Terraria

[Unkillable Cat]

The way I see it, it is already way too easy to get powerful quickly after hitting hard mode, and never find 90% of the content in it until it's all complete garbage. Found a beehive? Pyramid? Enchanted sword cave? Welp too bad you already have a megashark with an endless supply of cursed bullets, so none of that shit is even remotely useful. Fishing just makes that problem even worse.

I understand that concern, which is why I think fishing is mostly fucked up. As has been said, you can score some cool gear via fishing, but the problem is not only how easy it is to score it, but the timing of it.

People have to keep in mind that fishing in Terraria is an afterthought, it's not part of the original game design. As such it's not a complete clusterfuck, but there are still clear signs of them getting it Wrong.

Example: How easy it is to get 75% fishing power without any major investment. It boils down to 3 factors: Your fishing pole, your bait, and your fishing pool. After crunching the numbers, the best approach I've found is to start from the back. While exploring, look for large bodies of water and mark them down on your map. For bait, buy a Bug Net from the Merchant and start catching worms (about 20-30 should be enough) then use the far-too neglected crafting recipe of Worm+Falling Star to get some Enchanted Nightcrawlers that have a 35% fishing power. During this time you'll have access to various fishing poles from various sources. Don't bother with any of them. Just play the game normally until the Traveling Merchant starts showing up, then check his stuff every time until he sells "Sitting Duck's Fishing Pole" - this is the best fishing pole in the game that can be obtained without grinding quests for the Angler, and it has 40% fishing power (35 Gold may sound steep early on, but it's nothing compared to how much money fishing brings in at this point in the game, plus a little later on). Assuming that you've found a good fishing pool (and if you haven't, then make it bigger!) you're sorted for getting good catches from wherever you choose to fish.

The only way to improve your fishing power from there is to start doing the Angler quests. You'll not only quickly start getting the Angler Armor pieces, but also drops like elements for the Tackler Box, but more importantly you'll get the Angler baits. The Angler has Apprentice Bait (meh), Journeyman Bait (as good as the Enchanted Nightcrawlers) and then Master Bait (50% fishing power and pun intended). If you're lucky you'll get the second-best fishing pole as a random drop, and eventually you're guaranteed a Golden Fishing Rod, which brings your base fishing power to 100%.

So yeah, there are 9 fishing poles in the game, but 6 of them can be skipped because R'NG the Dice God can give you two out of the Top 3 with nothing more than a little patience. Talk about Not Thinking Things Through.

The other problem is when you choose to start fishing. If you do it pre-Hardmode, odds are pretty good you'll end up with stuff that'll last well past the early stages of Hardmode. That may piss off a few players, but consider what fishing offers once you're past the Adamantite/Titanium gear-phase: Nothing, except the option to fight Duke Fishron. It's still a source of income, but 2-5 gold every day (minimum) isn't big bucks for long in Hardmode, especially once you factor in the Tax Collector and the average sale prices of some drops. But consider those players that only start fishing after Hardmode - they'll be underwhelmed by the whole experience.

The main problem with fishing is knowing when to start, and when to quit. This is something that the Guide should drop a hint or two about, but doesn't. Because it's a post-release, never-planned addition to the game. So everything I've just said comes from the Terraria wiki - and you all know what I think about that.

 

[Turjan]

I agree with most of that assessment. That nicely explains why I complained about the boring fishing for that achievement while I said that fishing is, in principle, awesome. It's awesome in pre-hardmode, but I went for the achievement in hardmode, where it doesn't give you much, except potion materials and the occasional useful quest rewards, like the Bottomless Water Bucket or the Super Absorbent Sponge. Given the drop chance, stuff like Fin Wings is just useless junk (forgetting for a moment that most wings fall into that category).

It's funny that, for all its faults, there is still so much of an enjoyable game in Terraria. I guess it gets lots of things right.

 

[Turjan]

The 1.3.3 update hit on September 9, and that's quite an update to the desert. From one of the least dangerous places it became one of the tougher environments, at least as long as there is a sandstorm going on. If you have your base in the desert, you may consider moving, as tougher Dune Splicers and Sand Sharks may visit your house. On the outside, there are some clues when they approach, but it's still harder to avoid them than most enemies. Sand Elementals have a ton of hitpoints, but they attack via static sandnados, which are easy to avoid.

I haven't checked the new gear yet. There's a new armor for early hardmode that caters to mixed magic users and summoners. The new basilisk mount is pretty cool. It's not really fast, but better at running over enemies than the unicorn.

The current version number is 1.3.3.2, which means that most initial hiccups have been fixed now. I haven't seen all new equipment yet, but nonetheless, it's a pretty nice update altogether.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I had a look at the new update as well. The sandstorm visual effects brings a noticeable lag to my system sometimes, which Terraria has never done before.

Sandstorms in the early game make deserts a very risky area to cross. The winds can make it impossible for you to escape, leading to swift death at the hands of charging Antlions and those new "Angry Tumbler"-enemies (sadly no relation to Tumblr.)

 

[Turjan]

I guess my old netbook, which already got trouble with too many light sources, may not have been too happy with those new visual effects for sandstorm and blizzard either. Switching to "retro" or "trippy" look, at least in these situations, should solve this issue though.

In the 1.3.3.2 hotfix, they toned down the early desert spawn (before you defeat EoC) somewhat, so it should be a bit more feasible to go there.

 

[Turjan]

A few new updates have been released, particularly interesting to people who experienced performance problems during sandstorms and blizzards:

Version 1.3.3.3

Changes

• Improved performance during blizzards and sandstorms on some machines
• Fixed an issue on Mac OS X where Steam's overlay would not work
• Fixed snow sometimes not appearing during blizzards

 

[Unkillable Cat]

And they've already started hinting at their work on 1.3.3.4.

INB4 1.3.3.7 will be the game's last release.

 

[Turjan]

And they've already started hinting at their work on 1.3.3.4.

INB4 1.3.3.7 will be the game's last release.

Heh. Unfortunately, they hinted at 1.3.4, not 1.3.3.4. Regarding your suggestion:

I think the modders would kill us if we kept pushing out extraneous hotfixes for no other reason than to hit a specific number goal.

 

[Bahamut]

Fancy water changes

 

[Metro]

Time to work on Terraria 2.

 

[Alienman]

Is there a Codex community server or something?

 

[Drax]

Time to work on Terraria 2.

http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Terraria_2
http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Terraria:_Otherworld

 

[Turjan]

Version 1.3.4. (scheduled for November 15) will bring a crossover event of Terraria and Dungeon Defenders II

Here's the announcement:

Greetings, Terrarians!

A few weeks ago, we shared the outline of a mysterious shape to you all - a revelation which has led to much speculation, as we have come to love and expect from our dedicated community! As revealed via PC Gamer yesterday, this mysterious object is indeed what some of you guessed: a Portal between Terraria and Etheria! A rip in the fabric of space and time itself has pulled enemies, weapons, and more from Etheria into Terraria...and sent our beloved Dryad on a dangerous excursion to save Etheria from some uniquely Terrarian foes!



This will be no ordinary event, as the Etherians have brought all new game mechanics - for both you and your foes alike - to bear as they endlessly seek to destroy all that is in their path. This will challenge Terrarians to devise new strategic approaches if they hope to succeed in thwarting these bloodthirsty invaders.

We will have more to share in the coming weeks - but it will not be too long before Terrarians and Etherians alike are enjoying all of this exciting content.

FAQ answers:

Etheria Invades Terraria

• Terraria fans will see a brand new DD2-themed event – complete with authentic enemies and loot – added to the game. We are planning to make this not only accessible to new players, but also engaging for long-time veterans. The goal here is a truly authentic blended experience that brings Etheria into the world of Terraria.
• DD2-themed event with brand new tower-defense style mechanics developed specifically for this crossover collaboration will challenge players in new ways.
  • The Old Ones’ monstrous horde of evil minions are on the march, crushing everything in their path – can the player fend off their advances?
  • New defenses designed with this event in mind will be at the player’s call!
• Plus brand new weapons/vanity and more…particularly for those foolhardy enough to challenge the fiend leading the Old Ones’ march on Terraria!
• Our goal and plan is to have both of these updates (for DD2 and Terraria) out to everyone on November 15th!
• Terraria players will see this come through in the same manner as past content updates. This will be version 1.3.4. As with all Terraria updates, this will be free to owners of the game. As for how players will find and initiate the content in-game, we will leave that as a mystery for now.

Along with the amazing core crossover content courtesy of @Yoraiz0r, @Lazure, @Crowno, and the rest of the team, this update (1.3.4) will also contain the cool water visuals work that @Skiphs has been showing off.

More details will be shared as we near and reach launch. We hope that you are as excited as we are for this crossover - it is not very often at all that two Indie studios get together and collaborate on something this large across two games. We would like to sincerely thank the entire team at Trendy Entertainment for their partnership thus far...and now we will all dig deep and work to push this update to the finish line!!

This sounds quite nice! Let's see how it will turn out. However, there's also this:

For Terraria, this also gives the Re-Logic team a chance to experiment and play around a bit with Tower Defense style gameplay with our core fanbase – the feedback from which will be hugely valuable as we continue to shape and polish Terraria: Otherworld.

Source

 

[Siveon]

I'm not a fan of Dungeon Defenders II myself, due to a plague of free-to-play elements and un-fun TD gameplay - but this is just more content for Terraria and has no real bearing on the quality of the game itself. If anything, it's just a nice addition.

It's also a little bit of a demo on their Tower Defense spinoff. This is just neat, imo.

 

[Metro]

DDII is a huge grind and sucks bigly.

 

[Turjan]

You are both right. I hope it's just a nice addition and doesn't run over Terraria's basic gameplay too much. Not all updates the game got so far have been real winners, and this looks like an alpha test for a different game (Terraria Otherworld) that may become a pay-to-win cash grab for all I know (which is more or less nothing).

If it's just an event, I'm fine. I just hope they don't make it annoying and it's somewhat enjoyable.

 

[Rabbid]

New update is released already!

Update Changelog

Patch 1.3.4 (15 November 2016)
Features:

• Dungeon Defenders 2 Cross-Over Invasion
• Invasion event featuring enemies, weapons, and gameplay mechanics inspired by Etheria - the Dungeon Defenders 2 universe
• This event will play like no other in Terraria - featuring a brand new mechanic where you protect an artifact from invading enemies with the help of a unique defensive structure system
• Multi-tiered event allows players at multiple points in the game to experience scaling difficulty, with corresponding loot
• Enjoy rewards in the form of armor, weapons, pets and more, all straight from the Dungeon Defenders 2 universe!
• The Tavernkeep, a new NPC from the Dungeon Defenders universe, has arrived. He will be offering a variety of Etherian loot and gear in exchange for an exclusive currency earned by playing the new invasion!
• Completely redesigned liquid visuals. Enjoy the ripples and waves, as the player, enemies, and projectiles now have a visible impact when they enter and move through water
• The Blizzard weather event now has a new, unique ambient sound when active.
• Toggles for recently-added visual and water effects that will allow players to balance beautiful visuals and performance to fit their preferences
• A new ability for Summoner players to direct their minions to attack a specific target
• An experimental new world seed feature (This will be inactive by default, see below in the Changes section for more details)

Items:

• Added four new sentry summons, each of which has three tiers of potency
• Added ten new weapons
• Eight new armor sets
• Added five new accessories
• Added two new pets
• Added one new light pet
• Added three new boss masks and trophies
• Added two new decorate furniture items
• Added one brand new “Personal Safe” style furniture item, in the style of the Piggy Bank and Safe
• Added a brand new currency which can be spent with the Tavernkeep for much of the above

Enemies:

• Added ten new enemies, many of which can become visibly (and mechanically) more powerful as gameplay progresses
• Added two new invasion style mini-bosses
• Added one new boss

Other:

• Added one new soundtrack based on the Dungeon Defenders 2 OST, complete with a matching Music Box

Changes:

• It no longer rains in the space biome.
• Summoners can now direct their minions to attack a specific target of their choosing. To do this, the summoner must Right Click over an enemy while holding a summoning staff. Minions with line of sight on that enemy will target it immediately. However, if the minions do not have line of sight, they will continue to attack targets at random. The way Sentry Summons function has been changed somewhat.
• Outside of the DD2 Invasion event, you now have a limit of one sentry summon at a time. Some of the 1.3.4 content can increase this limit
• Unlike before, when the sentry limit is above 1, you can summon multiple versions of the same sentry. For instance, with a sentry limit of 3, you could summon 3 Frost Hydras at the same time.
• We’ve added an experimental new seed feature to World generation. All worlds generated in 1.3.4 and beyond will have a seed attached to them. You will also be able to set the seed for a world on world generation. PLEASE NOTE that this feature is not active by default. To activate it, please follow these steps:
• Find Terraria’s config.json file. On Windows, this should be found in Documents>My Games>Terraria.
• Open the config file with a basic text editing program, such as Notepad.
• The 12th line in the config file is labeled “"UseExperimentalFeatures" and will be set to “false”.
• Simply change this to “true” and save the config.json file. The next time you launch Terraria, the option to view and set world seeds will appear.
• Please be aware that this is NOT a retroactive feature, and cannot display the seeds for worlds created before 1.3.4, as the data is simply not stored there.

Patch #1

Patch 1.3.4.1 (16 November 2016)
Changes:

• Made tavernkeep slightly easier to find

Fixes:

• Fixed medals dropping only in stacks of 1 instead of their intended amounts when in singleplayer
• Hopefully fixed some enemies being invisible on spawn during the old one's army event when in multiplayer
• Fixed Eternia crystals using their internal name elder crystals
• Fixed Striking Moment buff's tooltip
• Fixed tavernkeep not reacting to the king statue
• Fixed certain worldgen crash that was replicated using the experimental seeds feature! whoo!
• Fixed an exploit
• Fixed certain new weapons staying in use during the player's death
• Fixed silent crash when trying to place defenses in dedicated servers
• Fixed silent crash when using last prism in multiplayer

Patch #2 - texture pack support

Patch 1.3.4.2 (17 November 2016)
Changes:

• Added experimental feature: texture pack support!
• Following the same rules as the seeds experimental feature, first you must set the "UseExperimentalFeatures" to true in the config.json file.
• Texture pack files use a password-less .zip format, and are loaded from the "My Documents/My Games/Terraria" folder.
• For a texture pack to be detected and used it must be named "Texture Pack.zip" and be in that folder.
• The texture pack needs to contain only an "Images" folder, in that folder any texture you include will replace Terraria's texture of the same path.
• Check out the simple example if you're unsure how to use it! :D

Fixes:

• Fixed Pumpkins getting cut when swinging nearby items or projectiles at them (we wanted to make placing blocks over them cut them for convenience, nothing else!)
• Fixed town npcs potentially disappearing if you load a map using a non-english language
• Fixed celestial pillars not loading properly, resulting in immediate wipe and triggering impending doom.
• Fixed Drill Containment Unit being usable during creative shock
• Fixed unconscious tavernkeep & sleeping angler not showing up on the lifeform analyzer
• Fixed tavernkeep accidentally spawning in water
• Fixed stardust armor's excess lighting brightness
• Fixed tooltips on the new accessories saying 'sentry' damage when it meant minion damage, there never was such a thing as sentry damage.
• Fixed numerous input issues
• Fixed item linking in chat!
• Fixed stardust cell minion's shots trying to occassionally latch to town npcs and the Eternia crystals
• Fixed old one's lane portals not emitting light
• Fixed weapons not being usable while chatting!!!
• Fixed Defender's Forge name missing when open
• Fixed Monk's brows saying "attack speed" instead of "melee attack speed"
• Fixed the tavernkeep still calling Eternia crystals "Elder" crystals

 

[Drax]

Oh boy, there goes another 50 hours.

 

[Turjan]

Patches are up to 1.3.4.3 so far.

I'm not in the mood for any complete run through Terraria at the moment, so I just tried the stuff with endgame gear. Okay, it's tower defense play, but otherwise not too far away from normal Terraria events. It's a bit like a cross of Solar Eclipse and Pumpkin Moon. The difficulty is somewhere between those. The first time I defeated the event my char died at about 97% of Wave 7 (I guess I was a bit lazy), but my sentries finished the boss off while I was far away in my base. Which was kind of weird, but I guess that's how it's supposed to work.

 

[Drax]

I haven't had time to play yet, do you good folk know how to trigger the new shit?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I haven't had time to play yet, do you good folk know how to trigger the new shit?

Haven't checked myself, but first you have to find the new Tavernkeep NPC. He's lying around unconscious somewhere.

 

[Turjan]

I haven't had time to play yet, do you good folk know how to trigger the new shit?

Haven't checked myself, but first you have to find the new Tavernkeep NPC. He's lying around unconscious somewhere.

Yup. While it's RNG-based, it's rather easy for most people, about as easy as with the Angler. When he wakes up, he gives you five units of this special "Etheria" currency. With this, you can buy your first sentry weapon.

To start the event, you have to also buy a crystal and a stand for that crystal from the Tavernkeep. These two items are paid with gold. You have to place that stand on a very flat surface area. This is rather tricky. It has to be very flat about 100 blocks left and 100 blocks right. If not, the stand will refuse to get placed, or if it works, you experience quite a few bugs, like monsters appearing as ghosts. You can also build a flat structure higher up in the air for this. The event starts as soon as you put the crystal on the stand and lasts for 7 waves. You also have special mana during this time that allows you to place turrets.

You can buy as many crystals as you want (1 gold each). Which means it's totally up to you when you want to experience the event or whether you want to do it all.

Edit: With endgame gear it's a rather boring event though as you are much too powerful, if you don't do it the stupid and/or lazy way as I did it the first two tries. Upper tier sentries are quite efficient. My monitor is 1080p, and the most efficient way to handle the event is to deal with the enemies when they are still off-screen. Which obviously is also the most boring way, as you only see yourself and the occasional flying monster. Except for the last wave of course.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I haven't had time to play yet, do you good folk know how to trigger the new shit?

First find the tavernkeep, and buy the crystal + stand from him. That's pretty much it.

 

[Turjan]

Terraria got a new update (1.3.5), but it's mostly technical stuff and rebalancing.

Release Notes

Features:

• Added professional localization for the following languages: German, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian (new), Simplified Chinese (new). Brazilian Portuguese (new), Polish (new)
• Greatly improved rendering and overall gameplay on resolutions larger than 1080p
• Added Zoom and UI scale sliders in the in-game settings menu
• Added most of the main menu's settings to the in-game settings menu
• Dungeons in newly generated worlds now contain new furniture
• Added a crystal furniture set, and expanded other furniture sets
• Added Arkhalis's and Leinfors' developer armor sets
• NPCs who are manually assigned to a room will attempt to return to it when they respawn after being slain
• Improved stability on Mac OS X and Linux
• Improved visuals on many different things
• Improved Retro lighting consistency

Fixes:

Spoiler

• Fixed settings button overlaying the armor icon
• Fixed inconsistent naming for Sand Poacher and Granite Golem banners
• Fixed banner buff list extending beyond screen limits
• Fixed hand drawing over backhand glove and shield accessories for female characters
• Fixed Sparky painting and several other rare paintings not naturally spawning properly
• Fixed a certain multiplayer crash
• Fixed sign mouseover text staying on cursor permanently when in Options and Camera menus
• Fixed a world generation crash on Linux
• Fixed a number of minor grammar issues in NPC dialog
• Fixed a certain exploit
• Fixed trapped Granite and Meteorite Chests dropping the wrong item upon breaking
• Fixed Vortex Monolith not selling for as much as it should
• Fixed crash when linking items with invalid prefix ids in chat
• Fixed Pumpkin Shirt and Robot Shirt causing leg skin to disappear when equipped
• Fixed Defender's Forge closing instantly if opened from below
• Fixed Terraria thinking it has focus when it did not have focus
• Fixed Grand Design and Multicolor Wrench emitting light on use
• Fixed auto-creating a world from the server causing it to always use the same seed
• Fixed Platinum Candelabra not sitting properly on other objects
• Fixed Goblin Tinkerer being slightly smaller than intended
• Fixed petrification death messages being broken for a long while now
• Fixed Wall Creeper dropping gore when blood and gore are off
• Fixed Xeno Staff's selling price, now consistent with the rest of Martian loot
• Fixed crash when mousing over chests and dressers in the map view
• Fixed settings button colliding with 6th accessory dye slot
• Fixed Corrupt Thorns almost never generating
• Fixed multiple issues with platform/block interaction
• Fixed pillars of dirt appearing above the Underground Desert sometimes
• Potentially fixed an issue where Marathon Medalist would cause FPS drops.
• Platforms from 1.2.4.1 and above now emit particles when destroyed
• Virtual Keyboard should no longer appear unless a Gamepad is being used
• Using Quick Heal to consume restoration potions now properly inflicts mana sickness
• Defender's Forge now has highlight outlines

 

[Drax]

Nice.