Adding more Risk/Reward to the Jeweled Enlightened Crown

[Pet Rock]

Inimical gestalts already attempt to add a drawback to the extremely powerful upgrade of the enlightened crown, but being a nuisance and all with their removal surely being imminent, I have a new idea to add more risk (but also reward) from using the jeweled enlightened crown.

The main concept is this: Celestial Jewels have explosive properties.

When agitated (by damage), dropped Celestial Jewels begin to shake, releasing an explosion if they are damaged again that damages everything including players. This could potentially be used for extra AoE damage if utilized currectly.

Most importantly, Celestial Jewels in the Enlightened Crown also have this trait, which means that taking too much damage in a short time causes the crown to shake and then explode upon receiving additional damage. This is mainly a risk since it damages the wearer but it could be used offensively with healing foods for potential higher dps.

The instability of the Celestial Jewels could also be demonstrated in both new bossfights, with a similar shaking and exploding occuring to their crowns when they take a lot of damage in a short time. This might make them a little too challenging though.

[Maxil20]

I feel like the addition of extra risk to an endgame boss drop feels really silly, in my opinion. Items like bone armor or the unpowered crown are really good because they just work. You don’t have to worry about enemy X hitting you 3 times and your items just implode on themselves, you just wear it and block a hit every 5 seconds or benefit from various bonuses when your sanity is above 85%. 

I already feel that apart from the gestalt, the crown already has an innate downside of the opportunity cost  of wearing other items. It’s basically a hyper glass cannon piece; it does a ton of additional damage with the gestalts (I adore using this on the mutant bosses in particular, it feels unbelievably satisfying), but you also compromise your defensive capabilities by being unable to wear head slot armor, which matters a lot more post rifts when planar damage isn’t as easily bodied by wearing one armor piece.

[Pet Rock]

1 hour ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel like the addition of extra risk to an endgame boss drop feels really silly, in my opinion. Items like bone armor or the unpowered crown are really good because they just work. You don’t have to worry about enemy X hitting you 3 times and your items just implode on themselves, you just wear it and block a hit every 5 seconds or benefit from various bonuses when your sanity is above 85%. 

I already feel that apart from the gestalt, the crown already has an innate downside of the opportunity cost  of wearing other items. It’s basically a hyper glass cannon piece; it does a ton of additional damage with the gestalts (I adore using this on the mutant bosses in particular, it feels unbelievably satisfying), but you also compromise your defensive capabilities by being unable to wear head slot armor, which matters a lot more post rifts when planar damage isn’t as easily bodied by wearing one armor piece.

I mean technically the unpowered crown also drains your sanity when you hit things above 85% sanity but I can see that how there is still an innate risk of wearing the crown instead of armor even when it is upgraded.

My problem with the crown right now is that the whole upgrade feels uninspired. The celestial jewels don't seem to have any unique properties at all, just acting as magical upgrades to an already interesting existing item. I would love if something was done to make the upgraded crown more unique, even if the answer isn't explosions

[IAmAFurrz]

the inherent risk is that your head is unprotected and therefore less armor, but the reward is way too much that ultimately the ratio is off balance, and because bshade sword/staff work so well with late game (convenience +high damage (staff for groups)) + the crown it makes for limited options. 

[Maxil20]

8 minutes ago, IAmAFurrz said:

the inherent risk is that your head is unprotected and therefore less armor, but the reward is way too much that ultimately the ratio is off balance

The main differences from the unempowered crown is your sanity doesn’t deplete, your gestalt attacks do 20% more damage, and they inflict planar. Those are admittedly pretty good, but are balanced out by Warbot/scion being exponentially harder than the celestial champion. I don’t really think it’s off balance, as it’s already an endgame drop from a difficult boss that most players are only going to obtain after several ingame years on a world.

You can argue that it’s a bit of a generic upgrade, but I also don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with that. The only thing(s) I would want is being able to dye the empowered crown since it’s impossible to do so with the jewels in, and general visual QOL improvements relating to the filters, because contrary to popular belief seeing Blue isn’t the ideal vision players want to have later on…

[NewGamePlus]

Can I just add, I really wish the effect with the upgraded crown looked cooler…it’s barely noticeable. It’s a really long term reward to go for, or in my case, something I actively rush towards.

Progression should be felt mechanically and visually. While I don’t mind the generic upgrades, the crown looks largely the same.I wish when socketed with the jewels, the crown would take on the appearance of the jewels. The colour and appearance of those things are really nice, and I wish they reflected in the crown upgrade itself. 

[IAmAFurrz]

On 7/23/2025 at 3:43 AM, Maxil20 said:

but are balanced out by Warbot/scion being exponentially harder than the celestial champion

its not that difficult lol. shadow maul makes warbot a joke already, and lazy explorer makes scion an even sadder joke. its much later in progression so cant really use the 'you have to use better gear to make it easy' as an excuse

On 7/23/2025 at 3:43 AM, Maxil20 said:

You can argue that it’s a bit of a generic upgrade

i never said anything about the upgrade (tho the crowns downside of inimicals being the way they are currently ******* sucks for multiplayer)

all i said that in terms of headgear items it has an unmatched amount of reward for what risk it has (outside of multiplayer aand the omni-presence of a shitty mob that can just 1 shot most of the cast that shouldnt be the way it is, which is very easily worked around so i dont have trouble dealing with it)

[Maxil20]

12 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

ts not that difficult lol. shadow maul makes warbot a joke already, and lazy explorer makes scion an even sadder joke. its much later in progression so cant really use the 'you have to use better gear to make it easy' as an excuse

I feel like this just proves my point, though. You are suggesting progressing the entire opposite questline to get a weapon to fight the Warbot/Scion, in addition to multiple other preparations/steps. By that point, the scion is the last progression boss in the game you are fighting, so getting compensated with a decently powerful reward makes sense.
 

12 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

all i said that in terms of headgear items it has an unmatched amount of reward for what risk it has

I don't really think it's too far off. Pre champ, unless you were wearing armor and/or were playing characters that didn't benefit from clothing as much, the Tam was the general all-go-around item you wore at all times. That is dropped by Mactusk, a mob you can easily challenge the first winter and provides you with a reward that lasts until you get the crown (with the other item it drops debatably being the best hand slot item in the whole game...). The risk from wearing the tam was the opportunity cost of wearing other head slot items, like the eyebrella or head armors.

The crown obviously has much better merits like the light/gestalt perks, but that makes sense given its literally the final pre-rift lunar boss, and even the former can be compensated with day 1-2 items like the miner hat/light bulbs pretty easily. A huge chunk of the community is not going to knock out the champ for several ingame years, let alone the scion.

[IAmAFurrz]

10 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

You are suggesting progressing the entire opposite questline to get a weapon to fight the Warbot/Scion,

only people that know what theyre doing are gonna rush to warbot, and since there is such a long amount of time before they get all the bosses, what are they gonna do then? do the shadow questline. if youre not rushing and dont want the maul, just use the batbat as convenient healing, its dirtcheap 

10 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

A huge chunk of the community is not going to knock out the champ for several ingame years, let alone the scion.

then why would they not just do fw with bshade gear and get the maul while they slowly get there anyway?

 

10 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

the Tam was the general all-go-around item you wore at all times

like for late game players before champion was added? or early game progression? cuz sanity is a very minor issue that gets solved with easier to get items like fashion goggles (i use this for ruins when im lazy and dont want to get green caps), and being insane is not a bad thing anyway

 

[Edible Coal]

14 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel like this just proves my point, though. You are suggesting progressing the entire opposite questline to get a weapon to fight the Warbot/Scion, in addition to multiple other preparations/steps. By that point, the scion is the last progression boss in the game you are fighting, so getting compensated with a decently powerful reward makes sense.

are you trying to fight warbot with lunar gear.....

[Maxil20]

4 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

if youre not rushing and dont want the maul, just use the batbat as convenient healing, its dirtcheap 

The batbat comes at a cost of an extreme reduction to your DPS, especially on WARBOT/Scion. You can get away with it on Warbot, but Scion actively punishes you the longer you drag out the fight, so using it for that is not ideal.

4 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

then why would they not just do fw with bshade gear and get the maul while they slowly get there anyway?

 

In order to get a fully leveled shadow maul for the fight, you need to get 2 shadow aitriums, prepare for nightmare werepig and fuelweaver, kill both, wait ~5 days to start the shadow rift, kill the ink blights/rictus, posses the shadow aitrium, then kill 9 bosses to fully empower the maul while making sure it doesn’t break in the process. Again, that’s a lot to go way out of your way to prepare for a weapon for the Warbot/Scion. You can rush this, yes, but its still a significant undertaking and still shows that the reward you get from said boss is in exchange for the preparations you do to get the shadow gear for it.

29 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

are you trying to fight warbot with lunar gear.....

I never said that you should use lunar gear for the fight anywhere???? I said that if you do make all the preparations for fighting scion with the shadow maul, then its the last boss you are going to fight because it objectively is, and you should get a reward that is on par/better than gear you already have, because it being worse would be silly. I didn’t discourage people from using the shadow gear other than getting it taking a bit of time, and for some people that’s okay, and for other’s it might not be.

Even if I did say that, Scion/Warbot don’t have mechanics that actively discourage you from using the lunar rift items or make you violently explode from entering the arena with them. They are going to be worse than the shadow alternatives, but the planar damage/defense you are provided are enough to reasonably perform the fight and you can still beat the boss with them. You’ll still go through the fight at a relatively decent pace and have good protection for the bosses attacks/DoT effects.

[IAmAFurrz]

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

The batbat comes at a cost of an extreme reduction to your DPS

use it as healing, not as a main weapon

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

you need to get 2 shadow aitriums

2 shadow atriums over at least a winter and an autumn, that is plenty of time

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

fuelweaver

hes a joke with bshade gear

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

wait ~5 days to start the shadow rift, kill the ink blights/rictus, posses the shadow aitrium

again, you have plenty of time 

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

then kill 9 bosses to fully empower the maul while making sure it doesn’t break in the process

is this really hard? you can just beat anything with bone armor, cowl and maul and thats all just a joke with lategame dps, and the best time to do it is in spring when moose/goose can be plentiful (not to mention you can just swap to the maul last second if youre worried itll break)

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Again, that’s a lot to go way out of your way to prepare for a weapon for the Warbot/Scion

uh.... the entire questline to warbot is already 'out of your way'. if anyones fighting the boss, they know what to prepare. again, 'its too much work' really isnt that much (especially isnt much when its someone going slow)

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

You can rush this, yes, but its still a significant undertaking

ive rushed it and can confirms its not as 'out of the way' or hard as you make it out to be. 

[Maxil20]

39 minutes ago, IAmAFurrz said:

Snip

I think at this point I’ll just say we can agree to disagree and move on, since I don’t think either of us are going to move from our stance.