Eye of Cthulhu

''"Have you seen Chith... Shith... Chat... The big eye?" ~ Merchant''

The Eye of Cthulhu is a bigger version of the Demon Eye and is a boss enemy. While playing, the player may get the message, "You feel an evil presence watching you...", which means that the Eye will awaken soon. After a few minutes the message "The Eye of Cthulhu has awoken!" will appear and the boss will promptly start to attack the player. However, if "You feel an evil presence watching you..." appears and you aren't ready to fight the Eye of Cthulhu, you can opt out of fighting it by simply exiting and restarting the world. To summon it, you will first need 10 Lenses and be standing near a Demon Altar to craft a Suspicious Looking Eye, which can later be consumed to instantly summon it. Eye of Cthulhu can randomly summon itself with a 33% chance each night if any player has at least 200 health, there are at least four town NPCs, and the Eye of Cthulhu has not yet been defeated.

If you attempt summon Eye of Cthulhu while another eye is already attacking you, you'll get instantly killed, and only one eye will remain. It's possible that it will spawn randomly during the night if you have or haven't summoned it before.



This boss is thought to be the easiest boss by the game developers. An often used strategy and probably the best way to kill it is to buy a large number of shurikens from a Merchant, despite the fact that it takes a lot more time. Buying 110 of them should be enough to kill it. Also, If you have a Starfury, you can use the stars that it shoots to hit the Eye of Cthulhu with. This does ?? damage if you manage to get all stars to hit it. The player will instantly be slain if they try to summon a second Eye of Cthulhu while one is already attacking him/her. However, when you 'feel an evil presence watching you' and you summon Cthulu, it may happen that a second one appears. While fighting the Eye of Cthulhu, do note that if day breaks, the battle will end and the Eye will run away, forcing you to summon it again. In single player, the player's death marks the end of the boss battle. In multiplayer, if no one is alive for the boss to shift attention to, then the battle is over as well.

The Eye of Cthulhu can only be summoned during nighttime and will disappear without dropping any loot if the player does not kill it before daytime.

Although not required, it's recommended to use a ranged weapon to kill it. Melee weapons damage it, but hitting the Eye of Cthulhu is very difficult, as it sometimes flies through walls and terrain, as well as the air. The Eye of Cthulhu has 3000 HP in both single player and multi-player.

Phase 1
The Eye of Cthulhu periodically spawns Servant of Cthulhu. It is thought that you also get a small bonus damage when hitting the pupil. You don't, you are actually hitting and killing the servants periodically. If the servant is not seen, someone could think that you deal bonus damage to the pupil. Attack Pattern: It will hover around the player and shoot out a very fast Servant of Cthulhu every second or two, then after four to six have been launched, it will dive towards the player three times and repeat until his HP reaches 1500.

Phase 2


Once the Eye of Cthulhu reaches about 1500 HP, the second phase commences. This nearly doubles the amount of damage it deals and changes the sprite so that it looks like a mouth (replacing the iris and pupil) with a set of large, sharp teeth. This change is marked by the Eye spinning rapidly and dropping the pupil. The Eye of Cthulhu also takes slightly increased damage during this phase (for example with shuriken you deal 7 demage in first phase and 11 damage in second). In the 2nd phase, instead of spawning servants, the Eye will charge at the player 3 times, take a short break and then repeat. It continues this pattern until death or daybreak. In this phase, the Eye's defense decreases by six points, making him take three more damage from any attack (see Armor for damage reduction formula).

Strategies
Some think that the best way of defeating the Eye of Cthulhu is with a gun. For New players a Bow and/or Shurikens works fine.

One viable strategy is to buy the Flintlock Pistol (after breaking a Shadow Orb and obtaining the Musket so that the Arms Dealer NPC will move in), buy around 400-500 (32 Silver-40 Silver) rounds of ammunition. The cost difference is usually not bad (You will earn about 3+ gold at the end, after the 32-40 silver) Or, if you have the resources to purchase the Minishark, the battle can be a cinch. Two piles of standard ammunition (40 silver) will be enough, and the battle will only take a minute or two. The steady stream of fire from the weapon also tends to eradicate any of the phase one minions that the Eye spawns before they get near you.

Should you run out of ammunition, it helps to have an Enchanted Boomerang, it is fairly common in chests underground. It does moderate damage.The problem is its speed, and time is something you cannot afford in this fight, so use it as a last resort. Another strategy would be to use Shurikens during the first phase because of the fact that they allow you to kill Servants of Cthulhu and hit the Eye of Cthulhu all in one throw, and then switch to the Harpoon for the second phase, which allows you to deal insane amounts of damage per second when the Eye gets close. Note: You should have at least found a few Crystal Hearts, and have at least 10 or so Lesser Healing Potions for the occasional mistake. If you cannot afford the ammuntion be careful, as it might take too long to kill him and before you know it daytime will ruin your fight as well as your time/money.

A great technique to defeat the Eye of Cthulhu is by building a primary engagement site made of wooden platforms. Place three layers roughly 7 blocks apart (vertically). When the time is right, summon the Eye and wait for it to arrive. Simply dash between each layer of platforms to easily avoid the Eye's attacks. This strategy also works extremely well with Skeletron and Eater of Worlds.

If you have a largely mana based character, the space gun will work well with this strategy, but another weapon will be useful for while mana recharges.

Battlefield


It is possible to just fight the eye on whatever spot you choose, but it is much easier to construct a battlefield before hand. Try to construct it close to your base (Not so close that NPCs are in danger, but close enough that the NPC's effect of keeping enemies away in a certain radius is intact) and then construct large wooden platforms in a line, preferably two, so that it looks like the screenshot (Attempt to test out the platforms and get a feel for quickly going up and down with the down key so that you can quickly drop down). Place many torches around if possible so that when Eye of Cthulhu clips through the ground you can keep track of it. The walls are optional, zombies and the like are sure to show up as the fight can only take place at night so the walls will help block them. Having a ceiling as well as walls can also be useful if you are using arrows as your main weapon, because you can easily retrieve them during and after the battle. Walls will also bounce back weapons using Meteor Shot as ammo or the Water Bolt spell.

Rewards

 * Gold coin
 * Demonite Ore
 * Unholy Arrows
 * Coins
 * Small Hearts
 * Corrupt Seeds
 * Band of Starpower (uncommon)
 * Sunfury (rare)

Trivia

 * In the Alpha version, the monster had 4000 health instead of 3000.
 * If a player uses the Suspicious Looking Eye after he received "You feel an evil presence watching you..." message (provided that he received the message at night) an Eye Of Cthulhu will spawn and shortly after another Eye Of Cthulhu will appear, thus leaving the player to fight two bosses at the same time.
 * If the Eye of Cthulhu is hit by a falling star, it will take 1000 damage minus its current phase armor.
 * The Eye of Cthulhu is most likely named after the fictional extraterrestrial entity, Cthulhu, created by horror author H. P. Lovecraft. Cthulhu is the high priest to the Great Old Ones in "The Call of Cthulhu", a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. However, Cthulu was a legend that told of a giant Cephalopod.
 * In patch 1.0.3, during multiplayer, if you pull out a Suspicious Looking Eye, an Eye of Cuthulhu will spawn and your Suspicious Looking Eye will not be taken away.



Media
thumb|right|290px|Short condensed boss kill tutorial! thumb|290px|left|Cthulhu Guide