Shimmer



Shimmer is a shiny, pearlescent liquid found in the Aether, a mini-biome which generates in the Underground or Cavern layer, always on the same side of the world as the Jungle. It has a variety of effects on different items and NPCs, triggered through contact. Shimmer is the only liquid that cannot be fished in.

It cannot be picked up with Buckets, but it can be pumped. The Bottomless Shimmer Bucket can also pour endless amounts of shimmer, which can be obtained after defeating the Moon Lord by either submerging a Bottomless Water Bucket into it, or crafting one using a Bottomless Water Bucket and 10 Luminite Bars at an Ancient Manipulator.

Throwing coins into Shimmer increases the player's Coin Luck, of which the strength and duration of will be determined by the value of the coin and the amount thrown.

Upon placing 300 or more tiles of Shimmer in the Underground or Cavern layers, an Aether biome is created. In the Aether, the area gets dimmer and stars appear in the background. The music that plays is "Aether" and the background can be replicated using the Aether Monolith.

Transmutation
Shimmer is used to transform or "transmute" one item into another item or decraft it. This also affects town NPCs (specifically their sprites), several enemies, and many critters.


 * Transformed items will float out of the Shimmer and stay in the air, and their sprite is a bit brighter.
 * Certain items will be upgraded by being submerged, some will be downgraded. Some won't be affected at all.
 * Craftable items will be decrafted into their components, except for Potions, for which each ingredient has a 33% chance not to be produced, to prevent duplication of potion ingredients.
 * NPC sprites will be transformed into a shimmered variant.
 * Enemies will become invisible for certain amount of time except for slimes which will be transformed into a shimmer variant.
 * Enemies which cannot be transformed will rapidly turn invisible; this effect will fade very slowly once the enemy leaves the Shimmer.
 * Most critters will be transformed into Faelings. The same will happen if thrown into the Shimmer as an item. There is one exception for gem critter, which will transform into a gem as an example: Diamond bunnies turn into diamonds etc., they don’t need to be in item form, they will also transform into the gem in NPC form.
 * On contact with another liquid, Shimmer transforms into an Aetherium Block.
 * Any new item created from Shimmer will not have a modifier, even cycling items like the emblems.
 * All accessories that can be crafted into another accessory will cycle in ingredients needed to make it, cycling in a similar fashion to emblems.
 * Upon jumping into the shimmer, the player will gain an effect called Shimmering, which makes you travel through blocks until you reach a flat surface that is not in the shimmer.
 * If a star falls into the shimmer, it bounces back to the sky.
 * Pre-Hardmode Crates cannot be transformed into their hardmode variants before entering hardmode.

Item Transmutations
For an item to be transmuted, the transmuting pool must completely cover the item.

Permanent Upgrades
Some permanent character upgrades can be made by throwing certain items into Shimmer. Each can only be used once per character, except the Peddler's Satchel and Advanced Combat Techniques: Volume Two, which can only be used once per world instead.

Some items can be upgraded by throwing them into Shimmer:

Interchangeable items
These items will cycle between each other when placed into Shimmer.

These items cycle from left to right.

Decrafting exceptions
Items with multiple recipes have only one way to be decrafted via Shimmer:

These items decraft into random ingredients.

Recipes that contain the following recipe groups will always be decrafted into the proper items:

Downgrading
Shimmer can downgrade various tiered items thrown into it, like ores and gems. When the lowest version of something is thrown into the Shimmer, it turns into a Stone Block, and Stone Blocks turn into Dirt Blocks.

With ores, Shimmer downgrades by tier, with 1.2 variants at each tier coming after the original variants. Copper is the lowest ore in the chain, Luminite is presumably still the highest.

Gems thrown into Shimmer downgrade from Diamond down to Amethyst.

Note: Demonite Ore, Crimtane Ore, Meteorite, Hellstone, and Hallowed Bar are unaffected by Shimmer.

Note: Amber is unaffected by Shimmer.

Downgrading items requiring multiple blocks to craft in a high enough stack can break the max limit to how many of those blocks you can stack.

NPC transmutations
NPCs that come into contact with Shimmer will change appearance and teleport upwards, unless there is no block to land on, in which case they will teleport a few blocks to the side. The change in appearance doesn't affect anything sold in the shops or NPC dialogue. The housing icons are changed to match the NPC's new look, but the bestiary entries are not. They can be returned to their classic looks by being submerged in Shimmer again.

Tips

 * While Buckets cannot collect Shimmer, it can be transported using Pumps.
 * Shimmer can be used to enter the Jungle Temple without a Temple Key.

Trivia

 * Shimmer may be a reference to a number of media.
 * 2018 science fiction film Annihilation, in which an amorphous phenomenon called "the Shimmer" transforms living things.
 * "The Waterfall of Wishing" / "Mysterious Pond" areas in the 1991 video game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, where the player can throw in items and get a stronger item in return.
 * It could also be a reference to the old transmutation glitch in Minecraft, where a block of flowing water was used at the same game tick as a piston activating and pushing a block to merge the metadata of the two together, "transmuting" the block into another variant of itself.
 * If the Skeleton Merchant falls into the Shimmer liquid, he transforms into a zombie. Bones.jpg
 * The stars produced by swinging the Starfury bounce off the surface of the shimmer instead of passing through it.