Hey, a beehive.
Honey is surprisingly complicated. You may have seen in the description for my water-walking accessories that I can tread on honey, too. With that in mind it may not surprise you that honey is the third fluid that appears, after water and lava. Honey is good for keeping wounds moist and adequately antiseptic, which translates in-game to extra health regeneration while you're standing in the stuff. It's also far stickier and more viscous than water, so movement while submerged slows to a crawl. That might potentially be a problem since it's also possible to drown in the stuff.
Honey can be harvested into glass bottles by standing in, on, or adequately near it. Chugging honey in a bottle also gives better health regen for a few minutes. Oddly, jarred honey isn't used to make any sorts of potions.
I've seen that some people set up honey pools in the arena they build to fight bosses later on -- I'm not to that point yet -- but I'm unconvinced that the benefits of health regeneration would outweigh the movement penalty keeping you from dodging anything.
It's also possible to fish in Honey, when sent by the Angler to do so, and catch a Bumblebee Tuna.
Hive blocks, when broken, turn into a blob of honey and often release a couple of bees. While Hornets are giant monstrous versions that are bigger than the player character and fire stingers with pinpoint accuracy, bees are just plain tiny insects that buzz around and sting on contact. They still have full knockback of any bigger monster, though, which combines with the slow-movement of the honey and the fact that the bees spawn from a block you've broken right beside where you're standing to make hollowing out hives annoying to do.
The first two hives I found had The Larva submerged in honey, and I broke it without realizing. So the image of the larva is from the third hive, but the Queen Bee fight that you spawn by breaking it is still in the first hive. That's just how it is doing semiblind Let's Plays.
Queen Bee charges back and forth, and fires stingers and smaller bees from her abdomen. She's intended to be fought alongside the other early-game bosses, though, and at this point I can chump the Brain of Cthulhu without breaking a sweat, so Queen Bee likewise falls without doing anything of note.
She drops Beeswax and bee-themed gear. I think I have a wand that lets me build my own hives from Hive Blocks, a Bee Gun (not, surprisingly, a Bee Bee Gun), a sword with bees in its mouth so that when I swing the sword it shoots bees, and a pair of stripey bee pants.
Defeating Queen Bee makes a Lihzahrd Witch Doctor join up in my base. Most of those things he sells are fountains that spray various colors of decorative water. There's also a Cauldron, but I don't know if it counts as a way to make either food or potions, and an Enchanting Table to put enhancements on weapons that I haven't messed with yet.
Did I mention that the Old Man from in front of the Dungeon has, with his curse lifted, now moved in and set up shop to sell clothes? He did, despite Skeletron quite explicitly erupting from his body when I fought it. NPCs are just infinitely replaceable if any of them die anyway, so maybe it's not the same guy. Doesn't really matter.
Back to exploring, I find a ruined jungle hut with a bizarre trap: a King statue, wired to a pressure plate in the floor. A monster stepped on the plate, and when activated, a King Statue summons a random male NPC to its location. The NPC then stepped on the pressure plate as they thoughtlessly wander around, summoning another NPC, who then steps on the plate...
The Painter and Dye Trader were eaten by Crimera while on this side of the map. In order to have an NPC go home, neither the NPC or their home can be onscreen. I have to warp out, then warp to my Jungle pylon to get the survivors pictured to clear out of the area and not die horribly. The Painter and Dye Trader eventually move back in, presumably new people with new names, that are inexplicably identical to the ones who just perished. Like I said, it doesn't really matter much.
But that reminds me of something. The first beehive is directly in the path of where I want to dig a shaft down the left side of the map. I don't want to drain the Honey off into a reservoir, as there's water and lava nearby that crystalize Honey into solid blocks. It's time for a more difficult solution: pump the stuff
upward.
The Mechanic sells Wire, Wrenches to place it, a Wire Cutter to remove it, and various measuring tools to make placing and removing the wires easier. Those things all combine into The Grand Design, a single tool that lets you do more or less anything wire- and mechanism-related. Like the informational accessories, The Grand Design is active even when not equipped, and the measurement screen overlay makes it pretty hard to do anything
else, so it's not something you want to just carry around.
Pictured here: the leftover wiring from a lava trap. Remember I mentioned earlier that some traps are a pressure plate that triggers a column of blocks to vanish, dumping lava directly onto the area where the plate is? This wire connects the pressure plate to the column of blocks that disappear. The red line is plain wire, and the X-shaped bits over the top are called Actuators. When Actuated, a block turns into a background element and doesn't interact with foreground objects, such as, say, holding lava up anymore.
Hop down to the bottom of the Honey pool, put down an Intake Pump, and wire it straight up.
Put an Outlet Pump in a little building I've put together, wire it to the Inlet Pump, and add a Switch to turn it all on. The wire acts like a pipe in this case, sucking the Honey into the Inlet and spitting it out of the Outlet.
End result: honey silo. I haven't decided whether I really
need anything like this, but if I need a jar (or a bucket) of honey anytime in the future, it won't matter what I do to the other hives.
I now have a rope from the top of the map to the bottom in three places: one on the far left of the map, one on the far right, and one in the middle near my base. I have to different minecart lines stretching the entire map from left to right, one near the surface median (so like 200 feet under the actual Surface, depending on whether I'm under a hill or valley) and one at about 400 feet below.
Why
bother? Like I said before, the Crimson can spread into blocks adjacent to Crimstone or dirt or mud with Crimson grass growing on it. It also grows hanging vines and thorny brambles, and those can also spread Crimson if, say, a Crimson vine hangs down low enough to touch regular green Forest grass. By cutting the rope shafts and minecart lines, I've physically separated nearly all of the Crimson from anything it can infect. By putting down minecarts and ropes, I've stopped the vines and brambles from reaching onto healthy grass or moss blocks. The Don't Dig Up seed placed Crimson along the surface and both sides of the map, and if I've done this right, it's now contained there.
I have a Forest Pylon in my base, a Cavern Pylon in some apartments near the surface (which pretty well obsoletes the middle rope shaft), and a Jungle Pylon near the Lihzahrd temple on the left side of the map. Pylons need NPCs living nearby to function, so I don't know if I have enough to set up a Pylon warp point in the Desert, the Snow, maybe a Mushroom biome?
There's not much left to do anymore other than make preparations for the next boss. Beating the Wall of Flesh will spread a new Biome, spawn a bunch of really hard monsters into the world, and allow me to proceed through the next set of equipment upgrades, essentially starting the second act of the game. I might dig another minecart line to make getting around post-Wall easier. Other than that, I need to double-check and see if there's anything significant I'm missing before I crank the difficulty up. It might take a little white before the next update, but that update will probably be fighting the Wall, for sheer lack of anything else to do.
