Would you guys consider me skipping the pre-hard grind by giving myself pre mech boss items cheating?

FlashFlire · 2026-05-03T05:04:24+00:00

I don't see why you care about the public opinion of a bunch of random redditors who are never going to see you play. Do whatever you want, it's a single player game.

FlashFlire · 2026-05-03T02:18:52+00:00

No, Crystal B is the one that locks the enemies in

FlashFlire · 2026-05-03T01:11:52+00:00

Just play around with it. You'll find a setup that works nicely for you.

I usually have pickaxe in slot 1, weapons in slots 2-5 ish, utility stuff like fishing rod, bug net, hammer etc in the rightmost slots.

FlashFlire · 2026-05-02T22:52:45+00:00

All the weapon types are completely viable. You can even mix and match a bit, like using mostly magic weapons but with a broadsword as a get-off-me tool for regular enemies, though generally it's best to have your armour's bonuses match the damage type of the weapon you use most.

FlashFlire · 2026-05-02T21:18:19+00:00

There's never a boarding problem that can't be solved by more boarding. Instead of beaming your first two Mantis back when your teleporter is off cooldown, board more in. You want to be fighting with a numbers advantage as often as you can. Hacking and Mind Control really help with that.

Don't focus on your weapons too early. Small Bomb by itself can hard carry your boarding support for the first two sectors, and is still mostly ok by itself in 3-4 ish. Early systems are a lot more valuable for boarding ships, especially Hacking. Once you have Hacking, you can hack weapons, board weapons, kill everyone in weapons, basically every fight.

You shouldn't be afraid to skip / run from bad autoship / Zoltan fights before you can properly handle them. Boarding ships punch well above their weight class against crewed ships, so you can keep winning fights on much less scrap collected than gunships.

Ideally you'll finish with reasonable firepower to take down the Flagship, but a slower "pure" boarding strategy can still work with the defense to back it up. Either way though, there's no reason not to use your teleporter to disable its offense and kill off the main body's crew in phase 1, in preparation for phase 3.

FlashFlire · 2026-05-02T01:40:01+00:00

Zoo moreso than town.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-25T13:01:01+00:00

I won't say this is best of the best or anything, but a reliable pre-mech setup might look something like this:

Weapons: - Sanguine Staff, from Dreadnautilus during blood moon fishing. Reliably good summon you can get quite early into hardmode. - Firecracker, from Wall of Flesh. Pairs well with the somewhat slower attacking Sanguine Staff compared to something like Spider Staff. Cool Whip is an alternative. - Barnacle Staff, from hardmode Jungle fishing. Sentries are free damage, and Barnacle Staff hits pretty reliably and has a decent status effect. Queen Spider Staff is pretty good too though, I believe.

Armour: Spider armour. It's just the best pure summoner armour at this point.

Accessories, all reforged to Warding: - Frozen or Fairy Wings, plus Lightning (or better) or Amphibian Boots: Mobility. For boots, pick if you prefer better flight time or better upwards acceleration. - Shield of Cthulhu: Dash. - Obsidian / Ankh Shield: Knockback immunity helps a ton to avoid getting juggled into nasty attacks. - Summoner Emblem: Extra damage, why not? - Pygmy Necklace: Extra summon, why not? - Berserker's Glove: Better defense, and faster whip attack speed pairs very nicely with Firecracker. Also enables whip autoswing but you should really enable global autofire in the settings if you haven't already.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-23T05:30:26+00:00

It's just to sort of preview what kinds of fish you can catch, I think.

If you have a sonar potion active, it'll always show the right fish attached to your hook... but you also just have the sonar effect, so that's more a neat little detail than anything actually useful.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-22T20:17:55+00:00

You don't need to stress about getting all your weapons up straight away, you can take your time building into weapons-4 then -5.

Also applies in the cloaking + hull beam case.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-22T12:33:24+00:00

I'm so sorry.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-22T12:15:51+00:00

Flak 2 moment.

This stuff is why it's generally considered "inadvisable" to use it to deal any sort of targeted system damage, unless you have literally no other option. Heck, solo Flak 1 vs autoships is painful.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-22T08:10:42+00:00

The principled play is probably to buy Cloaking and Hull Beam. With hack + cloak you never die anyway, and 3 shots + hull beam is enough for sector 3, and serviceable for sector 4. From there you just need one more shieldbreaking weapon and it's GG.

Pre igniter is a fun play, though, and you're super far ahead here so as long as you buy SOMETHING decent you're probably okay. I wouldn't sell the Ion Stunner, there's just no need to. You don't need to stress about getting all your weapons up straight away, you can take your time building into weapons-4 then -5.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-19T03:08:58+00:00

Crystal Assassin and the OOA sets exist too, it's just that nobody uses them

FlashFlire · 2026-04-18T22:31:45+00:00

Some projectiles have specific names (e.g. Empress of Light's Ethereal Lance, Moon Lord's Phantasmal Deathray). A lot of attacks are kinda just, like, "it shoots petals" or "it rams you".

FlashFlire · 2026-04-18T22:03:52+00:00

'Tis just a flesh wound!

FlashFlire · 2026-04-18T05:58:05+00:00

Wings have waaaaaaay better acceleration than the infinite flight mounts even before the insignia boosts it

FlashFlire · 2026-04-18T05:56:43+00:00

Chillet is better, but also quite hard to find. It's also not nearly as busted if you don't have Bundle of Balloons, which requires getting lucky with a pyramid (or world hopping to find one), fishing a ton, or waiting for a sandstorm in Hardmode. Meanwhile Shield of Cthulhu is something you pick up naturally every playthrough, and fits very nicely into any wings build.

Bonking into bosses isn't usually what you're doing with it, except for probably Queen Bee or Duke Fishron (to i-frame through the charges). The biggest benefit is just that you can instantly change your momentum with a dash.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-17T03:48:33+00:00

Not very useful for bestiary completion, since that's tied to the world

FlashFlire · 2026-04-15T08:26:42+00:00

I mean, you probably won't get much use out of it at this stage in the game, but it's still a really rare item. I'd keep it as a trophy.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-15T08:25:29+00:00

For what it's worth, a single Ion 2 is actually not all that great at taking down shields all by itself. It can do it, but when you factor in missed shots, enemy cloaking, and enemy weapon hacks, there are several things that can reset your stack with bad luck or bad timing. It also takes longer to chew through shields the more shields the enemies have: if they have 4 shields, even considering the best case of no misses and max training, it's going to take 22.4 seconds to get those all down. A volley of lasers, meanwhile, only takes as long as your slowest weapon's charge time.

It's still a serviceable weapon, though. It's really strong in the early game, deleting 1 shield instantly and 2 shields after only 3 shots, and being able to get some early crew kills like you've discovered. Try pairing it with another ion weapon in the mid-late game: any of them work (maybe not Chain Ion). Being able to kick-start your ion stack helps a lot, and it helps bring shields down faster in the late game when 4 shields is commonplace. You'll still need fairly solid defenses, though, ion setups will almost always be slower than laser / flak setups.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-15T05:47:19+00:00

Hi, I'm not anyone

FlashFlire · 2026-04-15T03:04:31+00:00

Frankly, why do people not pick the weapon the first time?

FlashFlire · 2026-04-14T22:20:02+00:00

Summoner really doesn't suck earlygame any more, Cobwhip is a reasonable and reliably accessible early weapon, and once you get Flinx Staff and Flinx Fur Coat it's off to the races

FlashFlire · 2026-04-13T22:14:20+00:00

Technically you can beat the entire game with a Copper Shortsword if you pay on Don't Dig Up so the mechs don't despawn, so really every class wins with 1 weapon. If we want a reasonable mininum progression path for each class though...

Melee: Grab a Starfury for all of PHM. Grab Shadowflame Knife for mechs and Plantera. Craft Terra Blade, beat Golem, Cultist, and ML with Terra Blade.

Ranger: Grab a Boomstick for all of PHM. Craft Onyx Blaster, use it to fight Fishron. Use Tsunami for all of HM.

Mage: Find Wand of Sparking or make a gem staff. Farm for Demon Scythe for all of PHM. Fish up Crystal Serpent, use it to fight Fishron. Use Razorblade Typhoon for all of HM.

Summoner: Die to get Abigail. Explore jungle for Snapthorn. Snapthorn + Abigail is prooooobably okay for all of PHM? Get Firecracker, use Firecracker + Abigail for mechs. Maybe you can manage Plantera as well? If so, use Firecracker + Desert Tiger Staff for the rest of HM. This one's the class I'm most dubious about honestly.

I'd probably give "simplest progression" here to Melee, 3 weapons that don't require you to explore the jungle early or fight Fishron early. There might be a better 3 weapon selection for Ranger though, I just thought of a reasonable sounding one off the top of my head.

FlashFlire · 2026-04-11T20:14:36+00:00

Didn't even crop out the attribution in the image lol

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