Game Mechanics - Balancing drills and pickaxes (2024)

Beyond design preference, pickaxes are superior to their drill counterparts as they benefit from faster mining speed (from the tool's prefix ONLY) and the ability to knock enemies back as you mine. Drills don't benefit from speed modifiers and you'll have to aim directly at an enemy to damage, though without knockback this only makes handling enemies even more difficult. How to possibly fix this:

Drills mine any block their sprite touches. With a drill, you can wave your cursor over a clump of ore and mine multiple blocks at once. For example, instead of tapping one block, then another, you'd tap two or three blocks simultaneously. The idea here is this will make pickaxes slower but safer, and drills will be faster for the cost of protection. As this may be problematic for precise building, there could be a right click function where it mines just like a pickaxe, without the protection of overswing, so you don't drill a chunk out of your house when trying to remove one block.

I know some of you may think both exist just for preference, not to be different, but as they are, they are different, and stat-wise, pickaxes are superior, so this change is to bring both tool types to equal usefulness, in different ways.

I like the idea, but one thing that might bother some is that if you have your drill equiped, you could break the door you are opening / switch you are flipping or whatever that has a right-click function.

Supporting !

Umbren The Shadow Hunter said:

See Also

Terraria: Drill vs. Pickaxe - Differences & Which Tool To Choose?Terraria: Drill vs. Pickaxe - Differences & Which Tool To Choose?Terraria Tips (Drill vs Pickaxe, Cobalt, Iron, Mythril) | Technology articles from PurplepediaWhich is better pickaxe or drill Terraria? - Gaming Pedia

I like the idea, but one thing that might bother some is that if you have your drill equiped, you could break the door you are opening / switch you are flipping or whatever that has a right-click function.

Supporting !

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I'd think you'd have to left click like now to mine those tiles. Right clicking on a tile that has a right click effect would do the tile's right click effect rather than mine it, I guess.

DestroyerOfTheDestroyer said:

Well, finally! Will chainsaws get this?

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I was thinking that, however chainsaws only effect trees and cacti, so it wouldn't be any different than how they are now, I think?

Snickerbobble said:

I'd think you'd have to left click like now to mine those tiles. Right clicking on a tile that has a right click effect would do the tile's right click effect rather than mine it, I guess.

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Possible, but that reminds me a dual-wielding mod I tried, but its probably not the same at all.

On another note, if drills are made for mining, maybe we should make pickaxes do more knockback, because as it stands they aren't really the best option for protection...

Umbren The Shadow Hunter said:

Possible, but that reminds me a dual-wielding mod I tried, but its probably not the same at all.

On another note, if drills are made for mining, maybe we should make pickaxes do more knockback, because as it stands they aren't really the best option for protection...

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Puckaxes are meant for mining too.

K. Support.
And here is why: the option to make drills mine the same as picks. I prefer drills cuz they look way cooler. And giving them 2 "modes" would just be awesome.
So yeah I want this.

(I like always forget to put this badge in... Finally remembered this time)

azumarill64 said:

Puckaxes are meant for mining too.

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Well, obviously so, but in the context of the OP , he says that the way pickaxes swing is meant for protecting the player, wich drills don't do well.

If we go with what he says, then pickaxes must also get a buff so that they don't get underused.

I unawares made same suggestion. Hope its log can be some feedback.
[Locked]Change the way Drills work.