How To Get Shadow Scales In Terraria

One thing I never understood

I used to be a huge terraria player back near release. I logged like 100+ hours in it until my old computer crashed. I never understood though what to do after I got gold armor and weapons and got bored of digging through caves. As far as I know, I'm meant to go to corruption. But I can't get orbs without demonite pickaxe and I can't get demonite pickaxe without breaking the orbs and summoning the snake. What am I supposed to be doing exactly?

level 1

use purification powder or explosives to destroy the rocks if you don't have demonite/deathbringer pick axe.

level 1

You have to use bombs to reach the orbs, and you have to kill the Eater of Worlds to get the pickaxe.

level 1

Gold armor and weapons is like 1/5th of the way through item quality progression preupdate.... Now its like 1/8

level 2

It was a lot more than 1/5 on release, when hardmode didn't exist.

level 1

Most use bombs, as they are abundant from breakables. i did myself, and it worked like a charm. dynamite works as well, obviously.

level 1

You need to buy purification powder from the Dryad. It's consumable item that turns corruption into normal biome, so you can dig through the stone and break the shadow orbs / flesh hearts.

level 1

You have to use bomb to reach the orbs, 3 of them. Then you kill the World Eater and you get demonite ore and shadow scale to craft it. Or you can use the Worm food

level 1

You know those Demon Eyes? They sometimes drop a Lens when killed. If you get 6 Lenses and go to a Demon Altar, you can make a Suspicious Looking Eye. Use this at night to summon the Eye of Cthulu boss. Upon death, it'll drop a somewhat fair amount of Demonite Ore and Shadow Scales.

level 2

The Eye of Cthulhu doesn't drop shadow scales, only the eater of worlds drops those.