Guide:The Destroyer strategies

The Destroyer is one of the bosses unlocked when the game enters Hardmode. It is extremely strong, dealing very high damage to the player even when the player has high-tier armor. It is generally recommended as the first boss to fight following the Wall of Flesh.

Terrain Preparation
The type of preparation you'll be making depends on your approach. If you are using melee, The Destroyer is best fought on an arena consisting of tall walls with multiple layers of Wood Platforms. This will allow players to move around the arena freely, and to keep a good watch on where the boss is. If you are using ranged, pick a wide, open, flat area, with plenty of clear space for flying and dodging. The Destroyer can clear a lot of vertical space. Like any other burrowing enemy, it can only control its movements in tiles/blocks.

It may be useful to summon and kill Eye of Cthulhu (he will die in a matter of seconds when engaged with hardmode weapons) before summoning the destroyer in order to spawn an extra one-use pool of Hearts. You can also choose to add a few Heart Statues wired to a Timer to supply you with some additional health. Another great help is building a few small pools of Honey and building Campfires and Heart Lanterns around the arena. Last of all you can move the Nurse in a nearby house (not too close!) for some in combat healing.

A tricky alternative way of building an arena is by creating a small box, wire up a few Heart Statues around it and some honey inside it. Combine this with high defense, a Cross Necklace and a Charm of Myths. The Destroyer himself will only deal relatively low damage, less than your healing potential, making the fight very easy. Another way is to build a vertical platform very high in the sky (200 to 300 blocks), with 1 block replaced by a Wood Platform. The Destroyer will be unable to reach you, allowing you to easily kill him with ranged weapons. Although those two ways may make the fight a lot easier, they might also make the fight somewhat boring.

Armor
The best armor to use is Orichalcum Armor, due to its set bonus which could deal 30 damage to a least 10 segments per hit, adding up to major damage. If its not available than use Mrythil Armor, this is a good choice, but if you want to put in the work to get end-tier armor, like titanium, it will be a easy fight. Colbalt won't do, you want be able to take the high damage attacks, so it shouldn't be used unless you have amazing dodging skills and all armored or warding accessories. Lastly, Palledium Armor is a good choice since it is good tanking armor, but have a good sword, like cutless.

Weapons
Weapons that will do area damage, like hellfire arrows or gernades, which explode, or spears do the best since the destroyer has segments with individual damage.

Melee
If you have good defense (65+) than you will be able to tank its hits and hit him with a sword at the same time. If you plan to do this, use either a fast swinging or large sword, with decent damage. A Cutlass or a Phasesaber would do good, but if you have a Beam Sword use it for its high damage. Lower tier swords, like Night's Edge or Breaker Blade, won't do well unless they are legendary or godly. As far as spears go, any ore spear will do, but the bigger, the better. The Flamarang does poorly in this fight compared to other weapons, but it could useful for probes.

Ranged
The best ranged weapon to use is a titanium or adamatite reapeater, with hellfire arrows. This will deal large damaged to multible segments, draining its health rather fast. Another good weapon are gernades as they do the same thing as hellfire arrows but they deal less damage. The shotgun is useful, but not required, it helps to use crystal bullets. Lastly, if you have a fast firing gun, like megashark or clockwork assult rifle, use it with crystal or cursed bullets. Slow firing weapons like a Phinox Blaster, is underpowered compared to other ranged weopons.

Magic
If your using magic armor your in for a tough fight, since most low-mid tier magic weapons require soals of sight to craft, so if you are a caster, its recommended to fight the twins first since than you can craft a Magical Harp and a Rainbow Rod. If you don't want to fight the twins, or can't, use the nimbus rod and crystal storm only and you will probably need the end-tier ore armor and even than it will still be a tough fight

Accessories
There are many great accessories available at this point. Especially (Frozen/Leaf) Wings would be of great help, as well as Lightning Boots. Those two accessories would allow you to move almost freely through the air and on the ground, making it a lot easier to evade The Destroyer and his lasers. A must have for melee users, as well as being useful for ranged users, would be the Obsidian Shield, preventing you from being knocked around by the lasers, both from The Destroyer and the Probes. The Mana Flower is less useful during this fight, as the Probes you kill will almost always supply you with enough mana and drinking a mana potion once during the fight isn't a great deal either.

For the remaining accessories the Cross Necklace (or Star Veil) are extremely useful due to their ability to lengthen the time delay until you take more damage. The Charm of Myths will also help you survive longer because of its regeneration and potion sickness decreasing effect. If you rather go for more damage an Emblem (or Mechanical Glove for melee users) would supply you with additional damage. As with all boss fights it is best to reforge your accessories with damage or defense increasing modifiers.

Potions

 * As with all boss fights a good supply of Healing Potions or even Greater Healing Potions would help you survive longer and a supply of Mana Potions in case you are going to use magic weapons.
 * One of the most useful potions would be the Ironskin Potion, helping you survive longer. Regeneration Potions also help for this.
 * A Bowl of Soup, Pumpkin Pie or Cooked Marshmallow can never hurt and are quite easy to make.
 * A Hunter Potion could be useful, so you can see where The Destroyer is going to surface and a Swiftness Potion to evade him.
 * In case you are going to use a repeater the Archery Potion is a must have and since they last four minutes you should make 2-3 of them.
 * If you prefer magic weapons instead an Magic Power Potion, Mana Regeneration Potion should be used instead. Also the buff from the Crystal Ball would give you some advantage.
 * If you are going to use melee the Thorns Potion could come in handy as well as a Flask of Ichor which you should now have access to.
 * Shine Potions and Night Owl Potions are helpful, but not really essential. They just make sighting other mobs and the terrain easier.
 * Featherfall Potions and Gravitation Potions are also useful if you want more control while in the air or have limited access to the flight accessories.

The Fight
The Destroyer is almost exactly the same as the fight with the Eater of Worlds, in that it digs around and launches up at you every chance it gets. Just sidestep the body and keep wailing away at it. Occasionally it will launch a few volleys of Death Lasers at everyone fighting him. These hit for about 15-20's on players with 40-50 defense. The Destroyer also spawns Probes throughout the fight. It spawns them very often at first, and then the spawn rate slows down a good bit as you kill them off. Probes drop a 20HP Heart when killed at a 33% drop rate, so for the most part health isn't too much of an issue with this fight.

The Probes are both a blessing and a curse. A curse as they get in your way and can attack you for decent damage with their lasers (a bit more if you collide with them). They are a blessing in disguise, however, as they can be a source of health by killing them when you have less than full health: They can drop Hearts for later healing. Careful management of Health Potion usage and Heart collecting will keep you nice and stocked on health. Just drop to the ground when it's relatively clear and gather some. The Hunter Potion will let you see The Destroyer in the ground, so you'll know if you have to evade instead or can keep going for the hearts.

If you're fighting on a wide, flat plain, it might pay to occasionally just run across it until The Destroyer appears. Doing so might cause it to spread a large portion of its body along the ground, making it an easy target from above. If you have the horizontal space (and speed), make use of it by flying a decent distance back and forth instead of only staying in a particular (horizontal) area to help spread its body out. The more of the body you can keep exposed (and accessible to attacks), the more opportunities you have to deal damage.

On the other hand, if you want to hit the ground (say for gather Hearts), you can fly straight up and hover a while until The Destroyer jumps straight up at you. You can then drop to the ground quick to gather what you need/want while the The Destroyer recovers from its attack attempt. It takes a while for it to loop back around from a high jump. Remember, outside of solid blocks/tiles, burrowing enemies have little control of their movement. This give you the time to take a breather or collect some pick-ups on the ground.

Like most other bosses, if everyone is killed The Destroyer leaves. The Destroyer will also leave if you cannot kill it before sunrise. After a few minutes of bashing away at its health, the machine will fall. Loot from the Destroyer will be dropped from the segment nearest to a player.