Making Lunar Rift Less Boring

[ShreWdMan]

I honestly find the lunar rift to be pretty boring at times because it's just so much waiting around for things to happen instead of being able to feel the impact passively like with the shadow rift. So, here are a few of my ideas so the lunar rift can be so much less of a waiting game.

- Bring back old lunar hail. I loved the idea of having surface earthquakes in the form of hailstorms. The new version is just so mundane and completely carried by the lunar buzzards. I'd still keep the new one but make it separate.

-Inimical gestalts should not be post- scion. They'd fit in better if they spawned anytime from infused moon shards on the ground. This would add more impact to lunar hail and be a nice alternative source of pure brilliance other than repeatedly checking the rift for ryfstals. With this I would also make lunar hail a bit more frequent since this is all about making the player wait around less.

-Add a 4th mutated boss (preferably Malbatross). I think there should be a 4th mutated boss so that we can have an alternative option for our third mutated boss instead of waiting a while after missing bearger or deerclops. I also think it should be Malbatross because it's not a seasonal boss, it has roughly the same stats as all the other seasonal bosses, and is the only one that I don't see having any problematic impact on gameplay if it were to have a mutated version.

-Find some way to make Enlightenment more dangerous. Having a mechanic that works completely opposite from sanity sounds so cool until you realize it doesn't provide any real difficultly outside the Celestial Champion fight.

I'd also like to hear some other ideas, please.

 

Edited March 3 by ShreWdMan

[DegenerateFurry]

Not a big fan of the lunar hail-related stuff here, but mutated Malbatross would be cool.

As for other ideas, let's continue the ocean theme here: I want to see undead lunar fish as things we can catch in the waters around the lunar island or whenever rifts are open, and heavy ones drop a Pure Brilliance when murdered. Maybe Brightshade-infested cookie cutters that swim much faster and have planar defense, too? And they have a chance of dropping husks instead of/in addition to shells. 

Edited March 3 by DegenerateFurry

[YouKnowWho142]

It's crazy to me that Klei has an obvious bias towards the lunar rift content, giving it all of these updates, bosses, and lore, and by the end the shadow rift still turned out more interesting despite literally only getting like an update and a half 

[RubLog6]

I've thought for some time about the possibility of being able to move Pearl post 1 mutated boss or post cc. Maybe even post cracked pearl returning.

That way one could spend the time with pearl decorating and messing around with the teas.

[Pet Rock]

I like the idea of inimical gestalts spawning during lunar hail but I don't think the lunar chunks should be reintroduced unless they only deal damage to players since this was the main issue players had with it. I also think a lunar Malbatross would be great since it would add more significance to the boss in general.

I personally think the radius of rifts should be increased in both the caves and the overworld, but they should not be destructive so it is just a temporary threat to deal with. Currently rifts just feel set-pieces and I think they should feel like biomes. This would also allow for more content to be added to each rift, like temporary structures that collapse when the rifts close or something of the sort.

I've also previously suggested the entire lunar system should be reworked so that enlightenment is an issue in more places. Instead of enlightenment exclusively acting as a sudden consequence of entering lunar environments, lunar creatures' sanity auras and lunar areas should both gradually raise enlightenment. Obviously it is hard to implement this in a natural way and if it raised the sanity above max then the difficulty of lunar creatures would have to be increased, but this would generally improve the enlightenment system.

[ForbiddenHat]

Idea: add a alter after the rift is fully complete. And like in shipwrecked, you could sacrifice moon items--ideally enlightened shards to change seasons. But to make it interesting, you could have the world covered in moonstorms during the time shift--similar as the celestial pillars in Terraria. Greater gestalts starts appearing, a wave of moon related enemies starts spawning. Basically you're calling upon the wrath of the moon god. And to add a greater threat, when your enlightenment is high, a boss appears that is insanely strong and can turn you into salt in an instant (like the salt formations teased in the ocean) that is if you don't have the right equipment. The main objective is to survive between the duration.

[Radicaljoe]

23 hours ago, ShreWdMan said:

Bring back old lunar hail. I loved the idea of having surface earthquakes in the form of hailstorms.

I didn't like old hail at all, it was very boring because it was just surface earthquakes. I think the new one is better, but it could be made more dangerous. Maybe like you said, by having the inimical gestalts spawn during the hail, kind of like a hound wave. I wouldn't make hail more common though, hail would lose its magical feel if it was happening too frequently and it would just return to being overly annoying. 
 

I really hope that eventually we get 1-2 more mutated bosses because waiting a whole year for 1 spark ark is soooo lame. (slighly mediated by the fact only 1 of the spark arc crafts are worthwhile, but that's a separate issue)

23 hours ago, ShreWdMan said:

I'd also like to hear some other ideas, please.

I would say add variety. Shadow rifts have the shadow trio and Ricky that change from rift to rift, Lunar only has brightshades. Weren't we told we were going to get more luanar rift spawned enemies that would tone down the spawned flood of brightshades?
 

[Mike23Ua]

I absolutely hate all these ideas about raining bosses down on the player in some from of Terraria inspired “Uber Hardcore Mode”

Klei should have instead: looked into what sold their single player games and its two dlc expansions so well.

It was never ABOUT fighting bosses with 50,000+ health, what made the game and its DLCs appeal to people was the wacky mobs, the unique weather hazards each dlc brought.

And if I could get more of that… I’d die a happy man.

If you’re looking for ideas of how to blend content, bath bombs are useless, but what if they were required to dissolve lunar hail build up off of structures before the player can mine for resources again? It gives a new use to an item that see’s very few uses.

Edited March 4 by Mike23Ua

[ShreWdMan]

13 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

It was never ABOUT fighting bosses with 50,000+ health, what made the game and its DLCs appeal to people was the wacky mobs, the unique weather hazards each dlc brought. 

But Malbatross is just a minor boss with only 5000 HP just like the seasonal bosses. I don't know where you got the idea of this being all about tanky raid bosses. Also all the other ideas I suggested were about environmental hazards.

[BB Marioni]

We set the lunar rift to always on, and tons so it always spawns and no waiting time. I do like the old hail better though, it just needed a more accessible early game tool to protect yourself with, and like the idea of more lunar bosses. 

[Mr Giggio]

On 3/3/2026 at 9:48 PM, YouKnowWho142 said:

It's crazy to me that Klei has an obvious bias towards the lunar rift content, giving it all of these updates, bosses, and lore, and by the end the shadow rift still turned out more interesting despite literally only getting like an update and a half 

To me the shadow will always win over anything new because this dark stuff is present in the game since the beggining. It's part of why the game was appealing to me. Feels organic to DST. All the lunar shenanigans are .... There. I get that the lore needs this to be complimented and the rivalry does add spice with this polarized situation but not enough banter between them honestly. 

[Mike23Ua]

12 hours ago, ShreWdMan said:

But Malbatross is just a minor boss with only 5000 HP just like the seasonal bosses. I don't know where you got the idea of this being all about tanky raid bosses. Also all the other ideas I suggested were about environmental hazards.

The Lunar Versions of bosses always have more health than the default versions, and get this weird “damage protection” against any weapon that doesn’t deal Planar Damage. I personally hate it.

to me this would be the equivalent of playing Dead Cells (or any game similar to it like Trinity Fusion or Entropy Effect X) and only being able to use ONE weapon to effectively do decent damage.

What I was hoping Lunar & Shadow Rifts would do would be to introduce new weather mechanics, or change the behavior of existing mobs (such as making rabbits get into and eat garden crops) perhaps lunar hail can build up on structures and prevent the player from using them until the hail is removed, or the ocean could have rough seas (I mean there are chunks of stuff crashing into the ocean)

At some point I was expecting this epic conclusion where Lunar entities vs Shadow Entities and one mob can bleed into the other mobs server shard (like having escaping acid inflicted bats end up on the surface) or Grazers doing battle against InkBlight Trio. Etc.

[Baark0]

Lunar rifts should mutate things in the surrounding area to their lunar variants. On its own this would be fine, but this could also be a cool way to introduce new resources to the game, like lunar berries for example.

[Jakepeng99]

On 3/4/2026 at 12:48 AM, YouKnowWho142 said:

It's crazy to me that Klei has an obvious bias towards the lunar rift content, giving it all of these updates, bosses, and lore, and by the end the shadow rift still turned out more interesting despite literally only getting like an update and a half 

Yeah.

Lunar riffs feel like they have been shoved into gameplay, shadow riffs are part of gameplay.

Probably main reason is that shadow riffs focus on survival threats, survival tools and other things than just combat.

 

(Also, lunar riffs are literally just waiting for something to happen, everything is tied to time it sucks since the riffs powercreep everything pre riff so there isn’t much to do)