Goblin Army

"A Goblin Army has arrived!"

The Goblin Army (also known as the Goblin Invasion) is an Event when unique Goblin enemies spawn in waves. A Goblin Invasion has a random chance of occurring at any particular dawn, if the criteria stated below are met. It can also be triggered manually using a Goblin Battle Standard.

Defeating at least one Goblin Army fulfills the criteria for the Goblin Tinkerer NPC to make his initial appearance in a random Cavern area.

Criteria
The criteria for a Goblin Invasion to occur at all are as follows:
 * It must be daytime.
 * At least one Shadow Orb or Crimson Heart must have been destroyed.
 * At least one player must have 200 health or more. (If this is not met the Goblin Battle Standard will not work)
 * There must be no Goblin Invasion already in progress.

A Goblin Battle Standard can be used to manually summon the event if a player meets the health requirement.

Chances

 * After the spawn criteria have been met, there will be a 1/3 chance every day for the army to first invade.
 * Further invasions (after the first has been defeated) have a 1/30 chance of occurring each day before Hardmode begins, and 1/60 chance afterwards.
 * The Goblin invasion takes a higher priority than the Pirate Invasion, which can only occur when the Goblin invasion fails to do so.

On average, a random Goblin Invasion will occur about every 12 real-world hours of playing in normal mode, and every 24 hours of playing in Hardmode.

Initial event


When a Goblin invasion is approaching, a status message will appear: "A Goblin Army is approaching from the [east/west]!"

This message repeats a few times (one time on a small- or medium-sized world, and twice on a large-sized world). The direction specified in this message only pertains to the initial wave of Goblins, which spawns at the world's edge and travels to the player's original spawn point. Additional waves spawn immediately near the player's original spawn point, when the player is in that area.

If the message says "West", the initial Goblins will come from the left. If the message says "East", they'll arrive from the right. Note that these directions are not related to the apparent motion of the Sun and the Moon, which, in Terraria, appear to move from left ("west") to right ("east").

When the Goblin Army is about to begin spawning around the player's spawn point, another status message appears: "A Goblin Army has arrived!" and the theme music will switch to the "Goblin Invasion"/ "Boss 1" track.

Completing the event
The event is completed when the player(s) defeat all goblins in the army.

The size of the army is based on the number of players currently in the world, and their health capacity:
 * There will be 80 base goblins
 * There will be an additional 40 goblins for each player that has a maximum health of 200 or more.

This means that in single player, the army will consist of 120 goblins, while in an 8-player game, with each player having 200 health or more, it will spawn 400 goblins. The maximum number of goblins in an invasion is 10,280 (255 players above 200 health).

When the final wave of goblins is on the screen, the status message, "A Goblin Army has been defeated!" will appear; and goblins will stop spawning. Even after the message is displayed, the event theme will keep playing until the last remaining goblin is dead. If the player quits the game, leaving the last goblins alive, this will cause the Goblin Army to respawn and the player will have to fight through it from 0% all over again.

Other Goblins
These goblin characters are not part of the Goblin Invasion:
 * Goblin Tinkerer: A Town NPC that appears randomly, only after at least one Goblin Invasion has been defeated. It initially appears bound in a random area of the cavern layer.
 * Goblin Scout: An enemy Goblin that drops Tattered Cloth and spawns near the edges of the world. Tattered Cloth can be collected and used to craft a Goblin Battle Standard, which is used to trigger an invasion manually.

Tips

 * Piercing items like Spears and Flails can take out several goblins at once.
 * The Spiky Balls dropped during the invasion are effective in fighting off further goblins, as the majority of them follow the basic Fighter AI and will mindlessly walk through them.

Trivia

 * Although it says this event will swarm the world spawn, in reality, it swarms the area nearest to the player as long as NPC's are nearby. Ex. If a player is in the ocean while an invasion event is happening, the invasion will swarm spawn. While if the player has an NPC with a beach-side house at the ocean, the invasion will swarm that area instead.

History
Armée Gobeline