World's biggest...
Skeletron
Hello there all of you cool kids! I decided to write a little guide for those of you who own the game on Xbox 360, PS3/Vita, and i think Wii U runs this version of the game too but who really knows... anyway, this guide aims to teach you how to get as far as possible in game progression while playing the tutorial world. Most of you have probably seen that big ol' tutorial button on the start screen so, I'm going to assume you have tried it out before. But for those of you who haven't, or haven't explored it as throughly as I have, I've got a few handy lists to show you.
"My son has not written this part yet. Please vacate the area or I may have to assimilate your consciousness."
THIS GUIDE WILL BE UPDATED SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE IF PEOPLE SHOW ENTHUSIASM OR MAYBE IF I'M JUST BORED IDK. It took me a long time to write just this much and it only covers the first 4 or 5 days... urgh
- You can't save on the tutorial world, meaning your console must be turned on at all times. Oof.
- You start on a large floating island that consists of these biomes, listed from from west (left) to east (right): Desert with buried fake dungeon (more on this later), a small jungle with an "underground" part and the world's only Demon Altar, a proportionally large forest biome with some buried ebonstone and for some reason blue dungeon walls, also an underground house, then another, even tinier jungle biome, a miniscule segment of forest and finally the world's only snow biome. It's worth noting that due to the island being in the sky, the Underground biome and the other biomes' Underground variants are inaccessible until the player escapes the island.
- While the player is on or underneath the island, they will not be able to die from physical damage. This excludes damage from debuffs, suffocation and drowning. This mechanic is basically the only way you'll be able to survive this playthrough, it really is a godsend.
- There is a MASSIVE ocean underneath the island that will drown any player that goes there... or will it? More on this later. Underneath the ocean there is a mega-thick layer of sand, and under that, almost-normal worldgen resumes, including the underground jungle, hell, and (to my knowledge) a single mushroom biome.
- On the west side of the world there is nothing above surface level except a large cliff made of sand, which is hidden by the ocean until you drain it... wait, draining the ocean?! Yep, that's right, more on that later.
- There is no underground snow biome or a full Corruption biome (there is one block of corrupt grass on the island which I will talk about, you guessed it, later).
- There are no life crystals... that means you have to stay at 100hp for the entire playthrough. Don't worry, we'll be discussing ways to deal with that later. Additionally, certain events (such as any natural boss spawn) require you to have a certain amount of HP to happen, which means you have to do a lot of things manually.
- No Corruption means no shadow orbs, which means no meteorite craters or goblin army. Which means no goblin NPC. Which means, NO ACCESSORY COMBINATIONS which sucks VERY BADLY.
- Having only one Demon Altar means you can't get all the hardmode ores without crate fishing. It doesn't really matter but it also means that if you smash it (which is a bad idea) you forego your ability to craft prehardmode boss summons (Suspicious Looking Eye etc.).
- I probably missed some, but its been a while since I did my tutorial playthrough so it was hard to remember.
- Fight Golem or Queen Bee.
- Fight the goblins or the pirates.
- Obtain the Goblin Tinkerer, Pirate, Nurse or Witch Doctor.
- Experience a Blood Moon.
- Generate Mythril, Orichalcum, Adamantite or Titanium ores (and Cobalt and Palladium as well if you heed my advice). These ores can still be obtained from crates.
- Combine accessories.
- Reforge items.
- Increase your max life beyond 100hp.
- Fight all bosses except the ones mentioned above.
- Fight the forces of the Pumpkin and Frost moons, as well as the Solar Eclipse.
- Obtain all NPCs except the ones listed above.
- Obtain some Meteorite gear (including the Star Cannon) due to a stash of Meteorite bars in the jungle.
- Complete the tutorial. In this case "tutorial" refers to the scripted sequence of blue boxes that appears on your screen when you first open the tutorial world. Once that is done you are free to move about the world and do whatever you want, sort of.
- Your first step after that has been done should be travelling west, through the jungle until you reach the desert. On the very edge of the world, dig down until you see pink dungeon brick. If you don't see any, try another place. Once you find the brick, move in a westerly direction until you find the edge of the brick structure. Go down and you should see a door.
- Enter the dungeon. No need to worry about Dungeon Guardians, Skeletron or Angry Bones. This is a fake dungeon anyway. Those guys won't spawn, there is no problem accessing this dungeon. Once inside, there should be two pots. One of them is scripted to always drop a Golden key. Once those are smashed move further into the dungeon. There is a floor of spikes, but just walk across them, remember the island makes you invincible.
- There should be a gold chest sitting there. Before you use the key, whack it with your pickaxe to test whether it has stuff in it or not. The reason for this is that the dungeon has TWO locked chests - one empty and one with the one item that will carry you through prehardmode single-handedly. If the chest doesn't break when you hit it, then you are free to unlock it. Inside you will find your new mystery weapon... but if that chest is empty, you are a Certified Goof and must scrap this playthrough and start a new one, back to Step 1 for you.
- BUT if you opened the RIGHT chest then you now have... a MAGIC MISSILE. A post-Skeletron weapon on the first day, nice! But right now you should get back to spawn point. If I remember correctly, you will have already built a house for the guide as the tutorial makes you do it. If not, now is the time. After that's done, and provided you still have some daylight left, you should skip step 6 and do it later. But if it's already night-time, go to step 6 now.
- Right now you have two things on your mind - finding fallen stars to upgrade your mana and getting lenses to summon the Eye of Cthulhu. Probably you should go to the jungle (to the left) to do this because it's a nice flat area, or maybe you could stand on top of the hill that is closer to your spawn. Either way, make sure to take a break from killing Demon Eyes every minute to search for fallen stars. Even one extra star on your mana bar will make combat so much easier. Star finding is also good motivation to explore the east side of your island. Keep fighting eyeballs and searching for stars till the end of the night.
- Once it's daytime, go east until you see a hole in the ground. There should be some cobwebs down it, and if my memory serves me correctly it is right next a little pond. If you've left the forest, you've gone too far. If you know the place I'm talking about, there should be a little vein of copper on the left wall of the hole, 3 tiles tall. Dig through that, and keep digging a tunnel until you break through to the other side into a small cave. Put some torches around. If you're in the right place you should see a tiny patch of corrupt grass there. Whatever you do, DON'T DESTROY IT or you're chopped. Go back to your tunnel and make sure that the Corruption can spread along it with no interruptions. Yes, we want the Corruption to spread, that's how we'll get Vile Mushrooms for the worm food.
- Your next step is to go back into that hole you dug in step 7 (the hole you found the Corruption in) and go to the furthest wall of the cave away from your tunnel. Just start digging another tunnel through there, and if you're doing it right, you should come out in an underground house! In there you can find an unlocked gold chest with an Enchanted Boomerang in it. It's nowhere near your Magic Missile in terms of usefulness but it will be essential for the EoC fight when you run out of mana, or to dispatch the servants so you don't need to waste mana on them.
- It should go witbout saying at this point that if it's night-time, you should go outside for lenses and fallen stars. Until you have at least ¾ of the maximum mana AND six lenses, you should go out and find as many as you can each night, just drop whatever you're doing rush straight out. During the day, you should explore the inside of the island, where some good loot can be found, including a Cloud in a Bottle (I don't remember exactly where) along with a Suspicious Lookin Eye, allowing you to skip farming for lenses. You should also spend some time over the next few days building houses. The best NPC for you at this stage is the Dye Trader, as the Merchant is too hard to get when you can't go underground for money. If you really want the Piggy Bank (which is sensible), your best bet would be to go to one of the jungle biomes and farm Jungle Slimes as each one drops around 5 silver, the most for any monster you can fight at the moment.
- I guess it's probably time to start talking about the EoC fight now, but truth is it's actually very simple. You need to adopt a hit-it-with-a-stick-until-it-dies mentality, except your stick is magical, which means the fight will be over pretty quickly. The only arena preparation you need to do is light the place up, as dodging only matters if you don't want to take knockback. You could literally just stand in one place, which is probably a good idea as your mana will refill faster.
- After the eye is dead, you should save your Demonite for shadow armour, because you have no need for any of the weapons right now. The only thing you should have on your mind is the worm - actually, you should probably be wanting to get off the island by now. I'll explain that in this step and the next step will detail the worm fight. OK, so you have 2 different options for Operation Island Escape. One is a very long skybridge to the east sandcliff that I recommend because it will take you straight to the dungeon, despite it being boring as bat to build. The much more FUN and LONG-TERM USEFUL method is to jump straight off your island into the ocean with a breathing reed that can be found in an easy-to-discover underwater gold chest in your island's west jungle biome. Just dig around without leaving the jungle until you find it, hopefully that won't take long. I'll go over both methods in separate spoilers.
⚠WARNING WALL OF TEXT INCOMING⚠
Alright kidlets, listen up. The first thing you gotta do is get that breathing reed we already talked about. I'm going to assume you've already got that done, otherwise GO GET THAT DONE. Now you'll want to pick the best spot on the island to jump off from (I recommend the snowy mountain on the east side, because it's closer to the dungeon and the east sandcliff, where you'll spend a lot of time. It's also the highest spot on the island which makes the jump more fun). Then just yeet yourself outta there with the breathing reed in hand. On your way down you may need to avoid a few of those nasty old jellyfish, but that'll mostly be a problem once you hit the ocean floor and they have time to accumulate. Anyway, once you're down there you need to tuck away the reed, whip out your pickaxe and DIG LIKE HELL. I probably should have mentioned this earlier so you could get a better pickaxe before the jump, but I think you'll probably survive. If you don't, no harm done anyway. Simply try again! But back to the actual plan: you only need to dig four blocks down (eight in total because you're two blocks wide) before the real clever part comes in. Quickly switch to a solid block and place it over your head to seal your tunnel. Now keep digging so as to create breathing room and jump up and take a sweet breath of air. Congrats! You have left your island successfully! Now just keep tunnelling down until you reach the underground biome. I recommend digging a full hellevator. Why? Well, remember when I mentioned (in outrageous all caps) long-term usefulness? That's about to come into play. Not only do you now have a very nice and useful hellevator, you also have a method of draining the ocean until hell, where it will evaporate. Have I lost my mind? Possibly. But the flat ocean floor is the ultimate place for a base as it's both under the protection of the island's invincibility effect AND in a central as location (pardon my French). So why not do it? Just keep an eye on the amount of water you drain, as you'll want to keep the ocean available for fishing. You should wait until there's a relatively flat expanse available for building on sticking up out of the water and then plug up the leak.
Alright kidlets, listen up. The first thing you gotta do is get that breathing reed we already talked about. I'm going to assume you've already got that done, otherwise GO GET THAT DONE. Now you'll want to pick the best spot on the island to jump off from (I recommend the snowy mountain on the east side, because it's closer to the dungeon and the east sandcliff, where you'll spend a lot of time. It's also the highest spot on the island which makes the jump more fun). Then just yeet yourself outta there with the breathing reed in hand. On your way down you may need to avoid a few of those nasty old jellyfish, but that'll mostly be a problem once you hit the ocean floor and they have time to accumulate. Anyway, once you're down there you need to tuck away the reed, whip out your pickaxe and DIG LIKE HELL. I probably should have mentioned this earlier so you could get a better pickaxe before the jump, but I think you'll probably survive. If you don't, no harm done anyway. Simply try again! But back to the actual plan: you only need to dig four blocks down (eight in total because you're two blocks wide) before the real clever part comes in. Quickly switch to a solid block and place it over your head to seal your tunnel. Now keep digging so as to create breathing room and jump up and take a sweet breath of air. Congrats! You have left your island successfully! Now just keep tunnelling down until you reach the underground biome. I recommend digging a full hellevator. Why? Well, remember when I mentioned (in outrageous all caps) long-term usefulness? That's about to come into play. Not only do you now have a very nice and useful hellevator, you also have a method of draining the ocean until hell, where it will evaporate. Have I lost my mind? Possibly. But the flat ocean floor is the ultimate place for a base as it's both under the protection of the island's invincibility effect AND in a central as location (pardon my French). So why not do it? Just keep an eye on the amount of water you drain, as you'll want to keep the ocean available for fishing. You should wait until there's a relatively flat expanse available for building on sticking up out of the water and then plug up the leak.
THIS GUIDE WILL BE UPDATED SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE IF PEOPLE SHOW ENTHUSIASM OR MAYBE IF I'M JUST BORED IDK. It took me a long time to write just this much and it only covers the first 4 or 5 days... urgh
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