Good point. :D

Tried killing Skeletron. Queen Bee gave me quite a scare, and I'm playing a hardcore character, so I prepared (almost) as well as I could for the second-toughest enemy in pre-hardmode. Lamps, campfire, food, a stack of healing potions, a stack of mana potions, auto mana refill flower, regen, ironskin, archery plus some other potions which sounded useful. I also ensured I could recover/remake everything that would be lost in case of death: enough meteorite to craft a set of armor, jungle drops for another sword and chakram, and exactly 15 hearts to buff up the replacement character. The only real setback (not counting the ancient shadow armor) would be losing quest progression with the Angler.

What I didn't do, however, was drying the partially flooded entrance where the old guy was walking. Also, dungeon brick is annoyingly difficult to mine, and there's a hill immediately in front of the dungeon entrance, so I decided to fight it on the roof without building a proper arena. So when Skeletron popped up, I waded through the water, then tried to jump out of the water while being swatted back down and away. When I finally jumped onto the roof after eating two hits from the rolling head, the lack of illumination, coupled with a purple cursor, confused me to the point I started shooting blind -- and it folded in under 30 seconds, leaving me with three full health bars and an ephemera heart which got me up to full. What a wimp. Wimpatron. Wimperator. Strongest enemy, my ass. I'd buffed for THAT?

So emboldened, I went into the dungeon, got knocked back into spikes by a gang of skeletons, nearly died and saved myself by jumping away into the darkness. Good thing there wasn't a spiked ball in it. One of the monsters dropped a golden key, after which I found a chest with an Annoying (not that it matters) Muramasa inside. I ported home to put away the arena equipment, went back and found a Mechanic in the process of being murdered by a spiked ball. Talked to her and ported home again to renovate the house. This will take a while. Bought wire cutters and a ruler. Fishing quests earned me a weather radio, and a bezoar dropped yesterday, so, except for losing the Lost Girl, tinkering is going well.

After I'm done with the house (for now), I plan to reforge the indispensable accessories for Defense -- it looks relatively cheap, and the effect will be huge in pre-hardmode. And then I'll go to hell to get Night's Edge.

The strongest enemy in the game (pre or post hardmode) is the Dungeon Guardian, not Skeletron. You can only encounter the Dungeon Guardian if you attempt to go below 0 height before defeating Skeletron while inside the Dungeon.

Of course, if you do want to try that, you should probably use a non-Hardcore character. While there is a way to survive a single hit with a maxed out character, you really should expect to die instantly.

How did you get TerraMap to work?

I put all the files in a subdirectory in the terraria directory, since I can't find an install or anything like that. Double click on the executable, and it comes up with "Could not load file or assembly 'System.Core...'". Click on "Close", it lets me select a world, the pops up the same message.

You seem to have cut out the most important part of the error message: "version=<some numbers>" which comes after System.Core, but it basically means "You haven't properly installed the version of .Net that I'm looking for".

With that in mind (re)installing the newest .Net framework ( http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40779 ) should be your first step, unless the version it asks for is different from 4.5 (if that's the case, just google for ".Net redistributable" + the version number you're given). As far as I can recall Terraria itself relies on an older framework, so there's a decent chance you don't have the proper one installed. And yes, you can have multiple .Net frameworks installed at the same time without causing trouble.

That should indeed be 2.0

I was referring to the overhype on the wiki: They make it look like there's an actual chance of showing up moderately prepared and losing anyway. Anyone who's read the article on the wiki will know better than to start the fight with the first rays of dawn or show up with a water gun, and if they don't there's just no way to run out of time.

Queen Bee was an actual threat, and if I'd accidentally smashed the larva, I'd have had to mirror off. The tapeworm is probably still scary in its natural habitat. The regular spawns in the Dungeon are dangerous. Skeletron is a joke.

True. Though the first time I tried it (wasn't even aware there was a wiki) in my brand spanking new tin armor and iron sword, I got my butt handed to me.

Skeletron on Expert isn't such a pushover, though. I can take him in single player, but multi framerates are so bad we haven't gotten him yet. Thinking of trying again throwing out spiky balls. He'd be pretty easy with traps, but without the mechanic...

Be nice if multiplayer worked a little better.

WTF!?
I thought Skeletron was tougher than the Wall of Flesh.

That being said, I tend to go after Skeletron earlier than I should because I want the Obsidian Shield so mybe my timing is screwed.

Thanks, Starmaker, for the reminder about the fishing quests; for some reason I keep forgetting to take them on more often. I picked up a fishing power item (necklace maybe) last time I played so I'll need to concentrate some time on that effort. Gonna start by using my few precious Crate potions up in the sky lakes since that should get me a good supply of better baits.

Speaking of which, kinda wondering why frogs aren't bait...

Sure, just go ahead and stand on my piano!

Bunch of fucking savages in this town!

But a naked chick standing on your piano is good luck!

did anyone manage to get the meowmere or the lunar portal staff? I killed the moonlord 20+ times and he never dropped those. i want that staff so badly :/

You can use the Builder's Workshop world if you're looking for a particular rare item, or just a giant stack of a common/uncommon one. It's got oodles of everything, which can be very helpful if you have an ambitious building project that you want to do ingame rather than with TEdit, or if that one item JUST WON'T DROP.