Part 30: Goblins!

#28 - Goblins!



Hello everyone. Welcome back to Rivershire. As I recall, last time ended on something of a cliffhanger, right?



Ah, right. Goblins.



This arena remains one of the most useful things I've built in the LP. I have a feeling we're going to actually need to use it this time. Like everything else, goblins got an upgrade with hard mode.



The first guys are just as strong as the last ones we fought.



They've brought stronger friends, though. This fellow here is a miniboss and you know what that means...



These guys summon Shadowflame Apparitions to harass us. These things don't despawn, and the summoner will repeatedly summon more.



The summoner is also athletic as fuck.



They certainly make the goblin invasions more tricky than the normal mode counterparts.



Some goblins still try to punch way above their weight class, though. Not pictured: this guy turning into a red spray 1 frame later.



The shadowflame apparitions are the biggest danger in the invasion. To succeed, you need to get them under control and quickly. They take off 35-50 damage each time they hit you, and they move fast.



It's about this point when I realize how dangerous they are. Up until now, I'd been chasing the summoner to try and cut the apparitions off at the source.



I'm thankful that we managed to scrape enough Palladium together for the armor set. That regen bonus is saving our lives here.



She doesn't even have the common courtesy to drop anything for our troubles.



Of course there would be more.



The second one falls and...







I think this invasion has ceased to be a problem. This thing barely uses any mana and it melts faces.





According to the wiki, the Shadowflame Hex Doll has a 1-in-6 (16.7%) chance to drop from the summoner. So it wouldn't be too difficult to farm one up if you really wanted one. (You want one. Trust me.)



The last enemy in the invasion, a third summoner, falls and this pops out.



It's also really good.



Sam is like a Belmont now. The knives have an arc to their throw and deal solid damage for early hard mode. They also throw super fast, which really helps.



As such. Each knife that's hitting is averaging 39 damage, and you see just how fast we can throw them out. Most importantly: these knives are absolutely free to throw. There are similar weapons which cost mana to use. So we can really pile damage on something if we were so inclined. These knives will stay with us for a good while to come.

The goblin summoners can also drop a third weapon, a bow that causes shadowflame damage. It's called, appropriately enough, the Shadowflame Bow. The Shadowflame debuff causes whatever you afflict with it to lose 15 HP per second, and be unable to regenerate health. There are only five enemies in the game immune to Shadowflame, and we've seen four of them.

Pixies, Wraiths, Mimics, Illuminant Bats, and Wyverns



Hello boys, I'm back!







Sorry, I kind of blacked out there for a while. My hands are now covered in spider ichor, and I have a bunch of fangs. So let's make a turret staff.



Back down in the underground hallow, we find another suspicious chest. Sometimes mimics don't do a very good job of disguising themselves, like in this case here. Regular chests always sit flush with the edge of the blocks they're resting on. Also, y'know, the whole "this chest wasn't here before on top of a pile of obsidian we created" angle.



Regular mimics are a whole lot less terrifying than their biome-themed cousins.



They do have pretty good drops, though. So it is worth your time to search a few out.



This would be an amazing drop to get, had we not gotten a free version from the goblins.



That's not to say it's a bad weapon. Our version is just superior because it doesn't cost mana to use.

While biome themed mimics have their own drops, regular mimics all share drops.

Dual Hook - (Another multi-hook. This one can only have one end at a time attached, but can fire the second while you're still grappled.)
Titan Glove - (Boosts your knockback by 70%. Can be combined with the Feral Claws from the jungle. Really handy for melee focused builds.)
Philosopher's Stone - (Makes potion sickness only last 45 seconds instead of 1 minute. Can be combined with a band of regeneration.)
Cross Necklace - (Doubles mercy invincibility after being hit. Goes from 2/3 second to 1 1/3 seconds.)
Star Cloak - (Causes stars to fall nearby when you're damaged. Can be combined with the cross necklace OR the honey comb accessory from the queen bee.)



A new friend pops by to say hello while we're down here kicking ass.



The Rune Wizard is like the hard mode version of Tim, the fellow that drops a wizard hat in normal mode. He's also one of the more dangerous enemies to find in early hard mode, as he deals 200 contact damage.



Not somebody you want to fuck with. On death, however, he drops the Rune Wizard vanity set. We've actually seen it before, way back at the start of the LP. In fact, it was the very first image in the LP!



We now have this set for our own use.



Sam is pretty hard to screenshot while wearing this. When you wear the robe and wizard hat together, your character gets a strange outline that looks like bad JPG artifacting, and they leave a trail of rune fire where they walk.



Gotta admit, having a rad set of vanity armor goes a long way to making you feel like a badass. I think we'll be wearing this for a while yet. Gotta give the tee and jeans some time to rest, y'know?



While we're shooting something with shadow tentacles, an armored skeleton takes a lava walk to get to us. Normally this wouldn't be worth mentioning but...



This shot may look familiar to those of you who read the thread between updates. I know there's a lot going on here, but look behind the healing heart in the middle.



We just won the goddamned Terrarian lottery. Allow me to explain...

This is one of five biome keys. Each key has a corresponding chest in the dungeon, but getting them is no small feat. They drop completely at random from any enemy in the corresponding biome at a 1-in-2500 (0.04%) chance. There are also keys for the Corruption, the Crimson, the Jungle, and the Snow biome.

Until this thing dropped, I was fully prepared to never show the biome chests off, because of how stupidly low the drop rate on the keys is. You can't cheat the drop rate, either. Meteor heads and statue spawned monsters cannot drop a key.



While the items in the biome chests are among the most powerful in the game, we can't open them yet. The keys are cursed by an extremely powerful boss in the jungle. This boss's summoning item won't even start spawning until we've killed the first three hard mode bosses. So even if we could go face it, we're nowhere near prepared to do so.

So we have quite a long time to go before we can open the hallowed chest in the dungeon. And, yes, before you ask... all five biome chests are in Rivershire's dungeon. I made sure of that before I even started the LP.



To end this update, we're down in Hell. There's one thing down here that's new with hard mode.



This is a "tortured soul" and he looks like a scraggly old man. If we take that purification powder we've been toting around, and throw it directly into his face like amnesia dust...



A new NPC named Chester pops out. This is the tax collector.



Through the tax collector, we can charge our NPCs rent. Each NPC that owns a house, including the tax collector himself, will get us 50 copper coins per minute. He holds onto the money until we collect it, up to a maximum of 10 gold coins.

Anyway, I think that's a good place to stop.

NEXT TIME: New houses, new NPCs, even new weapons! We've got it all!