The Shimmering Frontier

The Shimmering Frontier is a crystalline biome that generates 900–1170 tiles from The Core. It first appears as egg-shaped blobs inside Azeos’ Wilderness, the Sunken Sea, and the Desert of Beginnings, then becomes a complete ring at 1080 tiles from The Core. The biome is bordered by hard Crystal Blocks, and its interior contains crystals, trees, and grass that emit blue light. Alien structures can also be found scattered through it.

Alien tech labs are small dungeons that rarely generate in the Shimmering Frontier. Some of these labs contain a challenge arena: a circular room with a glowing terminal in the center and Materializers around it. Activating the terminal starts a wave event, causing enemies to spawn from the Materializers while a green ring appears on the floor. Staying inside the ring fills the terminal’s gauge; leaving it turns the ring red and slowly drains the gauge. When the gauge fills completely, all enemies in the room are removed and a reward chest appears in the center. If the gauge fully depletes, the terminal deactivates and the remaining enemies are removed until the challenge is started again.

Several points are worth noting when clearing these arenas:

• All objects inside the arena are indestructible until the challenge is completed.
• It is not necessary to kill every enemy to finish the challenge.
• The reward chest contains 2–3 upgrade gems based on the biome the arena is found in: Jungle Emerald in Azeos’ Wilderness, Ocean Sapphire in the Sunken Sea, or Desert Ruby in the Desert of Beginnings.
• The chest also contains 5 random loot rolls, plus a Nuclear Battery, which has only a 20% chance to appear if the Brave Merchant is already alive.

Fishing from shimmering water in any biome can yield items tied to this pool, and fishing there requires at least 260 fishing. This requirement can be met with a Solarite Fishing Rod.

Before release, developers referred to the Shimmering Frontier as the crystal biome, and the biome was previewed in earlier versions by using blobs of Obsidian Blocks as a placeholder. Those blobs became larger and more common the farther outward the player traveled, helping foreshadow the biome while also limiting how far players needed to explore to notice it.