Gold Ore

Gold is the top of the ordinary pre-Hardmode metal chain, and the pickaxe is the part worth caring about. A gold pickaxe chews through Meteorite, which is the first block that hard stops a new character, and the meteor gear waiting on the other side is a bigger jump than anything the gold armor gives you. Treat the armor as something you wear until a boss dies and hand the rest of the pile to the toolsmith.

A world rolls this or the platinum version when it generates, so if your caves are full of one you will never see the other down there. Two shortcuts exist: floating islands tend to have it sitting in the open near the chest, and slimes occasionally cough up a lump before you have swung a pickaxe at anything. Set some aside for Spelunker Potions instead of melting every piece into bars. Once you can brew those, ore stops being something you search for.

• Real gold would make terrible tools, being soft and absurdly heavy. The Goblin Tinkerer gets a line about it, insisting gold really is stronger than iron and wondering what humans are being taught.