Lava Charm - Why not in every world?

S

smacfarl

Terrarian
1.4.0.5

Any reason why the Lava Charm is now a rare item to even find in a world? Seems crazy. Is the idea that Terraspark boots are now not something that should be completed pre-Hardmode. Are Lava Charms intended to be a fishing only item? Seems like a weird exclusion. Why would this not be guaranteed to be in at least one chest on every seed?
 
I think it speaks volumes to the question that after looking at its wiki article to look at its drop / discovery chance, I looked at the pre 1.3 sprite and thought "I have never, ever seen that sprite before in my life."

Was it really that rare? Is it really that rare now?! Color me impressed.
 
Before Journey's End, the Lava Charm could only be gotten from the lava section of the Cavern Layer chests. They were even rarer than they are now. With 1.4 they have a chance to found in Shadow Chests and be fished through lava fishing. This way you're not locked out of getting a Lava Charm if you get unlucky with Chest generation.
 
Aurora3500 said:
Before Journey's End, the Lava Charm could only be gotten from the lava section of the Cavern Layer chests. They were even rarer than they are now. With 1.4 they have a chance to found in Shadow Chests and be fished through lava fishing. This way you're not locked out of getting a Lava Charm if you get unlucky with Chest generation.
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By design yes. But no if you take away fishing they are more rarer than they ever were. The problem is that cavern cabins spawn less frequently now. I do know this to be true as that item was always a must have for me pre 1.4., mainly for lava boots. I'd spend up to 8 hours doing nothing but looking for that item.

Fortunately they were added to fishing crates. I do hope the cavern cabins are being fixed though.
 
I didn't even know the lava charm existed until I looked up the Terraspark Boots recipe. Seems like you're more likely to get a pyramid in your world than for RNG to give you a lava charm in a chest.
 
In 1.3, they were a rare drop from common imps. Now they are much rarer in the world: Gold chests in the cavern layer, most of those don't even have cabins now, so you basically need a Spelunker potion to find them, and then its a 1 in 40 chance per chest. The flip side, however, is that you can grind them with lava fishing, which is involved but ultimately straightforward:
  1. Go to the Underworld. If you don't have a Golden Fishing Net, craft a Bug Net with hellstone to make a Lavaproof Bug Net. Get Hellbait, as much as you can. (If you got the Hotline Fishing "Hook" from the Angler, you can skip this, but that's a Hardmode award.)
  2. Make a lava lake at your base, or any other place thats safer than fishing in the Caverns, much less Underworld. You also need a Shadow Key to open the Obsidian Lockboxes.
  3. Max out your fishing power in usual fashion (equipment, potions, moon, weather, time, luck). Especially get Crate potions, brew your own if you have to. Don't forget the Garden Gnome and torches -- a Bone torch will help some in Forest, but you can get a bit of extra luck by putting your lava lake someplace where biome torches work.
  4. Use the Hellbait to fish for Obsidian/Hellstone crates. You're looking for the Lavaproof Fishing Hook, an accessory that lets you fish in lava with any rod/bait. It's almost a 1 in 5 chance per crate, so you should get one fairly quickly.
  5. You might have been lucky and gotten a Lava Charm already, if not, equip the hook and switch to Master Bait to fish lots of lava crates, until you get the Lava Charm. It's still a 1 in 40 chance, but you'll have a lot more crates than chests, and you will only catch the one kind of crate according to whether you're in Hardmode.
  6. Sell off the extras of all the other cool equipment you got in the process.
 
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Mental Mouse said:
In 1.3, they were a rare drop from common imps. Now they are much rarer in the world: Gold chests in the cavern layer, most of those don't even have cabins now, so you basically need a Spelunker potion to find them, and then its a 1 in 40 chance per chest. The flip side, however, is that you can grind them with lava fishing, which is involved but ultimately straightforward:
  1. Go to the Underworld. If you don't have a Golden Fishing Net, craft a Bug Net with hellstone to make a Lavaproof Bug Net. Get Hellbait, as much as you can. (If you got the Hotline Fishing "Hook" from the Angler, you can skip this, but that's a Hardmode award.)
  2. Make a lava lake at your base, or any other place thats safer than fishing in the Caverns, much less Underworld. You also need a Shadow Key to open the Obsidian Lockboxes.
  3. Max out your fishing power in usual fashion (equipment, potions, moon, weather, time, luck). Especially get Crate potions, brew your own if you have to. Don't forget the Garden Gnome and torches -- a Bone torch will help some in Forest, but you can get a bit of extra luck by putting your lava lake someplace where biome torches work.
  4. Use the Hellbait to fish for Obsidian/Hellstone crates. You're looking for the Lavaproof Fishing Hook, an accessory that lets you fish in lava with any rod/bait. It's almost a 1 in 5 chance per crate, so you should get one fairly quickly.
  5. You might have been lucky and gotten a Lava Charm already, if not, equip the hook and switch to Master Bait to fish lots of lava crates, until you get the Lava Charm. It's still a 1 in 40 chance, but you'll have a lot more crates than chests, and you will only catch the one kind of crate according to whether you're in Hardmode.
  6. Sell off the extras of all the other cool equipment you got in the process.
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No they never dropped you are mixing it up with the obsidian rose. That said before 1.4 I believe Lava charms could generate higher up in the caverns than they do now so there were more chances to get one as more cabin chests were eligible. Of course now there are chests which spawn outside cabins but there doesn't seem to be enough of them to compensate.

Additionally Lava charms do not come from Obsidian lock boxes those only give shadow chest loot so if you haven't beaten Skeletron you can just store those away for later as Lava charms come from the crate itself. With a stack of crate potions, a gnome, a golden Fishing rod and the magma snails it didn't take too long for me to get one (23 crates or so If memory serves?) but I might have gotten lucky. Also totally didn't make a safe lava lake lol I totally made a hell base with a :red: ton of trapped lava slimes instead would probably have saved a fair amount of effort. :p
 
Hmm, apparently my prior response didn't actually get posted. You are right on all counts; you don't actually need to open your Shadow Lockboxes yet. That can potentially give you a serious jump on the Underworld goodies (as soon as you get your Shadow Key), but it won't get you Hellstone.

And yeah, even with Spelunking, there aren't anything like enough chests to cover a 2.5% appearance rate, plus to get to those chests you need to prowl and tunnel around the lava caverns, often down to the Underworld edge, with Spelunking on almost continuously. I understand earning a drop , but there are limits, right?

Fishing is more tedious but can be done in stretches: As 3AM or 3PM approaches, check the moon and weather. If either is good and the other is at least not bad, drop a crate potion on lava fishing, timed to hit "prime time" (the minute-and-a-half between 6:00 and actual dawn/dusk), but 3 is early enough to avoid the "dead times" (about 9-3, day or night.) (See the Fishing tables at the wiki.) If when the first Crate potion runs out, you have especially favorable conditions (e.g., it started to rain, or the ladybugs came out for you to touch), then you may want to drop another Crate potion and fish somewhat into the dead times.
 
Banmei said:
I do know this to be true as that item was always a must have for me pre 1.4., mainly for lava boots. I'd spend up to 8 hours doing nothing but looking for that item.
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You should just use obsidian skin potions way easier to get and actually do the lava charm's job better.
Water walking boots can be replaced by the water walking potion.
 
qwerty3.14 said:
You should just use obsidian skin potions way easier to get and actually do the lava charm's job better.
Water walking boots can be replaced by the water walking potion.
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And then you need to keep the potions around and use them when needed. With the TSB, you just don't need to worry.
 
Yea the Terraspark boots are wayyy too hard to get for providing such negligible bonuses. In my opinion one of the worst items in the game.
 
The boots are great and got even better when becoming Terraspark. The fact that you have all of those abilities jam packed into one accessory slot makes it a must use for a large portion of the game. Yeah all but the flight can be replaced with potions but as an avid potion user I get to the point where I don't want to carry around 10 different potions. Takes up space and time to get all of those resources even with the Alchemist Table/Staff of Regrowth.

Ultrabright Helmet is the same way. I could just carry around Nightvision and Light potions but why bother when I could wear a helmet that always has both?

I will say that the Waterwalking Boots could be a tad easier to get consider the bonus isn't that game changing compared to some other fishable items.
 
Make the water walking boots as common as the other water chest loot and make the lava charm more common. It could be a 1 in 4 chance to get one from lava level gold cavern chests. That would make the TSB still fairly difficult to get but not near impossible in certain worlds. Also it seems like whenever an item is sooooo rare that it can't be obtained in some worlds through chests, they just make it an extremely rare fishing drop when they could just re balance the chest pool to make it less rare. Kinda lazy. Not such a big deal but is infuriating for players who try to get really rare items through one world. Way to solve problems with the RNG using even more RNG.
 
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also Light potions> ultra bright helmet. I'd rather take up an inventory slot than an armor slot. You'll miss out on set bonuses. However... it is quite good if obtained pre-eater of worlds/brain of cutulu, before set bonuses become important.
 
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