The 'Shroom:Issue LX/Shyguy Does a Thing

Shyguy Does a Thing by

Shyguy stood on top of the tallest mountain on his Terraria server, looking over his inventory of endgame items and 1-in-500 drops. He had every item he had wanted out of the game, and then some. He had defeated every enemy and every boss a multitude of times. And Shyguy wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer…

The Beginning

It was March the second, 2012. DP messaged me with a suspiciously long "heeeeeeeeeeeey buddy." He proposed that I write a guest column for The ‘Shroom, an offer which I have never before accepted due to my chronic writer's block. As I was about to turn him away, he suggested I play through Terraria for my article. The idea struck a chord with me: starting again from nothing, a new world to explore and conquer, a multitude of pointless items to collect once again. I agreed to play through Terraria for the ‘Shroom on one condition, that DP play with me.

And so begins a quest of epic proportions, two best friends reduced to nothing and united against an endless legion of zombies and eyeballs.

So yeah, DP and I will be doing a text LP of Terraria. We’ll be playing on a brand spankin’ new world with brand spankin’ new characters. Our characters will be set to mediumcore difficulty, which means we drop all of our items on death, to make it more interesting for me and you and to make DP never want to play Terraria again. For the uninitiated, I tried to write up a clever description of Terraria but Steam does a much better job.

Day 1



With my new character freshly created I eagerly jumped into our new adventure. Surveying my starting equipment I noticed that I had a slightly better than average copper axe. I milled around for a minute or two waiting for DP to wrangle his game into line and connect.

All of the sudden a hideously flamboyant pink-haired monstrosity appeared before me, dressed in a drab shirt and bright blue pants. I flailed wildly at it with my pathetic starting sword, but swiftly realized it was only my good friend Pokemon DP. I quickly assured him that attempted murder is how I welcome all of my friends onto my servers.

The first order of business was to mercilessly kill every tree in sight and build a wooden square vaguely resembling a house for shelter through the harsh, incoming night. Our rudimentary housing was completed shortly, and with nothing left to do I went exploring for treasure.

I stumbled across a cave and found a chest with a shoddy wooden boomerang inside. Not preferable, but it would have to do for now. I also found some shuriken and arrows on my journey. It was getting late, however, so I headed back home to hog all the spoils and wait out the night.

Night 1



Night descended swiftly and brought with it hordes of demon eyes and zombies. Normally two frail equipment-less adventurers such as ourselves would cower helplessly inside our nice safe homes and wait for it to all end, but that's too boring. Instead we went spelunking!

Before long we stumbled across a heart crystal. DP had no idea how to access its succulent fruits, but I had had the foresight to make and bring a hammer for the journey. I broke the stone open and, feeling generous, gave DP the crystal from inside, granting him an extra 20 health. We spent some more time underground and mined some copper and iron ore, and before we knew it we were surfacing to find that it was the dawn of our second day.

Day 2



We quickly made our way back to our home base, where I crafted us a furnace to smelt the ores we pulled up last night, which I used to craft an anvil. We also saw the arrival of a nurse, a friendly NPC who would return us to full health for a price.

Having already explored underground, DP and I decided to go to the west today. After crossing a large hill, the sky began to darken and we found a deep chasm lined with a resilient dark purple stone. I instantly recognized the area we had wandered into as corruption, a fairly dangerous place for us to be exploring with no armor and very early-game weapons. Naturally, we waltzed right in. We were almost instantly mobbed by eldritch horrors known as eaters of souls, gigantic flying insects which hit hard and died harder. Being completely unprepared for an encounter of this magnitude, we fled, fighting only what we had to.

We made it back home in one piece, but we'd been followed! The beast flew over the hill and smashed my face in. My corpse disappeared, leaving all of my items on the ground. DP rushed over and avenged my death, while I respawned and recollected my items just in time for the sun to set.

Night 2



After a short period of health recharging, we ventured back outside, once again pushing west. I managed to hold my ground against the monsters of the night, but DP was not so lucky. He fell into a hole and was mobbed by zombies, who killed him swiftly and easily. I jumped down and avenged his death, while he followed to grab his things. We left to hole only to be confronted with two more eaters of souls, but we were able to hold our own against them and we returned home safely.

Day 3



Seeing now that going west was not a viable option at this point in our game, I decided that we would explore to the east. We crossed two lakes and came to a rather expansive cave network. Now remembering the importance of proper armor, DP and I dove deep into the cave, mining every inch of ore we could find.

The enemies that tried to stop our quest fell quickly before us, leaving plenty of copper and silver coins in their wake. At some point, we acquired the coinage to attract to our outpost a merchant, who would sell us a myriad of useful items. We continued exploring the cave long into the night, pressing ever further until our pockets jingled with money and ores.

Night 3



DP left the cave before me, and fell victim to one of the creatures of the night. Meanwhile, I found a treasure chest and opened it to find a spear with a knockback bonus on it. When I finally left the cave, the night was almost over, and I strolled confidently toward home. My journey was interrupted by a zombie though, and I exploded into a pile of incredible early game loot. I rushed back to where I died, and grabbed all my items as the sun rose.

Day 4



I went back home and made a pair of goggles for me and a copper breastplate for DP. We wandered the overworld aimlessly for a while.

Night 4



Night descended during our wanderings, but we didn't let that deter us. Until a demon eye killed DP. He quickly went and grabbed his stuff and we went back to not really doing much of anything.

Day 5



Today I decided that our next goal would be to find some bombs underground to lure a demolitionist to our settlement. I had collected a bit of cash from our various escapades, and I thought that it would be a good idea to use it all to buy dynamite so I could blow a hole through the corruption. The end goal being the acquisition of a gun, which would drop from a shadow orb, found deep under layers of material that we currently had no means of digging through.

My venture was successful, and I returned with 2 bombs, some ores, and a pair of boots which would let me run faster than DP. A demolitionist moved in shortly before the sunset.

Night 5



Not one to let silly things like mortal danger get in our way, I bought 6 sticks of dynamite and dragged DP back into the corruption. Our voyage started off disastrously, getting attacked by a huge mob of eyeballs the second we stepped foot in the corruption. I managed to hold them off, but DP wasn't so lucky. I grabbed his items and brought them back to him, and we tried again.

This time we made it to a chasm safely, and carefully climbed down the walls. I began to blow through the floors. Everything was going very smoothly until:



How embarrassing.

Day 6:



I shook it off and went back to our chasm, recollecting my items and continuing to lob TNT like it was confetti. By the time I ran out, though, we were starting to see grass again. We had wasted a whole phase and a ton of money on a dead-end chasm.

After that catastrophic waste of time and coins, we still had half a day of sunlight. I ventured back to our cave system to try to find a demon altar, a special crafting area for making boss summoning items. I figured we had spent enough time being boring, it was time for action. I found a demon altar fairly quickly and crafted two suspicious looking eyes, which summon the Eye of Cthulhu.

Night 6



This night phase and the following day phase would be crucial preparation time. The Eye of Cthulhu can only be fought at night, and we weren't nearly prepared yet, so I made myself a copper breastplate, and DP and I built an arena to make the boss fight go easier:



Day 7



This phase went by incredibly uneventfully. I did some half-hearted mining and got enough ore to make DP another piece of crappy ineffectual armor, but my mind was mostly focused on the epic battle we would be waging in just a few minutes. Before night fell, I bought an arsenal of shuriken and arrows from our merchant. I gave DP around 300 shuriken and made myself 250 fire arrows. All we could do now was wait.

Night 7



The Eye of Cthulhu is a huge monstrosity of a creature. It bears some resemblance to the crappy little eyes that fly around at night, except approximately 10 times bigger, with around 50 times as much health, and far less susceptible to knockback. I had had a lot of trouble fighting the beast with my first character, and I was far better prepared back then than me and DP were now. But surely we must stand a chance! After all, I had gained a lot more combat experience since my first time, and there were two of us this time.

After suitably briefing DP on the boss's attack patterns and attributes, I selected a suspicious eye from my inventory and summoned the Eye of Cthulhu. The monster flew in from the side, and I immediately shot an arrow straight into its pupil. DP let loose a barrage of shuriken while I kept up a suppressive rain of fire. Before we knew it, the Eye started spinning and its front half exploded into a gigantic mouth. Unfazed, we continued our barrage until:



We'd done it. I grabbed the drops and stashed them away before congratulating DP on a job well done.