Vilethorn

The Vilethorn is a weapon that fires a magical spear-like projectile in the direction of the cursor. It is currently the only weapon available to players that (consistently) travels through walls, making it rather invaluable. It is one of a few possible drops from a destroyed Shadow Orb.

Projectile
The Vilethorn produces a unique projectile that extends to cover a distance of 15 tiles and acts as a field that hangs in the air briefly (about 1 second). It passes through all objects, including walls. All enemies in its path take damage, usually with many hits per attack.

The Vilethorn produces miniscule knockback that in fact tends to have the effect of nearly freezing enemies in place for the duration of each strike: it scores a rapid succession of hits (up to 7 per swing, for 56 total damage), each with a tiny knockback, preventing most enemies from moving or attacking. Note that enemies immune to knockback, like the Man Eater and Bosses, do not have their movement or attack ability affected. It also has a minimal Mana cost relative to its damage and capabilities.

The Vilethorn is the most mana-efficient weapon in the entire game, aside from the space gun/meteor armor combo. Vilethorns however have different uses than the spacegun, being able to hit as many enemies as in it's effective radius, and being able to pass through walls. Anyways, The Vilethorn does ~4.6 damage per mana point, it's only drawback being the WAY it does damage. Because it does damage in 7 brief hits, each of those hits is effected by an enemy's defense, because of this it only does 7 damage per swing against high-defense enemies.

These strengths more than offset its low per-hit damage, and make it an effective weapon for mob control and boss encounters; though the low per-hit damage rate makes it slow at killing high-defense enemies like the Fire Imp.

History

 * 1.0.6: Mana to cast increased from 5 to 12.
 * Pre-Release: Introduced.