Part 5: Sixteen Tons

#5 - Sixteen Tons



Welcome back to Rivershire. Last time was the end of the first bit of recorded footage, so I decided to throw in what the loading screen looks like. It's just some text and a number that goes from 0-100%.

I recorded this particular batch of playtime a week ago, so you'll forgive me if I don't remember specifics.



So you might be wondering why we spawn here instead of in our base. You may not recognize it without all the gigantic trees around, but this is where we initially spawned into the world several updates back. There is a way to change your spawn location, but it requires stuff we don't yet have. Let's fix that, shall we?





This little pond marks the edge of how far we've previously explored. So everything to the left from here is uncharted territory. Exciting, huh?

Also take a look at the weird bush in front of us. You wouldn't know it to look at it, but that is a dye plant.



I'm sure you remember a couple updates back when I briefly discussed dyes, and mentioned that the Yellow Marigold partially qualified us for the associated NPC. This Strange Plant is the actual key. He'll show up in a little bit, but the Dye Trader only spawns when three conditions are met:

1) You must have an empty house
2) You must have found a Strange Plant

OR

2) You must have beaten one of the first four bosses

and finally

3) You must have a material used to craft dye in your inventory. Strange Plants count for this purpose.

So really, Strange Plants are the key here. The dyes that they create tend to be bizarre. We'll find a bunch of Strange Plants as we journey throughout Rivershire, and I'll be sure to show off their various effects as we turn them into dyes.



Let's continue on. There's a much deeper pond just a little farther to the left from the smaller one. This would have stopped our explorations had the last one not. But we're now better equipped to deal with what we'll find this way, so some water won't stop us now.



Terraria is a game where you need to think laterally about the challenge in front of you. Sure you could meticulously jump up nigh-impossible cliff faces, or you could just build a staircase, or place a rope instead.



Well this cave is a bust. If there's anything down there, it's out of our reach for right now. We're not a very good swimmer. In fact, we don't "swim" so much as "sink."



While replenishing my stocks of wood for the journey ahead, the largest annoyance of rainy days in Terraria comes to harass me. Flying fish are unusually aggressive enemies. They don't have a lot of health or defenses, and most any weapon will make short work of them. So they're never really dangerous - just annoying as hell.



I'm not sure why it got so dark. Daytime will last for many hours yet to come. Anyway, because the lower path is a dud, I've elected to build a second bridge to help with the flow of movement.



As we continue even more to the left, the Dye Trader arrives back at the base. It'll be a while yet before we can properly welcome him, so he'll have plenty of opportunity to move into his new dwelling.



Yet another large tree blocks our path. There sure are a lot of these things in the world.



As though there were any doubt how I was going to handle getting past the tree. The Ironskin Potion increases our defense by 8 points, which if you remember the math, means we will shave off 4 additional points of damage from an attack. These are super handy for boss fights, and we'll be holding onto this for just that reason.



This imposing cliff will mark the end of our journey to the left. But we're not done exploring yet. This particular spot continues downward. This spot incredibly likely to be a cave entrance.



This small area under the cliff is mostly empty except for some pots containing the usual suspects.



Shall we?



Determining which canyons and valleys on the surface lead to a cavern isn't an exact science. After a while you kind of get a feel for it. Some otherwise unassuming pits in the ground can lead to astonishingly large caverns.



The way this one keeps going down is an incredibly good sign. If it were a shallow cave, it definitely would have ended before now.



We're just getting started and already we've found some treasure!





The Spear is a better weapon, damage-wise, than our wooden sword. It can be harder to use, though.

The only new item is the green potion, which is a Swiftness Potion. It increases our movement speed by 25%.



I tried to get a gif of poking this slime to death, but it was much too large. But the spear is a poking weapon with a very long reach. It's kind of difficult to use correctly, but you can indefinitely juggle a group of enemies if you know what you're doing. It also pierces through anything you hit with it, which is what lets you juggle so many enemies.



You can tell we're in an actual cave now because of the abundance of iron ore everywhere.



Until we get an early game accessory, it can also be quite difficult to mine things on the ceiling. So we have to, again, think outside of the box.



This next chest has two new items.



This is the first magic weapon most players are likely to find. It's not bad, but quickly gets outclassed by everything else.

The other new item are the bars next to the wand, which are just iron, but in bar form.



The little spark isn't exactly impressive. But it can pierce through enemies, and can even rarely set them on fire.



This little enemy is a new one. This is a jellyfish, as you might guess, and they show up fairly often in deep enough pools of water.



You also really do not want to get stung by them. 20 HP is a lot at this stage of the game!



When they die, jellyfish always drop glowsticks, which you can see the use of here. Torches, naturally, do not work underwater.

You can also see in the previous two shots the game's breath meter, which can be identified by those bubbles above Sam's head. Until we can properly swim, or at least have better options for movement, it's best to avoid water altogether. Otherwise you're very likely to drown in a pool of water half a mile under the earth.



And now nobody has to fall into that murky pool of water ever again.



You can see the cavern layer starting properly just below us. There's also a strange mushroom as well. This is the Teal Mushroom, and it's another dye item.

Now, I'd like to demonstrate the other use for glowsticks.



The glowstick isn't supposed to bounce off of tungsten and phase through a solid wall at the end, but you can throw them to see what's in the darkness below you. Handy, huh?



It's never really a problem underground, but you always want a bunch of building blocks so you can bridge gaps. If you run out, then... well, how do you run out of building materials when you're surrounded by them in every direction?

The way back up will need some smoothing out in the future, but this works for now.



When underground, be sure to check out every nook and cranny. You never know when you might find a massive vein of ore with some cursory exploration.



Do you see what I see?



Hell yeah! An underground cabin, some copper ore, and some topaz gemstones.



For the most part, gemstones are just another decorative block. They do have one other, incredibly helpful, use. But we won't be seeing that for a while yet. Because they're valuable stones, we're going to collect and hoard them.



These statues in the underground cabin are kind of grotesque.





Shoe Spikes give us Mega Man-like wall jumping abilities. They're also 1/4 of a much larger accessory that we won't completely have until near the very end of the game.

Because this is our first accessory, I should go over how to equip them.



Back over to the equipment pane, there are five slots below our armor. Those are for accessories.



It can also be difficult to see, but Sam is now wearing shoe spikes. Equipped accessories will, for the most part, appear on your character somewhere.



As ugly as they are, we still grab the two statues. Maybe they'll scare something away from the base?



Time to continue on!



Or not.

So what just happened?



We got crushed to death by a boulder trap, that's what.

The underground is an incredibly dangerous place. There are traps all over, and we just got unlucky enough to blindly jump right onto a touchplate. Scroll back up to the last shot where we were alive and look, you can see that there's a tiny raised bit of floor. That was our only clue that particular trap existed.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

NEXT TIME: Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back.