Summon weapons

A Summon weapon is a weapon that spawns a helpful secondary "Minion" character that follows the player, aiding during battle by automatically attacking enemies within range. Minions cannot be damaged or killed, and follow the player indefinitely until the player dies, summons a replacement Minion, or cancels their buff. There are several different Minions, some of which can walk or fly, and attack via melee or ranged means. A Minion costs 10 mana to summon initially, but follows the player indefinitely thereafter at no further cost. Although they cost mana initially, Minions deal summon damage, rather than magic damage.

By default, a player can only have a single Minion summoned at once. Various boosts can raise the player's Minion capacity, allowing multiple simultaneous Minions. With Minion cap boosts in effect, the same Minion can be summoned multiple times, or several different Minions can be summoned. Minion cap boosts do not affect Pets or Light Petss.

Minions follow players in a manner similar to Pets, flying and passing through blocks as necessary to keep pace with the player's movements, though most cannot move through blocks for the purposes of attacking. Exceptions are the Tempest Staff, Xeno Staff, and Stardust Dragon Staff.

Sentries are exceptions to the above: While they similarly deal summon damage, they are temporary, cannot move at all, and do not count toward the Minion cap.

Sentry-style
Sentries are unlike other minions. They are temporary and don't follow the player, rather remaining stationary until their time is exhausted. They also don't count toward the player's minion cap, so other traditional summoned minions will not be affected by summoning a sentry in addition. Multiple sentries can be summoned at once, but two of the same sentry cannot.

Boosts
The items listed below will boost Minion stats in various ways.

Tips

 * For pure summoners it is a good idea to have a full accessory loadout with the Menacing Modifier prior to summoning minions then swapping them out with accessories with the Warding Modifier to compensate for the significantly lower defense summoner armor has.
 * In addition, consider swapping out a piece of summoner armor with an armor with high defense. You will be sacrificing 1-2 minions for significantly greater armor. Specifically, consider swapping Bee Greaves for Molten Greaves (free 4 defense), Spider Mask for Hallowed Mask (1 minion for 19 armor), and Tiki Mask for Chlorophyte Mask (2 minions for 19 armor or alternatively, also swap out Tiki Shirt for Spider Breastplate to make the trade 1 minion for 10 armor).
 * One can also choose to solely use accessories to increase minion count and equip non summoner armor. Using only accessories a player may have up to 6 minions following them. Just remember to equip a full summoner loadout prior to summoning the minions. Basically this makes a player sacrifice 3 accessories for 6 maxed out minions.
 * You can use the following tables to estimate the net damage boosts of minions when wearing a full set of summoner or regular armor, and equipped with accessories which specifically increase the damage or capacity of minions:

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