Worlds and bosses

Other worlds and portals

Your world isn't the only one. Each has its own goal, and you carry your things between them.

Getting to the volcanic world

1. Make obsidian: pour water onto a lava source (still lava, not flowing). Mine it with a cobalt pickaxe.
2. Build a frame standing upright: at least 4 wide and 5 tall on the outside (the opening inside at least 2 by 3). The corners aren't needed.
3. Light it with a Fire Starter (flint and an iron ingot): right-click the frame.
4. Step in and wait a couple of seconds. A portal back home is waiting where you arrive.

The volcanic world is ash and basalt under a red sky, with rivers and seas of lava. Watch your step, and bring fire resistance potions.

What lives there

• Cinder Hounds hunt across the ash in packs of two or three, fast and quick to spot you. They drop cinders, and now and then an Ember Shard.
• Magma Crawlers are slow, armoured and hit hard. They drop magma and basalt.
• Lava Toads are harmless and sit about near the lava. Each one gives up a Fire Gland: brew it into an awkward potion for a Long Potion of Fire Resistance (8 minutes).

Ruins of the fire-folk

The people who once lived here left their buildings behind, and each has a chest worth finding:

• Ruined forges are the most common: a fallen-in hall with a great furnace, a chimney and a lava fall.
• Ember shrines are open temples with a dome, an obsidian spire and an offering chest by the brazier.
• Ash bastions are rare fortresses ringed by a lava moat and guarded by Cinder Hounds. The keep's treasury, upstairs, holds the best loot.

Basalt bricks come as stairs, slabs and walls too, along with polished, cracked, chiseled and gilded basalt, so you can build in the same style.

Getting to Frostreach

1. Beat the Ember Tyrant. Among its hoard is a Frozen Ember.
2. Build a frame of Polished Basalt (four basalt bricks make four), the same shape as a volcanic portal's, anywhere you like.
3. Light it with the Frozen Ember (right-click the frame) and step in. A Fire Starter won't light it, and the Frozen Ember lights nothing else.

Frostreach is a frozen world of snowfields, frostpine forests and glaciers rising in terraces of banded ice over a frozen sea. Its nights are lit by the aurora, and frost crystals glow in the snow and the rock. The ice is slippery.

What lives in Frostreach

• Rimebacks are woolly giants that graze the snowfields in small herds. They're harmless and give Frostfur (two make white wool) and meat.
• Frost Wraiths come out at night, drifting cloaks of frost with claws of ice. They fade in the daylight and sometimes leave Frost Essence.
• Shardlings are little ice golems that hunt in packs on the glaciers. They drop Ice Shards, and now and then a Frost Crystal.

Ruins of the frost-folk

• Frozen watchtowers: round towers of rimestone, half fallen in and half grown over with glacier ice.
• Buried longhouses: frostpine halls snowed in to the eaves, a crystal hearth inside and chests at the back.
• Aurora shrines: rings of crystal-crowned pillars round a spire of frost crystal. Best seen at night.
• Glacial citadels are rare: ice walls, spired towers, Shardlings on guard and a treasury in the keep.

Rimestone bricks come as stairs, slabs and walls, with cracked and chiseled rimestone, and frostpine gives planks, stairs and slabs.

Getting to Skyreach

1. Beat the Rime Colossus. Among its hoard is a Storm Feather.
2. Build a frame of Blue Ice (four packed ice make one; four ice make packed ice), the same shape as the other portals.
3. Light it with the Storm Feather and step in. You always come out on an isle.

Skyreach is a world of floating isles over a sea of cloud, with silverwood trees under golden leaves and stormglass glowing in the rock. There's nothing below the clouds but the void, so mind the edges. You can stand on the clouds themselves.

What lives in Skyreach

• Skyrays glide between the isles. They're harmless and give Skyray Membrane.
• Pufframs graze the isles. Their fleece is cloud: Cloud Fleece (two make white wool, four make a cloud block). They follow wheat.
• Storm Wisps are living thunderclouds that fly at you, day or night. They leave Storm Essence.

Ruins of the sky-folk

• Wind shrines: domed temples on their own little isles, a stormglass crystal floating inside.
• Sky lighthouses: tall towers with a stormglass lamp and a dock reaching out over the drop.
• Wrecked airships: run aground on an isle's edge, the envelope torn, the cargo spilled.
• Storm spires are rare: a great tower with satellite isles on bridges, kept by Storm Wisps, with the best loot.

Bosses and their lairs

Every world has a boss, and each one drops something found nowhere else:

Each boss you beat drops its heart, so beating the bosses of other lairs gets you more. Whatever a boss drops belongs to the player who woke it: nobody else can pick it up, even if they landed the last blow. Keep them safe: one of every world's heart makes the Convergence Altar, the way to the final boss (see The final goal). A boss also drops a hoard when it falls (gold, cobalt, ember shards and Embersteel from the Warden; magma, obsidian, cobalt, gold and the Frozen Ember from the Tyrant; ice shards, frost crystals, cobalt, gold and the Storm Feather from the Colossus; stormglass, storm essence, cobalt and gold from the Sovereign), and each lair has two chests of treasure.

A boss is beaten in one stand. If everyone fighting it falls, or walks away, it recovers in full and returns to its altar; a bed beside the lair gets you back quickly, but not with the boss any weaker. Friends fighting beside you keep it busy while you come back.

Boss armour

Each boss wears armour you can't get any other way: no recipe makes it and no chest holds it. When a boss falls, there's a good chance it drops a piece of its set, sometimes two. You can beat each lair's boss once (other players can still beat it there themselves, with their own key), so collecting all four means tracking down several lairs. Its protection is a little better than Embersteel's, but the real prize is the set's power when you wear all four pieces:

Hollowguard from the Hollow Warden
Undying Ember: a blow that would kill you leaves you at three hearts instead, healing, and a blast of fire throws back and burns everything around you. It recharges in five minutes.

Magmaplate from the Ember Tyrant
Lavawalker: for 10 seconds from when you first touch lava or fire, they can't burn you (then it needs 30 seconds' rest before it works again); you can always see clearly under lava, and anything that hits you gets burned in return.

Frostbound from the Rime Colossus
Permafrost: still water freezes under your feet so you can walk across it (it thaws again after you've gone), and anything that hits you is chilled, moving at half speed for a few seconds.

Stormcaller from the Storm Sovereign
Thunderstride: jump again in mid-air, no fall ever hurts you, and lightning strikes anything that hits you.

Finding a lair

The bosses sleep in lairs: sealed halls deep underground (in Skyreach, high in the sky), with the world's altar in the middle and two chests of treasure. There are several in every world, but they're rare and far from where you start. The nearest are more than a thousand blocks out.

To find one, craft a Seeker Eye (an ember shard and glow fungus) and throw it (right-click). It glides about fourteen blocks toward the nearest lair you haven't beaten yet and hovers there for a moment, so you can see which way it went. Then it drops: pick it up and follow. Sometimes it shatters instead, so bring a few. When you're standing over a lair, the eye sinks into the ground instead. Then dig down.

The final goal: the Devourer

With the heart of every world's guardian, you can face the end of it all.

1. Gather the four hearts: the Heart of the World (Hollow Warden), the Heart of Fire (Ember Tyrant), the Heart of Frost (Rime Colossus) and the Heart of the Storm (Storm Sovereign).
2. Make the Convergence Altar: the four hearts in the corners, gold blocks between them and obsidian in the middle.
3. Place it in your own world and use it (right-click). The Rift tears open beside it, framed in nullstone.
4. Step into the Rift. You arrive on the edge of the Devourer's arena, floating in the void between the worlds among torn-off pieces of all four. A portal home waits where you arrive.
5. Make a Rift Key from rift crystal (it grows on the drifting pieces), nullstone and a gold block.
6. Wake the Devourer at the altar in the middle of the arena, and beat it.

The Devourer is a leviathan of the void, its maw opening in four petals, each tipped with a crystal of a world it has swallowed. It's the toughest of them all and hits the hardest, so bring your best: a full set of boss armour, healing potions and plenty of food. Beaten, it drops the Crown of Worlds (a helmet, the best there is) and a great hoard. Like every boss, each player can beat it once, and the drops go to whoever woke it.