Crates

Crates are grab bag-type items which can be hooked while fishing, containing random loot such as ores, bars, potions, accessories, and other items. In addition, Biome-specific crates can contain biome-specific loot. Their content can be unloaded by using. They can also be placed.

Some kinds of crates can be caught anywhere, while the rest can only be caught when fishing in a certain biome. Wooden Crates, Iron Crates, and Golden Crates (or if in hardmode on the, Pearlwood Crates, Mythril Crates, and Titanium Crates, respectively), can be caught anywhere, with Wooden/Pearlwood being the most common, and Golden/Titanium being the rarest. In general, rarer crate types contain more valuable loot. Biome Crates, which are exclusive to the, are slightly less rare than Golden Crates and can contain items otherwise found only in the matching biome chests. When fishing in an area with multiple biomes, only one biome crate type can be caught; for example, when a Floating Island is Corrupted and changes to Corruption, Sky Crates can no longer be harvested. See Fishing for details on which biomes take precedence over others.

Crates are caught every 1 in 10 catches, on average; with a Crate Potion, the chance is doubled to 1 in 5. The kind of crate the player obtains is dependent on their Fishing Power, with higher Fishing Power increasing the probabilities of rarer crates. As an example, fishing with a Fishing Power of 100 in a lake of at least 300 valid water tiles in the Corruption would yield crates with the following probabilities: Golden Crate: 1/150 (0.67%); Corrupt Crate: 7/750 (0.93%); Iron Crate: 7/250 (2.8%); Wooden Crate: 7/125 (5.6%). The Crate Potion doubles these chances.

Variants
See crates for additional information.

Mutually Exclusive Items
Like all chests, crates use the concept of mutually exclusive items. This means that a single crate will never contain, for example, both an Enchanted Sundial and an Anchor, or an Aglet and a Radar. However, while some calculations made by the game are as simple as making a roll on whether or not to choose a set of items, and then choosing one item in that set, other items work a bit differently. Using a Wooden Crate in pre-Hardmode as an example, the Sailfish Boots are rolled first, and if it is selected, then nothing else in that box on the table will be selected. If it isn't selected, then the game moves on to the Tsunami in a Bottle, and if it isn't selected, then it finally rolls for the Extractinator. Therefore, the chance of getting the Extractinator adds up to be the chance written in the code, multiplied by the chance of NOT getting the other two items (39/40 × 39/40 × 1/50), which drops the chance from 1/50 to about 1/53. Because of this, many of the fractional chances aren't perfectly accurate, as 1/53 is a much easier number to read than 1521/80000, and being perfectly accurate is the purpose of the percentages, not the fractions. There is also a third set of mutual exclusivity, which was introduced in 1.4.0.1. As of this update, ores and bars are mutually exclusive in the 6 non biome-exclusive Crates. The game now makes a roll on whether to drop an ore, and if that isn't the case, then it makes the check on whether to drop a bar. Using Wooden Crates as an example again, this means that the chance of getting a bar is multiplied by the chance of NOT getting an ore (1/8 × 6/7), and so the chance of getting a bar in practice is roughly 1/9. On this wiki, items in both crates and chests that are mutually exclusive with each other are displayed inside the same box.

Tips

 * On the, it can be beneficial to fish for crates during pre-Hardmode, save them for later, and then open them up in Hardmode, in order to get Hardmode ores without breaking any Altars. This has the added benefit of not spawning random Ebonstone/Crimstone or Pearlstone in the world, which can be a side effect of breaking Altars.
 * On the, crates fished during pre-Hardmode will no longer drop Hardmode items, even after the Wall of Flesh has been defeated.
 * Crates can also supply a few other Hardmode items:
 * As stated above, the Anchor and Enchanted Sundial are only found in crates.
 * Corrupt or Crimson Crates can contain Cursed Flames or Ichor, respectively, and both can have Souls of Night.
 * Hallowed Crates can drop Crystal Shards and Souls of Light.
 * The higher the Fishing Power, the greater the chances for crates. See Fishing Power and Fishing § Tips for information and recommendations about how to increase Fishing Power.
 * The chance to catch a Iron or Wooden Crate increases if the player is not in a biome where a biome chest can be caught (i.e., not Corruption/Crimson, Hallow, Dungeon, or Jungle, and below sky level – an example could be the pure caverns). With a Fishing Power of 100 and a lake of at least 300 valid water tiles, Iron Crates are then caught with a chance of 7/225 (3.1%; instead of 7/250 or 2.8%) and Wooden Crates with a chance of 14/225 (6.2%; instead of 7/125 or 5.6%).
 * For a deep look at the sale value of crate contents, see here.