Part 29: Magic Dance

#27 - Magic Dance



Hello everyone, and welcome back to Rivershire. We're back at the bottom of the progression ladder again, but hard mode progresses faster than normal mode did. So before too long we'll be overpowered again.



First things first, we're going to need some purification powder and some hallowed seeds. The light blue seeds on the right side will spread the hallow for us. Purification powder can be used to get rid of a small amount of evil, though it doesn't have a very large range. You are just throwing powder, after all. But there's another use for it, and we'll be taking some along with us for when we have the opportunity.



This is just on the far side of our boss arena. If you recall, there's two large trees between us and the ever-expanding crimson biome. So if we plant some hallow of our own, we can halt its spread in this direction. I think the tree trunk goes down far enough to block most of the crimson, but you can never be too careful.



You can only plant grass seeds on dirt. So be sure to clear the grass away before trying. We're going to put down five small spots of hallow and let the hard mode biome spread take care of the rest.



With our base protected from the Crimson, I take some time to hang out in the desert killing dark mummies. I need a several of the dark shards that they drop.



I'm not exactly successful, and I'm eventually forced to retreat. This shot was taken a few minutes after the first, and you can already see the crimson spreading. I've made reference to it several times already, but here it is to see. In hard mode, evil spreads extremely fast. There are ways to slow the spread back to pre-HM speeds, and eventually almost halt it entirely. But for the first part of hard mode, evil will run rampant.



Before we'll be able to stand toe-to-toe with the enemies in the crimson desert, we need better weapons and armor. So back down into the mines we go.



No reason we can't nab a little mythril as well.



I'm feeling daring, so let's hop into the spider caves.



These enemies are called black recluses, and... well, look at the damage they deal.



We lost nearly 3/4 of our health in less than a second. These things are nasty.



Unlike most enemies, a shotgun blast doesn't cause them to flinch.



This little fang is the drop from them that we want. With a bunch of fangs, we can make a new set of armor as well as two new summon staves.



The armor itself takes 36 fangs, while the weapons are 16 and 24 respectively. The armor boosts summon damage as well as the number of active summons we can use.



The second staff is special in that until the Dungeon Defenders crossover stuff, it was the first sentry summon you could get. The queen sits in one place and acts like a turret. Even if you're not going for a summoning build, making one of each type of staff is still handy. It's free damage!



The toxic sludge is so happy to see you! He can drop the bezoar and the ever-elusive slime staff.



I love the shotgun. This was such a cool moment that I had to gif it.



Oh, hello.



Our first new NPC of hard mode, and it's a wizard.







Moving on. Like his name suggests, the wizard sells magical accouterments.

Ice Rod - 50 gold coins - (A magic weapon. Deals 28 magic damage. If you "fire" it at empty space, it will create a temporary block that you can use to stand on or grapple to. Arguably more useful as a tool than as a weapon. You can use the block it creates to start building projects, for instance.)
Spell Tome - 5 gold coins - (Using this and various materials, you can craft your own spells.)
Greater Mana Potion - 5 silver coins - (Restores 200MP. Drinking a mana potion gives you "mana sickness" which reduces your magic damage for a short time after.)
Music Box - 10 gold coins - (Equip this in an accessory slot and this will start recording the currently-playing background music. You can play the recorded tune by either equipping it as an accessory, or by placing it and activating it.)
Bell - 1 gold coin - (Used to craft the Fairy Bell light source pet. I'm never going to show this off, because I found a better light pet before I got the materials. This also requires beating one of the first three hard mode bosses, which is no easy feat.)
Harp - 1 gold coin - (Used to craft the magical harp spell. Like the light source above, requires materials that drop from one of the bosses. I've never made or used it.)
Crystal Ball - 10 gold coins - (Furniture. Place it and you can get a magic damage buff by right clicking it. Also serves as a crafting station for some... fun items.)
Wizard's Hat - 3 gold coins - (Only buyable during Halloween. Vanity item.)
Empty Dropper - 1 silver coin - (You can create a droplet effect on the ceiling if you craft this together with water, lava, honey, or sand. Requires the crystal ball to craft.)

The Wizard is one of the better NPCs you can get. He starts spawning underground as soon as hard mode starts. I buy a spell tome from him, because I have plans.



Skeleton archers are yet another underground enemy. They have a 1.25% chance to drop an accessory that boosts arrow damage, and a 0.5% chance to drop a bow called the Marrow. It deals 40 damage, and fires a bone-like arrow that retains the damage from the arrow it fires, but loses any special effects. I'd give it a solid pass for that reason alone. The Frostburn arrows have too powerful of an effect to give up for a slightly increased projectile speed.



An unlucky run-in with some black recluses kills us, so while we're on the surface, I craft some mythril bars. We have 54 ore, and at 4 ore per bar, we have enough for 13 bars with two leftover ore.



13 bars is just enough for a new anvil. We need to use this to make any of the higher tier hard mode stuff.



Palladium armor costs 54 bars, and we have 56. The armor also changes up how set bonuses work from normal mode. Instead of having different sets for magic, melee, and ranged, the spec bonuses are all on the helmet.



Because we're rolling with a shotgun, I make the ranged helmet.



The ranged Palladium set has approximately as much armor as the Necro set, but the life regen buff is powerful. It heals 15 health over 5 seconds, and all attacks trigger it. So as long as we're actively kicking ass, we can get health regeneration.



The underground glowing mushroom biome has its own enemies in hard mode. These guys are probably the most dangerous ones that can spawn, because they shoot spores out. These spores hang around even after the main bulb is dead. Otherwise, the bulb acts like the snatchers and man eaters from the jungle.





These guys can also spawn near mushroom biomes. Like the giant fungi bulb, they have no drops besides their banners. According to the wiki, these things can also spawn in above ground mushroom biomes before hard mode. So if you set up a glowing mushroom farm like I did, be sure to put backwall behind it to prevent these things from spawning.



My old foe, we meet at last. Before a patch changed it, Medusa used to spawn in marble biomes before hard mode. You can probably guess how they attack. They were changed several times in the early life of the 1.3 patch, because their stone gaze attack used to not respect height or line of sight. So you'd be riding a minecart near a marble biome and suddenly be turned to stone out of nowhere, from a Medusa that in all likelihood was nowhere nearby.

Being turned to stone also negates your fall damage reducing accessories, causes you to take more falling damage, and lowers the minimum range for falling. So if you got turned to stone from great enough of a height, it was instantly fatal. You can still get turned to stone now, but you now have to basically be face tanking these things in order for it to happen.

The Medusa can drop her head as a magic weapon, as well as a pocket mirror. The mirror isn't part of the mega immunity accessory, and only grants immunity to being turned to stone. The head is an awesome magic weapon for the early parts of hard mode, as it absolutely shreds multi-segment enemies. One of the upcoming bosses, spoilers, is a multi-segment boss.



This skeleton merchant has a new accessory for melee players. The yoyo glove is pretty expensive, but it causes a duplicate of the yoyo you're using to spawn. If you combine this with the white string and a counterweight, then you can have the ultimate yoyo boosting accessory.



The lower parts of our tunnels are infested with hallow, which means before too long we'll have plenty of these little things growing all over the tunnels. These are crystal shards, and are used to make all sorts of awesome hallow-themed stuff. We can even turn them into ammo that does mean things to enemies.

Some people suggest building your hell-spanning highway out of regular stone and then hallowing it to create a crystal shard farm. I don't know about all of that. I've gotten all the shards I've ever needed by just raiding underground hallow caverns.



This oddly colored ore we're next to is Titanium. We can't mine it without at least the mythril drill or pickaxe. Titanium and Adamantite are much harder to find than the other four hard mode ores. This is probably the highest up we'll find any Titanium in the world. It doesn't spawn at all above a certain depth, and gets more common the lower you get. Raiding the roof of Hell for Titanium deposits is honestly the fastest way to get as much as you need.



Uhh? That treasure chest wasn't there before. In fact, I've never seen a chest like that. Let's take a closer look.



By which I mean shoot it with the strongest ordnance we have. Beware any unfamiliar chests. We're actually pretty lucky to find a Hallowed Mimic. They drop one of the best weapons we can get in the early parts of hard mode.



OH GOD EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE.







It's like every nightmare I've had coming true simultaneously.





Don't fuck with mimics, y'all.



So after respawning, I realize I've got more Palladium than I really need. So let's make one of the new weapons. The Repeater isn't as fancy as our Hellstone bow, but it is an automatic crossbow.



Automatic crossbows are awesome.



Before we go, there's one last thing I want to show off. Here's the crystal ball from the wizard NPC...



Here's four stacks of musket balls, provided by our friendly neighborhood arms dealer NPC.



This little item does exactly what it describes on the tin. With this in our ammo slots, we have an infinite amount of the weakest ammo in the game. While we'll want to switch to something with a higher caliber for boss fights, this will serve quite nicely in all other cases.



There's also a quiver version. So now our new repeater can unleash an infinite stream of death. Even better, because you can occasionally collect fallen arrows again, we have the world's most inefficient infinite money farm.

So I think that's a good stopping point, don't you? We're much better equipped than we were at the start of the update. I think things are starting to look up.

NEXT TIME: