Pearlwood Crate

Any fishing hole in hardmode can produce one, at any depth and in any biome. Despite the name, the Hallow has nothing to do with it. This is the bottom rung of the crate ladder, which mostly matters if you sell crates unopened, in which case these are the ones you open instead.

Most pulls are bait, coins, a potion and a modest amount of metal. The reason to keep going is the Enchanted Sundial, which normally means finding one specific chest somewhere in the world and here only asks for patience. Sailfish Boots and the Tsunami in a Bottle share that group and are both movement upgrades that save you a lot of digging, while the Anchor is the common outcome of the same draw.

The second accessory group is smaller stuff, though the Radar and the Step Stool are quality of life items most players never get around to hunting on purpose.

The four metal rows are one draw, not four. A crate picks at most one of those groups, so you will never open one and find raw ore sitting alongside bars. They are split into separate rows for readability and it makes the odds look better than they are.

The hardmode side of that draw is quietly the better half. It picks from a much shorter list of metals than the pre-hardmode side does, so across a long fishing session cobalt and palladium pile up roughly twice as fast per metal as any single early ore. The crate also guarantees something from the main groups, so a completely empty open is not possible.

This one does not carry the Extractinator. The pre-hardmode Wooden Crate is the crate that does, so fish for those before you break an altar if you want one. Shimmer will convert a pearlwood crate back into a wooden crate, which is the repair job if you already crossed that line without thinking about it.