Buckets

Buckets are tools used to carry water, lava, or honey, allowing them to be removed or placed. With an Empty Bucket, pressing the button on any sufficient body of liquid collects it, which replaces the Empty Bucket with the respective Water Bucket, Lava Bucket, or Honey Bucket. Pressing the button again will deposit the liquid at the location of the cursor, wherein the filled bucket is again replaced with an Empty Bucket. Each bucket holds one tile of liquid.

The and  act as infinite water and lava placing buckets, whereas the  and  are essentially infinite Empty Buckets that accept only water or lava, respectively. They also add/remove liquids at a slightly faster speed than their normal bucket counterparts (especially when moving the cursor around while filling/draining). There are now honey variants for these, as well as the Bottomless Shimmer Bucket

Tips

 * Buckets may be utilised when duplicating liquids. When they are placed in a location that causes the liquid to begin flowing, this separates the liquid tile into multiple portions. This combines with the fact that each bucket collected is always full and will place a whole tile of liquid, even when a half tile portion is removed from the world. In other words, a half bucketful portion can be collected which will still place a whole tile and restart the cycle, while the remaining portion accumulates somewhere else. Overall because of this "rounding up" effect more liquid is now present than before. In practice this can be accomplished by either repeatedly using a full bucket on a single tile to place and remove the liquid, or instead splitting the fluid into two separate half tiles and collecting one of them.
 * This is ideally done with one bucket in the inventory, which will switch states immediately as it is used. With a stack of buckets present, the player will have to reselect the appropriate stack of items after each "use" action. Therefore it is best to store extra buckets during the actual duplication process and retrieve them afterwards when all of them can be filled at once.
 * The Empty Bucket "helmet" is of little practical use. While it is much cheaper than a proper Iron Helmet, it is also no more effective an a Wood Helmet, which is far more accessible than the Empty Bucket.
 * While falling, a Water or Honey Bucket can be used as an emergency method to prevent potentially fatal fall damage, although this may require some practice to perform effectively. Water Walking Boots or any of their upgrades prove useful. With protection against lava, e.g. via an Obsidian Skin Potion or Lava Charm (or any of its upgrades), a Lava Bucket can also be used.