buzzard Requests and Ideas for tweaking the Crystal Buzzards

[Dingle]

I've done tons of experiments with the crystal buzzards, and even wrote a guide for them. They seemed manageable for awhile, but the endless chore of dealing with them is starting to get to me. It's a combination of tedium, and a perception that a random migration can just destroy your farm anyway after killing 20 buzzards in a row.

I wanted to post some ideas in here for how I'd like to see them tweaked, even if tweaks happen in a hotfix or the next beta. I don't think they need much in order to be a dangerous but fair (and less tedious) mechanic.

My ideas:

1. Make scarecrows prevent buzzards and crystal buzzards from landing in a 3 turf tile or so radius. This would add a new function to an item that isn't used much, yet is interesting to craft because it requires growing a pumpkin (when its not all hallows). A small radius would still require you to be careful, or craft multiple scarecrows for your farm.

2. Greatly slow down the migration/reinforcement mechanic. I have a hard time figuring out how long it takes for more buzzards to go to your location after you clear the skies of them. This has sometimes resulted in me killing 20 or so buzzards, until they stop landing, only for more buzzards to show up just in time to destroy my spider farm.

3. Alternatively, some kind of warning or grace period when new buzzards show up to your location after clearing an area. That is, they make their presence known so you can run away from the farm. Maybe they land near enemy corpses, but just give warning caws and fly away until a grace period is up.

4. Maybe less buzzards globally. I need to make an exact count, but it really seeks like you have to kill 30+ buzzards before they leave you alone. This is made worse by the migration mechanic. You kill 20 or so, then you wait. The waiting time is unclear. After you wait long enough, you get to kill another 10+. Then you're probably safe. That's a lot of waiting. That's also a lot of slowly attacking each tanky buzzard, one at a time.

If anyone else has any ideas, please add them!

[Cassielu]

I belive what they need most is to add some kind of crafting item or building that allows player intervene their migration process to reduce threat in a way other than head to head combat.

Like some kind of bait can attract Crystal Buzzards to move towards its position instead of player. Or a barrier, placed in a certain migration node to significantly slow down the migration speed in that node.

Edited December 17, 2025 by Cassielu

[namhai]

Noob question, what is migration? How does it work?

[AndroidSpice536]

I like the scarecrow idea, but what if you could upgrade or give it an item to affect the buzzards. For example, upgrading to a pure brilliance scarecrow would attract the buzzards to that scarecrow and avoid corpses within an area. If you upgrade a scarecrow with pure horror, they stay away from that area no matter what and reconvene on you when you are far enough away from the scarecrow. 

[Dingle]

5 hours ago, namhai said:

Noob question, what is migration? How does it work?

I'm not exactly sure on the mechanics, but roughly:

The world biomes are like squares on a game board. Usually, buzzards will try to follow you from square to square, if they are adjacent.

If you kill or ditch all the buzzards in your biome, more buzzards (from nearby biomes? Just from the total world number of buzzards?) will go to your clear biome after a certain time. I've never figured out the "certain time". Sometimes it feels nearly instant, sometimes it takes quite awhile.

[Cruvimaster]

It would be cool if a giant shadow of the bird appeared passing by the player, indicating that they would spawn in a few seconds.

[Dingle]

I like the above ideas, and hope the developers consider some.

I've also seen the idea of upgrading scarecrows into anti-crystal buzzard scarecrows by using a new drop from the crystal buzzards themselves. Such as feathers.

I forgot to add this to my original post: it would be nice if the buzzards dropped pure brilliance instead of glass. There are a lot of cave rift monsters that drop pure horror now. Seems like much less so for pure brilliance.

Making the buzzards drop pure brilliance would make killing them feel a little less like a tedious chore. At least you'd be getting something, other than it feeling like a pure punishment you're forced to do.

[namhai]

You know, I'm kinda afraid that they won't have enough time left to add and tweak the buzzards themselves and any meaningful possible preventions and/or countermeasures...

So I guess the next best thing is that they had better delay this beta's buzzard changes and push pearlmas stuff (and some other small things) in winter's feast... Probably wishful thinking, I dunno

[Dingle]

11 minutes ago, namhai said:

You know, I'm kinda afraid that they won't have enough time left to add and tweak the buzzards themselves and any meaningful possible preventions and/or countermeasures...

So I guess the next best thing is that they had better delay this beta's buzzard changes and push pearlmas stuff (and some other small things) in winter's feast... Probably wishful thinking, I dunno

I doubt they'll have time to add much of anything. Maybe something like having them drop pure brilliance in a hotfix.

I didn't get to test them a lot, but this beta's buzzard changes didn't seem to hurt things much. I think them trying to eat bees actually helped things a little, as bees are less annoying to use as decoys/lures than spiders were.

[yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

Bright Flare

consume 3 Flare, 6 Infused Moon Shards, 15 Moon Shards

Trigger an small scale old Lunar Hail at the location where Flare launches (like a small scale earthquake in the cave. limited duration, like 30 secs. Limited scale, with the launch location as the center, with a radius of at least 10 turfs (I refer to Lightning Rod's effective scale). but drops glasses instead of rocks). You can recycle part of the materials by picking up the glasses dropped before they disappear.

A lot of Bird's corpse will fall after earthquake ends. (number and categories depend on the Lunar Hail Period, like the natural bird spawning)

All the Buzzards in the sky would fall, losing ability to fly. They would also get stunned for random secs, so we don't have to tackle with too many of them at the same time.

For next at least 8 mins, Birds won't spawn in the Bright Flare's effective scale. Buzzards won't migrate to the biome that launched a Bright Flare.

Use Lunar Hail's rewards to deal with Lunar Hail's threats. Increase the cost by the side effect of the item, not just the materials.

 

Edited December 18, 2025 by yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Dingle]

Just wanted to add that issues #2 and #4 actually got fixed by the last update! There was bug that usually set the amount of crystal buzzards you needed to fight to 30 or so, the amount of buzzard spawners didn't matter.

Now the amount is about half that, or maybe even less.

I'd still particularly like a grace/warning period after when buzzards first arrive in your biome. That and having them drop pure brilliance instead of glass would be nice.