Bottomless Buckets

A normal bucket carries one tile of liquid and then you walk back to the source. A bottomless one never runs out, so liquid stops being something you fetch and becomes something you place, the same way you place blocks. It also pours a little quicker than the ordinary version, which you feel most when you drag the cursor along and lay down a long line in one motion.

There is one for each liquid: the Bottomless Water Bucket, the Bottomless Lava Bucket, the Bottomless Honey Bucket and the Bottomless Shimmer Bucket. They do not come from the same place and they are not equally easy to get hold of, which each item page covers.

Two liquids touching convert into a block. Normally that means hunting down a natural boundary or hauling one liquid to the other a bucket at a time. Hold two of these instead and the whole process collapses into a shallow trench and a lot of clicking. Obsidian is the obvious one, but Aetherium Blocks, Honey Blocks and their crispy version come out just as easily, and all of it at whatever rate you can pour.

That also turns into money, slowly. Obsidian crafts into Obsidian Skull accessories, which vendors buy, and since the input is free the income never stops. It is not fast enough to be your main plan, but it is worth knowing about if you are already sitting on an obsidian setup.

The quieter use is fishing. Pool size affects what you pull up, and digging a pit and filling it by hand is tedious enough that most people fish in whatever puddle they find. With a bottomless bucket you can flood a proper pool anywhere, including next to a pylon, and stop caring about where the water was.

The important trick is that you can place liquid in mid air, and liquid is a surface. With Water Walking Boots or Lava Waders equipped, pour a tile under yourself at the top of a jump and you land on it. Landing refills your extra jumps and your wing time. Do it again, and again, and you have flight that never ends, well before the game hands you anything that grants it properly. It is slower than real flight and it takes rhythm, but nothing gates it except owning the boots.

The water bucket has a cruder version of the same idea. With a Flipper on, pour water over your own head and swim up into it, then pour again. You climb vertically as fast as you can click, which is the quickest way to reach a floating island you have spotted. The cost is a column of water left hanging above the surface, and surface water keeps spreading sideways long after you have moved on.

The Cute Fishron mount from the Shrimpy Truffle gets much faster while its rider is wet, which normally ties you to a body of water. Carry the water instead. One pour over your own head doubles the mount's speed to around 80 mph and adds fifteen percent damage for six seconds, and six seconds is easily long enough to pour again. Kept topped up, the mount simply never leaves its fast state, which is the single best reason to own the water bucket.

Lava does the same thing for the Lava Shark, which moves through lava the way the Fishron moves through air. Repeatedly dumping lava on yourself keeps it swimming and gives you working flight in pre-Hardmode, fast enough to stay ahead of the Wall of Flesh once it has wound up to full speed near the end of the fight. It also sets your entire escape route on fire, so pick a run you do not mind ruining.

Honey is the least dramatic of the four. Standing in it grants a regeneration buff that keeps ticking for a while after you climb out, and carrying the bucket means you can start any fight with that already running. It does the same mid-air platform trick as the others, so it doubles as mobility if you happen to own that one first.

The Shimmer bucket changes what you can do rather than how quickly you do it. It removes the trip to the Aether: transmuting items, decrafting, and flipping a town NPC over to its shimmered sprite all become things you do wherever you are standing. It matters most for old saves. A world generated before shimmer existed has no Aether in it at all, and pouring your own is how those worlds reach everything locked behind it.

• Water spreads and it does not drain. One careless pour near a base finds every open shaft you have dug and takes a very long time to settle.
• Lava destroys items lying on the ground, including anything an enemy drops into it. Do not pour it anywhere near your own loot.
• Shimmer transmutes whatever falls in, and if you fall in yourself it drags you down through the world. Test it somewhere other than over your storage room.
• These buckets only add liquid. Nothing about them removes it, so keep a sponge or a pump around before you start experimenting.