Terraria – In Terraria PC, how to See Items that I can Make but dont have all the materials

Attack speed (Slow) is not the same as wall-breaking speed. You know the 'ticks' you hear when you are mining or chopping or breaking down walls? With the meteorite hamaxe, it reduces the 'ticks' to 2 for destroying a wall tile.. This is, in my opinion, a significant upgrade from the gold hammer (What I had previously).

So end of the day, even though the attack speed for hammers is slow, the rate at which they can affect the environment is faster.

UPDATE: With the 1.1 update, as well as before this, a few passes have been made to make destruction and building of the background walls to be slightly less tedious.

You can go exploring some corrupted/crimson areas (randomly picked at world generation) to destroy the shadow orbs/crimson heart waiting for you at the bottom of chasms.

Each shadow orb/crimson heart destroyed will provide you some loot, and make a meteorite land on the world. Once the meteorite has fallen, go find the site, and mine the meteorite ore. This will allow you to craft some meteorite gear and weapons.

Once you've destroyed three shadow orbs/crimson heart, it will make the Eater of Worlds/Brain of Cthulhu spawn, allowing you to fight two different bosses.

Note: The shadow orbs are protected behind some ebonstone/crimstone, which you will not be able to mine with your current pickaxe. Just buy some dynamite from the Demolitionist and use it to access the shadow orb. Or you can buy purification powder from the Dryad, which turns the ebonstone/crimstone into the easily destroyable standard stone.