Now we have entered the 2nd half of this challenge run... well, I did a while ago, but I wanted to check some things and have secretly been preparing 2 more challenge runs in the background while I write out the last 2 parts of this one. One is already Post-Moon Lord and the other hasn't started yet, so maybe there'll be more to come even after this one ends.



Anyways, challenge-wise itself we get a bonus accessory slot rolling into Hardmode, so now to make the-

Ah, yes, here is where I learned about the Draedon update's Hardmode ore generation changes, which then in turn locked me out of being able to access a Hardmode anvil until I fought a Mechanical Boss.

This, in turn, meant I had to change up the usual order of Hardmode bosses, at least early-on, to compensate.



Anyways, as usual, the rules are over on the Pre-Hardmode page if you want to see them in-depth but the basic rundown is I can only use weapons from the 'Blossom Staff' upgrade tree, but in turn I get some extra accessory slots that are deceptively unhelpful for like half the game anyways.



Anyways, on we go :P

Summary:
I decided to start with the Twins because, of the Mechanicals, they have the lowest combined health across the targets and I wasn't too confident in the Cinder Blossom being able to consistently aim for Prime's head.

Overall, the fight was lengthy but entirely possible, mainly because our weapons were both Pre-Hardmode at the time being.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 5:10
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Now we can craft a Hardmode Anvil, allowing us to get one of our 2 Hardmode weapon upgrades: the Tundra Flame Blossom Staff
--I will keep backups of both Pre-Hardmode staves to use alongside it for extra damage, too. Even if it's not much damage it's still making some sort of difference no matter how small

Summary:
Skeletron Prime was my next target, with my decision mainly being due to me not looking forward to the Destroyer's massive health pool.

Prime seemed to be alright, with the Tundra Blossom's projectile spam accidentally taking out all its limbs, assisted further by both of its debuffs and Crush Depth stacking up further damage even when they weren't being attacked directly.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 4:40
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Aside from being able to access the third tier of Hardmode ores there isn't really that much gained from Prime specifically.

Summary:
The Destroyer was... not as bad as I was expecting to be honest. While I lacked piercing I had the Tundra Flame's projectile spam to thank for winning this fight in the end.

I was worried it was going to be quite a close one in the end, since The Destroyer is basically designed for piercing weapons, but in the end it turned out alright.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 5:45
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-The Blood Orange can be obtained in order to get another +25 health
-Angel Treads can also now be obtained, increasing general mobility nicely
-Pickaxe Axe can also be crafted now, allowing access to... chlorophyte...?

Summary:
Cryogen would've normally been the first Hardmode boss to fight, but due to the Hardmode ore changes I pushed it back until Post-Mechs. The only real reason I didn't fight it mid-Mechs was just to keep the boss groups together since it looks neater, since I wasn't really saving Cryogen for anything.

Cryogen didn't change much, it gained a charge attack and different movement, but otherwise the same sort of strategies and Warmth Potions apply here as they've always done. Even managed to go the whole 'derp-out' phase without damage for once, which was cool... though considering no-hitters are a thing that's more of just a personal achievement.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 2:57
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Sadly, there isn't much to get after Cryogen. The Ambrosial Ampoule was nerfed into the ground and is no longer needed for the Sponge nor for the Plaguebringer so unless you have the spare accessory slots it's not very useful anymore.

Summary:
The Aquatic Scourge retains its status of being 'easier Destroyer' in these sort of runs, having less health, no probes and no time limit to worry about, as well as having easier to predict movement.

The update made Scourge nicer, actually. First of all it spawns less toxic clouds I believe now, considering the fight, so it's much cleaner and Scourge also now has a weakness to Crush Depth which, as ever, I exploited to end the fight faster as best I could.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 2:25
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-As usual, however, there isn't really anything obtained for defeating the Aquatic Scourge

Summary:
Brimmy remains the same deal as ever for challenge runs, slower than normal but nothing too overly complex. In fact, with the update nerfing the amount of times she tries to use the shell, it actually went better than it normally does since we get opportunity to hit her now

Also she's weak to Crush Depth now, which helps speed things up



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 3:25
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Abaddon is the only useful drop from this boss, as once again most of her drops are weapons that I cannot use. I will take the Essence of Chaos, though

Summary:
Plantera continues to surprise me in these challenge runs. Sometimes she's super-easy and takes less than a minute, then at other times she takes ages. This time it was the latter.

Plantera wasn't a hard fight, mind you, but took longer than usual despite me having an actual Hardmode weapon. Fortunately Phase 2's clingers weren't an issue since Crush Depth and the Tundra Flame's projectile spam made fairly quick work of them.

On another note Tundra Flame in the jungle is a bad idea... it manages to hit literally every Queen Bee Larva on the map.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 3:43
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Reaver Armour can now be obtained so I can get the- oh, they changed them?
--Actually, tanky Reaver sounds very, very interesting... might have to try it even if it isn't a summoner set
--Alongside this the Necklace of Vexation makes a return with its extra debuffs

Summary:
Calamitas was probably the worst idea for a boss to try out an armour set with a damage reduction against... especially since it cost me both of my 'weaker' minions...

While I was able to stack 6 debuffs against her for damage, and my tanky set with full warding (which was still un-nerfed at the time of this challenge run) meant I could face-tank Calamitas' fireballs for over 30 seconds and not even be brought too low, my damage was seriously lacking to the point where I almost ran out of time to kill Calamitas and had to quickly make use of said facetanking to get in the last bits of necessary damage.

Calamitas got 2 bullet-hells as well... which also didn't help with my time-based issue... but I managed just about.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 8:57
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Ashes of Calamity are now required for Cores of Calamity, which means the Asgard's Valor is now locked behind this fight as well
-Calamitas' lore also no longer buffs minion slots, so I couldn't even make up those missing minion slots anymore

Summary:
The first boss to surpass 10 minutes, and honestly one of the candidates I would've expected to be honest considering the fact Leviathan is, to quote, "too thicc for these challenge runs".

Anahita was actually a bit of a problem as well this time around, being able to outspeed the Tundra Flame's projectiles unless I stood still and tanked some hits. Overall this meant that for a third of the fight or so I was exchanging blows quite literally with Anahita... until Leviathan showed up and dampened the mood a little.

Leviathan was super slow to kill as usual, but there isn't anything special to note since it was all very ordinary for these runs.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 12:00
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-You don't really get anything for defeating this boss, either

Summary:
Aureus' new fight is basically an altered version of his Revengeance battle, which I have a lot of experience with fittingly enough.

Flower-wise there isn't much to talk about, the fight went well and I mainly incorporated what I remembered from my Revengeance runs for this one.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 5:51
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Aureus drops nothing directly helpful for the challenge
--Even the Expert drop is basically outclassed by the Slimy Saddle, which isn't difficulty-locked and has no cooldown, nor does it use up an accessory slot

Summary:
Golem is Golem, which has all the strengths of being Golem and all the weaknesses of being, well, Golem.

In short this fight is still a total joke and despite having more health and defence than Plantera still managed to take less time and cost me less damage to kill it, even with a damage penalty.



Difficulty Increase:
★
⏲ 3:20
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-I can now make the Star-Tainted Generator, which becomes very helpful especially alongside the other half of my updates
-I can now make the Wither Blossoms Staff, since it just requires Plague Canisters which can now be obtained. This gives us the 2nd Hardmode Blossom Staff and the 2nd strongest one in this challenge

Summary:
Duke Fishron hasn't changed, and is generally the same sort of deal as always where it takes far less time to kill than it apparently should.

However, I made a screw-up and somehow managed to spawn 2 Fishrons at the same time. Might've been using one of the fishing rods with 2 lines or maybe just a glitch, but that is why there is an 's' in the heading for this part.

I still managed to come out on top, however, because I am an... err... 'epic gamer' or something? Idk honestly, but I did and it was sorta cool.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 1:30
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Aside from maybe Fishron Wings there's not much worth getting from these guys

Summary:
So I figured that, since it was the Draedon update, I should 'celebrate' by also fighting the Draedon's Remote variants of all of the Mech bosses as a 1-off. I decided to wait until Post-Golem since I knew the Tundra Flame alone wouldn't be enough, primarily because of the Destroyer.

Anyways it took 1:20 before the Twins were downed, followed quickly by Prime 27 seconds later, and finally the Destroyer a little over a minute later.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 3:33
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-You don't get anything important from this fight, it was just for a bit of extra fun
--I mean, there's money I guess, but the souls and Hallowed Bars aren't useful anymore.

Summary:
So I was worried about this fight. Plaguebringer hadn't been nerfed in this update, but rather indirectly buffed due to the Alchemical Flask and Ambrosial Ampoule being nerfed to no longer provide resistances to PBG's attacks.

However, by some miracle, or probably because I had appropriately-tiered weapons for once, Plaguebringer took a fairly normal amount of time.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 2:24
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Plaguebringer Armour was the main thing I got as a result of this boss fight, since it's both a summoner armour set and because it grants another extra damage source from the bees primarily which can stack up a decent amount of damage even on their own

Summary:
Like the Plaguebringer having an actual well-tiered weapon made Ravager a lot easier to handle, to the point that it was a little jarring to actually defeat it in less time than almost any other Hardmode boss

Ravager's fight hasn't really changed, so my usual strategies worked here and the fact Ravager died this fast tells me that maybe it's an actual good strategy maybe



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 1:20
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-Ravager doesn't drop anything I particularly want to use directly, but I am always appreciative of the Geodes and their contents

Summary:
Like Golem, Lunatic Cultist is an easy fight... in fact I sat still and did nothing throughout everything except the summoning phases, where I decided to attack the Cultist before he started spawning things.

I could've actually AFK'ed this fight without issue, but where's the fun in that?
Not sure how much of a difference walking a little to the left made but at least it wasn't full-on AFK-ing?



Difficulty Increase:
★
⏲ 0:55
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-You can now get the Ancient Manipulator, used for making things like The Absorber and Deific Amulet right now and some other items as you defeat the Pillars and the next boss...

Summary:
Unfortunately, to end my nice easy streak comes Astrum Deus; barging in to interrupt an otherwise easy end to this part of the challenge.

The main issue with Astrum Deus was that the Blossoms only ever wanted to attack the boss' tail segment and continued to endlessly ignore the head and the body segments, actively targeting the most well-defended part of the boss.

I didn't realise initially but, when I did, the fight sped up a little even if it did mean I had to constantly re-adjust the manual aim every time one of the worms moved out of range... which happened a lot.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 7:45
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-You, as usual, get nothing directly helpful for defeating Astrum Deus. I mean, you can make the Lunar Hook and Celestial Sigil, but you could've done that anyways by just fighting the pillars so really you don't get anything for doing this.

Summary:
Moon Lord's fight hasn't changed since it's a vanilla boss, but it remains the toughest vanilla boss in these challenge runs which I guess is fitting considering it is typically the final boss of a vanilla run.

Moon Lord didn't do anything too special, except that for some reason my game began lagging uncontrollably while fighting him initially.

Additionally, I went back to all Warding accessories now apparently, though I'm not sure when it was I went to full Menacing since it wasn't in my notes... Post-Calamitas maybe?

Anyways, Moon Lord was alright, and with his defeat the 2nd third of the Flower Girl run is completed



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 2:58
Flowers Present:




Aftermath:
-With Moon Lord's defeat we get +2 more accessory slots due to the challenge rules and the Celestial Onion
-Luminite allows us to upgrade to Celestial Tracers, freeing up a further accessory slot as well
-We can now craft the Flowers of Mortality... an item I will go into further detail with next time

And thus the 2nd part of the Flower Girl run is made public.

I would've had this done sooner but I've had some other stuff keep coming up recently, both good and bad, that has seriously slowed down production for the time being, sorry

Hopefully I'll have the next part out sooner rather than later



Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this part too, and I hope to see you guys soon with the next part :P