Part 41: Mars Forever

#39 - Mars Forever



It's apparently Christmas judging by what the bunnies are wearing. I thought we were done with this bullshit until next August when Cracker Barrel starts puting up their holiday decorations.

Anyway, hello everyone and welcome back to Rivershire. Today's update, if you'll direct your attention to the title above, is going to be an interesting one. Anyway, the Christmas event is like the Halloween one. It's short and sweet and barely anything changes.

We'll cover what's different as we run across it. For now, though, I want to demonstrate something the Steampunker sells.



Sam isn't going to be in very many of the early screenshots in this update. But what I just sat down here is an unpowered teleporter.



With the Grand Design, we can run wires for an extremely long distance. The wiki claims that the maximum length is approximately 1000 blocks. I have had the Grand Design place many more wires than that, but when you get above that length, the tool starts malfunctioning. Occasionally it will just lose the wire you were running, for instance. So instead of a hard maximum, consider 1000 blocks a soft cap.



I also legitimately have no idea why the Grand Design sometimes decides to run wires like this. One second it'll be running straight, and the next it's using twice as much wire because it decided to go vertical.



Seriously. No idea. But in any case, we now have wire running over to the LSD house.



Important PSA: teleporters will not work without a device to trigger them. So we have a handy dandy lever here for just such a purpose.



Just like that, we have instant access to the house any time we want!



The Hellevator was useful in the early game, but we're in the extreme late game. If we're returning to Hell, then we need to be there now. So to that end, there's now a teleporter down there.



By the way, during the Christmas event, basic health pickups are replaced by candy canes.



Who here can guess why two cave bats spawn every time I teleport down to Hell? Who wants to take bets on how long it takes me to figure this out?





I was going to run more teleporters, but something caught my eye. This rare enemy only spawns in the outer two thirds of the map, and only shows up once Golem has been defeated. This is a Martian Probe. The color of its lights indicates how alert it is. Green and you have no problem. If the lights are red, however...



Terraria Soundtrack vol. 3 - Martian Madness

Alternatively...

Mars Needs Cheerleaders

Martian Madness is an endgame invasion. To call it "hard" would be to undersell its difficulty.



There's only 12 enemies that spawn. Pictured here are the Gigazapper (600 life, 75 damage, 38 defense) and the Gray Grunt (the naked one, 750 life, 80 damage, 30 defense).

Despite there being 12 enemies, only two have unique drops. Everyone else shares the same pool:

Martian Costume Mask
Martian Costume Shirt
Martian Costume Pants
Martian Uniform Helmet
Martian Uniform Torso
Maritan Uniform Mants - (Two full sets of vanity gear.)
Martian Conduit Plating - (You can build your own spaceship with this building material.)



Pictured here are Martian Engineers (the green one, 400 life, 40 damage, 34 defense) and Martian Officers (brown with energy shields, 300 life, 75 damage, 50 defense).



The engineers also like to drop Tesla Turrets (200 life, 10 melee damage, 70 ranged damage).



This fellow riding a green alien is the Scutlix, and is actually comprised of two enemies in one: the Scutlix Gunner (350 life, 65 melee damage, 60 ranged damage, 30 defense) and the Scutlix itself (600 life, 85 melee damage, 30 defense).

The Scutlix Gunner also drops a unique item...

Brain Scrambler - (1% chance, summons a ridable Scutlix creature. The mount reduces fall damage to 1 point and its eyes shoot lasers that auto fire at nearby enemies. The wiki claims it's the best land mount in the game, and I'm inclined to agree.)



Three more enemies and a shitload of turrets. The large walker is, appropriately enough the Martian Walker (2000 life, 60 melee damage, 70 ranged damage, 40 defense). The UAV next to it is the Martian Drone (500 life, 60 melee damage, 16 defense). The Drone attacks by suiciding into you. Finally the little green fellow with a helmet is the Brain Scrambler (350 life, 50 melee damage, 48 ranged damage, 25 defense).



Uhh... why is our Party Girl all the way over here instead of safely at the rave house?



This little green fellow is the second to last enemy, the Ray Gunner (350 life, 50 melee damage, 60 ranged damage, 25 defense).

So far this seems largely doable right? Sure the enemies have a lot of health and most of them are dangerous if you get hit, but what makes the Martian Madness a deadly event?



Meet the boss of the event. Not miniboss. Boss. This is the Martian Saucer, and it has five parts you can damage, all together having a total of 27,000 health.



The saucer has two turrets, each with 5,000 life and 20 defense. The laser deals 35 ranged damage, and coming into contact with it deals 60 damage.



Sitting above the turrets are two cannons, each with 3,500 life and 20 defense. They launch guided missiles that deal 50 damage. Coming into contact with the cannon deals 60 damage.



The saucer also has a death ray. It deals 140 damage, and we can't break that part to stop it from attacking.

Even now, though, the saucer seems like it's managable. So why is it deadly?



Because once all four guns break, the saucer goes berserk. In a berserk state, the death ray deals 300 damage.



While flying around, we find a present. These are kind of like the goodie bags from Halloween, but with their own drops inside. Anyway, back to the event in progress.



If you're not prepared, the saucer will kill you...



And kill you...



And kill you...

And you get the point. In a straight fight, you will never beat the saucer. Once it enrages, it moves too quickly. There are ways to pattern lock it, but those require a clearing to run back and forth, and as you've seen from earlier screenshots, there are a lot of ground forces that spawn to prevent this very thing.

Not pictured here are about six more deaths to the saucer. I should also note that each time we're dying, it's to a different saucer. If it kills you, it flies off immediately. So if you want to get the completely absurd gear that drops from this event, you'll have to kill (or cheese) the saucer in one go.



Littering your base with water candles doesn't help matters, though.



Finally, completely by accident, we get the saucer into a pattern lock we can cheese it in. Sure, most of our NPCs are going to die in the process, but at this point I was beyond apopletic.



10,000 life and we're going to sit in a box where we're completely safe and just pelt the sorry son of a bitch with holy arrows until loot pops out.



For our endless troubles, we got a launcher that shreds groups of enemies.



No sweeter words in the English language right now.

In addition to this launcher, the saucer also drops...

Xenopopper - (45 ranged damage. A gun that shoots bubbles that then explode into bullets? )
Xeno Staff - (36 summon damage. Summons a UFO minion. Not as good as the electrosphere launcher, but still an awesome weapon.)
Laser Machinegun - (60 magic damage. It's a minigun that deals magic damage with lasers. It's pretty sweet.)
Laser Drill - (The single best digging tool in the entire game. Has 230% pickaxe power.)



The wiki's gif of the laser drill in action. You can control where it digs.

Electrosphere Launcher - (40 ranged damage. This is the drop we just got. Uses rockets for ammo, shoots a sphere that sticks around for about 10 seconds and shreds anything that passes through it. Deals the listed ranged damage, plus the damage from rockets, per tick that something is inside. It's, uh, kinda good.)
Charged Blaster Cannon - (52 magic damage. It's the Mega Buster, except when fully charged it shoots a beam.)
Influx Waver - (110 melee damage. Shoots a sword beam. When the beam strikes an enemy, more swords slash at it. Uh... see the gif below.)



Anti-Gravity Hook - (One of the more odd and cool hookshots in the game. Instead of pulling you to a target, it holds you in place and lets you orbit around a target at a variable length.)
Martian Saucer Trophy - (10% chance. If you get this thing, you've fucking earned it.)

Every other drop the saucer has has an 11.11% chance to drop.

Now I'm sure I forgot something. I know the saucer has something else it drops... It's right there on the tip of my tongue and I can't remember.



Oh right, now I remember!



Sam now has unlimited flight capabilities!

With this we can cheese the saucer out in the open as well. It's simple to do, too. Every time the berserk saucer charges at you, change direction and charge back at it. As long as you run at it quickly enough, the death beam will always miss you. It's trivial to pattern lock the saucer into always missing you this way, and you can them farm it for drops with basically no damage taken on your part.

But that's the martian event in a nutshell. There's no video because I got pissed off halfway through and stopped recording. Then the event drug on for another 45 minutes past the 15 I already had recorded. So to end this, let's crack open a bunch of christmas presents.



There's a metric fuckton of drops that can come out of presents. Most of them are used in the early game exclusively. For instance, the candy cane sword that we found deals 20 melee damage. A lot of the drops are also building materials of various flavors, and we don't need any of that.



Though for a brief moment we can be Kenny, swinging a candy cane sword.



Finally, to end this update there's a bunch of new idiots hanging out at the mouth of the dungeon. If we kill all four of them, then their boss appears and the game's finale gets underway. We don't want any of that, so we'll just let them do their thing in peace.

NEXT TIME: