Video Game / The Thorium Mod

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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.

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.
  • Bone Lee's place in the lore is changed significantly. Instead of being a whole clan of deceased ninjas, it was the Tracker's partner, where they hunted contracts together, until one contract took them to the Dungeon, where Lee let himself get killed to save the Tracker, with him never forgiving himself for what happened. Fittingly, he is the Tracker's final contract, unlocked on its own after all the others have been completed. Despite this, multiple Bone Lees can still spawn in the Dungeon at the same time, even after the contract is complete.
• 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 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.
• 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).
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Bow of Light is an extremely rare drop from The Primordials, at a 1% droprate only in Expert Mode. If you have obtained this, it's safe to say you can defeat the Primordials several times in a row with ease, due to its rarity.
• 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.
• Commonplace Rare: Some Bard instruments have mundane names, but appear very late into progression. The Organ, Clarinet, and Bassoon are made with materials harvested from the post-Plantera Dungeon, The Triangle drops from the Martian Saucer, and the Sousaphone is made with materials dropped by the Final Boss.
• 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.
• Deader than Dead: With Bone Lee being changed to be the Tracker's former partner, Lee, Lee already died once, and the player can kill him again in the Dungeon, as a Mercy Kill, destroying his body fully. On top of that, there's a chance a Dungeon Spirit spawns from him, letting you destroy his soul too, making him triple dead. Even this won't stop more Bone Lees from spawning in the Dungeon after.
• Despair Event Horizon: The Tracker NPC may have crossed this when his partner Lee was killed in the Dungeon on a mission, causing the Tracker to be unable to forgive himself for letting him die, which made him quit hunting monsters in favor of hiring the player to hunt them.
• Distressed Dude: The Diverman NPC is found trapped inside the Queen Jellyfish, and you have to kill it in order to free him.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Playing on Classic Mode will prevent the Dream Eater, the final phase of the Primordials from appearing, locking you out of the Reality Bearer buff and will prevent you from obtaining the Mjölnir.
• 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. In Expert Mode, you also fight the Dream Eater right after.
• Flaming Skulls: You can shoot them at enemies with the Almanac of Agony.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Bone Lee is reworked to be the deceased partner of the Tracker, who performed a Heroic Sacrifice to save him during a mission in the Dungeon. Despite this, multiple Bone Lees can be alive at once, even after the final contract is complete.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Three uncommon enemies in the Underground, the Gilded Bat, Gilded Lycan, 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. He used to actually hunt monsters with his partner Lee, until on one mission in the Dungeon, Lee was killed, becoming Bone Lee, and the Tracker never forgave himself for letting him die, which may have made him quit hunting personally, therefore hiring the player to kill things instead.
• 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.
• Improbable Weapon User: The Bard is already this, but two of their weapons are especially so - the Sinister Honk, a goose that is carried around (and is evidently squeezed to make sound, given it being considered a percussion instrument), and the Jar of Mayo.
• 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.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of the drops you can get from the Grand Thunder Bird is the Ancient Storm Mask, which looks like the Grand Thunder Bird's old sprite.
  • The Smothering Shade, an enemy that spawns during hardmode blood moons, is a reference to the Shade, the very first boss added to the mod during its very earliest release and removed not long after.
• 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.
  ''[Player] has failed Terraria..."
• 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 had two exceptions prior to 1.7.0:
  • The Primordials are intended to be fought after the Moon Lord, the Final Boss of vanilla Terraria. However, since you only need fragments from the Celestial Pillars to craft the summon item, if you defeat the Pillars but die to the Moon Lord, you can fight and kill the Primordials first, although it is ill-advised for obvious reasons.
  • You could 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. This is no longer the case as 1.7.0 removed the Pumpkin Moon Medallion from his drop pool.
• 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).
• Steel Drums and Sunshine: The Steel Drum is obtained in chests in the Aquatic Depths, and is an early-game Bard class weapon.
• Super-Speed: The Omega Core, an Expert Mode drop from the Dream Eater, drastically increases the player's movement speed, up to 92 mph.
• 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!
• Tangible Darkness: After defeating Plantera, the dungeon's stronger enemies will occasionally drop Dark Matter, which the mod describes as "a raging core of darkness". This material can be molded into darkness-themed weapons and armor, mostly focused on the mod's Throwing and Bard classes. Outside of its name, it doesn't seem to relate to traditional dark matter.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman!: Aquatic Ability is by far the rarest Bard empowerment, being available on only six weapons. But it does increase breath meter duration and underwater movement speed by 25% each level, so a maximum-level Aquatic Ability empowerment doubles both of them. There are two points in progression at which the empowerment becomes very useful.
  • The Jar O' Mayo can be bought from the Chef after defeating the world's evil boss, which also grants the materials for a pickaxe able to mine Aquaite.
  • The last two weapons that can bestow this empowerment, the Haunting Bass Drum and Jingle Bells from the Moon events, should be obtained shortly before fighting the Forgotten One, an underwater boss.
• 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.
• Triangles Are the Worst Instrument: Inverted - The Triangle is obtained from the Martian Invasion, and is the second-to-last percussion instrument in the game's progression.
• True Final Boss: The Dream Eater, a final phase of the Primordials boss fight that only appears in Expert Mode. If you're on Classic mode, it won't appear. Defeating it will provide you with the Reality Bearer buff, grant several exclusive drops, such as the Dormant Hammer (used with your Family Heirloom to make Mjölnir, The Omega Core, the Thorium Party Hat and if you're very lucky, the Bow of Light.
• Underwater Level: The Aquatic Depths, a biome unique to Thorium which spawns under the Ocean on whatever side the Jungle is.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: The Soul Render, the Lich's signature weapon, has a 20% chance to drop from him when defeated.
• 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.
• A Winner Is You: Taking down the Primordials in Expert Mode will give you the Reality Bearer buff, which does nothing except show a fancy crown over your head.