Day and night cycle



The day and night cycle of the Terraria world refers to the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon, and the ways this can affect the world. When the Sun sets, day music fades out and the night music begins, and vice versa when the Moon sets.

The exact in-game time can be displayed by equipping a Gold Watch or GPS, or checked from a Grandfather Clock.

One minute of in-game time equals one second of real-world time, meaning one hour in-game equals one minute real-world. One Terraria day therefore lasts 15 real-world minutes, and night lasts 9 real-world minutes.

Note that the Sun in Terraria rises at the left of the map, even though the left is referred to in-game as "West" (the same for right/East). When a Goblin Army or the Frost Legion begin approaching, the messages shown hold true to this rule.

Enemies
At the surface layer, unique enemies spawn at night. Nocturnal enemies will run or fly away when the day starts.

Additionally, many bosses can only be summoned successfully and fought during the night, including Eye of Cthulhu, Skeletron, The Destroyer, The Twins, and Skeletron Prime.

In contrast, King Slime can only spawn randomly during the day, though it can be summoned with the Slime Crown at any time.

Night-only enemies

 * Demon Eye
 * Zombie

Night-only Hardmode enemies

 * Clown (during a Blood Moon)
 * Gastropod (only in The Hallow)
 * Possessed Armor
 * Wandering Eye
 * Werewolf (during a Full moon)
 * Wraith

Trivia

 * You can grab the sun or the moon on the title screen and move it around. This has no functional effect.
 * Before formal server software was released for Terraria, and while it was necessary to open a second window of Terraria to host a server, you could drag the sun or moon around to directly change the time of day within the server.
 * If you are wearing sunglasses, the sun will appear to be wearing them too. Un-equipping the sunglasses will cause it to revert back. This has no functional effect.