Guide:Enemy farming

Enemy farming is an essential part of Terraria due to the amount of rare drops that are vital to progression.

Basics
An essential part of enemy farming is knowing the basics of NPC spawning. Entities will only spawn in a 168x94 area around the player, and there is a limit to how many enemies can exist in an area at the same time.

The Spawn Rates can also be manipulated:


 * Spawn rates are different depending on the Biome, depth, and the time of day. These factors also change what type of enemies spawn, so you will need to pick the right location.
 * Various special events can increase the spawn rate and limits. Additionally, they offer their own list of enemies. Most of these events can be manually summoned by the player with an appropriate item.
 * A notable mention is the Blood Moon, as it increases the global spawn limit, meaning that it increases spawn rates anywhere in the world.
 * Enemy spawns are suppressed near friendly NPCs, including not only the "town" NPCs, but the Traveling Merchant and the Skeleton Merchant. If there are three friendly NPCs on screen, no enemies will spawn. Friendly NPC presence does not affect spawning during events such as the Blood Moon or invasions.
 * Once the Mechanic has been freed from the Dungeon, Statues can be used for small, contained farms. While these have limits, they are still useful for getting certain rare drops such as the Diving Helmet, Medusa Head, or the Slime Staff.
 * Use of a Water Candle and/or a Battle Potion will increase spawn rates. Contrarily, a Peace Candle and/or Calming Potion will reduce spawn rates (as will the presence of a Sunflower). Invasions are not affected by these items, but Blood Moons and Solar Eclipses are.

It also helps to know the limits on dropped items:
 * Dropped items in the world do not expire, but there is a world-wide limit of 400 such items that can exist at once. If more items are dropped into the world, the oldest item will despawn. This becomes particularly important when large numbers of enemies are being killed and dropping items.

Kill Zones


The basic idea of farming enemies is to gather them in one place and kill them. This means finding or building a wide farming area where all enemies will spawn near the player. The Kill Zone can also be automated. At the beginning of the game, this means pits and Lava. Later, Traps and Minions will become available.

Pits and Lava


The simplest way to keep most enemies contained is with a pit. It can deal effectively with most basic grounded enemies, as well as some flying ones, however it is ineffective against Caster enemies and those that can phase through blocks.

The Lava Pit should be at least be 8 blocks deep so grounded enemies cannot jump out. Lava will destroy any item of Gray or White Rarity including Coins, so the Lava pool should be very shallow to keep money and other items earned.

Once the Mechanic has been rescued, Dart Traps and their improved variants, Geysers or Flame Traps, Spear Traps, or Spiky Ball Traps can all be used to speed up farming.

Statue Farms
Statues can be used to spawn particular enemies or critters on a mechanical trigger, usually via a Timer. By putting the statue in an enclosed box with traps, it's possible to automatically kill the enemies with little effort.

They can be used in order to easily obtain special items, however there are special limits to Statue farming:
 * Many enemies spawned by statues will have reduced drops. An already-rare drop with reduced chances can require considerable amount of time to farm.
 * Some statue-spawned enemies will not drop items at all if they are killed by Traps.
 * You can bypass this limit by using a lava-based setup.
 * If a statue for a Hardmode enemy is used before Hardmode, it either will not spawn or will not drop loot.
 * Statue-spawned critters cannot be captured, and statue-spawned enemies will never drop coins. Critters converted to evil forms by a Blood Moon will not drop coins, but can drop other items.

Enemies to Farm
There are many different items that can only be obtained for specific enemies, especially in Hardmode. These items can be very useful for game progression, but some of them can be harder to farm than others.


 * During a Blood Moon, Blood Zombies and Dripplers drop the Shark Tooth Necklace and Money Trough, both being very useful items.


 * Demon Eyes can be farmed for the Black Lens required for the Optic Staff.


 * Angry Bones drop the Clothier Voodoo Doll, which can be used to summon Skeletron.


 * Demons drop the Demon Scythe for Mages, and the Guide Voodoo Doll that is required to summon the Wall of Flesh. The player may want to kill the boss multiple times due to the very useful items it drops, so farming them in Pre-Hardmode is never a bad idea. If a Voodoo Demon drops its Voodoo Doll in Lava, the Wall of Flesh will be summoned, hence it is better to cover all nearby Lava lakes before farming.


 * At the beginning of Hardmode, Mimics found underground can be farmed to obtain a large amount of money and very useful drops. When in a Snow Biome, Ice Mimics will spawn and drop different items.


 * The Frozen Turtle Shell is dropped by Ice Tortoises in the Underground Snow Biome.


 * The Wyvern miniboss needs to be killed in order to obtain Souls of Flight used on Wings. Like many Worm type enemies, it is very vulnerable to piercing weapons.


 * Skeleton Archers drop the Magic Quiver, which multiplies arrow damage by 1.1, and the Marrow Bow.


 * Souls of Night and Light are required for many early Hardmode recipes.


 * Ichor and Cursed Flames can be obtained from enemies in the Underground Crimson or Corruption respectively. They are used for multiple ammo types and weapons.


 * Chaos Elementals will very rarely drop the Rod of Discord used to teleport. They can only teleport to the ground, and cannot appear on top of a player. These two traits should be exploited when farming them.


 * The Uzi and Turtle Shells can be obtained from Angry Trappers and Giant Tortoises respectively. Due to the nature of the Hardmode Jungle, these items are hard to obtain early on.


 * Once Plantera has been defeated, many new items and weapons can be obtained, including:
 * Shadowbeam Staff, Inferno Fork and Spectre Staff from Necromancers, Diabolists and Ragged Casters respectively.
 * The Paladin will drop its Hammer and/or Shield when killed.
 * Bone Lee will drop the Tabi or Black Belt.
 * All variants of Armored Bones can drop the Magnet Sphere and Keybrand.
 * Skeleton Commandos, Tactical Skeletons and Skeleton Snipers can drop their Rocket Launcher, Tactical Shotgun or Sniper Rifle respectively.
 * All enemies have a chance to spawn a Dungeon Spirit when killed, which will drop Ectoplasm used for many recipes.
 * Farming these enemies is harder with common methods due to most enemies having the ability to attack through blocks.


 * Lihzahrds and Flying Snakes from the Jungle Temple can drop Solar Tablet Fragments and Lihzahrd Power Cells.


 * Solar Eclipses spawn many enemies, most of them having different drops:
 * Creatures from the Deep will drop the Neptune's Shell.
 * Vampires can drop the Moon Stone and Broken Bat Wing when killed.
 * Reapers can drop the Death Sickle.
 * Mothron can drop its Wings, The Eye of Cthulhu yoyo and Broken Hero Swords.
 * Butchers can drop their Chainsaw.
 * Deadly Spheres can drop the Deadly Sphere Staff.
 * Dr. Man Flies can drop the Toxic Flask.
 * Nailheads can drop the Nail Gun.
 * Psychos rarely drop their Knife.


 * From the Martian Madness event, the Martian Saucer and Scutlix Gunners can drop unique weapons and mounts.

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