Mr Creamy's Terraria Completionism

Mr Creamy

Terrarian
The world is not new. Its information and secrets lost to time. How many civilizations existed here?
On the eastern edge of the Plateau where the Corans used to be is where our journey begins...


Hello folks! I am Completionist and about 3 years ago I began a great mission to play Terraria to COMPLETION.
Completion, for me, entailed the following:

Collecting and using every item and building material in the game, with the following criteria for each build:
  • Build had to be unique
  • Build had to fit thematically within the overall world
  • Build had to make sense (would need to be useful in someway to the player, or useful in some way to the characters and setting)
  • Build had to showoff or emphasize the materials being used so they would be "on display"
A little bit of EVERYTHING all in one world.

The idea was to use and showoff every material in the game in an interesting way with each building being coherent with the others and adding to the overall world. Starting from your typical wood and bricks, all the way to luminite, conduit plating and logic gates.

Below you will find a short intro video explaining the project.

[Link to be posted later]

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Main Completionism Tour


For each Spoiler: Screenshots show you images of the builds. Synopses give you the Lore for each area. Video links to Youtube where we go into specific detail. The order in which Screenshots appear for a given build starts with the build in its entirety and then follows the route taken to tour that build in the corresponding Video.

Main Castle (Full)
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East Gate & Draw Bridge
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Spawning Area & Rope Elevator
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Storage Cells
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Forges & Armory
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Garden
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Quarters & Workshops
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Great Halls & Throne Room
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Upper Floors
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Royal Bedrooms
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Glass Hall & Palace Towers
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Our journey begins...

... At the eastern edge of the Coran Plateau, where an enormous peak rests. There are gorges and canyons surrounding this compound to the west, north and south, and a deep river to the east.

The Capitol Palace lies here, built into the rock both above and below. It functions as a hub for the New Civilization, its interior teeming with activity. Materials are gathered and stored here, and then eventually forged into items of greater utility.

The heights of the Palace are kingly places where royality and people of importance live. Great halls are there to dignify their vanity and value. The Seven Light Towers of the Palace can be seen from miles away as the Palace's shining rainbow crown.

Our journey will continue outside the main castle where the rest of the Capitol sprawls over the Plateau.
Main Compound (Full)
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Garden Balloons
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Old Pipes & Tree Roots
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Copper Bathhouse
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Western Guardhouse & Library
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Confetti Party House
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Main Compound & Party Tree Trunk
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Party Tree Crown (1/5)
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Party Tree Crown (2/5)
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Party Tree Crown (3/5): Hive & Honey Generator
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Party Tree Crown (4/5): Midnight Confetti Nightclub
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Party Tree Crown (5/5): The top
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Slime Sky Island
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Our journey continues...

We left off last time after we came to a hall just beneath the surface of the Coran Plateau.

We venture to the western end where remnants of the Coran Civilization can be seen; some of their constructions and machines are still functional, but lie mostly unused.

The massive canyon marks the end of the Plateau and the Capitol. Beyond it sits the desert where the Corans used to be, the last known civilization being theirs.

In the Capitol there are three guard towers, re-purposed from old Coran tallhouses, that lie at the edges of the canyons along with the only bridges to and from the Plateau.

And at the center of the green land on the Plateau is a massive tree that the denizens here use for living, manufacturing honey, and hosting holiday and other celebrations of their folk...
Sewers (Full)
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West Sewer
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Central Intersection
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East Sewer
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Cistern Control & Water Generator
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Eastern Intersection
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Mushroom Outlet
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Now the journey turns to what's below...

Most of the old civilizations go deep underground. The earth's crust being thin and hollow leaves much room for downward expansion. Many tunnels were discovered and utilized in urban development.

Both the Corans and the Precursors shared this pattern; they built entire cities underground. Likewise the New Civilization follows suit.

Beneath the top ground of the Plateau, where the Surface and Underground Layers meet, the Corans had a massive, elaborate sewer system. It was infrastructure for moving around water and wastewater for the elites living on the Plateau. We believe similar sewer systems existed for the Corans' large cities.

Out with the old, the New Civs repurposed the sewer layer as well as the Cistern and water treatment facilities. All functional processes, ie water treatment, storage, distribution etc. are all handled internally by these systems. Like this they've managed a self-suffiency with regards to earth's most precious resource...
Facilities & Catacombs (full)
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Jungle Grass Farm
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Mushroom Farm
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Aquarium
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West Catacombs
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Main Catacombs & Subway Station
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Nexus & Deep Factory
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Lava Forge & Mixer
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We venture to the deep…

The Corans’ underground network is extensive. It goes further down beneath the Plateau (which the Corans called “The Island”) than anywhere else. The architecture here is very ornate and this intended finery is due to the Corans’ ceremonious attitude with death and beyond.

Long dark passageways lined with graves fill the expanse. Some graves are primitive, mere alcoves along the walls for the deceased, while others are spacious crypts full of formal décor signifying the importance and status of their hosts. The decorative style throughout includes shapes resembling skulls, bones and emblems of death and the afterlife.

All castes, classes and professions were buried here: peasants, soldiers, artisans, farmers, mages, priests, guildmasters, archons, lords, priests, counsellors etc. The higher classes belonged to the fancier crypts while the lower were the many that lay in the alcoves. Some graves were accompanied by commemorative plaques displaying the names and titles of their hosts and sometimes a few last words. Many plaques are still intact.

Besides the Catacomb the area contains many more chambers the New Civs made us of. Just above they have the Aquarium where curious sea creatures are kept. Adjacent to that are also several sterile rooms that serve as farms for growing jungle herbs and mushrooms. Below lie modern New Civ factories, production facilities, laboratories, the Lava Forge and the Mixer.

Additionally, for New Civ use the Catacomb caverns were renovated and expanded to house a subway system used for railway travel across world. The necropolis itself was partially converted into a subway station and a museum displaying the Coran heritage – efforts are being made to prevent its deterioration.

Below the subway is the notorious and crucial Nexus, central to New Civ infrastructure as it permits quick travel throughout the Capitol and the Plateau. The Nexus may be the oldest structure in this entire region, older than the Coran Civilization itself…
Hallowton (full)
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Riverlands Fishing House
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Riverlands Cemetary
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Farmland (1/2)
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Farmland (2/2)
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Hallowton Town Square - Day
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Hallowton Town Square - Night
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Costume Warehouse
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Hallowton Subway Station
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The Arboretum
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Hallowton Skyrail Station
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The light shines prettily in the east…

Our journey now takes us away from the New Civ Capitol. East of the Coran Plateau lies a quiet and quaint region: pretty trees, pockets of forest, lazy little rivers and lakes. Various cabins and farms have sprouted up along with a village or two, all within the New Civ Epoch.

Even farther east the forest land runs into a different biome, one whose splendor is only matched by its danger and perils – the Hallow. The Hallow is estimated to have emerged somewhere between the decline of Cora and the emergence of the New Civ. It had spread between the cold Snowland and the calm riverlands before the first settlements appeared.

The largest town, later named Hallowton, was situated near a series of hills where the Hallow and Snowland met. Settling in the Hallow would probably seem foolish to some, but a settlement was needed to help secure and establish an efficient trade route into the Snowlands and the Far East.

Hallowton has numerous defining characteristics. For one its town square has a lovely white fountain that makes a sparkling show at night time. Second is its known for housing the best tailors in the world, offering the most diverse selection of adornments known to man.

Finally, we have the Arboretum: a towering white structure at the edge of the Hallow housing all of the world’s most exotic trees – there to be beheld, enjoyed and of course, periodically harvested and replanted.

Hallowton may be beautiful, however for all that which exists outside the Capitol, there is still yet much to see…
Snowlands Surface (full)
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Frozen Fortress Skyrail Station
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Snowlands Surface (1/2)
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Snowlands Surface (2/2)
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Frozen Fortress & Light Orb Towers
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West Light Orb (Night)
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Frozen Gorges
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Frozen Fortress Subway & Upper Halls
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Jelly Playground (1/2)
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Jelly Playground (2/2)
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Deep Subway Station
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Frozen Fortress Lower Halls
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Roller Coaster Route:

Old Mine (1/3)
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Old Mine (2/3)
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Old Mine (3/3)
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Roller Coaster End
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Festive Mansion
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Legends of the White Lands…

Separating the New Civ Kingdom and the Far East is the Snowland. Leagues of frozen terrain, coniferous trees, violent weather and an abundance of subterranean Precursor remnants characterize the region.

Through an elongated canyon reaching the earth’s depths the Precursors had built a series of fortresses as part of their transportation system. The fortresses hosted bundles of railways leading to the Precursors’ Dungeon Capitol, various underground hotspots, old crystal mines, and peculiar amusement parks and recreational areas.

Still accessible in the current era, the amusement areas include a skating rink, strange-colored rooms, starlit chambers, and a massive playground full of amorphous blobs, bubbles, balloons and bouncy clouds.

Above the surface the New Civs can take refuge in an incredibly festive holiday retreat. A tall manor lined with lights, fancy wallpapers, and a plethora of merry decorations, offering both a jolly stayover and a wealth of winter delights.
Mushroom Land (1/3)
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Mushroom Land (2/3)
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Mushroom Land 3/3)
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Mushroom Land (Full)
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Shroomite Laboratory (1/2)
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Shroomite Laboratory (2/2)
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Savory, mystical Shrooms!

Now here we come upon the Far East, it begins immediately where the Snowlands end. Not many roads, or infrastructure this far out. The biggest point of civilization is the remainder of the Precursors’ Capitol, but besides that the hotspots are few and far between, and accessible mainly by train.

If one continues east beyond the Snowland and over a hill, one will come upon a very notable and funky site. A small valley of ruined ground and broken earth, absolutely teeming with blue grass and tall glowing mushrooms. The entire area is coated with a dark fog due to how the mushrooms interact with the air and deeper into the valley their thickness conceals most light keeping the place in a deep gloom.

The region also contains a wide range of mobile life unique to the ecosystem – from Fungo Fish, to Spore Zombies, to ravenous Fungi Bulbs; there is even a small handful of houses built of hard mushroom bark where the Truffle dwells.

The New Civs have seeded the area with a resilient, fey, metallic substance called Shroomite which feeds energy into the ecosystem, keeping the mushroom trees tall and alive. They have also set up a teleporter that connects far away to a similar biome in a cavernous trench just south-east of the New Civ Capitol. This teleporter, since it connects all the way back to Capitol, is a quick port to the Far East.

The biome near the Capitol also houses the Shroomite Laboratory where Shroomite is synthesized and produced on mass, then used to keep both biomes healthy.
This build is partially remade from images of oriental builds I've found online.

Sai Village (Full)
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Sai Village (1/5) Maple Trees
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Sai Village (2/5) Maple Trees & Bathhouse
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Sai Village (3/5) Pond & House
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Sai Village (4/5) Giant Tree
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Sai Village (5/5) Shrine
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Jade Caverns (1/2)
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Jade Caverns (2/2)
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Jade Caverns Subway Station
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Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Somewhere along the rolling plains, hills and valleys of the Far East lies Sai Village. A quaint little town, it’s recognized worldwide for its unique architectural design and exceptional beauty.

The houses and structures were built in a very minimalistic fashion and with a stylish integration with nature. Throughout the village one finds various planted shrubs, bushes and flora as well as small ponds and gardens made to look as if they were part of the landscape itself. Most notable of this aesthetic are the Eastern Maple Trees, whose leaves are bright violet; together their collective canopy sets a sea of dark red across the valley.

Sai’s inception predates the Corans, and it is likely it was part of the Precursor Empire at one point given its proximity to their Capitol – although at the time it wouldn’t have been any more than a handful of huts. Even back then though Sai must have been a spiritual place, and this theme lives on to the present day.

Travelers from across the world who come to the Far East make sure to stop by here; hence the New Civs have set up a train station just underground.

Beneath Sai Village are the Jade Caverns; a fascinating system of caves full of cool spring waterfalls and jade mineral veins lodged throughout the rock. The Caverns would have formed many aeons ago due to repeated volcanic activity.
Green Tower (full)
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Upper Dungeon Storage Floors (1/2) & Dungeon Lake
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Green Dungeon Subway Station
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Upper Dungeon Storage Floors (2/2)
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Green Tower Foundation
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Salmon Fishing House & Lake
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Green Tower
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Green Tower Sky Station
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Precursor Construct (Night)
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Green Tower Apex & Study
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Green Tower (Full-Night)
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At last it beckons, the civilization of the Dead!

The Precursors always built in two ways: enormous towers spiking into the clouds above ground; and massive, expansive cities stretching all over beneath the ground. Their Capitol exhibits both of these strategies.

What’s under the surface is called the Green Dungeon; the largest ancient city on the continent. It goes for miles in every direction between the Main and Deep Subway Lines.

When the New Civs discovered the Green Dungeon they had to defeat the automated Dungeon Guardians to access the city. What they found was that the city itself was even more dangerous; the entire thing teeming with Marching Bones, Necromancers and all manner of skeletal denizens.

The skeletal army that remained in place of the Precursor people was enough to deter any interaction. The New Civs looted what they could, hauled all the valuables to the upper floors, and sealed the Lower Dungeon for good. The upper floors of the City near the surface became a storage area for the huge collection of Precursor furniture, devices and artefacts. The New Civs built a Train Station here and have done little else in the area ever since.

Above ground the Precursor Capitol stands out as a giant tower jutting out from a swamp to the very tops of the world. At its base the Ancient Cultists gather, issuing prayer to some odd force. Here the Precursor Symbols made of glass, that now hang outside the New Civ Capitol, were once situated; proud banners of that Empire.

The Tower itself appears to have been a control center of sorts; revealing the deep, centralized, technological organization the Precursors must have had.

At the apex sits a thing that is tough to explain, but it is most assuredly a Being. Perhaps magical in nature, perhaps technological, perhaps both, one thing is certain is that this Being controls the undead Precursor armies, and was perhaps the thing that, either through direction or accident, transformed their race into skeletons in the beginning. Now thanks to New Civ intervention it lies isolated from the hordes below.

A few New Civ wizards and researchers frequent the Tower to study the technology & the books there – and the Being as well, albeit cautiously…
Sky Factory (Full - Day)
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Miscellaneous Clouds & Doodads(Day)
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Miscellaneous Clouds & Doodads (Night)
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Shipping Station (Day)
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Shipping Station (Night)
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Power Station (Day)
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Power Station (Night)
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Power Station (Wire)
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Skyware & Cloud Factory (Day)
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Skyware & Cloud Factory (Night)
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Sky Island & Air Cars (Day):
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Sky Island & Air Cars (Night):
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Barracks (Day)
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Barracks (Night)
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Blimp Car (Day):
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Blimp Car (Night):
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Slime Factory (1/3)
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Slime Factory (2/3)
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Slime Factory (3/3)
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Slime Factory (Full-Day):
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Slime Factory (Full\Night):
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Partially Built Slime Skylands (Day)
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Partially Built Slime Skylands (Night)
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Sky Factory (Full\Night)
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The world is full of countless strange phenomena: ruins of old civilizations, fonts of magical energy, the Hallow, underground Temples etc. Some of these are quite tough to explain, and some remain obscure mysteries that even the sharpest minds cannot crack.

There are few however that have been explained; namely, where the heck do Slimes and Sky Islands come from? The answer lies with the ultra-innovated, derelict Precursor technology. The build in question is the unparalleled Sky Factory.

High in the sky near the Precursor Capitol, around the same altitude as the summit of the Green Tower, is a dense gathering of clouds and Sky Islands.

Here you will find a sprawling technological bustle: tall factory walls draped in plating, metallic walkways going between Sky Islands, peculiar material processing machinery, a power station, flying cargo transports, conveyor belts moving freight, mechanical arms and hooks, floating signposts, buoys and light posts to illuminate the clouds at night, windmills on factory roofs etc.

When the New Civs found the place it was completely abandoned, presumably the crews that worked there had been assimilated by the undead armies of the Precursor Capitol. The Factory itself however was in very good condition; virtually none of the machines had been broken or worn out. In great surprise, the entire site showed no signs of decay, like it was ready for immediate use.

The explanation for this would be that the mysterious Being at the top of the Green Tower had been remotely conserving the Factory – ensuring for centuries that nothing would erode. Perhaps it planned to populate the Factory with undead workers at some point, but there was no sense as to what ultimate purpose.

It is evident that the core structures of the Factory must have been constructed on the ground below and were then taken up into the air when the levitating Cloud Block material was developed. The Factory was mainly used for manufacturing Cloud Blocks, Sunplate Blocks, as well as the various forms of Slime Blocks and Rainbow Bricks. The materials would then be shipped off to wherever Sky Islands were being built. Slime Blocks in turn would be used in production of other wares or to accommodate anyone who fancied a house with “softer” furniture.


The Precursors had a fondness for extravagance (and also bouncy building materials), and the idea of a luxury home floating in the Sky on top of a cloud was the quintessential product for anyone with such an affinity.

And to end, the Factory did have one more, final, little highlight. At some point during the production of Slime Blocks, the Precursors must have figured out a way to make the material sentient. Basically not only was the Factory the birthplace of all Slimes in the first place, but it was also responsible for the periodic Slime Rains that occurred on the continent. Every once in a while the storage tank that housed Slimes would go over capacity, and they would escape and jump off the clouds resulting in a rain effect that could last hours.

Supposedly the Precursors had created Slimes as innocent little pets to play with – as most were totally harmless. Something about the production of Slimes changed over the years however; some became dangerous and aggressive. And then there was King Slime, whose pet was he meant to be?
East Coast (full)
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Rainbow Towers & Beach
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Rainbow Passage
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Rainbow Fortress (full)
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Rainbow Fortress (1/4)
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Rainbow Fortress (2/4)
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Rainbow Fortress (3/4) - East Coast Station
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Rainbow Fortress (4/4)
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Diving Facility
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Diving Facility Lights
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Diving Facility Fountains
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Great Reef (unlit)
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Great Reef (lit)
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Finally, we come to the eastern edges of the continent. Beyond lie vast oceans and lands unexplored.

Before the ocean, the continent ends in a long parade of beautiful beaches, coral reefs, and casual deserts.

Much in line with their fondness for extravagance, the Precursors had set up lavish – and somewhat paranormal – dwellings here made of Rainbow Brick. Resting above and below ground, and over the water, these structures stand out brightly as they constantly shift color and their pixelation grants them an otherworldly appearance. It appears as if these buildings and underground complexes had been inhabited only by elites.

One of these complexes extends far through the ground beneath the ocean floor. It features a passage that leads to a hidden, glass diving facility underwater. The New Civs use the facility for exploring the depths and researching what the marine land has to offer.

The Rainbow Fortress also contains an observation room right beneath the ocean floor, and there, separated from the ocean only by glass, it observes the extraordinarily colorful Great Reef ecosystem. A long stretch near the coast of rich corals, vibrant fish and a sprawling networks of underwater flora, the Great Reef is one of the World’s great natural wonders…

And that is all that remains of interest here in the East…
Precursor Capitol (full)
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Screenshots are from Top-Left to Bottom-Right of the Dungeon

West Underworld Portal
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Bone City (1/7)
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Bone City (2/7) Residential Sector
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Bone City (3/7)
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Nobility Sector
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Bone City (4/7)
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Upper Dungeon Path
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Bone City (5/7) Bone Factory
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Bone City (6/7) Center Plaza
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Bone City (7/7)
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Deep Subway Station
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Ectoplasm Refinery
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Outskirts
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Academia Sector
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East Underworld Portal
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The heart of undeath…

The Precursors were obsessed with extravagance, floating islands, magic bricks etc. And as evidence from within the Dungeon would suggest, their obsessions lead them to an even greater aspiration: eternal life.

Their hunt for eternal life, at the time, must have manifested as rudimentary necromancy. One thing lead to another and the undead they created, they were unable to control. Instead the undead were somehow being controlled by the Precursor Being in the Green Tower.

The Being amassed enough undead to challenge the lethargic Precursor populace and eventually enslaved them all, in order to add them to the horde. It then went on to enslave the Precursors in the other settlements across the continent – thus justifying the overwhelming presence of zombies and undead creatures in the world.

The six undead factions now are all remnants of different Precursors groups. The Marching Bones and Necromancer factions were people native to the Capitol itself, the Rusted Company were people that used to inhabit the fortresses in the Snowlands, the Ragged Brotherhood were from the Towers in the West, the Molten Legion were skeletal troopers manufactured by Demons in the Underworld and gifted to the undead army, and the Diabolists were the remainder of an ancient cult of Corans (but that’s another story).

Within the Green Dungeon the leftover houses, libraries, and halls of the Precursor race remain abandoned. Meanwhile in the central areas of the city there are elaborate networks of skeletal architecture, bone walkways, bone-welding factories, odd skeletal shrines, and even some disturbing decorations. Supposedly these new constructions were erected by the undead after the collapse.


Deep within also lies the Ectoplasm Refinery. This factory creates bodies for deceased Precursors’ spirits out of Ectoplasm, thus extending their undeath. Presumably these undead spirits are then imbued into skeletal bodies, forcing them to join the ranks of the undead army and spend the afterlife serving the Being that destroyed them.

The New Civs made very few efforts to engage with the army in the Lower Dungeon. They explored and looted the outskirts of the city and residential areas; most of the furnishings and artefacts they had collected from the Precursors came from there. They then sealed the Lower Dungeon and built a Train Station on the Main Subway Line and one on the Deep Subway Line to get there, but did nothing else.

A handful of adventurers and researchers still try to explore the undead city. Most don’t return…





Please give me feedback and let me know which build you like best!!
 

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Wire Build Completionism

Proper Completionism includes Wire Builds using the various wiring-related items.
Does not include basic stuff like light switches and liquid generators.

Synopsis section includes lore information on the build. Explanation goes into technical detail about the the wiring system works. Screenshot section shows various screenshots of the builds at work. Video is corresponding youtube link.

Shine bright like a diamond (gemspark)!

When the New Civs invented Gemspark what followed was a boom in discovery and industry of all sorts of optical gadgetry. Useful as work lights, factory lights, Wire Facility LEDs, and waterfall color decorators, their implementation quickly spread throughout many New Civ facilities.

Their most favored use, however, was obviously aesthetic. The New Civs employed Gemspark in elaborate configurations and timed sequences for night-time visual appeal. The seven towers of the Capitol Palace were coated with every different color and made to shine permanently in the sky.

Other notable examples were the dance floor of the Midnight Confetti Nightclub in the Party Tree, the Light Orb Towers adjacent to the Frozen Fortress, and of course the White Fountain of Hallowton.
A Light Show is any set of lights or wireable devices that light up when pulsed that are configured or arranged in a creative way. Usually in a timed sequence of some kind. There's a bunch of these in the world, I go over the notable ones.

Each light show works like this:
Capture 2017-04-30 16_31_48.png

There are timers set up in a row, wired to each other as such:
Capture 2017-04-30 16_31_58.png


A switch activates the two timers on either end of the sequence, and a gemspark block (or any other light device) with the blue wire above. After the first second, the far timer deactivates the timer closer to the switch and the gemspark block above it (blue wire again), but it activates the timer to its left and the block above it (green wire). The next second, the timer that was just activated deactivates the previous timer, and the block above itself (green wire again), and activates the next timer in the sequence and the block above it (red wire). And so on and so forth. Then it loops. Basic timer sequence, each second used to activate a light device.

Here's an example of this for the dance floor of the Midnight Confetti Nightclub in the Party Tree:
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The seven timers on the left sequence through all seven different gemspark blocks arranged in the dance floor. The wires were arranged in such a way so that on the ceiling the gemspark sequence starts at the edges of the room and works its way towards the middle whereas on the floor it starts in the middle and works its way out.

Another example is the Light Orb near the Frozen Fortress in the Snowlands:
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Here the timers are set up in a vertical column. The arrangement of the gemspark colors, along with the glass between them makes for a very cool night-time effect.

Note that if the blue wire that connects the timers on either end of the sequence is cut, the mechanism will continue to work but the 2-timer signal will bounce back and forth from either end instead of looping. One can also cut the blue wire, have the 2-timer signal bounce (and hence reverse direction), then connect the blue wire again and now the sequence runs in the opposite direction!

I've made a few other Light Shows like these ones in the world and they work in exactly the same way!


A slightly different kind of Light Show is the Fountain of Hallowton.
It involves only one timer, the sequence is much longer; and instead of each set of lights turning on and then immediately off, the mechanism turns them all on first, then turns them all off. The whole sequence takes roughly 20 seconds.

Capture 2017-04-30 16_26_33.png


The mechanisms is triggered by the two sensors you can see above, on either end of the Fountain. The Night Sensor turns on the Fountain in the Evening, and the Day Sensor turns it off in the morning.

When nighttime starts the Night Sensor pulses this 5-second timer by the green wire:
Capture 2017-04-30 18_30_25.png

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The 5-second timer pulses the blue wire once every 5 seconds. The blue wire hits a Logic Gate. The first lamp above the gate is normal, the second one is faulty. The normal lamp starts out OFF initially. Since the timer pulses both lamps at once, the normal lamp and faulty lamp are triggered in the same tick and whenever this happens the normal lamp is triggered first. So when the pulse comes in, the normal lamp switches ON; then the faulty lamp gets triggered and verifies that the normal lamp underneath it is ON; then the gate sends out a pulse.

5-seconds later the timer sends the next pulse, only this time the normal lamp is ON. So first the normal lamp turns OFF, then the faulty lamp trigger verifies that it is OFF, and so the gate does not send out a pulse. Thus the second pulse from the timer is suppressed. The third pulse works exactly like the first one since the normal lamp is OFF again.

This is a common mechanism of using Faulty Gates for suppressing every other incoming pulse. Thus the Fountain mechanism gets pulsed once every 10 seconds, which is around the amount of time needed for each row of lights to turn on.

When the logic gate pulses, it pulses the dart traps with the red wire you see above. The dart traps shoot darts through a pool of honey with teal pressure pads at the end of their flight path. The pool of honey is isolated with bubble blocks and its purpose is to slow down the dart - since liquids in Terraria slow down projectiles. Roughly 21 blocks worth of honey will slow down a dart for just over 1 second.

Capture 2017-12-25 01_20_49.png


You can't see them in the dark, but the yellow wires (above) are connected to the teal pressure pads. Each time one of them is hit, it pulses the gemspark blocks turning on the fountain! (For some reason in the image above, the yellow wire connecting to the last teal pressure pad is cut up in a few places, I don't know why since in-game it's connected just fine).

The teal pressure pads are all spaced out, with each successive one farther and farther away so that the incoming dart would be slowed down just long enough for each set of lights to light up roughly 1 second at a time. It takes around 9 seconds for bottom dart trap to turn on the last set of lights (diamond gemspark at the top).

After all seven darts land, just under 10 seconds passes, and they get pulsed again. This time the darts will trigger the teal pressure pads to turn the lights off! So its 10 seconds for the Fountain to completely turn on, and another 10 to completely turn off, thus completing the cycle.

The whole thing repeats all night until morning when the timer is turned off just after the last pulse to finally turn off the Fountain is sent.

Only way this mechanism breaks is if you leave the game during nighttime when it is running. Turning off the game automatically turns off the timer (which stays off next time you login), and leaves the lights by default in the state you left them in when you left the game. So if half the lights were on before you left, half will be on by default when you come back. Hence this time the mechanism will turn on in the morning due to the Day Sensor, and rather than the sequence turning everything on and then everything off, since some of the lights are now on by default, it'll turn the on-lights off, and turn on the remaining ones.

In this case you'd have to manually turn off the 5-second timer if it's running during the day, and reset the state of the lights.

Anyway, that it's for Light Shows, hope you enjoy!
Midnight Confetti Club
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Frozen Fortress Light Orb
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White Fountain
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Diving Facility
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Choo!

The recent expansion of the New Civilization can be attributed highly to the creation and development of elaborate transportation infrastructure. From the teleporters in the Nexus, to the roads and highways in the Capitol region, and to, of course, the all-encompassing Transcontinental Railway System.

The TRS network consists mostly of railways, minecart tracks, and subway tunnels weaving throughout the planet’s hollow crust. While the New Civs did achieve the TRS, much of the construction involved repurposing the pre-existing tracks from old underground mines, and the remains of the Precursors’ rail highways in the Snowlands.

The TRS includes four major railway lines: the Main Subway Line, the Deep Subway Line, the Skyrail Line, and the Underworld Line. The first three lines go across the entire continent of the world, from the west coast to the east, but at different altitudes: Skyrail crosses the sky, the Main Subway runs along the Underground layer (Catacomb level of the Main Compound), and the Deep Subway runs far down through the caverns (and the Underworld Line is self-explanatory).

Additionally, each TRS line features several routes connecting it to the line below it; i.e. Main Subway has three routes down to the Deep Subway. The Skyrail is an exception to this; it sits isolated in the sky, accessible only via Nexus teleporter.

The TRS rails have been engineered to be automatic using complex wiring mechanisms and Logic Gates.
Naturally, the Completionism World contains lots of transportation infrastructure.

The biggest feature is an elaborate rail network that connects to all the main hotspots, builds and extreme ends of the map.

The point of a rail network was twofold: 1) having a rail system that connects to everything; 2) have a rail system that was automated – ie could be used to connect to different hotspots on the map by just hitting a switch.

In the rail network there several rail Lines. Each Line has a collection of Train Stations along it with connecting mechanisms between them. If a traveller is on a given Line they can use the automatic travel mechanism to travel comfortably to any other Station on the same Line.

The mechanism here is designed so that one can travel between Stations simply by getting on a cart, hitting a switch, then leaning back and relaxing as the cart gets to the oncoming station and disembarks on its own.

To explain the mechanism I will refer to a simple prototype of two train stations I built in the sky (see below) with one rail Line between them.
Capture 2017-05-02 00_07_13.png


The actual train stations in the world’s rail network have very convoluted wiring so I won’t refer to them here. You will see why.

So in this prototype, we have Station A and Station B (see below). Assume that the prototype is sitting arbitrarily along the Line, i.e. the Line could be longer and you could have more stations west of A, and east of B.
2.png


Let’s say the traveller begins at Station A and wants to go to Station B. He will get into his minecart at Station A, hit a switch, and travel to B where a teleporter will be waiting to teleport him off the Line.

My mechanism employs teleporters to do the embarking and disembarking, but you could also use Minecart Intersections to create off-ramps, which would be simpler and more consistent (but probably less cool).

There are 8 teleporters in total, 4 at each station.

You have 1 teleporter to get on and pick your destination, 1 teleporter to boost you onto the Line after you’ve picked, 1 teleporter to pick you up once you’ve reached your destination, 1 teleporter to rule them all, and 1 teleporter to receive you after you’ve been teleported off the Line.

ON-Teleporter:
PIC3.png

The teleporter at the top (see above) of Station A is the ON-Teleporter. The ON-teleporter is where the traveller gets into his minecart and picks his destination by hitting a nearby switch.

BOOST-Teleporter:
PIC4.png

Below the ON-Teleporter is a platform with two teleporters. The one with booster track above it is called the BOOST-Teleporter. The BOOST-Teleporter boosts the traveller onto the railway Line.

OFF-Teleporter:
PIC5.png

Next to the BOOST-Teleporter is the OFF-Teleporter. The OFF-Teleporter receives the traveler when he arrives at said station. I.e. the OFF-Teleporter at Station A would receive the traveler if he were to disembark at Station A.

Then there’s the teleporter on the Line with the AND-gate underneath it. This is the LINE-Teleporter:
PIC6.png

("LINE"-Teleporter because it’s sitting on the Line). The LINE-Teleporter disembarks the traveler and sends him to the OFF-Teleporter when he arrives at the station.

Hence the path to go from Station A to Station B one must go: A-ON -> A-BOOST -> Travel to B -> B-LINE -> B-OFF

And going from B to A would be: B-ON -> B-BOOST -> Travel to A -> A-LINE -> A-OFF


The wiring at A is:
Capture 2017-05-02 00_09_28.png


The ON-Teleporter is wired to the BOOST-Teleporter and activated by the switch in order to put the traveller onto the Line. Booster Track is set up to reach max speed.

LINE-Teleporter wired to the OFF-Teleporter and activates when the AND-gate underneath it sends a pulse.


The AND-gate underneath the LINE-Teleporter has two lamps above it which are OFF by default.

One lamp is activated by a piece of Pressure Plate Track that sits above the LINE-Teleporter (see below)
PIC8.png


This first lamp is the manual activator. It activates automatically when the traveller arrives at a Station and rides over the Pressure Plate Track. The first lamp does nothing if the second lamp is OFF.

The second lamp is the remote connection between the two stations. It is activated by the same switch that embarks the traveler. When second lamp is ON, and the traveler rides over the LINE-Teleporter, activates the AND-gate and disembarks at that Station.

Meaning that if you get on at Station A, and you’re headed to Station B, you need the second lamp below the LINE-Teleporter at Station B to turn ON. (see green wire below)
Capture 2017-05-02 00_09_09.png

The green wire is pulsed by both switches at both Stations, each one activating the 2nd lamp at the other one. Embarking at one station, readies the LINE-Teleporter at that station, and the destination station.

NOTE: Since the activating mechanism readies the LINE-Teleporter at both the starting station as well as the destination station, the BOOST-Teleporters are set up at the edge of the station so the traveler doesn’t ride over the LINE-Teleporter at the starting station immediately after being boosted onto the Line. In such a case the he’d be thrown off the Line to the OFF-Teleporter at the starting station.

The overall mechanism requires the activation of the two lamps beneath the LINE-Teleporter, but conveniently the second lamp is the only one that requires input from the player. Thus one can hit a switch and sit back and enjoy the ride as the minecart does the rest of the work.

Wire bulbs next to the switches at each Station let the traveler know if the remote lamps at the two Stations are active (see below). They are synchronized with each other meaning that if one wishes to embark at Station A and sees the wire bulb is green, one will know that the lamp at B is already on, and connection is active; hitting the switch would disable it. One would have to hit the switch once to disable the connection before hitting it again to embark.
PIC10.png

Wire bulbs also remind one to sever the connection after arriving at at one’s destination by hitting the switch at that station.

Also note that the LINE-Teleporter mechanism isn’t totally consistent because sometimes the Minecart rides over it too quickly (perhaps due to lag issues related to loading chunks of the world). In my experience the consistency is about 90%.

The reason to keep the remote lamps at both Stations connected by one wire is to make the connection easy to keep track of, and to have fewer wires running between the two Stations. I.e. if A to B was a different wire than B to A, you would need two wires: one at A activating the lamp at B, one at B activating the lamp at A. Needless convolution.

Having more connections would also become a problem as the number of Stations along the Line increased. If there are 10 Stations along the same Line, each Station would need 9 wires leaving it (for lamps at the other 9 stations) and 9 more wires hitting the lamps of its LINE-Teleporters. That is 18 wires weaving all over the place, not to mention any other wires going past the Station if it’s in the middle of the Line and there are connections between Stations to the East and West.

With the mechanism here the amount of distinct wires going between Stations depends on the number of connections. I.e. the number of different ways of going from one Station to another. Which in turns depends on the number of Stations.

If there are 2 Stations total on the Line, that’s 1 connection: 1->2 = 2->1.
If there are 3 Stations, there are 3 connections: 1->2, 1->3, 2->3.
4 Stations, then 6 connections: 1->2, 1->3, 1->4, 2->3, 2->4, 3->4.
N Stations, then (N-1) + (N-2) + … + 2 + 1 connections.

And twice that number if A-> B is not the same thing as B -> A.


The Main Subway Line has 10 Stations in total, with 45 connections in total.

NOTE: The Stations at the ends of the Line don’t need LINE-Teleporters or the AND-gate mechanism at all since the track simply ends. They do however still have wires: i.e. if one embarks at the West Coast and wants to travel to the center of the map, they need to hit a switch preparing the LINE-Teleporter at the Station in the center to disembark them.

Below are Screenshots of various Stations throughout the Main Subway Line with the wiring displayed. As you can tell it can get quite hairy (some of the wires appear cut up).

Frozen Fortress:
Capture 2017-05-01 23_43_21.png


Hallowton:
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Jade Caverns:
Capture 2017-05-01 23_43_43.png


Nexus (UGH):
Capture 2017-05-01 23_41_37.png



The only other nuances in the rail network are for tracks that connect different Lines.

Here the track makes use of Minetrack Intersections, which activate to allow the Minecart to travel to a different Line. This mechanism also requires extra AND-gates at the ON-Teleporter of the boarding station verifying whether the right Intersections are active if I’m traveling to a different Line.

This station in particular connects to the Main Subway, Deep Subway and the Underworld Line:
Capture 2017-05-02 20_29_13.png

In the image above the Levers on the left manually activate Intersections along the track, selecting three different paths to the three different Lines.

You can also see an AND-gate with 3 lamps underneath the blocks; the Levers turn on some of the lamps so the AND-gate checks if the right Intersections are toggled and for the intended Line being selected. When AND-gate activates it send the traveler onto the BOOSTER-Teleporter to the right (of course you could just walk over to it here, but that wouldn't be automatic now would it?). The traveler then rides the track towards whatever the intended Line is and his destination on that Line.


That about does it for Train Stations! Enjoy!
From West to East:

Nexus Station
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Hallowton Station:
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Frozen Fortress Upper Halls
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Jade Caverns
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Upper Green Dungeon
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Rainbow Fortress - East Coast
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From West to East

Green Dungeon
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East Coast
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From West to East:

Sky Central Station
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Hallowton Sky Station
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Frozen Fortress
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Green Tower
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Glittering centerpieces!!

A variety of places are designed with mechanism arrays known as Gem Lock Hubs. Certain Precursor facilities, underground temples, technological centers, etc feature these Hubs which are basically proximate collections of devices and systems that are toggled from a central triggering receptacle – a Gem Lock.

During their construction, precious gemstones cut into symmetric crystal shapes were made to fit the receptacles; each one unique for each Hub – essentially a “Gem Key”.

What each Hub does differs from one to the next. In general, they start up multiple wired sets of machines, light shows, computers, traps, electronic systems etc. The control centers of ancient Precursor facilities are Gem Lock Hubs where the triggers alone can activate the facilities and initialize all their main processes.

Overall what characterizes a Gem Lock Hub is that very many devices are toggled from it at once; hence Gem Lock Hub structures tend to be very elaborate.

There are seven Gem Lock Hub systems throughout the World that standout. While none of the Hub builds were built by the New Civs, the New Civs have studied the Hubs they’ve come upon and learned to make appropriate use of them as needed…
What I call a "Gem Lock Hub" is essentially an aesthetic build that has a Gem Lock mechanism as it's centerpiece.

An important part of Completionism is integrating nice-looking aesthetic builds with interactive elements like unique centerpieces and wire mechanisms. The idea is to further show off the use of unique items and/or the gameplay mechanics present in the mechanisms AND to augment the build by adding more flavor to the scene and telling a bit of a story.

Gem Locks function as great centerpieces because of their large size and perfect square shape. They can also trigger the most independent wire pulses of any other triggering mechanism in the game. Seeing as they can have 4 wires of the same color crossing them without touching (see below) they can send in total 16 independent pulses at once.

Capture 2017-12-25 17_33_26.png


This makes them perfect for these centerpiece mechanisms where a large system of devices needs to be activated. The connected devices can be things like Light Shows, Gemspark blocks, smoky logic gates, trap areas, etc. The general purpose is to activate everything in an area when you add the Gem to the Gem Lock and make the whole area "come alive". Ie. If you have an aesthetic build of a factory or facility of some kind, a Gem Lock can be the Master ON-button turning on all the machines.

Naturally I have made 7 Gem Lock Hubs for Completionism, one for each type of Gem. They all follow the aforementioned design theory.

I'll explain the design of the the Sapphire Gem Lock Hub here. which is set-up in the Power Station of the Sky Factory.

Capture 2017-12-25 17_48_10.png

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There are 8 wires crossing this Gem Lock: 3 yellow, 2 greens, 2 red, and 1 blue. I should mention this number is incredibly redundant as I could've probably crossed all the relevant devices with just 3 wires. The reason I used so many is partly due to convenience, and also because some of the devices in question are Wire Bulbs which give different light when they're crossed by different wire colors - and I needed the different colors for the aesthetic.

I'll just briefly go over what each of the wires does:

The blue wire turns on the blue Gemspark blocks in the Power Station.
Capture 2017-12-25 18_01_37.png


The yellow wire in the bottom left corner of the Gem Lock activates some white gemspark lights in the Cloud Factory.
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The green wire in the bottom left corner pulses the green and red gemspark lights in the Cloud Factory which are set to be out-of-sync.
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The red wire in the bottom left corner pulses a steampunk candle, the yellow and orange lights in the Cloud Factory, and a timer at the bottom that keeps the lights blinking.
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The yellow wires on the right side of the Lock activate gemspark and wire bulb lights in the Slime Factory.
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The green wire on the right activates a timer and a faulty gate which pulses itself to create smoke. The smoking faulty gate is meant to make the Rainbow machine to the right look like it's running and emitting smoke.
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The red wire on the right activates multiple smoking faulty gates and a timer to keep them smoking, as well as a Slime Statue to spawn Blue Slimes.
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The first of the smoking gates is meant to give the impression that the machine next to it is running. This machine is supposed to be synthesizing Slime Blocks.
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The second smoking gate is meant to be part of the machine that creates Slimes themselves and so the Slime Statue is right next to it. Again the smoke is to signify that the machine is running.
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So that generally explains the function of the Gem Lock Hub in the Sky Factory.

Indeed some of those independent wires are redundant. It's not easy to think of a mechanism that would require 16 independent pulses at once to turn it on. It's a creative challenge to develop a Gem Lock Hub that has to use 16 independent ones in a purposeful way - and they can't be redundant. Such a Gem Lock Hub would have to be massively elaborate.

That's all for explaining Gem Lock Hubs!
Sapphire
Sky Factory Power Station
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Topaz

Amethyst

Amber

Ruby

Emerald

Diamond
 

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Details & Analysis

Overview

So like I explained in the first post, this project is an attempt at "completing" Terraria in an ultra-creative way. When I started playing Terraria for the first time in 2015, I was overwhelmed by the amount of content in the game designed for creative purposes. All the different blocks, bricks, furniture types, paints & wallpapers, I wanted to possess all of it, but even more importantly, I wanted to use all of it. For the first two months I was just playing the game with some friends, all the while going far out of my way to include every item and every piece of furniture. Eventually I realized that this would qualify as an artistic product that I could share with the community. So here it is.

The idea of Completionism is as I explained in the first post. Every single building material needed to be in-play in some way and all the builds had to be coherent with one another. Everything needed to "make sense", and I explain more about that below. Overall the builds are set up both in a gameplay and storytelling way. The central builds feature all the useful equipment, crafting stations, storage chests, transportation hubs etc, and the exotic builds all try to add something to the setting and sort of explain what a particular building material is doing in the world of Terraria.

Over the course of the first year as I was developing this I realized two things: I needed to add unique Wire builds (which meant learning how Wires work) and I needed to add Lore. The Lore sections started out as simple poetic descriptions of the aesthetics on display, and became a way to describe the setting and the world in general. What had started out (in my head) as a random collection of different themes all displayed in one world, with different themes being for different building materials & furniture, would eventually become an attempt to reverse-justify how all the different themes could inhabit the same continent at once and what in-setting reasons would this world need for that to make sense.

In essence this project is a massive homage to everything that Terraria is and could be. Everything is in there, everything makes sense, everything is interesting and everything adds to the setting. These are the unifying principles behind the work on display.
Presentation Details

There are two categories in the presentation: Main Tour and Wire Builds. The Main Tour tours all the builds across the entire continent and emphasizes the aesthetics of the builds and their appearance, whereas the Wire Builds section gets into the weeds about how the Wire Builds work. I tried to combine the utility of the Wire Builds with the aesthetics of other builds so that their functionality feels embedded in the World itself along with the other builds.

Note that the Screenshot sections are kept up to date with the current state the World is in. I.e. new images are added, old ones replaced as builds get polished up, new features and items added to the game etc. The Video sections are NOT updated; each one links to a unique video that comes out on a specific date, and thus far none have been re-recorded. The reason is that the differences are often microscopic: an extra piece of furniture here, a different kind of platform over there, mayhaps a missing painting etc. You wouldn't notice unless you really tried to look for it. The differences are also mostly in the Main Compound (Parts 1-4) where the builds are less focused on a particular theme, but are amalgams of a lot of themes; so an item or two can get overlooked in the mishmash. An example of this is the absence of Frozen Platforms in the video for Part 6, whereas they are present in the Screenshots for Part 6.

In essence, nothing is left untouched when it comes to the Screenshots. As an exercise to any viewer, you can try to make sure that I did in fact use all the items by looking through each screenshot.

Another facet of all this is what happens with Terraria Updates. Obviously since Completionism requires using all building materials, each time an update comes out with more content in that category, it means the scope of the project expands. This is a very serious problem for this project. The goal is to do the full scope of Completionism, which ideally would include all the content that the game will ever have, but as time moves forward it becomes highly impractical to keep the project going. This is why part of me is hoping that the updates stop after 1.3.6.

Obviously I don't plan to be working on Terraria Completionism forever, even if updates are coming out decades from now, and even if those updates are amazing. At some point I am going to make a cutoff for the scope of Terraria Completionism even if more updates are on the way. Maybe months/years down the line if I have free time I might consider extending Terraria Completionism with content from whatever updates I'd missed, but I can't guarantee that and have no plans to do so. Alas the project will be an artifact of it's time.

At the very leastthe scope of the project has to cover enough content in order for it to feel complete, and for the world to feel rich enough in many ways. And I think that 1.3.6 expands that scope quite far enough. So as of now I see no reason to go further.
Philosophy of Completionism

Completionism is more than a term we use to describe checking off each box along a long-list of arbitrarily-defined tasks for completion. That way of seeing it is wrong for two reasons: a) the list isn't arbitrary, b) it isn't even a list. Completionism is more of a methodology, a process for discovering and defining everything that has value within a set of activities with many dimensions of possibility. It bears a strong emphasis on everything; everything is valuable, everything is interesting, everything is useful, and the process attempts to identify that which is interesting with every thing.

In a way Completionism is a form of pluralism; it embraces a plurality of value. The important difference between completionism and pluralism is that pluralism merely permits the idea that there are multiple dimensions of value, whereas completionism assumes there are many dimensions of value and passionately embraces all of them at once. The idea being that by embracing all forms of value at once, you converge at the ultimate balance, and thus the truest form of value which has the most power. Being a completionist means seeing as much of the value that there is in all things, it's a hollistic methodology for constructing the ideal picture, where each form of value is happily accounted for.



-everything is in there-

The obvious counter-argument one can levy against completionism is that, who is to define its criteria. In other words the criteria can often seem arbitrary. Indeed the thing I often hear when I try to explain the Terraria Completionism project to other people is exactly this. On what grounds can you truly know what counts as completion?

This contention I imagine is due to two things. One is the implicit association in peoples' minds of Completionism with the dull process of going down a list of tasks and ticking each box. Like doing all the achievements in a game; it can be dull and boring and feel like you're just going down a list without really gaining anything. The entire process can feel imposing as there's no guarantee that whoever decided what the achievement list ought to be took into account your particular drives and experiences in playing.

The second thing reason is because of the assumptions people make on what value is. Most people don't trouble themselves with the quest of identifying and accounting for all types of value, they identify the handful of values they fancy, that enrich their experiences, and they stick to them. The hunt for all which is valuable seems impractical to them. Well it doesn't seem so to me. When I am given a list of achievements in a video game, my first impulse is to see if I can do them all in the hopes that doing them all will grant me with a comprehensive sense of everything the game has to offer. I am driven to discover each form of value that may be featured. I then rate my experience based on how well I enjoyed the overall process and what worked well, and what did not. Usually some of criteria for completion do not feel as fun as other criteria because of course the game was not designed with the idea that completing everything was meant to be fun. No, usually a game has a core of gameplay elements that are meant to be the fun parts, and everything else is just there by happenstance. Everything is not meant to add to everything else, and the achievement list is just a list of milestones players can set for themselves if they wish (like arbitrary collectibles). As such, games designed in this way, lose quality points, whereas games that manage to weave in completionism and make it fun at the same time (but not necessary) achieve a higher level of quality.

All that being said I think the second reason people are initially skeptical of the concept of Completionism is that it is so rarely done well, that going the extra mile to achieve completion of something doesn't seem meaningful. Well i'm here to show everyone that it can be done well, and it is meaningful. Artistically hence Completionism becomes an added challenge; one of including everything in the work, but doing so in a way where the inclusion of everything doesn't feel dull, or boring, or imposing or unnecessary.



-everything makes sense-

The making-sense criterion is an obvious one. In the same way that you'd want the plot of a movie or a book or a story to make sense, you want the builds in a Terraria world to make sense as well. If something doesn't make sense, and it's noticeable, then it detracts from the overall experience because it introduces unsolvable conflict. Each story, moreover each work of art. is making a point, but when it contradicts itself it detracts from its own mission. In order to fully support its own point, the plot has to make sense.

Now the goal isn't to achieve some hypothetical Platonic level of perfect sense. Indeed such a thing is impossible in a story or work of art, or even in the real world. Even the real world doesn't make perfect sense, because if it did there wouldn't be any unanswered questions, any hidden truths, any unknown variables, any potential plotholes, any limit in measurement precision, any inaccessible information etc. The goal isn't to make perfect sense, but to make enough sense. To make enough sense that the narrative feels plausible.

In the case of Terraria builds the sense-criterion should be obvious. The builds themselves have to make sense with one another, the aesthetics can't just be random, each build has to obey the laws of the world. Basically there has to be some way of logically explaining how all these builds inhabit the same world with the same laws of physics, same magic and same history. This kind of thing is more difficult to do with something like Terraria because of the shear number of varying themes, colors and aesthetics present in the building materials. It's highly non-trivial to explain how confetti block, bubblegum block, Martians, Undead, and Flesh furniture all occupy the same physical continent. If you look at all the themes at face value, the whole thing comes across like some wild Anime show without strong adherence to any rules or thought; just an ugly melting pot of random nonsense. Of course this in part is the beauty of Terraria is that it gives you so many dimensions and themes to work with.

Having said all that, I tried very hard in making all the themes fit together and I think I succeeded.



-everything is interesting-

There are two components that go into this one.

The first component is self-evident. You want the builds to be interesting; the work must go beyond just being present and making sense. Imagine you could satisfy the -everything is in there- criterion by simply having one of each block and one of each piece of furniture on a flat platform. Everything gets included, but it's not engaging at all. Similarly you could construct a small house made of each type of themed block with themed furniture, but once again its boring; merely a repetition of the same formula in different colors. You could also put each weapon in the game onto a weapon rack, or each item into an item frame, but once again it isn't interesting by itself.

To go above and beyond each themed build has to offer something unique. Wood can be used to build a house, Living Wood can be used to build a giant tree, Martian Conduit Plating can comprise a spaceship etc. If this were painting the equivalent would be to imbue each paint color with its own flavor, add a unique character to each color's expression, or each brushstroke. In order to be interesting each build has to be unique and offer a different experience. A build could be of a house, or a fortress, or a castle or a factory, or a mushroom or a tree etc. Something. Anything. Any set piece that tells its own story.

On a more general level, each dimension of value within a work of Completionism has to tell its own story, and each story has to be unique and interesting in its own right. Interesting in its own right would mean that you could ignore the big picture if you wanted and focus on a single dimension of value and delve even deeper into it specifically. In order for this to be accomplished each dimension of value has to be sufficiently complex on its own to warrant such attention. Now granted some of the builds in my work are more interesting than others and some are more complex than others (ie Part 6 Snowlands is less interesting than the Part 10 Sky Factory). However the point isn't that all the pieces must be equally interesting, but that all of them must be interesting enough in their own right that the stories they could tell would be worthwhile.

The second component towards making everything interesting is to use each material in a way that shows it off. What a lot of highly talented Terraria builders do is they combine many materials at once to adds nuances to their builds. Their builds bear a high density of different component materials. My builds, in particular my early ones, do not bear a high density of different components. This was partly due to my inexperience at building at the beginning, but there is another reason that ties into the idea of Completionism.

Take Rulick's Vanilla Bridge as an example. A myriad of building materials go into that build, many of which are not meant to represent the substance from which the structure in the image itself is supposed to be comprised of. Ie. the build employs wood furniture and wood walls painted gray for the columns, and streamers painted gray hanging from the ceiling, but the substance on display is clearly stone because the structure is meant to be made up of stone. But by not limiting the build to just the stone materials in the game, Rulick was able to add more texture and complexity to the build. The substance on display in the build was stone, but the materials used were not stone (not just stone).

This is a glaring difference between my builds, and many other builds from other builders. The substances on display in my builds, more often than not, corresponds directly to the materials being used. If I used wood, it was because the build itself was meant to be made of wood. If I used stone it was because the build itself was meant to be made of stone.

The Completionist reason for this is that not only was each building material meant to be used in an interesting way, but each building material was meant to be put on display in an interesting way. Ie so when you see the Copper Bathhouse in Part 2, a build made primarily out of Copper Brick, you know that Copper Brick itself is meant to be on display here as the primary material in play, and the build is meant to showcase this material in particular and offer itself up as an example of something interesting that Copper Brick can be used for. While not every single build is meant to showcase the materials involved in it, each material in the game does have at least 1 corresponding build that showcases it in particular. In the case of Copper Brick it's the Copper Brick Bathhouse, in the case of Tungsten Brick it's the Sewer & Cistern etc.

In similar fashion, each piece of themed furniture is on display as well, and each interactive item, each centerpiece, each trophy etc. Now of course there are builds where the material used, is not the material on display. A great example of this is the Dynasty Wood pipes in Part 3 - Sewers. Painted gray and black, dynasty wood lines look like pipes, but the material in use is actually wood. Such tactics, however, were used sparingly and when they were used the material disguised as a different substance wouldn't be the central substance on display; the one that would be on display would be the one that was not disguised (in the case of Part 3 - Sewers it would be the Tungsten Brick and Green Brick of the sewer tunnel walls).

The other thing about putting building materials on display, is that the material on display would need to be visible the most and thus present the most. Other builders' method of crowding a build with a plethora of different blocks and wall types, while it adds texture, no one block or wall type is clearly the one being shown off. In my builds you need to see for each build which material is being shown off. A lot of the time what other builders do is just add lots of texture and detail, but too much detail takes away from the appearance of the raw substance.

Lastly, this difference in building philosophies has an important outcome. The traditional building methods employed by the most talented builders is a way of taking the built-in themes and aesthetics and combining them to create new themes, textures, aesthetics and substances. The Completionism building method isolates the aesthetic for each theme and building material, and then looks for a way to display that aesthetic and accentuate it.



-everything adds to the setting-

The setting of Terraria Completionism is an attempt at reverse-justifying the setting of Terraria itself. Canonically there is no real setting continuity in the game; it's an amalgam of different themes, but nothing more. The process of Completionism extends the themes and combines them into an actual continuity. This happens partially due to the making-sense criterion where every build has to follow the rules of the world, which must include the world's history. As such the world's history and lore is explained in the Synopses sections of the Main World Tour.

The setting of the world is the narrative that emerges as the different themes interact in the process of Completionism. This is also why some themes become more represented in the world than others. Completionism embraces each dimension of value, but it does not uphold each dimension equally. In other words you won't see an equal representation of wood, and stone, and cobalt brick, and copper brick etc. in the world. While the process can embrace each dimension equally in principle, the differences between them and the constraints of the context force some to be more represented than others.

So wood and stone are perhaps more present than materials like Glowing Mushroom. It is not because Glowing Mushroom is less valuable, but because Glowing Mushroom is meant to be more exotic, wheres wood and stone are more common place. Now granted I could always choose to put more time and effort and simply make the Glowing Mushroom build much bigger than the common place material builds. But the bigger I choose to make it, the harder it is to rationalize its size in a world with so many other themes, especially since you need space for other themes as well. Meanwhile a giant floating Sky Factory, while intentionally much larger, can be rationalized more because it can explain where the Slimes and Slime Blocks come from etc.

In other words which themes get represented in what amounts is not a simple matter of subjective choice. The size and effort behind each build reflects, at least in part, the contribution of each theme to the setting. The setting of Terraria Completionism is derived from the gameplay, and from the relative levels of importance the elements of the gameplay bear. Entities like the Moon Lord and the Celestial Forces are important in gameplay as the culminating enemies, and as such their role in the setting shares a similar level of importance.

Other elements of the setting are derived as a way of explaining why the gameplay elements are the way they are. The Precursor Being and the Undead Army take the responsibility of explaining the overwhelming presence of undead mobs throughout the game across various events and biomes. The Crimson, Corruption and Hallow are important to the setting as they are important in gameplay.

Of course there is an infinite number of ways of explaining how a particular gameplay element, building material or theme is present in the setting. The chosen way is the ideal balance between how simple the explanation is and how well it fits with explanations for other gameplay elements, materials and themes. The ideal way to explain it is where you leave very little excess information on the setting that is inaccessible from the game itself. In other words, everything is explained in a way where you get the gist just by seeing the builds, you don't need to read lore texts to make sense of what's going on.

Ie the Corruption and Crimson are both known to be malign forces that spread throughout the land and are parasitic and dangerous. However there are aesthetic differences between them and why those differences are there is part of the setting constructed by Completionism, rather than by the game itself. That setting itself is a natural extension of the aesthetic differences between the biomes, which originate from the game and not from any arbitrary choice that I made. The differences between the Corruption and Crimson are already in the game, and those differences are what motivate the builds for each, and Completionism just takes it a step further and provides a clean canonical explanation for those differences.

In essence the setting induced by Completionism is in a sense discovered as the process undergoes. It wouldn't be obvious to anyone ahead of time how combining all the themes would turn out, and what kind of story it would tell. This last fact is another highlight of the value of Completionism, because it means that Completionism derives its value not just from the value of the individual parts, but also from the story that emerges as you fit all the parts together. Each theme is interesting in its own right and tells its own story, but then how all the themes fit together is itself a story, but one that exists at another layer in the continuity. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. And it isn't a matter of whether all themes have an equal share of the overarching story, but that each has enough of a share and a fair share for their contribution.


The philosophy of Completionism extends beyond this project in Terraria. It applies to the world of art more generally, to the world of ethics, and in some sense to any project. It is a mindset for engaging in any creative work that features many dimensions of distinct value and benefits from ultra-detailedness. It is a philosophy of taking as many pieces as possible and building as much as possibles out of them. Doing a lot with a lot. It is a philosophy of embracing all.
My name is Mr Creamy or Theoretical Artist on Youtube and Twitch.

I am an avid Terrarian and gamer. And you can probably tell I am an obsessive thinker.
I see myself as a theorist, on top of being a mere consumer of media. I like to take myself seriously even when doing things that are meant to be fun. I am as interested in creating good art as I am in studying and determining what it is that characterizes good art.

This project has been an important one for me. It has taken me 3 years of my adult life and has had a profound effect on my evolution. I have learned many things along the way, and not just about Terraria, but about my own work habits, ethics and interests. I understand more clearly now what it is that I enjoy doing and what it is I believe I'm good at. Likewise I feel I have a better grasp of what I'm bad at and what I should learn to avoid. As with any project this size, it is incredibly difficult to make all of it elegant, smooth, consistent and keep up the same quality throughout each of the sections. My hypothesis on this is that the larger a project is, the more likely it is to be clunky here and there as it's a herculean task to make everything fit together seamlessly.

If I could redo all 3 years right now I would certainly do some things differently, and I would know how to make the work more seamless and even better. But alas in life there are no do-overs, and we must go on as is. I hope the project will be as engaging to you as it was for me, and hopefully it'll give many of you ideas for your own builds.

As for me I will be moving on to other projects once this one is done. And I hope that you will join me. I can't say quite yet what the next big one will be and it may not be a Completionist project, but it'll certainly have the same philosophy and style that I put into this one.

So please follow me on all the various social medias, and as always do leave your comments and let me know which parts you liked/disliked most.
 
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Terraria Completionism Completion Status: (as of Dec 11 2019)

Parts 1-6: presented; requires 1.4 Updates
Parts 7-11: finished; presented
Part 12: finished; presented
Part 13: unfinished; to be presented (requires 1.4) (75% done)
Part 14-15: unfinished; to be presented (requires 1.4)
Part 16: finished, to be presented
Parts 17: finished; requires 1.4 updates
Part 18-20: finished, to be presented
Part 21: unfinished, to be presented (requires 1.4) (50% done)
Part 22-24: finished, to be presented
Part 24: finished, to be presented
Part 25: finished, to be presented
Part 26: unfinished, to be presented (requires 1.4)
Part 27: unfinished, to be presented (requires 1.4)
 
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I am still working on the final build. It's very big. (shud be another 2-3 weeks)

Once it's done I will update this thread, move all the photos from the previous one, add some new text explanations etc.

Still can't add Part 12 until 1.3.6 though. Sit tight and stay tuned :D
 
FINALLY!

I have finally moved everything over from the last thread. This thread is now fully up-to-date with the project.

I have split things up into 3 sections: Main Tour, Wire Builds and Details & Analysis. Main Tour will is the presentation. Wire Builds goes into the technical details for wire builds. The Details & Analysis section is a load of additional information that I felt was relevant, although not essential, to the presentation.

I have also added Part 12 to the Main Tour which covers the Lower Dungeon, aka the former Precursor Capitol. Originally this section wasn't meant to be Part 12, Part 12 was going to be something else which required 1.3.6. I hadn't planned on touching the Lower Dungeon at all, but then as I was inspecting my world however I realized I could add this section to the tour and put it right after Part 11. So here it is.
 
Woo! Everything is here! Time to see the new- part twenty six!? This whole thing looks nearly complete as-is, what on earth are you planning? Geez, no wonder you’re taking your time, that’s... quite a lot of builds. Good luck!
`:confused:`;)
 
Woo! Everything is here! Time to see the new- part twenty six!? This whole thing looks nearly complete as-is, what on earth are you planning? Geez, no wonder you’re taking your time, that’s... quite a lot of builds. Good luck!
`:confused:`;)

We haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet :D
 
It is a very nice map. The only thing missing from this post is a screen shot of the whole map. Also I think you should have placed Mannequins all over and dressed them up so it looks like you have people in your towns/cities. Like those airships you made in the sky factory could have a captain and crew. And you have a lot of bits of wiring that don't go anywhere or do anything. You should cut away the loose bits of wire that are not needed.

I would like to do a massive build like this myself, but don't have the time to really work on a big project like this.
 
It is a very nice map. The only thing missing from this post is a screen shot of the whole map. Also I think you should have placed Mannequins all over and dressed them up so it looks like you have people in your towns/cities. Like those airships you made in the sky factory could have a captain and crew. And you have a lot of bits of wiring that don't go anywhere or do anything. You should cut away the loose bits of wire that are not needed.

I would like to do a massive build like this myself, but don't have the time to really work on a big project like this.

I will add the map after the whole thing is done.

I could add mannequins in some places, particularly New Civ places, but I have to be careful not to create canonical problems. The world is meant to be rather sparsely populated.

As for wiring. If you're referring to the bits of Wire in my train stations screenshots, those are not unnecessary, they connect to parts of the mechanism but for some reason when I take a screenshot it cuts the wires randomly. I don't know how to fix it.
 
UPDATE:

So i've gaffed this project by waiting for 1.4 it seems. Did not think it would take almost 3 years for them to release the next update...sigh

I still plan on wrapping this as I hate the thought of leaving it lying incomplete here.

Updated the Terraria Completionism Status. The plan:
  • Parts 1-6 will require updates with all the new features of 1.4, namely helmet stands, mannequins w/ dyes, new vanity items, new standard furniture etc
  • Re-record and re-upload videos:
    • Parts 6 definitely will require a re-record as i've a mind to add significant things to it
    • Parts 1-5 may be re-recorded with updates, may not be, I've yet to decide.
    • Re-upload all earlier videos (Parts 1-12). I dont like things being out of order so I've got to re-upload anything I don't re-record, this way everything can appear on channel in timely fashion
  • Add 1.4 content for Parts 13-15, 17, 21, 26 and 27, may be others as I go through and no telling how 1.4 will impact things
  • Present remaining parts after 1.4 additions
  • Anything else I decide to change as I work through old areas and new ones...
Urging anyone interested to pay attention to this thread despite the long wait as the last few parts will be hella-interesting.

Hopefully this won't go past spring 2020.
 
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