Don't Dig Up First Impressions

Xylia

Terrarian
Okay, so I tried the new Don't Dig Up Seed, which is accessed by typing

dontdigup

In the world seed.

You start on a small-ish island in the middle of a lava lake, with lots of Ash Wood Trees, weak versions of lava slimes, and the tax collector (not the guide!).

As the title suggests, you need to go up, rather than down and thankfully, to the left and right of the spawn are a bunch of pots, which have a large chance of dropping rope. I got ~1600 rope from all the pots near the spawn.

Don't even think about building out away from the island; there's something about that island, perhaps the grass that grows on it, that secretly makes the starting biome and without it, you start seeing flaming bats, imps, demons that will kill you fast if you're starting fresh.

Weirdly enough, mimics were spawning on the island if you get too close to the edge which is weird, that implies the world is already hardmode before you start (maybe the WoF was removed from the progression?)

I don't know why, but 10 seconds after I built a rope up to a Mushroom biome above me, King Slime immediately spawned and killed me which I found rather eye-roll worthy. And apparently, this was also during nighttime, so zombies and weirdly enough, floating eyes started spawning in the layer above spawn. Woulda been nice to get some form of clock so I know when it's safe to even try to go up there to get some materials other than wood, but eh.

Not sure what was up with the King Slime spawn, as I'm at the center of the world and there was no slime rain, but I hope that's not going to be a regular thing, hopefully it was just a bug or a fluke or something, otherwise this will make the map nigh-impossible until you get some gear to actually fight that thing with.

It seems like the starting strat is to build a few homes while waiting on the tax collector to get some coin to get to you, break all the pots (mind the mimics...) and maybe, I don't know, get some platforms built up, could maybe get a few hundred arrows and kill the mimics with bows while on platforms or rope? Not sure. Either way, the Merchant is easy to spawn with the Tax Collector giving you money, and the Guide spawns right away, and I'd guess that getting the 1 gold for a piggybank would be one of the first objectives (after getting a bug net, but don't forget, you can't catch any of the bait critters, but gem rabbits will spawn and you can catch those for 10s a piece!)

An interesting map, but really the overpowered enemies spawns are a bit of a turn-off. I can understand "harder difficulty" but spawning bosses within the first 30 minutes of play when you have no equipment seems a bit over-the-top cheap to me.

/shrug

But like I said, maybe that King Slime was a bug.

EDIT: Also, there are ZERO healing items. No Mushrooms, no chests that you'd find potions in, the pots don't drop potions, nada.
 
Oh that sounds neat, i'm gonna try it, though I'm not scared of the enemies I play on Journey mode anyways.

.... I'm scared.
 
Ok, this world definitely defies a LOT of rules. Trees grow underground, wind music plays underground, and I found a Magic Dagger in a brown chest not that far away from spawn. Oh, and there's a literal crapton of iron, like, everywhere. Not seen much else other than tin, though.
 
Ok, this world definitely defies a LOT of rules. Trees grow underground, wind music plays underground, and I found a Magic Dagger in a brown chest not that far away from spawn. Oh, and there's a literal crapton of iron, like, everywhere. Not seen much else other than tin, though.
Oh cool, also I found that mimics can spawn PRE hardmode.
 
Also ... pay attention to the ground. There are a LOT of boulder traps, they are literally everywhere. But then, so are Life Crystals.
 
So, this is going to be a bit spoilerific...

I made it to the surface, and.... it's a starry sky with no sun, thus no light even during the daytime. The entire surface appears to be the evil biome (for me it was Crimson) and the crimson enemies seemed stronger and faster than they would be normally, hitting for 35-38 damage while wearing full Tungsten Armor and seeming to take an extra hit or two to kill, even with a blood butcherer. There are sky islands, but they are made out of meat blocks, I saw a chest but couldn't get to it, as gravity seems to work weird up there, I was taking damage and the death message said "(player) left orbit." I got up to there with grav potions and even when trying to make sure I switched gravity to get back down to that island, that didn't seem to work either. Not sure how you're supposed to get to those chests.

There was also a Lihzarhd temple on the surface that was painted bright red and it spawned Lihzards and the chest in front of the door had standard Lihzarhd Temple treasure.

Those mimics on the starting island? I killed one and it dropped... a shoe spikes. Kinda disappointing as I already had one, that was better.

Also, breaking pots sometimes releases slimes carrying stars, so might wanna watch breaking pots early-game or if you're wounded or standing on a high ledge.

EDIT:
Zallaraxium said:
Oh cool, also I found that mimics can spawn PRE hardmode.

The only time I ever saw a mimic Pre-Hardmode before this update, was spawning one via a statue, and usually it doesn't drop anything.. unless they changed that, of course.
 
I wonder how a run of this world with a pre-built character would work.
Maybe one with weapons and armour already, but no building or mining materials.
 
That would defeat half of the challenge of the map.

The biggest challenge I've found, thusfar, is trying to figure out how progression in this world is supposed to work.

I think the next step is to kill the BoC, obviously, but not sure where to go after that. I found the underground desert, and the jungle thusfar (they are way closer to the center than on most worlds, and are exclusively underground), so that looks like a likely path.

Get the Boss Pickaxe and then maybe do Ye Olde Skip straight up to the Volcano (which sounds Sweet AF now) Sword and then also the hellfire armor or whatever it's called, I forget. Then... once I have that stuff...

Then it's time for a nice ole romp on the surface.

EDIT: On the subject of swords... Blood Butcherer is actually awesome (or, well, more awesome than it was) now.
 
Not at all. There's a ton of Ash Wood Trees near the spawn, which you can make Ash Wood items from, including housing. Said trees also drop acorns, which means such wood is infinitely renewable.
 
My impression is the underground forest is pretty and between how moutanious the surface is, the enternal darkness, and the "Living" Trees not having leaves the surface feels wrong. I've seen the top of one tree nest to the base of another and one's tunnel ending right at another tree's base.

I like it.
 
Can confirm. Source: I liked building my base in dangerous places even before Pylons. NPC Happiness isn't a thing on this seed, so maybe I'll build in the Dungeon again. :p

Also, it feels wrong to have Seagulls spawning in my Cavern Pylon that's just above Hell. I guess those birds really are demons?
 
NPC Happiness doesn't exist? Huh. I didn't notice that. Here, I was spacing homes out when I coulda just built an apartment complex o' boxes, lol.
 
Something the Wiki has wrong (for now) is it says the Temple and Dungeon are painted Red. That's only on Crimson Worlds. Corruption Worlds have Purple.

Another thing that makes the surface feel wrong that I didn't realize before, every tree generates cut off. No tree tops, only dead trees.
NPC Happiness doesn't exist? Huh. I didn't notice that. Here, I was spacing homes out when I coulda just built an apartment complex o' boxes, lol.
Pylons still matter. (Don't know if they're buyable or if you have to bring them from another world. I don't have NPCs that sell stuff yet.) That's why I always put my Cavern Pylon between the bottom of the Dungeon and Hell. Easy access to both. A good place for a Pylon would be the surface or Space if I can't purify enough of the Surface, which is a problem when... Let's just put it this way. When you're on the Surface, run. Just run.
 
Pylons are indeed available, and I would imagine that the only requirements are for population existing nearby and of course, the biome has to match, but yes, all NPCs sell Pylons no matter what in this seed.

Also, the Surface?

Get the Volcano. It has plenty of knockback and two swings obliterates everything in your path pre-Hardmode, at least if you're playing on Classic. Probably not so much on other modes, but after checking around up there for awhile, unless you're hankering for some sky island loot (which is very dangerous to attempt), there's not really anything ON the surface. And running actually makes it worse, as the max enemy count is like 20 or something absurd and the enemies move faster than you.

It is annoying but it's better in the long run to kill the crap as it comes to you rather than trying to run away from it, at least unless you have wings or something. If you don't, then you'll simply get overwhelmed when the stuff inevitably catches up to you, which they will, because the surface terrain is incredibly nasty and there's no natural light up there.
 
Weirdly enough, mimics were spawning on the island if you get too close to the edge which is weird, that implies the world is already hardmode before you start (maybe the WoF was removed from the progression?
Mimics do spawn pre-hardmode, but they only drop pre-hardmode chest loot until you beat the wall of flesh.
I don't know why, but 10 seconds after I built a rope up to a Mushroom biome above me, King Slime immediately spawned and killed me which I found rather eye-roll worthy. And apparently, this was also during nighttime, so zombies and weirdly enough, floating eyes started spawning in the layer above spawn. Woulda been nice to get some form of clock so I know when it's safe to even try to go up there to get some materials other than wood, but eh.

Not sure what was up with the King Slime spawn, as I'm at the center of the world and there was no slime rain, but I hope that's not going to be a regular thing, hopefully it was just a bug or a fluke or something, otherwise this will make the map nigh-impossible until you get some gear to actually fight that thing with.

But like I said, maybe that King Slime was a bug.

EDIT: Also, there are ZERO healing items. No Mushrooms, no chests that you'd find potions in, the pots don't drop potions, nada.
The king slime spawn happened to me too. You must've killed a slime 10 seconds after you entered the biome, because apparently every time you do that, there's a very small chance King Slime will spawn (I know because my PC isn't the fastest, and his spawn was heralded by a brief lag spike that started with me killing the slime and ended with him spawning), and you just got lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it). Fortunately, I had lucked out with an enchanted sword background object that dropped a Terragrim earlier, and trounced King Slime fairly easily as a result.
Not entirely sure whether this can be repeated multiple times.
 
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