Even then, it's for every 50 kills, so if another player got #50 you'd "only" have to kill 50 more to get it.

When digging a Hellevator do I need to grab a hammer and take out the walls (background) too? Can Corruption/Crimson use that to spread?

I remember now why I never played much with my Mediumcore character. I keep dying to random stuff (including gravity and/or my own stupidity) and having to either make "temp" armor till I can recover what I dropped, or scramble like hell to avoid getting hit while making a desperate run with no armor to wherever I dropped everything.

Currently, I'm on an epic/pathetic quest to recover an increasingly large amount of gear and items from a pit in the corruption (which I foolishly tried to jump over -- without a grappling hook or any mean of flight or double jump). I even managed to make it down there alive, pick it all up, and ALMOST use the one teleport potion I've found, but I panicked and dropped it (right-clicked when I should have left-clicked) and got cut down by a devourer before I could recover it. I even left the game session running and hibernated my laptop last night rather than shutting it down, just so I won't have to permanently lose all that stuff I dropped down there. NOT fun.

I *think* that it shouldn't matter; plus, on your way down to a level where there is corruption, you should have breaks with no usable background. The Hellevators I saw pictures of weren't more than just a 2-block wide pit, and this video doesn't show the guy knocking out the background.
Embrace your badness! I did, and it made many games so much more fun. Yeah, I play on easymode. That's because I suck at games. I'm ok with that. It's hard enough to not suck at real life; I'm fine with "video games" being a dump stat. Try it! It's liberating =)

Well I'm going 4 though I've heard to stop the spread 3 is the minimum. I'm going 4 just so I have a little more room.

My main character is Softcore. I just figured, "I have this other character just sitting there, and [more importantly] a whole world yet to explore with him...might as well make use of it!" (I prefer having exclusive worlds for each character. I'm weird like that. =) ) I most definitely won't be creating any more Mediumcore characters after this.

Yeah, I'm absolutely fine with playing on Easycore. Sometimes, though, you just wanna try new things. And then never try them again. XD

My hardcore character died, I ragequit and deinstalled the game. Then I got over it and now I'm restarting. I already found the starting items I consider essential (the living wood loom and the vine manual - not having either is unsatisfying now that I know they exist) and created a passable crimson world with good starting metals.

One problem: the crimson is next door. I already killed two pairs of tweezers and an assface with the help of the guide, and man, those are tough. The other neighborhood is presumably the jungle - I haven't seen it but I fought off two jungle bats. Those aren't nothing to sneeze at either.

So my question is: is this setup at all survivable / salvageable? Can I tunnel sideways through those areas? If not, am I likely to find the resources I need by simply digging down? Generally, what should I look for in a world?

The Underground Jungle houses some of the hardest hitting pre- and post-hardmode enemies in the game. If you're not experienced with the game, I'd advice you to stay out of there until you get Gold/Platinum armor and weaponry. You can't mine through Crimstone until you get either the materials from the boss in that zone or, with some lucky fishing in the Ocean, a Reaver Shark. Getting to the Ocean would require that you travel through either of those two zones and whatever lies behind them. Depending on how far you have between them, you may be able to progress by digging down and finding ores, but if they're relatively close there's the risk that they intersect somewhere beneath your starting location.

Overall, I'd recommend a new Medium sized world. Until you're comfortable with facing more challenging enemies with the equipment you have, you should look for a couple screens worth (at a reasonably high resolution) of Forest in both directions. A Forest cave opening can be quite helpful in directing you downwards, but you're going to have to dig on your own at some point anyway.

As far as Crimson vs Corruption goes, Crimson has slightly harder enemies while Corruption has chasms that can easily claim the life of an unprepared traveller simply due to fall damage. To easily see what kind of world you have/are making, pay attention to the Terraria tree. If the tree is Red/Green, the world has Crimson while Purple/Green is Corruption. Same deal with the world creation progress bar.

There might be some other repercussions for doing this, but you don't need a potion to return back home to safety. Press Escape, Settings, and then Save and Exit. When you restart, you'll find yourself back at your starting location (or maybe your bed - I haven't tried it much); note that you won't be healed so if you're really hurting then be careful. It's cheesy, but it has also saved my ass several times - like when that damn Medusa showed up while I was already dealing with a Hoplite.

If it doesn't cause any other problems then it kind of negates the point of carrying Recall potions. I suspect that it might cause you to lose some of your loot if you're not able to grab everything on the first grab. I haven't yet figured out what causes your death-loot drop items to disappear, whether it's time, the amount of deaths (like on your loot-recovery run), or Save and Exit.


Speaking of Medusae and Hoplites, I have a feeling that I'm going too deep too soon. My weapons and armor aren't really up to snuff and I'm resorting to terrain blocking and my current favorite weapon - the Yoyo with a silk string - to hit the enemies from places of near-immunity. I've encountered two bosses so far - the giant slime and the eyeball thing - and have barely hurt them before dawn comes and they go away on their own. And that's using my regular melee weapon, not the yoyo. I think my 'explore before building and crafting' mentality is to blame.

Save and Quit will despawn any loose items on the ground, including the money/items you drop in soft/mediumcore. It will also cause the Traveling Merchant to despawn, so it's not useful for getting back to base for him either. (It won't do either of those things in multiplayer, though.) That said, it CAN be a lifesaver.

Personally, though, I only use the Recall potions for the relatively short time before I get a Magic Mirror, so I never bother to hoard them. Once you've got the Magic Mirror, they're just vendor trash.

Whenever you save & quit, any item left lying on the ground is gone for good. (I'm not talking about placed items, obviously, only things which have been dropped or thrown. ;) ) That's why I've still got the game running in the same session -- if at all possible, I would like to recover my stuff.

Regarding how long stuff dropped on the ground lasts, it should persist until either A.) you save & exit to the menu, or B.) the number of items left lying around (in this case, counting stacks of multiple of the same item -- e.g., 30 torches -- dropped in the same place as 1 item) in your current world exceeds 400. In the latter case, the game should start deleting the items which having been lying around the longest first. Just to be on the safe side, though, it's generally a good idea to simply not leave too much lying around on the ground -- even if an item is more or less useless to you NOW, you never know when the material you thought was worthless early on will turn out to have a couple of really valuable uses later in the game that might have you smacking yourself in the forehead for throwing it away/leaving it behind earlier. If nothing else, try to sell stuff you don't currently want.

I don't know nothin' about no Medusas or no yo-yos -- I'm still rocking 1.2.4.1. I'm starting to feel like installing the newest version, but at this rate I might not be able to quit the game so I can reinstall anytime soon. =]

EDIT: Dammit, partially ninja'd by a Doctor Seuss character!

One odd question: What happens if the world has no place for you to spawn? (For example, if you have put solid rock where the spawn point would be.)

AFAIK, you'll spawn there anyway, and whatever was built or otherwise placed there will be "exploded", much like if a bomb went off -- except that, in this case, the "blast radius" is the size and shape of your character (3 squares high X 2 squares wide).

I'm so glad somebody mentioned the medusae and hoplites. Those damned hoplites are giving me some real trouble. I've gone out of my way to mine up ore and make a full set of platinum armor, and I've got that ice-ball throwing frost blade, but I keep stumbing upon groups of them with two medusae and four to six hoplites, which generally results in me waking up in my bed with less money than I had a moment ago. v_v

Are groups of that size normal or am I being "blessed" by the RNG?