What was planted in faith? Let's not Dig Up in Terraria!

[beatbandito]

You'd think you could catch statue bugs for bait. You'd think

[nosimpleway]

I did think, up until you said that

[beatbandito]

Hopefully I'm saving you some wasted time going out looking for a specific statue. I would have held my tongue if it was something that inspired doing chores. I cleaned my gutters while farming for the rod of discord!

[nosimpleway]

Between me folding all my piled-up laundry and you cleaning the gutters, Terraria is an excellent game to have running in the background while chores get done

[nosimpleway]

True Night's Edge is a pretty cool guy, it shoots these giant-ass sword beams that do even more damage than the blade itself. Something with infinite projectiles is damned helpful when placing a new minecart track through the jungle, since those Moss Hornets can lurk entirely offscreen and still snipe me for damage.


The lategame jungle is rough by design, and a few hornet stings sends me running for cover. In honey, if possible, to help with the HP regen.

Why place a new minecart track now? Well, it turns out I'm using the Shimmer rather more than I thought, so I'm putting down a way to get over there faster. In retrospect I could probably just build a house and put down a pylon there to teleport in, since people will live in the Hallow where the Shimmer pool is. That would have been marginally easier.


But if I'd done that, I wouldn't have collected any Chlorophyte ore on my way. I remember it being a lot less common!

Chlorophyte is unusual in that an existing chunk of ore will propagate itself, like Crimson or Hallow, through nearby mud. So each time I find a vein I take all but one or two blocks of Chlorophyte ore, then replace the mud around it to regrow some new ore. It's time consuming to do! I might not ever come back to harvest it! I don't know!


aw, nuts

Plantera is the next boss, the one I unlocked by beating the three Mechanical remixes. I'm definitely not ready to fight her yet! I just teleport back home.


uh, why is the boss music still playing

why is the boss life meter still on screen


why is there a giant vine lashing out of nowhere and latching itself onto my base


Because you can't just leave the Plantera boss fight. She will chase you. Across the map, if she has to.


Okay

deep breath

let's get set up in the arena

we absolutely cannot do this but we're gonna try, dammit


Because if she ever leaves the jungle biome, or enters a Crimson, Corrupt, or Hallow jungle, Plantera gets piiiiiissed. Double damage, double defense, extra attacks, extra speed, more aggressive pattern.


I wasn't ready for non-enraged Plantera, and the buffs from my own arena certainly aren't enough to bring me up past "ready" to "ready to fight while enraged". It does not take long to get splattered.


why is the boss music still playing

why is the life meter still on screen

why is Plantera still here trying to kill me

She has to kill me again before she despawns and I'm free to do something else.

[nosimpleway]

The whole point of the new minecart tunnel, interrupted by an accidental Plantera summon, was to get back to the Shimmer again. I managed to get this far without an Adamantite or Titanium Furnace, but I need one now to turn Chlorophyte ore into usable bars. I have almost enough Titanium Ore to make one, but I'm just a smidge short. I could fish some more, but... I really don't want to. God, I hate video game fishing.

But remember, the Shimmer doesn't just transform items into permanent boosts, it can also un-craft items into their component parts. I throw a couple Titanium Bars in, and they're transformed back into several chunks of Ore each.


I then reinforce my Hellforge with the Titanium Ore to make my new forge, adequately reinforced to handle anything the game throws at me. All this, and I never had to break a single Eyeballtar. I'm certainly not going to start doing that now, for like three chunks of ore!


I've got enough special weapons that I'm not particularly interested in the swords and spears and bolt-throwers I can craft now. But this thing is new, haven't seen one before. It works like the previous Extractinator, but it can spit out Cobalt, Mythril, and Adamantite ores (now that I have all of them I'll ever use...) and marginally more money than before. If I had realized there was a new Extractinator to be had I wouldn't have thrown away the Silt and Slush I'd picked up before...


Chlorophyte armor is pretty good, but Chlorophyte reinforced with the shells of the giant tortoises I can fight in the jungle is even better. This breastplate is one point shy of being double the defense offered by the Crystal Assassin mail I had on! The extra melee damage is a bonus and the extra hate I pull from enemies is utterly trivial in single-player games where everything is attacking me anyway.


Just like the Night's Edge, there's an upgraded True version of the Excalibur.


Maybe it's the layered effect of the "Massive" prefix and all the melee-boosing accessories I've got on, but True Excalibur is big.


Nothing like carefully digging out a drainage channel for a lake of lava to keep it from washing over a bit of terrain, only to find just before the final steps that there's an Actuator trap underneath that renders the effort moot (and requires you to dig new channels to drain the lava from the various places it's flowed into...)


Ice Golem! These are particularly rare, since they only spawn during snowstorms inside the Snow biome, and even then they don't show up a ton. This is the only one I've seen. It drops a Frost Core, which can be used for some special armor like the Turtle Shells were.


Huh. Never seen a configuration like this. Normally these little nodules with a Crimson Heart inside come at the end of long Crimstone passages, not just floating in the middle of a chamber like this.

[nosimpleway]

Next big project: Crimson monster farm.

Fill in as much of the terrain below, so there are no empty spaces for monsters to spawn. Open up as much of the area above as is practical, so that monsters can appear above. Install conveyor belts, sold by the Steampunker, to drag item drops toward the center of the arena. Hang Heart Lanterns and put up a Campfire to help with HP regen -- if I'd thought about it, I might have put a honey pool in the center too, or brought in the Heart Statues from the Hallow arena I built to fight Queen Slime.

In a vanilla seed, lava traps are also helpful because lava does about as much damage to monsters as it does to me, and it's possible to make a shallow enough pool to scorch the monsters without vaporizing the items they drop. In DDU seeds monsters are immune to lava damage, only picking up the On Fire debuff, so it's not really worth the effort. I install stacks of Dart Traps facing inwards, at the very least it can hit the Ichor Stickers floating down from above so they're interrupted from taking aim with their sprays.


You know what sucks? Ichor Stickers that can squirt me with their nasty bodily fluids at range while I work. You know what's worse? Floaty Grosses that just float straight to the walls to interrupt what I'm doing and get right in my face. Both are strong enough that my summons can't take care of them alone, so they both demand I drop what I'm doing -- filling in gaps with Crimstone, or trying to wire up the dart traps, or trying to get the conveyors placed. It's a complicated setup, and the more I get done, the more effective it is at spawning a shitton of monsters in my face so I can't ignore them.


Finally. Now to just stand here in the middle, firing TNE sword beams to the left and right, for like two hours collecting monster drops.


It's probably the most frustrating project I've built so far, and that's without being interrupted by a Blood Eclipse Army or whatever partway through building it. Oh no, the Crimson monsters are bad enough by themselves, thanks! But I just couldn't get these damn things to drop any other way.

I go Shimmer one of the Blindfolds into a Pocket Mirror so I don't have to go set up a new arena in a Marble biome to farm Medusae.

I then Tinker the Blindfold and Pocket Mirror together into Reflective Shades.


Time for the next mega-accessory, at long last. The five components -- each made from two 1% monster drops themselves -- combine into an Ankh Charm. The Ankh Charm then combines with an Obsidian Shield -- itself made from an Obsidian Skull and one of the Cobalt Shield from the dungeon -- to make the Ankh Shield. As with the Terraspark Boots, crafting the Ankh Shield nets an achievement.


In a small stroke of luck, it only takes two reforges to get the Warding prefix on it, for a total of +8 Defense and immunity to the ten status ailments from its component parts. Immunity to knockback would have been damned nice to have while I was building the Crimson arena...


And then I manage to land Warding on my wings, too. You'd think Turtle Armor, a bunch of Warding and defense-boosting accessories, and immunity to status ailments would mean I'm definitely able to stand up to the attacks of lategame bosses without concern for my HP. You'd underestimate just the sort of bullshit Terraria endgame throws at me, though...

[nosimpleway]

Digging around in the jungle again, I manage to net a Butterfly Dust drop from a giant moth, and a Tattered Bee Wing from a hornet. Putting aside for a moment the species confusion from both items, a Blood Moon also got me a Broken Bat Wing from a Vampire. I just got my Angel Wings with the right prefix on and now it's time to upgrade. Go figure.

Butterfly Wings, Bee Wings, and Bat Wings are all better than Angel Wings, but all the same as one another, so it's a matter of aesthetic. I go with the Butterfly Wings.


Some of that jungle digging was making way for that minecart track into the Hollow I was planning, before I realized most of the way through I could just build a house, stick some NPCs in it, and buy a Pylon to warp there directly. At this point, por que no los dos? I dug out a minecart track, dug out a shaft with a rope upward to the Shimmer lake, and built a house at the intersection.


After using every Life Crystal for +20 max HP and as many Life Fruits as the game allows for +5 max HP, you reach the cap at 500 HP. I actually didn't remember if anything good happened if you Shimmered a Life Fruit, but I had some extra from going through the jungle and figured I had nothing to lose. The reward is an innate +4 Defense.


I've been digging in the jungle for a while. The Yelets doesn't even seem like a particularly common drop, but I've been selling them off by the armload.


Perhaps I overdid it a little.


Step 1: dig out a big chunk of jungle
Step 2: build a Plantera arena
Step 3: attack and dethrone Plantera

But in the middle of Step 2 I realized just how much I overdid step 1. The center of the arena is so far from any jungle grass or overgrowth that it doesn't count as the Jungle biome anymore -- it's just regular Cavern. As you may recall, Plantera gets mighty pissed if she's lured out of the jungle. I have to slap some Mud Blocks back up and seed them with Jungle Grass Seeds to make the whole area the right biome again.


From what I understand of how the game calculates biomes, it's specifically looking for mud with jungle grass or the little decorative plants that grow from jungle grass to calculate how many blocks there are contributing to this area being a jungle. I build the mud in little rectangular cells so there's not any wasted space on plain mud that can't grow grass or plants. It doesn't take long before the jungle music kicks back in, and the Moss Hornets start showing up again. It only takes a bit longer than that before some of the mud starts crystalizing into Chlorophyte Ore. Didn't know it could do that without having ore there in the first place.

[nosimpleway]

here goes


Why dig out such a big arena in the first place? Most bosses fly around and pass through solid blocks, but Plantera needs to reach out with a vine and latch onto a block and pull herself toward it to move. By fighting in a wide-open space, Plantera has a harder time moving around.

Much like my digging plan, this worked too well at first, and Plantera could only find a place to latch a hook down beneath the floor where I was standing. The Night's Edge projectiles can't go through solid blocks, so she was safe from my attacks.


Come on, up here. There's a good plant monster.


The Inevitable Second Phase sees Plantera's bulb open up into a fanged maw, with a dozen or so little chomping vines erupting along with it. Plantera stops spitting seeds at range in this form, so victory is simply a matter of staying out of the reach of anything that can bite. The smaller vines can be destroyed, which leaves Plantera about as helpless as Skeletron is after you've destroyed all his arms.


Yes, perfect, keep doing that.


I consider beating the Wall of Flesh to be the end of "act 1" of Terraria, since it enters hardmode. Beating Plantera is the end of "act 2". There aren't nearly as many dramatic changes to the game world, but I'm in the home stretch now. As the pop-up message indicates, there's new stuff to do in the Dungeon...


...and as one of Plantera's item drops indicates, you can get into that indestructible Lihzahrd temple now.


As always, if you want the full set of drops, you've got to fight Plantera several times. I get a Wasp Gun, a Grenade Launcher, a Vine Hook to grapple to walls with, and the Seedler sword that launches little exploding nuts at enemies when I swing it. While I fight Plantera the second time, a Cyborg shows up to join my merry band of people who wander around more or less aimlessly and sell me mostly useless junk.

[nosimpleway]

The last guy to move in was a walking mushroom-person. I don't think anything in-game hints at how you're supposed to get him: build a house in a Glowing Mushroom biome, above the surface. That last clause doesn't change in DDU, I've built two houses in Mushroom biomes at the "surface" level of this world and they didn't work. And since the entire actual surface is Crimson, I could either dig a giant pit to keep any corrupting influence away from his house, or just skip the whole thing and make my own muddy satellite in outer space.

Once the Truffle moved in, I put him in one of the other mushroom-biome houses so I could teleport to him if I needed to, but left this flying mud house vacant. So the Cyborg moved in. I don't know if I'll ever need anything from the Cyborg, so I leave him here in his... uh... glowing organic UFO. Yeah, that's it.


After Plantera is defeated, new monsters show up for Solar Eclipse events. Nailhead brings to mind the Hellraiser films, the Butcher is a chainsaw-wielding maniac, the Psycho wears a hockey mask and hangs around nearly-invisible before striking, and Dr. Man-Fly lives about a day then dies, has hemolymph instead of blood, Sharkey wrote this song on a Dixie cup.

Mostly they drop more paintings to hang on the wall, and I get a couple Dr. Man-Fly masks if I want my head to look like a disgusting bug, but I do net a nice new chainsaw from a Butcher and some of the chemical flasks Dr. Man-Fly throws around. The event miniboss is the one to look for, though: Mothron is hard to see since I'm doing rather a lot of attacks to her all at once now, but she looks like she should be fighting Godzilla and drops a Broken Hero Sword.


The True Night's Edge is a bit slow, but has massive attack power and shoots those circular sword beams. The True Excalibur doesn't have sword beams and doesn't hit quite as hard, but swings extra fast in a massive arc. What if I could combine the two? The Broken Hero Sword is the missing ingredient to do just that.




I spend most of my money reforging the damned thing, but look at that. Look. at. that.


Other equipment might have bigger numbers but it's going to be hard to compete with the Terra Blade.


Granted, I fought Mothron enough times to get three Broken Hero Swords, and I only need the one, so I use the others to make some very, very fancy toilets instead. Even the ingame tooltip is baffled.

Night's Edge is the culmination of the pre-Wall of Flesh world exploration, requiring ingredients from the Dungeon, the Underworld, the Jungle, and the Crimson. It's powered up by conquering all of the Mechanical Bosses. The Excalibur is forged from drops from the Mechanical bosses, and powered up by Chlorophyte. Combining them requires a drop from an event miniboss that only shows up after Plantera. But you see on that description? It's still a "Material". We're still not done with it.

[nosimpleway]

Building an item farm is tedious work, but slightly less so in a desert. You can just point a Sand Block at the wall, and when it's place, it falls to the floor, making room for the next Sand Block, and so on. Filling in gaps requires a bit less by way of fiddly controller work.


I feel like I hit on a pretty effective farm layout with the Crimson farm I set up to get my Blindfolds, considering that I can't use lava all that effectively in a DDU seed. There aren't any traps here, but Desert monsters are a lot less dangerous than Crimson monsters anyway. The sword beams from the Terra Blade does fine. The little pygmy guy summons I got from Plantera can fill in gaps. I read a book or something while I hold down the attack button and rock the thumbstick back and forth to shoot left and right, and the conveyor belts bring me the item drops.


After a couple in-game days (each one 24 real-world minutes long, I'm waiting on a single rare drop and it's taking a while), a sandstorm whips up. And those sand tornadoes can only mean one thing...


A Sand Elemental has appeared. Sand Elementals are the only way to get a Forbidden Fragment, and they only show up in deserts during sandstorms. I manage to find four before the weather calms down again. Which is not to say I'm done with the Desert farm, it takes another half-hour before I get the thing I want.


Forbidden Fragment plus Cloud in a Bottle makes Sandstorm in a Bottle, Sandstorm in a Bottle with Shiny Red Balloon makes Sandstorm in a Balloon, Sandstorm in a Balloon combines with Cloud in a Balloon and Blizzard in a Balloon and Lucky Horseshoe to make Bundle of Horseshoe Balloons. Novelty aside I don't think I'll ever actually equip these since I already have wings, but boy does that free up a lot of space in the "Hold on to these accessories until you get the ingredients to combine them into something else" chest.


While I'm at it I realize I forgot a step for the Mechanical Glove I've been wearing all this time: setting stuff on fire with it.


And while I'm at that I remember that beating Plantera and getting Truffle to finally show his fungal face means I can get an Autohammer workstation from him and pound Chlorophyte Bars into Shroomite Bars.


Shroomite Digging Claws are the prize here. They can dig up anything the Drax can, but are even faster. Precise digging is actually kind of difficult because the Claws can tear out two or three blocks even if I tap the trigger quickly in hopes of only getting one.


Anyway. I got the thing from the Desert. Time for Snow. Yes, this also takes hours.


And while I was sure Snow was the last one I needed, it turns out I need a thing from the Hallow, too. Here I discover two things: I had run a wire through the Pearlstone floor to run the Heart Statues and keep my HP topped off while I fought Queen Slime. Conveyor belts run with a wire will switch direction when activated. Check out the platform on the left, there, all my conveyors are mixed up.

Oh, you weren't looking at the Conveyor Belts? Yeah, that's the second thing.


After you beat Plantera, you might spot a Prismatic Lacewing floating around in the Hallow. If you kill it, it summons the Empress of Light.


Don't do that. The Empress of Light is a Touhou.

[nosimpleway]

It took more or less a full day of real-time to build the three biome farms and get the drops I was after.


There are actually five, but I've already done my time in the Crimson and the Jungle. I actually got four Crimson Keys. That's how long it took to get the stupid Blindfolds I needed for the Ankh Shield.


The Dungeon has a bunch of new monsters in it, like this skellington glowing with hellfire. There's also giant floating cursed skulls, a variety of skellingtons in riot gear with tac shotguns and sniper rifles, a martial artist named Bone Lee, and a The Paladin, a walking suit of platemail who throws hammers like he's in Super Mario Bros.






Back when I went through the Dungeon for the first time I pointed out a chest I couldn't open. Now that Plantera has been defeated, the keys to open them actually work. These are the treasures therein. Had this been a Corrupt world instead of a Crimson one I would have gotten a spear called the Scourge of the Corruptor instead of the Vampire Knives, but from what I understand the Vampire Knives are better.


Each use of the Vampire Knives throws a spread of five daggers, and when they hit, they drain a single-digit amount of HP from an enemy. And they throw pretty gosh darn fast, like the Bananarang from what feels like so long ago. If you look closely you can see a very large shield sticking out of the pretty visual effects and number popups here, this is me hitting the Paladin.


I take the chests, too. I mean, obviously.


Of course, with new monsters come new loot drops, aside from what's available to be had in the Biome chests. The new casters drop the spells they use, to make lingering explosions or hitscan-type lasers that ricochet from walls. I get a Wisp in a Bottle, a new, brighter Light Pet to replace the Magic Lantern I've been using up til now. A Giant Skull drops a Shadow Jousting Lance, an odd sort of spear that stabs outward and stays there, presumably so I can get up some momentum on a mount or minecart and jab something with it at 60 miles prower.
The skellingtons in riot gear drop the Tactical Shotgun and this Sniper Rifle, which is the highest attack power gun in the game, but as you might imagine, only fires off single shots (whereas other rapid-fire guns with lower attack power have higher DPS). The Sniper Rifle is unusual in that it can be aimed further than other guns, the screen will scroll your character from the center to the edge when you aim the Rifle so you can hit things from further away. Shortly thereafter I get a Rifle Scope accessory that lets me do the same thing with any ranged weapon.


The Paladin drops his Hammer, which works as a boomerang rather than a background-wall-breaking tool. I also get a version of his Shield, which I combine with a Frozen Tortoise Shell back home to make a Frozen Shield. The Frozen Shield is +6 Defense, and when I drop below half HP, I take a quarter less damage from enemies. Bone Lee is kind enough to drop a ninja Tabi and a Black Belt, which increase movement speed and let me dash and dodge attacks. Those combine with my last set of Tiger Climbing Gear to make the Master Ninja Gear, doing all of those things at once.
Any nearly any enemy in the Dungeon can drop Ectoplasm, which lets me refine Chlorophyte Bars into Spectre Bars. Spectre Tools aren't more effective than Shroomite or Chlorophyte, but can typically be used from further away. The Spectre Pickaxe, for example, lets me mine blocks three spaces further away than usual. I assume it stacks with the Hand of Creation to let me break stuff from half a screen away if I want. I keep my Shroomite Digging Claws for now.


wheeeee

[nosimpleway]

Overall, I can't tell if I'm just better-prepared and better at the game overall, or if the game has been rebalanced so it's not such a brutal slog at every step. Going into the post-Plantera dungeon last time I played was harrowing, it seems like there were more traps, more monsters, and the monsters that showed up were harder to kill. The Paladin was a terrifying juggernaut, rather than something I'd just get vaguely annoyed at for dropping another serving of BBQ Ribs instead of the Shield I wanted.

like

This is what the part of the Dungeon I didn't go through looks like on the map. There are somewhat fewer spikes on the floors and walls and a few extra passages than the Dungeon originally generated with, on account of my foray here after beating Skeletron. But...


This is the part that I went through post-Plantera. I was so unthreatened by the monsters attacking me that I instead got annoyed at all the twists and turns of the dungeon hallways and, uh, smoothed things out a little bit.


A Blood Moon rises. There's an event I haven't seen yet, despite getting Goblin Army raids literally three days in a row and plenty of Solar Eclipselike horrors arriving. I spend my Blood Moon topside, at the ocean, looking for Pirate Map drops. So next time: Pirates! Probably!


Also next time, probably: The Lihzahrd Temple! I can't even walk up to the door without a dart trap shooting me in the ass, which is a nice preview for what to expect inside. And clawing away at it to get rid of the trap doesn't work, like the bricks of the temple itself, the Lihzahrd traps are virtually indestructible.

[nosimpleway]

Apple pastries will run you $3
Strawberry-rhubarb is about $4
Chocolate cream is $3.50


These are the Pie Rates


Pirate raids are about the same as Goblin Army raids, it's just a ton of mooks that spawn in and try to kill you. Event ends when you kill enough of them. Deckhands and Corsairs try to ram for collision damage, Crossbowers and Deadeyes try to shoot from afar, Captains have a bunch of HP, a fully-automatic firearm, and spawn a ghost when they die. The real prize is the Flying Dutchman, pictured, which has better drop rates for the cool stuff than the mooks. Each of the cannons on the side has 1000 HP, and with the Terra Blade sword beams I can hit all four at once. They don't last long, but they only show up after the event reaches 50% completion and each one increases the event completion by 10%, so there are never very many.

I do manage to score one of the rare drops during the first raid, though, so that's pretty cool.


Pirates also drop a lot of furniture, crafted from solid gold.


Defeating a Pirate Raid means a friendly Pirate shows up at your base. He sells more not-terribly-useful junk.


And recruiting every other NPC means the Princess shows up. She more or less functions as a way to bolster the NPC Happiness mechanic, since she likes everybody and everybody likes living close to her. But I've worked out that NPC happiness is virtually a nonissue in DDU worlds, so she's just another clothes vendor to me.


I use the other two Pirate Maps and score another rare drop. The Gold Ring pairs with the Lucky Coin to make the Coin Ring, which is a good accessory to wear outside of boss fights. Mooks dropping more money means I shouldn't be so strained running every piece of new equipment through the Reforge RNG.

It doesn't take long before a Blood Moon shows up, which I also spend at the Ocean for more Pirate Maps. I try to summon the pirates while I'm still at the Ocean, in hopes that the cavalcade of enemies will drop more Maps, in a sort of self-sustaining Pirate engine. They only start showing up near the middle of the map, though, so that doesn't work. I do get five more Maps...


Which continues my streak of baffling rare drop luck. I had to grind for hours just to get a couple fuckin' Blindfolds, but the Discount Card is one of the rarest drops in the game and I got one after five raids. It combines with the Coin Ring.

I didn't get a Coin Gun to Zeninage my enemies to death, but I think I'm probably done with Pirates. I got my Greedy Ring, I'm good.

[beatbandito]

I don't know if you've been using outfits, but with the greedy ring now it's extra helpful to be able to pop into it quickly before talking to npcs. Also keeping the mining accessories quickly accessible.

[nosimpleway]

You'd think after all that digging I did in the jungle that I'd have learned: knock the background walls out, then destroy the solid foreground blocks. Oh well.


Moving on to That Other Thing I Was Gonna Do...


I bring a set of Wire Cutters. I figure even if I can't destroy the traps themselves, I can clip the wires connecting them to their trigger plates, right? Doesn't work that way in the Lihzahrd temple. There are no wires.


Wooden Spikes are everywhere, and somehow they deal a ton more damage than the presumably-Iron spikes in the dungeon.


Thankfully, I can remove Wooden Spikes with an adequately powerful pickaxe tool. Shroomite Claws do the job nicely.


Chests in the Lihzahrd temple include: Lihzahrd Power Cells, which don't seem to do much of anything; Solar Tablet Fragments, which can be assembled into Solar Tablets; Solar Tablets, which start a Solar Eclipse event any time I want but lol why would I ever want to do that; and earlygame junk. Flaming Arrows went out of style around the time I was fighting the Brain of Cthulhu...


I will grant that the free Dangersense potions that show up in chests are nice to have around, making the traps and their triggers glow in the dark.


Poisonous dart traps I'm used to, and the Lihzahrd Temple has powered-up versions of them. There are also flamethrowers that would presumably set me on fire in addition to the initial damage if I weren't wearing my Ankh Shield. And again, Wooden Spikes are everywhere. This is to say nothing about the Lihzahrds themselves, which have a high spawn rate but my little summoned kitty is particularly adept at killing them before they become a major problem.


whaaaaaat

I can't dig up the dart traps or flamethrowers themselves, but I can remove the pressure plates? This happened completely by accident, but when I discovered this I went back to the entrance and dug up every pressure plate in the temple.


Amusingly, as I went deeper in, I got close enough to the little jungle hut I built on the other side of the outer wall, and the "town" music started playing. Lihzahrds stopped spawning in favor of harmless little bunnies and birdies, since towns, uh, do that. It doesn't last long -- the temple walls are thick, so it's not like the safe zone is particularly close -- but it's kind of funny that it reaches this far in the first place.

I could probably build a hut below the temple and keep mooks from spawning during the boss fight, now that I think about it.

[nosimpleway]

Whew. Really glad I can dig these up. Flying through the temple seems unwise, and walking over Wooden Spikes does about 40 damage even with the armor I've got on.


I must be getting pretty far, new trap just dropped. Just dropped a bunch of bouncy spiky balls on my head, I mean.


Really glad I can dig these up.




There's the Altar. This is the end of the temple. I dunno if I'm ready to fight the boss yet, though. I do take the liberty of removing the trigger plates for all those spiky ball traps in the ceiling before I head back to base to gather my boss-fightin' kit.


That's really all they're good for. I've already gotten all the Broken Hero Swords I need, what could I possibly get out of another Eclipse? Or like 20 of them, since that's how many Solar Tablets I have?


Knowing that all the traps -- and indeed, all of the furniture, statuary, and chests -- have been removed from the temple, I can zip straight through to the last room. I'm so fast that I get this far in before even the first Lihzahrd shows up.


Okay. You can't build your own arena at your leisure, you have to fight the boss in this room, because that's where the Sun Altar is. But you still summon the boss whenever you're ready, so you can take a moment and make the altar chamber a little more amenable.

I wall off the entrance, so Lihzahrds can't just walk in while I'm busy. I eventually realize that they can jump up against the wall, go into their quadrupedal extra-fast stance, and clip straight through, so I reinforce the wall to three blocks thick to keep them from doing that.

I've removed the pressure plates in the floor already, but then I fill it with stone blocks so it's not as rough and uneven. Now I can move more freely.

I hang torches on the back wall, since I won't be wearing my Ultrabright Helmet during the boss fight. The Turtle Helm gives me more defense and completes the armor set, giving me a bit of counterattack damage when I get hit.


Finally, click on the Sun Altar. This consumes one Lihzahrd Power Cell and summons the Golem.


Each Golem Fist has 7000 HP, and will ROCKETTO PANCHU to whichever side of the boss you're on as long as it's alive. The body jumps around and tries to stomp on you, and the head will shoot lasers and fireballs from its eyes. Do a few tens of thousands of HP damage, and the head will detach to fly around the room independently of the body.


All that said, Golem is... kind of a chump...?

[nosimpleway]

Before this release version, Golem was widely considered to be the easiest boss in Hardmode, if not the easiest boss in the game. You could build a trap for the damn thing, so that it couldn't move at all, and the only attacks you had to contend with while you pounded on it were the fireballs and eye lasers. It's been upgraded so that it can't be trapped, and made harder in general, but I can still wipe the floor with it nearly effortlessly.


Then I discover that it can't stomp on me if I hide in the little alcove I built next to the Sun Altar itself, while I fire upwards with Terra Blade beams and chew through its HP faster than it can hurt me, or fire upwards with Vampire Knives and absorb its HP faster than it can deal damage and end the fight at full health.

I remember Terraria being hard. Fighting a boss that's been upgraded and still managing to win without breaking a sweat still doesn't answer whether I'm better at the game in general or whether the buffs given to the player still outpace those given to Golem.


Most of the potions I brought along have a four-minute effect. I can fight Golem three to five times before needing to drink another round of them. I do this for a while, because he's a bit reluctant to drop that Heat Ray, but I finally get the last of the prizes I came for.

The Picksaw is, if I'm not mistaken, the last pickaxe upgrade in the game. The Shroomite Claws can dig through anything except Lihzahrd blocks, and the Picksaw... can do that. That thing I just said. Dig through Lihzahrd blocks. The Golem Fist is a copy of the Golem's ROCKETTO PANCHU. The Possessed Hatchet, Staff of Earth, Heat Ray, and Stynger are various flavors of magical and ranged damage. The trophy and mask are decorative, one for the walls, one for my face.


Beetle Husks give an upgrade to the Turtle Armor I'm already wearing. Wearing the full set gives a flat percentage damage reduction to incoming attacks, in exchange for losing the counterattack effect from the Turtle Armor.


The Sun Stone gives various stat boosts, but only during the day. It combines with a Moon Stone that a Vampire dropped during an Eclipse, which gives various stat boosts but only at night. As you might expect, the Celestial Stone works all the time.


The Golem Eye combines with the Avenger Emblem to make a Destroyer Emblem. Destroyer gives only 10% damage boost compared to the Avenger's 12%, but adds the Golem Eye's extra critical hit chance. A Destroyer Emblem can combine with a Rifle Scope to make a Sniper Scope, giving extra damage/crit to ranged attacks and allowing me to aim offscreen. If I had a sack of Putrid Scent, I could make a Recon Scope, but "enemies less likely to target you" doesn't matter in a single-player game, so who cares?

With Golem defeated, the game is ready for me to start the final boss summon event. I could go finish the game now, I guess? There's some more stuff to do, though. Namely, there's one more accessory I don't want to miss out on, and it...

uh...

it drops from an enemy. During a Solar Eclipse.





...Guess I'll need those Solar Tablets after all.

[nosimpleway]

Eventually I get the drop from the Solar Eclipse: a Creature from the Deep can give a Neptune's Shell, allowing me to turn into a fishman when I get into water. Maneuverability goes way up, breathing is no longer an issue, and a couple of other accessories are obsoleted entirely.

The Neptune's Shell combines with the Moon Charm, to make a single accessory that turns me into a fish in water and a werewolf at nighttime. That combines with the Celestial Stone to make the Celestial Shell, for a general stat boost, extra stats at night, and benefits in water.


I've got a bunch of melee-oriented accessories and the Beetle Armor for super-high defenses, but it occurs to me that while I'm digging and building I'm not swinging a sword. Might as well do a different build for more passively managing monster attacks. The Tiki Armor is a set based on summon monsters, giving extra minions to summon and making all minions more powerful than they otherwise would be.


Hey, what's that?


It's a Martian Probe. If you touch the green scanner, the lights turn red and the Probe flees. If you let it get away, it starts Martian Madness, the next step up for army raids from Goblins and Pirates.


oh, that's not good


Just as the pirates had their Flying Dutchman, the Martians have Flying Saucers to throw at me. They typically throw a barrage of missiles or lasers, and that ground-scouring laser is actually less threatening than it looks. In previous game versions it did ridiculous amounts of damage, but could be stopped by a single block ceiling. Now it pierces blocks but as a mercy it does about as much damage as one of the spikes in the Lihzahrd temple.


Digging on the surface gets me spotted by four or five Probes, and I break what I'm doing to fight each one as it happens. Rewards include the Influx Waver, a sword with higher attack power but less-useful sword beams than the Terra Blade...


A freakin' Mega Buster that shoots giant lasers...


A Laser Drill with a frankly absurd reach, but slower than the Picksaw...


The next step up in summon minions, a tiny laser-shooting UFO...


...and a Scutlix mount. Scutlices are used as cavalry mounts for some of the Martian gunners, you see. The Scutlix can't fly like the mount I was using before, but makes up for it with much better ground speed, nigh-instant acceleration to its top speed, particularly high natural jumps, and the ability to shoot lasers from its eyes at any monsters in front of it while I ride. If I need to fly, I've got wings anyway.

[nosimpleway]

There's a surprise. I figured the Sun Altar was fixed in place, but it can be dug up by the Picksaw. I don't really want it, so I just put it back down again, in the corner.


This means that when Golem drops onto the battlefield when the altar is activated, it gets stuck on a high wall for a little while. Whoops, sorry.

The game allows for up to three sets of equipment to switch between. My first is the Beetle Armor, with the melee and mobility accessories in tow. My second is Tiki Armor and accessories for better summons, and the Hand of Creation for quicker digging.
The problem with this system is that there doesn't appear to be any way to set a single accessory to function for more than one set at a time. Beetle Wings are easy enough to craft a copy of, I've got tons of Husks and Souls of Flight. I've actually managed to collect most of the stuff I need for a second Ankh Charm from random drops. But I'd sold off the extra Sun Stones I got from the fights with Golem before, so I need another one to make another Celestial Stone. I've already got the Moon Stone, Moon Charm, and Neptune's Shell from elsewhere.


Another project to undertake: insufficient storage. Mostly banners. Every non-boss enemy in the game drops a Banner of its species after 50 kills, and there are a lot of different monsters! Each chest has one of those bizarre video game "this slot can hold 999 potions, but not one potion and one ether" inventory systems. This is the point in the game where the space I've made for monster banners and general crafting materials starts to overflow, so I'm building a new base with more storage options.

While in that task I realize that I don't really need all the space I'd been using for foraged items that I can craft myself. Abandoned underground cabins with chandeliers and furniture and stuff, I'd been dismantling and putting the stuff away in case I need it later. But... I can just build all of that myself. I can Shimmer all of those things into their base components, and keep stacks of those ingredients instead. A chair, a table, a workbench, background walls, and wood blocks takes up five inventory slots. The component wood takes one.

I try to Shimmer an Angel Statue into its component stone blocks, and end up with an Aether Monolith for my trouble instead. The Monolith, when placed, can be activated to get the trippy starfield effect anywhere.


Having moved most of the NPCs elsewhere in order to get Pylons to work, this is all that remains of the previous base. If I need any more Pylons, I'll move these people out, too... but there can only be one Pylon for each biome in the world, the only biome left I haven't built a house is Snow, and I don't often have occasion to go there anyway.


The new base. A lot more compact and a lot less decorated, I'm afraid. The NPCs I use regularly -- the Tax Collector (for free money), the Goblin Tinkerer (for reforging and selling off crap items), and the Guide (to remind me what crafting recipes) are get to stay and power the Pylon. I have my "click on these to get buffs" stations set up between spawn and either the door or the Pylon out, so I am less likely to forget and walk away without, say, the extra summon minion from the Bewitching Table. And wow, look at all those storage chests. I hope it's enough.


I've built my new Ankh Charm. The Dungeon in DDU only had one Cobalt Shield, so I head into a normal world to kill Skeletron and loot that Dungeon for another. It's a shame the world I genned has the "outer space" background everywhere, some of these biome backgrounds look pretty nice.

Anyway, I get a Cobalt Shield, lump it in with an Obsidian Skull, and have the final ingredient for my second Ankh Shield. As tedious as the grind was for the first one I'd have never expected to make a second, just for giggles.


But I've been working on some pretty big projects, and there are lots of monsters to fight and get drops out of while I dig and build. This arena, for instance, which is mostly filled with natural water that I channeled out of the lakes and pools around the Forest-biome base area I dug out so long ago. From the Very Long Rope To the Top of the Sky west to where the Desert biome starts, from the Mushroom biome below to the Cavern layer above where the water is replaced by lava, all the H2O is now in this pool.

It was almost enough to fill it all the way, but it's a pretty big arena. I have an Endless Water Bucket to top it off.


One more "click on this before you leave the house" station: a slice of cake. The Sugar High it grants gives a little bonus to digging speed. It goes next to the Crystal Ball.