Talk:Fossil Pickaxe

Is this also the pickaxe to mine desert fossils?
Middling pickaxe power, high mining speed -- but which matters more? --MentalMouse42 (talk) 18:23, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Its as good as Deathbringer Pickaxe for Desert Fossils. Bone Pickaxe is faster if you happen to get it early or are willing to grind it, but for practical purposes fossil pickaxe is the best pickaxe you'll get until Deathbringer Pickaxe or Molten Pickaxe. Nightmare Pickaxe is actually slower than fossil for most blocks, but it is allowed to mine blocks like obsidian, hellstone, dungeon brick, and ebonstone, which is pretty useful as well. Molten is the best in general because it only takes one hit while fossil etc take 2, but it comes pretty late in prehardmode.

The reason is that pickaxe power doesn't actually matter for mining speed outside of determining how many hits the block takes. Desert Fossil has 100 hitpoints, so your pickaxe needs to inflict at least 100 pickaxe power total to break it. Molten Pickaxe or better can do that in one hit, and is the fastest prehardmode pickaxe for most stone-like blocks because of that. In the 50-99 pickaxe power range, it takes 2 hits no matter what to break desert fossil. So in that range only mining speed itself determines the number of blocks you can break per second. Bone is the fastest at 11 frames per hit, fossil and deathbringer are equal at 14, and all other pickaxes in that range are slower. Silver Pickaxe is faster than fossil or deathbringer with 11 mining speed, but it only has 45 pickaxe power so it takes 3 hits, or 33 frames to break a block. Bone takes 2 hits taking 22 frames to break the block, and fossil and deathbringer spend 28 frames per block.

However, in a practical sense desert fossil is best mined with bombs or dynamite. If you specifically want to use a pickaxe, and are too early for molten, bone, or deathbringer, I would recommend using fossil pickaxe to mine basically anything you want to mine, desert fossil included. Later on, molten is the best for desert fossil in prehardmode, and in hardmode Shroomite Digging Claw is the fastest pickaxe overall.

Awesomescorpion (talk) 22:04, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * So the upshot is it's fast, but the key point for desert fossil in particular is, 2 hits per block. So it's as good as Deathbringer, but for higher recovery rates you need to get a Molten Pickaxe.
 * --MentalMouse42 (talk)+