I'll Always Call It The Mesa
Part 18 ~ 15 August 2025
Played: 1 April 2025
This session was played on April 1st, so... Welcome to my Terraria let's play! Today we're building a wooden rectangle to protect us from the flying eyeballs... or whatever it is you do in Terraria, idk, I've never played it lmao.
May 2018. Over seven years ago as of this posting. That's when they renamed the mesa biome to the "badlands". These colourful hills have only been in the game since late 2013, meaning they have now been badlands longer than they were ever mesa. But to me, they'll always be the mesa. It just sounds, I dunno, less bad? Pour one out for my boy Bryce, while you're here. Oh, and it's not just the mesas by the way – remember mega spruce? Extreme hills? Mushroom islands?? (It's officially "mushroom fields" now, in case you missed that one.) I played the game so much with those names that I still haven't gotten used to the changes. So if you ever see me using old names for biomes, it's because I'm old, okay?
Anyway, minecraft boomer moment over, I'm just here for terracotta. Specifically white terracotta (you'll see why soon), but also plain terracotta that I can dye and bake as I see fit. I harvested about 200 blocks of each from this spot on the hill, just south of Shrieking Hole (that's it at the right of screen). But it wouldn't be Minecraft if I didn't go off on a wacky side mission, so rather than simply go home, I set about scouting these "bad lands" (sic) for their surface mineshafts.
Initial signs weren't promising, as there were no rails or webs in sight, but a quick flight to the south brought me to a minecart chest. This was just a taster though: the greater part of this complex was down in the ravine. Besides being a literal goldmine (a very nice perk of spawning near this biome!), the labyrinth was crawling with creepers – never fun to encounter, even with full gear, but essential for stocking up on rockets. The chest loot was nothing special by this stage, but free gold apples and nametags are always welcome.
Back on the wing, and another surface structure caught my attention, this one centred around an open-air spider spawner! Also featuring a floating dead bush (ghost bush?). The tunnel system here didn't seem to extend underground so much. I suspect most of it "generated" higher up and didn't spawn for lack of terrain. Still had a few chests though, including a couple rather far away from this spot.
The last one, you've already seen! It's the coastal one I passed by while I was harvesting coral. There isn't much to that structure, presumably most of the generation goes out to sea, so I just looted a couple of chests and flew off – back to my town of Testificates. Okay, I don't call them THAT any more :P
