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

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

Postby nosimpleway » Sun Oct 09, 2022 9:42 pm

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Quality of life upgrade: there's a button on the inventory screen to stack items into nearby chests. Anything you're carrying in your pockets flies out and into any nearby chests to stack with other items of the same kind that are already in the chest. So ores fly into the ores and minerals chest, stone and clay automatically go into the chest with the rest of the building materials, harvested plants go into the chest for potion and dye ingredients, and money and gems fly into the piggy bank.

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Traveling by minecart through some lava caves, it occurs to me that it's almost guaranteed one of these tracks is going to dunk me straight into a lava pool sooner or later.

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I don't know if the glowing purple moss signifies everything, but if it does, I didn't find it.

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I am currently on fire. See where those minecart tracks went? Mmhmm.

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The Antlion Larvae I fought in the brief foray into the Desert biome previously have all grown up! Well, not all of them, there are still lots of larvae around. But there are also Antlion Swarmers that fly around, Antlion Chargers that scuttle along the floors, and plain ol' regular Antlions that stick their heads out of the sand and spit stuff at me.

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...

...I have multiple questions.

The plaid shirt and flat cap might give it away -- this guy is the Golfer. He sells items that let me... build a golf course?

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I guess this is kind of useful if I find myself digging through mud or crimtane or something and don't want it cluttering my inventory?

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It's a good weapon, but the health drain is like 1 HP, sometimes. And that "Very Slow" swing speed isn't kidding. Pretty sure a Cave Bat dropped it, those things are all over the place and it's reasonable I killed like three at a time and missed a rare drop from one of them.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Sun Oct 09, 2022 10:03 pm

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Tim the skeleton wizard is still around, and still drops his hat that improves magic damage output. The only magic damage I have is still my pkang pkang pkang pkang semprini myew

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...sure, all right.

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Marble biome.

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A thin sheet of ice, over a pool of lava. That's the kind of verisimilitude we come to expect from Terraria.

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In a mushroom house, in a mushroom biome, I find a large white hat with red spots, a red harem vest, and blue trousers. Hmm.

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Salamanders are marginally more difficult than zombies or skeletons because they spit venom. If there's anything else special about them I haven't seen it.

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This person is a hairstylist. She sells items that let me change my character's hair color, or would if I had some. Thankfully she can also change my hairstyle to one that actually has hair to dye. I can only speculate why she was webbed and kept in a spider lair.

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This time I'm thorough enough to get rid of all the traps before I open the Dead Man's Chest. There was still a bit of anxiety when I opened it, since I've been caught off guard so damn many times already.

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My reward is a Lava Charm that gives me a few seconds of immunity to falling in lava. I can't bathe in the stuff but if a monster happens to knock me in -- not like that's ever happened before -- I have a moment to get out before I burn to death.

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Something drops me a Depth Meter, which shows me how far above or below the "Surface" median line on the map I am. Turns out I'm actually pretty close, after all this rope-belaying I've been doing. One block is two feet square, so I'm only 121 blocks from the "Surface".

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

Postby nosimpleway » Sun Oct 09, 2022 10:09 pm

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I keep putting the word "Surface" in quotes because the median line is usually pretty far below the open sky. I'm close to the Surface line here, but there's only dirt and rock on all sides. Above me is the hollowed-out root of a Living Tree. Unlike the other trees that function as background objects and passed through, this is a pregenerated structure that's made of foreground blocks of wood and leaves.

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Seven trees beside one another, with interconnected root tunnels, make for a pretty big structure! Given the spawns I'm pretty sure Living Trees count as the Forest biome even when there might be other biomes nearby.

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In this case, there's lots of Crimstone around, leading me to believe these trees have been corrupted by an encroaching Crimson biome. Still only seeing Zombies and Demon Eyes inside the root tunnels, though.

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Since I don't have a pickaxe that can pierce Crimstone yet, I can't take my rope straight up the rest of the way to the surface. I can Dynamite through, but that proves a bit too tedious to bother with. I just go up one of the Living Tree roots.

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Or would, except I got a notification that there's a Traveling Merchant that spawned, and not at base. That reminded me I still have some of the Ash Wood apartments to tear down.

Turns out when I dynamited his bedroom the Dye Trader moved back into a hell apartment before I could fix it, too. So I got him to move back in with everyone else in a slightly cooler area.

For all the distractions, T. Merch didn't have anything I wanted. Unless I wanted to pick up a duplicate Companion Cube. Terraria does love its cross-game references, huh

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Mmhmm.

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I dunno what this background is, but it breaks off without being added to my inventory like regular dirt walls do in the caverns below.

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Eventually I run into a big deposit of Crimsand, where the Crimson has invaded the Desert biome that apparently stretches from the top of the map all the way to the bottom, just to the left of center.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Sun Oct 09, 2022 10:28 pm

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The Living Wood loom lets me craft wooden furniture that looks like it's made by shaping a still-living tree, with leaves still attached. For example, that chair is a Living Wood Chair.

The Blood Moon is the same super-spawner event we've seen before.

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The Crimson is everywhere I dig, no matter how far to the left or right I manage to get. I head up to where the root tunnels open up into the trunks of the Living Trees, and thanks to the Blood Moon, I'm surrounded by Crimson monsters. None of them can move through walls, at least not yet...

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So I claw a tiny hole into either side of the trunk, too small for me or any monsters to fit through, and start firing arrows through. Which will run out first, the Blood Moon or the hundreds of Wooden Arrows I've found? The Wooden Arrows, it turns out, as I start firing leftover Jester Arrows and spraying confetti everywhere. It's a magical, sparkly light show, revealing the bloody horrors of the landscape underneath!

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Monsters stop showing up so rapidly on either side, which I eventually determine is caused by so many spawns coming up the tree from below. In the narrow, winding shaft and with their limited AI, they can't reach my little safe spot in the tree trunk, so I have to drop down myself to take care of them all.

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The Blood Moon ends, but the sun doesn't come out. I collect the scattered coins and Vertebrae -- apparently Flesh Samples to craft with my Crimtane ingots comes from somewhere else -- and make an initial foray under the open sky.

All I see is Crimson, as far as I go. And the sun never comes up.

Is that what makes the surface of a Don't Dig Up world so dangerous? It's all covered in the Evil biome, and always night? Eventually I get swarmed by Crimson monsters and have to Magic Mirror back to base in order to not die.

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I'd never seen a Face Monster or Crimera before the Blood Moon, and already have a banner for each of them.

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Not sure why I would want to do that, ever, but sure okay.

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Verterbrae do not appear to be terribly useful, as crafting materials.

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Dinking around in the UI I find the Bestiary option, which starts by listing NPCs. I think having the "Hallow" listed under her profile means the Nurse likes to live there? I'll, uh, keep that in mind. Hallow doesn't exist yet.

Entries for monsters track my kills, and may have extra information like their stats and item drops.

That's about what you'd expect from a video game Bestiary, I guess.

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Ah. Here's the next quest progression, buried in a gap in the Crimtane my pickaxe can't possibly reach through.

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I still got lots of Dynamite, though.

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That's one World Heart destroyed. If the Crimson really does cover the entire map, there's no telling how many there might be, or how far apart they might be.

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The Heart also drops my first proper firearm. The prefix gives it a pretty odd name. Why would I want to intimidate someone who prepares bodies for burial?

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The map.

That's Hell -- properly "The Underworld" down beneath. The green arrow is where I started. The lava lake a bit to the right is where had previously built a base.

The blue-ish area is the Glowing Mushroom biome. If there's any limit to it, I haven't found its edge. Above that is the green Forest "Surface, but 2000 feet below ground" biome. To its right, ice and snow. To its left, the desert.
Above that, caverns with lava pools, with two more Glowing Mushroom biomes nearby. Off to the right is the track through the Marble biome, through a Snow biome that may or may not be connected to the one beneath.
And at the top of the map, the network of Living Tree roots piercing the Crimson. Off to the left is the Desert and extra Living Tree that I spent the Blood Moon in, and to the left of that, as far as I got in my adventures under the open sky.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Oct 10, 2022 10:28 pm

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The Undertaker is a gun. Having found a gun prompts the Arms Dealer to move in. Mostly he sells bullets, and stuff to make my own bullets later.

I'm building an expansion onto the base to function as a workshop. Having all the chests down where NPCs are walking around is getting to be a pain when they end up standing in front of the chest I need so I can't activate it.

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It wouldn't be a building project without a needless holdup, of course.

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Goblin Army events spawn a shitton of goblins to fight. As with most things in Terraria, you either die a dozen times as you struggle through, or you win more or less effortlessly. In this case I kill enough goblins to stop the event without needing a single healing potion.

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Storage of various items on the left, crafting supplies under the matching stations on the right.

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The Depth Meter works by sitting in the inventory. It can be equipped, but you don't have to. With that in mind I also pick up the Lifeform Detector and keep it in my inventory too, allowing me to see when a rare creature of some sort has spawned nearby.

It doesn't tell me where the thing spawns, so it doesn't work all that well for actually finding rare critters, monsters, or in this case the next NPC.

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I blow up another heart, and it drops a heart. A Crimson Heart, which follows me around and glows in the dark. Glowing pets are fine, I guess? But they typically follow at a short distance, meaning they're providing light where you used to be but not where you're going.

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By the end of this post I figure it out. For Don't Dig Up worlds, the world generate more or less like they would in vanilla, including a couple of Evil biomes that stretch a couple hundred feet under the surface. The change for Don't Dig Up is that it generates a plain island of Ash Blocks in the middle of the Underworld to serve as Boring Hell, then paints the world's Evil biome from the surface median up. Anything between that median and the surface is corrupted, but that corruption doesn't seem to spread downward into the areas below.

So there are probably the normal amount of Hearts to break, at the bottom of the normal Crimson biomes where they would be found in vanilla. I don't break any more than the two I've done already, for Reasons.

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I'm playing in the middle of October. I spotted a pumpkin growing in the Forest. There are Ghosts spawning anywhere in the world, rather than limited to spots where there are lots of gravestones already. And sometimes enemies drop Goodie Bags with vanity items inside. This first one has a bedsheet Ghost Mask and Ghost Costume, and the next one I find has a mask and outfit for the Bride of Frankenstein.

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There you're!

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Been waiting for this one.

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Shortly thereafter I am gently encouraged to teleport home instead of exploring further. Fuckin' King Slime.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Oct 10, 2022 10:43 pm

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Oh, the Ruler was turned into a melee weapon instead of taken out entirely. Guess that keeps previous gameworlds from breaking for having a Ruler somewhere in it.

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The Tinkerer's Workshop, as the tooltip said, allows me to combine equipment together. For instance, I can combine an Obsidian Skull and Magma Charm into a Magma Skull that protects against lava and fire blocks, or combine a Magma Charm and Obsidian Skull into a Molten Charm that protects against fire blocks and lava.

Okay, bad couple of examples. Weird redundancy, though.

I also combine my Hermes Boots (allows dashing) and the Rocket Boots that I got from the Goblin Tinkerer (that allow limited flight) to create the Spectre Boots (allows dashing and limited flight).

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The other thing the Goblin Tinkerer does is change prefixes on equipment. It's expensive, costing a couple gold a pop, and as far as I know completely random. You can exchange a good prefix on a piece of equipment hoping for a great one, and end up with a detrimental one instead. You can always roll again until you end up with "Legendary" or "Godly" or "Unreal" or "Warding" equipment, but it costs more dosh every time.

This Magiluminescence turns from Spiked to Guarding, so that instead of +2% damage it now gives me +3 Defense when equipped.

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I haven't worked with Pylons before, but I know that characters have to be pretty happy with their surroundings to sell them. So as expensive as having G.T. reroll prefixes is, I'm getting a little bit of a discount.

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Old, recognizable trap. You can activate the plunger to set off the nearby Explosive and knock loose all the ore in the deposit, but the Explosive is close enough to the plunger that you'll probably blow yourself up at the same time.

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Red ice, from where the Snow biome has been corrupted by Crimson.

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Huh. Demon Altars normally can't be broken until quite a bit later on in game progression, but this one is sitting on Silt Blocks. If the ground underneath an object is broken, it typically breaks the object, too. I wonder what happens if a Silt Block falls out from under a Demon Altar and leaves it sitting on empty space.

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Ah. Hmm. Silt Blocks supporting a Demon Altar ignore gravity like the other blocks in the game. Oh well.

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Granite Golem. They spawn in Granite biomes, so apparently I'm close enough to one to get this guy to show up. He's tough!

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But he was kind enough to drop a Night Vision Helmet upon his demise, like the Miner's Helmet I had but providing two extra points of Defense and a bit more light. Back at the workshop the Miner's Helmet and Night Vision Helmet combine with each other to make the Ultrabright Helmet, which is bright enough to light up more or less the whole screen. Nice!

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

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Oct 10, 2022 10:51 pm

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Having dug from the bottom of the map up to the surface, I'm now working on trying to find how far I can go from side to side. Which... is pretty far! I start putting together some minecart tracks to expedite things.

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Rats.

The minecart tracks are stymied by a Dungeon being in the way. I can't dig through the walls. The dungeon is deep, at least a thousand feet down, and wide, in that if I dig straight down from here I'll also have to stop on account of running into a branch of the Dungeon stretching off to the left.

I'll either have to hold off on finding the right edge of the map, dig all the way around below the Dungeon, or explode my way through the Crimstone above me and take my tracks over the entrance.

I haven't decided which of those options I dislike the least.

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Oh. I can Dynamite through the walls, but I wouldn't want to. Going into the dungeon early gets you instant-killed by a vengeful ghost inside, even if I'm just ducking through to build some Minecart tracks.

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I did get pretty far off to the right, though.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Oct 11, 2022 10:47 pm

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I wanted to go have a look at the ocean, see what that's like in this kind of world seed, but I'm stymied by dungeon in the way. So let's do something else. Let's go up.

Even a little above the surface, the gravity is reduced like I'm halfway to outer space already. I can't get anywhere jumping, even with low gravity...

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But I can build some minecart tracks upward, and lo and behold, I run into a cloud.

Er, what would be a cloud in a normal seed. This cloud is made of meat. It's all Flesh Blocks.

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Most clouds in Terraria have a little room with a chest inside, and there's loot in the chest that doesn't appear on the surface. Er, I think.

In this case I get a Lucky Horseshoe, an accessory that negates fall damage. Frequency of my character deaths plummeted as soon as I found a modicum of protection against lava, and since then, the damage spike from falling long distances has been the only particularly dangerous thing left. Monsters can't crank out so much damage I can't run away, drink a potion, or teleport home... not yet, at least.

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Harpies don't hit particularly hard -- or at least, don't do a lot of damage given that three of my accessories give an armor boost. But there are a whole god damned lot of them. Kill one, and by the time you can kill another, a fresh one has spawned and flown onscreen.

I collect some feathers, but they don't do me much good yet, so no reason to risk my life doing it. Hey, hmmm... I did just get an accessory to null falling damage...

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wheeeeeeeeeeeee

Once I hit the ground, I just start running, off to the left. I can't dig a tunnel this way without running into a ton of Crimsand blocking my path, but I can leap and bound across the surface until the swarms of monsters and thorny weeds deplete all my HP!

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Eventually I run into the distinctive shallow pools that indicate I'm in what would be the Jungle biome, if it weren't all bloody and meaty all over. And before long, I run into... Huh. Normally this ziggurat is buried half a mile below ground. Here it sticks out of the surface. Door's locked, though, and won't open until I'm just about done with normal game progression.

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So these are enemies from that point in the game. Lihzahrds normally appear inside, but moving the temple above ground moved the front door from about where I'm standing to the end of the corridor. Apparently I count as standing inside the temple for monster spawns, and that means Lihzahrds.

Obviously I do chip damage at best and they hit like a goddamn truck. I can keep them far enough away that they can't hit me by swinging my flail around myself without ever letting go. At least, until the Lihzahrds drop to all fours and pounce. Once two of them do that I figure there's nothing they could possibly drop that would be worth the fight and hightail it out of there.

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I keep on runnin' until I find some kid sleeping on the beach. Yep, this is the Ocean biome, on the far left side of the map. Made it!

I teleport home.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Oct 11, 2022 11:01 pm

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I found a Compass... uh, somewhere. I think a Salamander might have dropped it? Maybe a Mimic? I can fight Mimics now.

The Compass combines with the Depth Meter and a Gold Watch to make a full-fledged GPS. Like the other accessories that give information, I don't have to equip it to get the readout.

But the Gold Watch illustrates another baffling design decision in Terraria's crafting system. A table, by itself, is not a crafting station. A table with a glass bottle on top lets you make potions. A table with a chair beside it lets you make pocket watches, and only pocket watches. If you don't know how to navigate the Guide's menu for Crafting, nothing else in the game hints that those two workstations exist. Eventually I'll need an upgraded Furnace and Anvil, but the potion station and watch station are the only stations that demand you augment, instead of replace, an existing piece of furniture. It's asinine.

Grandfather clocks, for the record, are made at a Sawmill.

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Once you get a dozen or so people living in your world, a Party Girl moves in. Apparently NPCs can decide to throw parties by themselves.

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I had to scorch this image a bit to make them at all visible, but having a party going on means balloons rise up in the background. Running across the bloody, gory, balloon-festooned expanse of the surface is surreal.

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I remembered something about the Dungeon.

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You can go in, and you can go down the first corridor, but the instant-kill spookum doesn't appear until you go beneath the surface median. So let's a) see if I remember that right and the first part of the dungeon is safe and b) see if I can find anything good in the first hallway. I like the hanging lanterns that usually decorate the Dungeon, and they come hooked up to Lightswitches that are worth taking, too.

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Answer is a) yes, and b) no. But that means I can break through the walls above the surface and keep my minecart track going.

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Before I find the ocean, I find another Crimson biome. I start digging downward to see how far I have to go to get below it like I did before.

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Huh. Don't normally see ruined cabins in places like this... surrounded on three sides by the Dungeon, and with the Evil biome filling in the empty space. Not that there was anything particularly good inside.

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Well... crap.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Oct 11, 2022 11:13 pm

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Heading back home, I dump all the Silt Blocks I've found into the Extractinator, and this pops out.

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There's an equipment slot for Pets and a separate one for Light Pets. I put the Crimson Heart away on account of how useless it is really, and let my new pet Dinosaur follow me around.

Yeah, it's in the last two screenshots in the last post. I put the images up out of order to stay on-topic.

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If the dinosaur gets stuck, it catches a ride on a tiny pterodactyl to catch up. It'd be great if it'd try to bite a zombie or something once in a while, but pets are purely cosmetic and don't actually do anything. But she's perfect the way she is, imo.

Dead-ended again, it's time to go Do A Thing.

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First, get some ammo. Are you tellin' me I can handcraft the delicate clockwork inside a pocket watch but can't melt a lead ingot into Musket Balls? They're only seven copper apiece from the Arms Dealer, but still, sheesh.

When I go to buy ammo it turns out the Arms Dealer is also selling the Minishark, better than the Undertaker... I think. So I buy a Minishark to take with instead.

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Put some platforms up, hang some ropes in case I need more vertical mobility, hang a couple of Heart Lanterns to boost my health regen...

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Then throw Dynamite into the last couple of chasms that still have a Crimson Heart in them.

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Not all of the bosses in the game are $bodyparts of Cthulhu. But the Eye always appears, and the Brain is what spawns in Crimson biomes. If I had worldgenned a Corruption biome, it would have made me fight the Eater of Worlds, a giant burrowing worm-monster, instead.

Which breaks the naming convention but from what I understand the Eater of Worlds is somewhat implied to be the Intestine of Cthulhu.

Anyway.

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The Bee oh Cee is a cross between Vitreous from A Link to the Past and Phantoon from Super Metroid. It teleports around, flinging those little eyeballs at me in a swarm. The eyes each have their own lifebars, and the Brain is invincible.

Eventually I realize that the Minishark is pretty nice, but I need something that can hit more than one flying eye with an attack. So I switch back to the Bat Bat, which has such a slow swing that I can get at least half the eyes attacking me while it's on screen for one swipe.

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Once all the eyes are defeated, the brain opens up along its longitudinal fissure, revealing... uh, a heart... with an eye on it.

God damn does this game like its eye gross-outs.

The Brain starts teleporting and ramming, teleporting after it tackles me or I dodge out of the way to try again from a different angle. So... pretty much exactly Phantoon, at this point.

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Now that I have only one target, it's Minishark time.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Oct 11, 2022 11:21 pm

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"Able to mine Hellstone" because yeah the Underworld is the game's next progression point.

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It can also mine through Crimstone -- no reason not to, since in order to get this I had to break through Crimstone to break the Crimson Hearts to spawn the Brain -- so I finish my big ol' rope shaft up to the surface. It's not lost on me that once I break through a big clump of Crimstone it's almost entirely plain dirt from there to the surface. Three or four sticks of Dynamite would have done the job. Oh well.

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It's not a Blood Moon this time, but much like my first trip to the surface, the monsters are crowded around where I'm trying to break through. So I break open a single-block gap, stick the barrel of the Minishark through, and open fire until they all die.

I put a Trap Door on the gap so I don't have Face Monsters dropping onto my head while I'm trying to climb up the rope.

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Each Crimson Heart broken can spawn a Meteor, which crashes to the ground somewhere on the surface. They don't start falling until the Brain is defeated, though. It's an open world, but progression in Terraria is very carefully gated, and for some reason it's verboten to have Meteorite gear while fighting the Brain.

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Let's finding!

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You are not a meteorite. You're just some guy from a different game.

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There's not enough Red Ice on the surface to count as a Crimson biome, so all I get is regular Snow-biome surface enemies. It's probably the safest place to be above the surface median line.

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I make it to the ocean on the right side, and do not see a meteorite crash site. This time I jump into the ocean and check the bottom, and find a giant tunnel leading down.

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Long story short I find a Trident, a pair of swimming Flippers, and a Sandcastle Bucket.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Oct 11, 2022 11:28 pm

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Aha. Two meteorites have fallen, but I only ever found this one. Perhaps the other one hit a meat cloud.

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Meteorite is its own mini-biome. The only monsters that spawn are Meteor Heads, and hoo boy does it spawn a lot of them. They float slowly, through blocks, and if I let them touch me they do a surprising amount of damage and set me on fire. They're not tough -- I can kill them with a couple pickaxe hits without needing to switch to one of my actual weapons -- but they're a constant distraction from digging.

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How many spawn? By the time I dig up the one meteorite I've collected three banners already. So, at least 150, not as many as 200.

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Meteorite lets me make a Space Gun, a pew pew pew laser pistol that replaces the Minishark. Yeah, already. I can also make a spacesuit that does dick all for actually being in space, but increases magic output damage (since the Space Gun counts as a magic damage source) and if I have all of the pieces equipped, the Space Gun doesn't cost any MP to fire.

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Problem is, in order to equip the entire suit and reap that set bonus, I have to take off my Low-Light Helmet.

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I take the Space Gun with me but stick with Crimson Armor for the damage reduction.

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While digging some more I find a helpful Skeleton merchant, who sells me a Magic Lantern. It's a Light Pet, so it's something I can use alongside my faithful dinosaur.

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The Magic Lantern is ten times more useful than the Crimson Heart, since it floats in front of me instead of trailing my steps. It's still kind of dim, though, and at times when I'm facing a wall to dig into it, the Lamp clips into the wall, blocking all the light coming out of it.

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So... both Crimson and Meteorite gear has been harvested. Gonna wrap the post here for now, before we head down into the Underworld again and see if we can't find the next equipment upgrade.

Until then, please keep in mind that "bug" means "annoy" and "bugger" means something else entirely.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:24 pm

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Dinosaur appears next to me on the character select screen when the game boots. <3

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I can dig through Crimstone now, but it's awfully slow. Dynamite is still used just to expedite things.

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Demon Altars... well, Demon Altars are the Corrupt version. I don't know what these are called. Meat Altars? Eyeball Altars? Eyeballtars?

Anyway. Trying to break these before you're supposed to deals a bunch of HP damage in backlash. I thought that Dynamiting the ground beneath them counted as an attempt to break them, so when I saw I'd thrown a stick of Dynamite next to an Eyeballtar I hadn't noticed I was braced to quaff a healing potion real quick. But it didn't do anything. Whew.

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According to the map, the other side of this Crimsand wall is the ocean. I made it all the way to the edge! This rail line is done!

With exactly five rails to spare.

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On the way back, I meet a skellington merchant who sells me a bread that makes an ActRaiser reference. We're not too far from the Crimson, there's probably a Bloodpool around here somewhere...

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I try to build another little apartment, but it's too close to the surface.

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Once it's built and the residents move in, I set up the Forest Pylon at base and the Cavern Pylon in the new apartment. Voip! I can teleport between the two, saving myself a long rope climb. The Cavern apartment is set up right beneath the newly-completed westbound rail line.

(West is to the right, because the sun rises -- in worlds where the sun rises -- on the left side of the screen and sets on the right. A minor gag is that Goblin Armies approach from the "east" on the left and "west" on the right, once the devs realized that the ingame celestial bodies disagreed with the directions the goblins come from, it became canon that goblins are just bad with directions.)

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Needless to say, that unconscious guy I found on the surface last time died almost immediately to the roving Face Monsters and Crimerae about. While I was building the Cavern apartments, I got a notification that a replacement for him, bearing the least creative name possible, has moved in. The Angler kid I found on the oceanside also moved into one of the newly-vacated homes at base.

And...

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I'm sorry the W H O M

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A cool slime has moved in. I'd expect at least a pair of shades or something -- the party had is only there because the Party Girl is doing that thing she does. Merchant's also wearing one, see?

I get a prompt to "pet" the thing, which I assume means I need to go wash my hands and earns me an achievement.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:40 pm

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According to the Bestiary this is an absurdly rare drop, probably to keep you from getting a dozen of the things considering all the slimes you have to kill over the course of a game. I haven't messed around with it, but it doesn't seem very good? Like managing to get the Goblin summon emblem for Rydia as you play through Final Fantasy IV.

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Anyway. As promised, it's off to hell to mine up some of that Hellstone. It takes a bit of finesse, since each block of Hellstone that's broken free leaves behind a glob of lava. I'm greatful for my Magma Charm, or whichever accessory I combined that into.

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There are locked chests here and there. Spoiler: the key is not in the Underworld at all, so I'll have to come back once I get it.

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I run into a couple of hell-chest Mimics, too.

Mimics are normally lategame monsters with drops to match, but DDU has put them around much earlier (obviously) and if they have any drops other than Cloud in a Bottle or Shoe Spikes, I haven't seen it.

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As you might expect from a stone that's mined out of a magma flow, the piddly heat from a mundane furnace isn't enough to melt it into a usable ingot. While in the Underworld it's vital to nab at least one of the Hellforges sitting around.

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I saw the top of the Jungle biome when I was on the surface, or the Crimson version of the Jungle anyway. From here I can see the bottom, without any Crimson around. That little green glowing ball is a mass of Jungle Spores, another crafting item. Hellstone makes good weapons and armor that boosts melee, and jungle detritus -- Spores, hornet Stingers, and so on -- make a summoner whip and magic-boosting armor and so on.

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This is the furthest, bottom-left corner of the map. You can tell because I'm not at the center of the screen anymore, standing closer to the alert popup. Time to go home.

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The first thing to do with a new crafting material is make a Pickaxe, to make digging things faster and easier. After that I make a Volcano sword, and a set of Molten armor. Wearing the full set makes a neat flame-trail effect, but doesn't actually provide light... so as before, I'll stick with my old helmet on top of the new armor and pants.

I got an Obsidian Rose from... a Lava Slime, maybe? that reduces lava damage. I can combine it with my Magma Skull to provide the eight seconds' protection from lava and reduced damage once that wears out, then combine that with Water Walking Boots to make the Lava Waders that do all that and let me walk on water. Or honey. Or lava! Walking on lava doesn't even trigger the eight-second countdown before I start taking (reduced) damage!

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Emboldened against molten rocks, I manage to dig all the way to the bottom of the screen. It seems like there's "blocks" offscreen, since I dropped a stick of Dynamite down there and then the lava started flowing offscreen entirely. Then it filled back up again. I dunno.

With this little area hollowed out and my new lava resistance I gather enough ore to make like 300 Hellstone ingots. I doubt I will ever need that many for anything. Pretty well set, I think.

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I'm probably going to stop posting the map at the end of updates, because it's now so big that it can't be easy to pick out landmarks for where I've been and what I've done. As you might be able to tell if you squint (or open the image in a new browser tab by itself), much of the Underworld is now mapped from my Hellstone-gathering excursions.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Thu Oct 13, 2022 10:50 pm

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I dig out the little bluff above the trapdoor I put on the surface, and build a very long rope to the top of the sky. A sky path is a good thing to build in a vanilla world, but honestly I'm not sure how much I'll use one in DDU, particularly after all the effort I'm putting into my minecart track that's about 20 feet below the median line. Nonetheless, here's a start to it, a way to climb up to altitude.

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I climb to the top of the screen and take a big leap, trying to get some hint of where the next meat cloud might be. As soon as I leave the top of the screen, I die. That's... new? Don't remember that ever happening before.

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I'm digging up the minecart tracks that were generated with the world when ugh fine gawwwd if I kill you this time will you leave me alone

(the answer is no, King Slime can basically spawn whenever it wants)

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I'm much stronger and better equipped than the first time King Slime spawned on top of me and digested me before I could run away. Rewards include a new slime pet. Hooray?

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While I was out picking up tracks I also remembered to nab some clay so I can patch this little hole in the wall.

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"Ugh, monsters fly in from nowhere and start harassing me anytime I'm trying to do any sort of precision work, it's annoying as hell, it'd be nice if some of these pets I've found would attack enemies for me."
"Wait a minute, isn't 'a pet that attacks enemies for you' basically summon magic"

and then I started carrying the Imp Staff I made from some of that Hellstone with me, and the imp that it summons functions as a pet that attacks enemies for me. That saves me a bit of a headache!

Particularly because the bit I run into when I try to dig out a minecart tunnel toward the left side of the map is a Crimson Desert, and all that Crimsand falls into my way as soon as I collect a block. Getting this far requires me to stand still and swing my pickaxe for minutes at a time. It's dull and cramps the finger that holds down the trigger button to use tools, but at least I don't get constantly interrupted by Crimera and Antlion Chargers.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Thu Oct 13, 2022 11:25 pm

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There are three "major" bosses in the first act of the game. Eye of Cthulhu is one. Either the Brain of Cthulhu or the Eater of Worlds is the second, depending on which one you get in world gen. The third is this old guy.

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Rather, it's the giant flying skeleton that messily erupts from that old guy when you agree to lift his curse. This is Skeletron. It's hard to see his arms in this shot, but swiping them around is the main way he attacks.

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With his arms defeated -- they have their own HP totals -- Skeletron is reduced to a floating skull that tries to ram me. Sometimes he spins around before charging, which does more damage but drops his defense to zero while he does it. I just smack him with a Flamarang a bunch until he dies.

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Either the game's difficulty has been significantly rebalanced since the last time I played, or having the proper defense-boosting prefixes on all the Accessories equipped makes a big difference. I expected both the Brain of Cthulhu and Skeletron to be much more difficult than they turned out to be. I facetanked both without a hitch.

The possible drops for Skeletron is either a decent grappling hook upgrade, a mask that looks like a skull, or a sofa referencing what I'm assuming is a streamer I've never heard of and care nothing about. I get the sofa. Bleh.

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This is because the actual reward for beating Skeletron is being able to enter the Dungeon without getting instantly gibbed by an unstoppable angry ghost skull. Inside the dungeon are various chests, all of them locked, but the keys to open them are drops from the skellingtons nearby instead of halfway across the world. So I collect a couple Muramasas, a Handgun, a Dark Lance, a couple Cobalt Shields that null knockback from enemies, and lots of potions.

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I also find what I'm pretty sure is the last NPC I can recruit for a while. The Mechanic sells switches, wires, various tech items, and the tools needed to connect all of those things together. A lot of items can be manipulated by wiring them to some kind of trigger -- doors can open, lights can flick on and off, some statues will spawn a living example of whatever they're a statue of. I'm sure if I revisit the location of those Dead Man's Chests that killed me half a dozen times I'll find the whole area thick with wire connecting the chest to all the Explosives, Dart Traps, and Actuated Blocks to drop boulders.

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Also in the dungeon are very special chests that cannot be opened without even special-er keys than the enemies here drop. Go figure.

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This is the best screenshot I got of a) a few of the dungeon traps while they're not killing me, such as that spiked ball on a chain that swings around and the spikes embedded all over the damn place; b) the various skellingtons while they're not killing me, both the Angry Bones that ram for collision damage and the Dark Casters that teleport around and throw skulls at me; c) some of the dungeon furniture I could loot if I felt like it and had the inventory space; and d) the Shadow Key I found in one of the locked chests.

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One of the skellingtons drops an accessory that prevents "Curse" status. Getting Cursed is something inflicted by Cursed Skulls that float around through the dungeon, doubtless an oblique reference to Bubbles in the Legend of Zelda games. It prevents you from using any items for a few seconds, "items" including weapons, potions, and the Magic Mirror. So it sucks and carrying immunity from it on further quests into the dungeon is gonna be a major boon.

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For now I teleport home. Another enemy dropped a Tally Counter, giving me a constant update on how many of a given monster I've defeated. Which... isn't very useful, unless I'm really interested in knowing how long it'll be before the next banner drop? It combines with the Radar that tells me how many monsters are nearby and the Lifeform Analyzer that tells me when rare critters are nearby. It's a lot of not terribly useful information all in one inventory slot!

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Messing around with the dungeon loot I combine the Handgun and some Hellstone into a pretty unimpressive Phoenix Blaster. The Water Bolt spell I found used to be a kind of ricocheting hitscan thing, where the whole beam as you see it appears at once. It's been retooled into a slower, bouncier projectile that's probably more useful than it used to be.

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Each random-drop key in the Dungeon unlocks exactly one chest and breaks. The one Shadow Key can be used to open every Shadow Chest in the Underworld. Well, whatever. I'll take it. I get not one but two new pet items -- one for an imp and one for my own Shadow Chest Mimic -- a new fiery bow, a summoner's whip, and the Sunfury flail. It works like the Mace I had before, only it does a ton more damage and sets enemies on fire. Volcano was damned useful while I had it, but Sunfury has even higher attack power and can hit multiple times against enemies that are close to me while I wind it up.

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I nip upward into the Jungle for whatever Jungle Spores I can find, and one of the Hornets there drops a Bezoar. Just like the enemies in the Dungeon drop the accessory that lets me ignore the status ailment they use, stuff in the Jungle like to inflict poison with their stings and spikes and bites and so on.

It's another thing that has me wondering about difficulty rebalancing, either in the update or specific to the DDU world, or if I've just gotten maddeningly lucky this time. I remember the Nazar and Bezoar being infuriatingly difficult to get to drop, and I've already found a Slime Staff and a Fossilized Mosquito.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Thu Oct 13, 2022 11:38 pm

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Ah well. Back to work... hey, what's an "Old Shaking Chest"?

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It hops around like a Mimic and seems like it needs another key to open. I still have a few left over from the dungeon, or maybe the Shadow Key does it, who cares

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All that's inside is another tame slime.

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In the middle of the Crimsoned Desert is a huge area of plain ol' regular Crimson. I need a few more Flesh Samples, it turns out, so as I pass through I bust open a few more Crimson Hearts and kill three more instances of the Brain of Cthulhu. That oughta do it.

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Breaking a bunch more Crimson Hearts means more meteorites have dropped. In this case I get the hint to look for a meteorite nearby when the Meteor Heads start appearing instead of Crimerae and Spore Bats.

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Nothing interesting happens at the meteor site, but on the way back a Nymph drops a Metal Detector. That combines with the DPS Meter and a Stopwatch into a single accessory that does the things that all of those devices do. Man, what if there was a way to combine the Goblin Tech, the GEK 3000, and the GPS into one inventory-slot device?

(There is, of course, but I'm missing an ingredient -- one themed around fishing. Guess I have to start doing that now.)

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Oh, right. Digging to the left had me go through ice and snow, then run into an obstacle with the then-impenetrable Dungeon. In this direction I got through the desert, and now that I'm near the jungle I've got the Lihzahrd temple in the way. There's seriously no getting through this one until the end of the game, so I can't hack my way through it.

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Gotta go around it. Thankfully it's only like 500 feet deep underground, not the like 1800 feet deep that the Dungeon takes up. The dungeon is big. I can already see the end goal of the Lihzahrd temple from here, but it'll be a very long time before I can get to the same side of the wall it's on.

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Finally, the thorny growth and mossy vines that indicate I'm finally in the Jungle biome.

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I already have a small collection of Jungle Spores, but I need more. I have some Stingers that drop from the wild, aggressive Hornets all over the place. What I really need are some Vines, which are supposed to be common drops but I haven't seen any yet (and the forest vines that I collected into Vine Ropes and Vine Rope Coils much earlier don't count).

So next time: the Jungle.

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

Postby beatbandito » Fri Oct 14, 2022 6:33 am

Can confirm on a default seed you just bump your head on an invisible ceiling if you try to jump into space. I also had a much easier time with Skeletron and the next boss than I remembered, leading me into a false sense of preparedness for what was just post-game the last time I played, but seemingly where the main game starts now.

nosimpleway wrote:Image

I'm honestly starting to think there's slightly different drop tables in crimson and corrupt worlds. I'm pretty sure you have every ingredient I'm missing (and don't have a number of ones I do) for two end-game accessories.
nosimpleway wrote:Image

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I did check the wiki, and remix seeds don't have any bonuses to drop RNG. However NPC Happiness is stagnan. They'll still complain, but it wont impact their prices or pylon sales. They're designed to only recognize surface biomes as anything other than underground/caverns/hell, so it would be pretty impossible to manage until endgame.
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Re: What was planted in faith? Let's not Dig Up in Terraria!

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Oct 15, 2022 3:20 am

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God, I hate video game fishing.

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On my way to this little pool I find another cross-game reference, this one another Don't Starve item. Ghost is visible in the next few screens as I tried it out.

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Sling the hook into the water and wait. When the bobber dips into the water, push the button. You can try as many times as you have bait.

Obviously you'll want to build some kind of shelter before you start fishing, since nothing ever stops monsters spawning.

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It takes nearly half of the bait I'd collected to catch the Dynamite Fish. Of course, I manage to pull up an old shoe and a can of Joja Cola (yeah, another cross-game reference) before I do, because why not add a bunch of actually-useless junk to the mostly-useless fish I'm getting in search of the one stupid thing I need? My reward is a couple of silver coins, and two more pieces of "Journeyman Bait". Yes, you can see the joke coming from miles away.

I spend the rest of my bait on the next quest to catch an ocean fish without ever getting it. After all the trouble it took to build a shelter, and having to sit and listen to Face Monsters snarl at me for what seemed like hours, I never caught the damned thing. For all I know I'm getting Crimson spawns here instead of Ocean spawns, and Ocean spawns just aren't available in this world because everything is Evil everywhere.

God, I hate video game fishing.

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Cutting grass or breaking blocks sometimes spawns a worm or grasshopper or something. You can catch the critter using a Bug Net, and that's your bait. You can't chop up anything into little bits and make your own bait, you've got to hunt for it! About as dumb as being utterly unable to make lead shot, imo

I feel like all the overgrowth in the Jungle spawns bugs more often than the vines and flowers in the Forest biome, and I was headed over there anyway, so I have a look around. I finally get a few Vines to drop from the Man-Eater plants there, and head back home to craft a Blade of Grass.

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A Blade of Grass from the Jungle. A Volcano from the Underworld. A Muramasa from the Dungeon. And a Blood Butcherer from the Crimson. (You can substitute a Light's Bane made from Demonite, if you happen to have that handy instead of Crimtane.)

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The result, combined at an Eyeballtar instead of a regular crafting station, is the Night's Edge. It'll be the best sword available until I fight the next boss, at least. It has much less attack power than the Sunfury flail, but it swings in a near-360-degree arc around me and sends out a big crescent beam a short distance away. It also autoswings as long as I hold down the button, neatly mimicking the repeated automatic hits from the flail windup that made them such a good choice in the first place.

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While I'm here, a few Spores, some Bones, and Flesh Samples make a Void Vault or Void Bag. The Vault is a station that acts like a chest, doubling the amount of inventory slots to hold items in. The Bag lets you access the Vault from anywhere. So... more or less I just doubled the number of things I can carry. A little experimentation shows that the informational items like the GEK 3000 or GPS, or the various keys I've been picking up, can work just fine from inside the Void Bag. I don't need an active inventory slot for those anymore.

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I talk to the Zoologist for the first time since she showed up. Turns out she has mounts for sale.

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WHHHHHAAAAAAAAT

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It was expensive, and a bargain at twice the price. It can only dig straight forward, and only on mine tracks, but it digs four blocks high and automatically places the next piece of track for itself to keep going.

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End result: the Minecart track that went from the center of the map to the left edge, under the Lihzahrd temple is now complete. That probably would have taken a few more days of real time if I hadn't found the Mole Cart.

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

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Oct 15, 2022 3:42 am

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It's not as convenient to the minecart tracks as the Cavern apartments, but I put together some Jungle apartments up against the Lihzahrd temple. I include a fishing dock for myself, under the assumption that I'll be asked to catch Jungle-specific fish sooner or later.

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Did I get everything out of the Dungeon the first time? I doubt it, I think I just teleported out once my inventory was full. I head back in, and find some chests in precarious positions.

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I also find the Dungeon is split into approximate thirds, so I really didn't get too far at all. Another trap I'd not seen before is a collapsing floor, where the bricks disintegrate out from under the player character as they move around. Turns out you have to find some that collapse into a path that leads deeper in. At least, that's the idea. If I ever can't find them, I think beating Skeletron means I can just bust up the bricks that make up the dungeon walls with a Pickaxe now.

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I'm used to the Dungeon having more branching paths, but being overall shallower. This one doesn't fork as much as I'm used to seeing, but goes about three-quarters of the way down the map.

From the map here and the one above showing the eastern ocean, it's easy to see that the Crimson doesn't just cover the surface of the world, it also covers the entire edges, too. And something I don't think I've mentioned yet: the Crimson can spread. The red grass and vines of the Crimson grow over the grass of other biomes, and can turn regular stone into Crimstone, sand into Crimsand, ice into Red Ice. I don't think there's Crimson-specific mud, but there's a big chunk of the Jungle that's already started growing Crimson plants instead of normal ones.

However, the Crimson can't spread through the Dungeon. So this weirdly long-and-tall layout walls off most of the right side of the map, protecting the biomes in the middle of the map from its spread. You can see on the bottom of this image that I've already dug a trench between where the Crimson naturally ended and the greenery of the underground Forest biome, and that goes all the way to the Underworld. That should keep this side of the map clean.

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While in the Dungeon I found a Bewitching Table. Clicking on it gives me a temporary status that allows me to use an extra passive Summon spell. Now I've just got to remember to actually click on the damn thing before I head out. Having an Imp to watch my back while I dig or futz around in chests has been super helpful, no doubt two would be even more so.

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All right. One more thing I wanna try before I wrap. Head up to the surface, climb the tallest Living Tree I can find, drink a Gravitation potion...

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uwaaaaaaaa

The gravity-flip is extremely disorienting, because it's not the character that flips while the ground stays in the same place. The entire map flips over and you still fall toward the bottom of the screen, which is now the direction of outer space. I've turned Don't Dig Up into Don't Fall Down

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You can flip gravity back over, as long as the potion is in effect. It takes some practice to overcome the weird low-gravity effect. The death plane where I instantly gib by "ascension" is around 1200 feet, and after a free-fall upward it takes about 100 feet for me to reach the zenith of my arc and start falling toward the ground when gravity is reversed back to where it should be. I end up flying across the sky in something of a sine-wave pattern, flipping gravity so I fall upward when I get close to the Crimson-blighted surface, then flipping it back and falling downward when I get about 800 feet up so I don't fall into the sky and die. I feel like I should be infesting the clock tower in a Castlevania game, flying around like this, but it works: eventually I land on the underside of another meat cloud.

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The meat cloud doesn't have anything on it but a pool of water, but the theory's sound. Of we go agaaaaain...

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A Lucky Horseshoe in this chest, a Starfury sword in another, a Celestial Magnet, and eventually, a Shiny Red Balloon.

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I need to double-check how many meat clouds a DDU world can have but I found seven of them, which seems like about the right density to guess I might have found them all. Now I, uh... I think I might not ever need to visit the surface again? Better to clear it out with a handful of Gravitation potions than trying to build a minecart track back and forth, whew.

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