"Upgrades" honestly feel extremely underwhelming.

[Toonces7]

For Reference - I'm wearing Galaxite armor, and have some Desert weapons among other things.

The thing is, almost every "upgrade" feels really lateral. You end up trading off really good things for some fairly small AC/damage improvements.

Like hey, nice shield? But you lose your light source. Which isn't just how far you can see, but also how much of the map you reveal.

Galaxite armor has improved critical hits? Well it doesn't matter because you lost most of your +crit chance.

You can have a mining or ranged damage set....but you'll die in 2 hits, in a game where surprise multi-attacks are extremely common.

New weapons? Pretty much just a variant of your old weapons. Might do more damage, but hit slower, or hit faster, but do less damage. It tends to make it feel like which weapon you use hardly even matters. On top of that, melee weapons are generally terrible altogether.

Monsters, meanwhile, get massive upgrades in ability and damage as you go to each new area.

I enjoy exploring areas for the sake of exploring them, but I never really bother looting much because it's mostly trash I have very little use for.

Even, for example - the new plants in the Desert biome.....there are no "new" plants. It's just a random mix of seeds of old plants with different pixels.

Just to see if this keeps up, I looked at other weapons/gear I've yet to obtain, and it's pretty much the same deal. Rune Song, a weapon that can take hours and hours to actually put together.....barely does more damage than Galaxite sword.

This game is doing fine on "Risk", but seems to have completely forgot about the "Rewards".

[Ryuu×]

early access... anyway i don't have rune song since i knew i am gonna be distance dealer player and did visit all biomes with galaxite set - 4 days ago i did made golden armor,legendary bow''not using it actually as weapon'' prefer galaxite chakram and legendary pickaxe and i feel like nothing can get in my way anymore - most of stats you get from leveling up, also i don't know if you found it yet but u can force change season's in game so you won't miss something what was like few month's ago on event. As off hand never used an shield since since i prefer my lantern. Only thing what i do dislike on that game is fishing system :c sure monsters at dessert hit pretty hard sometimes prolly they were set up for an distance fight than close one but that is last dome with game offer for now so must be hard.

[Toonces7]

Yeah, I get that it's early access, that's kinda WHY I am leaving feedback though.

[TheClosetSkeleton]

Well, I kinda get you, but that's mostly because galactite is a scam XD.

Essentially, you don't need galactite for anything but the tools, as for the various set, I'd advise wearing multiple. I often my may set, on which I equip lantern/anything else depending on my needs, which I use to explore, I have a mining set used to well, mine, and lastly a harvest set which I use for crops.

After that, you can quickly switch between sets to have what you need.

I will agree with you tho on the lack of weapon variety, but that a problem deeply tied to the current combat system that is currently not bad but kinda lackluster

EDIT : considering legendary weapon besides the Rune song that was introduced way back hence it's stats are lackluster with the current end-game, the other two legendary are well worth getting. First is a bow that won't break (and if you use range weapon a lot you know how fast they go down) and is useful for crowd control with the ghosts it summons, while the pickaxe is simply the best pick in the game currently, with a bunch of good bonuses

[[CTU]Jack_Bauer]

If i want to run with out the lantern i tend to use Glow foods

[mjkittredge]

You don't need the lantern, that's what torches and glow tulip food are for. But it's a nice convenience to go with your mining set of equipment. On your melee set use the octarine shield. On your ranged set use the legendary book from the shaman boss.

Galaxite armor has an interesting set of bonuses, 12% extra damage on full health and extra crit damage. So you have to get crit chance from jewelry and food. You can craft spiky gold rings for 6% crit chance and you can find 13% crit chance rings in the fungal sub biome of Azeos Wilderness. You can get an extra 6% crit from larval meat foods. 16% from the octarine axe. There are also several crit chance necklaces. There are several crit enhancing skills in the skill tree.

So with Galaxite armor you will crit less often than wearing the Scarlet Armor set but the crits will be devastating.

If you are dying in 2 hits anywhere then you should not be there. You need to go back to earlier biomes and improve your skill tree skills and get your HP and armor up.

Melee weapons are awesome because they do AOE/Splash damage, meaning you can cleave through swarms of multiple monsters in a single swing. Ranged attacks can hit two monsters with one shot but it's rare, they have to be perfectly next to each other.

Rune Song is excellent when it first becomes available (after breaking through the wall) because it's attainable way before you should realistically be going for galaxite. When you're first farming scarlet ore to get the pickaxe etc and scarlet set you can find the temple and the maze along the way. Never runs out of durability and heals.
I would hope that end game weapons are better than a sword you can get right after beating the first 3 bosses.

So I basically disagree with everything you're saying, I find the games loot progression to be very rewarding. I think with some adjustments to your gear and strategy you can see it for yourself instead of being a negative nancy.