NeoPhantom
Skeletron Prime
This was written on 2016 during the first month of the update. Most of the information here no longer applies!
Don't necro this old thing complaining how it doesn't seem viable because this thing is OLD!
Expert mode is hard, but not impossible. Even without preparations, it is quite possible to just blast through sooner or later... Unfortunately, without careful planning all that awaits you in those first few days is death, death and maybe survival with 5 HP only to die from status or fall damage.
I'm not kidding here, I dare you to go hardcore on survival mode without thinking things through!!! See how long you last!
Eherm... Anyways, suffice to say there is one way to at least survive prehardmode without any deaths what-so-ever if you play your cards right: the Cheese It Strategy to put it simply.
Step 1: Survival comes First
When slimes kill you in four (4) attacks, you know you are in trouble and need a place of respite in order to just survive. A normal house just won't cut it though as zombies can open doors as if it were bloodmoon all the time in expert mode.
Fortunately, the AI of the zombies wasn't messed around with too much and slightly deeper zombie pits are sufficient to trap them and keep them away from the house. Naturally, you'll want one zombie pit on either side of your house.
In case you don't know what a zombie pit is...
This is a simple version of it. You'll want one slightly deeper and longer so that the zombies don't jump across from one side to the other avoiding the hole. A seven block wide pit with a single index on the top on both extremities SHOULD suffice. The hole itself can be however deep you want it to be, within reason of course. Using rope of any kind, you can make passageways in, out and across this pit which the zombies won't be able to use themselves to escape, unlike with platforms. Bear in mind that slimes jump quite high and might escape this trap easily if its not deep enough though...
Now that you know what you will have on both sides of the house as protection, you need to know something else about the houses... The NPC currently outclass your combat potential, USE THAT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. If you build the NPC houses to have a 2 block connection with the zombie pits (using platform for walls, they AND you will be able to attack the enemies in relative safety.
The best way to set this up is by making 5 NPC houses next to each other, connected by doors or platforms. Each room should be 12H x 5W counting walls, roof and floor (Interior 10H x 3W). Workbench, chair and torch are needed as well of course. The leftmost and rightmost houses should have two platforms and a block connecting them to the zombie pit (contrary to the other rooms which must be connected by 3 platforms or a door.
This set allows the NPCs to attack the slimes during the day through the holes and the single npc who lives in the extreme rooms attack the zombies at night. Early on, get the guide. The next should be the Merchant or the Demolitionist, both of which have ranged attacks in the form of throwing knives and grenades.
Above these five rooms, build your temporary house where you can hide out when in danger. Keep a campfire lit here as you can easily build one quite early.
Step 2: Spawning and Grinding
The next step is getting the NPCs you need, in this case you can exclusively say its the Demolitionist, so explore the surface and break all pots you find till you get some Grenades. Once you get them, return to your house and farm some gel and money with the guides help.
Soon, the Demolitionist will spawn and allow you to buy explosives for some coppers. Your purpose right now is to buy at least 30 Bombs and turn them into Sticky Bombs. Buy yourself some more grenades for protection as well, for we are now going to take the first and only risk in Pre-Hardmode.
Step 3- Dessert Raid
We now head to the dessert and find the entrance to the underground dessert biome while avoiding the enemies on the surface. Build yourself a cactus sword while here as its knockback will help out quite a bit!
On the underground, remember this: sword the flying antlions, box in the running antlions with blocks, grenade the worms. Box yourself if surrounded! You should be able to survive like this in the underground dessert as long as you don't go to another biome.
Now, why are we here? Simple, Fossils & Extractinator. The fossils are too hard to destroy with a pickaxe, so use the stick bombs to gather them. Once you find the Extractinator in one of the dessert cabins (which almost always contain one) make your way back to your house with a recall potion which you should've obtained from any chest you might've found on the surface or underground in the cabins.
Back at the house, extract the items from the fossils. Sell everything except the Fossils, this should net you enough to spawn the Merchant if you didn't have him before. From him, buy the iron/lead anvil and see if you have enough to make yourself the fossil armor (even if only a single piece). If you need more, buy some more bombs, make stcky bombs and return to the dpundergroubd dessert. Repeat until you can make the fossil armor as well as at least 50 Fossil daggers which are relatively easy to make.
Now properly equipped, go to the underground dessert and gather more fossils in peace since you can easily kill everything in there with your throwing weapons. The 75% chance to not consume ammo basically means that instead of 50 attacks you'll get around 200+.
Continue until you can make 500+ Fossil Daggers and 500+ Fossil Lances. Congratulations, you are now equipped enough to explore the world unhindered by most enemies! Almost!
Step 4 - The World
There is one biome you must NOT enter no matter what yet, the Marble Biome has enemies who can 1-hit-kill you even with the armor, as well as another that can turn you into stone for several seconds! Unless you are VERY VERY careful, don't enter it!
Once you get at least 5 Heart Crystals, consider yourself ready for the Eye of Cthulhu if you know how to dodge and built an arena. If you don't and/or didn't, then 10 hearts. This amount can be decreased if you found speed accessories (particularly boots).
With the Shield of Cthulhu, battles have become a bit easier as you can bash enemies if they get to close or even spam the charge until the enemy is dead. The game has become seemingly easier, but DO NOT let your guard down.
The next bosses are Eater of Worlds and Brain of Cthulhu. If it's the first, the same strategies for easy win in normal mode apply to this fight. Guide the worm to the corrupted surface arena and use grenades or fossil weapons to demolish this entity!
However, the Brain will have a dangerous trick on its sleeve once his minions are dead, so prepare a good arena for that individual and get yourself a spear or else be prepared to run and dodge the entire fight!
Queen Bee should not be too hard by now as you've had practice dodging, but don't neglect the arena and look at your consumables! The main problem with the Queen is her summoned Bees, which are dreadful but can be ridded easily with a grenade or two. Just jump, dodge, dash, and shoot yourself a victory.
Now that you precticed with the Queen, its time to get real and challenge skelletron. Truth be told, you just might die in this fight, but if you keep a cool head and keep moving you'll find this guy to be not as scary as you feared he was... The dungeon will be hellish as usual, just get the cobalt shield and run away, you can get the other stuff once you get molten armor, which is your next destination.
From here on, its basic playthrough: get hellstone and a bucket of lava to make an obsidian farm. Make the high def Molten armor to explore dangerous areas with less danger of dying.
Quirpte honestly, at this point you just need to decide between farming for accessories now that the world is still "easy" or jump straight to hardmode. His bless you if you decide to go after the accessories afterwards...
I kept the boss strategies to a minimum after the player is supposed to get a hang of the class, but if needed you can always find some videos on the net of people defeating the bosses. Pedguin in particular pretty much trashed all the way to hard mode with the fossil armor on Twitch. The videos are still there if you are interested in seeing more of this class.
Don't necro this old thing complaining how it doesn't seem viable because this thing is OLD!
Expert mode is hard, but not impossible. Even without preparations, it is quite possible to just blast through sooner or later... Unfortunately, without careful planning all that awaits you in those first few days is death, death and maybe survival with 5 HP only to die from status or fall damage.
I'm not kidding here, I dare you to go hardcore on survival mode without thinking things through!!! See how long you last!
Eherm... Anyways, suffice to say there is one way to at least survive prehardmode without any deaths what-so-ever if you play your cards right: the Cheese It Strategy to put it simply.
Step 1: Survival comes First
When slimes kill you in four (4) attacks, you know you are in trouble and need a place of respite in order to just survive. A normal house just won't cut it though as zombies can open doors as if it were bloodmoon all the time in expert mode.
Fortunately, the AI of the zombies wasn't messed around with too much and slightly deeper zombie pits are sufficient to trap them and keep them away from the house. Naturally, you'll want one zombie pit on either side of your house.
In case you don't know what a zombie pit is...
This is a simple version of it. You'll want one slightly deeper and longer so that the zombies don't jump across from one side to the other avoiding the hole. A seven block wide pit with a single index on the top on both extremities SHOULD suffice. The hole itself can be however deep you want it to be, within reason of course. Using rope of any kind, you can make passageways in, out and across this pit which the zombies won't be able to use themselves to escape, unlike with platforms. Bear in mind that slimes jump quite high and might escape this trap easily if its not deep enough though...
Now that you know what you will have on both sides of the house as protection, you need to know something else about the houses... The NPC currently outclass your combat potential, USE THAT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. If you build the NPC houses to have a 2 block connection with the zombie pits (using platform for walls, they AND you will be able to attack the enemies in relative safety.
The best way to set this up is by making 5 NPC houses next to each other, connected by doors or platforms. Each room should be 12H x 5W counting walls, roof and floor (Interior 10H x 3W). Workbench, chair and torch are needed as well of course. The leftmost and rightmost houses should have two platforms and a block connecting them to the zombie pit (contrary to the other rooms which must be connected by 3 platforms or a door.
This set allows the NPCs to attack the slimes during the day through the holes and the single npc who lives in the extreme rooms attack the zombies at night. Early on, get the guide. The next should be the Merchant or the Demolitionist, both of which have ranged attacks in the form of throwing knives and grenades.
Above these five rooms, build your temporary house where you can hide out when in danger. Keep a campfire lit here as you can easily build one quite early.
Step 2: Spawning and Grinding
The next step is getting the NPCs you need, in this case you can exclusively say its the Demolitionist, so explore the surface and break all pots you find till you get some Grenades. Once you get them, return to your house and farm some gel and money with the guides help.
Soon, the Demolitionist will spawn and allow you to buy explosives for some coppers. Your purpose right now is to buy at least 30 Bombs and turn them into Sticky Bombs. Buy yourself some more grenades for protection as well, for we are now going to take the first and only risk in Pre-Hardmode.
Step 3- Dessert Raid
We now head to the dessert and find the entrance to the underground dessert biome while avoiding the enemies on the surface. Build yourself a cactus sword while here as its knockback will help out quite a bit!
On the underground, remember this: sword the flying antlions, box in the running antlions with blocks, grenade the worms. Box yourself if surrounded! You should be able to survive like this in the underground dessert as long as you don't go to another biome.
Now, why are we here? Simple, Fossils & Extractinator. The fossils are too hard to destroy with a pickaxe, so use the stick bombs to gather them. Once you find the Extractinator in one of the dessert cabins (which almost always contain one) make your way back to your house with a recall potion which you should've obtained from any chest you might've found on the surface or underground in the cabins.
Back at the house, extract the items from the fossils. Sell everything except the Fossils, this should net you enough to spawn the Merchant if you didn't have him before. From him, buy the iron/lead anvil and see if you have enough to make yourself the fossil armor (even if only a single piece). If you need more, buy some more bombs, make stcky bombs and return to the dpundergroubd dessert. Repeat until you can make the fossil armor as well as at least 50 Fossil daggers which are relatively easy to make.
Now properly equipped, go to the underground dessert and gather more fossils in peace since you can easily kill everything in there with your throwing weapons. The 75% chance to not consume ammo basically means that instead of 50 attacks you'll get around 200+.
Continue until you can make 500+ Fossil Daggers and 500+ Fossil Lances. Congratulations, you are now equipped enough to explore the world unhindered by most enemies! Almost!
Step 4 - The World
There is one biome you must NOT enter no matter what yet, the Marble Biome has enemies who can 1-hit-kill you even with the armor, as well as another that can turn you into stone for several seconds! Unless you are VERY VERY careful, don't enter it!
Once you get at least 5 Heart Crystals, consider yourself ready for the Eye of Cthulhu if you know how to dodge and built an arena. If you don't and/or didn't, then 10 hearts. This amount can be decreased if you found speed accessories (particularly boots).
With the Shield of Cthulhu, battles have become a bit easier as you can bash enemies if they get to close or even spam the charge until the enemy is dead. The game has become seemingly easier, but DO NOT let your guard down.
The next bosses are Eater of Worlds and Brain of Cthulhu. If it's the first, the same strategies for easy win in normal mode apply to this fight. Guide the worm to the corrupted surface arena and use grenades or fossil weapons to demolish this entity!
However, the Brain will have a dangerous trick on its sleeve once his minions are dead, so prepare a good arena for that individual and get yourself a spear or else be prepared to run and dodge the entire fight!
Queen Bee should not be too hard by now as you've had practice dodging, but don't neglect the arena and look at your consumables! The main problem with the Queen is her summoned Bees, which are dreadful but can be ridded easily with a grenade or two. Just jump, dodge, dash, and shoot yourself a victory.
Now that you precticed with the Queen, its time to get real and challenge skelletron. Truth be told, you just might die in this fight, but if you keep a cool head and keep moving you'll find this guy to be not as scary as you feared he was... The dungeon will be hellish as usual, just get the cobalt shield and run away, you can get the other stuff once you get molten armor, which is your next destination.
From here on, its basic playthrough: get hellstone and a bucket of lava to make an obsidian farm. Make the high def Molten armor to explore dangerous areas with less danger of dying.
Quirpte honestly, at this point you just need to decide between farming for accessories now that the world is still "easy" or jump straight to hardmode. His bless you if you decide to go after the accessories afterwards...
I kept the boss strategies to a minimum after the player is supposed to get a hang of the class, but if needed you can always find some videos on the net of people defeating the bosses. Pedguin in particular pretty much trashed all the way to hard mode with the fossil armor on Twitch. The videos are still there if you are interested in seeing more of this class.
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