Is Terraria's Crystal Assassin armor underrated? 

solar armor gives you a dash too you silly billy

A key factor to why I think its skipped is simply due to the fact Queen Slime was added so late into Terraria's life cycle, most players, myself included, forget she exists or dont bother finding a gelatinous crystal to summon her with Edit: It seems you all have far greater luck at finding them because I can never find more than three in a playthrough

I'm pretty confident that the main reason CA armour isn't used more is Queen Slime herself. Not the drop rates or anything, just the boss. Mostly because any reasonable person would suit up in either Adamantite/Titanium, Frost, or Spider armour before fighting her and by that point CA becomes essentially redundant as most people don't want to restructure their entire build to use CA effectively when they've already got one down by now. (Or they fight Queen Slime after mechs, at which that point they have our lord and saviour: Hallowed Armour)

What sucks about crystal assassin armor is that despite being a multi class armor, it doesn’t give summoners that much. No extra minions, sentries, or whip range. All crystal assassin armor gives summoners is an increase in mobility, damage, and melee speed.

I think it would be used way more if it was easier to get. I think queen slime should drop the whole set every time, because otherwise nobody fights queen slime and nobody really uses the crystal assasin gear. Having to fight a boss like four times to get a mediocre armor set is pretty inconvenient.

I don't know if it is just me, but I prefer the dash from the shield of chtulu Sure it covers a smaller distance, but that small knockback it what really makes it worth it for me If you can react just fast enough, you might be able to give a brofist to a boss charging at you, negating all the damage you might have taken Having a smaller dash can also help to not overextend and crash on incoming projectiles that were initially far from you

Another great thing about the armor is that it really shines with a no-crafting playthrough. Up until beating any one mech boss, the best armor you have access to is ancient shadow armor. While a fight with queen slime with pre-hardmode armor is difficult, it's quite rewarding obtaining such a powerful set, as it makes defeating all the mech bosses a breeze.

This actually sounds pretty good for early hardmode in calamity, might have to give it a try!

Terrasteel, you should do a comprehensive on the benefits of DoT debuffs compared with available weapons at various stages in the progression. I tend to think that when prepping for mech bosses, most people consider frost armor's added debuff to be negligable when comparing armor stats, but i think it pulls its weight

I never use it as armor, but I very frequently find myself using it, or parts of it, for vanity. It's visually a very cool armor set

"Crystal Assassin is the only true Multiclass armor in early hardmode." Cries in Forbidden/Frost Armor

Now I want more multi class armors. Just a few. The Ninja Gear could become multiclass. The Pumpkin armor is multiclass. Perhaps two armor sets could be dropped in late pHM and mid to late HM

The crystal assassin set bonus is super helpful for fighting Empress of Light with under-tiered gear. It would be feasible to do pre-mechanical boss Empress of Light in Legendary Mode with it. The reason I find it helpful is the tabi-tier dash being much better than the shield of cthulhu for controlling what the Empress does, which makes the entire fight far more consistent.

People forget that the first boss you fight in Normal Mode is the King Slime, but for some it's the Eye of Cthulu; Similarly, in Hard Mode your first boss fight should be the Queen Slime since her boss drop is super common and easy to obtain. But some go straight for Titanium/Adamantite and fight The Twins or The Destroyer first which means Hallowed armor which is already a tier up and unlocks the later metals, too. Like the King Slime, he just missed his spot and was forgotten, but that doesn't make her bad. The Hook of Dissonance teleports you and is the only Hook I use, period. The Expert Accessory also provides one of the few stacking passive damage and knockback items that isn't a pet or summon. Not a good item by itself, but it helps with fishing and a lil dps is always appreciated considering I forgot to remove my sharktooth honey-necklace even after beating ML. And it kinda reminds me of the old Terraria where knowing cool tricks like the Reaver Shark could get you ahead in progression. Only now it's game knowledge boss that you still have to try to defeat to get some neat gear for early Hard Mode, do you accept the challlenge?

I run it in almost every playthrough I do, since to me all of the trade-offs are worth it especially in higher difficulties/seeds (e.g. extra mobility > extra defense). It's super flexible, and I just really enjoy using it when it comes to my playstyle.

This set is, admittedly, pretty decent if you're running an all-class build; but like.. pretty much everything in hardmode is designed to hold up the middle finger to people who don't specialize in any one particular class.

I feel like it either needs to be reworked or be obtainable earlier. Even with Calamity (which makes Adamantite/Titanium unobtainable until 2 mechanical bosses have been defeated) it still feels rather useless compared to other armor that can be obtained around the same time. Most people don't multiclass past pre-hardmode so it feels like making it obtainable pre-hardmode would be the best option

I believe it to be a pretty decent set. The queen slime isn't difficult if you understand her attacks, which are easy to learn, and the gear is pretty good for entering hard mode. On my newest world where I just entered hard mode, I immediately got the crystal gels and fought her a few times with little trouble. It's a great set to have before fighting the mechanical bosses and upgrading into Hallow armor. In my opinion, of course.

i think its great for classic due to the dash being your only one but on expert and master, you already have more accessory slots and shield of cthulhu making adamantite, titanium or palladium a better, easier to obtain choice

Its also got a very useful 20% Movement speed buff.

Had no idea about the dash set bonus and considering picking this set up, thanks mr. terrasteel!

Its a good early hardmode option for most classes, queen slime isn't a big step up from wall of flesh and not as tough as mech bosses so its a good option to jump into for an immediate upgrade to hellstone that can tide you over till you can make more specialized or stronger gear, its only class that doesn't see much benefit outside of the dash is summoner due to no real class specific buffs, you'd be further ahead farming out spider armor.

Crystal assassin is, in my opinion, the best armor for taking down duke pre-mech, its also my favorite set in the game. Thx for acknowledging it so more people will use it!

Getting a really powerful dash pre-mechs along with the fact that its a multi-class armor set makes it a great option in my opinion

I never used it until my most recent playthrough and now I’m a fan for life. I like to have multiple armors I swap for different scenarios, but Crystal Assassin’s dash freed up an accessory and I was able to kill Mechdusa on my first try.

To be honest, the dash and movement speed buff are so good I keep it longer than I should.

I do think crystal assasin armor is quite good, the issue is that I find queen slime about as difficult as skeletron prime. And between the two of them, skeletron prime: Gives hallowed bars, for making a better armor set/weapons Gives access to the steampunker to combat evil spread Gives progress on beating mech bosses (duh) And gives access to tier 2 OOA. By comparison, queen slime gives crystal assassin armor (obviously), gelatinous pillion (which has questionable use when compared to wings+slime mount), and blade staff (which has massive competition with sanguine staff and needs heavy support to be worth getting). If given the choice between queen slime and skeletron prime, prime is a pretty easy answer in my book. For a boss with gear intended to be used pre-mech, she's pretty difficult. Even if she was made easier it's debatable whether I would fight her, the power increase from getting HM ores and weapons is already quite huge. She just sits at a really awkward point in progression, you are so busy at this stage with other things that an optional boss isn't high on the priority list, and by the time you think it's ok to fight her the items she drops aren't enticing anymore.

The problem with the armor is that you will probably want to get adamantine armor before you fight the queen slime anyways. It would be a pain to grind that fight for crystal assassin when you only have pre hard mode equipment. So if you have adamantine armor why not just go kill the destroyer using any spear or pricing spell. Then you got much better armor. Kill the other mechanical bosses and you got true knights edge. At that point plantera is a bit of a push over, especially if you use a hellevator. And now you can go get the ninja kit. At what point in that progression do you feel the need to go back and get crystal assassin? The only reason I could think is if you just really wanted to fight duke fisheron before plantera. And frankly I don't usually do that fight anyways, the wings aren't that good and the mount is equal or worse then the witches broom from the pumpkin moon. An event that you can pretty easily grind with post plantera gear even without a dash. So I can only really see this armor being useful in the extremely niche situation where you can't beat any mechanical bosses without a dash (why? They aren't even that hard without a dash aslong as you have wings) or want to beat duke fisheron pre plantera for some reason.

I think others have already reiterated the same point, but honestly I find the armor to be really good but just… not the most fun to try and obtain early on, as Queen Slime can arguably be as dangerous as early Twins, especially on Master mode simply because of how the fight in general goes, and collecting the summoning items for her is not the easiest either, given it requires going into the underground Hallow of all places, and as others have said, QS was also just added rather late on so many existing players just don’t include them in their planned progression, whether it be because of fishing maniacs or molemen getting the early HM ores with greater ease.

This video inspired me to do some testing myself. I tried summoner hybrid sets with melee, ranged, and mage using the crystal assassin armor first and then doing it with frost/ forbidden armor combined with the Shield of Cthulhu. Turns out that the only time you get more dps on the mechs is with melee. I was using the Shadowflame knife and the Sanguine staff.

as someone who fights the mechs with whatever i had in pre-hm, this armor is a godsend. the raw stats are better than anything pre-hm so there are literally no downsides to inserting it into my old play style. especially how easy queen slime is in master mode with the goat skull.

First, while the CA armor / tabi dash are longer, the damaging dash from the shield gives you i-frames on an enemy hit, giving you a sort of on-command melee dodge. On top of that massive utility, the shorter dash gives you much more precision in movement than the long, inactionable dash of the former two options along with a couple free defense points compared to the tabi. Secondly, the armor just feels outclassed by what most players use to fight queen slime with, as well as the mount it drops (especially prior to its nerf in labor of love). Not many people grind queen slime, but the majority of them grind for the mount as opposed to armor since there’s no real alternative speedy aerial mounts in early hardmode. It doesn’t help that the dash isn’t usable whilst on a mount, only being handy for getting the max speed when initiating the unicorn / goat / sapling mounts (even then the shield will still work)

Crystal assassin is a set I want to like but the set bonuses of other sets matter too, not just adamantite, titanium and frost, but earlier ores. As I commented on the poll, palladium is surprisingly effective regen buff and with only a few other regen buffs it allows for powerful survivability. Orichalcum petal damage, although minor, can add up with the other on par stats. Even with all this though, crystal armour is definitely quite unique and the ability to combine classes and longer dashes isn't negligible.

For pre-mech duke that armor is must have, long dashes will make fight 10 times easier, no need to smash altars - so mechs/pirates won't distract you, multiclass bonus, so you can use any weapon that dropped from the first bag right away. I even skip hallowed armor on my recent playthroughs, because for me having a dash is more important than dodging 1 damage from thorns in jungle every 30 sec.

[muffled by my Spider armour] Am I a joke to you?

I've always been partial to the Frost & Forbidden armors in my playthroughs. Especially in playthroughs with QOL mods like Fargo's that let you influence weather

0:21 what a handsome fellow near the bottom of the screen. he seems so smart

It’s probably because of my early exposure to class specific playthroughs on RU-vid when I first started playing terraria, but I absolutely cannot get myself to multi class lmfao, it is like physically painful for me to use a sword while I’m ranger or use a mage weapon while I’m melee. I usually choose a class I’m intending to play before I start, and then limit myself to that specific weapon type for the entire play through.

I'd say that palladium armor is still better for saving time in a run, since you don't need to grind for 1 to 2 hours to get adamantite/titanium or kill a boss, without any hardmode armor. The biggest downside to the crystal assassin set is that you need to kill a boss 2 to 3 times to get it, which isn't easy without any hardmode armor, so generally you'd need to spend time at least getting something be it spider armor or 1 of the hardmode ore sets, whatever it may be you most likely spent a good bit of time to get whatever armor you chose, so having to farm a boss to get an armor set that might be better with multi classing or might not, seems like a waste of time. And for the argument that it's really good for pre-mech duke, considering that the shield of cuthulu shield bonk can cheese the 3rd phase I'd say that it's still not worth getting it for the fight ether. Especially since you don't need the longer dash for the 2nd phase since you have at least the slimey saddle.

My early hardmode build in my recent play through was made up of crystal assassin armour, all 3 magic quivers, wings, a frog leg and terraspark boots. Crazy fun, and I used the marrow and phantom phoenix as my weapons until after golem (which is where I currently am). I switched to a launcher build with the snowman cannon but I might have to go back if I get the tsunami, or eventide. And of course the phantasm.

I personally don't use dashes in general because it's really awkward to do on mobile, and I'm still getting my PC set up so I can't switch over just yet

this armor was really good for skeletron prime fight, cuz even if it sacrificed some minion slots for me, not hitting an arm with the shield bash then getting stuck in the head was good enough to let me win

I recently did a no set bonus Playthrough. Gotta say with optimized ranger/ summoner hybrid sets, my DPS was significantly higher than I’ve ever achieved with a singular class. I was getting 2k DPS on plantera, where normally I’d see at most 1.2k.

It depends on the class I'm playing. For my most recent playthrough I'm playing Ranger with a group of friends, we got 7 frost cores within 5 minutes of hardmode beginning, so both the Melee and I went with Frost armour. We also only fought Queen Slime after Destroyer, mostly because our pylons were getting crimsoned, and we needed the clemtaminator. We also could not find any summons for her.

I liked it. It helped me get over the wall that was the mech bosses after they locked frost armor behind adamantite/titanium

Queen Slime is very easy to cheese with a straight, single-line arena and the unicorn mount. It's very easy to do pre-mech.

I typically see dash as a crutch.. Something that makes pre-hardmode a lot easier, but once I get the dual hook, I switch off shield of cthulu and just rely on hooking to give me that sudden change in direction (or just 'gitting gud'). When in my own element, I typically run a melee/summoner hybrid, because terra blade used to already be one of the best weapons in the game, and now after its buff it disgustingly effectively invalidates mage/ranged builds with only a few accessories tied to it, allowing me to make a summoner-oriented build, whilst still having respectable independent DPS and crowd-control abilities.

I remember grinding the Queen Slime so many times just because I really hated the idea of trying to re-contain the Crimson so I didn't break any demon altars. Then a few weeks later Journey's End came out and removed the random crimson spawn from breaking demon altars.

Maybe it's just me, but I like dash in Shield of Ctulhu more, than other dashes. Because with normal other dashes if you hit an enemy you are knocked out and takes damage. And with SoC you are still knocked out, but you don't take damage while still have invulnerability frames

I exclusively grind for Forgotten Armor and Old One’s Army equipment. If i want quick horizontal movement, i have a unicorn, a squirrel hook, and a minecart.

I beat Queen Slime 5 times and got headgear + shirt each time. NEVER the pants. That annoyance alone is a big reason I don't use it much

obviously queen slime is a limiting factor on this armor set but i also think there are just better options for armor out there that aren't worth switching out for crystal assassin stuff. full titanium on melee is just too good to pass up, the massive boost in defense and the set bonus are very beneficial for the class, so there just isn't enough reason to use it over crystal assassin. full adamantite for mage is also fantastic too, simply because even with the raw stat boosts they still outperform crystal assassin + an accessory in most cases, plus you miss out on a huge mana cost bonus. the only case i think the armor is useful is on ranger, but even then you have frost armor/hybrid sets which also outperform it on multiple scales. its just not worth the effort for an armor set that provides basically no extra bonuses past a dash when you already have better armor available without any extra effort required. (tbf im also of the opinion that acceleration is better than dashes in terraria anyway so im definitely a little biased here; but i still think most of my points apply regardless of that)

i usually just forget the QS exists, and since the armor is only a bit better than ada/titanium and i usually prefer hallowed over it anyway, i almost always end up just ganking one of the mechs first and going for full hallowed instead of full crystal assassin plus, as other commenters mentioned, by the time ur fighting QS u already have ada/titanium, so CA armor is a whole lot of effort when u could already just go for mechs

Oh man, I had never used the crystal armor set so I genuinely didn't know its set bonus. That bonus is so good.

Never even used it, so I didn't knew the set bonus. Might try another time, especially if I try to do an early Duke.

Fun fact, slightly unrelated: nickel has a melting point of 2,646 degrees Fahrenheit, and tungsten has a melting point of 6,150 degrees Fahrenheit, and they are both metals in Terraria that can be smelted in a furnace made of stone, wood, and torches. That furnace has to be to be able to burn at 6,150 degrees or more, so your starter base made entirely out of wood will probably not last very long (and neither will you), and that’s not even talking about the massive amounts of torches placed everywhere, which are definitely burning too hot for a human to sadly hold. And you can hold 50 stacks of 9999 as of 1.4.4, so you might as well be carrying around the sun in your back pocket.

honestly that class comment knocked me flat on my ass, I never even thought that restricting myself to a class would be a damage handicap

Puglord would use the armor that you can purchase from the Bartender NPC (the one who gives stuff for The Old One's Army), primarily the melee oriented ones as those sets give minor health regen and have very high defense while also giveing the player access to up to 3-6 sentries. (Puglord often uses sentires in fights cause he doesn't pay attention to a lot of stuff and just looks for what does really high damage (not counting accessories, those all get reforged to Warding ((enter accessory name)) )

Didn't even know this set had a dash until recently. Now I can add more mobility items to my builds pre mechs.

the thing about ninja and crystal assassin is that for some reason one of the pieces always just never drops, i´ve killed queen slime 8 times before getting the shirt, you'll never get it unless you're actively looking for it

I mostly agree but for pre-mech Duke you still wanna run the Shield of Chtulu, as it makes phase 3 almost trivial.

the only downside ca has is simply having lower raw stats, but if you're clever and mix classes to maximize your damage and use the accessory slot for an even better damage accessory than what other armor would give you it's much better

I personaly dont go out of my way to get that armor because i personaly prefer to use the frost armor because in my opinion it gives a better set bonus. I am a person cant live without the SoC exactly for the knockback and imunity frames it gives. I would even say that its a perfect side grade master ninja's gear while the crystal armor is just weaker due to the fact it has no way to dodge/activate immunity frames.

ahhh, shield of cthulhu gives you a invincibility for a little a moment if you hit the target if im not mistaken its kinda can be insanely useful against bosses, especially if boss want to ram through you, you can just dash to him and get invincibility and by that dodge the upcoming attack

when trying to beat terraria expert for the first time using only yoyo, this armor just saved my life. dashes are amazing.

Main reason why it's unpopular I think is its low defence stat which makes it kinda of unviable on higher difficulties since you need pre hardmode armor to defeat queen slime to make it worthwhile. Sure you can use your skyrail to fight her but you can also use pirate cannon on destroyer at the same time. On normal or expert it is a good option tho.

cool this armor gives you so many skills but i'm too lazy to get all the parts because the queen will always give you 500 helms

The reason I would want to use the armor is for fishron, but then again, that dash doesn't have a secondary action (no damage when dash into enemies, chance to not take damage)

Main disadvantage of the crystal assassin armor set: The sorrow of reaching the point where it falls off and you remember that there are no mid/late hardmode multi-class armor sets to upgrade to. Multi-class is the spiritual successor of the throwing class: Technically it's its own class but its progression ends early so it's just a temporary gimmick.

I've played since before hardmode existed, and i somehow never knew the crystal assassin armor granted you a dash. I always stuck to the shield of cthulu 'till post-plantera where i make a mad dash for the tabi. Yeah, this is gonna be my new permanent first choice in early hardmode...

Warrior player here. Nice video (and good skill), but for a warrior there are lots of better options IMHO. With the right knowledge you can farm the destroyer for hallowed bars. The hallowed armor's evasion bonus is incredibly useful. With certain accessories you can eat tons of damage and be fine. Hallowed armor also helped me in cheesing moonlord as a ranger despite being horribly outclassed by shroomite armor in terms of defense. (post moonlord ranger turned out to be really weak and underwhelming but still).

0:03 i chose titanium maybe because i forgot shield of chulchu is in expert but i renember using crystal armor in normal and the dash is very cool

it may just be the calamity nohitter in me but that 20% movespeed makes it BETTER statwise than the other armors, not ro mention the dash

"Also, there's a lot more to the game than stats sometimes." Counterpoint: number go up

I don't know if I am misunderstanding something, but I would honestly still prefer the shield of cthulu over the crystal arnor dash. I understand that the "knockback" may be annoying to some, like, for example, getting stuck inside of a boss. However, you did not mention the fact that the shield of cthulu can provide life saving invincibility. You are rewarded for playing a little more aggressive by being given invincibility from any contact damage. I am not saying you should be using your dash to directly attack an enemy/boss, but almost as an extra layer of protection in case a boss charges at you.

Thorium's Mod Kinetic Potion: hold my beer

I never really use this armour, even though I do like it. My armour progression tends to go like this: Nothing -> Crimtane -> Palladium (or Cobalt, with a mod I have) -> Spectre And once I get Spectre, that's it, it never comes off.

frost armor is my go to during a ranged or melee playthrough.

I just had no idea it had a dash since the last time I've used it was when queen slime was added almost a year ago

I consider the SoC BETTER than both the dashes hard mode has to offer. SoC might not dash as far but grants i-frames for dashing into something. Therefor you can escape some sticky situations a bit easier

So the thing with crystal armor is this: I don't pop the things that summon hardmore ores in order to keep the world as pure as possible. Due to fishing changes it is also not ideal to open crates to get enough ores for armor. So it makes crystal armor the best available armor. what i personally do is create farms all around my world including a truffle farm pre hardmore. So i get spider armor real fast, challenge duke with a teleport setup for easy W and then beat queen slime for armor then to mech bosses. I am not really a skilled player so this is more of a technical playstyle.

I still feel like shield of chuthulu is better for duke fishrons 3rd phase, dashing onto it at correct moment will let you use your weapons while still being able to dodge duke's dashes without much effort (Personal choice)

I love the armor, as it’s as good as frost/titanium armor but you don’t have to mine titanium which takes a while

the SoC dash is something i like to use over the tabi dash for duke because funny i frames parry

If I had known that it had a dash, I'd probably be using it more often. I only knew about the stats, so I never bothered with it, given I was going to be doing an early hardmode ore grind anyways.

the only time I used crystal assassin armor was in legendary gfb to kill mechdusa, because I was making a tanky build and the extra slot was very useful for more survibability

Apparently it's good enough that Calamity nerfed it slightly (the full set no longer gives the extra 10% damage and crit chance, boosting those by only 5% overall rather than 15%)

It’s just annoying to get as you have to beat Queen Slime a few times to get the whole set depending on luck.

I feel like the only pre-mech armor that competes with it in terms of strenght is palladium, as the regen can be really strong.

I only use dashes for duke fishron but I would just use master ninja gear as that doesn’t lower my defense

My problem with it is often when I fight queen slime I've already got either frost amour or the 3rd tier ore amour so I don't see much of a point to then change over to the crystal assassin.

For me knocking from the enemies is the main reason I prefer Shield of Cthulhu over Tabi. The short distance is also a plus IMO, since it gives you more control over what you're doing

I use this to do duke pre mech, its just really nice

Ah, finally, Pre-mech duke fishron

1. It's objectively worse than titanium/adamantite. 2. It drops from a boss that is harder to beat than duke fishron.

In master mode, you have plenty of space for: CoM Star veil Putrid Emblem Amohibian boots Wings Soc You really don't need an extra slot. The argument that the extra slot can be used for a damage accessory is pretty flawed as you would be running the accessory regardless. The extra slot will probably go to a random filler accessory such as the stinger necklace which is nowhere as good as a putrid scent.

Honestly, when i'm playing ranger or melee, I use frost armour up until I get beetle armour. It's not because I don't have the time/resources for turtle and shroomite. I just think that frost armour is better

you offer many arguments for this, i think players could just go for a full set of armor and accessoryes that have the same theme. you either go for stats or for a theme.

Crystal Asassin is my favorite looking set in the game

I'd say they should give it way more boosts with movement, like better top speed, acceleration and jump height.