Terraria: Sir Digsalot explores the sky
First order of business in New Quarteria is to build a new base, and transfer all my loot from the old world. I think this time I’ll go for more of a tower design. It takes a few trips back and forth between New Quarteria and the old world, but I finally get my tower built. I’ve got a lot more storage room this time around. As the NPCs start to repopulate my world, I’ll do a little exploring. Sure, I could start digging a new tunnel downward. I could explore the surface. But no, Sir Digsalot has his sights set skyward.
After the jump: There’s plenty of air up there
There are floating islands in Terraria – medium-sized chunks of land just hanging in the atmosphere, usually five or six screen-heights above the surface. Just high enough to be hard to find, they hold a single room with a chest full of loot, and usually plenty of gold and silver to mine. You can use one of the many mapping programs out there to print out your world, but what fun is that? (It’s actually super fun, but don’t tell anyone.) I’m going to search the old-fashioned way. I’m going to start making a ladder.
I’ll build a series of wooden platforms maybe 200 blocks high, then start building a dirt bridge to the right. If I’m unlucky, the island will be far away, or too high or low to see. You don’t want to do this before meteor hunting, by the way. The meteor may strike your big long dirt bridge and leave you with just one row of meteorite ore to mine.
What luck! I find an island without even building a skybridge at all! That practically never happens. I wonder what’s in the mystery chest?
Not a lot of goodies, but the one prize is actually quite fantastic. The Lucky Horseshoe totally negates falling damage. I can take a flying leap right off this island like I’m jumping off a table. I’ll spend the night building a skybridge to the left of my ladder, and see if I can’t find another floating island. It’ll take a lot of dirt, though.
It only takes about 400 dirt blocks, forming a flat skybridge to the left of the first floating island, to find a second one. One nice side effect of these skybridges: you can just run back and forth on them all night to gather up fallen stars more easily. Let’s see what’s in this mystery chest.
A Shiny Red Balloon, huh? Increases jump height? Well, since I already have rocket boots, they’re not that handy. Sir Digsalot’s accessory slots aren’t full up at the moment, so I equip it and move on. Time to explore the world a bit. Find the corruption zones, the deserts. Go poking around in the natural caves, looking for heartstones and chests.
Turns out there’s a chest in a cave just about one screen to the left of my tower. It doesn’t have very good loot in it, though: a spear, some grenades, a few iron bars, wooden arrows, and swiftness potions. If I had just started a new character in this world, this chest would have been an amazing find.
The corruption’s a lot closer to home base in New Quartoria. Heading down to explore the crevices, checking for shadow orbs, I find plenty of caves connected to the corruption area, and they’re just loaded with chests. Most of them don’t contain any really amazing loot. Some various potions, glowsticks (light up underwater, unlike torches), and some money.
Among the more mundane items, I find a gold chest with Hermes Boots in them. These increase your maximum run speed, which is super handy for blazing across a skybridge at night to collect stars. I also find about three more heartstones, so my maximum health is starting to look pretty good. It’s starting to look like the really good loot is going to come from exploring deep underground. And so, after a quick trip back to the tower to sell stuff and make some healing potions, I start to go down. Waaaay down.
The nightmare pickaxe digs quickly, and the whole tunnel-making goes a lot faster when you don’t have to build wooden platforms for your ascent. With a grappling hook, they’re not necessary. The orb of light means I don’t have to place torches all the time.
At the rate this pickaxe tears through the ground, it’s not long at all before I’m hacking down giant glowing mushrooms in the cavern layer, looking for mushroom grass seeds. Hmm… seeds. That gives me an idea…
Click here for the previous Terraria entry.
