Too Many Spawns of the New Ranged Hostile Mob

[Gwendal Steven]

There seems to be a spawn issue with the new ranged hostile mob. As proof, I'm attaching a screenshot; you'll see there's clearly a problem. I took this screenshot after an intense time storm. There are at least 20 of them, and they’re not normal mobs, making them impossible to kill.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Hi and welcome to the forums!

Okay so I see a couple of things in your screenshot. First it appears that the temporal storm has just ended judging by the fact that your gear isn't 100% full. Second, it appears you have gotten the bowtorn variant of the temporal storm. Temporal storms have 4 variants that I know of:

1. Drifters (original version)
2. Mostly bowtorns
3. Mostly shivers
4. a decent mixture of all 3

They should just despawn on their own or find a hole to wander into after a bit before despawning. If not, then I would consider submitting a bug report that the mobs spawned by temporal storms sometimes don't disappear after the storm is over.

[Yerik]

Not sure about temporal storms yet, but when rift activity is calm I get quite a few bowtorn and shivers at night, but never drifters.
Is this intended?

[Thorfinn]

@traugdor there are two others -- mix of drifters and shivers, and mix of shiver and bowtorn. The drifter-only is just 10%.

@Gwendal Steven, they are functionally the same as regular old supernatural spawns -- get at least 64 tiles away, wait at least six seconds there, then come home.

[Thorfinn]

@Yerik, Calm? No, they should not spawn on Calm nights. Most likely, what's happening is they are spawning in nearby caves and walking to the surface. You just need to add a few blocks to the cave entrances to make sure they can't get out.

[Yerik]

@Thorfinn Good point, I will check and see if that is the case. Thanks

[Gwendal Steven]

Yes, it was just after the time storm ended. During it, I stayed locked up on the upper floor of my house. The problem isn’t really that they didn’t despawn, it’s that there were too many of them. There were at least 25 in the same spot. Moreover, they were deep mobs, not surface mobs. I managed to kill all of them afterward, as they never left, even 5 minutes after the screenshot. I was forced to kill them all. With my bronze-tin shield, my iron falx, and my steel hauberk, I managed to defeat them, but it cost me at least 15 bandages and 150 durability from my brand new armor.

[Gwendal Steven]

Alright, I didn’t know you had to move 64 blocks away for them to despawn. I’ll do that next time.

[7embre]

Yeah, I've had similar situations during the rc.x part of 1.20. IMO they're problem only because unlike drifter, bowtorns don't tend to wander off or, I don't know, DISAPPER? as some of drifters immediately after the temporal storm do. Wasn't that pleasant, I should say, but, after it ended, I was in full plate iron. So I and my friend just sliced through them, as they're pretty visible during the day and when they, well, don't flick like crazy on a rust background.

 

 

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Gwendal Steven said:

Yes, it was just after the time storm ended.

Looking at the screenshot, I'm thinking that what may have potentially happened is that the rift next to your house helped spawn in a bunch of bowtorn during the temporal storm. The ones that spawn from rifts can still be stronger than normal due to the storm, I'm pretty sure, but they won't instantly vanish when the temporal storm ends. You'll need to either kill them, or go somewhere else a good distance away for a while and come back later.

In any case, I'm not 100% sure that's what happened here, but it has happened to me a time or two. I wouldn't say it's a common occurrence, but it tends to be an unpleasant scenario to find oneself in. Once you get into the late-game content, you may want to consider setting up a rift ward near your house to curb the active rifts in that area.

[Gwendal Steven]

8 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Looking at the screenshot, I'm thinking that what may have potentially happened is that the rift next to your house helped spawn in a bunch of bowtorn during the temporal storm. The ones that spawn from rifts can still be stronger than normal due to the storm, I'm pretty sure, but they won't instantly vanish when the temporal storm ends. You'll need to either kill them, or go somewhere else a good distance away for a while and come back later.

In any case, I'm not 100% sure that's what happened here, but it has happened to me a time or two. I wouldn't say it's a common occurrence, but it tends to be an unpleasant scenario to find oneself in. Once you get into the late-game content, you may want to consider setting up a rift ward near your house to curb the active rifts in that area.

Thank you for your reply, I didn’t even notice the rift in my screenshot. I didn’t even know there was something to prevent rifts from appearing.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

4 hours ago, Gwendal Steven said:

I didn’t even notice the rift in my screenshot.

me either....

[Voldemort]

On 1/21/2025 at 1:54 PM, Gwendal Steven said:

There seems to be a spawn issue with the new ranged hostile mob. As proof, I'm attaching a screenshot; you'll see there's clearly a problem. I took this screenshot after an intense time storm. There are at least 20 of them, and they’re not normal mobs, making them impossible to kill.

Love it but players hate it

Edited January 22, 2025 by Adnyeus

[Kevin Eric Snell]

My experience is that bowtorns don't necessarily spawn more than other monsters, but once they're outside your house, they're never leaving, never despawning unless you sprint a few blocks away and come back. Sunlight does nothing.

[Gwendal Steven]

Ok, so there’s definitely an issue: Bowtorns are sometimes way too numerous and don’t despawn as they should, unlike other mobs from temporal storms. A fix is clearly needed.

[Kevin Eric Snell]

At this point any time I see a bowtorn outside, I just switch on creative mode, with no guilt. By the way, as I was creative-moding away from my last bowtorn storm (because they never despawn unless move far away), I flew up north to explore a little, and when I switched back to survival mode to collect some wild plants, I started taking damage and hearing bowtorn noises.

It was from a bowtorn that had spawned below me in a cave. It was shooting me through several blocks of dirt and rock.

[Asurea Skie]

I'm going to add my own experiences here. Bowtorn don't flee with sunlight/vanish with the end of a storm like other mobs do (even when you're in the middle of fighting them). They just stand around, keeping you under siege.

When it's your first high rift activity night (not even a temporal storm) and you open the door...oh, hey, it's two bowtorn, if I charge them down I can take them! Weird that they're still here at 0800 in the first month in broad daylight...CHARGE! OH S*** IT'S NOT TWO IT'S 20 DODGE DODGE D-dead. In just a storm of arrow fire. If you don't have proper armor (and heck; unless you have superior armor) they chunk you for 4HP per shot and are super-accurate. You can dodge at long range but if you run in a straight line from their specific viewpoint, they'll nail you.

Now I've had two bowtorn-only temporal storms in a row, which I didn't even know was a thing until reading this forum post. Even in steel chain armor, they were nightmares, needing dozens of bandages just to keep the population under control so my entire base wouldn't be surrounded when the storm ended. Speaking of the storm ending, the bowtorn themselves don't despawn on their own. They just stick around, ready to murder you...but their corpses sure disappear promptly for any you kill after the storm ends.

All in all, they just don't feel fun and challenging. They feel like they're designed to break all the normal drifter rules and wreck players.

Here's some suggestions I would make:

1. Reduce the damage of lower-tier bowtorn. Surface bowtorn with Rank 0 damage shouldn't be hitting you for over a quarter of your default HP. Deep or tainted, sure, and corrupt/nightmare should hit an unarmored player even harder, but surface ones shouldn't be hitting for more than 2-2.5HP per shot.
2. Make them follow the same rules as drifters and shivers. They need to flee with the end of the storm/rising of the sun. Being sieged in your base and literally having to dig a 40+block long tunnel with your hands is not fun or engaging.
3. Cap their spawns at 10%-30% of all spawns from a portal or a storm. Could be different for each. A storm that spawns nothing but bowtorn is one where even someone in full steel feels it's better to just hide in the base and bunker down instead of "fighting the storm," something I'd routinely challenge myself to do prior to this patch in the endgame.
4. Reduce their accuracy. Whether through making them worse at leading targets or just increasing their dispersion (the size of the "aiming circle" that determines where their arrow will go), make them less likely to just consistently hit the player. This is especially suggested at long range.

Not all of these would necessarily need to be done. Any one of them, I feel, would go a long way towards correcting this enemy that currently feels like it exists to obliterate new characters and especially new players.

The screenshot, by the way, is one of two storm drifters (the other was a corrupt!) that first ambushed me over two full in-game hours after the last temporal storm ended. They don't despawn or run off...just stick around waiting to ambush the player. And you can't tell me that a tainted (T2) or corrupt (T3) bowtorn just wandered out of a cave next to my base, especially when both of them had the blinking/shimmering effect of enemies spawned because of a storm.

[위스키군]

same issue here. seems to be too harsh for two noobs

[LadyWYT]

Personally, I think it's fine if bowtorns are capable of quickly killing underequipped players; they're a good reason to avoid running around outside in the dark. But they shouldn't be spawning en-masse like in those screenshots--that's just a bit much. Nor should they be hanging around in the daylight. So I'd say something's gone haywire with the spawning again and will need to be fixed.

[Asurea Skie]

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Personally, I think it's fine if bowtorns are capable of quickly killing underequipped players; they're a good reason to avoid running around outside in the dark. But they shouldn't be spawning en-masse like in those screenshots--that's just a bit much. Nor should they be hanging around in the daylight. So I'd say something's gone haywire with the spawning again and will need to be fixed.

I think part of what's going on is how the game normally handles spawns. It creates a wave of drifters that try to get at the player for a period of time, but then give up, retreat, and a fresh wave comes in.

It's that retreat mechanism that's missing/broken with bowtorn. Combined with their heavy hits, incredible accuracy, and high damage, it allows them to build up these "execution squads" shockingly early. My first encounter with a mass like this was less than a week into the game, and wasn't even tied to a temporal storm. I was setting a pretty good pace, already having copper tools and just casting my bronze anvil and first bronze pick.

Yes, nights are and should be scary at that stage, but some RNG spawning 18-20 bowtorns leading to an unavoidable death makes that rage quit button feel like you're just being baited. VS is supposed to be hard, not complete BS.

The new enemy types are, overall, a good thing. Drifters alone were too exploitable. It's just that bowtorn are an exception to all of the rules.

[Thorfinn]

You are correct. The aitask that is tied to daylight for drifters is "fleeentity", while for bowtorn, it is "stayinrange". I'm guessing it was for a reason, but it does allow them to mass.

[EDIT]

It might be simply to make it so you have to adapt to the situation, rather than just turtling until daylight. You have to take active measures to get rid of them.

[EDIT2]

Oh, it also helps to have a back door. Engaging them is just wandering damage. Way too little loot to bother with. So don't engage.

Edited January 26, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Asurea Skie said:

and wasn't even tied to a temporal storm.

I missed this the first time through. Are others experiencing this, too? I don't believe I've seen more than one I know for certain spawned from a rift, though they seem to have no spawn limit in caves. If you don't keep them from climbing out, they will soon build their numbers.

[Kevin Eric Snell]

While I was panning bony soils, a bowtorn spawned in broad daylight with no rifts nearby and started shooting at me. These things are ruining the game experience.

[Thorfinn]

Sure he didn't come out of a nearby cave? The following is part of the spawn conditions.

				maxLightLevel: 7,
				chance: 0.1,
				lightLevelType: "MaxTimeOfDayLight",

Cave mouths, it's easy to happen -- that would only be, what, 15 blocks from daylight? And they have a seek range of 30.

Check around again to make sure you closed off all caves in your AO. That is much more important in the new version. You need either secure your surroundings or be ready to deal with an occasional bowtorn.

[gomodo]

Another possibility: add the ability to modify the behavior of monsters.
A few suggestions:

• an item that temporarily attracts monsters (for example: a special thing that burns)
• a special arrow that poisons the behavior of the monster : it becomes an ally and is targeted by other monsters
• an item that temporarily makes monsters flee (for example, something to eat)
• an item that temporarily slows down monsters, or even nicer, makes them temporarily dance

It is always more interesting to add a game system than to nerf the existing system.