Ridere wrote:
So I take it sunflowers no longer stop the spread of the corruption?
There are two kinds of corruption. The normal corruption and the "hard mode" corruption.
Normal Corruption:
- Can spread by moving 1 tile at a time.
- Can only spread through grass tiles on the surface.
- Will stop spreading if it reaches any non-dirt tile along the surface such as clay, stone or iron.
- Will stop spreading if it reaches a sunflower.
Hard mode corruption:
- Can spread by jumping approx 4 tiles at a time.
- Can spread underground.
- Can spread through stone (will be converted to Ebonstone).
- Can spread through both sand and mud. Deserts and jungles will be corrupted.
- Can spread through sunflowers, removing them in the process.
- A monster called the Corruptor will instantly corrupt tiles it hits with its spit attack, which will then also spread. This allows it to corrupt tiles passed obstacles and even corrupt sky islands.
Ability to spread through stone, underground, and by jumping multiple tiles allows hard mode corruption to spread almost completely unhindered throughout your entire map. Especially on the cavern layer which consists almost entirely of stone.
Even when you think you're safe because of obstacles on the surface, the hard mode corruption simply spreads underground and eventually rises back up underneath through various bits of dirt and stone in the ground. Not to mention that underground corruption spawns it's own kind of crazy difficult monsters that don't appear on the surface.
If you don't do something to stop it, your entire map
WILL become corrupted.
*There IS one thing that will stop the spread of the corruption, and that's the Hallow. The Anti-Corruption, so to speak, which is filled with light and good and unicorns and rainbows and stuff. Unfortunately, the Hallow *also* spreads in the same manner as the corruption, and only if the two meet will they become equalibrially opposed and stop each other.
This means that, given a couple of weeks, your entire map will consist entirely of corruption and hallow and nothing else. It kind of sucks. The hallow also spawns it's own monsters that are equally annoying, if not more, than the corruption monsters. Believe me when I say that, eventually, Hell actually becomes the SAFEST part of your world.
If you intend to activate hard mode by defeating the Wall of Flesh. I would, for now, suggest you do it on a brand new map specifically for this purpose, and keep it away from your home world. I'm hoping they do something in a patch to limit it somewhat. I don't mind the new corruption and hallow biomes, but I don't like them taking over 95% of the map.
* The only known way to stop it is to completely enclose your city/town with blocks that cannot be corrupted, including underground. If you've been on my "peaceful" server you'll notice that theres a huge underground perimiter tunnel around the city designed to keep the corruption out should somebody ever accidentally turn it on.