So the Draedon update dropped and released 2 more upgrades for the ‘flower’ summon weapons… so I decided to make a challenge based around using them and only them
 
 
Well, if you ever wondered the same thing (which I doubt the Draedon update’s only been out for like a week or so as of my beginning to write this) this is the ‘guide’ for you
 
 
Anyways, on we go!
 
 

[Prior Notes]

So, the Draedon update dropped, which is probably the biggest news. The challenge run was completed between 1.5.0.1-1.5.0.2 for reference, as for once I actually have the specific update numbers to use because I paid attention for you guys 🙂
 
 
This means more bosses, changed bosses… and many of the boss rankings being altered by the fact said bosses are changed. Thus I will be changing the usual difficulty slider about the increased difficulty to one about general difficulty… which tbh I was partially using it as anyways…
 
 
 

[Rules]

As per the usual, this challenge run has a series of rules that go with it.
 
 
Blossom Staves Only
 
This includes only things from the Frost Blossom’s upgrade tree, and nothing else. The general signature of these is either flowers floating over the player, or orbiting them from a short distance. These can be obtained up to early Post-Moon Lord, which means this challenge is easier than normal on-paper, but then you have to remember all the boss changes mean that many of them will be very different so many old strategies may be different now.
 
 
The 5 Staves allowed are:
 
-Frost Blossom Staff
 
-Cinder Blossom Staff
 
-Tundra Flame Blossoms Staff
 
-Wither Blossoms Staff
 
-Flowers of Mortality
 
 
Some other means of damage are allowed, like debuffs, but certain other forms are banned, listed below.
 
 
Blacklisted Damage Sources
 
There are very few blacklisted damage sources aside from the obvious ones, like weapons. Some of these are personal preference, however.
 
-Other Weapons
 
-Town NPCs
 
-Explosives
 
-Accessory-Summoned Minions
 
 
Armour minions aren’t banned as almost every Post-Moon Lord summoner armour set spawns minions, so the player would be stuck with Tarragon Armour at best otherwise
 
Accessories that provide additional affects, such as the Necklace of Vexation and the Abyssal Amulet, are also allowed since they supplement the flowers’ damage instead of being their own damage source
 
 
Accessory Rule:
 
As usual, there is the additional rule of giving yourself more accessory slots as you progress outside of other items like the Celestial Onion.
 
Normally I use +1 Pre-HM, +2 Hardmode and +3 Post-Moon Lord
 
Surprisingly, this isn’t game-breaking in this challenge since most things aren’t very helpful. Minion slots don’t help, crit chance doesn’t, and most other items will usually just be for survivability to compensate for some longer fights.
 
 
This is there if you want to still do the challenge, but don’t want the more gruelling parts like the endgame from becoming too taxing.
 
 
Anyways, onwards we go!
 

 
 
 

Pre-Frost Blossom

Summary:
 
The Pre-Frost Blossom game is mostly just about farming in the ice biome for a while. 50 snow and 50 ice are rather easy to gather, but due to how early in the game you are at this point you may need to wait a while for the 5 Shiverthorn to actually grow… so it’s moreso a wait than outright tough.
 
 
Just be careful about nighttime or any world evils that have spread into the ice, as without means to defend yourself even regular zombies can pose a challenge.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★★
 
⏲ ?:??
 
Flowers Present: N/A
 
 
Aftermath:
 
-Once you have a Shiverthorn you can begin gathering material to upgrade your armour and accessories and such, generally in an attempt to aim for Desert Scourge in the future.
 
 
 

Pre-Hardmode

 
Summary:
 
Now with an actual weapon I’d recommend doing a few things before actually fighting any bosses, namely getting the Tinkerer and the Abyssal Amulet (my beloved).
 
 
The Tinkerer can be got by breaking a single Shadow Orb/Crimson Heart, getting 200 health, and either making a Goblin Battle Standard or by waiting. Either way the end goal is the Tinkerer to upgrade your Frost Blossom since it’ll likely be your only means of damage until Post-EoW/BoC.
 
 
The Abyssal Amulet just requires some fishing. With the lack of actual damage sources having the newly-buffed Amulet to supplement your lack of damage is amazing.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★
 
⏲ ?:??
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can now prepare to fight the Desert Scourge. The reason why I recommend Scourge specifically will become clearer later
 
 
 

Desert Scourge

 
Summary:
 
Desert Scourge here makes a good tutorial on learning to use the targeting feature for summons. Targeting many of its segments allows Crush Depth (for the first time in 2b2t challenge run history) to actually affect Scourge.
 
 
With multiple segments affected its health quickly depletes to nothing, even when using a single summon.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★
 
⏲ 0:18
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can now craft Victide Armour, which has been moved to Post-Scourge. On one hand no more Cnidrion farming, but on the other hand it means Wulfrum Armour for Scourge.
 
 
 

King Slime

 
Summary:
 
The reason I suggested you do Scourge first was because, for the first time ever, King Slime can put up somewhat of a fight during this challenge… well as much as King Slime can muster anyways.
 
 
The main problem comes from two things: first of all that unlike Scourge this boss only has 1 segment to inflict Crush Depth upon, and also the problem that despite playing summoner you only have 1 minion at this point.
 
 
The Urchin from Victide’s armour set bonus helps here, both dealing a little extra damage and also being able to poison King Slime for further damage.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★
 
⏲ 2:30
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The Slime Hook and Slimy Saddle are once more appreciated from this fight, for the usual reasons as you might have guessed
 
 
 

Eye of Cthulhu

 
Summary:
 
Like King Slime, your DPS isn’t too amazing for this fight so it is quite slow, but not necessarily hard.
 
 
The benefit of the Frost Blossom becomes apparent here thanks to its hitscan-esque attack, since it means that the Servants can be dealt with as they spawn and it also helps bypa*s the issue of the Eye’s speed during the Phase 2 charges.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★
 
⏲ 2:45
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The Shield of Cthulhu is pretty cool, but that’s really about it for useful Eye drops
 
 
 

Brain of Cthulhu

 
Summary:
 
Now you may be wondering why I skipped Crabulon, but I did it intentionally this time I didn’t just forget. I will explain on its page.
 
 
For the Brain itself there isn’t much to talk about. The Creepers can be dealt with faster due to Crush Depth, but you don’t attack consistently enough nor house enough knockback to ward off Phase 2, so you will need to keep moving away from the Brain once it begins charging.
 
 
Something awkward also happened during this fight. Unbeknownst to me, a Perforator Hive had spawned just beneath my arena… and my Victide Urchin killed it 30 seconds before defeating the Brain. I managed to win, but it did mean my initial attempt at the Perforators wasn’t really in my favour already…
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★
 
⏲ 2:20
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can now make the first significant upgrade in their weaponry, using the Deathbringer Pickaxe to get the materials needed for the Cinder Blossom Staff.
 
–Fortunately, both Staves can be used in unison, since they only consume a total of 2 minion slots and the player should easily have enough minion slots when wearing summoner armour
 
 
 

Perforators

 
Summary:
 
Unfortunately, the Perforator summon at this point threw off my initial plans; both preventing me from getting my desired weapon upgrades and also throwing off my plan to follow the Brain up with Crabulon… so I fought it twice.
 
 
The ‘Unprepared’ Perforator fight was slow, but do-able. A lot of the damage, especially to the Perforators themselves, came from the Crush Depth provided by the Abyssal Amulet; thus making Desert Scourge’s tutorial more important than ever.
 
 
In the rematch fight, when I was ‘Prepared’, things went far smoother and cut off over half of the fight time with just the addition of the 2nd flower.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
[Unprepared]
 
★★★
 
⏲ 4:07
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
[Prepared]
 
★★
 
⏲ 1:53
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can now get Aerialite… which once again I neglected to do for the simple reason that I entirely forgot about it… oops
 
 
 

Crabulon

 
Summary:
 
The reason I decided to wait to fight Crabulon was because of me wanting to bring both Pre-Hardmode Blossom Staves to this battle. This is because of the sheer amount of spores Crabulon spawns likely overwhelming the Frost Blossom on its own.
 
 
The fight was quick, but still tough since even with two I’d either have to choose between dealing with spores or attacking Crabulon.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★★
 
⏲ 0:43
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-You get nothing for this fight, still.
 
 
 

Queen Bee

 
Summary:
 
Queen Bee worried me a little, as with most of these challenge runs, since it has the ability to buff its own defences. My workaround for this was to use Voltaic Jelly for Electrified, the Urchin for Poisoned and the Abyssal Amulet for Crush Depth alongside the flowers to stack debuffs alongside my regular damage output in order to add as much damage as possible.
 
 
This strategy seemed to work well, with the fight taking about as long as the previous fights regardless of Queen Bee’s higher health and defence.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★
 
⏲ 2:16
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can now craft Bee Armour, which is definitely better than the usual aftermath of the Queen Bee fight in these runs
 
-The Honey Comb can also be a useful material for later
 
 
 

Skeletron

 
Summary:
 
Skeletron got a buff from Calamity that I didn’t learn until later, which is that it is now immune to Crush Depth. This means I am once again having to purely rely on 2 minions’ damage… as well as the Urchin which I still keep using for some reason.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★★
 
⏲ 3:03
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can now access the Dungeon, obtaining the Cobalt Shield
 
-The Skeletron Hand hook can also be pretty cool, but isn’t a necessity
 
 
 

Slime God

 
Summary:
 
Slime God is basically the same as ever, being a tough boss in Pre-Hardmode but not being anything too special during challenge runs. As ever, Crush Depth can be applied to all 3 of them to quickly shred a large percentage of their combined health, and the core isn’t too bad thanks to the Frost Blossom’s attack.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★
 
⏲ 3:22
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player can craft Statigel Armour now, which is the main upgrade. I actually upgraded this time as well
 
-The player can also upgrade the Voltaic Jelly if they want to use it
 
 
 

Wall of Flesh

 
Summary:
 
Wall of Flesh isn’t too troublesome in theory, but I would highly recommend making quite a long bridge. Due to the quantity of Hungries spawned, dealing damage to WoF is awkward since you have to choose either to deal damage indirectly but keep their number down, or attack WoF directly and risk too many new Hungry spawning.
 
 
Overall, the bridge was around 2,500 blocks long and WoF took me to the end of it before it died, which was worrying but alright in the end.
 
 
Difficulty Increase:
 
★★★
 
⏲ 1:35
 
Flowers Present:
 

 
 
Aftermath:
 
-The player will now enter Hardmode, beginning the 2nd part of this challenge
 
-The player can now get a 6th accessory slot thanks to the Heart, as well as another if counting the accessory rule
 
-A Summoner Emblem is also desirable for later
 
 
 

[Final Notes]

So that was the beginning third of the Calamity Flower Girl challenge, getting us the first 2 of 5 flowers and bringing us into the main bulk of the run: Hardmode.
 
 
Like I eluded to earlier this run isn’t as hard any of the prior runs, being easier than Weaponless even without access to the useful accessory minions, but this is because of the new update changing things and me wanting to experience them in both a challenge run, but at the same time not pushing myself too hard against bosses that might be entirely alien to me after their changes (like the new Ceaseless Void, which is a whole new boss).
 
 
Also, if anyone wants to know about the Boss Ideas stuff, it’s moving back over to the Terraria tab and I’ll dedicate the TModLoader one to challenge runs from now on since the views show that’s what people here want to see
 
 
Anyways, hope to see you guys for the next one when that’s done
 
 
See ya then 🙂
 
 

 
 
Here we come to an end for the Calamity, Flower Girl Challenge [Pre-Hardmode] – tModLoader guide. I hope this guide has helped you with your gameplay. If you have something to add to this guide or believe we forgot some information to add, please let us know via comment! We check each comment manually by approving them!