Jungle Temple

The Jungle Temple is a sealed structure of Lihzahrd Bricks buried in the Underground Jungle. Every world has exactly one and it exists from world generation, so you can find it long before you can do anything with it. The only door is locked until Plantera drops a Temple Key.

That door sits at one of the two upper corners of the structure. Using the key consumes it and unlocks the door permanently for every player in that world, so one key is all you will ever need. Inside, a corridor winds down through a run of chambers and finishes in a large room holding the Lihzahrd Altar.

Lihzahrd Bricks need a Picksaw or better to mine, and the Picksaw drops from Golem, who lives at the bottom of the Temple. The walls close off the movement tricks as well. Standing in front of a Lihzahrd Brick Wall before Plantera is dead, a teleporter will not fire, the Rod of Discord and Rod of Harmony simply do nothing, and a pylon refuses with a line about ancient forces. Wire cannot be seen, cut or placed in front of those walls until Golem is down either, although the pressure plates themselves stay mineable throughout.

One thing does leak out through the door. Standing in front of a Lihzahrd Brick Wall lets Lihzahrds and Flying Snakes spawn even in pre-hardmode, including on the outside at the entrance. They will take apart an early character in seconds, so sightseeing at the door before you are ready is not free.

The Temple is wired far more densely than the dungeon and everything hits harder. Spear and Spiky Ball traps, Flame traps and Super Dart Traps sit close together along a corridor you are usually being chased down.

The detail that changes your approach is that Lihzahrd Pressure Plates only respond to players. Enemies stroll over them without triggering anything, so you cannot bait a trap into thinning a pack for you and you cannot use a plate as a defensive line. A Dangersense Potion shows the plates, the traps and the Wooden Spikes together, and it is the single most useful thing to bring. If a fight goes bad and you need a corridor to stop shooting at you, a Rocket IV or Mini Nuke II blast destroys the plates and spikes outright. The tidy method is cutting the wires that run from each plate, but that only becomes possible after Golem, which is well after you needed it.

The Altar takes one Lihzahrd Power Cell per summon. Every Lihzahrd Chest in the Temple contains one and both Lihzahrds and Flying Snakes drop them at random, so a string of failed attempts is not a supply problem. Fight him at the Altar where it generated and you get the fight as intended.

It is normally inside the Underground Jungle, but generation occasionally puts nearly all of it outside with only one edge still in contact, and this happens in ordinary worlds rather than only in special seeds. If a full sweep of the jungle turns up nothing, search the borders of the neighboring biomes. Spraying the area with a Clentaminator lights the surroundings up, which outlines the Temple clearly on the map.

For the Worthy generates a Temple three times the usual size, which usually makes it trivial to locate because it extends down into the Underworld. That is a problem rather than a gift: the Altar in its natural position ends up down there, and fighting Golem in the Underworld puts him in his enraged state. A drunk world can produce the same situation. Remix and Zenith worlds put the Temple on the surface instead.

Once you have the pickaxe for it, every trap, plate and length of wire in the building can be pulled out and reused in your own mechanisms. A full sweep with a Wire Cutter or The Grand Design will return well over a thousand Wire, which covers most of a serious wiring project on its own.

Every chest also contains a Lihzahrd Furnace. You need one for the furniture line. The rest sell for two gold each, which makes emptying the Temple one of the better single payouts available at that stage of a run. Life Crystals can generate inside as well, rarely enough that finding one is a surprise rather than something to plan around.