The weapon system needs improvement

[CCCR33]

 Most weapons are boring and not practical.
 Is it possible for a weapon to obtain a boss's skills or characteristics of other weapons?
 Such as whirlwind, laser, jump, collision, flame, freeze.
 Of course, the cost could be reducing damage or consuming a lot of durability.

[Ryusuta]

To me, things took a definite downturn in quality with the addition of lunar/shadow damage resistances on enemies. It's made the new endgame extremely one-note and dull.

I really wish they'd scrap the idea and come up with an actual challenge rather than just new ways of making things tedious and annoying.

[Gashzer]

51 minutes ago, Ryusuta said:

To me, things took a definite downturn in quality with the addition of lunar/shadow damage resistances on enemies. It's made the new endgame extremely one-note and dull.

I really wish they'd scrap the idea and come up with an actual challenge rather than just new ways of making things tedious and annoying.

I mean lunar planar bosses and shadow planar enemies have much lower hp than standard bosses so you can easily keep using whatever non-planar weapon you aesthetically enjoy without too much of a downside. You only need a ranged planar weapon if you want to trigger the stun state.

Armoured bearger has 8000hp, if you use a darksword to kill him his hp is effectively 13272hp when you consider planar defence which is still well below all other pre-rift raid bosses. 

No one is stopping you using your favourite weapon even in the post-rift world.

 

Edited May 8, 2025 by Gashzer

[WilsonHiggs]

While it would be cool in terms of gameplay, some potential skills, would also feel very off because the majority of survivors are simple weak people. I don't see Wilson or Weber doing fancy anime sword man attacks or complex spells

Ofc there are some ways to implement cool stuff that fits the goofy nature of the game. Just pointing that, atleast for me, there are limitations of what kind of spells and skills have room in this game 

 

I wish Klei some day develop another fantasy survival like v rising but with the cool gear balance of ANR and the survival mechanics

[Ryusuta]

39 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

No one is stopping you using your favourite weapon even in the post-rift world.

I didn't say they were. I'm simply referring to the direction they're taking things in terms of design philosophy. It sets the precedent of "From now on, our way of making things more challenging includes slapping a damage resist on stuff and calling it a day."

It's similar to the direction they started taking end bosses on The Binding of Isaac in later iterations. (I know... different types of games, but it's the closest analogy I could come up with.) They decided that the way to up the stakes on boss fights was to give them an armor mechanic that means they would take less and less damage if damaged a lot in a short period of time, but there were things like explosions that bypassed that armor.

In theory, it's a way of upping the challenge, but in practice it just served to slow things down and make them more tedious. It didn't get rid of broken runs; it just changed the ingredients used to make a run broken. As a result, some of the least popular bosses to fight for players are the ones with this mechanic.

In short, it's boring.

[WilsonHiggs]

30 minutes ago, Ryusuta said:

I didn't say they were. I'm simply referring to the direction they're taking things in terms of design philosophy. It sets the precedent of "From now on, our way of making things more challenging includes slapping a damage resist on stuff and calling it a day."

It's similar to the direction they started taking end bosses on The Binding of Isaac in later iterations. (I know... different types of games, but it's the closest analogy I could come up with.) They decided that the way to up the stakes on boss fights was to give them an armor mechanic that means they would take less and less damage if damaged a lot in a short period of time, but there were things like explosions that bypassed that armor.

In theory, it's a way of upping the challenge, but in practice it just served to slow things down and make them more tedious. It didn't get rid of broken runs; it just changed the ingredients used to make a run broken. As a result, some of the least popular bosses to fight for players are the ones with this mechanic.

In short, it's boring.

Isn't to add a challenge but a new tier without raising the damage to dumb numbers which, like happens in the 99% of sandbox games, makes previous content useless and boring to engage with. Is like: new tier deals a lot more damage to the new tier of enemies but doesnt one shot previous tier enemies

Also is a protection against stacking damage buffs like wolf+volt goat (but right after they released warbis helmet ..)

 

Wasn't a bad idea for them. They can add a new tier for a game that rewards re-fighting multiple times the same enemies.

And they can add powerful enemies without raising their damage to 500 which would cause the player to grind a lot of armor. Celestial champion and the Twins of terror already got really high damage so something pierces throw thulecite, marble and night armor. Before planar damage was difficult to make the player lose enough hp to force him to it unless the player tanked every atack 

[Wawchik]

This might be possible if we get Wagstaff weapons or something, I hope it won't be too anime swordman like stuff

 

[Well-met]

All you need to do is buff tail-whip to 51 damage and battle paddle to 68

[Cheggf]

The only problem weapons have is for some reason they decided to add enemies that are basically immune to almost every weapon, so your choices went from almost 20 different weapons to dark sword reskin, or worse dark sword reskin. 

[YouKnowWho142]

15 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

The only problem weapons have is for some reason they decided to add enemies that are basically immune to almost every weapon, so your choices went from almost 20 different weapons to dark sword reskin, or worse dark sword reskin. 

i think the issue is more that weapon variety means very little when they are all functionally the same. you can't really say "dark sword reskin" since 90% of weapons either fall under the category of a stronger dark sword or a weaker dark sword (even the more unique weapons like the thulecite club are just not used in favor of the dark sword anyways). at that point, it doesnt matter if there's 20 weapons or 2 weapons, you're always going to only choose the most efficient one anyways since they're all statsticks

I personally have no issue with planar weapons being relevant as they obviously want to make the planar enemies a new phase of the game, it just hasn't been built up very well and is in a very unfinished state for years now which only sours it more

Edited May 8, 2025 by YouKnowWho142

[WilsonHiggs]

34 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

The only problem weapons have is for some reason they decided to add enemies that are basically immune to almost every weapon, so your choices went from almost 20 different weapons to dark sword reskin, or worse dark sword reskin. 

And now isn't worth to use interesting stuff like the morning star

19 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

i think the issue is more that weapon variety means very little when they are all functionally the same. you can't really say "dark sword reskin" since 90% of weapons either fall under the category of a stronger dark sword or a weaker dark sword (even the more unique weapons like the thulecite club are just not used in favor of the dark sword anyways). at that point, it doesnt matter if there's 20 weapons or 2 weapons, you're always going to only choose the most efficient one anyways since they're all statsticks

I personally have no issue with planar weapons being relevant as they obviously want to make the planar enemies a new phase of the game, it just hasn't been built up very well and is in a very unfinished state for years now which only sours it more

Atleast the dark sword, thulecite club and morning star has interesting concepts instead of a flat boring weapon that can't have downsides because enlightenment isn't developed 

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

i think the issue is more that weapon variety means very little when they are all functionally the same. you can't really say "dark sword reskin" since 90% of weapons either fall under the category of a stronger dark sword or a weaker dark sword (even the more unique weapons like the thulecite club are just not used in favor of the dark sword anyways). at that point, it doesnt matter if there's 20 weapons or 2 weapons, you're always going to only choose the most efficient one anyways since they're all statsticks

I personally have no issue with planar weapons being relevant as they obviously want to make the planar enemies a new phase of the game, it just hasn't been built up very well and is in a very unfinished state for years now which only sours it more

Weapons having different methods to obtain them differentiated them a lot. Even ignoring the outliers that perform differently (Morning Star, Bat Bat, Shield of Terror, Strident Trident, Thulecite Club), thinking about what weapon should suit each situation made them each fill unique purposes. Tentacle spikes are plentiful and cheap, but not the highest damage. Ham bats can swing an infinite amount of times, but only for a few minutes. Spears and axes are very low damage, but extremely easy to make, even if you don't have anything there's probably materials nearby you can scrounge up. Dark swords have high damage, but drain your sanity and have a high cost.

You could choose to do things like use dark swords because you already have nmf for your magiluminesence, so the extra living logs to craft more is only a single extra inventory space (or zero as Wormwood) instead of needing two slots to be able to craft more dark swords. There was a lot of choice in the old system, and it's all gone now. Now you have a maximum damage melee weapon with no drawbacks and no notable special abilities, which is repaired using the same kit you use to repair everything else.

[Walrusst]

Whips, stabby swords, and cork bat alikes are something I want to see more of, just balanced. More clearly defined weapons could be really useful for making the "Together" part of the game pop out in combat.

Standard weapons with great costs to using them and well thought out resourcing chains are excellent, its just that this has been played out for a long time, we have nearly every drawback  or advantage that isn't a hunger drain on a weapon played out at some point or another, so many durability types, elemental systems, and the like.... The chart for what we've done with standard weapons with good costs is very densely played out to the point where inclusions in the standard weapon class struggle to find value:

• The cost/output is often too skewed for obscure options like the morning star to come into play, which is a solveable issue but its also just a highlight of how even relatively unique "Standard items" can get edged out by bad luck because of how even the competition at the alchemy engine level is very harsh (Trying to eek out more value than what you can get from a hambat is difficult.)

The only realm we don't explore much is rhythm and playing Walter has made me notice that subtle changes in rhythm challenge my habits when I am fighting, and this is fun.
Since memorizing a kiting loop becomes a game of repetition, approaching a fight with an alternative rhythm weapon reduces this since a new rhythm means I need to form new habits, but say we had reasons why you might want to use a slow recovering weapon when you don't have aggro etc etc, now you have a reason to experiment with rhythms that aren't your primary rhythm for better times in a fight and no just one habit.

• Of course, you would need to invent reasons why certain off rhythm weapons are good, I've proposed things like thrusting swords working from some kind  of saddle (Beefalo or not,) and the cork bat like weapons would almost certainly need to be balanced around the player using them NOT having aggro, but in the end I think its worth it to tap less saturated weapon space with quirks like this.

[WilsonHiggs]

7 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Weapons having different methods to obtain them differentiated them a lot. Even ignoring the outliers that perform differently (Morning Star, Bat Bat, Shield of Terror, Strident Trident, Thulecite Club), thinking about what weapon should suit each situation made them each fill unique purposes. Tentacle spikes are plentiful and cheap, but not the highest damage. Ham bats can swing an infinite amount of times, but only for a few minutes. Spears and axes are very low damage, but extremely easy to make, even if you don't have anything there's probably materials nearby you can scrounge up. Dark swords have high damage, but drain your sanity and have a high cost.

You could choose to do things like use dark swords because you already have nmf for your magiluminesence, so the extra living logs to craft more is only a single extra inventory space (or zero as Wormwood) instead of needing two slots to be able to craft more dark swords. There was a lot of choice in the old system, and it's all gone now. Now you have a maximum damage melee weapon with no drawbacks and no notable special abilities, which is repaired using the same kit you use to repair everything else.

They are making the game dumb proof 

[Johnny_Waffles]

The biggest issue with the new weapons and armor is post cc and Fuelweaver, 99% of all the armor and weapons become useless since you got Brightshade and void gear which is better in almost every situation.

[WilsonHiggs]

10 minutes ago, Johnny_Waffles said:

The biggest issue with the new weapons and armor is post cc and Fuelweaver, 99% of all the armor and weapons become useless since you got Brightshade and void gear which is better in almost every situation.

It also reduce the variety in the gameplay loop. You only need to either kill dreadstone crop mobs, which has many design problems like how they spawn, how often, how the player needs to limit their selves by not using ranged weapons, etc, or mine pure brilliance and kill BS which also have many design problems like how simplistic is to wait for a tiny area to spawn with a single mob that we need to ignore to mine the pure brilliance (or just use weather pain to do the task faster), how uninteresting is the surroundings of the portal (the enlightenment doesn't even has any effect on the player) or how repetitive is killing BS, specially because killing them, unless there is 3 or more (once I got 5 really close), is so easy and uninteresting and you can simply spam range weapons and they won't fight back

They said they will revisit the cost of the kits but I doubt since nerfing stuff is forbidden in this community no matter how good could be for the game 

[Sikers]

2 hours ago, Johnny_Waffles said:

The biggest issue with the new weapons and armor is post cc and Fuelweaver, 99% of all the armor and weapons become useless since you got Brightshade and void gear which is better in almost every situation.

That's not true, against non-planar bosses wich are still majority of game content, armors with 90+ % damage reduction, are miles better and with W.A.R.B.I.S or other dmg multipilers, non-planar weapons are stronger. Bone armor is great, for both pre and post rift content. Beside, it's not like the post-Rift content killed weapon and armor variety, because the game never realy have it, back then most people just used Hambats, Night Swords and Football Helmets, new gear just replaced them.

Edited May 9, 2025 by Sikers

[FillerText]

1 hour ago, Sikers said:

That's not true, against non-planar bosses wich are still majority of game content, armors with 90+ % damage reduction, are miles better and with W.A.R.B.I.S or other dmg multipilers, non-planar weapons are stronger. Bone armor is great, for both pre and post rift content. Beside, it's not like the post-Rift content killed weapon and armor variety, because the game never realy have it, back then most people just used Hambats, Night Swords and Football Helmets, new gear just replaced them.

I have 13 Purple Gems in my current world after a Ruins Rush. If I spent them all on Batbats, that would be 6000+ hp worth of healing. That's more than enough to finish the entire Fuelweaver questline to then later clear ruins again for another huge pile of purple gems. In fact, it's more than enough for me to also do Dragonfly, and Bee Queen before Fuelweaver. I am playing Wormwood, so I can negate the only other downside of the Batbat by spamming Moon shrooms, or kill Bee Queen for her Crown to solve this issue as any character. 

If you are saying this isn't a legitimate alternative option just because most people "Use Hambats, and Football helmets" then idk what to tell you. Your Playstyle doesn't change the fact that I can easily do this if I wanted to.

I also think Rifts don't kill Weapon Variety, and they already present their own strong options leading me to believe Rifts themselves would end up with a very varied arsenal of tools at the player's disposal

[Sikers]

 

2 hours ago, FillerText said:

I have 13 Purple Gems in my current world after a Ruins Rush. If I spent them all on Batbats, that would be 6000+ hp worth of healing. That's more than enough to finish the entire Fuelweaver questline to then later clear ruins again for another huge pile of purple gems. In fact, it's more than enough for me to also do Dragonfly, and Bee Queen before Fuelweaver. I am playing Wormwood, so I can negate the only other downside of the Batbat by spamming Moon shrooms, or kill Bee Queen for her Crown to solve this issue as any character. 

Sure, I hope you have a great time grinding Batilisk wings, also Bee Queen Crown only converts sanity aura, Batbat just consumes your santiy 

 

2 hours ago, FillerText said:

If you are saying this isn't a legitimate alternative option just because most people "Use Hambats, and Football helmets" then idk what to tell you. Your Playstyle doesn't change the fact that I can easily do this if I wanted to.

I don't deny the streantgh of  batbat, but it's not a good alternative, low damage, drains sanity, and is expensive to craft on top of that. Batbat is best used as an alternative to healing food, not a main weapon, at least in my opinion.

[WilsonHiggs]

Just now, Sikers said:

hope you have a great time grinding Batilisk wings

Define grinding... They have good drop ratio, spawn every dusk and can be found by dozens in the guano biome

[Sikers]

3 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Define grinding... They have good drop ratio, spawn every dusk and can be found by dozens in the guano biome

It's fine if you need few, but 39 wings with 25% drop rate is a lot of grinde

[WilsonHiggs]

21 minutes ago, Sikers said:

It's fine if you need few, but 39 wings with 25% drop rate is a lot of grinde

Why do you think anybody will craft them at once

[Mr Giggio]

I do think freezing is severely underrated and ice staff is as good as having a weapon but I do agree magic can be even better and significant to fight.

Like a monster meat hambat that triggers poison so for bosses u stack a line of poison damage while doing the normal fight can raise dps and force more switching or placing structures like traps or stationary spells that also do damage overtime

I do stand for a simplier way to fight tho, DST does have a charm about how simple Fighting is in theory but also adding more than just a kite can make it intense in the inventory control. 

 

I would even add that Klei is making that a character thing like catapults and tentacles as "stationary spell" effects so it ends up adding value to the char and not a general idea. It's hard to add a strong general thing to be versatile on top of another already existent general thing cuz if u stack it all in a char proficient to fight it just turns into melting down bosses without much effort in gameplay

Edited May 9, 2025 by Mr Giggio

[Sikers]

44 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Why do you think anybody will craft them at once

You don't have to craft all at once but you need at least 9 just to take down Dragonfly

[Nikki Darks]

I think the main issue with weapons is that... They're ALL just boring and plain?

Why are they all melee?
Why are they all the same attack animation?
Why do none of them have special on hit effects? (Burn, slow, damage increase maybe???)
Why are they all the spear with higher damage?
Why are all whip/ranged weapons garbage and/or tedious to amass?

In short, there's is no variety between weapons, and if they are different from the spear they are garbage.

 

20 hours ago, Cheggf said:

The only problem weapons have is for some reason they decided to add enemies that are basically immune to almost every weapon, so your choices went from almost 20 different weapons to dark sword reskin, or worse dark sword reskin. 

Also this is perfectly said. It dumbs down your selection of 20 boring weapons to 2-3 boring weapons.

Right now the only unique weapons we have are the Planar Damage Staff (forgot the name) and the Lunar Bearger Darts (forgot the name)....

But guess what? To enjoy those 2 unique and fun weapons you need hours and hours of gameplay to even be able to use them for 20 minutes.