In Terraria on console, the merchant can sell you the Mining Helmet for 8 gold. Is it worth farming gold to obtain the helmet, considering my primary objective is to farm ore?

Or is there a more suitable/efficient method to keep me illuminated/safe while I mine?

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4 Answers

It depends on your priorities and current equipment.

First let's consider the alternatives.

• Torches
• Light Pets
• Shine Potion

The good thing about the Mining helmet is that it will allow you to see everything around you constantly, without the need of placing torches every time you settle somewhere. The problem is that in early game the lack of defense can be problematic, specially in biomes with a lot of monsters. If you, on the other hand, have good enough equipment, the lack of defense won't be that much of a problem and the helmet will be great.

Having said that you can also consider crafting shine potions, which require Daybloom and Glowing Mushrooms. However to make this a viable long term option you will need two small Daybloom and Glowing Mushrooms farms, to maintain your stock of ingredients.

Finally the light pets are a possibility, but in the early game they're quite lacking, as the light they provide is not much.

Personally I prefer using torches. If you plan on going hardmode on that specific world, they're only a small investment of time, given that you will be constantly using the tunnels you dug before.

Well yes and no. Yes because you won't need to waste your wood and gel, but no because it will only glow if equipped, and armor in the vanity slots does nothing. So have good weapons or an escape route, because if you don't, then no - it is a waste of gold.

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Yes, the mining helmet helps a lot. Go to the ice biome after and kill undead miners. Their clothes and helmet give a great mining speed buffs. I use these with shroomite digging claws when I go mining and it saves a ton of time.

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Lighting is and has always been one of the biggest things you're worried about when mining, needless to say, a mining helmet would be extremely useful. BUT, due to the mining helmet actually being really useful in lightning, the defence of it is the same of a wood helmet, absolutely awful. I wouldn't recommend using a mining helmet, after finding new ores or beating the second boss in the game you'll outmatch its defense by tons (and defense is probably the most important stat of the game in general), so no, if you do buy it you'll switch it out after an hour or two of playtime anyways.