Tombstones

A Tombstone drops when a player dies. It can then be retrieved and used much like a sign or as a form of decoration. By default, they contain the status message which was displayed upon the player's death and usually describes how the player died. Additionally, tombstones show the date the player died.

Upon death, a tombstone will bounce around until it lands on a 2×2 empty space, at which point it will place itself. Two tombstones cannot land on each other, nor can they be retrieved if they fail to place themselves (e.g., due to lack of suitable space).

Variants are chosen randomly upon death. Golden Tombstones drop when the player had more than in their inventory.

Having at least four tombstones placed in close proximity will generate a Graveyard mini-biome. Breaking a tombstone may spawn a Ghost offscreen.

The is a -exclusive tombstone variant dropped when the Worm Pet is active at death. Its tooltip is "A Tombstone that kinda looks like a worm, right?". Despite it saying so, the Strange Looking Tombstone cannot be re-placed after being mined.

In hardcore, tombstones cannot easily be obtained because death is permanent. In, NPCs in worlds with hardcore characters now drop tombstones when they are killed. This makes it possible to build Graveyards without the need for a non-hardcore character.

Tips

 * Tombstones can be easily farmed by placing Hellstone or Meteorite directly under the spawn and then creating a new character. The player will die, create a tombstone and then they will spawn again and die again. Alternatively, it can be done by digging straight down from the spawn so the newly spawned character will die from fall damage.
 * One could flood the spawn point with water so the character will drown, but note that this is very inefficient compared to other methods.

Trivia

 * Golden Tombstones, like all other tombstones, have no sell value.
 * On the Xbox 360 version, before an unspecified patch, any profanity or sexual content written on tombstones would have resulted in the tombstone saying "(Censored)".
 * There is no golden variant of the Obelisk in any version of the game.
 * The Strange Looking Tombstone is inspired by the artillery turn-based tactics video game , like the Worm Pet.

History
Pierres tombales