The next session continued with just us two, diving deeper into the jungle caves, but also sky high into the floating islands.
We've found some new items, and had some fun discoveries.
At one point, I've actually discovered that glowsticks can trigger red pressure plates,
so there was a mushroom biome with a very specific spot that was very tempting to throw a glowstick at, to spawn a hoplite.
Aaand this escalated quickly into multiple hoplites swarming, and we got trapped:
So it was pretty clear what happened next:
Gerben blocked that hole afterwards.
Afterwards, we've made some more non-boss progression, like blood moons, breaking crimson hearts, and I also managed to grab Fledging Wings from a chest.
Which quickly shows again how valuable raw items with multiple functions are (these wings are effectively a balloon, umbrella and lucky horsehoe in one)
However, we've both come to an agreement: Living without a pickaxe is a huuge pain.
To recap what it's like without a pickaxe:
- Every block placed has to be done carefully, a mistake means a bomb has to be used to remove it, or live with the error.
- You can't pick up empty chests, so all chest management has to be done from their generated positions.
- Limited Bomb management, you never know how much you're gonna need.
- Exploration is mostly just moving around the generated caves, making shortcuts felt like wasting bombs.
- We cannot remove the gravestones, so the graveyard will constantly persist, lowering our morale. (and removing it with a bomb, while our chances of dying are still high, is like putting a sticking plaster on a wooden leg)
The first pickaxe in my run was a Picksaw, and Gerben was not in a mood to go through these restrictions for 80% of the game, and tbh, I have to agree with him.
So, with the potentional of the buffed item droprate, we went looking for a decent spot to farm Undead Miners. And after looking for a while, we found far away a very conveniënt farming spot:
Lava everywhere! and enough surface to make the enemies spawn on the edges, so we've decided to set up our camp here.
...and then we wait...
This screen took like 2 hours, and we even got all mining equipment before getting the Bone Pickaxe.
At some point, we even just let the game run and took a pauze ourself, in good belief that the minions kept us safe.
There was also like...a moment where the Skeleton Merchant arrived, and since we couldn't even use the shop, his presense was basically just limiting enemy spawns at best.
So I also had to take...measurements to get rid of him without leaving:
...I felt a little guilty for it. At least he's already dead.
Eventually...at the end of the second hour, it finally dropped:
With us already been for so long without even a single pickaxe, Gerben already felt that
massive relief of finally having one of our default equipment back.
It felt very similair to how I felt that relief when I got a picksaw, so I found it very entertaining to watch and decided to let Gerben keep the pickaxe first. I could handle been without for a while longer.
It did made me wonder if it was worth it going for the Bone Pickaxe on my first run though.
At one side the struggle was real, but at the other side, I'm also glad to have somehow managed that all without.
Gerben, who was inspired by watching Yrimir's Summoner Playthrough again, had decided to take the creativity on building again.
We still have our limitations on decorations and furniture, but I still think it came out pretty well:
And at the end of the day, our base started to take shape (My brother might have a little obsession with the pickaxe now)