Mushroom

They sprout on their own on surface grass, ordinary or hallowed, and anything you are holding will knock one loose. There is no tool requirement at all. A Sickle is the one worth swapping to, since it hands you Hay on the same swing.

It heals a little and it still puts you on the same cooldown a proper potion would, so drinking one mid fight can cost you the Healing Potion you needed thirty seconds later. Measured across a minute it heals less than the cheapest bought potion, and the Merchant stocks those from the day he moves in. The window where eating one is correct is the first evening of a fresh world, and it closes fast.

In a Constant world it picks up a second job, since eating one pushes hunger back up. That is worth a slot there and nowhere else.

Regeneration Potions. That is the whole answer, and it holds from your first hour to the Moon Lord. The buff outheals a Band of Regeneration by a wide margin and costs almost nothing to keep running, so a mushroom you walk past is a small piece of permanent survivability left in the dirt. Pick up every one you see, even when the stack is already deep.

Mushrooms only appear on bare grass, and they will not shove aside a plant that already holds the tile. Grass left alone fills with weeds and then stops producing. So the cheapest farm is a habit rather than a build: swing at grass as you run past it, clear the weeds and the mushrooms together, and the emptied tiles refill on their own while you are somewhere else. Most characters never need anything more deliberate.

A sky bridge is the natural one, because you were probably building it anyway. Lay grass along it with Grass Seeds or a Staff of Regrowth, then harvest by running the length and swinging, which collects fallen stars on the same pass. If you want density instead, stack grass rows with a small gap above each so mushrooms have headroom, and automate collection with Dart Traps or Actuators. The yield is better and the build cost is much higher, and for something you only need in potion quantities the sky bridge usually wins.

Shimmer turns a Vile Mushroom or its crimson counterpart into this, which is worth knowing if your world buried you in evil mushrooms and little else. They also go into Feywood now, so a stack keeps its value past the point where you have all the potions you need.

• The sprite is a direct nod to the Super Mushroom from the first Super Mario Bros.
• It is the weakest healing item in the game, with the arguable exception of a Life Fruit, which gives less per use and gives it permanently.