The Thorium Mod is an expansive Game Mod for Terraria, created by DivermanSam. It is often considered one of the largest, most in-depth, and popular mods that exist for Terraria, and for good reason — it adds an incredible amount of content, including numerous NPCs, tons of enemies, two entirely new damage types, and several challenging new bosses.
The mod can be downloaded here
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The Thorium Mod contains examples of:
- Ability Depletion Penalty: If the exhaustion meter for infinite throwing weapons fills up then the damage from those particular weapons is severely weakened and although continuing to throw won't reset the duration of the debuff, you will have to wait for it to expire, after which the meter is reset.
- Adaptation Expansion: The Throwing damage type, barely utilized in Terraria proper to the point where it was removed from the game entirely in patch 1.4, is expanded into its own class in Thorium. The chief gimmick is Ninja-esque "Techniques" fueled by dealing Throwing damage, allowing a wide range of mutually exclusive secondary powers like throwing daggers, combat decoys, or teleportation.
- All Your Powers Combined: Each of the base gems, as well as ones added in Thorium, can be crafted into ring accessories boosting specific stats by small amounts, or early game magic weapons that inflict different debuffs. Each of them can be respectively combined into a single ring or weapon which combines and enhances all of their attributes and remain useful for a significant chunk of the game.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Several, mostly centered around not having to wait for random events to trigger.
- A player can pay the Desert Acolyte a single gold coin in order to trigger a sandstorm to appear.
- A new item called the Blood Moon Medallion can be crafted relatively cheaply, and can be consumed to trigger a Blood Moon.
- A Rain Stone can be found in chests in the Aquatic Depths, and can be used to instantly make it start or stop raining.
- The Golden Thread teleports you to the Dungeon's entrance.
- Grim Pedestals allow the crafting of Demon Altar recipes without having to run to your nearest Demon Altar.
- A Winner Is You: Taking down the Primordials will give you the Reality Bearer buff, which does nothing except show a fancy crown over your head.
- Benevolent Monsters: The Globee is a rare enemy found within the Aquatic Depths biome. It swims directly towards the player when they are submerged in water, but, unlike most enemies, doesn't deal any contact damage. As these emit a fair amount of light, their entire purpose seems to be to aid the player's vision.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Borean Strider, a giant icy spider. When it's killed, a few new types of giant spiders begin to appear in the Spider Nests.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Patch Werk, the Corpse Bloom, and the Illusionist: minibosses that spawn naturally in their home environments. Notably, none of them respawn after being killed.
- The Borean Strider counts as this. Despite the fact that it's a full-fledged boss, it can spawn naturally in Blizzards (having multiple active at once isn't too far-fetched) and doesn't even have an item to properly spawn it (said item just increases its spawn chances).
- Chest Monster: Thorium adds the Coin Bag flavor to Terraria. They're not nearly as problematic as the actual Mimics, however, and they run away when you get close. It also adds three new varieties of the standard chest mimics for the Underground Mushroom, Underworld, and Aquatic Depths biomes. There's even a mimic pet that can be bought from the Tracker.
- Life Crystal Mimics play the trope straighter, as they appear to be Life Crystals, but will attack you when you approach them.
- Combat Medic: The Healer class has numerous support abilities that can keep teammates alive and healthy, but that doesn't stop them from being able to dish out some serious damage with their Radiant weapons.
- Cthulhumanoid: The Whispering armor set gives the player the appearance of this.
- Damage Over Time: The Shade Master armor's set bonus uses an odd variation of it. 50% of the damage you take is staggered over the next ten seconds, allowing you to tank massive damage with the caveat of it catching up to you later.
- Dark Reprise: The Dream Eater boss theme is a sinister remix of The Primordials' battle theme, swapping out various orchestral sections for intimidating synths.
- Distressed Dude: The Diverman NPC is found trapped inside the Queen Jellyfish, and you have to kill it in order to free him.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Apparently the arrival of the Primordials will cause something akin to this.
- Final Boss: The Primordials serves as the final boss of the mod.
- Flaming Skulls: You can shoot them at enemies with the Almanac of Agony.
- Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Three uncommon enemies in the Underground, the Gilded Bat, Gilded Worg, and Gilded Slime, are completely golden and emit such a strong light to completely illuminate the immediate area they're in. They also drop Gold Bars and Ores regardless if your world has Gold or Platinum in it, making them a good source of the stuff, and they also happen to be one of the targets for the Tracker's hunts.
- Hunter of Monsters: The Tracker NPC seems to be this, though he mostly just hangs out at whatever house you build for him and sends you out to kill monsters.
- Infinity +1 Sword: While pretty much anything made from the materials dropped by the Final Boss is this, special mention must go to the weapons that share the appropriate title of
"Reality Breaker" (Quasar's Flare, Terrarian's Last Knife, Northern Light, and Black MIDI). In addition, the Primordials' expert drops (Mjölnir and the Bow of Light) easily fall into this category. - Instrument of Murder: Being music-based fighters, pretty much all of a Bard's equipment falls into this category.
- In the Hood: Several armor sets added by the mod include a hood, typically the ones intended to be worn by Healers. The Lich also wears a hood during the first phase of its fight.
- It May Help You on Your Quest: At the beginning of the game, a new player will spawn with a Family Heirloom which provides 1 Defense. It's advised to hold onto this, because you don't get another - and if you're playing on Expert, it's a vital ingredient to create the Mjölnir.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Thorium adds several Shield accessories made from base ores, which increase your base defense and provide slowly-regenerating Armor As Hitpoints.
- Metal Slime: As said above, Coin Bag Mimics are these, as they try to run away from you. Defeat them, and you can acquire a good amount of money.
- Musical Assassin: The entire Bard class is based around using musical instruments to lay waste to foes.
- Ninja: Many of the items intended for throwers have this motif, including the Ninja Rack, Ninja Emblem, Kunai, Fungus Armor, and Shade Master Armor.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Unlike most bosses, the Grand Thunder Bird flies away when defeated rather than being slain outright. Supplementary material suggests it is (or
was, perhaps) meant to play a larger role later in the mod's progression, and it's more interested in testing your abilities than battling to the death. - Non-Standard Game Over: Dying to the Dream Eater will give you an unique death message.
- Norse Mythology: In case the title didn't give it away, Thorium takes many cues from Norse myth. Besides the mineral Thorium itself (which is a real metal, by the way), the final boss used to be called the Ragnarök, and the ultimate weapon of the mod is the legendary Mjölnir.
- Optional Boss: None of the bosses introduced in the mod are actually required for progression (besides The Primordials), but fighting them is generally worth it for better gear.
- Our Liches Are Different: The Lich is a massive, scythe-wielding skeleton that serves as a mid-Hardmode boss.
- Overheating: Infinite use throwing weapons uses this in the form of an exhaustion meter that fills up. When it does, damage from those weapons will be severely reduced until the debuff wears off. Accessories like the Canteen reduce the exhaustion buildup.
- Plague Doctor: One of the armor sets available for throwers is the Plague Doctor armor, which improves the effectiveness of gas grenades.
- Power at a Price:
- The Whispering Dagger is a Healer item that, when used, grants a slew of offensive buffs for Healer weapons for 60 seconds, dramatically increasing the player's damage output. However, after the duration runs out, the player will have their health reduced to a mere 10% of their maximum, often leaving them a single hit away from death.
- The Hungering Blossom accessory returns 80% of the player's maximum mana whenever they run low, but also fills up a "volatile energy" bar. While the player's attack speed also increases with the amount of volatile energy, letting the bar overflow instantly kills the player.
- Saw Blades of Death: The Man Hacker is a special gun that shoots miniature sawblades at enemies.
- Sequence Breaking: Although generally sticking to the same progression as vanilla Terraria, the mod allows players to initiate the Pumpkin Moon event prior to defeating Plantera, as The Lich (who is summonable after defeating the three mechanical bosses) always drops a Pumpkin Moon Medallion when defeated.
- Shout-Out: Too many to supply a comprehensive list, but here's a quick summary.
- The Hopping Spider is nearly identical in behavior to the Spider from Spelunky.
- Many of the names for the various NPCs are references, such as the Tracker sometimes being called Guts or the Cook being named after many famous chefs.
- The Sonar Cannon fires a sound wave projectile that can bounce off projectiles, but hitting yourself with it supercharges your next symphonic attack, just like how the Noise Crush weapon works in Mega Man 7.
- One pre-Hardmode Bard weapon sold by the Cook is... a jar of mayonnaise. Its tooltip even says along the lines of 'an age old question finally answered.'
- Nearly all of the items created by donators are references to another intellectual property, including Vicious Mockery and the Aeon Staff.
- The Strange Skull Summoner weapon straight up lets you summon Gaster Blasters.
- Sinister Scythe: Scythes serve as the weapons for the Healer class, dealing constant damage in a circle around them. The Lich boss also uses a large scythe dubbed the Soul Render (which is obtainable as a melee weapon after killing him).
- Support Party Member:
- Healers are this by default due to... well, healing and providing benefits to teammates. That doesn't say that they can't fight if needed, however.
- The Bard class is also based around this, being able to provide potent buffs to themselves and all allies in the vicinity whenever they strike an enemy with their weapons. Unlike the Healer, however, Bards are much more suited for direct combat.
- Supreme Chef: The Cook NPC seems to be able to cook up almost anything. He can even turn things like Rotten Chunks edible!
- Token Heroic Orc: Two of the NPCs added by the mod, the Confused Zombie and the Weapon Master, belong to species that are normally hostile to the player.
- Under the Sea: The Aquatic Depths, a biome unique to Thorium which spawns under the Ocean on whatever side the Jungle is.
- Voluntary Shape Shifting: The Transformation items, which go in a player's mount slot and allow the player to transform into a certain creature.
- Wicked Witch: The Hags, rare enemies who wield Elemental Powers. The Tracker implies that they're women who took shortcuts to trade their youth for magical might, and now try to steal the youth from others.
