User:MasterShizzle/Hellstone Mining Sandbox

Hellstone Mining Guide: Trial Draft

Overview
Mining Hellstone is a dangerous and sometimes tedious process but worth it, as most of the highest-tier items in the game require large amounts of Hellstone bars. Hellstone is a valuable trade item for multiplayer as well.

What You'll Need
Hellstone mining requires the following: The following aren't required, but will make the job much easier:
 * A Nightmare Pickaxe or better
 * A Hellforge, to smelt the ore into bars
 * Obsidian in large amounts, 1 for every 3 hellstone ore
 * An Obsidian Skull: Hellstone will damage you on contact without it, much like Meteorite. You'll need lots of Obsidian to forge all those Hellstone bars, so be sure to get an extra 20 to craft a skull.
 * Healing Potions, the more the better
 * A Magic Mirror: Great when used as a "panic button". If you're getting overwhelmed with enemies and don't want to waste a lot of potions while fighting them off, using the mirror to teleport back to your base will reset the spawns and give you a fresh start. Just make sure you've got a means to get back quickly.
 * Dirt or Stone: The Underworld is made up of mostly Ash, which has the same collapsing nature as mud. You'll need plenty of stable building material for shoring up tunnels, and both dirt and stone are easy to find.

Mining Tips
In general:
 * Never try to mine Hellstone from the surface of the Underworld, as you'll soon be overwhelmed with enemies and won't be able to devote any time to mining. Instead, tunnel below or make a quick shelter around yourself to keep unwanted baddies out.
 * Always use the best armor available to you. Everything in the Underworld hits harder than average, so the more armor you have the longer you'll last.
 * Don't take any coins with you. Lava deaths are extremely common this far down, no matter how careful you may be. Any coins you lose while submerged in lava can't be recovered, and the loss adds up quickly.

Dealing with Monsters
The monsters of the underworld are tougher and more aggressive than in any other area in Terraria, and mining Hellstone throws you right into their backyard. Fire Imps are the biggest worry, as their attacks penetrate walls and they respawn quickly after being killed. One way to avoid their attacks is to simply get them on one side of the screen and ignore them: if you're mining constantly, your pickaxe should deflect most of the fireballs and you can mine relatively unhindered.

Bone Serpents are hard to dodge in confined spaces, but it can be done. If your armor is decent you may wish to simply take the hits and use potions, as it tends to be quicker. The longer you spend fighting these things the more other enemies can get in the way, so beware. Their spawn rate is so low that once you kill one you don't have to worry about another one for a good while.

Demons, Lava Slimes, and Fire Bats can show up as well, but are much easier to deal with when mining in a confined space. If you're below the Underworld surface most of the time, these shouldn't bother you.

One approach to mining Hellstone can be to just drop down to the Hellstone / Ash "floor" and start digging out the Hellstone. Since all Pickaxes are pretty fast and swing continuously, this should deflect most fireballs and kill most Fire Imps that stand in front of the player. One should take care that the Fire Imps spawn above them, by mining as narrowly as possible and preferably straight downwards. With decent armor, an Obsidian Skull and one or more Bands of Regeneration, a player should be able to mine a decent amount of Hellstone before they are killed by the Fire Imps or a Bone Serpent. Also, using a fast pick axe will help deflect fireballs. One must keep in mind, however, that Hellstone Bars are very expensive, and that 6 pieces of Hellstone and 2 pieces of Obsidian are required to forge only 1 bar.

Once you are at the very bottom of the world, a way to effectively suppress Fire Imps spawns - and get Hellstone with less effort and danger - is to deny Fire Imps the right to spawn by not letting them have enough space to do so. As mining Hellstone gives also a lot of Ash Blocks, one can use these blocks to fill the space left by mining. Note that you don't need to fill the space so much, as Fire Imps seem to require a target space 4 blocks high by 3 blocks wide to teleport into a location. Making tunnels 3 blocks high and descending shafts 2 blocks wide is sufficient to prevent spawning.

Using potions
Using an Obsidian Skin Potion and Gills Potion together will allow you to mine in the lava itself. This can keep you safe from many of the spawns (Fire Imps and Bone Serpents being notable exceptions).

Using an Artificial Meteor Biome
If the Player places at least 50 pieces of Meteorite Ore on the screen where they are mining, they can create an artificial Meteor Biome. In the Meteor biome, all monster spawns are replaced by Meteor Heads, which are more predictable and tend to do less damage than the naturally spawning creatures of The Underworld. If the Player can withstand the Meteor Head attacks he can mine Hellstone in relative peace.

If this method is used, the Player only needs to take care to move his Meteorite deposit as they mine away from it. Refer to the Meteorite page for tips on safely mining in the Meteor biome.

Required Amounts
There's an entire tier of items that use hellstone, and it can be intimidating to think of how much you'll need to do everything. The following table shows all the items that use Hellstone Bars, from least number of bars to most, and gives the amount of Hellstone you'll need for it.
 * To find out the amount of Obsidian you need, just divide the Hellstone number by 3.