Part 24: Honey Bee
#22 - Honey Bee
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Rivershire. Today is going to be the first of several roundup updates. These are going to have things that I otherwise couldn't show off for various reasons. So expect these to jump around a bit more than usual.
Today we're starting out at a group of trees out next to the dungeon. They seem innocuous enough, right?
The only way you'd ever find this is with a map viewer or being stupidly lucky. But if you start digging in certain spots in the outer edges of the map...
You can actually find a little tiny tube running through the dirt. Follow this all the way down and...
This is a mini-biome known as an enchanted sword grotto. Each map usually has at least two of these, and usually more. Each grotto will have a sword sticking out of a rock at the bottom, but most of these swords are fake.
Fake swords, when mined, are just destroyed like any other rubble object. Rivershire has four grottoes like this near the surface, and each of them have a fake sword inside. Now because I've said fake sword several times, that means there's a real sword, right?
Yes! Initially I thought that these swords only spawned in these grottoes. But after doing a search with the map viewer, I noticed something strange near our hellevator. You see, enchanted sword objects can spawn underground randomly too.
In fact, the update where we dug the hellevator has one in pretty plain view. I just didn't see it at the time, and I'm willing to bet many of you didn't either. So let's hop over to it!
Here's that part of the hellevator that runs through the granite biome. You may remember that this is in the middle of where I kept running into the water from the same gigantic underground lake. Anyway, take a look just over to Sam's right.
Just on the edge of the darkness you can see a sword sticking out of a stone. But this one looks different from the one we mined up above.
It looks more colorful. This is a real enchanted sword.
I should also take this time to note that each real enchanted sword shrine has a 1-in-10 chance to become an even stronger weapon, the Arkhalis. I've never had one, though it's apparently really good.
Think Crissaegrim or Valmanway and you have the Arkhalis.
Rivershire actually has another real enchanted sword shrine, but I seriously doubt I'll ever find it. My hellevator running next to one of the two underground ones was pure blind luck. According to the map viewer, the other enchanted sword shrine is in one of the most remote corners of Rivershire under a pretty large lava lake.
As for the enchanted sword itself, it's also pretty good. Another one of those "projectile melee weapons." It actually out damages our
Next let's return to the underground jungle. I've been making references to a boss down here for a while now, so let's fight it.
Here's the hive I showed off previously. If we're going to have any peace fighting this boss, then we're going to want to wall it off.
Never feel bad about walling yourself off in the underground jungle. Enemies spawn pretty quickly down here, and giving yourself two minutes of uninterrupted peace can be so helpful.
When you mine out hive blocks, they'll either produce honey or create a little enemy bee to attack you. Liquid honey slows your movement while you're in it, but just touching it gives you 30 seconds of increased life regeneration.
When you're in a gigantic hive, you need to be really careful. Swinging your sword errantly can and will break the larva sitting on the platform to our right. If that thing gets broken, the boss will spawn.
The queen bee isn't really a hard boss, but it placing down platforms never hurt anyone. And, yes, the boss is a huge queen bee. Given we're talking about a giant beehive, that's pretty easy to guess.
We're ready, so let's fight this boss!
Terraria OST - Boss 4
Queen Bee Boss Fight
Hell of an intro, huh? The Queen Bee is the fastest boss in the game!
With 3400 health, she's hardier than most of the bosses in the first half, but she has a pretty easy pattern. She charges back and forth like this a few times...
After charging a few times, she flies around like this and shoots stingers at you.
She'll alternate between shooting stingers and smaller bees at you.
She doesn't really alternate from this pattern. So if you have a weapon with a decent swinging arc and can dodge around, you're pretty much gonna win.
That hellstone bow is pretty damn powerful. A crit of 84 damage is a new high for this LP!
The queen bee always drops a bunch of items. The hive wand is like other wand items. It lets us place down hive blocks for building. I don't believe I've ever used it, but the OP of the Terraria thread in games has a pretty amazing base built entirely from hive blocks. If I'm not mistaken, forums user MrGreenShirt built it.
The Bee Keeper is a sword that summons friendly bees when it hits an enemy. I've never used it beyond swinging it a few times experimentally, but according to the wiki it's pretty good. It's the only weapon in the first half of the game capable of inflicting the Confused debuff.
Bee Wax is used to make the Bee Armor set, which is the game's first set of summoner armor. If we make that and wear it, we can have several of our fire imp buddies out at the same time.
The beenade is a grenade that, like other weapons dropped by the Queen Bee, summons a horde of friendly bees to tear apart enemies.
The jar in the background is bottled honey. It's a healing item that's a little worse than regular healing potions, but a little better than lesser healing potions. It can also be used along with some other materials, to craft an item to summon the queen bee boss at will.
Finally, the Queen Bee can also drop a bow called the Bees Knees (I'll give you three guesses what it does), a magic weapon called the Bee Gun (I've shown this off in several updates), a set of vanity armor that makes you look like a bee, an item that summons a little pet bee to be our friend, and at a really low chance, she can even drop a large bee that we can ride as a mount.
Finally she can also drop a queen bee mask, as well as a trophy to put on our wall.
You can also use bee wax to make a summoning staff. I've never used it, but damage-wise, it's weaker than our fire imp buddy.
We've also found enough spores and stingers to make our first piece of jungle gear. The Thorn Chakram is a personal favorite of mine. I once used it to completely humiliate Skeletron.
It bounces around randomly, but it can also inflict the poisoned debuff. So now we have a venomous boomerang, which is pretty rad not gonna lie.
While reviewing my footage, I also finally found my lost first trip into the dungeon. I apparently didn't head right in, and instead went off to fight queen bee first.
Rivershire's dungeon is pink instead of dark blue. But otherwise, all the stuff I said earlier in the week still stands.
Anyway, back at the base we have some new NPCs. The Clothier I've already explained, and the Stylist we've already met. But there's also the Witch Doctor. He moved in after we defeated the Queen Bee.
The witch doctor's inventory isn't very helpful to us right now.
Imbuing Station - 7 gold coins - (Create potions that imbue our weapons with temporary effects)
Blowgun - 5 gold coins - (The bigger brother to the blowpipe we found long ago. Can also fire darts if we can get any. 27 ranged damage.) --- (You can make 100 poison darts with 1 stinger.)
Pure Water Fountain
Desert Water Fountain
Jungle Water Fountain
Icy Water Fountain
Corrupt Water Fountain
Crimson Water Fountain
Hallowed Water Fountain
Blood Water Fountain
All the fountains cost 4 gold coins and if powered will change the water in and around your base to look like water in the associated biome.
The witch doctor is also another non-human NPC. We won't see the species he belongs to for an incredibly long time to come, and to even mention them is a spoiler, but it's worth pointing out all the same.
This is just showing off combining the cobalt shield and obsidian skull that I mentioned a few updates back.
It's in the dark, but look closely at this bunny if you can. It's yellowish and glinting, which is not something that bunnies normally do.
Gold animals can spawn at a 1-in-150 chance instead of a regular passive critter. If you catch it with a bug net, you can sell it to a merchant for 10 gold coins, or you can put it in a terrarium as a blinged out pet. Gold passive critters can be detected by the lifeform analyzer sold by the traveling merchant.
I didn't take a screenshot of it, but our first day in Rivershire we saw a gold bird. I was kind of mad when it flew away. We'll sell this little fellow for the money.
In a cave under the corruption, we find this unassuming brown chest.
The radar is yet another piece of the information mega accessory.
We can combine the radar, the tally counter (from dungeon enemies), and the lifeform analyzer to create the R.E.K. 3000.
Now the right side of our screen has all sorts of neat information!
That marks the end of our first roundup update. The rest of the updates from here until we tackle the last boss in the first half will be roundups.
NEXT TIME: We go mining for hellstone.