Terraria – What happens when a pre-hardmode altar is destroyed

terraria

I'm on a world where Hardmode has not been activated, and I found a demon altar spawned over some sand. Here is a visual representation:

[*]
DDS
DDS

[*] = Altar
D = Dirt
S = Sand

I was clearing the path and by mistake I removed the bottom sand block, making the upper one fall, and then the altar wasn't over 3 blocks anymore. The game made a sound like when a zombie dies, and the altar dissapeared.

No message appeared. I didn't lose any HP. It may have any colateral effect in-game?

Best Answer

What you experienced was the correct result. The source code for the destruction of Demon Altars has this in it, near the start of the method:

if (!Main.hardMode)
{
    return;
}

This means that if the world is not in hardmode, then the rest of the code for spawning the hardmode ores will not execute, resulting in the Demon Altar just disappearing.

Related Topic