Terraria: Sir Digsalot and the meteor crash

A new day is dawning and Sir Digsalot is feelin’ pretty good about all the cool stuff he just found. It’s time to find some corruption to deal with! That means a bit of prep work. I have my grappling hook, but I’ll also need to make a bunch of lesser health potions and convert them to standard health potions. Last but not least: the portable spawn. That means a door and a bed. Any time you venture far from home, it’s a good idea to take a bed, door, and maybe a workbench (though you can always make one later). You can make a little room as a far-from-home spawn to save you a lot of time if you die. Then you use the hammer to pick it back up again when you’re done.

I run to the right all day, past vast deserts and a jungle and steep mountains, then make myself a little safehouse to wile away the night. I can always open the door and kill some stuff with arrows, then shut the door for safety. If I die, no biggie…

After the break, dealing with corruption

The whole point of all this is to take my two pieces of dynamite (I should have bought more!) and smash a Shadow Orb. After day dawns, you can see my little temporary spawn location is right on the edge of the corruption. The corruption is an area of the world (usually there are two or three areas) where the ground is…uh…corrupted. Flying Eater of Souls spawn, though they’re quite easy to defeat. Vile Mushrooms grow occasionally, and you’ll want to grab those. But most importantly, the corruption is full of very deep, very narrow crevices surrounded by Ebonstone blocks. Like so.

Big devourer worms harass you, too. At this level, they’re a real pain. But at the bottom of many of these crevices, you’ll find Shadow Orbs. My gold pickaxe can’t break through the Ebonstone surrounding them, but the dynamite can. Boom!

Okay, so I was a little too close to that one. This is what that temporary spawn room is for. One more dynamite blast, and the orb accessible. Typically, you’d want to smash the orb with your hammer, but this one gets caught in the blast. “A horrible chill goes down your spine…” the game informs me. What’s so great about Shadow Orbs? First, they drop look like boss monsters do. In this case, I get a musket.

A musket is no big deal when it comes to shooting stuff – it’s a terrible gun – but it fulfills the requirement for the Arms Dealer to move in. I’m out of dynamite anyway, so it’s time to pick up my bed and head back to base. Gotta build another level on my fort so the Arms Dealer has a place to move in.

This shady fellow sells ammo for guns, the flintlock pistol (which can be upgraded later), and something called the Minishark. 50 gold?! Yeah…I won’t be buying that for awhile. The other important consequence of busting up Shadow Orbs is when you do, there is a chance for a meteorite to land sometime over the next day or so. Sir Digsalot is crossing his fingers…and heading back out at night to hunt Demon Eyes for their lenses. He’d love to head back to the corruption and break another Shadow Orb or two, but dynamite costs 50 silver each, and there’s no way to craft it.

Let’s fast-forward a few days. Nobody wants to hear the tale of how Sir Digsalot dug a few more miles of tunnels, finding several heartstones and plenty of gold and iron. The only interesting bit was when I saw that little guy above – a skeleton with a miner hat. This rare spawn, the undead miner, drops bombs and sometimes a hook, but I already have my grappling hook ready. As I dug, I was notified that a meteor had landed. Time to go find it! Nothing to do but run across the overworld until I see where it has crashed, spewing meteorite everywhere. I’ll want to bring along several piece of dynamite, so I stock up, take my bed, and head out.

Halfway to the place where the corruption is, I find where the meteorite has landed. It crashed into the side of a mountain near a lake, which is kind of unusual and might make it difficult to grab my ore. Good thing I had previously covered the lake with wooden platforms.

Meteorite will spew out those annoying floating Meteor Heads you see above. They’re a little tough to kill, and they just keep coming and coming until you have gathered up most of the meteorite. It takes forever with the gold pick (and you can’t use lesser picks at all), but a few pieces of dynamite will make quick work of it.

After gathering as much meteorite as he can, Sir Digsalot runs back to the forge. 20 bars of meteorite (at 6 ore a piece – 120 ore!) plus 10 gems (any kind will do, as long as they’re the same type) equals phaseblade.

21 damage! The lightsab…er…phaseblade also has a really long reach and very low knockback, making it easy to get multiple hits in quickly. With this, I’m ready to go kill some bosses!