Beating Calamity From a Single Block | Episode 3 – Crimson Cultivation

Beating Calamity From a Single Block | Episode 3 – Crimson Cultivation

Welcome back to Calamity Onblock, where after 38 hours of grind, I finally defeated an Eldrich abomination in hell to force a star to fall on a sandwich I built out of precious metals, generating another worldly monolith used to summon a cosmic worm. All to get a mere eight blocks of dirt. The first thing I do with this astral dirt is convert it into normal dirt using purification powder bought from the dryad. I can then plant some hallowed grass on it with seeds I also got from the dryad, which surprisingly allows hallowed mobs to spawn even though I don’t have the biome. The main target here is pixies, but I may as well multitask while farming these. And I have just the right task to do so. With my old lord claymore dash and the glide of my wings, I can fly to the ocean. But this time, I can place blocks without having to bridge all the way over thanks to the ice rod. I built some basic housing here for a pylon. Then move my hallowed grass over so I can farm for both pixie dust and a pirate map. As pirates are, for potentially the first time ever, actually useful in this playthrough. While farming, it starts raining, so I switch gears to instead farm cloud elementals for one of the best early hard mode weapons. While doing so, I’m rudely interrupted by a message warning me of the arrival of the twins. Usually in vanilla, you’d have to break a demon or crimson alter for the mix to spawn, but since calamity reworks the way hard mode ores and alters themselves work, they’re set to randomly spawn from the very start of hard mode. Oh, nothing. Brilliant. Okay, let’s give them a very unserious try. I actually don’t want to defeat any of the mech bosses yet, though, which is just as well as I have absolutely no chance with my current gear. Without Souls of Night or Light, I can’t craft their spawn items. So, I first want to get these as random drops from normal enemies, which only happens if they haven’t been defeated yet. Since Calamity makes boss summons non-consumable, once I have one of each, I’ll be able to take them on as many times as I want. I do not think you could beat them. Yeah, you might be right on that one. [Music] After collecting enough pixie dust, I make a set of fairy wings, giving me not only excellent flight stats, but also a much appreciated extra 60 health. While I’m talking about accessories, I should probably backtrack and explain how I got this giant turto shell without a jungle biome. Well, it’s actually super easy as Calamity adds an enemy to the sulfurous sea that drops turtle shells, which I can combine with one of the many giant shells I got in preh hard mode to make one of the best defensive accessories in early hard mode, granting 15 defense, 5% damage reduction, and immunity to knock back with some very minor downsides that I can mostly ignore. Back in the present, I place down a bunch of graves near the dryad so she’ll sell me crimson seeds. I then build a large cage which these seeds will live in for the foreseeable future at top the eight dirt I have. This is the second community tech showcase of the playthrough. This time discovered by bone reaper who found the eight dirt is actually more than enough to make an entire artificial crimson or corruption. All it takes is a little gardening and a lot of waiting. During that time I do yet another fishing session. This time to get hard mode ores. I’ll not be using the tier two or three ores until I beat my first and second mech though, as these being found early in crates is a bug that has yet to be fixed. Once I have my first set of each ore, there’s a much more consistent way to get it though. I am of course once again talking about the mining armor set bonus. This allows me to dup enough palladium to make a full set of armor. And while crafting it, I’m notified of an incoming pirate invasion. I guess whatever Calamity does that allows the mech to spawn also works for the pirates. I slowly make my way through them while accidentally still wearing the mining armor. There we go. Not too bad. Didn’t get either of the drops I wanted. I don’t think I did have palladium armor in my vanty that whole time. That was very silly. By the time I’m done with the pirates, I return to my crimson grass to find exactly what I was looking for. Okay, we got thorns. A little known fact is that these count as crimson tiles, meaning with enough patience, care, and patience, I’ll be able to slowly cultivate enough of these to create my very own crimson biome. Getting the 300 thorns required to count as a crimson biome is going to take a lot of time, though, so it’d be really nice if there was a way to speed this up. The cosmolite added by Calamity might be your first thought, but this skips time rather than speeding it up. And regardless, it’s not actually obtainable as I don’t have souls of night or light yet. I already have an enchanted sundial from fishing. But while this speeds up time, it doesn’t speed up plant growth. You may then be thinking I should craft a bed. But sadly, all the recipes for beds require silk, which I don’t have access to. This is the first area where the pirates end up being surprisingly useful. And after farming through a blood moon at the ocean, I now have the map needed to manually spawn them. Throughout the event, the various pirates drop golden furniture that they presumably stole. And among this furniture is the golden bed, which as far as I’m aware is the only bed I can actually obtain without access to silk. I don’t get the other drop I wanted from this, so we’ll have to return to it later. But at least now I can finally sleep for the first time in the playthrough. It’s not just a case of waiting for the thorns to grow themselves, however. This plant is surprisingly hard to grow and requires constant upkeep. It may not literally be watching grass grow, but damn is it close. The guide to crimson and thornification. Thorns cannot grow over existing grass or mushrooms, so these will need to be carefully pruned to give your thorn space to flourish. Thorns will avoid touching other thorns when growing, leaving small gaps between them. As such, it is advised to have a plot of land much larger than the number of thorns you need. Thorns will grow up to six blocks away from the closest block of crimson grass, soil should be replaced regularly for a healthy plant. Thorns are incredibly fragile, and great care should be taken when handling them. They will wither away at the slightest touch from yourself or any of your equipment, which could lose days worth of growth. Drills are preferred over pickaxes for any garden work, as the more precise nature ensures it won’t disturb this delicate ecosystem. Follow these rules and you’ll be on your way to a thriving field of thorns in no time. Well, actually quite a lot of time. In fact, from start to finish, this process takes almost 12 hours, with a lot of that spent sleeping to speed up growth. You surely don’t expect me to spend 12 hours of my life sleeping in a game while making barely any progress, though. That would be hell. In this playthrough, there’s thankfully a lot of other things I can work on while the thorns grow in the background. And I don’t just mean dying to random mech spawns. Okay, as expected. My first task is to take advantage of the rain to continue farming cloud elementals. This time, combining it with the increased spawn rate of a blood moon to get the drop I wanted, the storm saber. This is potentially my favorite early hard mode weapon in Calamity. With its homing projectiles, making it very easy to use and dealing excellent damage for this stage of the game. With the saber in hand, I take down the pirates once again to get the other item I wanted from them, a golden sink. This won’t quite allow me to place water in world, but it does allow me to fill some bottles with it so I can make potions for the first time in the playthrough, meaning I no longer have to rely on rare slime drops or crates. That’s not all though, as it also unlocks the costic tier, an item that allows me to summon an acid rain and cause a heavy downpour across the rest of the world, giving me an ondemand weather boost to my fishing power. Lastly, for now, I can make water candles to further boost my spawn rates. Though, it’s not as if it’s needed with the boost I already get from death mode blood moons, which very quickly gives me a couple of upgrades in the form of the starv. Aside from speeding up thorn growth, having a bed is also very helpful for increasing the rate at which I can complete fishing quests, which I’ve continuously been doing in the background whenever possible. This leads to a routine of sleeping away most of the day while tending to the garden, then waking up to check on the angler quest each morning. Underground tundra, not possible [Music] surface. It’s finally one I can actually do. [Music] Eventually, the angller gives me a lava proof fishing hook, which is the main reason I’ve been completing quests this whole time. After adding it onto my tackle bag, I can finally stop gaslighting lava into thinking it’s water, and start fishing the intended way. The main benefit of lava fishing comes from hellstone crates, which contain many exciting new items. is also going to give me a lot of stuff I don’t need, like potted brimstone bushes. Can I make the upgrade to these? I could actually make the upgrade. While the prospect of some slightly better boots is nice, the hands down most important item found within these crates is wet bombs. Okay, let’s put all but one into my storage so that they’re there as a backup. Create the upgrades to these rewarding as well. Very nice. A side effect of all these crates is that I now have a bunch of obsidian lock boxes and no way to open them. Thankfully though, Calamity offers a solution to that, but it’s rather convoluted. First, I’ll need to visit the cloth air, who Calamity makes sell a golden key in hard mode. I then throw some water bombs at one of my lava lakes and collect up the obsidian it forms. These can then be combined with five bones, which Calamity causes Skeletron to drop to make a shadow key using a recipe also added by Calamity, allowing me to open these lock boxes for some overshadowed and underpowered weapons from preh hard mode. It’s not all for nothing, though, as the treasure magnet will be quite useful for collecting the dirt I break while tending to the thorns. Many of the weapons also have upgrades, such as the Halloweening bow being upgraded into the flare-wing bow, which just ends up being worse than my storm saber while testing against the wall of flesh. The next few hours mostly consist of me sleeping in the thorn garden and completing a few side tasks, including dying to a random skeleton prime spawn, creating an artificial ocean, which unfortunately won’t let mob spawn without sand, dying to a random destroyer spawn, but actually not doing so bad against it, expanding my storage system with new units, fishing in the caverns, fishing in the sea, fishing up a quest that grants two bottomless buckets, the second of which will be incredibly important. much later on. Moving some dirt to hopefully get mushrooms for regen potions. Moving that dirt again so I can also gather hay without breaking my thorns. Building a sulfurous sea suited for a scourge. Dying to a random twin spawn. Farming the wall of flesh to hopefully get his rare weapon drop, which I don’t. And finally, another random destroyer spawn. I think the clouds might be doing more damage than my swords are to be honest. Although thankfully the destroyer himself isn’t dealing too much damage to me. Well, at least the adrenaline stopped me taking as much damage. I think we got it. Oh. Oh well, we got it. We did get it. After respawning, I collect the treasure bag, but don’t open it just yet. as saving it for after I defeat all three mechs will allow it to drop hallowed bars as well. That doesn’t mean I don’t gain anything from this fight though, as thanks to my self-imposed rule regarding hard mode ores, I can now use the second tier of them, letting me craft a myithil anvil and an oracalum pickaxe. This is one of the most impactful items in all of hard mode. But before I explain why, I get a little distracted fending off some pirates and farming for flame wings in the underworld. Then of course checking in on the thorn garden which is coming along very nicely. With that out of the way, let’s get back to the Oracalum pickaxe. At first glance, it appears entirely unremarkable. Sure, I can now mine up adamant in titanium, but if you haven’t noticed, this is a sky block, so it’s not as if I just have those laying around. What I do have, however, is the single block of infernal suaveite that started this entire playthrough. And thanks to the power of this pick, I can now mine it for the very first time, a mere 47 hours into the run. Of course, I didn’t just pick Infernal Suite as the one and only block in the world without reason. It is, in fact, the only block I could find in the entire game that works for a oneb block run. But to show you why, I’ll first have to use my trusty set of mining armor to gather some more. I mentioned earlier that this is the most important armor set in the playthrough, and this right here is why. So far, it’s been very helpful for getting a renewable source of each ore. But this is where it actually becomes a full-on requirement to progression. You see, with 101 blocks of infernal sway, I can create an artificial brimstone cracks. And within the cracks is an enemy called the despair stone, which when killed has a 20% chance of dropping 10 to 30 brimstone slag. As far as I can tell, this is the only way to get this in a sky block without straight up giving it to the player or abusing some really cheaty glitches. And why is brimstone slag so important, I hear you ask? Well, it’s one of the three items required to craft the alter of the occurs used to summon supreme calamatas, making it a vital component for my final goal of the playthrough. That’s a long ways off, though, so for now, I settle in for a fishing session in the crags. [Music] The main benefit of crags fishing is hell stone, which has a chance of dropping from brimstone crates in both bar and ore form. So, you know what that means? All right, we’ll stop there. That’s a nice number to get. With hell stone and infernal suvi, I can then make unholy cores, which can be used to make a whole array of new weapons. For now, I make the sword, and after some more duping, the bow, but both end up being outclassed by my storm saber. Once again, defending its title as the best early hard mode weapon. I then return to sleeping among the thorns until I’m interrupted by my first solar eclipse, which can now occur thanks to me defeating a mech boss. There’s really not much I can get from this, so it mostly just wastes some time that could have been spent sleeping. [Music] Soil is worth more than gold considering there’s eight soil in the world. Yeah, a lot more with Logan out here producing the box of incomprehensible pain and suffering. Yeah, sometimes it’s got to be done. That’s all I’ve got to say. It’s done. Brilliant. That one thorn over here. Right, I need to not touch anything. Couple more for safety so you can remove the dirt itself. Yeah, I’m going to keep the dirt there for now and let it grow up into these corners and then I’ll remove the dirt. But what it means is that I can start fishing now at least. Is there a way to obtain crimson blocks now that you have the biome? Unfortunately, not. So, it’s going to be the most fragile crimson biome in existence. [Music] Fishing in the crimson unlocks hemopranas for rage potions. The blade tongue is a pretty competent truelelly weapon and hematic crates that contain both Iicor and souls of night which can be used in many recipes. But that’s not even the best bit about this whole thorn garden setup. You see, with just a contaminator and a handful of purple solution, I can convert the entire thing into a corruption biome in a matter of seconds. No need to wait another 12 hours for more thorns. This grants access to all the corruption equivalents to the crimson items I just fished up. Ebanco for wrath potions, the toxicarp as a pretty incompetent ranged weapon, and filed crates containing cursed flames and even more souls of night, which I combined with some unholy cores and essence of havoc to make a charred idol I can use to summon the brimstone elemental. For that though, my current crags biome won’t be enough. So, I get started on farming despair stones for brimstone slag. Do a little bit of this, little bit of this, and hope that I don’t die. I then double back to my thorns and lay down some corrupt grass, which should hopefully be enough to spawn a hive tumor. The ensuing fight with the hive mind is incredibly easy considering I have hard mode gear. So, I fight it a second time for even more drops, using the additional demonite bars to craft the dark master. rectile damage increases for every hit point above 400. Uh, with that, I head back down to the underworld to make a very long crags biome. Then decide to give Bmy a test run without any buffs. Let’s see what it’s like. Okay, so not bad so far. I mean, I’m still getting adrenaline, so it really can’t be that bad. [Music] Yeah, I I really don’t mind the brimstone elemental fight. It’s probably one of the ones I’m naturally a bit better at. That was honestly so much easier than any of my fights against the mech so far. So to take advantage of that, I fight her another few times to get her best weapon drop, the Hellborn. [Music] Between farming Brimmy, I take a short break to fight the Perforators, using the bloody worm tooth that drops to further increase my melee damage and defense. Usually, this would already be upgraded to the bloody worm scarf for an extra 10% damage reduction, but it seems something already ate this world, so the worm scarf is not on the menu. [Music] And this is supposedly very good. Let’s see. Okay. Yeah, that’s pretty good. Touch the targets with the gun for real power. Okay. So, it’s a true melee gun. Okay. So, it’s a 10-second boost after. Okay. Yeah, it’s uh it’s doing quite a lot of damage. I’m also taking quite a lot of damage, but um that might be okay. I might deal enough damage that taking all that damage doesn’t really matter. Oh, damn. Sadly, I don’t quite manage to take down the twins by the end of the night. So, I spend the next day at the sulfurous sea trying to get the aquatic scourge to spawn. Without any way to get shark fins, I’m unable to craft the seafood used to spawn him. So, have to rely on the incredibly small natural spawn rate. Oh, there we go. Okay, definitely dealing good damage. Although, he’s also dealing good damage. So, making the mistake of uh not dodging. Probably the worst mistake you can make in Terraria or at least dodging really badly. Okay. managed that. Now just the actual event. After a very slim victory against the scourge, the tier 2 acid drain was a breeze. I don’t end up getting the drop I wanted from this. That being the orthacer shell as a muchneeded sentry upgrade, but go back to attempting the twins anyway. This is going worse than my first attempt. Like a lot worse. Yeah. I think I just uh managed to phase transition them both at the same time, which is the exact opposite of what I want to do. Come on. It’s going to be dead soon. Ah, okay. Let’s go for it. Okay, let’s try not to jump into the projectiles. I’ve heard that that works quite well. And I’m still using mining armor. I’ve heard that that doesn’t work too well. I did at least get my adrenaline off. I think we got it. There we go. Not too bad. Could have been worse, could have been better. I could have had the right things equipped. That would have helped, but we got it in the end. With my second mech down, I can now allow myself to use titanium and adamantite. But honestly, these don’t offer much. So, aside from upgrading my health forge, I mostly skip this tier. At this point, I’ve been sitting at 380 health for quite a while. So, decide to do one last push on the life crystal grind to get up to max health. This is a good point to bring up some fishing tech that Bone Reaper taught me to ek out a little more efficiency from each session. Whenever my sonar potion detects an item I don’t want, I quickly swap to another item in my hot bar and then back to my fishing rod. This cancels the time that would have been spent on the bobber animation and allows you to get straight back to waiting for a good catch. Pair this with a block directly below the bobber to slightly speed up the time it takes to settle, and you have a recipe for a high octane skill-based fishing session. 8 minutes later, I open my crates to find not one but two life crystals. Enough to both max out my health and make my first heart lantern. Looking back, I’ve come a long way from fighting slimes in the void. So, what’s next? I could turn my eight dirt into mud, plant some jungle grass, and defeat Skeleton Prime, hoping a planter’s bulb spawns on top of it. Considering the intended progression of the game, that would make a lot of sense. But there’s a better option. By farming some enemies in the astral biome that I’ve mostly ignored since collecting my eight dirt, I gather the materials needed to craft an astral chunk. Taking on Astromorius right now may seem a little strange, but trust me when I say it’s going to be well worth it. If you’re walking, he will not land on you. When he jumps, just walk. No need to dash. He will not reach you. Just jump the projectile wave. Okay. Okay. I think I know what you mean now. [Music] Yeah, like that slime is falling from the sky. Another king slime attempt. What? We’re back to the start of the playthrough, guys. [Music] [Music] Okay, getting close, but I’m also getting close to dying, especially if that hits me. Few seconds when I heal and then I might actually be able to do this. Hey, not too bad. Astromorius dropped some really good weapons and a permanent upgrade to my adrenaline. But that’s not why I fought him so early. You may have noticed at the end of the fight there was a message in chat about another star falling from the heavens. This is entirely normal and happens in most worlds after defeating Orius. But what doesn’t usually happen is this. What you’re looking at is a second monolith that spawned right on top of the existing one. And yes, this one contains dirt, too. Full credit for this discovery goes to Raz in my Discord server. The full explanation behind it is a little complex and has to do with the number of astral tiles in the world and the astral ore on the surface, but the headline is that each time I defeat Oreus, I gain access to an extra eight dirt. Now, considering what I’ve already done with the first eight dirt, imagine what I could do with a technically infinite supply of it. New biomes, new enemies, new items, and new bosses are now closer than ever before. But to see all of that, you’re going to have to subscribe to the channel and wait for the next episode. Unless, of course, you’d like to join my Patreon, where it will already be uploaded when this one goes public. Either way, thank you very much for watching, and I hope to see you in the next one. [Music]

Terraria Skyblocks have long been one of my favourite challenges in the game, but today I take on potentially the most extreme one yet: beating the Calamity mod from a single block.

Music by the very talented @InertTheVtuber

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Mods used:
Better Blending
Boss Checklist
Calamity Mod Music
Calamity Mod
Can I Shimmer This? [CIST]
Census – Town NPC Checklist
absoluteAquarian Utilities
Magic Storage
Recipe Browser
Voided NPC Fix for Skyblock