Do you really want to use ONLY dark swords?

[Mit_Mit_Mit]

I’ve seen discussions about the recent changes making the Glass Cutter cheaper and more accessible. A common argument is that this removes the weapon from its "niche," making it less unique. Others claim the new recipe is "unfairly" cheap - just 1 log and 3 moon shards for 68 damage (equal to a dark sword). And of course, some say allowing prototyping is excessive, especially given prior updates.

But I want to ask these critics directly: Do you actually play the game?

Before these changes, the Glass Cutter had one purpose: killing Fuelweaver. It was optimal for that fight (no sanity drain, higher durability), but useless elsewhere. Against non-shadow mobs (i.e., 90% of enemies), it broke faster than a dark sword, and you couldn’t craft it on demand. Carrying a weapon that degrades quickly is pointless - it’d break before you got real value.

That’s why nobody used it. That’s why everyone uses dark swords - not just for damage, but because they’re craftable anytime, anywhere.

On "cheapness" and accessibility:
Dark sword: Requires two crafting stations, chopping totally normal trees/killing Treeguards, and farming nightmare creatures.

Glass Cutter: Find an island, build a boat, sail, gather an altar, chop trees, mine glass boulders.

Both require effort and game knowledge. Dark swords have higher risk, but resources are universally available. Glass Cutters demand specific locations (which you must discover) and non anytime available lunar glass.

This creates a REAL choice:
Stick to the 10-year meta (dark swords), or

Explore new content, gather lunar resources, and use a viable alternative.

Is the Glass Cutter better? Slightly:
 Cheaper
 No sanity cost
 Rewards non-mandatory exploration

But it’s not OP - it’s a meaningful side-grade. The fact that it’s a bit stronger than dark swords makes it a good alternative, not just a reskin or situational tool.

The reality of balance:
Right now, the Glass Cutter can only exist in three states:

Worse than dark swords - Nobody uses it.

Equal to dark swords - Just a reskin with extra steps.

Better than dark swords - Justifies its niche and effort.

If critics want to only use dark swords forever, then yes - make the Glass Cutter harder to craft and don't add prototyping. But if we want fresh gameplay after a decade, prototyping and affordable recipes are essential.

As for cost? 1 log + 3 shards is fair. The lower durability balances the ease of crafting, and lunar trips still aren’t trivial.

[Well-met]

ok well Do you really want to use ONLY glass cutters?

[Mit_Mit_Mit]

2 minutes ago, Well-met said:

ok well Do you really want to use ONLY glass cutters?

Nobody's stopping you from using dark swords. Why should I be restricted from using glass cutters then?

[Cruvimaster]

I'm convinced the devs know that almost all players only use the hambat. And if the hambat had planar damage, they'd keep using it forever. Only the Toadstool makes you want to use another weapon.

[GrapeVruit]

12 minutes ago, Well-met said:

ok well Do you really want to use ONLY glass cutters?

Unless you're going out of your way to go to the grotto/lunar island to farm glass, I highly doubt it'll make people stick with glass cutters. It's not like the crafting materials are handed out on a silver platter, you actually need to explore in order to make it, and some people would rather just stay on the mainland. Dark swords take longer to get, but at least the materials needed don't require you to explore to get them.

[Well-met]

5 minutes ago, Mit_Mit_Mit said:

Nobody's stopping you from using dark swords. Why should I be restricted from using glass cutters then?

its not a matter of preference or morality, its a matter of people always going for the best item whenever theres a gross imbalance because why shouldnt they?

if you make one option too good, then that kills off other choices and variety and ultimately harms the game experience for everyone. For instance, all those "bad" clothing items are bad because eyebrella exists. Disregard the BIS and suddenly everything else becomes viable.

[Maxil20]

Boop from my post on the update

On 7/26/2025 at 8:17 AM, Maxil20 said:

I think a lot of people forget just how good weapons like dark swords and hambats already are. The Dark Sword’s crafting costs practically come directly to the player. You are always going to cut down trees, and unless you are hyper managing your sanity you’re going to have various insanity moments and fight shadow creatures (much less an entire area of the game where you are forced to do that regardless…). The insanity of the dark sword is very minimal all things considered, because unless you are fighting or farming nightmare fuel most players are not going to hold it while walking around as opposed to literally Any Other Item, especially the walking cane.

The cutter’s changes are great, but once you mine out the initial moon shard piles your options of renewing the glass are very limited pre rifts/moonstorms. You can either use bath bombs on the lunar island and wait for a full moon, wait for several full moons for the lunar glass piles to spawn in the caves, fish up lunar wobsters, or hunt down sunken treasures for the moon shard roll. None of these are particularly attractive for mass shard farming, especially considering that living log/nightmare fuel sources are very abundant and rarely deplete to a point this is something you have to consider. By the time you do get sources (especially the champion), lunar/shadow rifts are probably right around the corner anyway.

Even considering this, the ham bat still triumphs both of them if you are planning to do an extreme amount of combat on weakish mobs. Having infinite uses matters a lot more to me than killing the mob slightly faster, and the ham bat can dish out a lot of punishment before the spoilage effect is genuinely an issue. It’s to the point I still use them post rifts to conserve several repair kits of durability to clear out an area of spiders/smash down lots of walls for builds and the like.

I personally like that there's a lot more weapon variety now, at least pre rifts. You can stick with the tried and true dark swords and hambats (they are not going to go away from this, trust me), try out the glass cutters, run the shield of terror, use the morning star for shock AOE, or use one of the character specific weapons. You have way more viable weapon options, and that's a good thing! Players should have variety and these are really good staples.

[Cruvimaster]

There is a supremacy of Hambat. Any effort from Devs to change this scenario a little is a good measure in my vision.

[Dingle]

I just want to use ham bats for the next 30-40 years (IRL).

Please devs, don't buff any other weapons.

Ham bat only please.

[flamboyant wolf]

9 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

Boop from my post on the update

I personally like that there's a lot more weapon variety now, at least pre rifts. You can stick with the tried and true dark swords and hambats (they are not going to go away from this, trust me), try out the glass cutters, run the shield of terror, use the morning star for shock AOE, or use one of the character specific weapons. You have way more viable weapon options, and that's a good thing! Players should have variety and these are really good staples.

Yeah! I feel like this update is a great step in improving weapon variety, first making electrical damage(and by association morning star) more interesting, and now seeing what can be done to make glass cutters competitive with the options we've been used to for so long.

[kroban]

I admit that Im probably a particular case because I do like to stack a sh*t ton of glass, I even used to joke about this with my server friends saying **** like  "glass will be cool, yall just wait, im calling it". I was farming stacks before Walter's skill tree (who is, funnily enough, my main), and even more so now that he has glass ammo. So I always used both glass axes and cutters on the daily.

That said, imo, I think Glass cutter shouldn't have both buffs. It should either be cheaper, or more accesible, both things at the same time will ruin the progression curve, everybody will be running with Glass Cutters at day 20. Again imo, the craft requirement was already fine, Grotto is extremely underrated, the glass refills quicker than most here think. I have played endless where there was 3 or 4 Walters farming it for the glass ammo and it had more than enough for everyone. And now that Bath Bombs got cheaper we could pretty much use Lunar Island as "the new surface grotto" with low-effort.

Edited July 29, 2025 by kroban

[Schneid_101]

I'm not againts the idea of making glass cutters cheaper and be able to be prototyped, but how about replacing the log cost with driftwood?

[GrapeVruit]

2 minutes ago, Schneid_101 said:

I'm not againts the idea of making glass cutters cheaper and be able to be prototyped, but how about replacing the log cost with driftwood?

If they did that, it would SEVERELY limit its viability as driftwood isn't that common compared to logs. Fitting, for sure, but in practice it wouldn't work as well.

[kroban]

5 minutes ago, Schneid_101 said:

I'm not againts the idea of making glass cutters cheaper and be able to be prototyped, but how about replacing the log cost with driftwood?

I agree a lot to this, just requiring 1 log is ridiculous, 1 driftwood would be way better even if the craft stayed with the 3 glass. Driftwood is still easy to farm thanks to the marotter nests, but at the very least it would require a bit more effort to craft it

[GimplyGoose]

41 minutes ago, Well-met said:

ok well Do you really want to use ONLY glass cutters?

I mean... Even if the glass cutter was cheaper and prototypable, I would probably still use hambat/dark sword.

Like how Maxil20 mentioned, you basically passively collect nightmare fuel from playing the game and the living log cost is manageable.

Not only that, but the low durability of the glass cutter is still a major detriment.

The proposed/beta changes to the glass cutter only make it a viable alternative to the dark sword, not an upgrade. And they both still lose out to the hambat in most cases.

Like maybe these changes would incentivise the collection of moon glass from the grotto/lunar island instead of ignoring it completely.

[Mit_Mit_Mit]

7 minutes ago, Well-met said:

its not a matter of preference or morality, its a matter of people always going for the best item whenever theres a gross imbalance because why shouldnt they?

if you make one option too good, then that kills off other choices and variety and ultimately harms the game experience for everyone. For instance, all those "bad" clothing items are bad because eyebrella exists. Disregard the BIS and suddenly everything else becomes viable.

I agree with you, but let's take this further - why don't you consider the dark sword a 'terrible imbalance' when it renders other weapons obsolete? Once players can craft dark swords, they won't bother going to swamps for tentacle spikes or even making regular spears

I'm genuinely trying to understand where this line between 'variety' and 'imbalance' begins. Or should players actually be rewarded proportionally to their effort?

[Mike23Ua]

If swamp tentacles respawned over time (like most every other resource that used to perish over time can now respawn such as Catcoon Dens & Volt Goat Herds) then even the Tentacle Spike would be a viable weapon that saw more usage from players..

However as it stands right now: Over long periods of play, the world can become obsolete of Swamp Tentacle, removing the availability of Tentacle Spike as a Weapon.

DarkSwords & Hambats are the Meta because all other weapon choices (not counting the player specific ones) seem to be intentionally a hassle to not only get, but to also maintain a steady supply over.

I personally would love it if swamps randomly regenerated tentacles in them after X amounts of days (same as how Catcoon dens do) or for Glass Cutters to become more wildly available & Useable.

But the truth is that it’s limited to the availability of Moon Glass, which unless I’m mistaken and the game has an always available location to obtain supply of early/mid-game, Will only become viable once you’ve opened Rifts & Lunar Hail brings it in as a Resource.

And unfortunately…. This makes it IMMEDIATELY Obsolete, because you’ll now have access to the far superior to it in every way imaginable: Brightshade Swords.

[kroban]

20 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

If they did that, it would SEVERELY limit its viability as driftwood isn't that common compared to logs. Fitting, for sure, but in practice it wouldn't work as well.

Nah I think it would work pretty well. Driftwood is less common than logs, of course, and it used to be hard to stack. But after marotters got added that changed a lot. Its the most common thing they spawn inside their nest and they do it each day. Literally out of looting 1 nest there are times where you can get 2 entire stacks of driftwood. Marotter farms would become sooooo worth it with this

Theres also a lot in lunar islands the first time you reach it, and the watterlogged biome. And you usually end up with a lot of driftwood if you are a player that spends time on the ocean. But honestly, marotter nests are more than enough for farming lots of it

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Mit_Mit_Mit said:

Nobody's stopping you from using dark swords. Why should I be restricted from using glass cutters then?

Nobody's stopping you from using glass cutters. Why should i be restricted from using dark swords then?

 

Dark swords have more downsides than cutters.

[Mike23Ua]

10 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Nobody's stopping you from using glass cutters. Why should i be restricted from using dark swords then?

 

Dark swords have more downsides than cutters.

Darkswords one single downside is that they continuously drain sanity while being held, that’s it.. they don’t automatically spawn shadow creatures to attack you, you just lose sanity while holding the sword (when sanity drops low enough then creatures can attack) but it’s a downside that is easily countered by using the sword long enough to hit something with it a few times and then quickly swapping another item into your hand slot when not hitting something with it.

Thanks to a nice QoL Xbox Update: the game now even auto remembers two recently active hand slot Items, so When I’m not smacking a boss with the DarkSword, I can literally just swap hand slot items by tapping the D-Pad to a random shovel or pretty parsol and negate the negative effects of the DarkSword Entirely.

Hambats actually have a worse downside: Their damage gets weaker the less fresh the Hambat becomes and the weapon can eventually spoil into rot, a downside that without access to Bundling wraps: Will always be more punishing than DarkSwords.

Edited July 28, 2025 by Mike23Ua

[HowlVoid]

Darksword have virtually no downside. How after all these years, people on this forum that have played this game for years, want to act like the sanity drain is bad? We use it to farm more darkswords. 

I also like how we ignore that at some point you have so much nightmare fuel from just going into the ruins. At the end of the day they both do the same damage and youre going to gravitate towards the one that best suits your character. Wormwood and woodie are drowning in living logs and anyone else who can level a forest in a day. Maxwell and Wanda are doing their own thing.

This does nothing but level the playing field for everyone else.

[Mit_Mit_Mit]

18 minutes ago, kroban said:

I admit that Im probably a particular case because I do like to stack a sh*t ton of glass, I even used to joke about this with my server friends saying **** like  "glass will be cool, yall just wait, im calling it". I did it before Walter skill tree (who is, funnily enough, my main), and even more so now that he has glass ammo. So I always used both glass axes and cutters on the daily.

That said, I think Glass cutter shouldn't have both buffs. It should either be cheaper, or more accesible, both things at the same time will ruin the progression curve, everyone will be running with Glass Cutters at day 20. Imo, the craft requirement was already fine, Grotto is extremely underrated, the glass refills quicker than most here think. I have played endless where there was 3 or 4 Walters farming it for the glass ammo and it had more than enough for everyone. And now that Bath Bombs got cheaper we could pretty much use Lunar Island as "the new surface grotto" with low-effort.

I get what you mean. It’s a fair question - could these changes make glass cutters "just better"? When we talk about which items are stronger or weaker, we gotta remember: some players always optimize, while others play for fun.

Optimizers will always find the most efficient path (this happens in almost every game). No matter how you balance things, certain items will always dominate specific scenarios. Currently: it is dark swords, in future potentially might be glass cutters, and in the end game its shadow reaper/brightshade sword.

Meanwhile, those who play for fun just enjoy the game their own way - exploring, building, or whatever they find fun.

Perfect balance is impossible, but good design minimizes the gap between these approaches

Glass cutters might become niche, but they won’t break the game - you still have to choose between investing in lunar stuff or sticking to mainland resources. Both dark swords and cutters require effort, just different kinds.

[firoborn]

15 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Darksword have virtually no downside. How after all these years, people on this forum that have played this game for years, want to act like the sanity drain is bad? We use it to farm more darkswords. 

I also like how we ignore that at some point you have so much nightmare fuel from just going into the ruins. At the end of the day they both do the same damage and youre going to gravitate towards the one that best suits your character. Wormwood and woodie are drowning in living logs and anyone else who can level a forest in a day. Maxwell and Wanda are doing their own thing.

This does nothing but level the playing field for everyone else.

not to mention the place where the glass cutter is at its strongest ie the ruins the dark sword is still the better option just because the materials can be used for ancient crafts making it take less inventory space which is very important when rushing/clearing,

[Mit_Mit_Mit]

41 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Nobody's stopping you from using glass cutters. Why should i be restricted from using dark swords then?

 

Dark swords have more downsides than cutters.

Thank you, Your Majesty, for allowing me to use glass cutters on Fuelweaver

Edited July 28, 2025 by Mit_Mit_Mit

[reddocc]

lunar tools feel like a luxury version of regular weapons tbh, a glass axe can cut as much as 1.33 flint axes but quicker, and the glass cutter has darksword dmg but only more durable against shadow enemies. Also moon glass isn't as easy to farm It's limited and takes time to replenish unlike nightmare fuel that sometimes is just left in the ground because having more 40 of a resource you can farm anywhere is irrelevant.