The Battlerod tooltip contains a wealth of information about the performance of that battlerod. The tooltip lines are:
Fishing Damage
The damage this rod does per bob. This damage is then divided by the number of bobbers the rod will cast, so if a battlerod with 300 damage and three bobbers will cause 100 damage for each one.
Modifiers
Fishing Damage, as most damage types, has a main modifier called the Fishing Damage Bonus, which can be increased by many items across the mod. It is also increased by the largest damage Bonus you have for any of the Vanilla classes. So, if you only had a Warrior's Emblem equipped, you would have 15% damage bonus for melee, but also 15% damage bonus for Fishing. If you had 10% bonus for melee and 20% for magic, you would also have 20% Fishing damage bonus.
There is also a bonus from Bob Escalation, where as long as you have the bobber stuck to an enemy, you have a base increase of some percentage per second up to (usually)2 times the base damage. The Bob Escalation potion provides 2% per second, so you would need to be stuck to the same enemy for 50 seconds to reach full double damage. There are also bob escalation items that inflict a mana cost that has to be paid for escalation to be maintained. Bob escalation keeps adding damage even when the enemy is invulnerable, but the bobber is still stuck (such as when the moon lord eyes close).
Fishing Power
As it can be used as a normal fishing rod, all battlerods have a fishing power percentage.
Number of Bobbers
Present in rods that natively launch more than one bobber, this tells you how many bobbers will this rod launch with no bobber number modifiers.
Tensile Strength
The force (in average) before this rod line breaks when reeling. Measured in pixels per second, a rod with 16pix/s tensile strength will break if the enemy (or you) are walking away from each other faster than one tile per second.
Bob time
A bob is when the bobber inflicts damage. Bob time is the time, in seconds, that must pass for damage to be dealt again. This value is the maximum time it will take the rod to cause damage, but the first damage time is random between 0 and this time. It can be sped up (or slowed down) by several accessories and one potion.
Reel Acceleration
Measured in pixels per second squared, this is how fast you will gain speed to drag the enemy towards you (or the other way around)
Effect Tooltip
A small description at the end of the tooltip that describes any extra effects this rod may have. (Not always accurate, sometimes may be a joke).
Battlerods have two sets of controls: the ones when you aren't stuck to an enemy, and when you are stuck to an enemy.
Not stuck to an enemy
It's pretty much the same as the normal fishing rod: pressing the left mouse button will cast the line in the direction your cursor is aiming. Pressing it again afterwards will retract the line. If you leave the bobber in liquid and that battlerod can fish in it and you have bait, there is a chance the bobber will go up and down quickly, and if you reel in (press Left mouse button) then you may get a fished item.
The major difference from normal fishing rods is that battlerods also respond to Right mouse button. In this case, it acts same as left click, only if you leave the mouse button pressed, it will continue to launch and retract the line.
If when you cast the line you hit an enemy, or if while the bobber is laying around an enemy collides with it, the bobber will attach to the enemy and the next sections of controls applies.
Stuck to an Enemy
Whenever you are stuck to the enemy, an invisible timer will count down until it reaches 0, and then causes damage to that enemy. Pressing the Right mouse button will release you from that enemy by breaking the line. Pressing the Left Mouse button, however, has an interesting effect. You begin to Reel the enemy.
Reeling
If the enemy is small enough, Pressing the Left Mouse Button will cause that enemy to stop right where it is and, if not forcing the line, will start moving towards you. If the enemy is too big for that battlerod to handle, you get stopped in place and start getting dragged towards the enemy. In either cases, the longer you reel, the faster you move towards each other. While reeling, the time needed to cause damage is reduced by half, which is very good in the beginning, when bob times are 2 seconds a piece, but becomes less useful later on, as bob times decrease.
When reeling an enemy, it is possible that the line will break from the excess force. This will not happen if your line is unbreakable (such as with the high test fishing line and angler bag accessories). There are also accessories that allow you to always be pulled towards the enemy or the other way around.
New in v1.2 is the addition of the Powered Baits, Baits that can be used as ammo for your Battle Rod. Most rods can only use one bait at a time, but some can use 2 or 3 at the same time. When you have a Powered Bait active, it will inflict a debuff on the hooked enemy or a buff to the user.
Baits are only consumed if they are equipped on your Ammo Slots. Once consumed, a Buff indicating the baits used and their effects appear in your Buff HUD, as well as the time remaining in that bait set. The timer on that buff only decreases in two circ*mstances:
- If you are hooked to an enemy, it will decrease the timer at a rate of 1 per tick;
- If you have a rod that spawns Fire Bees or Beetles, it will decrease by 5 ticks every time a Fire Bee/Beetle is released from the rod, as long as it is not hooked.
Baits are only consumed when the number of baits the rod is capable of changes, when no Powered Bait buff is present or when the time remaining is less than 10s, and only when the rod is cast. On consumption, the time remaining is determined by the quality of the bait:
- Apprentice lasts for 1 minute;
- Journeyman lasts for 2.5 minutes;
- Master lasts for 5 minutes.
Powered Baits come in two varieties, Buff baits and Debuff baits. In v 1.2 there are only 2 Buff Baits, the Doctor Bait that gives you life regen and the Dryad's Blessing Baits, that grant Dryad's blessing for as long as you are hooked to something. For a full list of Baits, see the Baits page on this wiki.
