 1 utility that is not dependent on rare blueprints. The only exception is desert stones. However, defeating the antlion is much more easier than toadstool, not to mention that you also have an alternative peaceful method (giving beach toy to antlion). So it is much easier to making desert stone useful.

The mushlight is the down-graded version of glowcaps, so I propose making mushlight prototypable, and remove its rare blueprints from all possible loot pools . However, these would not make mushlights OP because you still need some effort to get toad skins. What do you think?

[BezKa]

Prototype-able implies that you learn it once to be able to craft it, unlike ancient crafts for example.

You mean 'make it an Alchemy Engine craft'?

As for the suggestion itself, I don't mind either way. Less papyrus for me whenever I kill the boss for fun, and I think it makes sense to drop from Toad, but if it still needs skin to be crafted who cares if it's available by the crafting station. Might even move it to the saw horse, tho people hate that building

[fpx007]

11 minutes ago, BezKa said:

Prototype-able implies that you learn it once to be able to craft it, unlike ancient crafts for example.

You mean 'make it an Alchemy Engine craft'?

Well, recipes learned at science stations requires a initial craft which is know as a prototype (as the button suggest). Recipes learned from blueprints do not need a prototpye. So I believe here prototypable definitely excludes blueprint-exclusive recipes.

(Anyway, it is just OK as long as we know what other people mean.)

22 minutes ago, BezKa said:

Might even move it to the saw horse

I guess that goes too far. My proposal is meant to simplify issues, while sawhorse is hermit related, which makes things even worse. An alchemy engine should be probably OK.

[MadMatt]

I'd rather players not be discouraged to ever fight Toadstool more than is already the case. The Toadstool fight just needs to take less time to beat him, it does stand at a pretty stupidly long amount of time even with decent strategies and gear. Maybe reintroduce the damage multiplier when attacking him while he spawns mushcaps?

[Cassielu]

It's just substituting one issue for another, then almost no reason to beat toadstool.

[fpx007]

5 hours ago, MadMatt said:

I'd rather players not be discouraged to ever fight Toadstool more than is already the case.

Sorry, but my proposal is not about complaining toadstool being too hard to be defeated. My main topic about one of the random loots from Klaus is hard to utilize, and the difficulty of defeating toadstool is one of the main reason why it is hard to utilize.

46 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

It's just substituting one issue for another, then almost no reason to beat toadstool.

Definitely not. Without defeating toadstool, the only way you can get toad skins is to defeat Klaus. Defeating Klaus isn't an easy thing either. And even you defeated Klaus, you only have a 1 in 5 chance to get merely 1 toad skin. That is to say, farming toad skins from Klaus is extremely limited and unreliable. To mass spam mushlights/glowcaps you need to either defeat toadstool multiple times, or defeat the 99999HP misery toadstool so you can craft-deconstruct napsacks to duplicate toad skins.

Besides, the proposal only demands the inferior structure, mushlights being prototypable. The superior glowcaps, as well as napsacks, are still locked behind their blueprints. So toadstool are still needed to be defeated to reliably get the blueprints, especially for napsacks.

That is to say, for those who like mushlights and so on, there is still motivations for thems to fight toadstool. (For those who don't want mushlights, there is already no reason for them to fight it even without this change,)

Edited February 8 by fpx007
minor typos

[Cassielu]

4 hours ago, fpx007 said:

Without defeating toadstool, the only way you can get toad skins is to defeat Klaus.

Toadstool drop it when 70% and 40% health. 

Edited February 8 by Cassielu

[fpx007]

1 hour ago, Cassielu said:

Toadstool drop it when 70% and 40% health. 

Sorry, I forgot that fact. But despite this, I still believe mushlights are supposed to be prototypable.

First, although not actually defeating toadstool, you do fight toadstool. And fighting toadstool is already painful. And the most important thing is that there is no different phases while fighting toadstool. Actually, you are doing the same thing from beginning to end: attacking, dodging bombs/clouds, attacking, chopping trees, attacking... The only exception is a ground slam at 40% HP, but beyond that all the attack patterns from toadstool are the same. That is to say, if you can reduce its health below 70%, you can also defeat it with 3X resource and time. And since you get far more loot by defeating toadstool than reduce its HP below 70% for 3 times, this can't be the reason people don't fight toadstool. At least, my proposal doesn't make a difference in this scenario.

Second, this fact reminds me of Eater of World/Brain of Cthulhu in Terraria. Players are allowed to make nightmare/deathbringer pickaxes without defeating the EoW/BoC boss because their major loot can be partially obtained during the fight and be utilized independent of the final victory. And since the major loot of toadstool can be obtained during the fight befor victory, it is supposed to have at least 1 utiliuty before defeating toadstool, which's also what my proposal is for.

[MadMatt]

13 minutes ago, fpx007 said:

The only exception is a ground slam at 40% HP, but beyond that all the attack patterns from toadstool are the same. That is to say, if you can reduce its health below 70%, you can also defeat it with 3X resource and time. And since you get far more loot by defeating toadstool than reduce its HP below 70% for 3 times, this can't be the reason people don't fight toadstool.

You don't get much loot from killing Toadstool either. The only thing you can get is a funcap which sucks, the chance of a blueprint for the glowcap which is a tiny upgrade from mushlights, and a single shroom skin.

I haven't run the numbers but I know that the last phase of Toadstool is something around 20,000 health, which is greater than the threshold for shroom skins to drop of Toad's transition from first to second and second to third. So, it makes no sense to actually fully kill Toadstool if all you want is shroom skins, as not only is the fight harder, but you have to spend longer to even get the shroom skin on death because it's the phase with the highest health. This is also ignoring the fact that killing Toadstool is counter productive to gathering shroom skins since then he'll be on a respawn timer for 20 days.

If mushlights were prototypable, then there is very good reasons to believe that players would be less incentivized to kill Toadstool at all.

Edited February 8 by MadMatt

[arubaro]

3 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

You don't get much loot from killing Toadstool either. The only thing you can get is a funcap which sucks, the chance of a blueprint for the glowcap which is a tiny upgrade from mushlights, and a single shroom skin.

I haven't run the numbers but I know that the last phase of Toadstool is something around 20,000 health, which is greater than the threshold for shroom skins to drop of Toad's transition from first to second and second to third. So, it makes no sense to actually fully kill Toadstool if all you want is shroom skins, as not only is the fight harder, but you have to spend longer to even get the shroom skin on death because it's the phase with the highest health.

Toad should drop ~5 skins when defeated and ~10 when you defeat misery toad

Makes no sense to actually keeping a boss alive gives more loot than not. And when you defeat misery is cheaper and faster to simply dupe napsacks

Same goes for DF... is better to dupe or stun her than defeating her

[NoodlemanNed]

i would love this suggestion if toad also dropped more skin when defeated. Im not a huge fan of duping it with napsacks but you get so little from fighting toadstool it doesnt feel like a reasonable alternative.

maybe it would also be reasonable to greatly increase the number of spores and mushrooms you get from the fight, i would consider fighting toad far more often if it gave a stack of blue caps.

[fpx007]

1 hour ago, MadMatt said:

f mushlights were prototypable, then there is very good reasons to believe that players would be less incentivized to kill Toadstool at all.

Well, I propose this because I didn’t think it will not break the balance of game. (And actually I don’t care much the fight with toadstool itself. Its difficulty only makes the toad skins from loot stash even harder to be utilized.) But if you all agree that this makes defeating toadstool pointless, then I have to change my idea.

I guess instead of making mushlight prototypable, it is better to simply remove toad skin as well as the 2 rare blueprints from loot stash pool. This time, it is still meaningful (actually, more meaningful) to defeat toadstool, and players get rid of useless drops from loot stash. After all, the latter is the direct reason of my proposal.

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, NoodlemanNed said:

would consider fighting toad far more often if it gave a stack of blue caps.

It is already easier and faster to do in a blue mush biome anyway but would be interesting.