Well the only thing that is scary in mediumcore is that if your game gets closed, the items despawn. And we have random power outages here occasionally
I've had that happen once, and that can be pretty disheartening. I don't think there's really any good solutions to that though, not unless mediumcore's item dropping was changed to work differently (I've heard the items being placed in a tombstone as if it were a chest suggestion a few times, that would solve this).
@@sorbetcafe I looked around and managed to find an old mod like this from 2017, but it doesn’t save after reloading sadly. This seems like something that could be commissioned fairly easily from a mod dev and is def a good idea
Why is this video the first terraria video where i've actually heard someone mention the void bag? I'm glad to see it actually exists and my copy isnt personalised
that's such a good idea I'm surprised I've never thought of it like, Minecraft literally has mods for that (good time to compare to Minecraft because in this case it's "game that makes you drop items" vs "game that has a mode that makes you drop items"... Except Minecraft items despawn after time and stay around when the game is closed, so) I'd probably have started trying medium core sooner if something like that was available in vanilla ngl
@skylerross8054 Honestly, I'd love mediumcore if whenever I wanted to take a break I could, and return later, but mediumcore doesnt allow that until I get my items back, and oftentimes whenever I am trying to get my items back something goes wrong and I die.
@@keags1545I think the reasoning behind items despawning when you leave the game has something to do with how entities are logged in game, seeing as how mobs also despawn when you leave the game or get far enough.
I hate videos like this. Not because they're poorly made, or bring up bad points. It's because they make me want to play mediumcore even though I'm not in the mental headspace to deal with mediumcore lol
@@sebastianmjynapiermjy I don't as long as all the player you're playing with agree on having it enabled. My main gripe with losing items is the despawn timer, honestly.
My main problem (as someone who enjoys hardcore more) is that when I’m mad at hardcore and die, that’s it, in medium core I have to immediately get my stuff back or risk losing it all, if I’m mad at terraria I enjoy just getting off, medium core doesn’t allow me to do that
That makes sense, with mediumcore you've got to deal with it immediately or screw yourself over big time, but sometimes it's best to walk away. So if a change was made that saved dropped items, either a mod or officially, I imagine yourself and many others would consider doing mediumcore playthroughs 🤔
I think the biggest problem with mediumcore is its name, it sounds too much like a "normal" difficulty and especially to people coming into terraria not knowing anything about it and seeing the similarity to minecraft it can be easy to be fooled into thinking it's the way the game's meant to be played, when it ends up being really frustrating for new players
Yep. It LOOKS like the medium difficulty, when it’s more like a 9 out of 10. My first character (who I soon dumped) was mediumcore because I didn’t want to play on the easiest setting. It’s just sorta decieving, which is likely why it gets the hate.
First time I played Terraria without friends, I made the foolish decision to try out mediumcore. After two hours of getting farmed by mobs as I was trying to get my items back I deleted my first character and world. Mind you, this was in 1.3 and on mobile. I'll never be convinced mediumcore isn't a bad character difficulty. It makes the game very punishing, but unlike hardcore the character doesn't die, so the player is gaslighted into continuing their run. And god forbid dying in lava, where half the items are gone for good or sitting just out of reach. It also forces the player to grind a lot more than hardcore and softcore.
The only problem I have with mediumcore is reorganizing my inventory after I die. I like to favorite items, put everything nicely, and like the vanity options the game gives you in clothing, dyes, accesories on vanity slot, not just for right click easy access, but for looks; yet dying will make me think for an extra 3 to 4 minutes trying to remember the right order for the mana cloak to not show up but the angler backpack when I switch that on for fishing, and what dye I used for it out of the 10+ different dyes I use. It's just a mess LOL
Maybe you can ask to make it a feature or in the worst case scenario a mod, but I'd love to see how the game remembers where your items were. Since It also happens to me
or that medium core doesnt drop dyes and vanity sets if they have 0 armour bonuses. but this whould also kind of miss the point of mediumcore. Idk it whould be cool but also not...
@@Drie_Kleuren if something is considered a vanity item by Terraria, then it shouldn't drop on death in Mediumcore. Simply putting a powerful item in a vanity slot wouldn't save it.
@@mateuszgraczyk9249 okay but uniconically I've had to repeatedly shift myself towards that mentality lol not like, with every single hit possible, but when it comes to bosses, every single time I thought "I'll just trade a hit or two for " I've died lol (Legendary/FTW as summoner. Melee might be able to tank, idk)
I played mediumcore for my first ever playthrough of this game, I can say, it's not really a bad difficulty, it makes you strategize a lot more! The problem is that it isnt fun, really. When you start hard mode and get stuck in a deathloop trying to get your items back while a goblin summoner is constantly on your ass, it isn't much fun. Honestly, mediumcore is only bad before you beat the three mechs, after that it's very easy to get good gear.
I think one of the things that this video doesn’t really touch upon for the reasons that people aren’t a huge fan of medium core is that a lot of people simply don’t find the time between dying and getting your loot back to be engaging. You bring up that it’s fun to use underpowered loot and its pumps adrenaline, but for a lot of people, it doesn’t do that, it’s not particularly challenging, a lot of people just see it as an arbitrary timer, making your respawn time effectively go from 15 seconds to 2 minutes, even more if you get into a death loop
mediumcore is a hidden gem, it is teaching how to manage your inventory because sorting everything when you died is actually annoying when you have too much stuff
Yeah, mediumcore is a big reason as to why I keep chests organized really well and usually only carry my hotbar and healing potions with most of my inventory empty lol
@@sorbetcafe I keep chests organized because I usually play Terraria with 3-5 other friends and I go insane looking for things so I always sort everything for everyone lol
I can tell none of yall ever played diablo 2 which made a proper system of losing your items on death 20 years ago. If you die, your armor and your gold are dropped on the ground (minus the gold death tax). If you come back, you get back the remaining gold. If you quit the game, you lose all the dropped gold and get back your armor. This system will probably never be implemented because nobody plays mediumcore and noone will ever ask
I remember playing mediumcore once on expert mode and i died in the post plantera dungeon, but when i got back there to try and get my stuff back i ended up dying over and over again because my gear got weaker and weaker with each attempt until i eventually gave up, honestly would have preferred to play hardcore in that moment because at least i wouldn't have had to put through such purgatory
If you die in a difficult area to retrieve your items in, and especially if you die on some of the attempts back, the best thing to do is to a breather and approach it carefully. Getting some potions of return and mining around the dungeon - in a seriously dire situation, you can even destroy the dungeon walls to allow you to get closer to your gear without spawning dungeon enemies. It can suck if you get trapped in a death spiral like that, and oftentimes finding a way out in the same gaming session can be tough if you're tilted from the deaths.
The only way to prevent this is by collecting excessive amount of ore per upgrade so that way you have more tries before you get to that point. Though honestly softcore is a better casual experience and that isn't a bad thing.
Same, that was the only way I played for the first year and I was astounded when I found out my friends played softcore. I thought of it as “baby mode” with no real consequences
Honestly mediumcore Terraria is so much less annoying than Minecraft’s death mechanics. Sure, you may get stuck in a death loop if you didn’t prepare a decent backup set, but if you die in Minecraft you only have five minutes to retrieve your stuff once you load the chunks, (I don’t understand why this is a feature) the world is 3D and without mod’s there’s no minimap, so it is much easier to not know where you died, and deaths to lava and the void destroy the majority of items in the game. Honestly, most of mediumcore’s reputation comes from how painful and unforgiving Minecraft’s death mechanics are.
In Minecraft all items have a default 5-minute despawn timer to prevent lag and crashes in situations where items drop a lot. This timer can actually be disabled easily just by changing a single number, so death drops could be given a much longer timer easily. It would increase the maximum lag spike possible, but I don't think most people are going to be causing lag specifically with death drops. I agree that the rush to recover items in Minecraft really restricts a lot of preparation habits. Minecraft's shallow progression also means throwing on some cheap armour is usually enough to recover your items, and modded Minecraft has over a dozen popular grave mods especially because modded items can be much more expensive. That being said, mediumcore could be improved in exactly the same way, with a grave that holds all the dropped items.
I think the main reason I don't ever think I could play medium core is that I really enjoy minmaxxing my gear and having many different tools and options on me at all times. By the end of the game, my inventory is almost always half full of random favourited tools for any scenario (I'm not really a fan of having to open external inventories, I usually just use them from crafting materials I'll likely use a lot like souls, and money of course)
@@icneo9738 I think they mean they wouldn’t have backups because they carry literally everything, just in case. (Honestly, me too. I probably used, like, ten different weapons once I got to moonlord.) They also, I think, said they don’t like to use chests. (External inventory systems) I can’t relate to that, I love hoarding things.
while i don’t exactly think my idea of fun is mediumcore, the part where you talk about learning and improving does interest me. in a softcore playthrough you die so many times and since you lose so little it’s easy to just say “eh whatever try again” and not learn a thing in hardcore you can only die once so you can only learn a lesson the hard way once per playthrough. in mediumcore there’s stakes enough that you are incentivized not to die and so you can learn and adapt more per playthrough. something about mediumcore i think should be changed is item recovery, on death it should create something like in dark souls where if you touch it, it gives your items back to you. ideally it would fully restore your inventory/equips to how it was on death, and it’d drop/voidbag the items you had while retrieving it. that could also be saved when quitting, another issue. in softcore and hardcore, if you die you can just stop playing. in mediumcore, the game forces you to keep playing, because if you quit your items permanently disappear. that’s just a plain and simple accessibility issue.
I don't know if I see the point about accessibility issue, at least not over hardcore. Like we can pretend there's a medium-er core mode where if you die you just lose all your items; they don't drop, they just go poof. That would still slot in well between softcore and hardcore. You can always pretend you are playing that, and the game no longer forces anything.
@@randomnobody660I think the problem with losing item if you save the game is that it essentially punish someone who have to quit the game for reason beyond their control.
@@Lemony123 the game already does that. If you quit halfway thru a boss fight/invasion, before picking up loot, after getting thru to a difficult place etc, you're "punished" if you quit. I think you use that word too lightly. Quitting randomly causing progress loss is hardly "punishment".
@@randomnobody660 "Quitting randomly" Maybe because people have life and don't have their entire time to play game? I think that just reveal that you are terminally online. Also just because the game already does that doesnt mean it should do that again? I would rather make invasion loot not dissapearing after fighting.
Yeah i always play with keepinventory in Minecraft I like taking 10,000 block journeys for no real reason other than fun in Minecraft, so keepinventory is definitely something I need
@@CloutmasterPhluphyysounds incredibly boring to remove every ounce of challenge in a game that is not hard at all but i guess different strokes for different folks
I never really thought about mediumcore before, but this video has given me a new view on it. It is basically like when you die in minecraft and have to make it back for all your items with old or quickly gathered or crafted items. And honestly i personally always kept past equipment out of pure instinct, so i might want to try it in the future.
I think the thing that puts people off from mediumcore is, unlike Terraria's sibling, Minecraft, deathloops are a very real possibility. In Minecraft, there isn't very much world scaling, and mobs are always easy to avoid. Getting your stuff back is reasonable. But since Terraria has actual world progression, it is very likely your stuff will get stuck in an area you can't get to with zero gear without dying again.
@@randomannoyance yeah but what if you die with the back up gear, each time you get progressively more underpowered until it could genuinely become impossible
@@kyarumomochi5146 mediumcore punishes you for dying, making you actually worry about dying without killing your character forever, hardcore is just a challenge thing and theres no way you actually think that having to reset your character is more fun than taking your old gear and trying to get your stuff back also the phrase "what people should play" doesnt make any sense because youre not the person to choose what mode a player enjoys the most, terraria doesnt have ranks and levels for you to care about it so much
Mediumcore would be infinitely more approachable imo if gravestones housed your items on death, and items were returned to the slots they were in if possible, once recollected. The constant inventory management of putting everything back in the proper place is a big no no for me. Honestly sounds more annoying than the difficulty itself.
I quit terraria because of mediumcore I lost all my endgame gear because of one death. I died to a dungeon guardian deep in the dungeon. I accidentally dashed to deep in dungeon then it kill me. fvck mediumcore its trash
Nearly a thousand hours in terraria on PC (and way more on mobile) and I’d never actually tried medium core before, maybe I should give it a shot it sounds really fun now!
started a ftw mediumcore world a few weeks ago. currently have 63 hours on it not because it's hard, but because i just took my time over preparing some things like arenas and farms on different biomes as well as building decent houses. probably spent around 20 hours already just post skeletron and not doing wof in preparation for hardmode lol
I do the same playthrough and I have 20h pre skeletron already lol (that's because I died once and lost all my items due to the game crashing, and also died like 5 other times and spent like a hour getting items back)
As a minecraft player I find this discussion hilarious since its actually easier usually in terraria to find your items again than it is in minecraft due to the way maps work in both games.
It’s much easier to relocate and find your items in terraria as in Minecraft the map is much larger and in 3 dimensions, but the process of reaching those items have very different aspects of difficulty. Like I just said, Minecraft’s difficulty often lies in finding exactly where you died, then a little lies in getting there safely. However, because of Minecraft’s overall limited total progression and the tendency for players to have an unlimited supply of iron to fall back on, gearing up to get back your stuff isn’t as much of an issue. You usually will just make a full iron set + shield, the materials for which become very cheap after only a few hours in a survival world. This level of gear is plenty to survive pretty much any area long enough to get your enchanted netherite back. In terraria, despite your death location being much clearer, has consistent world difficulty scaling throughout. You can’t just use armor from the cheapest ore in the game without decent accessories or grapples and expect to survive the post plantera dungeon for example. This creates a new layer of difficulty in trying to use the variety of miscellaneous items the player has collected in order to cobble together gear that allows them to execute some sort of strategy to survive an area likely above said gears weight class. Besides all of this, there is also the punishment that the player receives when their gear is lost. For Minecraft gear, it can be very rough to lose some high level enchanted gear, but often the players who have the best enchantments were only able to get them through means like village farms, which give them an unlimited source. Besides that, diamond gear is fairly easily obtained through either mining or trading, XP farms are common, and bed mining in the nether trivializes getting netherite. In terraria, if you fail to get back your main weapon/equipment/armor it can be truly devastating. Sometimes these weapons are simple and crafted with hard mode bars that you can easily use to make another. However, pretty often they come from rare enemy drops, drops from bosses you can no longer kill due to lost gear, or in the worst cases long crafting trees that would require reframing from many different locations a bunch of niche items (I.e. losing a terrablade or ankh shield). Not to say that mediumcore is terrible, I largely agree with the points in the video. However, the experience is fundamentally different to Minecraft’s, which is why terraria isn’t designed around such a mechanic and Minecraft is.
Yeah I was thinking how people clown on minecrafters who have keep inventory on where in the terraria community people get clowned on for having keep inventory off
I remember doing a full playthrough as a mediumcore character on a mastermode multiplayer server. It was a really interesting playthrough. I never made a dedicated safe room away from the main base on normal playthroughs, but mediumcore influenced me otherwise. It also made me coordinate more with my friends in boss battles, since dying adds another layer of trying to recover your items, we would coordinate in vc who would take the heat while the others go back and heal/recover items; it honestly made me better at surviving boss battles because dying was a huge punishment. I only carried on me what I was okay with possibly losing. Honestly, whenever I died, I would use items of the same tier but for a different class. It made getting the "wrong item drop from bosses" have a use, since it was the same tier of power. I also recall many moments where I thought "omg i got my stuff back using low tier equipment or a class i would've never used at this stage of the game" and it felt rewarding ironically enough. Definitely not for everyone, but I can at least attest to doing a full playthrough on mediumcore; it really stands on it's own as a different gameplay experience from both classic and hardcore.
The part about overpreparing definitely struck at me. I often have difficulty maintaining interest in Softcore runs, and in Hardcore I always get the best gear. I think it'd be interesting having some stuff at risk, and situations with suboptimal gear. You've convinced me to go give Mediumcore a shot.
The main probpem is that it serves no purpose. Hardcore is a big challange but mediumcore is just annoying. Why go trough the trouble of wasting a couple of minutes or more to get your items back when at the end of the day, the gameplay is the exact same after you get them. It serves no purpuse since if you are somewhat good at the game you will get the items back, there is not fear of losing them.
there are some good points but i think ill stay with softcore. my main problem that i have with mediumcore is it wastes a lot of time. i go to play terraria for the bosses, optimising my setup, getting new and exciting weapons but mediumcore just disrupts my flow of having fun. some people like the mechanic wich i dont have a problem with but for the majority it just wastes time. i also dont agree about mediumcore making you better at the game, it mosly just makes me more anxious about hard bossfights and such because if i die i have to pick up my stuff again wich wastes a lot of time, instead something like master mode just makes the game harder and decereases time between trying to pass the challenge wich means more tries wich means better understanding of the fight instead of mediumcore just saying ´if you suck you will have to waste your time again so get good out of thin air i guess,. again i dont see anything wrong with playing mediumcore, im not gonna gatekeep fun but it does have some flaws.
I have a newfound respect for mediumcore after this. I still probably wont play it, because i dont hate myself, but the respect is there Also bug dance :D
I've never really heard anyone defending mediumcore, even if I probably won't play it myself those are sone genuinely good points about how inventory management and risk taking are important
I think mediumcore should have "graves" which keep your items after dying. this would solve 2 of mediumcore main issues: 1- it would prevent losing your items due to the world closing. 2- it would help with inventory managment, since if the graves keep the items in the same order that you had them, they won't get jumbled every time you die.
Fun fact! I for whatever reason keep backup of my gear and weapons on chests even doe I play in classic/soft core and I think this will prepare me well once start a medium core play-through, and I still have no idea why I do this, I just don’t feel like selling items because im lazy lol
I once tried meduimcore. It was master mode and I somehow only died once due to my controller dying in the middle of a plantera fight. Ngl I kinda liked it because it made me panic when in dangerous situations, it felt like hardcore in a way. Anyway I will still never do it again solely because of the stress of trying to recover my stuff in the underground jungle.
Only Shitty event I've had in mediumcore where I resorted to cheating was when I died in the early hardmode underground jungle and was trying atleast 20 times to recover my items but when I eventually got to where I died my items had despawned due to the item limit integer maxxing out and erasing my items in the process. I took a break from the run for a few days after that.
I'm doing it, it's not bad as long as your comfortable in your difficulty (i.e. your first master or legendary playthrough may not be the best idea on mediumcore)
the real solution to dealing with mediumcore item dropping: just don't leave home (or anywhere near any teleporters/pylons/railroads/whatever you've made to quickly and safely get somewhere) with anything you can't afford to lose or replace; this is also known as the golden rule of just about any game where you lose things on death it's that simple
I might try out mediumcore now honestly... UPDATE: I have tried it out on the Zenith seed and I really like it! Great challenge and it does make me try to die far less often, and prepare for "future me" with less gear. Thanks Sorbet for the recommendation!
Played terraria for nearly a decade have over 4k hrs on all versions and never tried mediumcore but this convvinced me especially with the new update coming soon
Minecraft and Starbound exist. And their default mode IS mediumcore. And especially Minecraft has a huge playerbase. I admittedly play Minecraft with keep items = true and Starbound with a mod that disables item drops on death (because I like food in Starbound). Losing items is just not for me. But there is a reason a lot like those games. So yeah
I'm one of the people featured at 0:19, the one named KEXE. I was just made aware of this video and would like it to be known that I've been playing mediumcore for like a week or so before finding this video, and I find it quite fun now.
I love seeing someone mention all of this and a few points I didNt really think about. I played a few rounds before going over to hardcore runs and it did help even if it was a bit annoying at times. I’d still have to say it’s my least favorite character difficulty but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it but I never see anyone play it
One thing I have a habit of doing which I think would help in medium core is building a rope down your primary/first helivator. This allows you to descend quickly and safely without a horseshoe or wings if you dropped your items in hell or deep underground. It takes more time, building that long rope, but worth it when you need to quickly go up or down without items.
I havent played a whole lot of medium core. The idea has been floating around in my head for some weeks now. I have tried it a few times a year back but only got to around EoC. but back then I also wasnt that exerienced and I had never beaten the game. I think I might try it sometime soon. I rhink I have enough skill to make it somewhat far. I also like that you drop your items but they dont respawn. Thats a problem I have with minecraft. The rush to get your items back is tough. Only having a few minutes once you load the area before item despawning sucks. In Terraria you can take as long as you want and that is nice.... I really like that items dont despawn.
For my money, the biggest issues when it comes to game modes that allow for item/gear drops arise a few different considerations, and how those game modes answer for them: 1. How valuable are the items / what was the investment to acquire them: ~ ~ Items that are difficult to acquire, naturally, hurt a lot more to lose than items that are not. 2. How much player efficacy was locked up into those items: ~ ~ Offense, defense, mobility, consistency. 3. How difficult is it to get back to where you dropped your items: ~ ~ How far you went, what the ambient enemy threat level is compared to your backup gear, how difficult the region is to traverse. 4. How secure are the dropped items: ~ ~ Will they be lost on game exit; are there other conditions that might make it possible to lose them. Mediumcore in Terraria answers for these questions in these ways: 1. Items require progressively more investment as the player goes on, and as such normally become significantly more valuable as a result. Some items come from challenges that the player might be extremely unwilling to repeat. 2. Offense, defense, and mobility are all lost, and thus consistency is affected severely. Ability to recoup these stats in the mean time to recover items is entirely dependent on the player's thoroughness of preparation and familiarity with the game. 3. It is quite easy to get into the middle of bumbutt nowhere, smack dab in the middle of high difficulty mobs that weren't exactly easy to deal with even before losing gear. 4. Dropped items ARE NOT SECURE. Game crashes, power outages are things that cannot be predicted, and while threat of this is minimized in a single player world where the player immediately bee-lines back to the gear, simply taking too long to get back to the items and having too many drop from enemies or blocks between here and there has a nonzero chance of erasing some dropped items due to item limit. The consequence of all of this is that mediumcore gets insulted as 'tediumcore' because it's incredibly tedious to play in a way that minimizes risks and ensures stable recovery of very high investment and very high value items that ARE NOT SECURE, and even then it's still possible for things to go awry and result in a loss so devastating that, well... Many players might just find it more emotionally freeing to have that experience taken out of the equation entirely. This is why some players prefer hardcore to mediumcore - the emotional low doesn't come with the added baggage on top. For my money in particular, I think that if mediumcore had a grave-storage system in place, like spawning a chest where you died to keep your stuff safe even if item limits occurred or the game crashed or the player decided to take a break and close out so they could cool off, a good amount of this unnecessary emotional baggage would be alleviated.
I've always played mediumcore since 1.1, because i thought it was "normal" difficulty. The only time I've played softcore was when helping a friend learn the game. I honestly much prefer the challenge, even if once in a blood moon i pull all my hair out and store up enough rage to earn myself "domestic" achievements with my future wife and kids
When I was a little boy I started playing and saw my items didn't drop, which confused me and I though it was too op (coming from minecraft), so I looked around and figured out how to choose medium-core.
The reason mediumcore sucks for most people, including me, is because everything it tries to do, is done better by another option (in my opinion). Mediumcore is like making a "hardcore nuzlocke" pokemon playthrough, except when you wipe, you just catch all the pokemons again and have to retrain them. Basically, you remove the challenge and the sense of accomplishment for beating it, and keep the tediousness. You end the run not proud of yourself, but just liking the game less. Most people do not like being punished in games (basically having their time wasted by fucking up), and mediumcore is punishing, so most people avoid it. But i mean, mediumcore is for people who LIKE being punished for mistakes i assume. It's an option for a reason. The problem is that hardcore is better for that (in my opinion), and i think the point here is misunderstood. Sure, you technically lose more time dying in hardcore than mediumcore. That is definitely true. But dying in hardcore makes me rage for a bit, then remember the death, and since my character is deleted, makes me take time to think about it and go "Man, i should not have done that, this is what led to this", and i'll actually keep a memory of it. Because it makes you take a pause to redo a character, you'll probably take a break after losing a lot. Dying in mediumcore goes along the lines of "God fucking damnit, i have to get all my stuff back... *frustrated groan* i fucking hate this game". Just pure frustration, because you just lose your time, you can just get your stuff back, just like in softcore, it just takes longer and that's it. Oh and you CAN'T take that pause of introspection ! Because if you quit the game to chill out, you're fucked, your items are gone ! But to adress some points that are made later in the video : you are right that it forces people to consider other options, and i already explained why it tends to fail to make you consider your deaths : then why not just make a softcore challenge run ? If i want to use the flintlock pistol, i'd play a run of pre-hardmode where i can only use weapons that NPCs sell. It ups the difficulty without making me having to redo progress for no real reason. (In fact it lessens the grind since you don't need to craft or drop weapons from enemies, you'll just buy them.) I'd also argue that for getting better at the game without more punishment, playing with mods that make the game harder is a better option on PC. As for Co-op, true if you have friends at all, and also if they can put up with mediumcore. TL;DR : Mediumcore is just at an akward medium, where both sides of it are done better by either softcore, a softcore challenge run, or hardcore.
I feel like medium core incentives more building of farms so if/when you loose your gear you can farm it up again. It makes the game more challenging but with some forethought and game knowledge it isn't bad. I think loosing items on death is a great way to make backup gear and use things like teleports so you can quickly and safely get around the map when you die. basically medium core makes you build infrastructure more than classic.
Honestly I would love if there was a difficulty between soft and medium core that makes it so where you ONLY lose everything not on your hotbar, so that way your mining loot is gone, but you aren’t completely shit out of luck. One of my issues that I usually have with master mode is just the random deaths you will have from things you couldn’t have expected, things like random boulders or a turtle that hits you out of the air mid glide. And if that happens and you lose all of your shit super far from your base, that can really suck, something that just happens that you just couldn’t have avoided causing you to lose something that has the possibility of only being 1 per world.
0:59 If its 'only for' a single hipster and noone else then i'd classify that as bad regardless. Mediumcore is *unanimously* hated by everyone, so if its not for everyone other than one guy, then its not for anyone.
@@sorbetcafe I have been playing terraria since 1.0, i have been on the forums for almost that long, and other than you, i have *never* in my life seen anyone even take a neutral opinion towards mediumcore, let alone a positive one. I'd say thats unanimous enough, or atleast as much as i can get it without an actual survey.
Recently, I've been doing a Hardcore Master run. I swear, every time I see some video or post titled "Mediumcore is actually harder than Hardcore" it makes me want to scream.
the idea that the gamemode that allows you to take risks and bounce back from failure is somehow harder than the gamemode that deletes your character upon one failure and prevents you from taking any risks whatsoever is the most ridiculous thing ive ever heard in my life and yet everyone who hates mediumcore seems to use that argument
I've never played medium-core before but I think void vault would be your best friend here, same with the piggy bank (if you get the money trough or the living wood chest) you can always keep your stuff within the reach of your inventory AND your base
Solid defense, solid points, solid arguments in favor of trying it. Consider me sold, I’ll have to give it a try at some point as I am one of those players that finds hardcore a bit too punishing for my current skill level at the game, and I’m open to something with a bit more bite to it then soft core. I may do it on expert, but what difficulty would you recommend for someone’s first dip into mediumcore?
I'd suggest -Playing a tankier build with warding accessories. Ranger is fantastic, melee is a solif choice too. Summoner, due to being squishy and having weird item progression, can get rough. -If you find a good summoning weapon, keep it in your piggy bank or a chest at home rather than carrying it with you. That way you can resummon it when you die to help you. With a bewitching table, that can be two free minions to help you. -Be sure to set up pylons -If you ever die on the way back to retrieve lost gear, I'd highly suggest taking a breather at your base and thinking, because that's a tipping point on the edge of catastrophe. Continuing to die can get your stuck in a loop where you keep coming back with worse and worse gear. Consider trying to get potions of return or approaching the problem in a different way (if you died in the dungeon, you can mine around it and cut in where your corpse is rather than walking the long way around, you can even break the walls to stop enemies from spawning). -Keep any informational accessories and potions in a void bag -Secure your spawn location. In prehardmode, all you really need is something that goblins and blood zombies can't open the doors of. In hardmode, I usually make a small safe room linked with a teleporter to my main base. Teleporters come from the mechanic now, so you can even set it up in prehardmode. -When fighting the pillars, stay away from the pillar itself and close to the edge of the pillar area. That way, if you die, you don't have to venture far into the area to retrieve your items.
i was one of those people who said mediumcore was worse than hardcore, i did get good and understood that that's just bs my biggest problem with medium core though is how you kinda repeat the same process of getting your items back almost always in the same way get old gear > head to the place you died > get items back > do some stuff > die > repeat it does impose a challenge and is slightly different depending on progression, but it's still the same especially for anyone who isn't that good at staying alive
Well, of course it will be in the same way, since you are going back to the same place you just died in. But it does has an unique challenge of trying to recover an item using a sub-optimal item that you would never have used in softcore or hardcore.
I like playing terraria hardcore, and I like keeping the worlds, just not characters. But uh, I couldn't handle it after a while and just started deleting and creating new worlds whenever I died. Mediumcore doesn't seem to bad, but if i wanna play casually with friends I like classic and if I wanna play by myself I play Hardcore because I love the challenge. Mediumcore is a valid and fun challenge, a diet version of hardcore. but by no means is it a harder normal. its an easier hardcore, like you said.
Doesn't do well for those who wanna explore unique equipment builds... Or who don't like having a city strictly consisting of chests full of old stuff. But then again, they need to have a better way of dropping your stuff than in item form since items don't save with your world like in Minecraft so god forbid your power goes out or even worse, your mother says "bedtime. now."
It’s hard to step away from mediumcore. I can start a hardcore run, play for a couple hours, die in a dumb way and then be satisfied and do something else. My sunk cost fallacy makes it impossible to walk away from medium core after a death. I have to go get my stuff back. If I wanted to do a full game playthrough I’d rather crank up the standard difficulties to master or beyond for a challenge than go mediumcore because I find those challenges more fun personally, but different challenges are for different people. I gave mediumcore a couple shots and I just didn’t have fun. I see why you like it but it’s not my cup of tea.
The 1 thing i hate about mediumcore is the unwanted invasion, like Pirates immediately after u enter hardmode can make you rage quit, thats rll the only thing i can say is annoying since there is rll no way to skip an invasion, had that happened to me while playing medium core master mode, i was beinf 1 shoted everytime i tried to get my items back it was rll frustriating
Maybe it's not terrible but I'd much rather play hardcore over mediumcore. The rush you get from narrowly evading death is such a great feeling and is why I love hardcore/one life modes in games in general.
Pretty good summary of it. I used to do challenge runs in Terraria a long time ago and always went mediumcore. Got to a point I rarely died and I made sure to keep backup items incase it happened. Really, if anything, it felt like it was justifying my hoarding tendencies. Even had a death in lava once but managed to recover most of my stuff.
I love deathloops. Not interacting with them directly, but the extra investment and planning you put into your world to prevent them. Mediumcore seems similar to the experience I've had with Minecraft combat-based modpacks, I might try it despite having no interest in hardcore
I think only reason dropping items in terraria is not fun while in minecraft intended way to play is how many things you carry. First of all you have accessories that you equiped and optimal ones you hold onto. Secondly the inventory itself as you carry too much things that supposedly help you anytime and organizing them is also pain in the ass. As a bonus might be the terraria's punishing nature that there are more things to kill you rather than helping you.
This is probably one of the best persuasive arguments I've ever heard. In a single video i had by entire mentality regarding mediumcore laid bare and am like convinced that when 1.4.5 releases i should start a mediumcore playthrough, especially because my main class is filling out its progression with new whips
This video inspired me to play Terraria again after many years, on Master difficulty, and try out Mediumcore as well. It's definitely a tense experience a lot of the time and it drives me to play extremely careful and calculated, but it also makes me appreciate my gear a lot more and save older gear to have something when I die and need to venture out to find it... Or if it's too late/dangerous and I need to kiss the other gear goodbye, which does definitely feel harsh, but yeah.
Yeah I gave mediumcore a real try recently and loved it. Having played Terraria for years, I eventually got bored. Mediumcore created a fresh problem solving experience that is uniquely offered by the gamemode.
The fact that items don't despawn really adds to the experience. Before, I thought they would despawn and always rush to my death to try to get them back as quickly as possible, but now I know I can take my time and it's a lot more fun. Also only negative point I have is having multiple loadouts can be a pain, especially if you have a full inventory, because you actively have to put on all your gear to be able to pick all the stuff up.
The way you put has actually convinced me to play medium core I just never tried it because everyone always said “it’s just a more annoying hardcore”. It’s also probably better for me since I like to take my time with things like builds or making farms opposed to trying to speed run the game and avoid danger at all costs
My main problem with mediumcore is that it seems unneccesary. Either have a casual experience with classic or go all in with hardcore instead of going with the awkawrd middle ground.
The biggest complaint for me between mediumcore vs hardcore is: Hardcore death means I can walk away and close the game if I'm tilted after a death. Mediumcore means I have to keep playing while tilted, unless I'm willing to lose those items permenantly. (Closing a world means items on the ground dissapear.) Mediumcore sortof forces me to play while I'm tilted from the death, even if it's not AS bad as hardcore death, it FEELS worse simply because I have to keep playing while tilted at times. (It's one of my least favorite things about many games' death punishment.)
I had a habit of collecting old weapons that I liked but already outgrown I never played mediumcore but it's interesting how it allows the old gear to be useful a few more times.
I keep on seeing hate for gamemode or mechanics for games that can be completely avoided by just... not choosing them. Like you don't even need to avoid it if it's not there.
The issue for me is how low the actual dropped item limit is. A few people die at the same time in an invasion and someones items are gone forever even if the server never turns off or the invasion is quickly cleared.
Well the only thing that is scary in mediumcore is that if your game gets closed, the items despawn. And we have random power outages here occasionally
I've had that happen once, and that can be pretty disheartening. I don't think there's really any good solutions to that though, not unless mediumcore's item dropping was changed to work differently (I've heard the items being placed in a tombstone as if it were a chest suggestion a few times, that would solve this).
@@sorbetcafe I looked around and managed to find an old mod like this from 2017, but it doesn’t save after reloading sadly. This seems like something that could be commissioned fairly easily from a mod dev and is def a good idea
the player backups he talked about are helpful then! but in that situation medium core is probably kinda iffy then
@@thetechnovoid yeah, loading up backups removes the risk i feel like
Me as a mobile player: *laughs hysterically*
Why is this video the first terraria video where i've actually heard someone mention the void bag? I'm glad to see it actually exists and my copy isnt personalised
Actually both of you just have personalized versions, the void bag doesn't exist
@stzaleft7355 just turn up the volume, and plus, the lack of background noise makes it easy to hear him.
I remember the void bag because it was used for duping gold and platinum coins back in the day
I’m honestly SO suprised someone hasn’t made a “gravestones house your mediumcore weapons” mod, so they don’t despawn.
that's such a good idea I'm surprised I've never thought of it
like, Minecraft literally has mods for that (good time to compare to Minecraft because in this case it's "game that makes you drop items" vs "game that has a mode that makes you drop items"... Except Minecraft items despawn after time and stay around when the game is closed, so)
I'd probably have started trying medium core sooner if something like that was available in vanilla ngl
tmodloader has mods for this!
@@FirstnameLastname-wi8bq It does? What are they called?
@skylerross8054 Honestly, I'd love mediumcore if whenever I wanted to take a break I could, and return later, but mediumcore doesnt allow that until I get my items back, and oftentimes whenever I am trying to get my items back something goes wrong and I die.
@@keags1545I think the reasoning behind items despawning when you leave the game has something to do with how entities are logged in game, seeing as how mobs also despawn when you leave the game or get far enough.
I hate videos like this. Not because they're poorly made, or bring up bad points. It's because they make me want to play mediumcore even though I'm not in the mental headspace to deal with mediumcore lol
That’s the reason I don’t play Minecraft I can’t handle having to lose items unless I want to turn on keep inventory
@@sebastianmjynapiermjy exactly like it's all fun and games until you lose a good dozen hours of progress at best and then it shoots motivation lol
@@sebastianmjynapiermjy thank god keepInventory is a thing
@@unbearable505 I consider keep inventory cheating also I always forget to turn it on anyway
@@sebastianmjynapiermjy I don't as long as all the player you're playing with agree on having it enabled. My main gripe with losing items is the despawn timer, honestly.
My main problem (as someone who enjoys hardcore more) is that when I’m mad at hardcore and die, that’s it, in medium core I have to immediately get my stuff back or risk losing it all, if I’m mad at terraria I enjoy just getting off, medium core doesn’t allow me to do that
That makes sense, with mediumcore you've got to deal with it immediately or screw yourself over big time, but sometimes it's best to walk away.
So if a change was made that saved dropped items, either a mod or officially, I imagine yourself and many others would consider doing mediumcore playthroughs 🤔
@@jordazmo19 Another comment mentioned the idea of gravestones working like a chest that hold your items when you die.
I think the biggest problem with mediumcore is its name, it sounds too much like a "normal" difficulty and especially to people coming into terraria not knowing anything about it and seeing the similarity to minecraft it can be easy to be fooled into thinking it's the way the game's meant to be played, when it ends up being really frustrating for new players
thats exactly how i ended up being a mediumcore-only player. I have never played a single run on softcore
@@manuelhgfr5564 same
Yep. It LOOKS like the medium difficulty, when it’s more like a 9 out of 10. My first character (who I soon dumped) was mediumcore because I didn’t want to play on the easiest setting. It’s just sorta decieving, which is likely why it gets the hate.
Also why they changed softcore to classic.
First time I played Terraria without friends, I made the foolish decision to try out mediumcore. After two hours of getting farmed by mobs as I was trying to get my items back I deleted my first character and world. Mind you, this was in 1.3 and on mobile.
I'll never be convinced mediumcore isn't a bad character difficulty. It makes the game very punishing, but unlike hardcore the character doesn't die, so the player is gaslighted into continuing their run. And god forbid dying in lava, where half the items are gone for good or sitting just out of reach. It also forces the player to grind a lot more than hardcore and softcore.
If items didn't despawn when closing the game, it would be the perfect
difficulty. Sometimes you lose power or close the game by habit.
Yeah, it would be great if mediumcore was tweaked a little to avoid that issue
I think loose items should just save in the .map file any time a character is saved on any difficulty.
@@Yairaph this is the first time in years that I see someone typing "loose" correctly it even threw me off hahah
@@PowBolim Surprising.
The only problem I have with mediumcore is reorganizing my inventory after I die. I like to favorite items, put everything nicely, and like the vanity options the game gives you in clothing, dyes, accesories on vanity slot, not just for right click easy access, but for looks; yet dying will make me think for an extra 3 to 4 minutes trying to remember the right order for the mana cloak to not show up but the angler backpack when I switch that on for fishing, and what dye I used for it out of the 10+ different dyes I use. It's just a mess LOL
Maybe you can ask to make it a feature or in the worst case scenario a mod, but I'd love to see how the game remembers where your items were. Since It also happens to me
Yeah favorite items should go back to where they were
or that medium core doesnt drop dyes and vanity sets if they have 0 armour bonuses. but this whould also kind of miss the point of mediumcore. Idk it whould be cool but also not...
@@Drie_Kleuren if something is considered a vanity item by Terraria, then it shouldn't drop on death in Mediumcore. Simply putting a powerful item in a vanity slot wouldn't save it.
This can be easily avoided by simply not dying.
just don't get hit bro mentality
Yeah exactly, should've seen that dart coming 😂😂😂
@@mateuszgraczyk9249 okay but uniconically I've had to repeatedly shift myself towards that mentality lol
not like, with every single hit possible, but when it comes to bosses, every single time I thought "I'll just trade a hit or two for " I've died lol (Legendary/FTW as summoner. Melee might be able to tank, idk)
Mediumcore is just practice for Hardcore
Basically if you don’t get hit you might as well play hardcore 😂
I played mediumcore for my first ever playthrough of this game, I can say, it's not really a bad difficulty, it makes you strategize a lot more! The problem is that it isnt fun, really. When you start hard mode and get stuck in a deathloop trying to get your items back while a goblin summoner is constantly on your ass, it isn't much fun. Honestly, mediumcore is only bad before you beat the three mechs, after that it's very easy to get good gear.
It can be pretty rough for a first playthrough, since it can punish you pretty harshly for not doing or knowing things.
I think one of the things that this video doesn’t really touch upon for the reasons that people aren’t a huge fan of medium core is that a lot of people simply don’t find the time between dying and getting your loot back to be engaging. You bring up that it’s fun to use underpowered loot and its pumps adrenaline, but for a lot of people, it doesn’t do that, it’s not particularly challenging, a lot of people just see it as an arbitrary timer, making your respawn time effectively go from 15 seconds to 2 minutes, even more if you get into a death loop
mediumcore is a hidden gem, it is teaching how to manage your inventory because sorting everything when you died is actually annoying when you have too much stuff
Yeah, mediumcore is a big reason as to why I keep chests organized really well and usually only carry my hotbar and healing potions with most of my inventory empty lol
@@sorbetcafe I keep chests organized because I usually play Terraria with 3-5 other friends and I go insane looking for things so I always sort everything for everyone lol
We also learned that Moon Lord has 1 million HP in 6 player Expert
I can tell none of yall ever played diablo 2 which made a proper system of losing your items on death 20 years ago. If you die, your armor and your gold are dropped on the ground (minus the gold death tax). If you come back, you get back the remaining gold. If you quit the game, you lose all the dropped gold and get back your armor. This system will probably never be implemented because nobody plays mediumcore and noone will ever ask
@@cowrocks3630 one MILLION?!!?
I remember playing mediumcore once on expert mode and i died in the post plantera dungeon, but when i got back there to try and get my stuff back i ended up dying over and over again because my gear got weaker and weaker with each attempt until i eventually gave up, honestly would have preferred to play hardcore in that moment because at least i wouldn't have had to put through such purgatory
If you die in a difficult area to retrieve your items in, and especially if you die on some of the attempts back, the best thing to do is to a breather and approach it carefully. Getting some potions of return and mining around the dungeon - in a seriously dire situation, you can even destroy the dungeon walls to allow you to get closer to your gear without spawning dungeon enemies.
It can suck if you get trapped in a death spiral like that, and oftentimes finding a way out in the same gaming session can be tough if you're tilted from the deaths.
@@sorbetcafe "break underground dungeon blocks" ftw is kinda mean
The only way to prevent this is by collecting excessive amount of ore per upgrade so that way you have more tries before you get to that point. Though honestly softcore is a better casual experience and that isn't a bad thing.
Me playing Terraria as a Minecraft player thinking Medium core was the main mode 🗿
o h n o
Same, that was the only way I played for the first year and I was astounded when I found out my friends played softcore. I thought of it as “baby mode” with no real consequences
Honestly mediumcore Terraria is so much less annoying than Minecraft’s death mechanics. Sure, you may get stuck in a death loop if you didn’t prepare a decent backup set, but if you die in Minecraft you only have five minutes to retrieve your stuff once you load the chunks, (I don’t understand why this is a feature) the world is 3D and without mod’s there’s no minimap, so it is much easier to not know where you died, and deaths to lava and the void destroy the majority of items in the game. Honestly, most of mediumcore’s reputation comes from how painful and unforgiving Minecraft’s death mechanics are.
In Minecraft all items have a default 5-minute despawn timer to prevent lag and crashes in situations where items drop a lot. This timer can actually be disabled easily just by changing a single number, so death drops could be given a much longer timer easily. It would increase the maximum lag spike possible, but I don't think most people are going to be causing lag specifically with death drops.
I agree that the rush to recover items in Minecraft really restricts a lot of preparation habits. Minecraft's shallow progression also means throwing on some cheap armour is usually enough to recover your items, and modded Minecraft has over a dozen popular grave mods especially because modded items can be much more expensive.
That being said, mediumcore could be improved in exactly the same way, with a grave that holds all the dropped items.
I think the main reason I don't ever think I could play medium core is that I really enjoy minmaxxing my gear and having many different tools and options on me at all times. By the end of the game, my inventory is almost always half full of random favourited tools for any scenario (I'm not really a fan of having to open external inventories, I usually just use them from crafting materials I'll likely use a lot like souls, and money of course)
What??
This doesn't clash with mediumcore really
@@icneo9738
I think they mean they wouldn’t have backups because they carry literally everything, just in case. (Honestly, me too. I probably used, like, ten different weapons once I got to moonlord.)
They also, I think, said they don’t like to use chests. (External inventory systems)
I can’t relate to that, I love hoarding things.
while i don’t exactly think my idea of fun is mediumcore, the part where you talk about learning and improving does interest me.
in a softcore playthrough you die so many times and since you lose so little it’s easy to just say “eh whatever try again” and not learn a thing
in hardcore you can only die once so you can only learn a lesson the hard way once per playthrough.
in mediumcore there’s stakes enough that you are incentivized not to die and so you can learn and adapt more per playthrough.
something about mediumcore i think should be changed is item recovery, on death it should create something like in dark souls where if you touch it, it gives your items back to you. ideally it would fully restore your inventory/equips to how it was on death, and it’d drop/voidbag the items you had while retrieving it.
that could also be saved when quitting, another issue.
in softcore and hardcore, if you die you can just stop playing.
in mediumcore, the game forces you to keep playing, because if you quit your items permanently disappear. that’s just a plain and simple accessibility issue.
I don't know if I see the point about accessibility issue, at least not over hardcore.
Like we can pretend there's a medium-er core mode where if you die you just lose all your items; they don't drop, they just go poof. That would still slot in well between softcore and hardcore. You can always pretend you are playing that, and the game no longer forces anything.
yeah but what if i want to play normal mediumcore instead of mediumer core but i also want to be able to stop playing anytime i want @@randomnobody660
@@randomnobody660I think the problem with losing item if you save the game is that it essentially punish someone who have to quit the game for reason beyond their control.
@@Lemony123 the game already does that. If you quit halfway thru a boss fight/invasion, before picking up loot, after getting thru to a difficult place etc, you're "punished" if you quit.
I think you use that word too lightly. Quitting randomly causing progress loss is hardly "punishment".
@@randomnobody660 "Quitting randomly" Maybe because people have life and don't have their entire time to play game? I think that just reveal that you are terminally online.
Also just because the game already does that doesnt mean it should do that again? I would rather make invasion loot not dissapearing after fighting.
Losing items on death is one of the biggest things that stopped me from getting into Minecraft, and I'd rather not deal with it in this game either.
Yeah i always play with keepinventory in Minecraft I like taking 10,000 block journeys for no real reason other than fun in Minecraft, so keepinventory is definitely something I need
@@CloutmasterPhluphyy Exactly. For a game with infinite worlds, there sure is a heavy price for exploring.
@@CloutmasterPhluphyy
But that's why beds exist.
@@Xahnel I use beds still, but yk, might travel more than 5 minutes away from where I set spawn and that'd kinda suck if I died
@@CloutmasterPhluphyysounds incredibly boring to remove every ounce of challenge in a game that is not hard at all but i guess different strokes for different folks
I never really thought about mediumcore before, but this video has given me a new view on it. It is basically like when you die in minecraft and have to make it back for all your items with old or quickly gathered or crafted items. And honestly i personally always kept past equipment out of pure instinct, so i might want to try it in the future.
10:49 seriously in 2024? Yu stick bugged us( i know it's not a stick bug)
I think the thing that puts people off from mediumcore is, unlike Terraria's sibling, Minecraft, deathloops are a very real possibility. In Minecraft, there isn't very much world scaling, and mobs are always easy to avoid. Getting your stuff back is reasonable. But since Terraria has actual world progression, it is very likely your stuff will get stuck in an area you can't get to with zero gear without dying again.
thats the reason to keep the previous gear you upgrade from instead of selling it. you can come back weaker, but at least not empty
@@randomannoyance yeah but what if you die with the back up gear, each time you get progressively more underpowered until it could genuinely become impossible
@@tev5040 thats the point of mediumcore. its like having limited lives, getting your items must be carefully planned each time
@@randomannoyanceif thats the point of it then it sucks
Hardcore is what people should play, wanting to pick your items is just stuoud
@@kyarumomochi5146 mediumcore punishes you for dying, making you actually worry about dying without killing your character forever, hardcore is just a challenge thing and theres no way you actually think that having to reset your character is more fun than taking your old gear and trying to get your stuff back
also the phrase "what people should play" doesnt make any sense because youre not the person to choose what mode a player enjoys the most, terraria doesnt have ranks and levels for you to care about it so much
Mediumcore would be infinitely more approachable imo if gravestones housed your items on death, and items were returned to the slots they were in if possible, once recollected. The constant inventory management of putting everything back in the proper place is a big no no for me. Honestly sounds more annoying than the difficulty itself.
I quit terraria because of mediumcore
I lost all my endgame gear because of one death. I died to a dungeon guardian deep in the dungeon. I accidentally dashed to deep in dungeon then it kill me. fvck mediumcore its trash
@@AbdulMakhar that's sounds like a you problem honestly.
How on earth did you manage to not fight skeletron at endgame?
@@slashine1071 new world bro
@@AbdulMakharsave n exit
“its bad for you doesnt mean its bad”
90% of all terrarian: ye it sucks
Nearly a thousand hours in terraria on PC (and way more on mobile) and I’d never actually tried medium core before, maybe I should give it a shot it sounds really fun now!
started a ftw mediumcore world a few weeks ago. currently have 63 hours on it not because it's hard, but because i just took my time over preparing some things like arenas and farms on different biomes as well as building decent houses. probably spent around 20 hours already just post skeletron and not doing wof in preparation for hardmode lol
me and my friend finished expert death mode calamity with 100% bosses within that time... vanilla terraria can be brutally challenging also.
I do the same playthrough and I have 20h pre skeletron already lol (that's because I died once and lost all my items due to the game crashing, and also died like 5 other times and spent like a hour getting items back)
As a minecraft player I find this discussion hilarious since its actually easier usually in terraria to find your items again than it is in minecraft due to the way maps work in both games.
It’s much easier to relocate and find your items in terraria as in Minecraft the map is much larger and in 3 dimensions, but the process of reaching those items have very different aspects of difficulty. Like I just said, Minecraft’s difficulty often lies in finding exactly where you died, then a little lies in getting there safely. However, because of Minecraft’s overall limited total progression and the tendency for players to have an unlimited supply of iron to fall back on, gearing up to get back your stuff isn’t as much of an issue. You usually will just make a full iron set + shield, the materials for which become very cheap after only a few hours in a survival world. This level of gear is plenty to survive pretty much any area long enough to get your enchanted netherite back. In terraria, despite your death location being much clearer, has consistent world difficulty scaling throughout. You can’t just use armor from the cheapest ore in the game without decent accessories or grapples and expect to survive the post plantera dungeon for example. This creates a new layer of difficulty in trying to use the variety of miscellaneous items the player has collected in order to cobble together gear that allows them to execute some sort of strategy to survive an area likely above said gears weight class.
Besides all of this, there is also the punishment that the player receives when their gear is lost.
For Minecraft gear, it can be very rough to lose some high level enchanted gear, but often the players who have the best enchantments were only able to get them through means like village farms, which give them an unlimited source. Besides that, diamond gear is fairly easily obtained through either mining or trading, XP farms are common, and bed mining in the nether trivializes getting netherite.
In terraria, if you fail to get back your main weapon/equipment/armor it can be truly devastating. Sometimes these weapons are simple and crafted with hard mode bars that you can easily use to make another. However, pretty often they come from rare enemy drops, drops from bosses you can no longer kill due to lost gear, or in the worst cases long crafting trees that would require reframing from many different locations a bunch of niche items (I.e. losing a terrablade or ankh shield).
Not to say that mediumcore is terrible, I largely agree with the points in the video. However, the experience is fundamentally different to Minecraft’s, which is why terraria isn’t designed around such a mechanic and Minecraft is.
Yeah I was thinking how people clown on minecrafters who have keep inventory on where in the terraria community people get clowned on for having keep inventory off
I remember doing a full playthrough as a mediumcore character on a mastermode multiplayer server. It was a really interesting playthrough. I never made a dedicated safe room away from the main base on normal playthroughs, but mediumcore influenced me otherwise. It also made me coordinate more with my friends in boss battles, since dying adds another layer of trying to recover your items, we would coordinate in vc who would take the heat while the others go back and heal/recover items; it honestly made me better at surviving boss battles because dying was a huge punishment. I only carried on me what I was okay with possibly losing. Honestly, whenever I died, I would use items of the same tier but for a different class. It made getting the "wrong item drop from bosses" have a use, since it was the same tier of power. I also recall many moments where I thought "omg i got my stuff back using low tier equipment or a class i would've never used at this stage of the game" and it felt rewarding ironically enough. Definitely not for everyone, but I can at least attest to doing a full playthrough on mediumcore; it really stands on it's own as a different gameplay experience from both classic and hardcore.
The part about overpreparing definitely struck at me. I often have difficulty maintaining interest in Softcore runs, and in Hardcore I always get the best gear. I think it'd be interesting having some stuff at risk, and situations with suboptimal gear. You've convinced me to go give Mediumcore a shot.
The main probpem is that it serves no purpose. Hardcore is a big challange but mediumcore is just annoying. Why go trough the trouble of wasting a couple of minutes or more to get your items back when at the end of the day, the gameplay is the exact same after you get them. It serves no purpuse since if you are somewhat good at the game you will get the items back, there is not fear of losing them.
there are some good points but i think ill stay with softcore. my main problem that i have with mediumcore is it wastes a lot of time. i go to play terraria for the bosses, optimising my setup, getting new and exciting weapons but mediumcore just disrupts my flow of having fun. some people like the mechanic wich i dont have a problem with but for the majority it just wastes time. i also dont agree about mediumcore making you better at the game, it mosly just makes me more anxious about hard bossfights and such because if i die i have to pick up my stuff again wich wastes a lot of time, instead something like master mode just makes the game harder and decereases time between trying to pass the challenge wich means more tries wich means better understanding of the fight instead of mediumcore just saying ´if you suck you will have to waste your time again so get good out of thin air i guess,. again i dont see anything wrong with playing mediumcore, im not gonna gatekeep fun but it does have some flaws.
3:32 Fun fact Terraria was built with dropping your items in mind, the playtesters hated it so they removed it and made you drop money instead.
Maybe 1.0 and 1.1, 1.2 on was very much balanced around coin death.
I have a newfound respect for mediumcore after this. I still probably wont play it, because i dont hate myself, but the respect is there
Also bug dance :D
How did you comment before the video even uploaded..
@@Overloadingz They were probably a member or something
Patreon/youtube memberships@@Overloadingz
@@sorbetcafe ooo
I've never really heard anyone defending mediumcore, even if I probably won't play it myself those are sone genuinely good points about how inventory management and risk taking are important
I think mediumcore should have "graves" which keep your items after dying.
this would solve 2 of mediumcore main issues:
1- it would prevent losing your items due to the world closing.
2- it would help with inventory managment, since if the graves keep the items in the same order that you had them, they won't get jumbled every time you die.
Fun fact! I for whatever reason keep backup of my gear and weapons on chests even doe I play in classic/soft core and I think this will prepare me well once start a medium core play-through, and I still have no idea why I do this, I just don’t feel like selling items because im lazy lol
I once tried meduimcore. It was master mode and I somehow only died once due to my controller dying in the middle of a plantera fight. Ngl I kinda liked it because it made me panic when in dangerous situations, it felt like hardcore in a way. Anyway I will still never do it again solely because of the stress of trying to recover my stuff in the underground jungle.
Only Shitty event I've had in mediumcore where I resorted to cheating was when I died in the early hardmode underground jungle and was trying atleast 20 times to recover my items but when I eventually got to where I died my items had despawned due to the item limit integer maxxing out and erasing my items in the process. I took a break from the run for a few days after that.
Now I want to give mediumcore a try, it doesn't look as bad as everyone made it sound
literally
it’s painful
I'm doing it, it's not bad as long as your comfortable in your difficulty (i.e. your first master or legendary playthrough may not be the best idea on mediumcore)
the real solution to dealing with mediumcore item dropping: just don't leave home (or anywhere near any teleporters/pylons/railroads/whatever you've made to quickly and safely get somewhere) with anything you can't afford to lose or replace; this is also known as the golden rule of just about any game where you lose things on death
it's that simple
counterargument: that's less fun :]
@@petrikhorr Fr, purposefully limiting yourself instead of enjoying the entirety of the game is kinda counterproductive
I might try out mediumcore now honestly...
UPDATE: I have tried it out on the Zenith seed and I really like it! Great challenge and it does make me try to die far less often, and prepare for "future me" with less gear. Thanks Sorbet for the recommendation!
Played terraria for nearly a decade have over 4k hrs on all versions and never tried mediumcore but this convvinced me especially with the new update coming soon
This video got me to start my first ever mediumcore playthrough despite playing terraria for years
Im gonna get so mad lmao
Minecraft and Starbound exist. And their default mode IS mediumcore. And especially Minecraft has a huge playerbase.
I admittedly play Minecraft with keep items = true and Starbound with a mod that disables item drops on death (because I like food in Starbound). Losing items is just not for me.
But there is a reason a lot like those games. So yeah
I'm one of the people featured at 0:19, the one named KEXE. I was just made aware of this video and would like it to be known that I've been playing mediumcore for like a week or so before finding this video, and I find it quite fun now.
I love seeing someone mention all of this and a few points I didNt really think about. I played a few rounds before going over to hardcore runs and it did help even if it was a bit annoying at times. I’d still have to say it’s my least favorite character difficulty but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it but I never see anyone play it
One thing I have a habit of doing which I think would help in medium core is building a rope down your primary/first helivator. This allows you to descend quickly and safely without a horseshoe or wings if you dropped your items in hell or deep underground. It takes more time, building that long rope, but worth it when you need to quickly go up or down without items.
I havent played a whole lot of medium core. The idea has been floating around in my head for some weeks now. I have tried it a few times a year back but only got to around EoC. but back then I also wasnt that exerienced and I had never beaten the game. I think I might try it sometime soon. I rhink I have enough skill to make it somewhat far.
I also like that you drop your items but they dont respawn. Thats a problem I have with minecraft. The rush to get your items back is tough. Only having a few minutes once you load the area before item despawning sucks. In Terraria you can take as long as you want and that is nice.... I really like that items dont despawn.
thanks for the new perspective, i might try a mediumcore playthrough with a different state of mind sometime soon
For my money, the biggest issues when it comes to game modes that allow for item/gear drops arise a few different considerations, and how those game modes answer for them:
1. How valuable are the items / what was the investment to acquire them:
~ ~ Items that are difficult to acquire, naturally, hurt a lot more to lose than items that are not.
2. How much player efficacy was locked up into those items:
~ ~ Offense, defense, mobility, consistency.
3. How difficult is it to get back to where you dropped your items:
~ ~ How far you went, what the ambient enemy threat level is compared to your backup gear, how difficult the region is to traverse.
4. How secure are the dropped items:
~ ~ Will they be lost on game exit; are there other conditions that might make it possible to lose them.
Mediumcore in Terraria answers for these questions in these ways:
1. Items require progressively more investment as the player goes on, and as such normally become significantly more valuable as a result. Some items come from challenges that the player might be extremely unwilling to repeat.
2. Offense, defense, and mobility are all lost, and thus consistency is affected severely. Ability to recoup these stats in the mean time to recover items is entirely dependent on the player's thoroughness of preparation and familiarity with the game.
3. It is quite easy to get into the middle of bumbutt nowhere, smack dab in the middle of high difficulty mobs that weren't exactly easy to deal with even before losing gear.
4. Dropped items ARE NOT SECURE. Game crashes, power outages are things that cannot be predicted, and while threat of this is minimized in a single player world where the player immediately bee-lines back to the gear, simply taking too long to get back to the items and having too many drop from enemies or blocks between here and there has a nonzero chance of erasing some dropped items due to item limit.
The consequence of all of this is that mediumcore gets insulted as 'tediumcore' because it's incredibly tedious to play in a way that minimizes risks and ensures stable recovery of very high investment and very high value items that ARE NOT SECURE, and even then it's still possible for things to go awry and result in a loss so devastating that, well...
Many players might just find it more emotionally freeing to have that experience taken out of the equation entirely. This is why some players prefer hardcore to mediumcore - the emotional low doesn't come with the added baggage on top.
For my money in particular, I think that if mediumcore had a grave-storage system in place, like spawning a chest where you died to keep your stuff safe even if item limits occurred or the game crashed or the player decided to take a break and close out so they could cool off, a good amount of this unnecessary emotional baggage would be alleviated.
I've always played mediumcore since 1.1, because i thought it was "normal" difficulty. The only time I've played softcore was when helping a friend learn the game. I honestly much prefer the challenge, even if once in a blood moon i pull all my hair out and store up enough rage to earn myself "domestic" achievements with my future wife and kids
Im on love with Terraria mastermode médiumcore... The chalenge its freakin awesome 🎉
I usually hate bugs and big one's especially, but that one at the end is cute, douing its stickbug dance
You should look up weevils. They are even better
@@joeyrony2887 thanks, will not. Internet trolling can be everywhere
this is an amazing video, mediumcore is such a fun gamemode and it deserves more love
I did a 1hp mediumcore with my friends and it was chaotic and awesome
@I_EatKidswe died in the underground desert one time and it was so chaotic
@I_EatKids i think it was extractinator and desert fossils
thats a really cool stickbug, is there any chance for more content with it or your gecko?
When I was a little boy I started playing and saw my items didn't drop, which confused me and I though it was too op (coming from minecraft), so I looked around and figured out how to choose medium-core.
The thing is, mediumcore is the only difficulty thingy that forces you to keep playing once you die (item despawning), making you even more angry.
The reason mediumcore sucks for most people, including me, is because everything it tries to do, is done better by another option (in my opinion).
Mediumcore is like making a "hardcore nuzlocke" pokemon playthrough, except when you wipe, you just catch all the pokemons again and have to retrain them. Basically, you remove the challenge and the sense of accomplishment for beating it, and keep the tediousness. You end the run not proud of yourself, but just liking the game less.
Most people do not like being punished in games (basically having their time wasted by fucking up), and mediumcore is punishing, so most people avoid it.
But i mean, mediumcore is for people who LIKE being punished for mistakes i assume. It's an option for a reason. The problem is that hardcore is better for that (in my opinion), and i think the point here is misunderstood. Sure, you technically lose more time dying in hardcore than mediumcore. That is definitely true. But dying in hardcore makes me rage for a bit, then remember the death, and since my character is deleted, makes me take time to think about it and go "Man, i should not have done that, this is what led to this", and i'll actually keep a memory of it. Because it makes you take a pause to redo a character, you'll probably take a break after losing a lot.
Dying in mediumcore goes along the lines of "God fucking damnit, i have to get all my stuff back... *frustrated groan* i fucking hate this game". Just pure frustration, because you just lose your time, you can just get your stuff back, just like in softcore, it just takes longer and that's it. Oh and you CAN'T take that pause of introspection ! Because if you quit the game to chill out, you're fucked, your items are gone !
But to adress some points that are made later in the video : you are right that it forces people to consider other options, and i already explained why it tends to fail to make you consider your deaths : then why not just make a softcore challenge run ? If i want to use the flintlock pistol, i'd play a run of pre-hardmode where i can only use weapons that NPCs sell. It ups the difficulty without making me having to redo progress for no real reason. (In fact it lessens the grind since you don't need to craft or drop weapons from enemies, you'll just buy them.) I'd also argue that for getting better at the game without more punishment, playing with mods that make the game harder is a better option on PC.
As for Co-op, true if you have friends at all, and also if they can put up with mediumcore.
TL;DR : Mediumcore is just at an akward medium, where both sides of it are done better by either softcore, a softcore challenge run, or hardcore.
thank you for making this video, mediumcore's my favorite character choice and I'm tired of people shitting on it
I feel like medium core incentives more building of farms so if/when you loose your gear you can farm it up again. It makes the game more challenging but with some forethought and game knowledge it isn't bad. I think loosing items on death is a great way to make backup gear and use things like teleports so you can quickly and safely get around the map when you die. basically medium core makes you build infrastructure more than classic.
Honestly I would love if there was a difficulty between soft and medium core that makes it so where you ONLY lose everything not on your hotbar, so that way your mining loot is gone, but you aren’t completely shit out of luck. One of my issues that I usually have with master mode is just the random deaths you will have from things you couldn’t have expected, things like random boulders or a turtle that hits you out of the air mid glide. And if that happens and you lose all of your shit super far from your base, that can really suck, something that just happens that you just couldn’t have avoided causing you to lose something that has the possibility of only being 1 per world.
0:59 If its 'only for' a single hipster and noone else then i'd classify that as bad regardless.
Mediumcore is *unanimously* hated by everyone, so if its not for everyone other than one guy, then its not for anyone.
I don’t think you know what the word unanimous means
@@sorbetcafe I have been playing terraria since 1.0, i have been on the forums for almost that long, and other than you, i have *never* in my life seen anyone even take a neutral opinion towards mediumcore, let alone a positive one.
I'd say thats unanimous enough, or atleast as much as i can get it without an actual survey.
Recently, I've been doing a Hardcore Master run. I swear, every time I see some video or post titled "Mediumcore is actually harder than Hardcore" it makes me want to scream.
the idea that the gamemode that allows you to take risks and bounce back from failure is somehow harder than the gamemode that deletes your character upon one failure and prevents you from taking any risks whatsoever is the most ridiculous thing ive ever heard in my life
and yet everyone who hates mediumcore seems to use that argument
i played a mediumcore run like 3 years ago, its honestly one of the most memorable runs ive ever had (i may or may not have created a cult)
Y’know this has actually changed my mind on mediumcore almost completely. Thanks Sorbet!
I've never played medium-core before but I think void vault would be your best friend here, same with the piggy bank (if you get the money trough or the living wood chest) you can always keep your stuff within the reach of your inventory AND your base
Solid defense, solid points, solid arguments in favor of trying it. Consider me sold, I’ll have to give it a try at some point as I am one of those players that finds hardcore a bit too punishing for my current skill level at the game, and I’m open to something with a bit more bite to it then soft core. I may do it on expert, but what difficulty would you recommend for someone’s first dip into mediumcore?
I'd suggest
-Playing a tankier build with warding accessories. Ranger is fantastic, melee is a solif choice too. Summoner, due to being squishy and having weird item progression, can get rough.
-If you find a good summoning weapon, keep it in your piggy bank or a chest at home rather than carrying it with you. That way you can resummon it when you die to help you. With a bewitching table, that can be two free minions to help you.
-Be sure to set up pylons
-If you ever die on the way back to retrieve lost gear, I'd highly suggest taking a breather at your base and thinking, because that's a tipping point on the edge of catastrophe. Continuing to die can get your stuck in a loop where you keep coming back with worse and worse gear. Consider trying to get potions of return or approaching the problem in a different way (if you died in the dungeon, you can mine around it and cut in where your corpse is rather than walking the long way around, you can even break the walls to stop enemies from spawning).
-Keep any informational accessories and potions in a void bag
-Secure your spawn location. In prehardmode, all you really need is something that goblins and blood zombies can't open the doors of. In hardmode, I usually make a small safe room linked with a teleporter to my main base. Teleporters come from the mechanic now, so you can even set it up in prehardmode.
-When fighting the pillars, stay away from the pillar itself and close to the edge of the pillar area. That way, if you die, you don't have to venture far into the area to retrieve your items.
i was one of those people who said mediumcore was worse than hardcore, i did get good and understood that that's just bs
my biggest problem with medium core though is how you kinda repeat the same process of getting your items back almost always in the same way
get old gear > head to the place you died > get items back > do some stuff > die > repeat
it does impose a challenge and is slightly different depending on progression, but it's still the same especially for anyone who isn't that good at staying alive
Well, of course it will be in the same way, since you are going back to the same place you just died in. But it does has an unique challenge of trying to recover an item using a sub-optimal item that you would never have used in softcore or hardcore.
you missed your mage emblem at 10:38
also I'm gonna start a mediumcore run now
I like playing terraria hardcore, and I like keeping the worlds, just not characters. But uh, I couldn't handle it after a while and just started deleting and creating new worlds whenever I died. Mediumcore doesn't seem to bad, but if i wanna play casually with friends I like classic and if I wanna play by myself I play Hardcore because I love the challenge. Mediumcore is a valid and fun challenge, a diet version of hardcore. but by no means is it a harder normal. its an easier hardcore, like you said.
Might actually try a Mediumcore run now. Thanks for the video!
Doesn't do well for those who wanna explore unique equipment builds...
Or who don't like having a city strictly consisting of chests full of old stuff.
But then again, they need to have a better way of dropping your stuff than in item form since items don't save with your world like in Minecraft so god forbid your power goes out or even worse, your mother says "bedtime. now."
It’s hard to step away from mediumcore. I can start a hardcore run, play for a couple hours, die in a dumb way and then be satisfied and do something else. My sunk cost fallacy makes it impossible to walk away from medium core after a death. I have to go get my stuff back.
If I wanted to do a full game playthrough I’d rather crank up the standard difficulties to master or beyond for a challenge than go mediumcore because I find those challenges more fun personally, but different challenges are for different people. I gave mediumcore a couple shots and I just didn’t have fun.
I see why you like it but it’s not my cup of tea.
Personally: I like to have the option to ragequit after a particularly bad death.
The 1 thing i hate about mediumcore is the unwanted invasion, like Pirates immediately after u enter hardmode can make you rage quit, thats rll the only thing i can say is annoying since there is rll no way to skip an invasion, had that happened to me while playing medium core master mode, i was beinf 1 shoted everytime i tried to get my items back it was rll frustriating
Don’t want pirates? Don’t break altars.
@@IcyPK_Studiosyeah, just don’t do progression through the game
@@saratoga6663 who said you needed to break altars to get hardmode ores
@@xxGreenRoblox fishing supremacists rise
THANK YOU FOR EXPLAINING IT THIS WAY! i wanna try it now :)
Maybe it's not terrible but I'd much rather play hardcore over mediumcore. The rush you get from narrowly evading death is such a great feeling and is why I love hardcore/one life modes in games in general.
Pretty good summary of it. I used to do challenge runs in Terraria a long time ago and always went mediumcore. Got to a point I rarely died and I made sure to keep backup items incase it happened. Really, if anything, it felt like it was justifying my hoarding tendencies. Even had a death in lava once but managed to recover most of my stuff.
I love deathloops. Not interacting with them directly, but the extra investment and planning you put into your world to prevent them. Mediumcore seems similar to the experience I've had with Minecraft combat-based modpacks, I might try it despite having no interest in hardcore
I think only reason dropping items in terraria is not fun while in minecraft intended way to play is how many things you carry. First of all you have accessories that you equiped and optimal ones you hold onto. Secondly the inventory itself as you carry too much things that supposedly help you anytime and organizing them is also pain in the ass. As a bonus might be the terraria's punishing nature that there are more things to kill you rather than helping you.
You make a very compelling argument. I'm really excited to try a mediumcore run now!
this video has convinced me to try meduimcore thanks for the tips
0:15 Is that Spearmaster?
spear mustard
That "a" doing astronimical work
You’ve made Mediumcore Sound very fun^^ I’m glad someone made a video about this.
This is probably one of the best persuasive arguments I've ever heard. In a single video i had by entire mentality regarding mediumcore laid bare and am like convinced that when 1.4.5 releases i should start a mediumcore playthrough, especially because my main class is filling out its progression with new whips
You have inspired me to try Mediumcore on Master Death mode. Wish me luck!
changed my whole perspective, going to be starting a mediumcore/hardcore run when i graduate
i never thought about mediumcore this way. might have to give it a few playthroughs sometime!
This video inspired me to play Terraria again after many years, on Master difficulty, and try out Mediumcore as well. It's definitely a tense experience a lot of the time and it drives me to play extremely careful and calculated, but it also makes me appreciate my gear a lot more and save older gear to have something when I die and need to venture out to find it... Or if it's too late/dangerous and I need to kiss the other gear goodbye, which does definitely feel harsh, but yeah.
Yeah I gave mediumcore a real try recently and loved it. Having played Terraria for years, I eventually got bored. Mediumcore created a fresh problem solving experience that is uniquely offered by the gamemode.
The fact that items don't despawn really adds to the experience. Before, I thought they would despawn and always rush to my death to try to get them back as quickly as possible, but now I know I can take my time and it's a lot more fun. Also only negative point I have is having multiple loadouts can be a pain, especially if you have a full inventory, because you actively have to put on all your gear to be able to pick all the stuff up.
The way you put has actually convinced me to play medium core
I just never tried it because everyone always said “it’s just a more annoying hardcore”. It’s also probably better for me since I like to take my time with things like builds or making farms opposed to trying to speed run the game and avoid danger at all costs
those "20" minutes of time to get ur stuff back is legitmately worse than restarting the whole run after dying for me
Why?
Replying cause I also want a reason
@@sorbetcafe idk but im right
I used to play mediumcore alot back in 1.3 with my cousin and it was really fun and challenging
I love creativity and points made in this video! I'm convinced, I'll try it some day. (Coming from someone who plays Journey)
My main problem with mediumcore is that it seems unneccesary. Either have a casual experience with classic or go all in with hardcore instead of going with the awkawrd middle ground.
The biggest complaint for me between mediumcore vs hardcore is:
Hardcore death means I can walk away and close the game if I'm tilted after a death.
Mediumcore means I have to keep playing while tilted, unless I'm willing to lose those items permenantly. (Closing a world means items on the ground dissapear.)
Mediumcore sortof forces me to play while I'm tilted from the death, even if it's not AS bad as hardcore death, it FEELS worse simply because I have to keep playing while tilted at times. (It's one of my least favorite things about many games' death punishment.)
I had a habit of collecting old weapons that I liked but already outgrown
I never played mediumcore but it's interesting how it allows the old gear to be useful a few more times.
I keep on seeing hate for gamemode or mechanics for games that can be completely avoided by just... not choosing them.
Like you don't even need to avoid it if it's not there.
The issue for me is how low the actual dropped item limit is. A few people die at the same time in an invasion and someones items are gone forever even if the server never turns off or the invasion is quickly cleared.