Summon weapons

Summon weapons are a type of weapon that spawns secondary characters that will aid the player during battle by automatically attacking enemies within range. They cannot be damaged or killed, and deal summon damage.

Most summon weapons fall into one of two categories: Minions and Sentries. Minions are mobile characters that follow the player, while Sentries remain stationary. Additionally, the set bonuses of the Stardust armor and Forbidden armor will summon an entity to fight for the player in a manner similar to minions.

There are currently 19 summon weapons on the, 11 on the , and 5 on the.



Minions
Minions are mobile summons. They 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 using melee or ranged means. A Minion costs mana to summon initially, but follows the player indefinitely thereafter at no further cost.

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 Pets.

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 minions summoned by the Tempest Staff, Xeno Staff, and Stardust Dragon Staff, which can attack through blocks.

On the, it is possible to press with a minion summoning item. This will direct the respective minion to target the entity nearest to the cursor. As long as the minions have their target within their line of sight, they will specifically attack it. The targeted enemy will show swirling purple particles which will trail behind a moving enemy, or circle in front of a stationary one (see images).

Spider Minions
Normally, each minion summoned uses one minion slot. After adding in all bonuses from armor, accessories, and buffs, a player can easily determine the number of minions they can summon. However, Spider Minions take up only 0.75 of a minion slot, so this total must then be divided by 0.75 to ascertain the number of Spider Minions a player can summon. For every 4 Spiders summoned, only 3 minion slots are used.

Sentries
Sentries are stationary summons. Unlike Minions, Sentries do not follow the player, and will instead remain rooted in place. Sentries will automatically disappear after a fixed amount of time, but can persist even after their owner dies.

By default, a player can only have a single Sentry summoned at once. Various boosts can raise the player's Sentry capacity, allowing multiple simultaneous Sentries (Note: Sentry accessories do not stack). With Sentry cap boosts in effect, the same Sentry can be summoned multiple times, or several different Sentries can be summoned. On the Console and Mobile versions, the player has no Sentry capacity, but they are limited to only summoning one of each Sentry type.

A waiting sentry goes into a reuse cooldown after attacking, before it can try to attack again. This cooldown is bypassed initially on summoning, which can dramatically increase sentry attack speed at the cost of greater mana expense. Since sentry do not suffer from Mana Sickness, this can be a viable way to deliver high damage at long range when using a sentry that attacks instantly.

Tavernkeep's sentries
Sentries summoned by items from the Tavernkeep are associated with the Old One's Army event. They are purchased with Defender Medals (instead of coins), which are awarded only during the event. At first, they can only be used within the event, where they will remain placed until the end of the event. Each sentry summoned will cost 10 Etherian Mana; at the beginning of the event, the player immediately gets the 10 Etherian Mana for their first sentry, and can collect more as they kill enemies.

Each of the Tavernkeep's sentry summon weapons come in three tiers: Rod, Cane, and Staff; with the Staff being the most expensive and the most powerful. The Tavernkeep's various armor sets each enhance one of his four sentry types; see his article for full details.

After the event is completed once, these can be used outside the event, and will then function as normal sentries, costing ordinary mana to summon (5 points per tier) and lasting the usual two minutes. Etherian Mana cannot be used outside the event, so by default only one sentry can be summoned at a time. However, armor sold by the Tavernkeep, and accessories dropped by event bosses such as Ogres, can raise a player's sentry limit, allowing more than one sentry to remain summoned at once. This limit increase does include non-Tavernkeep sentries such as the Queen Spider.

Armor Summons
Certain armor sets will summon a unique minion when the full set is worn:
 * All armor summons can be obtainable on desktop, while the Stardust Guardian is also obtainable on console. The leaf crystal (see bottom of this section) is obtainable on any system.
 * Each player can only have one armor minion that remains active as long as the armor is worn, and can be directed by double-pressing the key.
 * They do not count against either minion or sentry caps.
 * See also the Leaf Crystal from Chlorophyte armor; This is not controllable like a minion, but does provide ongoing attacks against nearby enemies.

Tips

 * Minions do not differentiate between enemies summoned by Statues and normal enemy spawns. This causes them to sometimes interfere with enemy-based engines, as they will zip off to slaughter any statue-summoned enemies in range (the Dragon from the Stardust Dragon Staff is especially prone to this behavior).
 * Summon weapons are the only weapon type that isn't regularly available in the first parts of the game. While the first summon weapon, the Slime Staff is technically the earliest obtainable weapon, it is extremely rare, and is likely to go unseen until far later in the game (perhaps when a player farms for it using a Slime Statue).
 * Keeping a minion around will help keep both night and daytime enemies off your back. Of course, more enemies will spawn to replace them, but those will be moving in from the edges of the screen.
 * Note that minions will attack slimes even during the day, when the slimes are nominally "neutral". In areas where King Slime can spawn in place of a regular slime (Surface layer, outer thirds of the map), the turnover can lead to repeat visits from the King.
 * While using the Tavernkeep's sentry summons you can resummon them to automatically refresh their attack.
 * It may be prudent for an expert mode summoner to wire a Bat Statue to a switch near the base or spawn zone. Generating a bat and tanking a few hits to contract the short debuff at the base allows the player to summon more powerful minions in controlled conditions after when loading up the game or after respawning.
 * Summoning damage bonuses also affect the damage of Mounts. This includes the Slime Mount, Basilisk Mount, and the Unicorn Mount.

Trivia

 * All minion summoning items and the Tavernkeep's tier three sentry summoning items have the word "Staff" in their names.
 * The Tavernkeep's tier two sentry summon items also all have the word "Cane" in their names. Same goes for the tier one items, which share the word "Rod". This can be used to help tell the difference between the sentry tiers.
 * The Sharknadoes summoned by the Tempest Staff turn translucent when going through blocks, similar to what Duke Fishron and Pigrons do.

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