Part 35: Stones

#33 - Stones



Hello everyone, and welcome back to Rivershire. Today we start off in the snow biome for what is, for me, probably the fifth time in hard mode. I keep coming here and not finding anything worthwhile. This is going to largely be a roundup update, covering stuff that I haven't yet shown off in the early parts of hard mode.

The Amarok pictured here is a yoyo that deals frostburn damage, so that's pretty cool.



It only occurs to me now that the armored viking pictured here is actually a separate monster from the pre-hard mode version. The wiki claims that they, and most enemies in the hard mode underground glacier, all share a rare drop in the Ice Sickle.

The Ice Sickle is a melee weapon that has no mana cost or ammo, and you throw it forward. The weapon spins around as it travels and then dissipates, which makes it yet another hard mode weapon that humiliates the Destroyer. It has a 1-in-178 (0.56%) chance of being dropped.



We also have a new drill.



The Drax is made from 18 hallowed bars and one of each type of boss soul. It has the second highest pickaxe power in the entire game at 200%. With a Drax or a Pickaxe Axe, we can dig up any tile in the game except for one. Do you remember a while back when I showed off the jungle temple? Its blocks are so dense and strong that not even our new drill here is capable of so much as marring them.

But otherwise, we can dig up anything in the game. That includes the new type of progression ore. But we'll get to that eventually.



Off in the distance we can see another of the enemies in the underground snow biome. This is the ice tortoise, and in addition to the ice sickle, it can also drop a frozen turtle shell at a 1% chance. This shell is an accessory that, when we're below 50% life, gives us 25% additional damage reduction.



Eventually I get tired of wandering around down here and return home. We got the Amarok, which makes the trip not a total loss. But otherwise we didn't get much of anything down there.

I'll eventually return to the underground snow biome to farm up one of the four remaining biome keys. But I sincerely doubt I'll actually cover it. So here's a rundown of the other enemies we can find down there...

Snow Flinx - It's a white ambulatory puffball - Drops the Compass and a Snowball Launcher. The snowball launcher is just a furniture item that shoots snowballs like a pitching machine.
Icy Merman - Imagine your typical merman, except icy - Drops the Ice Sickle and a Frost Staff (2%). The Frost Staff just shoots a magical bolt of cold energy, dealing 46 magic damage. Apparently auto fires.
Ice Elemental - Floating chunks of animated ice - Drops the Ice Sickle and Frost Staff


Ice Mimic - Has four unique ice-themed drops.

Frostbrand - 49 melee damage, shoots a projectile
Ice Bow - 46 ranged damage. Converts all arrows into frost arrows, which lose all special properties, but fly with less of an arc. Similar to the Marrow bow, but trades projectile velocity for raw power.
Flower of Frost - 55 magic damage. Remember the Fire Flower magic weapon we got in hell in normal mode? This is the hard mode, frostburn version!
Toy Sled - Summons a baby snowman pet.

There's also a harder enemy to find, the Pigron. I've never seen it before, though we do have a statue of one at the base. It only appears in the underground snow biome, when it also overlaps with hallow/crimson/corruption. It drops bacon at a 33.3% chance. Bacon gives you well fed for 30 minutes, which is nice but not as nice as pumpkin pie.



Time to make a new accessory. Lord knows we have enough cobwebs to last us a lifetime.



It's worthwhile to carry around this accessory even if you don't rely on yoyos as your primary melee weapon. You can swap to it quickly if you want to take the yoyo for a spin, and it makes the weapon a lot more versatile.



The yoyo bag throws out a second yoyo and a couple counterweights, in addition to increasing the range of the weapon. You know, I bet these black recluses start dreading seeing us. Every time we get a new weapon, we're down here testing it out on them.



On the way back from testing the yoyo bag, this thing dropped. I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry. We don't have any use for it, but you can be damn sure that I made a weapon frame to put it in. I'm gonna show that shit off.



Anyway, after killing a couple more mechanical bosses, we have enough hallowed bars to make the full set of ranged armor. I really like the Hallowed armor, it looks awesome as hell and getting it is a really good sign that you've graduated to the major leagues.



Ammo conservation bonuses stack multiplicatively, so if we wear this armor and use our Megashark, we have a 62.5% chance to not use ammo. So more often than not, we won't use any ammo while firing our weapon.



I love our little spider friends to death, but I think we should also upgrade to the next summon minion. This staff is extremely expensive, requiring not only 20 souls of sight and 12 hallowed bars, but 2 lenses, and 1 black lens.



On the other hand, we now have miniature versions of Retinazer and Spazmatism.



Now that we're successfully past the initial gearing up stages of hard mode, I think it's time to show how we could have skipped it. Pictured here are 18 wooden crates from my fishing exploits in normal mode.



That's just what we picked up. I can see Adamantite bars on the ground.



For reference, here's what our hard mode minerals chest looked like before the crate exploit.



Here it is after. Admittedly most of the ore we found was from normal mode, and I explicitly held back on amassing a bunch of crates. But you can see how this would completely break the early parts of hard mode progression. Get enough crates and you can completely skip all the tedious searching for Titanium that we had to do.



Here's what the slime staff is like in action. We've got the spider armor on and have 5 little baby slime followers. They barely deal any damage, but that's part of the draw. With the right accessory, we can turn these adorable little buggers into an infinite money farm. This is also something I plan to show off at some point, assuming the pirates are generous with their drops.



I was telling Eevee yesterday, you can tell the approximate point that I stopped giving a shit about building houses. The lower levels are better decorated and have more life, while the post hard mode houses are rather threadbare.

These were built to house a Pirate Captain NPC and the Steampunker NPC. The Pirate Captain spawns after we've beaten at least one pirate invasion, while the Steampunker only spawns once we've beaten at least one Mechanical boss.



Cornelia arrives first.



That is an awful pun and you should be ashamed and I'm mad I didn't think of it first.



She has a rather extensive inventory of items so, deep breath, let's dive in.

Clentaminator - 2 Platinum coins - (A special gun. Fires solutions. I'll cover this more in depth in a minute. Trust me, it's worth the wait.)
Steampunk Hat - 1 gold 50 silver coins
Steampunk Shirt - 1 gold 50 silver coins
Steampunk Pants - 1 gold 50 silver coins - (In case you want to dress like a reject from Arcanum. Sold during full and waning moons)
Jetpack - 40 gold coins - (A type of wings. A side-grade to our faerie wings. Sold during new and waxing moons.)
Static Hook - 50 gold coins - (Basically a hook that lets you manually adjust how far out you want to be attached to an object. A demonstration courtesy of the wiki. Warning: 4.3MB gif.)
AND
NAND
OR
NOR
XOR
XNOR - 2 gold coins - (Logic gates, for use in wiring. Please understand if I never show these off. I took two semesters worth of electrical engineering in college and that was more than enough for me.)
Logic Gate Lamp Off
Logic Gate Lamp On - 10 silver coins - (Wiki claims they operate logic gates. Sure, why not?)
Logic Gate Lamp Faulty - 2 gold coins - (Changes logic gate behavior. I don't know how, and I don't want to know how. Moving on.)
Conveyor Belt (Clockwise)
Conveyor Belt (Counter/Anti-clockwise) - 10 silver coins - (When powered acts like a conveyor belt should.)
Blend-O-Matic - 10 gold coins - (Used to create Asphalt. Takes 2 stone blocks and 1 gel, and creates a block that lets you run at super fast speeds across it. With no speed boosts equipped, you can run at 53MPH across Asphalt, as opposed to the normal running speed of 15MPH.)
Steampunk Boiler - 10 gold coins - (Used to create Steampunk themed furniture from cogs. Only available to buy if you've beaten the Eye, the Eater/Brain, and Skeletron. Given that the Steampunker only spawns after a mechanical boss has been defeated, you'd have to be playing the game pretty weirdly to not have that be available.)
Flesh Cloning Vat - 10 gold coins - (Only available in worlds generated with Crimson. Used to craft flesh themed furniture. You'll excuse me if I never buy this to show it off, because I have way too many furniture crafting stations that I will never use. Ever.)
Teleporter - 2 gold 50 silver coins - (Hook this up to wires and instantly teleport around the world!)
Cog - 7 silver coins - (Apparently used to create Steampunk themed furniture.)
Purple Solution - 25 silver coins - (Sold during a blood moon or future luna-solar event we have yet to see. Stacks to 999. Only available if the world has corruption.)
Red Solution - 25 silver coins - (Same as the purple solution, but crimson instead.)
Blue Solution - 25 silver coins - (Steampunker only sells this is her house is in a Hallow biome and no events are going on.)
Green Solution - 25 silver coins - (When no other solution is on sale.)
Steampunk Goggles - 3 gold coins - (Sold during Halloween.)

When the fuck did Terraria turn into Factorio?

So with that mouthful out of the way, let's move on... We buy both a Clentaminator and 999 bottles of green solution. I think the best way to explain this unique gun is to show it off.



On our way down to the item farm, our new tenant arrives. We'll check him out shortly.

Now, before we begin, the description on the green solution is "spreads the purity."



So, here's what the side of the item farm looks like before we spray green on it.



If we load a green solution into the Clentaminator, we erase any present form of evil or good. We can likewise load other colored solutions to spread different biomes. Purple spreads corruption, red spreads crimson, light blue spreads hallow, and dark blue spreads mushroom.

The green and dark blue solutions work somewhat at odds with each other. If we spray a mushroom biome with green solution, it turns into jungle. If we spray jungle with dark blue, it turns into mushroom. We can only spread mushroom onto mud, for what it's worth.



Moving on, I see James T. Beard has moved into his new apartment. Right now his dialogue reflects the random party going on, so it's not worth showing off right yet.



Cannon - 25 gold coins - (Does exactly what you might think it does. If we activate the cannon either while holding a cannonball or with a wire, it shoots a projectile a ways forward. This cannonball can and will destroy any tiles it hits. If you activate it with wires, the cannonball it fires is just for show. You have to throw down money to get actual destructive power.)
Cannonball - 15 silver coins - (Ammunition for the cannon.)
Pirate Hat
Pirate Shirt
Pirate Pants - 5 gold coins - (Every day can be Sept. 19th!)
Sail - 50 copper coins - (Wallpaper. Does not count as valid for housing or preventing hostile mob spawns.)
Parrot Cracker - 3 Platinum 75 gold coins - (Summons a pet parrot.)
Bunny Cannon - 50 gold coins - (Oddly enough, actually an upgrade to the cannon above. The Pirate only sells this while a Party girl is present in the world, and at least 1 mechanical boss has been defeated.)
Explosive Bunny - 7 silver coins - (That's fucked up. Can also be crafted by catching a bunny with the bug net and strapping dynamite to it. You absolute monster.)



Before we move on to the final piece of the roundup, the Truffle sells two weapons now that we've defeated at least one mechanical boss.

The mushroom spear used to be sold as soon as you got into hard mode, and was one of the most effective ways to shred the Destroyer. Just stabbing with the weapon causes little spinning mushrooms to appear for a few seconds, dealing lingering damage.

He also sells the Hammush, a hammer that behaves similarly. It costs 40 gold coins instead of 70.



So let's move on to the underground desert, and see what that's all about. Pictured here is a Ghoul enemy. Ghouls come in normal, crimson, corrupt, and hallowed varieties, and all types except normal drop the requisite type of shard. Evil versions also drop ichor or cursed flames (the corruption equivalent of ichor).

In addition to those drops, Ghouls also have a 6.67% chance to drop a few scraps of Ancient Cloth, a crafting material used to make a vanity set that makes you look like Anubis.



Basilisks also appear down here. These guys resist knockback and move quickly, making them incredibly dangerous. They can drop sturdy fossils and an ancient horn. Sturdy fossils are a normal mode crafting material used to make a set of armor that boosts throwing damage, while the ancient horn allows you to summon a basilisk mount.



We're about to quickly find out that even with our Hallowed armor, we're overmatched here. The Lamia drops entirely cosmetic armor, a sun or moon mask that looks completely awful, as well as a full costume that lets you look like a snake person.



Dune Splicers are the worst. We saw them aboveground during that sandstorm.



Sand Poachers also spawn down here now. They have no drops besides their banners and a few coins.

And believe it or not, barring one enemy that only spawns in an evil underground desert, we've seen everything there is to see down here.

The enemy that spawns in evil underground deserts are Desert Spirits, and look like your traditional djinni. In fact, they can drop a cosmetic item that turns your lower body into a plume of smoke like one. They also drop the desert spirit lamp, which is one of the components of that magic weapon I briefly mentioned.



Looks like we've reached the hallowed desert. I see no reason to go in there, so let's just head back.



Noooo...

No. No. No.

No no no no no no no no no no no no



Fuck. I don't need two of them!



Let's just move on and not dwell on that. This is a hallowed weapon called the Light Disc. It takes 4 bars and 3 souls of light and 5 souls of might per. They're the usual chakram item, except we can throw five at once, and they're super strong. We'll put them to really good use coming up soon.



We also use the last of our hallowed bars to craft an Excalibur, for personal reasons.



It's got a large overhand swing, it autoswings, and even swings decently fast. Plus it has something crazy like 75 base damage. Excalibur used to be an endgame weapon, and the reason why absolutely shows.


Apparently the damage bonus from the Hallowed armor is better than I thought!



Between the two, I prefer the range and versatility on the Light Discs. Each one deals as much damage as Excalibur, and you can rapid fire chain throw them at enemies.

But that's enough for now.

NEXT TIME: We actually make good on my promise to venture into the jungle.