Part 28: Gone Guru

#26 - Gone Guru



Hello everyone. Welcome back to Rivershire. We're in hard mode now, and a lot of shit has changed. There are new enemies all over the place and even a new biome has sprung up. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so there's no time to dawdle.



Now that we're in hard mode, we can build a house in this artificial glowing mushroom biome. Doing so will coax a new NPC out of hiding. We won't be doing that this update, but we will soon.



With a lot of new content to explore, I decided to head left first. The crimson biome is encroaching on the right side, and there's some no man's land between us and the corruption on the left, which makes it more safe to explore right now.



It's in the desert that we find the first new thing in hard mode. A mummy. There are actually three types of mummies that will spawn in hard mode. The regular one, shown here, a mummy for the corruption/crimson, and a mummy for the new biome. All three types have different drops.

The only thing we're interested in from a regular mummy is an accessory called the Fast Clock. It drops at a 1% rate, and is one of those pieces of the mega immunity accessory. It specifically renders us immune to the slow debuff.

The other two types of mummies also drop different pieces of the immunity accessory.



This guy's not exactly difficult to kill. 130 HP is honestly one of the smaller totals of hard mode exclusive enemies.



Oh, what's this?

Terraria Soundtrack vol. 1 - The Hallow



This is the new biome for hard mode, and it's called The Hallow. A reductive way to explain it would be... if Crimson and Corruption are the manifestations of Evil in Rivershire, then Hallow is Good taking root.

Don't get me wrong, though. The Hallow is not our friend and it is incredibly fucking dangerous.



Pixies are just the most common manifestation of that danger. These little things appear commonly in hallowed areas and if they touch you, they inflict the slow debuff.



Their drop, pixie dust, is used to make the next highest tier of healing potion.



Hallowed landscape is remarkably pretty, I have to admit.



You may not recognize it now, but this little pond is where I demonstrated fishing in the previous update.



And this... this used to be corruption.



In fact, it still is. Well, the good news is that on the left side of the world, the spread of corruption is permanently halted insofar as spreading toward our base is concerned. Hallow, like Corruption and Crimson, will spread like wildfire through "untainted" blocks, but will not allow either form of evil to spread through it.

It's also worth pointing out that NPCs can't live in houses that have too much ambient evil, but they can live in a hallowed hellhole quite happily.



Corruption was always kind of an afterthought on the left side of the world.



Some people have expressed concern that having corruption so close to the jungle means that it's screwed. That the corruption will spread through the jungle and eat whole. In earlier versions of the game, they were right.

However, since 2015 and the 1.3 patch, the jungle can take care of itself. We'll cover why eventually, but just be aware that the jungle in all of its terrifying deadly glory is not going anywhere.



It, too, has new enemies. These fish don't have any notable drops, and are just generic fodder enemies.



The Derpling also has no notable drops, and it's a sign that our welcome in the jungle has just been worn out.



We're wearing the single best set of ranged combat armor in normal mode and this asshole just dealt 63 damage to us through our defenses. That's 10 pounds of nope in a 5 pound bag right there.



Retreating back into the "safety" of the corruption and we run into yet another new enemy. This winged slime is called a Slimer, and it has two lives. Once we "kill" it the first time, its wings fall off and it becomes a regular if pissed off corrupt slime.



Flying in to greet us is not an eater of souls. That's a Corruptor, and most of the people reading this update just involuntarily shuddered at the mere sight and mention of its name. Corruptors like to spit pure corruption at you, and until the 1.2 patch, that spit would actually spread the corruption. This spit also inflicts the "Weak" debuff if it hits you.

The good news is that the Corruptor also drops an accessory that grants you immunity to being rendered weak. It's a 1% drop and, say it with me now, it's part of the immunity mega accessory.



Corruptors also have a metric fuckton of health.



You remember all those weapons that were so good all throughout the first half? Yeah, they're trash now. Hard mode has basically reset the totem pole, with us being firmly at the bottom now. All of our armor is the equivalent of babby's first suit of wooden armor at the start of the game.

There are new ores to find during hard mode, but we have to be a bit proactive in making them appear in the world.



Remember the Pwnhammer we found last time? We need to use it to break apart altars of concentrated evil. We need to do this three times.









There is a price to pay, however. Each altar that we break summons several of these Wraith enemies. These guys will relentlessly follow us across the world, and are capable of flying through solid blocks. They also spawn like crazy during a blood moon, and will be the number one reason why we stay well the fuck away from our base during blood moons from now on. They are also another source of the Fast Clock accessory.

There are also other prices to pay for smashing these altars, but we'll see them in due time. The most obscure penalty is that there's a 66% chance, per smashed altar, that the game will randomly convert a single tile of stone somewhere in the world to hallow/corruption/crimson.

We can smash as many altars as we like, and the game will keep spawning more ore throughout the world for us to find and collect. But each "round" of three that we smash spawns half as much as the time before. Here I smashed six altars, which gives us a lot of ore to find without diminishing returns kicking in too hard.

So like at the start of the game, the hard mode ores also come in pairs.

Cobalt / Palladium
Mythril / Orichalcum
Adamantite / Titanium

Progression through these ores is pretty strict, too. We have to have a Palladium Pickaxe before we can even start to mine Mythril.



With the jungle blocking us to the left, let's see what horrors await to the right.



Wandering eyes are like the big brother to demon eyes, and they actually operate like miniature Eye of Cthulhus. Once we knock off half of these guys' health, the cornea and iris drops out and little teeth appear in its mouth.

While these guys don't replace demon eyes, they do share drops with them.



Well, I knew it was bound to happen eventually. This is the second tree out from our base, and the crimson has already spread this far. The only thing that's stopped it from going farther is this tree creating a natural barrier. I really doubt that barrier is going to hold, so I'm going to have to transplant some Hallow over here just to fight the spread.

See, in the first half of the game, evil biomes spread, albeit slowly. They can be completely halted by a simple sunflower. In hard mode? The only thing that will stop the spread of evil is Hallow or a large enough barrier. Like, say, our hellevator. Or a particularly large tree. To prevent evil from spreading, you need, I believe, four blocks of non-corruptible material.



Clanking from behind alerts me to yet another new enemy. Possessed armors are one of the most common enemies in hard mode. They don't have any drops, and are just yet another fodder enemy to kill.



Meet the Herpling, a hard mode crimson enemy. They drop a crafting station called a "meat grinder" at a 0.5% chance. The meat grinder just creates flesh themed furniture and walls.



By the way, I haven't just been calling it hard mode all this update as a colloquialism. The game has indeed gotten much harder. That's a Wraith on the left side of the screen.

The two slimes in the picture are Crimslimes, and they also have a 0.5% chance to drop a meat grinder.



After yet more enemies appear, I decide that discretion is indeed the better part of valor.



I've already shown off the crimson desert, but here it is again. Dark mummies can spawn in here, just like light mummies can spawn in the hallowed desert. Dark mummies can drop the megaphone and blindfold, which prevent blindness and silence respectively. They can also drop a neat little thing called a dark shard at a 10% chance. This shard is a crafting material, and we're going to be wanting some of those.

Light mummies, for what it's worth, drop a light shard and the trifold map, which prevents confusion.



For the time being, the dungeon is completely unchanged. This actually makes it one of the safer places to go during the early parts of hard mode.



To end this update, let's take a tour of our hellevator, and see if we can find any of that new ore.





To the casual observer, Palladium looks a lot like a darker copper ore. We can mine this with our molten pickaxe, so we'll grab it and continue on.



Mythril ore is a toothpaste green color, and we can't even scratch it with our molten pickaxe.



We'll have to return to this spider cavern once we have some better weapons and armor. There are new enemies and weapons to be found inside.



Armored skeletons are a common enemy underground. They have too much health, and they can inflict the broken armor debuff, which mercifully no longer lasts 5 minutes like it did in earlier versions of the game. Broken armor cuts your defense in half. Thankfully they can drop the accessory that grants immunity to it.

Armored skeletons can also drop at a 1-in-150 chance (0.67%) a melee weapon called the Beam Sword. It shoots its blade out like a beam, like the Master Sword does. It's basically the upgraded version of the enchanted sword.



Thaaat is not good.



Oh fuck. This is a world map view of the lower part of our Hellevator. That big red area in the middle is my AFK item farm. It's now in the middle of the largest stretch of underground crimson in Rivershire.



The good news is that we can find these guys, who drop an item called ichor. Ichor is used to create a good many crimson-themed items during hard mode, including perhaps the greatest spell in the game. More on that when we find enough materials to make it.

Also present in the screenshot is a bigger version of the common cave bat. These giant bats inflict confused, and for that reason are far more annoying than their tiny cousins. The confused debuff reverses your left and right movement keybinds for a short while, which is just as annoying as it sounds.



This little thing is a Floaty Gross, and it is like a crimson version of the wraith. It's yet another source of the vitamins drop, which prevent weakness.



My beautiful underground farm has been ruined by crimson.



Hell is actually another one of the safest places to be in early hard mode.



The ash on the border of the cavern layer can also spawn hardmode ores. Normally this far down, I'd expect to see Titanium or Mythril, but I'm not going to complain about a fairly large vein of Palladium, especially when we need as much as we can get right now.



The little swirly thing in front of us is a soul item. Any (non meteor head) enemy killed in underground crimson or corruption has a chance to drop a soul of night at a 20% chance per. There is a hallowed version called the soul of light with the same drop mechanics.

The other thing in front of us is called an obsidian rose, and until it dropped I had no idea this thing even existed. It apparently drops at a 2% chance from a fire imp, and it reduces lava damage.



So this is kind of weird. The bottom of the first tunnel we made into Hell is hallowed. This spot is nowhere near where we killed the Wall, so I dunno why they met here of all places.

Basically the spot that you kill the wall the first time creates a V shape spreading out from it of both hallow and the native evil of your world. It's why the entire bottom of our hellevator is thoroughly crimson despite being wide enough that it couldn't spread that way naturally.



Like I said before, just because Hallow is "good" doesn't mean it won't rip you a new asshole. This fellow here is a chaos elemental, and he rushes at you and teleports around like Kurt Wagner on crack. His most notable drop is the Rod of Discord, which lets us teleport around like him.



There's also an enchanted sword enemy. It's another source of the nazar drop from the dungeon.



Things in the underground Hallow get kind of out of hand.



Yes, there's a hallowed bat too. Because I don't suffer enough. All these hallowed enemies, I should add, have a chance to drop an item called the "blessed apple" at 0.67% chance. This apple lets us ride a unicorn for a mount!



We have 47 health here, and the hallowed enemies haven't stopped coming. So I think we should retreat back home.



While almost every one of our NPCs has new stuff to sell, the arms dealer in particular has a new toy for us. This shotgun is a nice upgrade to our boomstick, and we can use it to create an even stronger weapon pretty soon. We just need to get several Souls of Night and some Dark Shards.



While I'm organizing stuff at the base, a traveling merchant shows up. He finally is selling a portable cement mixer again, so I buy it instantly.





I don't think the kimono look suits Sam.



I also finally buy a safe. The merchant has been selling this since, I believe, we killed the Eye. It costs 25 gold coins, so it's kind of expensive. I'm gonna use this to store all the souls we collect.



But with the cement mixer, we can finally build this accessory. All four bits of it are randomly sold by traveling merchants, and having it makes building so much less of a headache.



Much better. A green Mickey Mouse shirt and faded jeans suits Sam a lot better than that stuffy kimono.



So anyway, we have 63 palladium ore, and each bar takes 3 ore. So we have 21 bars here to play with.



While there are a lot of tempting items here, one is catching my eye instantly.



Sure that's nice and all, but...



Now that's the ticket. Why would you ever make a pickaxe when you can make power tools?



We can also make a chainsaw. Though right now I think the drill is a much better use of our currently limited amounts of palladium.



I've got the power!

NEXT TIME: More spelunking. We need Palladium and badly!