[Rant/Question] I think evil/hallow biome spread is annoying. Is there an easy non-tedious method to maintain world purity?

dannyshmanny

Terrarian
I have begun hardmode in my singleplayer normal-difficulty world and I have noticed that all the purity-preparation I have gone through before beating the WoF has partly gone to waste. I had dug three-block-wide tunnels around my pylons, base, oceans, jungle and other places but the first thing I noticed was that even though I have "protected" my jungle biome the hallow has partly spawned inside the jungle rendering my tunnel useless. I have used the clentaminator countless times but I will never be sure that it's safe from it happening again. The jungle is one thing, but the most tedious thing about biome spread is the underground corruption. Pre-hardmode I have quarantined all my corruption biomes using bomb-tunnels because I only want a small amount of corruption in my world. Now obviously because the good and evil spirits are released a V shape of both hallow and corruption have spawned and I have an entire half of a gigantic V-shape of corruption to deal with while I'm underground plus the other half being hallow which isn't as awful but I still want both biomes to be contained in the surface. I just don't understand how this is supposed to be fun, because for me it feels like a giant tedious chore to maintain world purity, if even possible. My question is, how do you guys cope with this? I tried using the clentaminator but my pirate farm produces underwhelming money so purchasing green solution is a slow process. Using the clentaminator is another thing, because although it does purify a larger radius than your regular purification powder, you still need to go searching the whole world looking for every possible nook and cranny that haven't been purified. If the only solution to this is digging hellevators all across the map to use the clentaminator with, that'd be really inconvenient as I don't want to ruin my world. Again, I don't understand how this makes the game fun to play during hardmode. Before I knew this painful truth I thought there was a way to instantly purify the world but to my knowledge there is only a manual Clentaminator and the feature of biome spread being slower after beating certain hardmode bosses but that's it. It could be that I'm the problem because maybe I'm too lazy to go exploring for all the corruption or hallow to purify or because I can't handle that much imperfection and I'm overreacting in general. So as a recap, is there some sort of tool that can be made early, mid-hardmode or atleast endgame that does the purification work for you?

Update: I saw a video from chippy announcing Biome Sight Potions coming in 1.4.4
It's not bad as a solution to my problem, and I wish it comes soon.
 
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I usually go into another throwaway world, beat the WoF again there, smash all the altars there to generate ores, get enough Titanium/Adamantite to make a pickaxe, then go back to my main world and diagonally cleave out the Evil side of the "V" with the new pickaxe (and various mining/melee buffs). It takes me only around 20-30 minutes to completely quarantine it in this way, as you can carve through it very quickly.

After this, you can clentaminate it at your leisure, because it's no longer a threat to the rest of your world. It's easier to see the corrupted areas on the map if your PC brightness is higher.
 
I usually go into another throwaway world, beat the WoF again there, smash all the altars there to generate ores, get enough Titanium/Adamantite to make a pickaxe, then go back to my main world and diagonally cleave out the Evil side of the "V" with the new pickaxe (and various mining/melee buffs). It takes me only around 20-30 minutes to completely quarantine it in this way, as you can carve through it very quickly.

After this, you can clentaminate it at your leisure, because it's no longer a threat to the rest of your world. It's easier to see the corrupted areas on the map if your PC brightness is higher.
I see where you're coming from, but I want to use one world only because I view the use of multiple worlds as cheating. So is there a "cheat-free" alternative?
 
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I see where you're coming from, but I want to use one world only because I view it as cheating, is there a "cheat-free" alternative?
You could do the same in a single world; it just involves alterations — like fishing up crates for ores, using a weaker pickaxe (or beating the mechs for Pickaxe Axe), or smashing altars in your "main" world for the ores (which I really don't recommend, since it actually generates more Corruption/Crimson). There isn't really a better solution than the typical Clentaminator strategy yet.
 
You could do the same in a single world; it just involves alterations — like fishing up crates for ores, using a weaker pickaxe (or beating the mechs for Pickaxe Axe), or smashing altars in your "main" world for the ores (which I really don't recommend, since it actually generates more Corruption/Crimson). There isn't really a better solution than the typical Clentaminator strategy yet.
Problem is it's too late for me to do this method as I already pwned several altars. Perhaps there is a more universal option?
 
Problem is it's too late for me to do this method as I already pwned the altars. Perhaps there is a more universal option?
Destroying altars generates random blocks of Hallow and Corruption/Crimson in the world, so besides using third-party (cheat) tools like Terramap and TEdit, there isn't a reliable way to quickly identify them all and get rid of them before they spread. Every method I know of for reliably containing biome spread involves knowing where every single source of the spread is.
 
Destroying altars generates random blocks of Hallow and Corruption/Crimson in the world, so besides using third-party (cheat) tools like Terramap and TEdit, there isn't a reliable way to quickly identify them all and get rid of them before they spread. Every method I know of for reliably containing biome spread involves knowing where every single source of the spread is.
Another question of mine (unimportant) is why does this feature exist in the game? Just to make the process even more tedious? I thought the main goal of a game is to be fun..
 
@dannyshmanny
Hey there, I guess I'm here to address some of your concerns, but to do that properly I'm gonna have to ask you some questions too?
  1. How do you know about the "V"? Who/ what told you about it?
  2. What compelled you to use the Five Tile Wide "tunnel method" as a preemptive countermeasure to the World Evils?
  3. What do you hope to gain by 100% cleansing your world of Evil? Did you know certain hidden items are locked behind Biome progression?
  4. Did you know that there are a number of ways to "agitate" the world Evil, making it nearly impossible to completely eliminate?
  5. Is the current state of the World Evil in your game ruining your experience?
The reason I'm asking you these questions, is that preventing World Evil spread is actually quite easy to do, you just have to know where to be, where to go, and what to do during certain points of progression, if not, things will eventually get out of control.

For example, if you knew about the "V", why didn't you play around that instead of using the "Tunnel Method"? If you knew about the "Tunnel Method", why did you decide to "Crack Alters" for ore instead of Fishing? You where using all of these Advanced Gameplay methods of preventing the spread of World Evil, but then also working against yourself, making your efforts pointless... why?

The only thing I can assume is that you were mislead, or you where following someone else's gameplay methods without understanding their endgame [which would include their bad habits as well].
-------------------

How do I cope with the World Evil?

If it's just me alone, I avoid killing the Wall of Flesh for as long as I can possibly hold off. I spend time developing my Map in the ways I want it to be, specifically, before it all goes to ****! I fish if I want ores and I rarely if ever crack Alters. I'm usually pretty good when it comes to dealing with World Evil, but I'm also never upset when it gets out of hand, because by that time, my World is already established. I just "keep it clean" so that things function properly, I've never chased after a 100% Pure World.
 
Red has stated that he shall soon be introducing a potion that highlights all evils in your vicinity, That combined with a clentaminator should make the process a lot quicker and more effecient
 
Red has stated that he shall soon be introducing a potion that highlights all evils in your vicinity, That combined with a clentaminator should make the process a lot quicker and more effecient
That's what I said in the edit of my post, I am looking forward for it
 
@dannyshmanny
Hey there, I guess I'm here to address some of your concerns, but to do that properly I'm gonna have to ask you some questions too?
  1. How do you know about the "V"? Who/ what told you about it?
  2. What compelled you to use the Five Tile Wide "tunnel method" as a preemptive countermeasure to the World Evils?
  3. What do you hope to gain by 100% cleansing your world of Evil? Did you know certain hidden items are locked behind Biome progression?
  4. Did you know that there are a number of ways to "agitate" the world Evil, making it nearly impossible to completely eliminate?
  5. Is the current state of the World Evil in your game ruining your experience?
The reason I'm asking you these questions, is that preventing World Evil spread is actually quite easy to do, you just have to know where to be, where to go, and what to do during certain points of progression, if not, things will eventually get out of control.

For example, if you knew about the "V", why didn't you play around that instead of using the "Tunnel Method"? If you knew about the "Tunnel Method", why did you decide to "Crack Alters" for ore instead of Fishing? You where using all of these Advanced Gameplay methods of preventing the spread of World Evil, but then also working against yourself, making your efforts pointless... why?

The only thing I can assume is that you were mislead, or you where following someone else's gameplay methods without understanding their endgame [which would include their bad habits as well].
-------------------

How do I cope with the World Evil?

If it's just me alone, I avoid killing the Wall of Flesh for as long as I can possibly hold off. I spend time developing my Map in the ways I want it to be, specifically, before it all goes to ****! I fish if I want ores and I rarely if ever crack Alters. I'm usually pretty good when it comes to dealing with World Evil, but I'm also never upset when it gets out of hand, because by that time, my World is already established. I just "keep it clean" so that things function properly, I've never chased after a 100% Pure World.
1. I know about the V because I saw a lot of tutorials on youtube (not just one, to be safe) and all of them stated that in the aftermath of the WoF, a V-shape of Hallow and Evil will form starting from the bottommost center of the world. I did [what felt like] overpreparation for quite some time pre-hardmode and in that time I wondered if the wiki or a tutorial on youtube says what the exact distance (in tiles) of the spawn to the first hallow/evil points is but I didn't find such information. Unfortunately I made this rant post after Hardmode begun as a result of the overwhelming I felt. But I did make a pre-hardmode backup world before this so atleast I have another chance if all goes wrong.
2. It's simple really, a tutorial said it; to prevent evil from spreading to the dirt/stone near pylons and common places (also it's not five tiles wide, it's three)
3. I don't think I said I wanted all of evil to disappear, in fact I said that I wanted to keep the pre-existing corruption biomes (surface and little underground). I just want to remove the rest of the corruption and hallow from the world (sorry if I worded my post in a confusing way). I am aware that certain items originate from these biomes, that's why I want to keep some places corrupt.
4. Yes, I know (from the hard way) that cracking altars will do such thing, and sadly i already did so, as you know.
5. Well, I can't say that the evil is *everywhere*, but I know that it has 100% potential and that obviously every time I purify corrupt underground places it comes back. Obviously I can't see everything in my map (I would need many hours to explore/reveal the entire underground) so searching evil is made harder (without the existence of the upcoming Biome Sight Potions). The game is not unplayable, but said purple stuff in my map just frustrates me, that's all.

I cracked the altars even though I had used the tunnel method because at that time all I knew that it would do was just blessing the world with ores and letting mechanical bosses automatically randomly spawn at night time. I had known that cracking altars produces random evils around the world when I saw a tiny underground hallow biome with crystals in the middle of Purity (as in normal stone and stuff) and Corruption, when the real Hallow biome is located in the other side of the map. At first I thought it was a bug because there was no hallow around it before it happened, but when I saw a forum post (PC - Random spots of hollow/corruption) with my same situation, I learned that altars caused it.

Also I don't really like fishing that much as it feels as grindy and boring as purifying the underground.

The tutorials on youtube I mentioned were mostly made by channels like Salendrak, FrenchFryArcade, Zuzucorn.
Also when I mentioned that I felt like I was overpreparing the WoF bossfight and hardmode itself at that time, that was influenced by this video (youtu.be/R43XqlgRN4g) which although satirical, told me that I shouldn't keep on preparing and just get on with general game progression so I can have fun. So that's what I did, I stopped watching even more tutorials and continued.
 
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Perhaps there is a mod that can help you achieve your goals? I know that there is a world editor out there that can change x block to y block, and I have used that to purify worlds before. I think it's called "TEdit"
 
Perhaps there is a mod that can help you achieve your goals? I know that there is a world editor out there that can change x block to y block, and I have used that to purify worlds before. I think it's called "TEdit"
This would definitely help me, in fact it's the best way to do it without hassle, but I don't like using cheats unfortunately.
 
Before I address your concerns, I think it's important that you know a few things.

Firstly, I'd advise strongly against getting any of your tutorials or advice on Terraria from YouTubers. There's a few reasons I say this, so allow me to explain some of 'em.
  1. You have to keep in mind that many of the things Content Creators do in Terraria is to entertain viewers, not because it's "fun". A natural, organic playthrough, will absolutely not have the same beats as a "Let's Play" or a "How to get X,Y,Z tutorial" where you're seeking eyeballs; not necessarily a "good time".
  2. Your personal, private goals, will rarely ever match those of a person seeking viewership. For example, there's normally no meaningful reasons to obsess over The Hallow or any of the World Evils. There's no special prize or reward for doing so [at least none that I'm currently aware of]. This is normally the goal of someone trying to impress viewers, a burden that a normal person shouldn't be struggling with privately.
1. I know about the V because I saw a lot of tutorials on youtube (not just one, to be safe)
That explains a LOT, but I'm here to inform you that this kind of information is typically only relevant to a person who plans on "metagaming". In short, knowing this information would allow a veteran to counter either the Hallow or World Evil in a very specific way, or would allow them to experiment with the game in ways that no one would normally consider testing out.

If you're just trying to have a good time with a few friends over pretzels and lemonade, information like this only gets in the way, and will greatly shift your goals into the realm of "unreasonable" and "burdensome", because the tireless number of hours it'd take to dig-up each and every tile created by this mechanic is mind-numbing. Why someone would want to do this? "Viewership", which is something you shouldn't be worried about unless you're posting this stuff on some kind of entertainment platform.

2. It's simple really, a tutorial said it; to prevent evil from spreading to the dirt/stone near pylons and common places (also it's not five tiles wide, it's three)
...actually it's a bit more technical than that, because the way "infection" spreads when it comes to Wall Tiles is a different ruleset, but that's not what's important. Just know this, if you want to counter World Evil using "tiles" as a reference, try paying attention to "Living Trees", they tend to be a natural countermeasure to World Evil spread; if you copy their pattern, you're doing the "Tunnel Method" correctly.

3. I don't think I said I wanted all of evil to disappear, in fact I said that I wanted to keep the pre-existing corruption biomes (surface and little underground). I just want to remove the rest of the corruption and hallow from the world (sorry if I worded my post in a confusing way). I am aware that certain items originate from these biomes, that's why I want to keep some places corrupt.
This is actually pretty manageable and doable, but then I'd have to ask you why? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this? Unless you want to build something very specific, or you have some big building project in mind [which means you wouldn't be frustrated anyhow, because terraforming is just part of the process], you're just setting up an arbitrary goal that'll leave you feeling empty and burned-out after you've accomplished it. 🤷‍♂️ 🍵

Trying to do what you're doing now, is a LOT of work... for nothing, really, especially if you're not even working on some kind of building project.

4. Yes, I know (from the hard way) that cracking altars will do such thing, and sadly i already did so, as you know.
Which is a common mistake people make in the Forums that I refer to as... "metagaming without any context".

In short, it's suggesting that you're breaking the game down to it's mechanical parts without any good reason for doing so. It's like gathering all of these numbers, facts and measurements in your head, that you don't plan on actually using for anything other than "bragging rights".

For clarity sake, the reason a player would want to know the exact number of tiles it takes before the game recognizes a certain locations as a "Biome", would be to create a project, using the least number of required blocks possible, which would maybe be to also create an "illusion" of some kind, or some sort of impressive machine maybe. Learning this to impress your friends however, would be a massive waste of energy and time, yours and theirs. 🤔 🤷‍♂️

5. Well, I can't say that the evil is *everywhere*, but I know that it has 100% potential and that obviously every time I purify corrupt underground places it comes back. Obviously I can't see everything in my map (I would need many hours to explore/reveal the entire underground) so searching evil is made harder (without the existence of the upcoming Biome Sight Potions). The game is not unplayable, but said purple stuff in my map just frustrates me, that's all.
Well, it's doing what it's supposed to do... frustrate you. When the Wall of Flesh is destroyed, all h*ll is supposed to break loose, and you're supposed to feel the effects of that choice. I would strongly recommend against obsessing over it, because controlling a run-away World Evil is harder to deal with than Master Mode, FTW Moon Lord, no one has figured that **** out yet, LoL!

On the other hand, if you have an audience of 500,000+ viewers to impress, then you obviously do spend 20+ long hours digging and removing it [evil blocks], but ONLY if you have 500,000+ views to impress! If you're just a regular person like the rest of us, save your sanity, just find something else to do...

The tutorials on youtube I mentioned were mostly made by channels like...I stopped watching even more tutorials and continued.
Do yourself a favor and stay away from YouTube. If you get stuck, I mean like, forreal stuck on something, go to the official Wiki.
 
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Before I address your concerns, I think it's important that you know a few things.

Firstly, I'd advise strongly against getting any of your tutorials or advice on Terraria from YouTubers. There's a few reasons I say this, so allow me to explain some of 'em.
  1. You have to keep in mind that many of the things Content Creators do in Terraria is to entertain viewers, not because it's "fun". A natural, organic playthrough, will absolutely not have the same beats as a "Let's Play" or a "How to get X,Y,Z tutorial" where you're seeking eyeballs; not necessarily a "good time".
  2. Your personal, private goals, will rarely ever match those of a person seeking viewership. For example, there's normally no meaningful reasons to obsess over The Hallow or any of the World Evils. There's no special prize or reward for doing so [at least none that I'm currently aware of]. This is normally the goal of someone trying to impress viewers, a burden that a normal person shouldn't be struggling with privately.

That explains a LOT, but I'm here to inform you that this kind of information is typically only relevant to a person who plans on "metagaming". In short, knowing this information would allow a veteran to counter either the Hallow or World Evil in a very specific way, or would allow them to experiment with the game in ways that no one would normally consider testing out.

If you're just trying to have a good time with a few friends over pretzels and lemonade, information like this only gets in the way, and will greatly shift your goals into the realm of "unreasonable" and "burdensome", because the tireless number of hours it'd take to dig-up each and every tile created by this mechanic is mind-numbing. Why someone would want to do this? "Viewership", which is something you shouldn't be worried about unless you're posting this stuff on some kind of entertainment platform.


...actually it's a bit more technical than that, because the way "infection" spreads when it comes to Wall Tiles is a different ruleset, but that's not what's important. Just know this, if you want to counter World Evil using "tiles" as a reference, try paying attention to "Living Trees", they tend to be a natural countermeasure to World Evil spread; if you copy their pattern, you're doing the "Tunnel Method" correctly.


This is actually pretty manageable and doable, but then I'd have to ask you why? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this? Unless you want to build something very specific, or you have some big building project in mind [which means you wouldn't be frustrated anyhow, because terraforming is just part of the process], you're just setting up an arbitrary goal that'll leave you feeling empty and burned-out after you've accomplished it. 🤷‍♂️ 🍵

Trying to do what you're doing now, is a LOT of work... for nothing, really, especially if you're not even working on some kind of building project.


Which is a common mistake people make in the Forums that I refer to as... "metagaming without any context".

In short, it's suggesting that you're breaking the game down to it's mechanical parts without any good reason for doing so. It's like gathering all of these numbers, facts and measurements in your head, that you don't plan on actually using for anything other than "bragging rights".

For clarity sake, the reason a player would want to know the exact number of tiles it takes before the game recognizes a certain locations as a "Biome", would be to create a project, using the least number of required blocks possible, which would maybe be to also create an "illusion" of some kind, or some sort of impressive machine maybe. Learning this to impress your friends however, would be a massive waste of energy and time, yours and theirs. 🤔 🤷‍♂️


Well, it's doing what it's supposed to do... frustrate you. When the Wall of Flesh is destroyed, all h*ll is supposed to break loose, and you're supposed to feel the effects of that choice. I would strongly recommend against obsessing over it, because controlling a run-away World Evil is harder to deal with than Master Mode, FTW Moon Lord, no one has figured that **** out yet, LoL!

On the other hand, if you have an audience of 500,000+ viewers to impress, then you obviously do spend 20+ long hours digging and removing it [evil blocks], but ONLY if you have 500,000+ views to impress! If you're just a regular person like the rest of us, save your sanity, just find something else to do...


Do yourself a favor and stay away from YouTube. If you get stuck, I mean like, forreal stuck on something, go to the official Wiki.
So, as a recap, what I understood was that I should stop obsessing over an intentionally negative game mechanic and get on with the actual gameplay. Also watching/reading tutorials and wiki pages before you even do anything is metagaming, and I've been doing this since I started. The objective should be about survival, not beauty. Since I'm starting I didn't know what's the "correct" way of doing things is so I just feared doing it first time and instead overprepped myself with metagaming.
Also I didn't know before that living trees were a natural barrier to evils, that's cool. Provided if I stay patient, the upcoming update 1.4.4 would reduce the annoyance of biome spread (Biome Sight Potions, plus the jungle won't be converted to dirt anymore if infected.)
Despite it being unimportant that I purify most of the world technically speaking, I still would suggest that a fair (endgame) way to make the purification process a breeze (like having clentaminator upgrade to clentaminate a whole [vertical] chunk of the world etc)
 
@dannyshmanny one thing I don't want to do here, is suggest to you how it is you should be playing Terraria.

"My only hope is that you actually give yourself, your friends, your co-op partners [whoever you plan to play with], a fair shot at discovering what the game is [to you] on your own terms."

What that means, will look different for everyone [in some cases], if given the chance to actually do so. Terraria is absolutely NOT the same game to/ for me, that it is for many other players in these forums [and Steam], and our old debates about Summoner Class, and basic progression, are a shining examples of that fact.

The only reason that I'm often convinced that I'm right [in most instances], is because I'm one of the few with a strong opinion about Summoner Class [and the game in general], that refuses to torment myself [or grind], undervaluing my personal time, by obsessing over the smallest, most minute things that aren't worth obsessing over. Filling your head with useless facts that change a 20 minute session, into a 6-hour grind, for slightly better stats, is not my idea of efficiency.

"You've come at a great time in the games life, where Terraria can be played in many different and interesting ways..."

...there's no such things as a "Right Way to Play" this game anymore, most of those abusive features have been removed [and shall remain nameless, at least from me]. There's nothing wrong with taking your time, discovering things on your own, and making stupid mistakes, that's the entire point of a "First Playthrough". Your second time around is when you start trying to optimize things and make better decisions, based on what YOU think is important, not some YouTuber...
 
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