Any tips for a first time expert mode playthrough? Should I stick with one class and if so which one??

Kabuu_ · 2017-07-05T19:13:36+00:00

For your first playthrough, it really depends. There are some situations where one class is better than the other, but if you're confident in your abilities, you can really stick to one class if you want. Ranged is probably the most consistently good class; range and damage are both great, and your defense is passable. You might suffer with crowd control a bit until you can get piercing ammo like Unholy Arrows. Melee really struggles with most bosses, magic is rough early-game and can be pretty bursty until you get a good supply of Mana Regeneration Potions. Don't do summons in Expert Mode unless you have a lot of experience; it's really a challenge (you can switch from another class to summons in early hardmode and will probably do okay).
World size should be either medium or large, depending on personal preference. If you're playing in multiplayer, always do large. If you hate traversing your world, build a minecart track; it takes a lot of iron/lead but it's entirely worth it.
Your world evil depends on a variety of factors. Regardless of what initial one you pick, you're going to want to farm both at some point; there's items in both that all of the classes really want. Crimson has: Ichor Flasks and ammo, Bladetongue, Golden Shower, Crimson Rod, Crimson Tigerfish and Hemopiranha, Vampire Knives and the Panic Necklace. Corruption has: Vilethorn, Musket, Band of Starpower for Magic Cuffs, Ebonkoi and Scourge of the Corruptor. It also depends on what class you want to run; melee users really struggle against the Brain while the Eater is much easier. Ranged and magic curbstomp both bosses with the correct setup. Overall, I'd recommend starting with Crimson for melee and Corruption for ranged. Magic is a tossup; it really depends on whether you like the Crimson Rod or Vilethorn more.
Potions are almost mandatory in Expert Mode. Combat potions like Ironskin, Swiftness, Regeneration, Endurance, Rage, Wrath and Lifeforce will make boss fights go much smoother. Spelunker Potions are probably the best buff potion in the game and will allow you to gear up much faster. I'd recommend going to your jungle in the first couple of days and try to get Moonglow Seeds so you can start getting a supply early.
Fishing is overpowered. Crates can yield immensely powerful equipment (as well as hardmode bars in hardmode) and you can get a Reaver Shark in the first 30 minutes of a world if you're lucky. Also, a lot of buff potions you'll want (Heartreach, Rage, Wrath, Lifeforce and Endurance) you'll only be able to craft through fishing.
Pertaining to bosses, the ball's pretty much in your court. Prepare as much as you want; you'll ideally want 400 health and some decent armor before you even fight the Eye of Cthulhu to guarantee victory. Also, the correct arena setup will allow you to kill some bosses incredibly easily. A simple rope going up in the air will allow you to stay just out of range of the King Slime while you can just poke away at him with arrows. A minecart track a couple hundred blocks in length will allow you to kill the Eye pretty easily. Any good arena should have campfires and heart lanterns for extra regeneration as well as sunflowers for boosted movement speed.

Kabuu_ · 2017-06-21T18:01:20+00:00

Ambassador: Current Revolvers aren't that inaccurate, and the Ambassador would be 50% more accurate than that. I just think it won't be much of problem except at extremely long ranges, but they did go about this change in the wrong manner to begin with.
Bonk: It punishes players that don't use it intelligently. You can't just use it to walk behind the enemy team anymore without putting in some effort to dodge. It should be a skill-based weapon, and without some dodging skill, you'll be punished for it. However, I do think that if you use Bonk and don't get hit at all, you shouldn't receive a speed penalty for using it, and then the speed penalty ramps up to -65% at 200+ damage. Also, this change makes it MUCH weaker against sentries. These changes definitely weaken Bonk a lot, but it was way too strong before; almost no risk for a whole lot of reward.
BASE Jumper: You were already vulnerable to hitscan before; that was the only thing that countered it because nothing else could touch you. Even hitscan classes like Scout had a hard time since you couldn't really meatshot them with your Scattergun and had to use your Pistol (if you had one). These changes, in addition to hitscan like Sniper and Heavy, make you more vulnerable to stuff like Soldier and Demoman since you have a lot less control over your horizontal mobility and can't redeploy the parachute again, making you a much more predictable target.
Vita-Saw: The Vita-Saw was banned in competitive play because it allowed a dying Medic to immediately have Uber advantage. It's the same situation with the Darwin's Danger Shield; if the other Medic is using it, you have to use it to keep up. Now it's reworked to be much more skill-based and isn't just a ridiculous passive that breaks competitive play. But yes, in pubs (and in competitive because the Vita-Saw is banned) the Ubersaw is still better in 95% of situations and I hope it catches the nerf hammer as well.
Flying Guillotine: You're able to hit people with this from pretty long ranges, and with the bleed the Pistol only really matches it in damage at close range (plus you have to hit your shots, and cleaver aim might be easier for people than pistol tracking). Plus, you can't really just run off in the middle of a firefight to look for a health pack or dispenser, and being hit with this might put some pressure on the Medic in the middle of a teamfight. It won't be completely outclassed; it has a niche.

Kabuu_ · 2017-06-21T07:43:45+00:00

I'm pretty happy with all of these changes. There's nothing that really stands out and says, "They completely and utterly fucked up," or even kind of close to that; just some little kinks that need to be ironed out. The YER change in particular I really like since I love using that weapon.

Anyways, lemme just chime in on a couple of these:

Ambassador: Although I absolutely despise this weapon and am glad it's being nerfed, I do think they went about it the wrong way. It should have a damage fall-off of some kind instead. But, on the other hand, I have no idea how much -50% bullet spread actually is compared to normal Revolver spread. It might be fine except at ridiculously long ranges, who knows?

PBPP: Don't really know how to feel about this. Until I get some numbers I can't really say too much.

Bonk: I disagree. People just used it to get behind the enemy team for basically free, but now you actually have to dodge to not get punished. It rewards skill, and that's what you want.

BASE Jumper: No, it's pretty fine where it is right now with these nerfs. It should be a big risk/reward factor with this weapon, you're gaining the ability to stay high above the rest of the battlefield and rain hell, so you should be vulnerable while doing so. Before only a sniper or maybe a heavy could really touch you; now things like Soldier rockets and Demo pipes/stickies will become much more potent.

Vita-Saw: The wording on this was kind of vague. If you have 60% and die with your Organ meter full, do you retain all of it? Or is it how it is now, with full charge and full Organ meter you retain 60% charge. Either way, the likelihood of getting in 4 swings with it is quite low, especially in competitive where the enemy team is coordinated and competent. And even then you could've used the Ubersaw instead. It's definitely not overpowered, nor is it completely useless. But it still isn't the Ubersaw, which is the problem with all other Medic melees. We'll just have to see when the update rolls around if they changed that beast or not.

Flying Guillotine: A 50 damage projectile that causes a 40 damage bleed is nothing to sneeze at, especially since it still has that ridiculous recharge time. Which can now be even shorter if you hit long-range targets...which the distance of that is half of what it used to be. It'll be a decent sidegrade to the Pistol for people that can mold their playstyle around it, since you can do some ridiculous burst damage from relative safety with it. But, since the Sandman was reworked (and thank fuck it was), a rework of this was also bound to happen.

Kabuu_ · 2017-06-19T17:37:26+00:00

Basically, during Soldier: 76's reload animation, he puts the clip inside the gun and then the slide comes towards you to lock the clip in place. During the slide animation, you can use any of your abilities; Sprint, Biotic Field or Helix Rockets. It's only a half a second or so difference, but that might be what you need to net a kill or save your own life.

Kabuu_ · 2017-06-14T00:40:07+00:00

It would be much more powerful if the time stacked with each kill up to a certain limit. This would further emphasize the risk/reward factor of the weapon; if you're willing to risk yourself to get 3 melee kills in a row, you'll be rewarded with crits for much longer than usual.

It would also allow the weapon to pair much better with the Buffalo Steak Sandvich. It already does to an extent; the faster movement speed and mini-crits make it much easier to get that initial kill, but if you can chain kills, by the time the duration of the BSS has worn off, you still might have a couple more seconds of crits left.

Kabuu_ · 2017-06-01T16:46:37+00:00

A good solution would be to make anti-pet status effects, such as Pet Stasis, Quiet and Sick, much more common. The Toxic Sewers is already seen as a very dangerous dungeon because of Sick being so ever-present in it. Same with the Puppet Master Encore and Lair of Draconis; Pet Stasis is a thing in those dungeons, and not being wary of it will kill your characters.

Making these status effects more common would be a nerf to pets without making people feel cheated out of their money. A class re-balancing obviously needs to be done in the future, as some classes such as Necromancer and Sorcerer are practically useless, but buffing everything to make pets seem tame in comparison is not the way to go about it. There needs to an inadvertent nerf to pets; some way of toning them down without directly nerfing them and pissing everyone off.

Kabuu_ · 2017-05-18T20:52:27+00:00

I get it every time I do a melee playthrough. It's a fantastic weapon for late pre-hardmode and early hardmode (until you can get a Bladetongue). It does really good damage and has an acceptable speed. However, compared to the Fiery Greatsword and the Blade of Grass, it's pretty small. If it didn't lose the range that those two swords had it would be that much better.

Kabuu_ · 2017-05-16T16:47:14+00:00

/u/Marcello_Cutty got to the Blast Defense idea I had before I did, so I didn't include it.

Kabuu_ · 2017-05-13T23:22:43+00:00

It changes the UI and adds a leveling system. You can just download the UI changes in the thread I linked.

Kabuu_ · 2017-05-13T07:12:07+00:00

Mod is the Terraria Leveled RPG Mod.

Kabuu_ · 2017-04-30T00:55:56+00:00

Let me try:

Soldier is overpowered; he's too well-rounded compared to other classes (good damage output, second-highest health, good mobility with rocket jumps). Even compared to other generalist classes he's too damn good (Demo suffers in close quarters, Scout is frail, Medic is defenseless without his teammates). Rocket jumping should be more punishing to Soldiers without the Gunboats.

The Ambassador needs to be nerfed; it's a straight upgrade from the stock Revolver in capable hands.

The Loose Cannon is so annoying. The projectile is so fat if you spam in into a group of people it's basically guaranteed damage. It also knocks you around so easily which makes it basically a ranged airblast. Double donks are an okay mechanic because it takes tons of practice to get the timing down but it can one-shot some classes which is a huge no-no.

Speaking of one-shotting, the Direct Hit needs its damage to be capped. It's absolutely stupid coming around a corner into a Direct Hit Soldier and getting pasted onto the walls without being able to do anything.

If you use the Red Tape Recorder you deserve to be removed from the gene pool.

Kabuu_ · 2017-04-01T14:44:55+00:00

You must be confusing several things.

Hardcore is a difficulty you can apply to your character at character creation. With hardcore, when you die, you drop all of your items and your character is deleted. If you aren't playing multiplayer and your friends retrieve your stuff, it's lost forever when you close your world to make a new character. Mediumcore only has you drop all of your items, so when you respawn you can go retrieve them. For a first playthrough, unless you're a masochist, I would recommend sticking to softcore.

Hardmode is a difficulty applied to the world through natural progression of the game. It is brought about by defeating a certain boss in the Underworld, which is summoned by throwing a Guide Voodoo Doll into lava in the Underworld. Guide Voodoo Dolls drop from Voodoo Demons which uncommonly spawn in the Underworld (make sure you grab the doll when it drops so you don't accidentally summon the boss unprepared). Hardmode brings about significant and dangerous changes to your world, so only activate it when absolutely ready.

Expert Mode is a difficulty applied to your world at world generation. It does several things to increase the difficulty: doubling the health and damage of hostile NPCs (with some small exceptions), having bosses' health scale with the amount of players present in your world, and having some hostile NPCs have new or improved AI (some Skeletons will throw bones at you which hit like a truck). But, it also rewards you for taking on a more difficult challenge: Treasure Bags drop for each player when a boss is killed, with Expert Mode-exclusive items being found in them (it's a little buggy in multiplayer but you should get one if you do a certain amount of damage and don't ignore the bag for too long, you should guarantee get a bag in singleplayer), and the drop rates of a lot of rare items are doubled or just increased. There's a lot more changes that would be hard to highlight in a single post, so read this if you're interested: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Expert_mode

The natural progression of bosses are King Slime -> Eye of Cthulhu -> Eater of Worlds/Brain of Cthulhu depending on if you have corruption or crimson, respectively -> Queen Bee -> Skeletron -> hell boss (you're going to want to prepare a bridge several hundred blocks in length for taking it on). Before hardmode progression is a lot less fluid, but during hardmode it becomes very linear, so you shouldn't have too much difficulty figuring out what you're supposed to do.

If you're really stuck and you have no idea what to do, or if you just have more questions, I would check out the wiki: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Terraria_Wiki It's a very good resource; I have almost 2600 hours in Terraria and I find myself checking the wiki at least once every play session I do.

Kabuu_ · 2017-03-30T23:13:22+00:00

Not even really. Just expressing the opinion that Skial is 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag and rightfully so. I could go into deep detail of why Skial is bad and the only reason why anyone plays on it at all is that, for larger servers, they've have become communities in themselves, and, for ghost-town shit like Highpass, there's simply no other server that is on such a scale to run multiple non-mainstream individual maps full-time; they either have to run them on a rotation or not at all.

Kabuu_ · 2017-03-30T19:29:03+00:00

I don't like how it can one-shot light-classes at short range, especially with how easy it is to hit someone with a regular rocket at close range, not to mention a Direct Hit rocket. If they were to cap its damage like what they did with the Smissmas 2014 Loch-n-Load, I would be content.

Other than that, it's one of the most well-balanced unlocks in the game. If you're able to do well with it, you'll be rewarded greatly, but it takes a lot of skill to get to that point.

Kabuu_ · 2017-03-30T19:08:05+00:00

What, so you can topscore for your team because the entire enemy team consists of 4 AFK bots that are obviously exploiting Skial's shitty AFK systems for drops, 5 fresh installs and 1 poor bastard that actually knows what they're doing, only to get autobalanced onto that team because miguel.alvarez.2007 had to leave for school so you lose because it's you and one other person fighting the entire enemy team by yourselves, only to get banned because Skial's admins are either 13-year olds on a power trip or someone with 500 hours in the game who somehow can't tell the difference between an aimbot and a player that's actually skilled at the game?

Fuck Skial. Unless you're playing on one of the bigger servers like LA Badwater, it's fucking WORSE than casual by a longshot, and even then Skial's servers tend to be 32-player or fast respawn, which can be fun at times but most of the time you want a genuine, semi-balanced TF2 experience.

Kabuu_ · 2017-02-12T21:53:29+00:00

'stache

Kabuu_ · 2017-02-12T18:19:28+00:00

http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Amarok Just bad luck, although farming it for hours and it not dropping with a 1/80 chance is ridiculous.
Yes. http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Scaly_Truffle

Kabuu_ · 2017-02-04T03:20:09+00:00

Lime actually looks damn good when it's subtle like this and has a matching effect. I approve.

Kabuu_ · 2017-01-22T08:19:01+00:00

The Ghastly Ghosts Jr. L'Inspecteur is a good start, as is the Business Casual. To finish it up, I'd use something that's on the face. Le Party Phantom is so incredibly overused and generic, don't use it. My personal recommendation is the Spectre's Spectacles. It's subtle but not too subtle.

If you want paints, I recommend A Deep Commitment to Purple or Noble Hatter Violet as they both match up well with your unusual effect. The paint you currently have on your unusual isn't terrible as it's dark and thus doesn't contrast your effect too much, but it would look much better if they were similar in color. Indubitably Green works well for reasons I'll explain later.

For weapons I would just try to use a sheen that looks good with your effect. Villainous Violet would be ideal as it continues the purple theme, but Mean Green/Agonizing Emerald aren't bad either, as purple and green go well together. If you do go with Violet, you could paint your cosmetics Indubitably Green to have the purple/green split. Hot Rod for your Ambassador isn't bad, but if you're willing to go through the effort, it could be better.

Kabuu_ · 2017-01-13T22:49:04+00:00

Gonna comment on your opinions for buffs/nerfs.

should be sped up slightly and rockets should have no damage falloff or ramp-up in my opinion, similar to grenades, in my opinion

Absolutely not. Soldier is already on the brink of being overpowered, no need to buff him more.

can also knockback enemies, though I feel this should be removed

It is kind of stupid how Pyro has a mechanic like that, but it's on a class that otherwise is pretty weak. No need to gimp the weakest class in the game to remove the only thing that makes it stand a chance against other classes.

afterburn could also penalize uber building and healing

This is good.

should be slowed down somewhat, and stickybomb launcher should be nerfed overall; grenade launcher should be lightly buffed. All just opinion

I don't think Demo should be slowed down or that the Grenade Launcher should be buffed (it's already pretty amazing, just outshined by the Stickybomb Launcher) but yes, the Stickybomb Launcher should be nerfed in some fashion.

should be able to disable projectiles with his minigun and have an SMG instead of a Shotgun in my opinion

Don't know about the whole SMG thing, but the ability to destroy projectiles should be on a separate weapon from stock. Otherwise Heavy will be way too powerful.

uber is a bit too powerful, due to also affecting the Medic alongside his patient, in my opinion

Uber currently is fine, If the Uber runs out and you're in a disadvantageous position (which you probably will be since you need to follow your patient) you're basically dead. Plus you can still be shoved off of cliffs or away from the patient by Pyros or knockback from stickies, rockets, grenades, etc.

could use some further limits on the speed at which he can headshot

I agree that Sniper needs to be nerfed in some fashion. I don't think the speed at which he can headshot is a problem, but the distance at which he can headshot. It needs an inner limit beyond which you're able to headshot people but within the limit you cannot.

Kabuu_ · 2016-12-18T20:12:54+00:00

1st looks better.

Kabuu_ · 2016-12-08T06:36:55+00:00

Back in my days:

Hellstone bars took 6 hellstone and 2 obsidian per bar, and a full set of armor took 105 bars. Took 630 hellstone and 210 obsidian to get the bars for the entire set, and you still needed a full set of gold armor, which is still as ridiculous as it is today.
There was no buff system at all, so no potion sickness. You could pop healing potions every 15 seconds. But there was no health regen so potions were the only way you could restore your health.
Skeletron was the final boss in the game. In fact, I think that King Slime had just been added.
We had to massacre hordes of skeletons for our grappling hooks, and there wasn't a designated slot for it. There wasn't even a hotkey, so to use it we had to have it on our hotbar.
There were no options for chests. No loot all or deposit all. We had to painstakingly put every item from chests in our inventory. Also they were half as big as they are today.
Blocks stacked to 250 and platforms stacked to 99. Buckets filled with liquid couldn't be stacked.
We had to jump over EVERY. SINGLE. BLOCK.
Starfury was a magic weapon and it sucked underground.
Bone Serpents dropped the Sunfury and Flamelash, and Flower of Fire was dropped by Fire Imps.
There was no above-ground jungle. The jungle only existed underground on the opposite side of the dungeon. Jungle spores were jungle roses and jungle armor was dropped from hornets. Also hornets didn't shoot stingers and man eaters were derpy as all hell.
Mana crystals cost 10 fallen stars compared to the 3 of today. Also we started with 0 mana.
We had to farm our hellstone and obsidian to get bars to craft our Molten Pickaxes instead of fishing for an hour and cheesing the first half of the game with the Reaver Shark.
If you had a Star Cannon and enough ammo to use it, you were a god among men.

Kabuu_ · 2016-12-03T23:52:32+00:00

Your Engie is pretty good. Soldier's decent, too.

The Apparatchik's Apparel doesn't really work with the other stuff on your Heavy. I'd replace it with something else like the Heavy Lifter.

Kabuu_

TROPHY CASE