Antlion

The Antlion (and Albino Antlion on Console/Mobile Versions) is an enemy found in Deserts during the day. They remain stationary with their head sticking out of the sand, and will shoot sand at players. They can only launch their projectile at an upwards angle (straight upwards or within ~45 degrees to the left or right), so approaching from lower ground means you will usually be out of their line of fire.

Antlions will climb up walls if they are touching the wall.

Tips

 * Abusing spawning rules and actuated traps can allow you to farm mandibles incredibly easily. By either filling in the surroundings with blocks or placing layers of lava in open areas around a certain location you can make sure monsters spawn only where you want them to. (refer to NPC spawning for exact dimensions) A series of actuated dart traps set up to 3-second times will allow you to quickly kill enemies that spawn even while they're off screen. As antlions are stationary, this is incredibly effective way at farming them that doesn't entail constantly running back and forth, simply stay put with one placed and one held water candle and check for mandible drops every few minutes. Building a small house whit a lava trap on the roof will finish off any pesky vultures that evade the traps.
 * The best way to gather Antlion Mandibles is to level out a large desert as much as possible, and run from end to end repeatedly. Man-made farms are far more difficult to create because they must be very long (in order to compensate for the low spawn rate), and at least 2 blocks of sand in depth. The primary reason for gathering mandibles is to create a Sandgun.
 * Another way is to drain and level an ocean, and stand at the far edge of the world, with the screen no longer centered on your character. Enemies will then start to spawn on-screen, with no need to run around.
 * Because the Antlion creates Sand Blocks as it attacks, sand is a renewable resource. There is no truly practical way to use this for mass-producing sand, since they spawn so infrequently, however, the Sandgun with ammo consumption bonuses makes sand faster.
 * If the player wishes to stay away from the Antlion they can get behind a 3 block high wall (due to its oddly angled aim) and shoot weapons with bullet drop-off (such as the Flower of Fire or Cursed Flames) in the air at an angle so that the projectile will land on the Antlion and effectively one hit kill it (or light it on fire and kill it with slow damage).
 * Another Very effective way to kill Antlions is to use Starfury due to the lack of Mana use, and high range.
 * It has been seen in the mobile version that Antlions have somewhat rare and limited movement across the desert, instead of being entirely stationary.

Trivia

 * The Antlion is based off real life antlion larva which dig sand pits as traps for other insects. When a prey attempts to escape, the antlion will throw sand at it to make it lose its footing and tumble into the center where the hungry antlion is waiting.

History

 * Projectile damage reduced from 20 to 10

Fourmilion Antlion Antlion Муравьиный лев