Talk:Diving Helmet/@comment-26918712-20150824024520/@comment-28982900-20160821212750

I'm sure you've long moved on but I'll leave this here for posterity's sake.

To farm sharks, it use to be that you could put lava on top of a wood platform and then stand in water to attract the sharks up to you. The latest versions make it so that lava destroys the wood platform, so that won't work anymore. However, once you get the Engineer you can get some wire and make active stone blocks with a little bit of cobblestone and some red wire that you purchase from the Engineer.

I use 8 active stone blocks in a row with wire going from them to a switch. Then I pour the lava out on top of those 8 blocks and throw the switch. This lets the lava fall down to the bottom of the block where it interfaces with the waterline below, but it won't let the lava actually interact with the water, so no obsidian gets made. Then I just make a little ledge to sit on top of and pour enough water in so that it splashes when I jump in/out. That is enough to make water mobs aggro on me, and then I can just AFK farm. Battle Potion + Water Candle will improve your rate of mobs spawning so you are more likely to acquire the item you seek.

If you're in hardmode, a really great idea is to put down 50 blocks of a biome-specific block like hallowed stone or mud or w/e so you can also grind for the keys for the hardmode dungeon chests.