Terraria’s Snowball Cannon, but it shoots boulders

Terraria’s Snowball Cannon, but it shoots boulders

So, earlier today I was scrolling Reddit when I came across this post by u/Shalapai4201, which suggested the idea of an “upgraded snowball cannon that shoots boulders”. Now, normally, I’m rather brainless when I scroll Reddit. However, after reading this, I got a strong urge to actually bring this into reality – so, I did.

Now, of course, I am no star modder. Don’t expect anything magnificent or novel from someone who only knows how to follow tutorials. However, I do know enough to work with existing mechanics, and I believe my interpretation of this particular idea is at least decent. So, that being said, this is the Boulderball Cannon.

I know, very creative name. It’s a Snowball Cannon that shoots boulders! It is crafted from a Snowball Cannon and 199 Boulders, making it relatively cheap, though its requirement to be crafted at a Mythril or Orichalcum Anvil locks it behind Hardmode. This was done for balance reasons, as you’ll see in a minute.

After crafting the Boulderball Cannon, you’ll notice a few quicks of the weapon. First, the immunity. Boulders, by nature, are incredibly dangerous to players – after all, that’s their claim to fame in this game! Unfortunately though, a boulder gun that causes its user to immediately commit suicide wouldn’t

Be very useful, so the gun comes with protections built in. As long as you are holding the Boulderball Cannon – that is, you have it selected in your hotbar or cursor – boulders become completely harmless to players. This is an effect that applies globally.

You are free to run into any and all boulders with impunity – and you will be completely unscathed. However, the moment you mouse off the Boulderball Cannon, you will lose this immunity. All boulders become hostile again, including the ones you just spawned, so be careful – or

You might meet a rather quick demise. As for the second quirk, you probably already noticed it. When holding the Boulderball Cannon, boulders gain glowing tracers that make them much easier to see and track onscreen. Given boulders’ tendency to move however they like, this is invaluable for keeping tabs on your projectiles.

But, just like the immunity, this effect disappears as soon as you stop holding the weapon. The third and last quirk is in the weapon itself. You’ll notice that the cannon doesn’t actually have any intrinsic damage value. So, just like the Coin Gun, the damage and crit power of the Boulderball Cannon comes

Solely from its ammunition, not the gun itself. Speaking of ammunition, boulders! Boulders are now a class of ammunition for this weapon, and they are the most important variable for the cannon. There are four options, representing the four boulders you can find in Terraria: the standard

Boulder, the Bouncy Boulder, the Life Crystal Boulder, and the Rolling Cactus. The standard boulder is a… boulder. To be like typical, standard vanilla boulders, I set them to deal 70 base damage to enemies – though as ammunition, you can increase this through ranged damage buffs too.

Crafted for 6 stone each, they roll long and fast, but are relatively brittle and don’t bounce well. When held, the Boulderball Cannon highlights them with a cloudy grey tracer. Of the four, the Bouncy Boulder is possibly the best ammunition for this weapon.

They are like vanilla boulders, dealing 70 base damage, but have far, far superior bouncing abilities. This allows them to stay on screen much longer. However, their drawback is their exorbitant price, costing an extra 5 Pink Gel per Boulder, which is still ludicrously expensive even with a 90% ammo conservation bonus. Yikes.

When shot, these boulders behind a fluffy pink tracer when powered by the Boulderball Cannon. The Life Crystal Boulder is probably the weirdest boulder in the entire game. These generate naturally in GetFixedBoi worlds, and can also be crafted with a Life Crystal.

They act pretty much identically to a standard boulder, but they’re a life crystal! That being said, there isn’t really a reason to use these, on account of their stupidly expensive crafting recipe, though I guess since they drop a life crystal on death they are recraftable? I dunno.

Leaving behind a jittery red-blue trail, these boulders are not affected by ammo conservation. And lastly, we have the Rolling Cacti. Unlike the other three boulders, cacti are naturally weaker, dealing just 35 damage to non-player entities – though they do release spikes every time they bounce.

Despite this, they are the weakest of the bunch, and are generally not worth using. The Boulderball Cannon makes these boulders and their spikes glow a bright green color. So, that’s the gun itself and the ammunition it fires. Given that, how does it actually feel like to use then? Well, surprisingly responsive.

The Snowball Cannon actually has quite a decent firing velocity, which transfers over to our Boulderball Cannon, meaning it is quite easy to use over a medium distance. The Boulders themselves also retain their natural ability to accelerate over flat surfaces and climb slopes, meaning they are exceptionally fast and effective over these flat surfaces.

All boulders also have infinite piercing and extremely strong knockback as well. Through this, we can reasonably conclude that our Boulderball Cannon will be absolutely godlike for crowd and invasion control. And indeed, it is. The boulders absolutely decimate the Pirate Invasion and Stage 2 Old One’s Army over a flat arena.

The boulders can stall the oncoming ground enemies while dealing heavy damage, and the Cannon itself has enough velocity to hit flying enemies decently high up as well. Unsurprisingly, an infinitely-piercing boulder cannon also works wonders against the Destroyer, but then again, basically everything with piercing does.

With what we’ve seen so far, the crowd-control capabilities of the Boulderball Cannon would definiely already be A to S tier for early Hardmode. It’d definitely be a powerful weapon in this state – but the Boulderball Cannon still has two more tricks up its sleeve – Bouncy Boulders and For the Worthy.

Both of these cases amplify the power of boulders by a even more extreme margin. With Bouncy Boulders, we can bounce boulders off the edges of a container, like this, and they will keep ricocheting back and forth – decimating anything in their path.

As long as you can afford these bubblegum blobs from hell, you can hold your own against pretty much any swarm. Meanwhile, For the Worthy boulders work in a similar but different fashion. You see, in For the Worthy, standard Boulders split into three mini-boulders upon destruction.

So, for grounded attacks, each boulder is essentially like 4 boulders in the same package, which leads to some… funny consequences. However, despite this insane (yet still unsurprising) crowd-control performance, the Boulderball Cannon has a few notable drawbacks – it is no panacea.

Those drawbacks are its lack of versatility, immunity frame issues, and poor single-target performance. The lack of versatility is a minor but pertinent issue. Remember, as soon as you mouse off the Boulderball Cannon, you become vulnerable to the Boulders you just fired.

And, you ARE vulnerable – while boulders deal 70 base damage to enemies, they deal much, more damage to players, meaning that you’ll often get one-shot by your own boulders if you mouse off. Without the ability to freely switch between your hotbar, you’re limited in your ability

To use support or secondary items like the Golden Shower, Rod of Discord, or Nimbus Rod, without worrying about a sudden death, limiting your combat versatility somewhat. Oh, and of course, remember it could be a disaster in multiplayer if you die!

Then, immunity frames present another secondary issue, as Boulders use the older and inferior “global” i-frames. So, when a boulder hits an enemy and triggers immunity frames, that enemy becomes immune to all forms of damage, not just damage from that boulder or boulders in general.

Due to this, only one boulder may hit a target at once, which means only up to 6 hits per second on a single enemy in ideal conditions – no matter the amount of boulders. Those boulder hits will also block other unrelated hits from registering – like those from another

Player or even your own minions. The difference is quite stark – here’s a fight versus Plantera using “global” i-frames versus that with “local”. You can see that the difference in letting every individual boulder hit is… quite significant. You’re missing out on a lot.

Most modern weapons have transferred to “static” or “local” immunity frame systems that prevent this issue from coming up, but Re-Logic didn’t bother with updating traps. This is why Boulders and Bees still use “global” i-frames – their origin is in natural traps.

Thus, when they are weaponized – either by me or even by the vanilla game itself – this issue persists. It’s simply unfortunate. And lastly, we have the weapon’s mediocre single-target performance. You’d think that a weapon shooting a 100+ damage boulder three times per second would do decent single-target damage, but no.

Other weapons like the Onyx Blaster, Uzi, Dart Pistol, and even Titanium Repeater just deal more single-target damage. They benefit from ammunition bonuses that the Boulderball Cannon just doesn’t get, and they simply get more lead downrange than the comparatively slow firerate of the Boulderball can.

Compound this with the “global” i-frame issue, and you get a pretty crummy single-target weapon. So, in summary, the Boulderball Cannon is pretty much what you expect. In a way, it’s kind of like a weirder Star Cannon – god tier crowd control and multi

Target for bosses like the Destroyer, but poor-to-mediocre damage for single target. It’s a bit situational, but I figure that if it existed, it would probably find a way to worm itself into the meta. If Re-Logic actually decided to add this into the game, then they would probably find a

Better way to balance it than me. I mean, hell, I just copied the Snowball Cannon’s stats, slapped some vanilla boulder damages on it, added some protections and called it a day! Not much on my end. Re-Logic would probably find a way to make the weapon a bit less broken for crowd control,

And add variety by making sure the Life Crystal Boulder and Rolling Cacti have a use beyond… sucking. And, of course, if they did this, they would also fix the i-frame issue. Now, how do you think this weapon would turn out if it was added into the game, and how would you balance it?

Let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing, as it supports the channel. Things like this take quite an amount of time to make, after all. Similar videos are on the left and right. Either way though, thank you for watching, and good day and good bye.

See you next week.

What if Terraria’s Snowball Cannon shot boulders?
a bit of a stupid this time
100% pointless discord: https://discord.com/invite/yJrCt9YFz5

mod download (note: my coding is crappy and compatibility is not tested!): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mMkmHrnz1cqU4Y1oZ2al-d8SeDzqm9B-/view?usp=sharing

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:35 My interpretation – this is the Boulderball Cannon
2:14 Meet the Boulders: your new ammunition
4:11 The positives of our Boulderball Cannon – crowd control!
6:13 The negatives of our Boulderball Cannon – a few things
8:43 Closer

#terraria

Music:
Stardew Valley – Winter (Nocturne of Ice) by ConcernedApe
Stardew Valley – Volcano Dungeon (Molten Jelly) by ConcernedApe
Stardew Valley – Volcano Dungeon (Forgotten World) by ConcernedApe

Mods and Packs:
Foundry & Alchemy (Pack) – https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2440505684
Fancy Lighting [Ultra Preset] (Mod) – https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822950837
Stanberry Font (Pack) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2559652586
Stormdark UI (Pack) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2448259079
DragonLens (Cheat Mod) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2939737748
Better Zoom (QoL) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2562953970
Character Stats (QoL) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3033200611
What if Terraria’s Snowball Cannon shot boulders?