PC Questions about how water works in Terraria

Nemesis

Terrarian
Hi guys.

I'm a new player to Terraria. I admire the moving water behaviors in Terraria, and, being the curious type I have a few questions about it. I've tried to sum up the questions in bold, but it'd be appreciated if my other comments could be addressed.

1.) Is there any way to truly obliterate a tile of water?
It was sometimes useful in Minecraft to obliterate water. Let's say there's a small, shallow pit, which is what you want, but it's filled with water, which you don't want. So, by filling it with dirt, and then removing the dirt, you'd obliterate the water tiles permanently. (and there was a way to create water out of nothing in MC, so it was okay!) In Terraria, however, let's say you have the same situation -- a small pool of water in a spot where you want to build. Well, that's easy, just fill it up with dirt -- problem solved. However, if you now dig your dirt back up, the water is still there! -- it was hiding behind your dirt tiles -- wut?! This is strange to me, but maybe this is there for good reason.. is there perhaps a valid reason for this behavior?

2.) When you dig underwater, are you actually CREATING new water tiles?
I noticed that if I jump in a pool of shallow water (say, 2 to 5 tiles deep), and dig down, the water level lowers accordingly. This is what you'd expect to happen. However, I noticed that when digging down in BIG pools of water, the water level eventually stops being affected at all. I figured, since the body of water is larger, the change will be more gradual, so it will take a lot longer to lower the water level. However after continual underwater digging, the water level seemed to stay exactly the same after a certain point. Does that mean that I'm essentially CREATING new water tiles? Maybe my "water level adjustment" amount from digging is too small relative to the size of the body of water, that it's getting constantly "rounded off" to zero, and therefore I am actually increasing the amount of water tiles? Or is it my imagination? Furthermore, I noticed when a tile of water falls off a ledge into a wide flat pit, it will distribute itself as evenly as possible, flattening, as you'd expect, in its new pit. But what happens if a bit of water falls onto a very large, flat area? It seems to flatten into nothing (i.e. obliterate?), but it might just be going off the edges of the screen too fast for me to see?

3.) How do you make perpetual waterfalls?
Sometimes when exploring in caves I'll find a tiny pool of water which is dropping a thin, never-ending waterfall down a ledge (into another pool). Can this effect be created artificially? If so, how? If I try to make an artificial waterfall, the amount of water that overflows always flows entirely over the edge, occupies a new space, and no permanent waterfall is created.

Thanks for any enlightenment!
 
You can duplicate water from taking it from the middle of two blocks like this: -- _ -- the water would sit in the middle of the blocks. Then you would empty the bucket on the adjacent block and, water would spill back in the middle thus making more water (sorry Im really terrible at explaining things lol)

For the the 3rd question, you hit the tile with an hammer to change the angle and it can make the water flow over it.
 
1. Yes. You can dig a hole, put the water in there and fill up the pit with dirt again.
If you log out and in again, the water will be removed. If you don't reload the map then the game will remember there's water there.

2. Nope, you're not creating more water. There's a way to infinitely create more water, but you won't accomplish this by just digging somewhere.

3. Give a tile next to water a smack with a hammer (creating a half-block) and you'll create a waterfall.
 
#1 You can bury water tiles in blocks, yes. If you quit & Save from the world and re-enter afterwards, the water will disappear when you dig the blocks.

#2 If you dig too slowly(as in 1 block every 10 seconds) with larger pools, yes. I do believe there's a method of infinite water if they are enclosed in a box at least 29 x 50 or something. But this isn't a problem if you keep digging down at speed.

#3 The waterfalls you see are created when water(or any liquid) is contained in a pool with half-blocks on the side. These are purely visual effects, and they are not real tiles at all.
 
1. Water is like Matter and Anti-matter, you annihilate them both when they collide. Plus you get some exotic energy obsidian from the process, though it definitely takes a lot of time. You could always just dig a thin hole to hell and let it rot somewhere.
2. Yes, in some occasions. It's a strange bug where if large water bodies have smaller holes below them, sometimes the water level doesn't change causing an infinite waterfall.
3. STOP, Hammer time
 
The only ways I know of to obliterate water is to:

-Put it in buckets and trash the buckets
-pour it into hell, where it will overflow and eventually evaporate
 
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