PS5 The Elbavi Flatland (Terraria Playthrough Blog)

[Menerick_]

Because my sleep schedule can't get any worse than it already is, I have nothing to lose by starting up another Terraria playthrough, so here we are!

@Unit One, I kindly ask that you not move this thread into some other one & allow it to stand on it's own, because this will be a fully-fledged blog in the sense that I'll be writing detailed accounts following each gameplay session, and will not simply be posting big-moment screenshots every once in a great while with a tiny bit of description to them.

Now with that being said, I've already created the character & world as of writing this, but have yet to actually venture into it!

I've explained this a few times already on seperate posts, but the reason behind my forum name is that ever since picking up Terraria again on the PS5 a couple months ago (used to run it for an unhealthy amount of time on Xbox 360 & Xbox One years ago), I've always named my characters "Menerick__(subject)" depending on what they were for, such as Menerick__1 (regular playthrough), Menerick__NT1 (No Traps playthrough), you get the gist. Additionally, all my characters look exactly the same outside of eye color, and the reason for the double underscores is due to the game making it that way when adding only one, so I've just rolled with it the entire time.

Of course, because I prefer to enjoy my Terraria playthroughs, my character is set to "Classic", and the world difficulty is set to Classic Mode as well.

I feel this is entirely just a placebo, but when creating a new world for a playthrough, I always make sure that the randomly generated name (RGN) has something resembling "Flatland" in it, alongside not having "Cenx" in it, for I judge a seed based upon what it's RGN is, and I want a world that's flat & without prolonged, existential pain.

Normally, I'd be spending half an hour trying to get a world with an RGN that I deem worthy of a run, but it seems as though the RNG Gods have smiled upon me this time around, and have granted me this on the first try!

And of course, I love me my space & resources, hence why I always go with "Large". Not to mention as well, I make sure to always go with the objectively better world evil each & every time!(fight me)

But I almost never stick with the RGN, as I usually tweak it slightly based upon it's original; and in this particular case, I've taken "Unforgivable", and made it "Elbavi"!

So! With this opening post out of the way, I'm off on yet another Terrarian adventure, and I hope that you'll stick around for the ride!

See you again soon!

 

[Menerick_]

Current Playtime: 8:17:59

Update time!

So I've quickly realized that writing up one of these after each gameplay session would start to stack on in repetitive, mundane posts, alongside eventual burnout knowing that I'd have to come over and update this thread each & every time, as these update posts take a good while to make up!

So instead, I'll be making updates to this following certain milestones, instead of gameplay sessions. That way, there'll be more interesting content in one burst, instead of less so content in sporadic bursts.

Now with that being said, let's get into what's occured thus far!

Starting out in a new playthrough, after clearing trees out of the immediate area for housing, because acorns tend to be a bit finicky with their growing conditions, I make sure to mark the pre-existing trees with a block one tile below before I cut them down, so as to avoid any general problems that may arise from it.

Additionally, as a certified NPC prison warden, I always make NPC housings the way in which you see here, no matter what stage of the game I'm at, the main reason for this being that back on the old Xbox 360 tutorial, they taught you to build a house from scratch with a minimum of 10 x 6. However, I remember that becoming finicky from time to time, so in all my 8 years of playing Terraria, I've always made 12 x 7 housings, so that the interior would be 10 x 6. All told, it'll save you time & materials, and is also quite convenient for that fact that the maximum base tile placement reach is 6 vertically!

Carrying on in terms of progress though, after spending the first night running straight into the darkness with wood armor & a Legendary modifier wooden sword trying to kill everything that moved, like a true Terrarian, I dug straight into the ground the following morning with no rope, ranged weaponry, & barely any torches, and proceeded to mine away at anything that wasn't Tin. However, it was as I was mining some Tungsten that I heard a very familiar bug noise coming from the right:

Needless to say, if this world had been set to Master, this would've quickly sent me off to Ocram's house. However, because I'm not usually a masochist to that extreme, all it took was about 25 hits to take this big fella out!

Still though, whenever you happen upon an undiscovered track, be sure to scout the whole thing before jumping off at some goodies you spot whilst going past!

Another good tip as well: Whenever you've been sticking around in one area for 10 seconds too long and every enemy in the underground comes out to greet you, if you happen to spot a shiny chest off to the side, just remember: 2 blocks vertically on both sides, 2 blocks horizontally at the bottom, rinse & repeat for success!

Now, after having completed my initial mining spree, I geared up in Tungsten & took my Ice Boomerang out to a Blood Moon with only 160HP to try & wrest forth a Money Trough from whatever the night could throw at me!

Once again, doing something as stupid as what you're witnessing here would be suicidal on Expert/Master, but because it's Classic, you could be juggled by 6 Blood Zombies & still come out relatively unscathed.

But even at that, despite a 0.5% drop rate:

The Piggy had gazed upon my stupidity, and thus deemed me as one in dire need of it's assistance!

However, in spite of blatant luck carrying me through on this, not every run can be perfect, and I would inevitably wind up bestowing upon me my first two gravestones:

Seeing how I carry on through Classic, you'd be right to assume that I get a tad bit more reckless than how I would be otherwise. But when I found myself two Teleportation Potions, while normally you should only use them when you're a bit further along, I decided that I could tank wherever it might send me, & potentially grab some good loot while I'm at it, still with Tungsten armor at 160HP mind you.

Now on the first swing, it teleported me right next to the left-side ocean. So I figured, what would be the harm in diving straight in for underwater chests, with absolutely no underwater accessories?

Well as it turns out, the end of the ocean turned into a cave; and while I made sure to create breath pockets while heading down, my glowsticks were at the far end of my hotbar...away from my weapons...and I didn't have any Shine Potions.

So long story short, I wound up trying to beat a shark to death in complete & utter darkness with a Bat Bat...one of the slowest melee weapons in pre-hardmode. As you can see, I didn't last long.

On the other swing however, I had managed to get myself teleported into the Underworld, which is exactly where I wanted to be! But, it had teleported me between a Hellstone Brick house, & a giant pool of lava...and I didn't have any obsidian accessories. You can also see how well that went, and the only reason I was able to recover my tombstone was from teleporting back to spawn at 5HP.

But hey! As the Sunbeam captain from Subnautica once said: There is no good without the bad, and there is no bad without the good! But even though Sunbeam later went on to bite down his words harder than the Red Alert OST's dubstep drop...

...I FOUND HIM!

For those of you who don't know, the "Waldo" painting is the rarest one in the entire game, as the Wiki states: (source)

"Waldo is much rarer than the other paintings that can be found in Underground Cabins. For any given painting in an Underground Cabin, there is a 32.5% chance for it to be a 2×3 painting, and out of all the 2×3 paintings, there is only a 0.49% chance for it to be Waldo. Combining these two percentages, there is only about a 0.16% chance for a painting to be Waldo."

To put that into perspective, the Rod of Discord has a 0.2% drop rate on Classic, and a 0.25% drop rate on Expert/Master. So all told, I'd say it's a remarkable find!

Carrying on with the subtle tips & tricks, a good thing to do in the very early game is getting to 180HP and waiting till you obtain 11 more life crystals before getting it up to max. The reason for this is because both the Eye of Cthulhu & Goblin Army (and Pirate Invasion, lol) are only able to spawn naturally if the player has 200HP or higher, so it's better to wait until you're further along in the game before you go past that threshold.

Speaking of which, after I maxed the pre-hardmode HP at the very beginning of the day & made a few Heart Lanterns with the remaining 3, I went to go take out a couple Brains of Cthulhu, and I wound up finding yet another conjoined heart, with an odd tunnel connecting the entrances as well:

I don't know what Red's been doing with the worldgen code lately, but I believe half or more of my 6 main playthroughs on PS5 have had conjoined hearts in their respective worlds.

Not that I'm complaining though, as having conjoined hearts means that a Crimson biome was stacked on top of another one during worldgen, thereby mitigating it's area of influence, and also making it easier to fight multiple Brains of Cthulhu in one place.

Last but not least as well, two more quick words of advice for you all:

Horde everything for selling, & know that you can never have too much Lead/Iron! As you can very well see, despite having only killed 2 Eyes & 2 Brains on this Classic playthrough, I've already managed to make a shiny Platinum Coin, and you can too!

And that concludes this update!

Again, I'll only be posting updates after certain milestones have been reached instead of gameplay sessions, and I hope you'll stick with me through them all, up until the full-world quarantine!

See you again soon!