Part 32: Entry of the Gladiators

#30 - Entry of the Gladiators



Hello everyone and welcome back to Rivershire. I don't know when it happened, but the tower defense arena has become my official blood moon arena, too.

Blood moons during hard mode are a very special time when terrifying clowns climb out of the walls to do their dark work. In modern day Terraria, they're mostly harmless, but that wasn't always the case. In the 1.1 patch, clowns were one of the most destructive forces in the game.

Do you see that little smiley face he's holding? That's a bomb, and they used to destroy tiles. I still have vivid memories of entering hard mode for the very first time and narrowly scraping together a win against the Wall of Flesh. No sooner did I return to the surface when a blood moon happened, and the clowns came out to play. I thought nothing of it until the next morning when I surveyed the damage and found that the majority of the lower parts of my base were no longer extant.



I have yet to forgive these bastards for destroying my pretty tower. So I'm only too happy to introduce them to the Onyx Blaster.

As far as drops go, they can inflict confusion, which lets them drop trifold maps. They also drop, as far as I know, the only boomerang item in hard mode... a banana. The wiki says there's other boomerang items, but they're either chakrams or throwing weapons that just happen to return.



Here's a better non-cluttered shot. Anyway, clowns are the only new additions to blood moons during hard mode.



Skipping forward to the next recording, about 20 minutes later, we find that a medusa has kindly dropped her head for us.



This is one of those weapons I wish that we had gotten earlier. It's really good, but we have the shadowflame hex doll and the golden shower, both of which do the medusa head's job faster and with less mana.



The animation isn't something you can show off, either. You have to charge the head, and then when it finishes, it does that. The result shreds multi-segment enemies, but we're well taken care of in that department.



Hey, it's a naked girl. She looks lost.



There's now five spiders gnawing on her face, but this is the Nymph enemy. Basically she lures you in by appearing to be a helpless naked girl. When you get close, or attack her, she transforms into the nymph. The wiki claims that before hard mode, she has a 0.6% chance to spawn, while she has 0.1% chance during hard mode. The half a percent drop is due to the spawn tables being more crowded.



Those spiders are bloodthirsty little shits. And of course she dropped a metal detector. I spent fucking hours tracking it down only to have it drop while I wasn't recording or paying attention. Now a second one drops long after I no longer need it.



By the way, have I mentioned lately how awesome the Onyx Blaster is? Because it's better than I'm letting on. Between our new shotgun and the spiders, we're honestly over-equipped for dealing with random underground hallow enemies.



We're down here collecting crystal shards, which grow like weeds in underground hallow. We're also secretly hoping to find more hallowed mimics. I really, really want one of their drops. A distant third reason would be to farm chaos elementals, because they also have an item that I really want. But even with the spectacular amounts of luck this LP has had, I'm under no illusions of that item ever dropping.



...huh. Dumbass mimic sat on top of lava.



Neat! This is the Hel-Fire yoyo. It has a 1-in-200 (0.5%) chance to drop from any enemy in the caverns or underworld layers during hard mode.





No reason we can't roll with this for a while. It has a chance to inflict the on fire debuff. There's actually a stronger version available, but because I barely spend any time in the snow biome, we haven't seen it yet. The stronger version can inflict frostburn!



I don't feel like I'm doing yoyos enough justice. They're incredibly good melee weapons that you can use at range. Ever since the old hard mode beat the melee playing tendencies out of me, I haven't really bothered with the play style much past meteor armor.



Have you ever seen a speedrun of an old Mario game where they glitch through solid blocks? I just did that to that poor illuminant slime.





Bon voyage, good buddy!



That's the broken armor debuff taken care of!



Let's jump ahead to the surface. Something you can do if you can't find a biome mimic is to create one. If you take 15 souls and combine them at an anvil, you can craft a light or dark key.



Next you need a chest. Any type will do. We have a shitload of gold chests, so I'm gonna use one of those.



Lastly, you just need to stick the light or dark key inside of the chest and close your inventory.



The key will transform the chest into a mimic!



Biome mimics are something you don't want to take lightly. This one casually clipped past us and took off 86 health!



No, Mr. Unicorn. Kindly fuck off. I'm busy! I already have all the drops I want from you anyway.



Keep dodging the hallowed/crimson/corrupt mimic and you'll eventually kill it. Just realize that you're not safe just because there's solid blocks between you and it.

Greater Healing Potions, by the way, heal 150 HP. The biome mimics always drop a bunch of them, so they're a good way to stock up if you don't feel like messing with alchemy. Otherwise you have to combine 3 bottles of water, 3 piles of pixie dust, and a single crystal shard.



Anyway, the reason I've been hunting biome mimics down so hard is that they have a bunch of weapons they can drop. Each weapon has a 20-25% chance to drop, so you typically won't have to kill too many to get what you're looking for. I'm farming these hallowed mimics for what is commonly regarded as the single strongest bow in the first part of hard mode. We'll get it before I take on any bosses, so I'll show it off then.

The flying knife throws a knife that lazily follows your cursor around the screen. It's honestly really good, and if you can trap it against a solid wall, you can shred multi-segment enemies that pass through it. Are you starting to notice a pattern here?

I'm probably gonna keep on using the shadowflame knife because it's fire and forget. If I'm fighting a boss, I don't want to think about where my weapon is, I want to be dodging around its attacks.



Anyway, onto the part of today's update that a lot of people have been waiting for. We're going high up into the sky, up to those floating islands we saw way back at the start of the LP.



We're high up enough that we're in low orbit. Gravity doesn't really affect us as much up here, so we moon jump around. This is overkill for what we're looking for, but there's a nice fishing landing up here we can pass the time with while we wait.



As long as harpies spawn, we'll find the enemy we're looking for.



These sky lakes are one of my favorite mini biomes in the game. I'm not even sure why beyond "they look pretty" which is as good as reason as any other.



Here it comes!



This Falcor looking thing is a wyvern. Don't let that doofy grin lull you into a false sense of security. These things kill.



The Onyx Blaster may not actually pierce through enemies, at least not with the ammo we're using, but it is a shotgun, and we are shooting this thing point blank. What I'm trying to say is that this weapon wrecks large multi-segment enemies as well.



The whole reason we're up here are these souls. Souls of Flight only drop from wyverns, and are needed to make the single best mobility accessory in the game. I'm going to jump here until we have enough to make one. For reference's sake, you need between 15 and 20 to make this accessory, so you only have to kill a couple wyverns.



Jumping ahead several minutes, I accidentally fell down into the desert. There's a sandstorm going on, which means... uh... well, a lot of content that until now I had never seen before.

Sand elementals are a miniboss that summons these tornadoes. There's gigantic scary worms leaping out of the ground, and there's also sand sharks prowling my wooden bridge.

Sand elementals drop only forbidden fragments. These fragments are used to make the next tier up of magic/summoner armor, but it also requires a bunch of titanium or adamantite bars to make as well. The fragments can also be used to make a magic weapon, but I have no experience with the weapon.

Sand sharks are an easier source of shark fins for the occasional recipe that calls for them.

Finally, the gigantic worm enemies are dune splicers and have no drops at all beyond the banner you get for killing multiples of 50.

I'm honestly not even sure where the new (as of September) desert content fits in with the rest of hard mode. I'll see about exploring it once we've killed the first three hard mode bosses.



Jumping ahead some more, we're now immune to slow. I don't even know what enemy dropped this, though I do know it appeared in my inventory during those desert shenanigans up above.



Combine a trifold map and the fast clock to create The Plan.



Finally to close the update out... if we combine 20 souls of flight and 100 piles of pixie dust and we can make wings.



Yes, the wings work. Just having them equipped also negates all falling damage, so we can put our lucky horseshoe up for good.



Sam can now fly!

You also don't have to make fairy wings, I just chose to. There are a bunch of wing recipes, though the fairy wings are one of the three easiest recipes to make.

The other easy ones are...

Angel Wings: 20 Souls of Flight + 10 Feathers + 25 Souls of Light
Demon Wings: 20 Souls of Flight + 10 Feathers + 25 Souls of Night
Fin Wings: Random quest reward from the angler. Requires 10 fishing quests completed and hard mode to be active in the current world.
Bee Wings: 20 Souls of Flight + 1 Tattered Bee Wing (dropped by hornets in the hard mode underground jungle)
Butterfly Wings: 20 Souls of Flight + 1 Butterfly Dust (dropped by moths in the hard mode underground jungle)
Harpy Wings: 20 Souls of Flight + 1 Giant Harpy Feather (dropped at a 1-in-200 (0.5%) chance during hard mode)
Leaf Wings: Sold by the witch doctor for 1 platinum coin if he is housed in the jungle during night in hard mode.
Frozen Wings: 20 Souls of Flight + 1 Ice Feather (dropped by Ice Golem enemies, which appear during "blizzards" in the snow biome in hard mode)


There are still more wings, but these are the ones that players are most likely to craft during the early parts of hard mode. Some wings are more powerful than others, too. For instance, the fairy wings that Sam has are better than the angel or demon wings, but not as good as most of the others that I listed.

For what it's worth, the frozen wings are far and away the best set that a player new to hard mode can get. They let you fly up for 81 blocks, and provide +150% speed boost when traveling horizontally.

The Angel and Demon Wings, on the other hand, let you fly up 53 blocks, and have +108% horizontal speed.

Sam's fairy wings have 67 blocks of height and +125% horizontal speed, which is a nice medium for how easy they are to craft.



The unicorn mount, the wings, the robe and hat... you guys, Sam is now a fairy princess.

NEXT TIME: So tell me, what's become of my ship?