[A Zarkin' Frood]

Chapter 7: This Jungle needs more deadly things! (but maybe also more lights)

Never mind the fact that it already has the most lights of all underground biomes except the underworld.
Ho-kay, yesterday I found an island in the sky. Let's call it... a skyland. Man I wish I had my shades with me so I could put them on now, but anyway, time to fly.


Fun!


And already found something

(This is the resolution I normally use (of course, scaled down to fit with the other images) and I'd recommend anyone playing the game to stretch the window to full screen or just turn on true full screen mode in the option. You'll see much farther that way and won't miss a lot of stuff. It's also essential for the later bosses)


This sure is nice. After I already got rocket boots.

(The effects stack, of course. But now we'll have to be careful, because we just might get hurt on landing if we jump too high.)


All right. This was pretty much exactly above our little village which has yet to be named. Last time I found a floating island in the east, so let's go west this time.


Oh and there is one already. I wonder how many there are.


Oh well, this one only has this one thing I already have. Let's go on.


Been going for quite a while... my potion is running out, I should probably return.


Oh shit, the ocean!


Barely made it to the shore... I'll just return home and walk to where the first island I found was. Good thing I built some kind of a marker there.


Yeah, there it is.


After flipping gravity the finger for quite a while I finally find this, and decide, I should probably do something different now. As fun as this is.

[The lucky horseshoe can be combined with an obsidian skull. An obsidian skull can also be combined with the cobalt shield, however. Which is a better choice in my opinion. We won't need the horseshoe because we have plenty of means to cheat gravity. For one, with the right timing we can just fire our grappling hook at the ground underneath us to speed up our fall, thus surviving it unharmed. We can also activate our spectre boots before impact or just use a gravitation potion if we're really desperate. Alternatively, I could have not thrown away all these featherfall potions I found.)


In my heart... dear nurse. In my heart.


Excuse me, I have important work to do.


God, I just know they're at it up there. They KNOW I'm working down here.


Done with building, people already moved in. Reforging harpoon. Might need it to dispose of... dishonest members of our community.

(Reforged it at the Goblin's just to show it off. Even got a prefix with two modifiers. Not too great, though. But It's better than before. But not like we're going to use it a lot now)


I also buy a wrench from my other dungeon friend. This allows me to build mechanisms of all kinds.

(Yeah, we can build mechanical some stuff now. I've hinted at infinite money machines and other stuff. This might happen if we find the right statue. Of course, we can also install dart traps in the demolitionists house that are activated by stepping on a pressure plate... Wait shit... I shouldn't be in character right now. This is the problem when you are narrating in character, the character being you but not you but still close enough but too many buts.)


Aww, shit, I need to go before I kill something. I should kill things in the wild, not beautiful women who just can't handle the love I would give them.

(The canon „romance“ for the nurse is actually the arms dealer. Who's kinda a lady killer and is known to flirt with all the female characters. I've never played as a female AND talked to him though, so I don't know what he thinks of a female PC. We'll soon find out what the other canon romance waiting to happen is. It is my secret hope that this was done to prevent shippers from going nuts. But then, there's nothing that could stop them)


Gonna tame the jungle, I even put on my jungle clothes and everything.


The jungle at night. It's probably deadly as hell multiplied by a really big number.


And yet, I make it to a cave without encountering any dangerous animals. It's quiet... too quiet.


It's a pretty big cave system, it seems. Don't even have to dig. Yet.


Well, at least here's a chest, Nothing of value in it, of course. But I'm not complaining.


A fucking giant hornet? What the hell?

(These are a smaller variety, actually. They also drop stingers used to craft some parts of the jungle set. Among them the blade of grass I believe, the second biggest sword in the game.)


A heart!


And another heart! No luck in love, but great luck in finding hearts underground.

(we've just hit max HP! Yay)


Oh damn, now I get attacked by some pincers or something attached to a vine.

(Those fellas also happen to drop vines, used to craft the ivy whip, an upgrade for our grappling hook. There are also weaker versions of Man Eaters called Snatchers.)


Oh, a heart, silver and a bird statue! This is well... pretty okay. Especially the silver since I don't need hearts anymore...

(I take the heart regardless. It's useless now, but why not keep some. For other characters maybe. Or just to show off. The bird statue spawns birds with the help of mechanics.)


First time I have to dig! The Jungle might be more hostile than random cave systems, but at least it's easier to navigate.

(This is only true if you have a grappling hook or can jump very high. The glowing plant over there is a Jungle Spore, needed for all parts of the Jungle set.)


thes shinies are just irresistible. It's like they're calling my name. „Mister Six, Mister Six!“ they say, in an angelic voice.

(At this point he's wondering if he's maybe hallucinating that part)


Oh, a golden chest, lemme dig, lemme dig!

(At this point he's wondering why he can see a golden chest through several meters of mud.)


Oh yes, this is nice! I can use that to jump higher. I can almost fly now!

(The only way we can extend our jump's height further is by getting wings, which is impossible before hard mode.)


I can jump in mid-air now! Screw physics. They don't know something cool when they see it. And that's why things like these are impossible.


I also found a pretty flower, without even noticing.

(Nature's gift is the only equippable non-vanity item that just grows on the ground. Most people don't notice when they find one. Neither did I)


Whats this? I guess I've hit... a brick wall. Man Why don't I ever have my shades with me when I actually need them.


This peculiar building has a chest in it at least.

(These golden buildings with chests in them can only be found in underground jungle biomes. The chests contain items that can only be found in the jungle.)


I drank a spelunker potion just now. Now I have a legit reason to see stuff through walls.

(With the spelunker potion's effect active all ores, pots, chests and plants that grow on the ground twinkle and glow)


going deeper now.


Oh, diamonds I can use them for stuff.

(Phase blades and sabers which glow white, I haven't checked if it colors torches white yet, but it might do that. Diamonds are also needed for one part of the jungle armor)


Further down, out of torches...

(Should've really brought some more, sadly I'm out of materials to make them too)


Screw this.


I'm going home


At least I found some nice stuff I can use for crafting on my trip into the darkness.

(Now we have an ivy whip... a better version of the grappling hook. It has four hooks, three of them can be attached to any surface at once allowing us to just hang there in the air. The fourth hook is used to advance. It also has more reach than the regular grappling hook. There's yet another version of the grappling hook called the dual hook. As the name suggests it has two hooks. It works the same way as the regular grappling hook, but has even more reach than the ivy whip. Whether you prefer the whip or the dual hook is up to you, but I prefer the ivy whip.)


Word on the street is a goblin army is approaching.


Time to don my goblin killing clothes!

(Yes, his regular clothes are his goblin killing clothes)


Are they even trying?


Like...


… seriously?


They're all dead now. Time to get to know my new friends a littler better, I think. Y'know, one of them is a goblin, I hope I didn't kill him on accident.


You are asking me this as you are standing in her house, doing whatever you're doing here, while she's in your house, possibly waiting on your bed naked. Oh that's right, you don't have a bed.


No, I just came from your place, where he was asking me about you.


I'll... get to that...

(We could actually add blinking lights if we wanted)


Who's Zach? The Demolitionist? Oh, the guide. Yeah.


Well, I don't know. Got any useful hints?


Uh... yes. That's where I just came from. I know that.


Now this is more like it, this is actually helpful. I didn't know that yet. Anything else?


It's funny because the sacrifice is you. It could be funnier, but the demolitionist is too clever to fall for that.

(Yeah, it's the guide that will be sacrificed, apparently his AI was mistakenly programmed to annoy the players by opening doors at night in earlier versions and this is the developer's idea of making up for that. But I think the tales of the Guide's horrible nightly door openings are exaggerated. Not like I was actually around for that.)


Just hanging here. Chilling with my brand new ivy whip.

---

We were in the jungle now. There's still more stuff to find there, but nothing we really need. The next thing we'll do will probably be a trip to hell. I don't have to go there yet if you don't want me to. But there's no harm in going there (except we might die, but we could die anywhere, a meteorite could land on us at any time). Only we need an Obsidian Skull to go there first. I'm not sure if I'll go defeat the wall of flesh down there just now, but I don't see why not. This will unlock hard mode though, there are some things we can do before doing that. Building houses higher up, on floating islands, for example. This will be much harder on hard mode, because the Wyvern will appear. (A randomly spawning miniboss who made an appearance in the prologue). Once in hard mode the corruption will also spread faster and we'll have to stop it from reaching our village, or NPCs wont be able to live in their houses anymore.

1. Build a machine to get some Obsidian, this will be faster
2. Machines are for the weak, you must tame the underground to yield the obsidian to you with nothing but a pickaxe and your wits!
3. Dig a huge moat to protect yourself from the corruption fill it with some corruption proof block, or hell... why not use water or lava.
4. A moat? Heh. No, you'll just fight back the corruption until the hallow spreads to your place (as far as I know houses on the hallow count as valid housing, opposed to those built on or near corrupted areas, the hallow may look nice, but it's not a nice place)
4 (actually 5). Build some houses higher up. Or a tower. Something like that. What about that museum? Where are you gonna build that? Or your disco ball house? (Nothing that's essential, but if you want me to build something in high altitudes, this might be our last chance to do it the easy way.)
5.When you go to hell, you're gonna dig a shaft straight down. (allows easier access to the underworld later on)
6. Or you could just go there through that cave system where you already found a way to hell
7. Go to the jungle again. Seriously, you didn't even get that deep.
8. Wasn't there still a meteorite that was supposed to have landed somewhere? Go find it!
9. bluh.