#and of course when i hit hardmode....

[gay-yosuke]

secret laboratory... secret laboratory...

[hiroshotreplica]

i would love to hear why crimson is better than corruption

hi anon ive been thinking about this for so long. i shall list every reason i can think of off the top of my head

firstly, crimson is literally designed to be better than corruption in some areas. the enemies are much more diverse and much harder to deal with to account for this, but that can be handled through getting better at the game.

a youtube video recently tried to spread the idea that the nightmare pickaxe is somehow better than the deathbringer pickaxe because of use time, but deathbringer will almost always be better because of its higher pickaxe power. it just breaks blocks in less hits, which the tool speed does NOT make up for

the crimson's fishing pole is literally just a tiny bit better than the corruption's. the other tools are like this but i think thats funny enough to point out specifically lol.

brain of confusion is marginally better than the worm scarf at worst, scaling to even being objectively better in higher difficulty modes. like damage reduction is great, but dodging attacks is a lot better in hindsight. ESPECIALLY on higher difficulties where enemies hit like a truck regardless if you have the scarf on or not. plus i only found this out now, but the brain of confusion also gives you a damage buff during the dodge cooldown? the fuck? thats huge. oh yeah it can confuse enemies too. like literally the only way this accessory is worse is if youre on 1.3 still for some reason

with the hardmode debuffs, ichor is better than cursed flames. of course, this means hardmode crimson enemies are MUCH worse to deal with than hardmode corruption enemies, but thats apart of the balancing. i dont have the time to really test this out or give good examples forgive me for that.

the flesh knuckles are better than the putrid scent, esp for tank builds or melee players. but putrid scent is a lot more useful in multiplayer apparently?

im not gonna try to argue that the vampires knives is better than the scourge of corruptor or anything because i havent used either weapon enough, but its commonly argued that vampire knives are better. i do think theyre a bit overrated but that doesnt mean they arent good

aesthetics dont count for obvious reasons. if they did, corruption would win. i love the corruption's visuals so much.

and, some points towards corruption:

vilethorn is better than the crimson rod. like, no arguing there. the panic necklace is also a lot more diverse in use cases than the band of starpower for obvious reasons. more of the orb/heart weapons might be better but id have no idea, i dont use them much at all.

the buff potions are bit hard to compare but wrath might actually be better than rage. though if youre in need of a higher crit chance then rage is better.

toxicarp is more interesting than the bladetongue. neither are like, amazing but bladetongue feels worse due to the fact that its ability to naturally inflict ichor feels pointless when theres flasks. but im also biased. crystal serpent is probably better than both tho LOL

chain guillotines are easier to use than the fetid baghnkahs. even though the latter can have better damage, they require specialized builds to do insane dps. unlike the other "safer" options in the corruption, this one felt notable enough to me. this is a tad more opiniated though

[pixelrhys-ocs]

im sleepsy and cant think of guys so do these with anyone you want ok 💔 💙 🍔 🤔 🤩 😞

details about ocs! 💔 BROKEN HEART — what are three of your oc's negative traits?

Kevin! Manipulative, Creepy, Uncaring.

💙 BLUE HEART — does your oc have any cool/special powers and/or abilities? how are they with magic, if it exists in their world?

Fritz is a melee user so he doesn't actually channel any form of magic (Until late late hardmode) BUT! I consider wings in Terraria to be mild magic instead of a physical part of the body.

He DOES get some magic when he gets hit by a Brimstone blast from Calamitas. He has some weird connection to the Brimstone Crag but that might be Calamitas' fault. We just don't know.

But that's a whole other can of worms. Fritz's relationship with magic is complicated at best.

🍔 HAMBURGER — is your oc good at cooking? are they good at baking? which one do they prefer?

Matthew is bad at cooking but good at baking! He likes making treats for people at the church. He prefers baking because he'd burn anything he tried to cook normally.

🤩 FACE WITH STARRY EYES — is your oc a planner, or are they more spontaneous in their actions?

Gerald mostly plans what he's going to do. Part of it is NPC instincts. Following a specific path every day. Of course though, he isn't trapped in that path but it's routine and he prefers that.

😞 DISAPPOINTED FACE — does your oc attract others, or do they tend to be left alone?

Carmine tends to be left alone. Like, as a performer she gets attention but it's just for business. She prefers to be left alone anyway.

Thank you!

[veliseraptor]

if you're still doing the five headcanons meme, how about character-defining quotes for a character of your choice from the untamed/mdzs? (I know I said your choice and IT IS!!! but personally I'd love to see JC or JGY, or hardmode maybe Jin Ling)

oh man, anon, you’re giving me hard mode regardless purely because I can’t...look up quotes, so I have to go off my memory and then go hunt them down episode by episode. 

decided to go with Jin Guangyao because I love him and I feel like I don’t write enough about him myself (as opposed to just reblogging other peoples’ writing about him and yelling about it in the tags).

Two things that came out of this: 1. this got really long, so sorry about that if that’s not what you wanted, and 2. I now have so many Jin Guangyao screencaps. (This is not a problem.)

finally I am coming at this as a certified Jiggy Apologist™ so heads up there.

(Using Viki subtitles because I can’t screencap from Netflix anyway.)

1. "How can I be the same as you? You want me to not be afraid of the sky or afraid of the ground? I am exactly afraid of the sky, afraid of the ground, and even afraid of people!”

I mean, okay, this whole speech is one big Jin Guangyao Manifesto, but as I was going through it to pick a specific bit for this response this was the part that stuck with me - because in many ways Jin Guangyao is a man driven by intense and inescapable fear. The entire world feels as though it is against him and always has been against him, or at least as though it is just waiting for an excuse to tear his throat out the second it sees weakness. This ties in to #2 (and Jiggy’s ‘then bite first’ instinct, but this one I think is particularly defining because of the way it emphasizes specifically fear. 

“Afraid of the sky, afraid of the ground, and even afraid of people.” Set against Nie Mingjue’s earlier words, too - listed as a bonus on this post - this is also Jin Guangyao confessing to what he knows Nie Mingjue will judge as cowardice. 

There’s this great post about how this whole scene is very Jin Guangyao Speaking His Truth - to the person he knows will reject it. He admits this - this fear that drives him, that is his constant companion, the fear that quickly becomes paranoia as his world spirals out of control (control, that he hangs onto so tightly because either he has all of the power or none of it, and without power he can’t protect himself) - with at least some knowledge that it won’t matter.

Because of course it doesn’t matter. How can I be the same as you, he asks, and his entire answer to that question will always be I can’t - I have to make my own way, however ugly that looks.

2. “In this world, everyone began with no grudges. Someone will always come forward with the first stab.” 

I wrote a bit of a post about this one the last time I watched this episode! Basically how he’s talking to Wei Wuxian here, but I think he’s also talking about himself - and, obliquely, explaining himself. He began with no grudges, like everyone else here. Someone was always going to strike first - as his father did, to him, when he kicked him down the stairs of Jinlintai. He went there to get his acceptance, grudge-free, and limped away having come off the worse. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t done anything to Jin Guangshan. 

Everyone begins unstained, but nobody stays that way. It’s sort of a race to the bottom way of looking at things, maybe, but given how much time Jin Guangyao has spent with people stepping on him, it’s pretty understandable that he looks at people with fear (see above!) as those who will potentially kick him down a flight of stairs. 

Eventually someone will hit first, and in Jin Guangyao’s experience if he doesn’t do it then the other person will. Why lie down and let them go for it? Why not at least try to fight back?

3. “'Abhor evil as one’s deadly foe...’ Am I exactly that evil then?”

So this is in response to Lan Xichen’s attempt at being comforting by telling Jin Guangyao that it’s not him! Nie Mingjue is just like that about people he thinks are evil!” and Jin Guangyao is like. “So let’s examine that for a minute.”

It doesn’t just function as pointing up to Lan Xichen what he just said/implied, though (and Lan Xichen clearly realizes he said something wrong, as he stumbles over responding to this question), but it’s also, I think, to some extent a genuine question - both internally and externally directed.

I think about this great breakdown of this scene, and how Jin Guangyao is trying to balance three powerful people and keep them all happy(ish) with him. He is, here, about to do something awful - possibly unforgivable. And I think there is a hesitation, a desire to know (am I evil or am I just doing what I have to?) but also to be reassured. Jin Guangyao isn’t someone where questions of right and wrong, good and evil, don’t matter or don’t concern him. And especially here, it matters very much in the context of Lan Xichen, specifically.

Am I evil? And if I am, what does that mean: for me, for you, for us?

But it’s not just about Lan Xichen, either. It’s posed at himself, too. Is this the line that’s too far? Is this the place where I cross a point of no return? Is it?

Does it matter, if evil is what I already am?

4. "”Under the circumstances, doing one more or doing one less, what’s the difference?”

This one...oof. I resist, to a certain extent, the retroactive “Jin Guangyao was responsible for literally every bad thing that happened after the end of Sunshot” that the Guanyin Temple scenes present. It feels a little too neat. And I’m not quite saying ‘I reject this canon and ignore it because I want to’ but I do feel like...this line interests me because it illustrates not just where Jin Guangyao is at this point (’there is nothing I can say, you’ve made up your minds about me and there’s no point arguing details anymore’) but also, more generally, how he got here.

Because it’s very easy to see how incremental Jin Guangyao’s actions are. Starting out doing things for his father - following orders, getting his hands bloody on Jin Guangshan’s behalf. And escalating. Because once he’s done one bad thing - once he’s already crossed one moral line...what’s another? Or another? Once he’s already stained, how much of a difference does it really make if he does worse?

And besides...he was never going to be virtuous. He was never going to be clean.

5. “In my life, I have lied countless times, killed countless times. Just like you said, of all the evil deeds in the world, what haven’t I done? But I...I had never thought about harming you.”

So I like pain! And this is very. Very ouch. I feel like I see a lot of people arguing about whether this is sincere, or how sincere Jin Guangyao’s feelings for Lan Xichen were, or whether he was just lying to/manipulating him all along - but I think this is a very real, truly honest moment. Because he’s admitting to everything - admitting to a kind of hideous monstrosity that he avoided claiming before this moment, even as he was truthful about what he’d done and why. And he’s doing it to contrast it with that last line: I had never thought about harming you.

Lan Xichen was the cleanest part of his life. Lan Xichen was the person with whom he got to be his best self - the self he wanted to be (at another point in this scene he says it’s not that I didn’t want to be a good person). It’s not his truest self because Jin Guangyao doesn’t really have one of those (who does?), but a self that he doesn’t get to be with anyone else (to a certain extent, also with Qin Su, but there’s a different kind of reserve there however much he cares about her; a consequence of what he knows to be true about their relationship, particularly after Rusong’s death). That’s precious to him. That’s priceless. And here, after everything else is ripped away, their relationship shredded, there’s still this to lose: he never thought about harming Lan Xichen (he did, of course, but never directly). But Lan Xichen is killing him.

BONUS: “A real man can stand up straight and do what’s right. The more these people spout a stream of rhetoric nonsense behind your back, the more you must do things to the point that they have nothing else to say.”

So this is a bonus instead of one of the five because it’s Nie Mingjue speaking and not Jin Guangyao himself, but the level to which this is - how Jin Guangyao approaches things for a long while is really...pretty intense. And in some ways the tipping point for Jin Guangyao is the realization, constant and unending, that it doesn’t matter what he does, or how much he does, or how hard he works - people will always have something to say. There will always be more insults, more snide comments, more judgment. There is no possible way for him to be a real man; the opportunity to stand up straight is, as far as Jin Guangyao is concerned, one he lost the moment he was born in a brothel. 

But I think there is a period of time where he wants to believe in this kind of merit-based success. That if he pushes himself hard enough, he’ll be able to better himself, to make enough gains that he can stand up straight, to make good of himself. That’s an encouraging thing to believe! And for someone like Jin Guangyao who prizes his control - the idea of having that much control/agency is a very appealing one. But he keeps running into the fact that in a rigid, hierarchical society where rumor is king, there’s no real such thing as merit-based success, or at least not the kind where they’ll let you forget where you came from. 

I think that’s a big part of Jin Guangyao’s breaking point, actually - not just the knowing he’ll never be good enough to be more than the son of a prostitute, but the disjunction between people claiming that if he just tried harder then it would be better (notably, Nie Mingjue, here, who I think does believe it to some extent), and his lived experience of trying very, very hard all the time and always eventually running into the ‘son of a prostitute’ glass ceiling. 

There’s no way out, he says in Guanyin Temple; I think in some ways Jin Guangyao’s life has been a succession of closed doors and narrowing paths where it feels, again and again, like there’s no way out - or at least, no right way. No clean way. 

The only way to win was to do terrible things.

[obeyme-kaidii]

Obey Me Card Strategy Guide, (4/4)

The Long Version, part 4 - The Big Picture

(Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)

So far we’ve learned some pretty important things - 

Powering up your cards evenly is the most efficient use of Grimm & resources

Type Advantage on levels 21-40 (and new events) is extremely important

SSR cards are viable in battles, even at later levels

Glow sticks are amazing

And perhaps most importantly -

If your current cards are allowing you to win, keep using them

Now we are going to tie all this together and look at what sort of scenario would necessitate changing the cards in your current lineup in order to advance.

The first thing we’ll do is max out Belphie at level 90 for 186,000G as mentioned earlier. With that taken care of, there isn’t really any room for him to grow in this scenario since gathering those hardmode materials is rather prohibitive and takes a fair amount of time to accumulate. I can’t really increase the Devil’s Trees for Levi and Lucifer, for similar reasons.

So on this level, the only thing I can do is continue to level up Levi and Lucifer. Let’s start by taking a look at how much S is still needed in order to beat this level.

335,000S - 293,000S = 42,000S 

In this example for lesson 39-17, I’m still 42,000S short after accounting for the S from my Memory cards (which are worth 105,000S). 

If I raised Levi and Lucifer to level 65, I could calculate my new total boosted S (including Memory cards).

At level 65, Levi’s boosted S would be 69,000S and Lucifer’s boosted S would be 66,000S.

(please refer to the beginning of part 3 of this guide for how boosted S value is calculated, if you are curious about where those numbers come from)

105,000S + 58,000S + 69,000S + 66,000S = 298,000S (Memory + Belphie + Levi + Lucifer)

That’ll give you a total of 298,000S. And when we subtract that from the S needed to beat the level we can find out how much more S we still need. 

335,000S - 298,000S = 37,000S

Eventually, we would need to raise both Levi and Lucifer to level 90 by spending 966,000G combined. This would bring their boosted S to 85,000S for Levi and 81,000S for Lucifer. 

105,000S + 58,000S + 85,000S + 81,000S = 329,000S

And even then, it’s still not enough to beat the level.

335,000S - 329,000S = 6,000S 

In fact, it’s 6,000S short.

Now let’s go ahead and add up what we’ve spent so far.

Cost to raise Levi and Lucifer to level 90 - 966,000G

Cost to raise Belphie to level 90 - 186,000G

966,000G + 186,000G =  1,152,000G

It has cost us a total of 1,152,000G to get to 329,000S on level 39-17. And we still need 6,000S (at least) in order to beat the level.

At this point, you have two options - 

Use glow sticks (always a valid strategy)

Power up another Envy Demon card (in this case, Satan)

Assuming that you’ll eventually want to beat the hard mode lessons as well, and assuming that a third season of the Obey Me main story will be released with potentially even stronger levels, we’re going to explore option 2 for the sake of this guide. But if you decide to just use a couple rainbow glow sticks and call it a day, that’s quite alright too. (In fact, that’s been my primary strategy for most of the game. More on that later though lol.) 

So now let’s take a closer look at the Demon cards in the Envy set that uses Satan.

Currently, Satan has his level capped at 60, with 1 star and can’t go any higher without unlocking another star or “branch point”. We’ve also already spent 287,000G to get him to this point.

Levi and Lucifer both still have some room to grow in regards to their levels, but as mentioned before, their Devil’s Trees are pretty much maxed out at the moment. 

First, we will need to raise Satan’s level cap once more by unlocking additional spaces in his Devil’s Tree. 

The branch point itself costs 5,000G and there are 6 additional spaces to be unlocked before the next branch point that cost 3,000G each and raise their corresponding stat by 170S. (I am ignoring the “Voice” space in my calculations since the majority of other cards wouldn’t have unlocking it as a requirement to progress.)

3,000G x 6 spaces = 18,000G

Meaning it’ll cost 18,000G to unlock all of the individual spaces. 

18,000G + 5,000G = 23,000G

For a total of 23,000G to unlock both the branch point and all the additional spaces that follow. 

After unlocking those spaces, Satan’s new boosted S has now become 60,000S. 

Let’s bring this back into perspective of an actual lesson, like 39-17.

With all cards at level 60, the boosted S values are 66,000S for Levi, 64,000S for Lucifer, and 60,000S for Satan.

When combined with the 105,000S contributed by the memory cards in my example, you can get the total boosted S for this team.

105,000S + 66,000S + 64,000S + 60,000S = 295,000S (Memory + Levi + Lucifer + Satan)

And when you subtract that from the needed S to beat the level, you will find out how much S you are short. 

335,000S - 295,000S = 40,000S

So in order to beat the level, we’d still need 40,000S. 

Since we’ve already calculated the boosted S for Levi and Lucifer at level 65 while analyzing Belphie’s card, all that we need to do now is calculate Satan’s boosted S at level 65. 

If we were to power up Satan to level 65, it would raise his base S to 43,000S. When taking into account the type boost for Envy, this makes his boosted value now 62,000S. (see the beginning of part 3 if you need a refresher on how this is calculated) 

Next, we just need to compare the total boosted S of all cards to the S needed to defeat the level.

105,000S + 69,000S + 66,000S + 62,000S = 302,000S  (Memory + Levi + Lucifer + Satan)

And subtract the difference once more…

335,000S - 302,000S = 33,000S

Meaning, we are still 33,000S short. 

If we keep going, we will eventually reach the point where Levi and Lucifer are both at level 85. Levi will have a boosted 82,000S and Lucifer will have a boosted 78,000S. Satan will then need to purchase some additional spaces in his Devil’s Tree to be able to bring him up to level 80 with a boosted S of 71,000S. 

105,000S + 82,000S + 78,000S + 71,000S = 336,000S (Memory + Levi + Lucifer + Satan)

When combined with the S from the memory cards, this makes the total boosted S value 336,000S. 

To calculate the total G spent will be a little trickier, so I’ll break it down before adding it all up

For Satan - 

levels 1 to 60 - 273,000G

levels 60 to 80 - 290,000G

First 7 Devil’s Tree spaces @ 500G each - 3,500G

First branch point - 3,000G

Next 5 Devil’s Tree spaces @ 1,500G each - 7,500G

Second branch point - 5,000G

Next 6 Devil’s Tree spaces @ 3,000G each - 18,000G

Third branch point - 8,000G

Next 7 Devil’s Tree spaces @ 5,000G each - 35,000G

273,000G + 290,000G = 563,000G on levels

3,500G + 7,500G + 18,000G + 35,000G = 47,800G on Devil’s tree spaces

3,000G + 5,000G + 8,000G = 16,000G on branch points

563,000G + 47,800G + 16,000G = 627,000G (rounded up)

All told, it cost 627,000G to get Satan from level 1 to level 80.

Since things were much less complicated for Levi and Lucifer because we didn’t have to include any changes to their Devil’s Trees, calculating their total cost in G is more straightforward.

381,000G x 2 = 762,000G

Once we combine that with Satan’s cost, we will have the grand total in G.

762,000G + 627,000G = 1,389,000G

1,389,000G is the total G needed for creating a full Envy set of 3 Demon cards by powering Satan up from level 1, with 2 Demon cards starting at level 60, that will clear level 39-17 without the use of glow sticks.

If you recall, it took a total of 1,152,000G to get the Envy set featuring Pride Belphie to 329,000S. When comparing that to the 1,389,000G that it cost to create an Envy set featuring Envy Satan we can see exactly how much more expensive the Satan route was. 

1,398,000G - 1,152,000G = 246,000G

I mentioned earlier that there were two routes you could take - leveling up Satan and creating the 3 Demon card Envy set, or sticking with Belphie, and having only 2 Demon cards in your Envy set.

Because the possibility does exist that at some point you’ll eventually hit a S cap while using Belphie, it may be a good idea to go ahead and start powering up Satan as soon as you can, and not putting more resources into Belphie (except as needed for the Pride set he’s part of).

But, if taking into consideration the S needed to defeat the existing levels up to lesson 40 in normal mode, it is currently more economical to just stick with Belphie for the time being, and using rainbow glow sticks to close the gap in S. While it’s still possible you may need to swap out Belphie for Satan one day - it is definitely not necessary right now.

For the current lessons, both strategies would be viable and allow you to reach your goals.

THE END

And that concludes this long ass guide!

Thank you so much for sticking with me through all this. I sincerely hope this helps you when you’re making decisions about which cards to use, and how to best spend your Grimm and resources.

Please feel free to send me a message or leave a comment if you have questions or feedback. I promise to respond to all of them, but it may take me some time since this was (not surprisingly) very mentally taxing to write over the course of 3 days.

IMPORTANT NOTES -

I only calculated changes to the Demon cards and used the same Memory cards for both sets. Since my Memory cards were all at level 60, they also had some room to grow and if I had leveled them up as well, I could probably have saved a few Grimm and reached my goals sooner. The principal remains the same however - depending on how strong future levels become, especially in hard mode, it’s likely you’ll reach a point where Belphie would need to be replaced by Satan to take advantage of the type boost. 

I did not take into consideration the type boosts for the secondary types. So if, for example, I also had a Beel Gluttony card for level 39-17, that I had powered up for use in my Gluttony set, it would have surpassed Belphie at some point if I was strengthening the rest of my cards and teams evenly. But again, you'd likely run into the same issue we encountered with Belphie where Beel just wouldn’t be able to grow anymore and we’d need the boosted S of Envy Satan. 

Aside from unlocking branch points as needed for Satan, I ignored the branch points/stars for the other cards. This is because after you get past 3 stars, it's a huge PITA to gather those hard mode materials. I would personally rather do events and slowly gather them over time (working on them when Levi’s Otaku Bootcamp comes to town). With how much time and AP it takes to get enough to unlock a card, it’s just not worth it to grind them IMHO unless you literally have nothing better to do. My current strategy is to get all the cards I use to 3 stars, and then increase the stars one at a time per type (all cards at 4 stars, then all cards at 5 stars etc). If you get hung up on fully unlocking the Devil’s Trees for your cards before moving onto the next card, you’ll quickly find yourself struggling to advance.

[cobalt-rat]

I hate when I get addicted to a game and then get frustrated when its method of making the game more difficult as you progress is literally,

“You die in less hits now, and more enemies spawn, have fun!”

I am of course talking about the shift in difficulty when you enter Hardmode in Terraria. I enjoy that the capacity for my character’s strength expands a lot, but it’s just hard to feel like Terraria ever rewards you for skillful play. It feels like skillful play isn’t integrated into the gameplay when your movement options are to move left right, and jump, with minor modifications to your jumping ability.

If you’re going to make enemies tougher and faster, it would make sense for me to be able to maneuver around them in some way. Your character feels so fucking heavy in this game. It’d be less frustrating when I died if I felt like there was something I could have done to prevent myself from getting juggled by a group of enemies and dying because, when you take a hit from an enemy and get bounced into the same enemy, or another enemy, you take damage again, possibly until you die.

Rather, deaths as such would feel more fair if you had like, even a second of invincibility after taking a hit? We’re talking about a game that expects you to mine for materials to make yourself stronger. While mining, often times you’ll find yourself in a narrow corridor, because constantly mining yourself in only open areas takes significantly more time (in a game that already expects you to be playing for a long fucking time).

There’s no justification for Terraria enemies to be as strong as they are. It leaves me asking, what is the focus of this game? After a while, combat starts to feel like you and your enemies just mashing into each other, with projectiles sometimes. Enemy AI boils down to moving towards you, and it’s just up to you to kill them before they reach you. There is no depth.

I keep going back to Terraria time and time again because I still enjoy it, but there are still a lot of things about this game that bother me. One day I’m gonna take a long look at Terraria and Starbound and compare how the two games approach key aspects of their genre.