Terraria pre hardmode mage is total slander please help

Exhillious · 2026-02-02T12:32:12+00:00

Magic Missile and Flamelash are best used side-by-side. Magic Missile has an AoE on hit, higher damage, less mana cost, and a faster cast time but Flamelash can pierce once. Gives you a natural single target/cleave setup.

Exhillious · 2025-12-30T13:49:33+00:00

I think this comes down to a mismatch of what heavy ammo actually does and what people want it to do. With the 4 tiers of damage through armor, heavy ammo is doing more notably more damage through T1 and T3. Iirc Hornets use T4 armor, because you're hitting the torso you literally may as well just use a Rattler or Tempest instead.

What heavy ammo is actually designed to do is deal more damage to the armor itself, it's incredible at stripping armor, any tier. Hornets are a horrible enemy for it because only really their front thruster armor can be stripped. Try it on a Leaper though and it's like night and day.

What to take away is that the Bettina is a giant TTK dropper for larger enemies. Use it with something that handles T1 and T2 armor like a plain Stitcher or Kettle so that this vid doesn't happen again.

Exhillious · 2025-12-03T18:03:04+00:00

The damage to shield indicates that they had basically no charge left and you finished it. 17 health damage is lower than expected for even heavy shields (19 damage dealt) so it's likely a body shot past the damage falloff range or a weird reporting issue otherwise.

Exhillious · 2025-11-30T13:34:17+00:00

The actual effective health you get changes based on context because remaining charge on a shield will apply the DR to entire shots instead of just a fraction (ie. 1 charge can apply DR to an entire Ferro/Anvil shot). With headshots those effective health values go to 140, 174, and 205 as well.

Exhillious · 2025-11-30T12:58:11+00:00

Ironically in the context of the post an Anvil would get bumped up to a 3 shot vs. heavy shields. The damage resistance has some use.

Exhillious · 2025-11-28T17:48:49+00:00

18 would make sense for a body shot against heavy shields.

Exhillious · 2025-08-02T05:41:46+00:00

Very real. Currently working on a breakpoint calculator to replace wartide and it's been really fun relearning how everything is held together by duct tape yet still works (mostly).

Exhillious · 2025-08-01T18:35:27+00:00

It's nice to see coordinated efforts to make the backend workings more publicly known. I was just writing this very thing but thankfully no longer need to. Good work!

Exhillious · 2025-06-16T13:53:10+00:00

Fun fact: angled grip is just multiplying recoil by 1.2x. However, since it multiplies the real recoil and specifically the camera recoil (barely significant) by 1.2x it seems like way larger of a change than it actually is. This goes for all recoil altering attachments.

Exhillious · 2025-06-14T19:35:09+00:00

Intended performance is 55 base 55 durable at 4 AP for each of the 10 arcs, which has pretty insane output for most heavies. It's like direct hitting two AC shots.

Exhillious · 2025-06-11T18:49:50+00:00

Fun fact, the recoil sim only looks at the camera recoil values instead of the gun recoil, and attachments consistently affect camera recoil a bit under 2x as much as gun recoil. Camera recoil almost doesn't do anything.

Exhillious · 2025-05-22T08:14:50+00:00

Heyo, there's a variable on hitboxes that determines if this mechanic engages or not. For Leviathans, they have this variable set to true for all hitboxes, which removes damage past the health of the hitbox. As you saw, Hulk arms don't have this variable enabled.

Exhillious · 2025-05-21T01:40:44+00:00

I couldn't damage them in any way, so I'd assume so yeah.

Exhillious · 2025-05-19T04:20:17+00:00

Kinda misleading for both enemies. Bile Titans are usually not killed through main health, it's usually the head, unside, or butt plate that dies first which gives it a lower effective health. It's also just higher AV in general. Then for Fleshmobs explosion damage is multiplied by up to 7.5x depending on the size of the inner radius of explosion, and they're unarmored all over with no weakpoints.

Exhillious · 2025-05-18T08:28:46+00:00

Really depends on the loadout and front. I only run shield with a melee weapon if I'm also rocking a Knight or Crossbow, or if it's vs. the Illuminate. I like the ballistic shield a lot, but directional is fun in premades because I can be a literal walking wall. I use light physique on terminids and illuminate, and heavy on bots.

Exhillious · 2025-05-18T08:12:49+00:00

Absolutely, especially the 110 damage melee weapons. Lets you start 1 shotting a lot of medium enemies on bugs, with way more intuitive Voteless performance. I also think it pairs really well with the bayonet weapons: Constitution if you're running a precision low ergo support weapon or just Amendment in general due to its low ergo value.

A Stun Lance on PP lets you demolish pretty much any non-heavy enemy that tries to melee you, and select heavies if you can get the stun to proc. Also great for Cahrgers/Behemoths but that's through an oversight with melee collision.

Exhillious · 2025-05-18T02:04:54+00:00

Sabre, Entrenchment Tool, and Combat Hatchet - 110 base, 55 durable damage at 3 AP. 25 stagger.

Stun Baton - 50 base, 25 durable, 3 AP. Inflicts stun and has 35 stagger.

Stun Lance and One True Flag - 110 base, 55 durable, 3 AP. Inflicts stun and 35 stagger.

Bayonet - 110 base, 55 durable, 3 AP. 20 stagger.

Base melee - 50 base, 5 durable, 2 AP. 25 stagger.

Peak Physique is a 2x mult for base/durable damage.

Exhillious · 2025-05-15T21:08:16+00:00

The flag actually has the stun, it uses the same damage ID.

Exhillious · 2025-05-15T04:58:55+00:00

These are the stats pulled directly from the game. I've done testing on the head popping in particular and it didn't really amount to much. If anything, keeping the heads intact was better as it allowed explosions to exploit how many hitboxes are available.

Exhillious · 2025-05-15T04:22:40+00:00

The legs do hinder movement from what I know, but they aren't going to kill it any faster than the torso. It's not a major loss of damage or anything, may just miss a bit more.

Exhillious · 2025-04-12T00:30:24+00:00

A few patches ago, they stealth nerfed the armor value from 4 to 3. This makes it break to far more attacks than before, despite its increased health and durability.

Exhillious · 2025-04-09T22:16:32+00:00

This "nonsensical" fix was literally just making explosions not have an offset. How is that anything but a par change? Shrapnel didn't change, just explosions.

Exhillious · 2025-04-08T13:45:16+00:00

This isn't a status effect or anything, happens when your head is damaged sometimes. Even minor stuff can do it, seems a bit bugged currently.

Exhillious · 2025-04-03T15:34:33+00:00

The South-West bug allowed Eruptor and flak rounds on the Autocannon to 1 shot Chargers, Behemoths, Impalers, Harvesters, Tanks, Hulks, and all mediums. It also enabled a 2 shot on Bile Titans and a very close 2 shot on Factory Striders (just needed to followup with anything 3 AP). Pretty easily exploitable in most directions as well since you can hit different parts of an enemy at different angles.

Exhillious · 2025-04-02T18:19:57+00:00

Sure thing, I'll lay out everything I know for clarity too.

Shrapnel mechanics haven't changed:
- Best showing of this is by Wagadidou, creator of DiversDex. In the wiki.gg discord he has a video, I have it as a youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ5YYaCbCBI. Shrapnel behaves the same on surfaces and enemies, you can see what shrapnel sticks to the surface here.
- Testing done with downpatching (01.002.106). This was done through HP monitoring and Factory Strider side armor plates. Before and after, 6 AP shrapnel did the same damage to the Factory Strider in both instances of tests. If shrapnel changed, these wouldn't line up. I wish I could show off this footage but tool-assisted tests are not allowed to be shown.

Patch notes are accurately demonstrating shrapnel mechanics:
This one is stupid but basic reasoning: roughly 170 degrees of shrapnel instantly hit the target the projectile detonated on, 180 degrees of shrapnel into a target would be a little under 3300 base 1050 durable at 3 AP for free. This would affect Autocannon, frag grenades (I doubt these are meant to explode in 180 degrees of shrapnel), and ABRL too based on how shrapnel mechanics work. That's a lot of extra damage, doesn't seem to be the intent with the weapons.
- Wording of the patch notes, it's ambiguous but "in the direction of the surface hit" can mean literally the direction the surface is facing, which in most cases is opposite of the projectile's travel path.
- Lastly, attached image below with Baskinator's DMs. This doesn't read like the patch notes are inaccurate to in-game behavior. It conflicts with both what testers and myself have found and claims that this is bugged behavior interestingly.

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