#calamity mod

A project I am starting involving post-yharim stuff. Not a mod cause I don't know anything about modding, or coding, or spriting. Just an art/story project.

Story stuff further down. Here's the current 3 gods in it (there will be more, I just haven't made them yet)

I suck at pixel art but this is just the concept sketch so it doesn't matter. Gonna make a better version later

"to what could have been"

Terraria is my most played game of all time, by a very notable margin. It currently sits at 2371.4 hours played in my Steam library, more than 3 months worth of time. A quirk of that figure is that it also includes playtime of tModLoader, aka modded Terraria. So of those 2371 hours in Terraria, How many were played without mods?

810.2 hours. The remaining 1,561.2 were all played with mods. I'm pretty sure I put more hours into Fortnite, which I actively played for half the years!

If vanilla and modded hours were counted separately, Terraria would be third overall while tModLoader would still be first. However, if I could break hours distribution down even further, into what content mods I played, I'm 90% sure that my playtime for one mod in particular would eclipse my hours spend in all of vanilla Terraria. It's none other than the Calamity Mod.

Man, I Love Calamity

I picked up the Calamity Mod extremely early into my modded Terraria journey, probably because it was and still is the most popular content mod by a mile, but that's probably just a coincidence or something.

Jokes aside, I think the reason I got hooked on Calamity more than mods like Thorium, Fargo's, or Mod of Redemption was that it added/ expanded upon so much of Terraria's progression in a very distinct way without abandoning it either. I also love how each area of the world has something significant (aka an armor set and boss at least) to give more of a reason to keep exploring, even as it gets to the point where you've explored nearly all the world.

I'll admit this definitely is not an extensive list of what got me hooked on Calamity, mainly because it's hard to put myself under a microscope and study why I love things. There's much more I could try to say, but I think I'd be better to say more on how I loved this mod rather than why.

There were times when I got home from school, ate, and played tMod (90% Calamity) for most of my evening until I stopped procrastinating homework or I couldn't stop ignoring being hungry. Few games have ever hooked me this much, and it largely only happens to my favorite games of all time. I've lost count of my total playthroughs years ago. You'd think I'd move on over time, right? Well, there were times where I stopped playing Calamity, but most of the time it was when I stopped playing Terraria as a whole for some time, whether it be burnout or just being more into another game at that time. And yet, I've always come back, time and time again. I may do another mod from time to time, but the default was and always has been Calamity.

I will say that Calamity did not mean this much to me entirely on its own.

The community's addons were great for replayability. Infernum reinvented boss difficulty while taking it to a much higher level, Wrath of the Gods the craziest superbosses I've ever seen in modded games, and Catalyst plus Hunt of the Old Gods were always nice to add some extra bits to a playthrough. There's many more I'm certainly forgetting, but those are the big ones.

It would also be a crime not to mention the many Youtube videos I've watched over the years, as it fueled much of my motivation to keep playing over the years. For Terraria as a whole I gotta mention ChiefLogan, WaffleTime, and Adrian, but for Calamity specifically I've watched countless chapstixx, Yardis, Myra Terraria, and as well as my goats GP and JFL. All very entertaining to watch through the years.

I should also mention the couple multiplayer playthroughs I've done for Calamity. They've all been very fun when not laggy, but base Terraria 1000000% outclasses tMod in terms of the multiplayer experience. I have nowhere else to put this but I think it's worth saying.

One last thing that kept me interested in Calamity over the years, and a pretty major thing at that, was the updates. Updates have usually been slow to come out but it was hard to not look forward to them. Resprites, reworks, general additions and balance changes, Calamity mod just never stopped changing. And the changes weren't just great in quantity, but quality too! So many basic weapons and bosses transformed to keep rediscovering in new playthroughs.

I talked about updates earlier, but given the circumstances it's best to talk about it at the end of this section. I could gush about calamity anytime, but why now? Well...

This Post is a Eulogy, Kinda

Calamity Mod has development problems long before I started playing terraria, but there's always been the hope that one day, the mod will rebound back and keep chugging along towards its future. The latest problems, however, were too much.

As of yesterday, August 10th, Calamity Mod's development has ended.

To truly get my thoughts out, context is important. I'll keep it brief. In May of last year, Calamity's founder and lead developer Fabsol was revealed to be a groomer. Soon after being caught, he left the mod entirely. After that, Calamity's new lead developer became another dev, Ozzatron. He was well liked and development went pretty well from there, or at least it did until August 8th, when evidence came out that Ozzatron was also a groomer, and basically did every bad thing Fabsol did, right alongside him. Since, the larger dev team has decided to end the mod for good.

Ozzatron was, to my knowledge, the 4th developer in Calamity's history to be outed as a groomer and removed. Each time was terrible, but this time stung uniquely bad. Fabsol didn't have a good community reputation to begin with, and was even unpopular among most of the dev team. Literally just before Ozzatron's actions were outed, Calamity seemed to be at it's best. The development team was full of extremely dedicated and talented people, who I and many others trusted with making the best version of the most popular content mod in Terraria history. And yet, it's all gone to waste because Ozzatron cared more about power and suppressing his victims than anything else. He did this despite wanting Calamity to remain the most popular mod in perpetuity and even surpass Terraria's popularity (yes, he really said that).

Before I keep going, I should say I'm not trying to downplay the actions of Fabsol or Ozzatron. What they did to the mod is the least of the terrible things they've done, and I'm not a victim here. Please keep their actual victims in mind when discussing this situation.

Now that Calamity Mod development is gone, I have a lot of thoughts (if you couldn't tell already by the Wall of Text) and they're not easy to describe. Here's the best I can do:

I don't think I'll ever stop loving Calamity, but I will miss it. Yes, everything will still be around, but I will miss the feeling of being excited for the next update. I will miss the feeling that, despite some of the lesser parts of the mod, it will get better, because the developers keep coming back to the old content to improve it. I'll miss the feeling of not living with stagnation, as we all now will have to.

Calamity won't be deleted, but it's effectively in a coma without its updates. Fanmade content can keep it going, but just by being unofficial it will never have the same feeling. I don't know how much longer I'll keep being so in love with the mod.

Right as this news dropped I was in the midst of a Calamity playthrough, and it could not possibly be any worse of a sendoff. It was a silly concept, specifically doing the game's hardest difficulty with a million "quality of life mods" (cheating). Barely any of the fun of that playthrough came from what makes Calamity good.

Once again, Calamity Mod is not dead, and on paper I can keep enjoying it as usual. I just don't know if I can in reality. They say to smile that it happened rather than be sad that it ended, but how can I not be sad about such a disappointing ending? I'll have to deal with it eventually.