How to protect against lava?

Question

In Terraria, one difficult aspect of acquiring the molten armor is the fact that mining hellstone produces lava, which can quickly kill a high hp player even equipped in full shadow armor.

What are the different ways of protecting ones' self against lava pre and post hardmode?

Is the point of the question about mining hellstone or just avoiding lava? I find it somewhat akin to an XY problem, because the question title and question text are dissonant... Also, there are several pages here that describe efficient techniques to mine hellstone and transversing hell. Linking some here: What's the most efficient mining pattern? (an answer of mine deals with hellstone mining), How can I navigate and mine hell safely? and linked duplicates there. — Doktoro Reichard, Aug 07 '15 at 02:11
@DoktoroReichard lava, the first paragraph was just a premise, bit of backstory as to why I want to protect against lava, but my question is how can you protect against lava. — Aequitas, Aug 07 '15 at 02:33

Aequitas · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-07T03:32:18.820

Lava Charm - 7 seconds of lava immunity when this accessory is equipped, found in chests in the cavern layer.
- By extension, Lava Waders, crafted from a Lava Charm and a Obsidian Water Walking Boots allows the wearer to walk on lava and also to submerge himself on Lava for 7 seconds, cumulative with another Lava Charm.
Obsidian Skin Potion - Grants 4 minutes of lava immunity, can be crafted at a placed bottle, with Bottled Water, Fireblossom, Waterleaf and Obsidian.
Fill - A player can either fill a lava lake with some sort of gravity-enabled material (e.g, Sand, Silt, Slush) or at the very least cover the top of the lake with any sort of material, as to avoid falling on the lake.
Redirect - You can create sized reservoirs near the lava source that allow control over where the lava is. You can either use gravity (in which case the chamber should be below or at the side of the source, connected by a pipe of sorts) or a system of pumps.
Reach - Since hellstone releases 1/2 a tile of lava when mined in The Underworld, digging from the other side of some block barriers allows for the ore to fall down and to be pulled to you through the blocks, up to 3 blocks away (two tile less than the maximum reach of the Nightmare Pickaxe).
Evasion - You can use Rocket Boots to fly over the lava or Grappling Hooks to sling yourself to a roof or the other side of the lava lake.
Water - If you can keep water in the area around you the new lava will become obsidian right away, before it can burn you. Of course to do this enough to get a reasonable amount of ore you will need either water draining in from above or the Bottomless Water Bucket. Water evaporates quickly in the underworld.
Buckets are stackable to 99 units, which means a single stack can almost remove a 10x10 space of lava. You can then place the lava somewhere else. A bucket can be crafted at an iron/lead anvil for 3 iron/lead bars.

I personally like the "reach" technique. It's definitely the most difficult, but it's almost a puzzle game figuring out how to route lava on the other side of a wall so that you can drain it and keep mining. I find it satisfying. — Kevin, Aug 07 '15 at 01:16
@Kevin it's surely the easiest as you don't need anything extra, but sometimes it's impossible to get all the ore with that method, let alone doing it quickly. I didn't know about the bottomless water bucket, it sounds very promising, but not sure if it'll be that easy to acquire. — Aequitas, Aug 07 '15 at 01:22
What about Bubble blocks ? They block all kinds of liquid where any entities can cross them. Useful if you mine hellstone above your head. — Red-Jeweled, Aug 07 '15 at 11:01
@Aequitas unfortunately it's a fishing quest item, which is 100% reliant on RNG to obtain. Shame. — , Dec 17 '15 at 10:16

How to protect against lava?

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