Shimmer

See also: Liquids

Shimmer is a liquid obtainable from the Bottomless Shimmer Bucket. It can also spawn naturally underground in Aether Cave biomes on the jungle side of your world on any seed. It cannot be picked up by Buckets.

It has a variety of effects on different items and NPCs, triggered through contact.


 * If you get submerged in it without wearing the Chromatic Cloak, you will fall through blocks until there is a space for you to exit into
 * This is called the shimmer debuff. Any animations on your character or mounts freeze while this debuff is active.
 * Certain items will be upgraded by being submerged
 * Putting any item that has a crafting tree into it will disassemble it into its components.
 * Placing any coins into the pool will increase your luck. The number of coins dropped determines the length of the luck.
 * Placing any coins into the pool will increase your luck. The number of coins dropped determines the length of the luck.


 * Placing a Wall of Flesh emblem into it changes the emblem, cycling from warrior, ranger, sorcerer, summoner, then warrior again.


 * Placing any components of the Angler Tackle Bag into it will cycle the item from Tackle Box, High Test Fishing Line, Angler Earring, then Tackle Box again.
 * Placing any components of the Fish Finder into it will cycle from the Sextant, Weather Radio, Fisherman's Pocket Guide, then Sextant again.


 * Certain accessories used in crafting trees turn into the accessory they combine with, cycling in a similar fashion to emblems.
 * This includes the Ankh Charm, Cell Phone, and Greedy Ring
 * Grappling hooks end when they touch shimmer, not grabbing and not having to retract.
 * Any new item created from shimmer will not have a modifier, even cycling items like the emblems.
 * If a critter walks into the shimmer, it will turn into a Faeling. The same will happen if you throw it into the shimmer as an item.
 * Ancient items such as Ancient Gold Helmet change to their standard form, and the standard form changes to the ancient form. Only tested on loot drop ancient items.
 * Additionally, items from the Miner Set can be thrown into Shimmer and transformed into a different piece of the set.
 * Pouring it onto NPCs and certain enemies will transform them into a shimmering variant. The only difference between variants is the sprite.
 * There are no unique fishing drops.
 * Most projectiles bounce off the surface of the liquid.
 * Upon placing a certain amount of shimmer in an area, the place will get dimmer and stars will appear in the background (like with using the Aether Monolith). The music that plays is "Aether".
 * Shimmer-unique items listed below cannot be returned to their original forms, so tread carefully. In particular, Rod of Discord turning into Rod of Harmony could be disadvantageous, as Rod of Harmony cannot damage the player to trigger low health effects.
 * Enemies submerged in the Shimmer which cannot be transformed by it will rapidly turn invisible, this effect will fade very slowly once the enemy leaves the Shimmer.
 * Gem animals turn into their respective gems.
 * Hardmode Crates turn into their respective Pre-Hardmode variants.
 * Items will float out of the shimmer and stay in the air when they are transformed, and their sprite is a bit brighter.
 * When Shimmer comes into contact with any other liquid it will make an Aetherium Block.
 * The three liquid buckets cycle between each other
 * Luminite bricks will turn into different variants, depending on the phase of the moon it is when they are thrown into the shimmer.

Transmutations in Shimmer
For an item to be transmuted, the transmuting pool must completely cover the item.

Downgrading
Shimmer can downgrade various tiered items thrown into it, like ores and gems. When the lowest version of something is thrown into the shimmer, it turns into a stone block, and stone blocks turn into dirt blocks.

With ores, shimmer downgrades by tier, with 1.2 variants at each tier coming after the original variants. Copper is the lowest ore in the chain, luminite is presumably still the highest.

Gems thrown into shimmer downgrade from Diamond down to Amethyst.

Downgrading items requiring multiple blocks to craft in a high enough stack can break the max limit to how many of those blocks you can stack.

Trivia

 * This item may be a reference to the 2018 science fiction film "Annihilation", in which an amorphous phenomenon called "the shimmer" transforms living things.