PC Lighting terrain

Quizer

Quizer

Terrarian
I like to go around in my worlds and light up as much of the terrain in my minimap as I can. Pre-hardmode, the Arkhalis is the best general-use tool I've found for doing that to open terrain as well as some depth into solid blocks. The Demon Scythe can reach deeper levels of penetration if the projectile has enough time to wind up, but that requires some space.

Recently I've discovered that the Grand Design is actually quite a powerful light source to xray dark areas of the screen, but unfortunately it does not consistently give off the high-quality light needed to light up the map to the highest degree possible. The starfury and / or burn effects on monsters are quite good at getting light particles to fall into the ground from above, but that has limited applicability.

What weapons or other items are surprisingly good at lighting up the minimap? Ideally, there'd be decent options for pre-hardmode, early hardmode and mid-to-late hardmode. Please tell me of your favorite light sources for mapping terrain!
 
Pre-Hardmode: Not really sure...
Early hardmode: The hallowed spear, too lazy to look up the name
Mid Hardmode: Clentaminator
Late Hardmode: Solar Eruption.
 
Does the clentaminator emit full-intensity light? Even if it does, it's still quite expensive to use, though...

The spear you mentioned is the Gungnir, crafted out of Hallowed Bars? That also requires me to defeat a mechanical boss, so I wouldn't classify it as 'early hardmode' any more than the clentaminator. Still, thanks for the tip, I'll give that a try!
 
In the Early game, once I get a Gem Staff, I try and use that to help me navigate in places I'm exploring to help with my torch placement. I will shoot several bolts out to light up the caverns so I don't end up walking into skeletons/bats and/or falling to my death. The Ice Blade also makes a good option for defense while exploring.

Once hardmode hits I make a lot of use out of the Ice Mimic Weapons which include the Ice Bow/Frostband, as well as Shadowflame Knives and Shadowflame Bow to help with this. My torches also get upgraded to Cursed/Ichor since they look cooler than normal torches, and I don't have to worry about flooding my caverns from digging and having all my placed torches get taken off.

At the endgame, the Solar Eruption and the Suspicious Looking Tentacle Light Pet become my Light Sources for my top Characters. The light they give is so good that I don't feel the need to place torches as I explore anymore with them.
 
Yeah, I also use a diamond staff early on, as soon as I can get the materials needed. It has a tiny bit of penetration into walls and lights up open space pretty nicely. It's my magic weapon of choice until I pick up a Demon Scythe.

I tried out the Gungnir. It does give off full-intensity light, but the rate at which it puts out those sparks of light is pretty lackluster. It can penetrate deeper into walls, but otherwise the Arkhalis does its job much better.
 
Anything that can produce sparks or embers (so, typically most fire-based weapons) are quite useful for lighting up areas. The sparks themselves illuminate the area as they fall. Setting a worm-type enemy on fire causes it to throw sparks everywhere as it burrows, illuminating a lot of the screen.

Exploring and illuminating the map is tedious, but very rewarding. You can then use the map to find dye plants, Strange Plants, life fruit, ore and so on. The map updates immediately when the world does; no need to revisit areas.
 
Some things unfortunately don't produce bright enough light to fully map pixels on the map. For example, the Death Sickle's projectiles only spread very dim light, and burning monsters are good to get a good overview of what's around, but pretty bad at actually lighting up each square to the maximum.

Personally, I find it fun to try to map as much of the area as possible, and yes, it lets you see what is going on in parts of the world you rarely visit, such as the spread of corruption, etc..

One thing that doesn't seem to consistently update the map is when a meteorite falls. In that case, the map only seems to update when you visit the changed area. I know I can watch the spread of corruption or other biomes on the map, but I can't help but wonder if there are other exceptions.
 
The Meteor Staff works well too. A full mana bar of meteors will usually throw enough sparks to light up almost an entire screen of caves.
 
I'll have to give that one a try, though if it's much like the starfury, it probably won't have consistent enough light to fully map large areas (brighten up the pixels as much as possible).

I also tried the clentaminator, and it illuminates terrain only with about 50% intensity, at least with green solution. Maybe other solutions have better lighting, but that seems unlikely.
 
Fire is always the answer. Use the Flamelash. It's guided and drops particles the entire time it's live. That means deep penetration in a downard direction anywhere you can get the projectile. For seeing through ceilings, use a flask of fire, a spear, and and digging implement. The fire effect throws sparks out every once in a while and lights up anywhere you can get a weapon, such as a spear.

Slightly more versatile is the Ice Rod, the projectiles are static, shed enough light to see by, and throw numerous particles downward, especially when breaking. But it's harder to get them in place than with the above methods.

I've recently discovered the Ice Hydra Staff is the ultimate in terrain lighting, as it can be summoned inside terrain, and has a sparkle effect on summon. There's no limits with it.
 
This is the best weapon available for clearing the fog of war:

(click image for wiki link)

Not sure how anyone could think otherwise. Just test it yourself. Holding M1 for a second uncovers half your screen nomatter where you are or how many blocks there are in the way. It also doesn't breathe plat coins like the clementator.

Edit: If certain light sources aren't bright enough for you, drink an owl potion.
 
Last edited:
Xakk said:
I've recently discovered the Ice Hydra Staff is the ultimate in terrain lighting, as it can be summoned inside terrain, and has a sparkle effect on summon. There's no limits with it.
Click to expand...
That seems like a valuable tip; thank you! I'll have to give this a try as soon as I manage to get my hands on a frost key. I don't currently have anything to surgically light up spots deep within blocked-up area; this sounds like it lets you do exactly that.

Unfortunately, the fire particles from the Flamelash and similar fire weapons (or enemies that have been set on fire) can only light up terrain to ~80% brightness or thereabouts, which rules them out for what I want to do.
Ts69rO6.jpg


Yggdrasil said:
This is the best weapon available for clearing the fog of war:

(click image for wiki link)

Edit: If certain light sources aren't bright enough for you, drink an owl potion.
Click to expand...
I'll have to give that one a try when I progress far enough in the game.

I was not aware night vision affects how much the minimap is lit up by certain light sources; I thought the minimap operates independently of status buffs or debuffs that affect your vision. I certainly was still able to fully light squares while being affected by a darkness debuff. Maybe I need to experiment with that some more.

EDIT: I tested nightvision and it makes no difference as far as uncovering terrain on the map goes.
 
Last edited:
I tested the Meteor Staff. It's amazing for exploring, for when you just want to see what's there, especially if you can get the meteor to pass through solid ground. Unfortunately, the meteor itself only has fire-level brightness. Some of the sparks that drop from the impact point have full brightness, but it's fairly laborious to light up an area completely using that, and it suffers from the same problems as the starfury and other drop-from-above weapons when it comes to using it underground.

I also tested the Ice Rod. This one is actually pretty good. Very reliable, full quality lighting 10-25 blocks down (only ~10 from placed ice blocks), without requiring a lot of space or enemies to set aflame. Anywhere you can shoot, you can light a fair distance into the ground. It's a bit finicky to use, since you'll want to create the ice blocks that keep raining sparks of light instead of just shooting it against the ground. Actually, scratch that, shooting into the ground walls works perfectly fine and requires much less concentration.
I think I'm actually going to use this, since it complements the Arkhalis (which can only light 3~4 blocks below your character) pretty nicely.
 
Last edited:
If you wave the fire back and forth over any area the saturation will soon become nearly complete up to the depth the sparks can drop. With any method of casting light upwards through ceilings you can light most areas. I know quite a few, having mapped two maps cave systems to 90%. I'll eventually write a guide but I want to know all the ones there are first, which means a lot of testing.
One of the better and time honored tricks is Jester's arrows. When striking a surface they poof light particles out a fair way past that. That works in any direction, though not as far as fire particles go downward.
 
The problem with fire is that it can't get blocks fully lit. Like the screenshot above shows, the area directly below my player character that has been lit by fire is lightened up to the same consistent level, but that level is still darker than the maximum which can be seen in the area to the left. Because my goal is to fully light up those pixels, generic fire particles aren't good enough, no matter how numerous they are. I shall have to investigate the frostburn debuff and/or cursed flames, since the ice rod's particles work so well.

I shall investigate the Jester's arrows. I've been using the demon scythe to penetrate deep into terrain at arbitrary angles in places where the projectile has enough time to gather speed (it can fully light up big splotches of terrain up to ~15 blocks deep), and the Arkhalis is pretty good at lighting into vertical walls, reaching 6-8 blocks into terrain with full brightness and a high level of reliability (i.e. you don't need to spend a lot of time trying to light up those last few stubborn pixels).
 
The absolute best way is to equip a bunny mount and a hook. It requires precise timing but it can completely, with 100% brightess, light up to 30-40 blocks in ANY direction.

The procedure: fire a hook in the desired wall and direction and when the hook latches, spam "R" or whatever your mount key is.

I was using Arkhalis until I discovered this and now 90% of my map is lit up.

The downside is that it requires some space to be able to mount up while the hook is pulling you, at least 7x7, but it's easier with more space.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom