Part 38: One Night in Bangkok

#36 - One Night in Bangkok



Hello everyone and welcome back to Rivershire. Today we're going to explore the jungle temple, though we will not be killing its boss. Not yet, at least.



The boss of the Jungle Temple used to be the endgame in the previous large patch, back in 2013. So while we'll fully explore this temple, we will not be fighting him until we venture back into the dungeon.



Ahh, here we are. This temple brick, like I mentioned before, is the single hardest substance in the game. You need a digging tool with at least 210% power to break it, and the Chlorophyte drill was only 200%. The boss inside is potentially the first chance we'll actually have to get a 210% digging implement.

Before we step in, I want to give a warning. The temple is one of the most dangerous places in the game, and it's the only major place we have yet to explore on the map. If you have the grand design, then it should be on an easily accessible hotbar slot. There are traps everywhere in here and neutering them should be your top priority.



These are wooden spikes, and they deal 50% more contact damage (60 contact damage) than the steel ones you can find in the dungeon (40 contact damage). They can be easily broken by whatever digging tool you're carrying around, so be sure to pull all of them up. The last thing you want is to be retreating and run square into a patch you skipped.



We have enough defense to lower their damage, but look how quickly it stacks.



I know it's been said before, but the temple is one place you want to take things slowly. See that pressure plate? It's hooked up to four super dart traps. Yes, super dart traps. So named because they deal almost double the damage of regular dart traps.

We, uh, will be dismantling every trap we see in here. For personal reasons that are absolutely in no way related to home defense.



Meet the Lihzahrds. These guys only ever spawn in the jungle temple with a single exception. Yes, they kind of look like a D-tier Doctor Who recurring species. We actually have one living in our treefort right now, but he is alone in being the only friendly Lihzahrd.

Anyway, these guys are pretty uninteresting. They have approximately 400 HP, and when it drops by half they start running around on all fours at super speed, but other than that they're just your normal enemies.

They have a 2% chance to drop a Lihzahrd Power Cell, a 0.1% chance to drop an egg that summons a pet lizard, and a 14.29% chance to drop a Solar Tablet Fragment. I'll explain what the two non-pet items do later.



The flying snake has the exact same drops as the Lihzahrd, even at the same percentages.



Well that's unexpected. You remember that bow I mentioned when we first got to hard mode? The one that shoots arrows at sonic speeds but they lose all effects? This is it.



Shit. I made a pretty big mistake. See those two falling balls? Those are another of the many traps in the temple. Spiky ball traps are the most common trap in the temple and are perhaps the most useful one too. These balls bounce around like crazy and they deal, according to the wiki, 40 contact damage. The wiki also claims 90 contact damage on the same page, so who knows.

I do know that these traps do not care what they hit, just that when the balls hit something they will shred it apart like cheese.



These are spear traps, and we actually have some of these at our boss arena. A few spawned outside of the jungle temple for some reason. They're not the most useful trap, but they are neat all the same.



Anyway, there's chests all over the temple as well. While most of the stuff inside we've seen before, there's still some new things as well.

The first item is the power cell that I mentioned before. This is actually the boss summoning item, which is handy that it's potentially farmable, even if it is a 2% rate.

The second to last item is the Lihzahrd Furnace. I bet you'll never guess that it's yet a-fucking-nother furniture crafting station.

The final item are solar tablet fragments. We'll be collecting as many of those as we can.





Moving on, we find the last and rarest type of trap. We'll be using these in future home defense projects if only for the coolness factor.



Despite its dangers, the temple is not very difficult. It's just long and full of traps that strain your resources. Here we've moving down to the fourth level of the temple and still have no end in sight.



Though it is admittedly fun shooting helpless Lihzahrds from above. If you wanted a place to farm for the biome key for the jungle, you couldn't ask for a much better spot. Enemies down here spawn fast and love to swarm you. Bring a few battle potions (increases enemy spawn), lay down a few water candles, and you can spend a few hours shooting Lihzahrds in a barrel.



Welp, on our way down to the fifth floor now. Take note of the four spiky ball traps in front of us. At least I think those are spiky ball traps. They could also be spear traps. They look almost identical.



Anyway, the point was that there are traps everywhere.



See, this is what I was talking about a minute ago. So many enemies that can't hurt you and will all too happily cluster directly below you.



In case you were wondering, the jungle temple is gigantic.



You can rarely find whole tablets in the jungle temple. They summon an event called the Eclipse. I won't be showing that off until we've beaten the boss down here, so expect that in a couple updates. You can combine 8 fragments into a whole tablet at a Mythril/Orichalcum anvil.



Down to the sixth floor. In case you couldn't tell, I've completely run out of things to say about this temple.



Because I've run out of interesting commentary, here's some no context images of exploring this place.



Down to the seventh floor, by the way.





Jungle creatures intruding means this is probably the bottom floor.



That's unfortunate. This is the final chamber of the temple. That yellow thing behind us is the Lihzahrd Altar, which is what we use to summon the boss. The unfortunate thing is that the main room isn't remotely level. We can't dig up blocks from elsewhere to compensate, and I discarded all the building stuff in my inventory while making my way down.

To put it plainly, fighting the boss in the room as it is right now is suicide.



It's more cramped than I would like, but if we clear off the spikes from the ceiling, we'll at least be free to jump around. My big worry is the giant pit behind the altar. We'll need to level that off to make a proper arena for this boss. With our inventory as full as it is, and with no building materials in it, we'll have to retreat for now.



Well, we'll retreat after we disarm the traps in the boss's chamber.



Looks legit. I think badly disguised mimics have become my favorite thing in this game. They try so hard and completely fail at it every time.



Before we retreat, here's some numbers. We've found 98 spiked ball traps, 29 super dart traps, 52 pressure plates, 33 spear traps, a single flame trap, 254 wooden spikes, 56 tablet fragments, 2 Lihzahrd banners, and 13 power cells.

We're also bafflingly carrying around 78 gold. I know that we didn't have any when we left to fight Plantera, so between the boss, the temple, and that poor dumb mimic, we've done alright for ourselves.



Oh hey... what's up? Sorry we busted into your home and slaughtered your friends and family in the name of personal gain.



Anyway, because we're carrying the Pygmy Staff this guy has some new stuff for us. So let's cover his inventory for the final time. I'm only gonna mention it in the first description, but each of these new items requires both the Pygmy Staff in your inventory and Plantera to be dead.

Tiki Mask
Tiki Shirt
Tiki Pants - 50 gold coins - (The second best summoner armor in the game. You can potentially have 10 minions following you if you have buffs and minion boosting accessories. Must have the Pygmy Staff in your inventory, and Plantera must be dead.)
Pygmy Necklace - 40 gold coins - (Accessory. Lets you summon an additional minion. Sold at night only.)
Hercules Beetle - 40 gold coins - (Accessory. Boosts minion damage by 15%. Witch Doctor must be housed in a jungle biome.)
Vial of Venom - 10 silver coins - (Used to craft venomous ammo. Can also be mixed with water at an imbuing station to make a venom flask. Venom prevents health regeneration and causes the target to rapidly lose health. Basically super poison. Notably, before Plantera dies, the only way to inflict the Venom debuff is with the spider summoning staves.)



To end this update, we're going to talk to the Truffle. Now that Plantera is dead, he sells a very special item that's of particular interest to us.



The Autohammer is incredibly expensive, but Shroomite bars are used to craft one of the best ranged sets in the game. Remember a couple updates ago when I talked about turtle armor? Shroomite armor is the ranged equivalent, and it has its own neat bonuses.



Shroomite armor is also why I was so insistent on building an aboveground mushroom farm. We've found so many healing potions in our travels that we have never needed to craft any, and now that we're in hard mode, we don't need these to make greater healing potions.

But we need truckloads of these mushrooms to make Shroomite bars.



A full stack and a little of another should be just enough.





Each individual bar takes 15 mushrooms. Look at how quickly just 53 bars chewed through our stockpile of mushrooms.



Shroomite being a new tier of gear means there's new stuff to look at. The digging claw is... nice... I guess. You can also combine 18 Shroomite bars with 20 Souls of Flight to make a hoverboard. It's a side-grade to our frozen wings, and we have better things to spend these precious bars on.





Like armor, for instance. Shroomite, as I've said, is entirely for ranged characters. And believe it or not, we're actually short a single bar. So it's time to see if we can't find some more Chlorophyte.



It looks like our farm is progressing nicely.





We'll just trim it back a bit and replace the mud. Anyway, back to the base.







Because Shroomite is a wholly ranged set, they can bake different damage bonuses into the helmets. We'll be using the bullet-boosting hat.



I don't know what we look like, but it's badass whatever it is.



Even better, we can go invisible just because we don't move for a few seconds. 57 defense is also a new high for us. I am going to miss the innate frostburn effect, but I think having supercharged ranged damage is worth the tradeoff.

Anyway, that'll be enough for today.

NEXT TIME:

EDIT: Next time will either be the hard mode dungeon or the Christmas stuff. The event started on the 15th, and the next update is scheduled for the 21st, so it could be either.