You can throw regular shadow armor in the shimmer and get ancient variant fyi More on reddit.com

Two ways, farm Corruption enemies for a low chance of it dropping. Or drop normal shadow armor into shimmer and it transmutes into the ancient version. More on reddit.com

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

To get to hardmode this time around, I used full Meteorite Armor plus the Space Gun. While the defensive stats weren't very high, the ability to use the Space Gun constantly and not lose mana made it effective in using it as an off time spell when I had used more damaging mana items. I would usually combo this with a large storage of health potions and stock up on stat boosting items from the Traveling Merchant. I preferred this over any other armor due to the spam Space Gun. I added onto this with an Imp Staff (17 hellstone bars) and I was able to handle the Wall of Flesh pretty easily. If you are wanting to play up close, you should probably go for Molten Armour and create a Night's Edge if you can. This is created by the Murumasa (found in dungeon) + Fiery Greatsword (20 hellstone bars) + Light's Bane or Blood Butcherer (10 Crimtane or Demonite bars depends on Corruption or Crimson biome) + Blade of Grass (12 jungle spores and 15 stingers) This will create the strongest pre hardmode sword, and is very useful. I didn't replace mine until I got the Cutlass. This is a lot to read, and kind of late, but I hope it helped! More on reddit.com