This spell will shoot a projectile with a fast initial speed that rapidly slows to a stop after traveling a short distance. It will then proceed to slowly float toward any enemies in homing range, creating a small explosion on contact. Enemy projectiles and self-harming projectiles(such as Pinpoint of Light or Piercing Shot modifier) can collide with floating Pollen, allowing large clouds of Pollen to double as a shield against enemy fire. Floating Pollen will harm the player on contact.
It is possible to use Pollen to dig due to their small explosion upon contact with creatures or material. Paired with rapid fire wands makes them a cheap tool to infinitely dig through soft materials up to the hardness of rocks. However, this method is somewhat unreliable, because Pollen tend to bounce off of sloped surfaces or home in on enemies through walls. So it is best to dig with them at a small distance.
There appears to be a bug where this spell's projectiles will spawn without a damaging hitbox, resulting in situations where the projectiles will appear stuck harmlessly on an enemy until they expire.
Modifiers which cause spells to harm the player, such as Bloodlust and Piercing Shot, have a detrimental effect which causes Pollen projectiles to collide with other Pollen projectiles and cancel each other out.
Tips[]
- The spell's movement speed while homing is very slow, and will often fail to catch retreating enemies until they are well offscreen. This can be remedied with speed up and homing modifiers.
- The unreliable hitbox on the spell means modifiers which attach additional damaging effects to a projectile, such as Damage Field and Fireball Orbit, can provide a greater benefit than modifiers which directly increase projectile damage. Damage Field in particular can deal a lot of damage if Pollen projectiles get stuck on an enemy.
- Projectile Repulsion Field will render Pollen almost entirely harmless to the player
Pollen Feedback Loop[]
Since pollen can be hit by a player created piercing projectile such as Pinpoint of Light, it's possible to use add trigger to create a feedback loop where a projectile hits pollen which then triggers another pollen to spawn which is then also hit, etc.
Pinpoint of Light works especially well but can be replaced with other piercing projectiles:
The Long Distance Cast prevents the first Pollen from getting the piercing modifier.
More spells can then be added to the trigger to make, for example, a travel wand:
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