Shadow Orb

Shadow Orbs are purple floating orbs which are found deep in the crevices of the Corruption. Frequently, to get to them you need to dig through Ebonstone, which is possible by using Nightmare Pickaxe or higher tier Pickaxes, exploding it with Dynamite, or converting it to normal stone with Purification Powder.

Once you reach the orb, you can break it with a Hammer, Bomb, or Dynamite.

Each orb, when destroyed, will leave behind items for the player, and have some effect on the game world. The following list outlines the cycle of orb messages, and is ordered assuming that the world loads with 0 orbs having been destroyed:


 * Destroying your first orb will relay the message "A horrible chill runs down your spine...".
 * On destroying a second orb, the message "Screams echo around you..." appears.
 * On destroying a third orb, the dreaded Eater of Worlds is spawned and the destroyed orbs count is reset.

May contain:
 * Musket and several Musket Balls
 * Orb of Light
 * Vilethorn
 * Ball 'O Hurt
 * Band of Starpower

It is entirely possible to spawn the Eater of Worlds after destroying your first orb, or even to have it spawn right at the start of a new game! This occurs when a map loads and registers two or three shadow orbs as destroyed from the beginning. A clear indication that a new world file has a broken orb count is if meteorites crash or a Goblin Army spawns before anyone in the game breaks any shadow orbs. The meteorite can possibly crash right at the start of the game if this is the case. There is no way to definitively confirm the phase of the orb cycle until one of the orbs is broken.

The first Orb broken in a world (not destroyed with dynamite) will always drop a Musket and several Musket Balls, from then on the drop is chosen at random from the list above.

For a Goblin Army to spawn or a meteorite to crash into the world, the orb count of the world must be greater than one.