Sand Blocks

Sand Blocks are special soils that are subject to gravity. They deal damage to any player or mob they fall on.

They have hallowed and corrupt variants: Pearlsand and Ebonsand, respectively. At hardmode any hallowed or corrupt block will turn regular sand blocks that are up to three squares away into their hallowed or corrupt variants.

Location
Sand is usually found in vast quantities. On the surface, it is commonly found in the form of a Desert and at the bottom of Ocean. There are large areas of sand found in upper parts of underground as well. Digging through sandy areas can be tedious and potentially dangerous, due to its physics.

Harvesting
Because of its mechanics, and the fact that it is usually found en masse, sand is especially easy to harvest. Mining the bottom block will cause an entire stack of Sand Blocks to fall onto the the surface below it. As a result, player can simply hold down their mouse button and the sand will practically mine itself.

Sand can be harvested in a renewable way too. This method is slower than the conventional method but would primarily be used by players playing permanent worlds to keep their desert(s) intact. This method uses Antlions, more information is located in the picture to the right.

Uses
The ease with which Sand Blocks are harvested makes them prime candidates for making money.

Because of its unique gravity conforming mechanics, sand can be used to create traps, for both monsters and players. Sand Blocks can be placed over a Cobweb and when the Cobweb is destroyed, it releases the Sand Blocks. This can have many useful and fun effects such as crushing traps, or pitfalls. This can be done with other environmental objects besides Cobwebs, like the top of trees or items like Torches.

Sand is also useful in the creation of mining shafts. While digging downward, sand can be used to create walls in caves without ever actually entering the cavern.

Sand is also used as Ammunition for the Sandgun with its default damage value of -1, reducing the Sandgun's implied damage by 1. Because of this, sand can be stored in the inventory's ammo slots, to conserve inventory space. Additionally, when wearing full Necro Armor (or hardmode armor with ranged head equipment), you can farm Sand by shooting the sandgun continuously, because ammo will not always be consumed whereas Sand is still being placed where the shot lands.

History
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