Cannot for the life of me find anything about this anywhere. When hammering blocks to reshape them, the hammer will almost always destroy walls simultaneously. This seems to be especially true with stronger hammers like The Axe or Luminite hamaxes. Since I don't want to break the walls, I have to replace them one-by-one making for a very tedious process.
Is there any way to reshape blocks without breaking the wall behind them? Preferably without having to use a wooden hammer.
Best Answer
Hammers and their interaction with walls is definitely one of the more annoying aspects of building in Terraria. Unfortunately, there's not really a good fix.
If I recall correctly, hammering a tile seems to be pixel-perfect. That is, if you click on a transparent part of the block (the "air" of a triangle shaped tile, for example), the wall behind that block will be affected instead. Additionally, wall-tiles themselves actually extend into the neighboring tiles, making their "hitbox" much larger than a single tile. Therefore, you need to be careful where you click when working with hammers. In particular, make sure that smart-targeting is turned off, as this can occasionally target tiles and walls that you don't want to touch.
In my experience, high-tier hammers not not really useful for construction - they are much better suited for destruction. This is because with the highest tiers of hammer, a single mouse click often lasts long enough to get two or three ticks of hammer action in before the click releases. If you're looking to put the finishing touches on a structure, I would recommend using a lower-tier hammer, perhaps Adamantium/Titanium or less, so that single clicks equate to single hammer actuations.