Nettle Burst

The Nettle Burst is an unusual magic weapon that fires a rust-red snaking vine-like area of effect that lingers for several seconds, travelling through blocks and infinitely piercing enemies. Functionally, it is a hardmode upgrade to the Vilethorn that drops from the jungle boss Plantera.

Compared to the Vilethorn, the Nettle Burst deals a little over double damage, affects an area twice as long, lingers for a slightly longer period of time, and has a slightly faster use time. Due to the effects of defense, however, this doubling in damage results in significantly more damage against hardmode enemies that usually reduce vilethorn damage to 1. In addition, the nettle burst's minor increase in duration allows the weapon to hit up to 9 times, instead of the vilethorn's 7 times, further increasing the potency of the weapon. Even against hardmode enemies, a solid attack can deal 200 damage before adding any equipment bonuses.

In spite of the slightly increased mana cost, carefully timed uses of the nettle burst allow players to still maintain a constant zone damage effect by waiting until mana has fully recharged before being used again.

Similar to the Vilethorn, the Nettle Burst produces minuscule knockback for each quick hit, which tends to have the effect of nearly freezing enemies in place for the duration of each swing. Enemies that are immune to knockback do not have impeded movement.

The most useful trait of the Nettle Burst and Vilethorn, however, is the property of passing through solid blocks and piercing as many enemies as travels through its effect. This means that players can simply wall themselves off from any threat that does not pass through walls, and still kill them at no risk, or fire through solid walls at worms and other enemies that pass through walls at a much higher range than any melee weapon (or hitting them while they're in mid-air through a thinner wall) at the cost of noticeably lower damage per hit.

It's infinite piercing property is also considerably useful against enemies with multiple parts or minions, such as the Destroyer.

Until the release of v1.2, the Vilethorn was the only weapon with this behaviour.

Although small, the Nettle Burst has the same low knockback as the Vilethorn, so its best modifier is Mythical.