There's a reason obtaining Night's Edge is one of the 4 main categories on the leaderboard - it involves a lot of the early game content, without asking for annoying resource grinding, fitting into tight day-night cycle deadlines, - which in my opinion, makes it the best category for a beginner to get into, as well as a good way to polish your skills at early game navigation, sharper movement and other things.
The exact category in question is 1.4 NMA, Random. NMA stands for No Major Abuses, which means no glitching, as well as only using one world (view rules for more). World Record at the time of writing is 21:11.
The route consists of 5 main parts:
- Getting ready for Brain of Cthulhu, finding Boomstick if possible
- Getting ore and tissue from BoC phase 1, optionally, also phase 2
- Night 1 Skeletron, getting Muramasa
- Using Jungle cave to navigate to Hell, getting Blade of Grass on the way, making Fiery sword
- Finding the closest crimson altar
- Don't build houses. Start walking, hitting trees once for a chance to get food that grants a movement speed boost. Chop 2-3 trees when you find somewhat tall ones.
The better side to go is always jungle side. Along with normal mountain-like cave entrances, and a lesser chance for evil biome, Jungle offers its own cave entrance, that may get blocked by a beehive among other things, but is still, most of the time, a sure way to get deep into the underground jungle. Underground desert, which sometimes has clear cave entrances on the surface, is always* on the same side as jungle. Meanwhile, spotting a desert covered by crimson, or finding an early double crimson (1 chasm per crimson biome), is a sure way to know you're heading in the direction of snow biome.
- To fight Brain, grenades can be incredibly useful, so burning a few seconds to get a wooden chest is usually worth it. If you find any jester arrows, a decent bow will take care of phase 1 no problem (though, a wooden bow will be quite effective too). If you're comfortable enough with your mobility, you can try to pick up the drop from the last orb in case it is crimson rod. There's a few ways to go about Brain. I'll list them in increasing difficulty.
- Using any weapons in your possession to clear phase 1, picking up drops, recalling.
- If you have throwing knives or boomstick, clearing phase 2 (viable if crimson is close to the dungeon)
- Setting spawn point at surface of the crimson, recalling with one or no creepers left, getting Brain to despawn by leaving crimson
- Clearing phase 1 until a single creeper is left, leaving crimson through the chasm entrance with Brain on your tail 3 of the methods above focus on keeping your location at the crimson, that is because the next step is to get to the dungeon and kill Skeletron, and the crimson often appears on the same side as the Dungeon, - which brings us to step 3.
- Prepare 1 or 2 levels of platforms, not going far horizontally. If you have a crimson rod, try to get Skeletron as high as possible before he starts spinning, and lead him down the cloud's rain for max DPS. The important thing now, is to see whether the first dungeon chest is a wooden one or not. If it's IS - you're gonna have a hard time finding muramasa.
Dungeon loot spawns based on a pattern, with order being determined by which chest generated first. Pattern: Muramasa -> Cobalt Shield -> Aqua Scepter -> Blue Moon -> Magic Missile -> Valor -> a wooden chest with a golden key -> Handgun, then it repeats. When the first chest spawns at 'surface level', it gets replaced with a wooden chest with a golden key, effectively, overriding your otherwise guaranteed Muramasa.
If that happens, you need to go deep and look for a Second-cycle Muramasa. A good way to do that is by finding another wooden chest, then trying to guess which one generated 2 chests later. If not - then you need to break every pot and kill every enemy to get a golden key, then come back to the very first chest, because it is guaranteed to have Muramasa.
- Often times you'll have Crimtane bars for more than just the necessary Pick and Sword. Crimson weapons can play a pretty big role in the run: If you don't have Boomstick, the mace can deal the most damage against Skeletron, otherwise, a bow and/or yo-yo will be helpful in farming the stingers.
The next step is go to hell through jungle. If you run into a dead end, look for openings on the sides and below, dig and bomb to them to try and get down with minimal effort. Keep in mind that you'll need 12 spores and 12 stingers, as well as 20 obsidian (!). Being just above hell when getting the final stingers can be annoying, with some hornets flying into lava. Getting 60 hellstone as fast as possible is pretty trivial.
- If you've explored any caves near spawn, there's a chance you've encountered an Altar - see if that's the case before going to the nearest crimson for one.
Another thing, there can be small enclosed holes underground, not connected to the outer world by any caves, and very occasionally, they have altars too. But if you open your map and see a piece of light somewhere you've never been, that does not mean that it's an Altar. Caves not previously accessed by the player have a weird feature where they randomly flash, emitting light out of nowhere. So if you're not certain the light near spawn was emitted by an Altar, it's safer to go for a crimson chasm.
Sorry for the massive detail and amount of text in this guide - that is the nature of me :) Join the Discord server linked on the side navbar if you have questions.
- Max Overpower#5914 on Discord.
