Guide:Plantera strategies

Plantera is a moderately hard boss; it can spawn after defeating all three of the mechanical hardmode bosses and destroying one of Plantera's Bulbs in the Underground Jungle.

Though as noted in the Plantera article, you will only need to have defeated one of the mechanical bosses in the versions.

Arena Preparation
First, Plantera has plenty of health to chew through, and a good amount of damage, so it would be best to set up a Heart Statue and Star Statue if you use magic. Set them to timers. Add a Heart Lantern and Campfire to boost your health regeneration further, and a Crystal Ball if you use magic, a Ammo Box for ranged, or a Sharpening Station if you use melee. A Bewitching Table can't hurt no matter what you use. If your arena is fairly large, try to set up more than one healing station like this, so that you can run in a big circle (or oval) and collect hearts on both ends of the loop.

The actual shape of your arena depends on how you want to fight. For a player who wants to have plenty of evasive space, excavating around a screen's worth of space inside the Underground Jungle and filling it with rows of platforms can work well. For more aggressive players, a smaller space excavated right next to a bulb can work too. Others will just use a stack of bombs to excavate a large area for flying and grappling. Plantera's spike balls do some significant damage and are used frequently during Plantera's first phase, however they can only bounce off solid surfaces, if you don't mind taking the extra time, consider digging a hole at least 2 times deeper than you would use for the fight and stick to the top half of your arena, without the added threat of Plantera's spike balls, it is much easier to defeat.

Honey can be used for its regeneration, so you can make little pools for the regeneration benefit.

Bring a hammer to remove the jungle walls so that in Plantera's second phase, the hooks can only grapple on to the blocks so it cannot grab you with its hooks, and thus you do not take damage from them.

More specific strategies are available below. Some of these have their own arena setups.

Armor
At the very, very minimum, players should use Hallowed Armor with the helmet to suit their class. Melee characters should use Turtle Armor or Frost Armor. However, equipping a Hallowed Mask instead of the Turtle Helmet offers greater defense and melee critical strike chance, only sacrificing the relatively decent Turtle Armor set bonus. Ranged characters should use Chlorophyte armor or Frost Armor. Magic users should also use Chlorophyte armor. I found that you can use Chlorophyte armor's bonus with the leaf gem for melee damage to help with attacking purposes.

Weapons
Generally, you should use a Bewitching Table and a Summoning Potion to increase your minion count to three, and conjure three spiders or better, three pairs of mini twins. Despite their higher damage, pirates are not the best choice due to their lack of flying. Those minions will give you a decent base DPS, allowing you to focus less on your damage output and more on dodging.

Melee

 * Spears work well as they can attack through blocks and can strike multiple times in one swing. The Chlorophyte Partisan is especially convenient as it shoots a small projectile that hits multiple times, making it a very useful spear for this fight.
 * Swords like the Terra Blade, True Night's Edge or Frostbrand are fine choices for high ranged damage.
 * The Death Sickle has proven to be a great weapon. As for armor, Turtle armor combined "Warding" modifier (+4 Defense) accessories can boost defense to the point where the player takes only single-digit damage.
 * The Cutlass or the Terra Blade combined with the Hallowed Armor can be very effective if the weapon has a good reforge.
 * Using the Light Disc proves effective if you have more than one of them and are in a smaller arena.
 * The Yelets is very useful, as it can rip through its first phase very quickly.
 * "Legendary" modifier Fetid Baghnakhs are incredible if you're going melee. This will end Plantera within' seconds. To avoid dying, use Turtle armor, Star Veil, and other "Warding" modifier (+4 Defense) accessories.
 * The Shadowflame Knife is a good choice as well, since it allow you to keep your distance and afflicts the Shadowflame debuff. Also it bounces, which allows it to have three chances of hitting Plantera instead of being stopped by the biters.

Ranged

 * The Uzi is a popular choice, dealing high damage.
 * The Megashark with Chlorophyte Bullet can be used for high damage, although Crystal Bullets, Ichor Bullets or Explosive Bullets will get the job done.
 * A Chlorophyte Shotbow with Cursed Arrows or Ichor Arrows can be used to great effect.
 * The Flamethrower performs admirably against Plantera itself, but becomes devastating against its tentacle-like minions. It should be used as a second weapon, to quickly get rid of leashes.

Magic

 * The Nimbus Rod is often useful (even for non-magic users). It can deal continuous damage which can greatly help the fight, especially in vertical arenas.
 * Crystal Storm, Cursed Flames, Magical Harp, or Magic Dagger can be used for rapid attacking.
 * The Venom Staff performs very, VERY well against plantera, dealing fast, high damage.
 * The Rainbow Rod can do well against plantera.
 * Using the golden shower every so often can prove to be very helpful as it inflicts the ichor debuff, increasing your damage input even more.

Potions

 * Greater Healing Potions or Horn of Plenty are important for staying alive.
 * Ironskin Potions and Regeneration Potions and Mana Regeneration Potions will help you survive much longer.
 * Anything that gives the Well Fed buff is welcomed help.
 * Increasing damage with buffs from potions such as the Archery Potion, Magic Power Potion, and any Flasks that Plantera is not immune to (Ichor is recommended, or Cursed Flames, if the world has a Corruption) will make an enormous difference.
 * Clairvoyance from a Crystal Ball is recommended for magic users.

Accessories
Wings, and Lightning Boots/Frostspark Boots will allow you to dodge Plantera's attacks.

Damage can be greatly boosted through combat-accessories such as the Warrior/Ranger/Sorcerer/Avenger Emblems. A Moon Stone is also useful.

Charm of Myths can be used for increased regen and reducing the Potion Sickness debuff time from one minute to 45 seconds. A Fire Gauntlet is helpful because of melee damage increase and causing the On Fire! debuff. A Magma Stone can be used as well for this debuff. As with most bosses, the Cross Necklace/Star Veil can be used to extend the invulnerability period after being attacked, allowing you to take less damage.

For Prefixes, damage increasing or critical hit chance increasing Modifiers, such as menacing and lucky, will make a less-than-obvious difference. Melee characters may want to Reforge for modifiers that increase defense, such as warding.

For defensive characters, Flesh Knuckles would be one of the useful items to use. Star Veil would help during the fight during taking damage. Warrior Emblem if you're using melee. Reforging all of the accessories to "Warding" modifier will help too.

The Battle
Plantera will attempt to chase after the player, always trying to make its main bulb overlap the player's space. It moves fairly slowly when compared to a player with speed-boosting equipment. This means a player in a large enough arena can easily keep a distance, assuming they just keep moving. As such, a good arena can make the fight much easier. The second stage begins when Plantera reaches 50% remaining health. The pink petals fall off to reveal a ferocious green maw and Plantera's speed is greatly increased.

Currently, Plantera will "go berserk" if the player leaves the Underground Jungle (including to go to the surface), so surface-level arena strategies are generally obsolete. One exception is taking advantage of Plantera's need to "grapple" to move by building a large enough space that Plantera cannot grapple up after you, and then firing down upon it. However, Plantera can grapple onto backgrounds, and since they go until reaching the underworld, you would have to clear them out first.

The player will want to focus on dodging attacks while shooting constantly at Plantera. Once plantera reaches its second form, the player should be very wary and try to avoid Plantera's lunges.

Ranged characters would also try to kill tentacles as soon as they appear. Due to generally low defense of ranger's sets, getting caught by them often will kill player really fast.

Specific Strategies
Note: Strategies that require spawn points are no longer valid as with the 1.2.3.1 update - Plantera now vanishes after you die, so when battling solo be forewarned. (They still work on the Console Version and Mobile Version.)

3 Slime Strategy
Put 3+ Slime Statue (or other mob-spawning Statues) above your head over lava, connected to a 1 Second Timer. The slimes will constantly be killed, giving you mana and health as you take damage from Plantera.

The Teleportation Trick


Make a long hallway (preferably longer than 150 tiles, but still shorter than 250 due to the bug shown below, because of Plantera's movement speed in the second phase) out of any material you desire, and place a Teleporter on each end, and wire them together. Test it first. Then, summon Plantera.This strategy works out with Frost armor or Hallowed armor,a Megashark with Crystal Bullets, with the ironskin, regeneration,well fed and thorns buff.Using a Flamethrower is not recommended since it has a short range compared to other guns, and it won't be against the biters since the crystal bullets will take care of them.

When it's climbing down toward you on one side, flip the trigger used to activate Teleporter. You will teleport to the other side, and Plantera will have to climb back at you. It is even possible to combine the Teleporters with a Timer to remove the need to activate a trigger or with a Pressure Plate,which will only require the player to jump for teleporting.

Note that if the hallway is too long, Plantera will despawn. This was observed in a hallway as small as 200 tiles.

Honey Submarine
Make a decent sized pool of honey with blocks to stand on in the center. While underneath the surface of the honey Plantera's Seeds will not be able to hit you and the thorn balls will roll of the side of your platform. The Honey will provide regeration effect so the only time you should take a heart or two of damage is when going up for air.

Note that this requires only a good melee weapon.

Ring Around the Rosey method
It is little known that Plantera's AI can be manipulated to be trapped inside of a block for the first stage as the player flies around it. First, a standard arena must be built (15-20 tiles high and about 50 tiles long) then, around the middle, a floating 7x7 block must be built, leaving room for the player to fly around it while just being able to shoot Plantera (prefferably with a Terra Blade or Flamethrower) this will take it into second stage often without taking any hits. Second stage gets a little more intense. This means that the block idea could be discarded for the remainder of the fight, unless the player feels confident enough to keep Plantera inside.

Nurse method
If you make a house for the nurse in the underground jungle, you can heal mid-fight, though this usually results in the nurse dying.

AFK Farm
A very simple method is to make an automatic mechanism that fights plantera. Using a Minecart or Teleporters to move around and any kind of Traps you can easly kill Plantera without even using a Weapon/Armor.

Fast Method
A good and fast way to kill Plantera is using a very good sword with autoswing, like Terra Blade and a good melee armor, at least Hallowed Armor, and if needed, some Potions. Then get Plantera and yourself in a corner, and attack it. You will only get melee damage.

Plantera Farm
This is more for farming Plantera for its items especially The Axe, but can also be use spawn your first Plantera's Bulb in a open arena. As a bonus, this farm will also spawn Life Fruits, should you need any. === Build a large empty room in the Underground layer of any biome.

Place mud blocks in a layered structure with 4-5 blocks between each layer.

Plant Jungle grass on this layers.

Place an Actuator on every Mud Block (jungle block) and connect everything with Wire to a switch/lever.

This farm will spawn 1+ Plantera's Bulb every day or so. But the farm will only have 1 bulb at a time so check regularly to make the most of the farm.

When you want to battle Plantera use your pickaxe on the bulb THEN flip the switch to make the blocks inactive and giving you a much larger arena to battle Plantera.

You are able to fly around Plantera taking very little damage.

If you are a magic user you can use Spectre Armor (hood) and a Nimbus Rod.

You fire two Rain Clouds above you and let Plantera sit on top of you where it will take constant damage and you will heal yourself faster than you will take damage.

-WARNING-

If you deactivate the mud (jungle) blocks before you destroy the bulb with a pickaxe the bulb will be destroyed and Plantera will NOT spawn. This may be helpful if you just wish to farm the jungle items and not Plantera. This Build will also cause Underground Jungle mobs to spawn.

NOTE: The above glitch has been observed on PC, however it has also been observed that deactivating the farm allows the bulb to be broken with any weapon, and that breaking it with a weapon will spawn Plantera normally.

Chlorophyte Bullet Strategy
This method is relatively simple. All you will need is hallowed armor (ranged set), a megashark and chlorophyte bullets. First, build a small arena to maneuver around, and just fire near the boss. The megashark's rate of fire combined with the homing of chorophyte bullets make this fight an easy one. You don't even have to aim!

Spawn Point Method
This method only works on the and. Simply build a house in the underground Jungle, set your spawn point and destroy the bulb. Run into the house and wait next to the bed, being careful not to let Plantera despawn. Equip an auto-swinging sword. Recommendations are Excalibur, Cutlass and a well reforged Chlorophyte Saber. If you are killed you will respawn in the house where Plantera is. Let Plantera sit on top of you while you slash it with the sword. This will make Plantera farming relatively easy.

Alternately placing a (or two) cloud from the nimbus rod on top of the bed can kill plantera even while you haven't respawned yet.

Farming Plantera
Many post-Plantera weapons are powerful enough to make Plantera-farming relatively easy. Popular weapons/armor include:
 * Leaf Blower
 * Piranha Gun
 * Razorpine
 * Magnet Sphere
 * Vampire Knives - Nifty due to their ability to regain life. If the character's melee attack is boosted enough (by the means of armor, accessories, and buffs), it is possible to win the fight without having to avoid Plantera's attacks.
 * The Horseman's Blade - Can be combined with Statues to create vast amounts of homing pumpkins to chase Plantera. See Melee damage set under Guide:Defending against events for details.
 * Spectre Armor - Nifty as it likewise provides life when damaging an enemy with a magic weapon.
 * Stynger - packs quite a bit of damage, especialy taken into consideration that Plantera is big enough to take all damage from the AoE effect to if you aim at the middle of it.
 * Inferno Fork, along with Golden Shower doesn't hurt, since Plantera is NOT immune to On Fire! or Ichor. If you are just looking to test your skills, use a Rainbow Gun or a Blizzard Staff.