long live the whip discourse

Back in 2018, I first joined, looking to help out in something tangible. The fact that I could launch a game, and see something that I made was the best feeling I've ever had. This mod is the reason I joined discord, and found some of my closest friends. Even though I wasn't the most active dev, this community is still a big part of my life. Of course, I won't be going anywhere! Terraria is still an amazing game, and I'm lucky enough to still be able to create stuff with my friends. Thank you for jumpstarting my creativity, Calamity Mod.

Reposting because r/Terraria Rule 9 sucks

I see his face

youtube video link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiV2aDQAMq8

The mod is based on calamity(obviously) but is set 100 years in the future after the original Terrarians defeat at Yharims hands. The mod will not only compose of some old calamity bosses(not all of them) but also new bosses!

Ranked based on fun and difficulty! the higher, the more fun, the more to the right, the harder the boss is. This is my first time, each boss was fought on tier and is skewed toward summoner as that's what i played. I was also not running optimal loadouts so the boss fights were quite long at each stage. Here's some extra notes on each boss (not necessarily in order):

Eye, scourge, king, bee: not much to say here, none are too interesting but they're better than vanilla

Giant clam: The only miniboss here, he's very easy and simple but i just have a fun time fighting him, both in pre and hard mode.

Eater of worlds: Not fun, I fought them underground in a decently sized arena, but the lack of real telegraphs for their random projectiles is annoying, they're probably a bit too far to the right, but i hated them while doing them.

Hive mind: more fun than previous, and more challenging! made it fun. Not much to say, just a decent boss, except it's dashes can be hard to react to at faster speeds

Skeletron: What a FUN boss, interesting attacks, fun to dodge, just great.

Slime gods: whatever, it's slime gods. Middle of the road.

Wall of flesh: Admittedly, after learning him, too far to the right, but jesus i still don't think he's fun. I hated the fact if you get too far away he drags you into him, it always dragged me through the Lazer, but i get why its a thing. Even past that, the gameplay of jumping to the top right every second isn't too engaging and it's not interesting.

Queen slime: Another one of my favourites, amazing visuals, fun attacks and fun to doge. Just fun overall.

Cryogen: no idea why i put him to far to the right, but i hate this boss. He has honestly 2 attacks, and they're not interesting. What makes it worse is that you can never hit him cause he's always 80 kilometers away, and if you leave the ice biome you cant hurt him at all. He's just too lanky

Prime: Super boring phase 1, moving up and down with nothing too interactive. And phase 2 isn't too interesting, but what frustrated me is his dash attack, it's so hard to dodge and I just hated it

Twins: Better, but they're not too interactive and nothing that special. Found them quite hard though.

Destroyer: just miserable. I hate his drones, i didn't have knock back immunity so I'd just keep getting knocked into his mouth, and my crowd control was awful. More an issue with my kit, but hey ho it's my list.

Astrum deus: I honestly forget about the astral infection in 90% of my calamity playthroughs and my first infernum one was no different, forgot to research stuff so had to wait an hour just to get the summon. But past that he's not too interesting again, but at least it's not hard to dodge.

Aquatic scourge: Super hard to see what will hit you, but that might be a me issue. Kept getting juggled by the clouds cause the edge is hard to gauge.

Leviathan: put in the middle and for a reason cause i don't remember a thing about this boss

Empress of light: My favourite boss, most likely. I love her attacks, they're fun to dodge, look amazing, and it's just fun all around.

Plantera: Forgot to put her in the graphic but she'd be around 4,6 on the graph. Nothing hard, and nothing special to fight, but since it's easy to win it's hard to have a bad time.

Golem: Meh... fly around him in semicircles and it's ok... interesting fight but it's quite hard still imo.

Lunatic cultist: just a squishy guy, hard to learn his attacks since you get 5 seconds with him before he dies.

Moon Lord: i HATE moonlord base game, but this is a great improvement, way more interactive and just fun in general

guardians: oh my god i struggled here, they're interesting though, but hard as fuck

dragonfolly: i literally dont remember their attacks

Providence: I was ripping out teeth but it was a fun fight anyway

Storm weaver: simple boss, but fun because winning is fun

polterghast: Weird spider thing, it's alright. Hard though and my run back was quite bad cause i had poo pylons

Ceaseless void: the camera is interesting but I couldn't get used to it and it annoyed me more than anything

Signus: Visual clarity is 0 with this boss, i couldn't see a thing the whole time cause of the background.

DoG: it's dog, so many attempts, he's so hard. However, it's SO rewarding when you feel like you're actually dancing with him.

Yharon: I love his music but his screeching pissed me off when i was facing him for the 200th time, stupid dash dash dash dash dash I JUST DID THIS STOPPP

Calamitas: I actually find her SIGNIFICANTLY easier than the exo mechs, but she's quite fun still. I like her desperation phase quite a bit

Exo Mechs: holy difficult, I struggle a lot with this, and half the time can't see anything. Super rewarding in the end, but man is it hard to get there

Let me know what you think and if you agree/disagree!

1st and 2nd images by u/the_ahegao_man
4th by @xlphen on Twitter

I would like to preface this by saying I do not expect everyone to share my sentiment, far from it in fact. Anyone who has been an avid fan of Calamity until the point of it’s downfall, I truly understand why you would be heartbroken. Calamity was something truly special, and I doubt anything can fill the hole the same way. It is a genuine tragedy the way things had worked out.

My Experience With Calamity:

With that out of the way, I’m going to get into my experience with the mod. My first exposure was from the OST on youtube without any context for the mod, or even Terraria for that matter. It was a truly magical experience wondering what this was attached to, or what kind of spectacle was accompanying this sound and the lore I’d gathered from the comments. About half a year later I’d pick up Terraria on an unrelated note, where I really learned to love the game. When I was done I finally realized I could experience the once unreachable experience that was Calamity, and I played it for the first time. It really was a wonderful experience, and I’ll never get that same surreal feeling of playing something I’d only seen glimses of.

I’ve been an avid fan since then, though I’ve been past my obsession for it for around 2 years now. Terraria is a faded era in my life, but something I still hold very dear, Calamity included. I eventually stopped being able to care about it as much though, I remember seeing people constantly slander the mod for it’s lack of originality, and I honestly couldn’t refute it. I’ve played many other mods in the time, and there were undoubtedly things that deserved more attention than Calamity. But it was still special to me, so I never let go of it still.

Recently I played through the entirety of Calamity again with a friend, around a month before everything went to shit now. It was definitely a very very fun time, but it really wasn’t that interesting all things considered. After a certain point it really does just become a boss rush with sparce spacinv inbetween. After seeing how interesting exploration could be in other mods, it definitely was a bitter feeling.

I did notice some updates in that playthrough, the new developments were definitely interesting, but a lot of them felt a bit strange to me. Hog wild update definitely confused me more than anything, but hey, I appreciate the effort to make something more fun and zany. But even when I looked at updates in the future, I couldn’t help but get a weird feeling about it all. It was probably just the spriting, but I just could never get behind it fully. The push for quality was insane, yeah, but it honestly felt a but too jarring for the game. The only thing I could truly 100% get behind was the Desert Scourge rework, and I still do mourn that a bit. Regardless of how reasonable my gripes with progress was, it was definitively how I felt, and because of it my care of the mod lessened as it became something more alienated from what I cared about in my head.

Now to today, everything has gone to complete shit. Everyone knows what happened, and the mod is irreparably dead. When I learned what had happened I coped really hard, but I was ready for it all to hit how bad it was once the information settled… I mean, kinda? I felt shitty for about half a day. Half a day, and then I learned about my new beloved, my savior, the treasure I had been waiting for my whole life-

THE PART WHERE I GLAZE FABLES NONSTOP:

I remember learning about Fables when it came out. I’ll be real, I barely cared about it and never planned to play it. I had this weird mental barrier in my head that always stopped me from touching it. Just knowing how much it diverged from the base mods lore felt wrong, and I couldn’t get myself to care for it. But the base mods was dead now, so there was really nothing left to lose. In my desperation to find a future to hope for, I decided to peek into the Discord server.

That was the exact day they posted the redesigns for the big 3 and HOLY SHIT was it incredible. I immediately understood Fables was for me, the mod was made for me, to appeal to ME. I could recognize it wasn’t going to be fully accepted by the community, it was way too different in parts, I get that, I understand. But the absolute joy and giddy I felt when I was imagining what those characters would be like with the polish of Fables, with their new personalities and looks, it was unbridled. The characters I liked as a guilty pleasure, knowing their writing was iffy at best, had been reworked into something I could truly, unabashadly love with all my heart. Characters with depth and soul that oozed from the design alone, it was a real miracle for me. From this moment onwards, I had become more invested in Terraria than i had ever been since I left. My love for the game had been completely restored by the potential I saw alone.

Ok, addressing some elephants. Calamitas’ redesign for Fables has been controversial at best. For as much praise as it’s gotten, it’s also gotten as many people be extremely reluctant. They’re incredibly different, so I don’t expect everyone to like the new look. Most people do acknowledge however that the Fables design is undoubtedly more fitting with her origins in many ways. Though I have seen some defend the old design as having a certain elegance to its simplicity, I mostly disagree form a design standpoint as it simply does not convey enough about the character. Ideally, if Calamitas’ old personality were to stay, her ideal look in my opinion would inherent a lot of similar aspects to the Fables design. Though Calamitas’ personality isn’t the same, at least from what we can tell. They made her a lot more overtly evil. Once again, I’ve seen people thinking it makes her character less interesting, which once again, fair, it’s basically a different character to a degree. But at the same time I think it opens a lot more intrigue as to why she did what she did, and why she’s still choosing to serve Yharim. It’s that kind of intrigue for these bew interpretations that I really love when thinking about this mod.

Next elephant to address is arguably a more grevous one. For this, I’d like to adress the tragic passing of out beloved Jungle Dragon, Yharon. It’s a very bold decision of them to remove such a beloved AND important character. I’ve already seen many deciding to not give this mod a chance because of this, and if they proceed I will not blame them. It’s the most devastating loss taken in the transfer from Calamity to Fables. Having him replaced instead by something else which is all… announced in the weirdest statement ever???
“There won’t be Yharon, but there’ll be a dragon with wings”
Why be so vague? It’s almost like they’re hiding something. Something in plane sight-

Yharim Theory [Yharim + Yharon]:
I think a lot of people keeping up with fables have probably caught onto this by now. The more you look into it, the more likely it seems (some real weird Yharim concepts you got there Iban). Anyways, this theory is not actually that Yharim and Yharon merged in lore, I just wanted to make the (Yhar + im) joke. The core is that Yharim is a dragon, and that they conceptually merged both Yharim and Yharon into the same entity. (This is my explanation for the weird phrasing and why they didn’t outright put Yharon in the removed catagory.) There isn’t too much of a point to this section honestly, I just really wanted to talk about this aspect because if it’s true it opens up SO many avenues for what could happen, especially for a boss fight. This concept is one of the things that I’ve really been wondering about a lot for the future.

Wrapping Up with More Fables Glazing:

A lot of people are dreading how long the mod will take, but I honestly cannot be bothered. I’ll wait as long as it takes, not like the updates won’t be chock full of content anyways. The upcoming Sunless Sea update planned to hit in a couple of months seems INSANELY cool with tons of content to explore. I was originally fooled by the seeming lack of bosses, but with the amount of npcs I can kind of assume a larger focus will be on exploration and questlines, which I’m all the way for. Speaking of npcs, these designs are SO GOOD!!! It’s genuinely so insane to me that these are getting in a Terraria mod of all things, these feel like they belong in their own polished indie game instead. Once again, the personality in Fable’s designs just cannot be understated to me.

Actual Verdict

Ok the verdict is I like Fables, and that I wouldn’t have found and loved it if it wasn’t for base Calamity dying. Technically Calamity didn’t need to die for this to happen, but for the course of MY life it did. Don’t take this as a serious claim on how you should feel for anything, this is just my own very personal feelings and ramblings. I just really wanted to gush about Fables, and how much it’s restored my love and wonder for the Calamity mod and the world it had to offer.

How do I fix this?

Edit: found a fix. (OverPerformance mod)

Edit 2: It didn't work