Moon Lord

"Impending doom approaches..."

The Moon Lord is a Hardmode, post-Plantera boss summoned by defeating all four Celestial Towers from the Lunar Events. It serves as Terraria's "final boss". After the Fourth Tower is destroyed, the Moon Lord spawns shortly thereafter. During the Moon Lord fight, the healing effects normally provided by the Spectre armor and Vampire Knives are deactivated.

If all players die during the Moon Lord encounter, the Moon Lord despawns. It can only be re-summoned by completing the Lunar Events again (initiated by again defeating the Cultists at the Dungeon's entrance, then defeating the Lunatic Cultist again).

The Moon Lord has two hands and a head that must be killed before its "core" becomes available for attack. Each hand, as well as its head, contain a vulnerable eye-like target area that are each periodically closed off and opened via an eyelid. These may only be damaged during their "open" states. Once these parts and then its core are killed, the boss is defeated.

During the fight, the Moon Lord positions its two hands on either side of the player some distance away. Its mouth periodically attaches a tentacle to the player that extracts multiple killable essence-like monsters out of the player. If not killed by the time they reach the mouth, the Moon Lord's Head is healed for 1000 health for each of them.

Tips

 * The Moon Lord should not be fought in singleplayer. His extremely high health, strong attacks, and the fact he despawns if the player dies all suggest that he should be battled in Multiplayer. He can still be defeated in Single Player, however. However, the player may retry fighting the Moon Lord an infinite number of times, provided they can defeat the Lunatic Cultist and the four Celestial Towers.
 * Ride back and forth on a long bumper track and pelt him with bullets as a strategy. Also, put heart statues on there as a way to heal, as the moon lord can take away large amounts of health.
 * If the player teleports to the spawn point in the middle of the fight, the Moon Lord will not despawn. Actually, he is pretty slow, so you could go back for healing whenever you are going to die, heal with the Nurse, return to the fight and carry him away from the spawn point. This technique can be repeated indefinitely.
 * Another workable method is to get into a high area, use the Phantasm to shoot upwards, and let the phantom arrows eat away at his mouth. This method also works on the Core.

Trivia

 * Despite a mid-development comment by Cenx that this would not be the case, the Moon Lord resembles common depictions of Cthulhu, a creature first imagined by H. P. Lovecraft in his story, The Call of Cthulhu. It also fires "True Eyes of Cthulhu". This is partially a nod to broad fan speculation prior to the release of 1.3 that Cthulhu would be the final Terraria boss, which arose in part due to an early concept design floated by the development team.
 * Terraria's final boss was originally going to be the Moon itself descending on the world, but Cenx later stated that this idea had been abandoned in favor of a new, unknown concept proposed by Crowno. The new concept was presumably the Lunar Events and the Moon Lord. The old concept may have been inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Final Fantasy VII, or the film Armageddon.
 * The Moon Lord bears similarities to a Tenome, a man-like creature with its eyes not in its face, but in the palm of its hands.
 * In a live stream, Cenx stated that the Moon Lord is Cthulhu's brother.
 * With a combined health of 145,000, the Moon Lord has the most health of any boss in the game.