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 three categories: Minions, Sentries, and Whips. Minions are mobile characters that follow the player, while sentries remain stationary. Additionally, the set bonuses of the Stardust armor, Chlorophyte armor, and Forbidden armor will summon an entity to fight for the player in a manner similar to minions.

There are currently 25 summon weapons on the, 19 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, manually cancels their buff, or exits the world. There are several different minions available, 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.

Minions provide an ongoing source of damage against enemies which requires little or no attention from the player. The common limit of all minions is that each has a limited rate of attack and damage, but the different types also have various limits to their movement and/or attacks.

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, Desert Tiger 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).

By default, a player can only have a single minion summoned at once. Various boosts can raise the player's minion capacity ("slots"), 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. If the minion cap later drops below the number of minions in use, minions are randomly chosen and dismissed until the number of minions is below the current cap. Minions vanish when their player leaves the world, and are not re-summoned when the player re-enters that or another world.

Spiders
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, on, Spider Minions take up only 0.75 of a minion slot, so this total must then be divided by 0.75 (or multiplied by 4/3) to ascertain the number of Spider Minions a player can summon. For every 4 Spiders summoned, only 3 minion slots are used. However, there is a catch here: The player cannot summon a minion with less than 1.0 slots available, so with exactly 3 minion slots, the fourth summon will fail. However with 4 minion slots, the player can summon 4 spiders and then summon another minion of any type.

Twins
The Optic Staff spawns two minions which together take up only 1 slot. It is not possible to directly spawn just one of the twins (say, to go with two Spazmaminis). It is however possible to end up with two Spazmaminis by boosting the summoning cap, summoning to fill it, and then lowering the cap again; when the cap goes down, the twins are dismissed individually and count as half a minion. Even odd numbers of "twins" are possible when spiders are mixed into the fleet when doing this. Of course, the actual results are very much subject to random chance.

Stardust Dragon
The Stardust Dragon Staff is special in that if summoned more than once, multiple dragons do not spawn – instead, the first spawned dragon becomes longer by one segment for each additional summoning. With each additional segment, the dragon gains additional damage, approximately a quarter of the original summon. While it's not obvious, each Dragon segment is actually two half-segments; as with the Optic staff minions, these are always summoned together, but if the minion cap goes down, they can be dismissed separately and count for half; this can result in odd-looking Dragons, especially when mini-twins and/or spiders are mixed in.

Desert Tiger
The Desert Tiger Staff is special in that if summoned more than once, multiple tigers do not spawn – instead, the spawned tiger becomes stronger and faster for each additional summoning. The tiger will appear as a baby if summoned 1 to 3 times, an adult if summoned 4 to 6 times and an armored adult if summoned 7 to 9 times. Other minions may be used in addition to the Desert Tiger, but the tiger may not be powered up beyond the ninth summon.

Sentries
Sentries are stationary summons. Unlike minions, sentries do not follow the player, and will instead remain rooted in place. In normal use, sentries will last for a fixed two minutes before vanishing; unlike minions, they can persist even after their owner dies. (But see "Tavernkeep's sentries" below for their special use in the Old One's Army event.)

By default, a player can only have a single sentry summoned at once. Tavernkeep armor and Old One's Army accessories (see below) can raise the player's sentry capacity, allowing multiple simultaneous sentries. Note that these accessories do not stack with each other, so the maximum sentry limit is 5: 1 by default, +1 from an accessory, and +3 from armor. With sentry cap boosts in effect, the same sentry can be summoned multiple times, or several different sentries can be summoned. On the, the player is limited to only summoning one of each sentry type, with no way to raise the cap.

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 sentries 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.

Whips
Whips are weapons that deal summon damage without summoning any minions. Whips cannot score critical hits. Hitting an enemy with a whip will cause your minions to target it immediately.

Whips also affect sentries, which can both cause unintended behavior (causing your sentries to fire in the 'wrong' direction during Old One's Army, for instance) and allow for interesting strategies (buffing the damage done by lightning sentries vs bosses, for instance).

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. Sentries summoned with Etherian Mana are not subject to sentry limits (see above). Other sentries can be used in the event, but will have their usual mana cost, duration, and sentry limits.

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 the usual sentry limits apply: By default only one sentry can be summoned at once, but armor sold by the Tavernkeep, and accessories dropped by event bosses such as Ogres, can raise a player's sentry limit. This limit increase does include non-Tavernkeep sentries such as the Queen Spider. Again, the accessories do not stack with each other.

Armor Summons
Certain armor sets will summon a unique minion when the full set is worn:
 * All armor summons can be obtainable on, and the Stardust Guardian is also obtainable on and . The Leaf Crystal (see bottom of this section) is obtainable on all platforms.
 * 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 Stardust Dragon is especially prone to this behavior).
 * Summon weapons are the only weapon type that is not 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. It can, however, be farmed by the use of a Slime Statue as soon as the Mechanic shows up.
 * Even if not playing as a Summoner, it is always good to keep a minion around to help pick off minor or weakened enemies. Having a minion taking out some of the passing bats, slimes, zombies, and so on can sharply improve your quality of life while wandering around in the nighttime surface, Caverns, Jungle, and so on.  Doubly so if you're trying to build, gather bait, chop wood, or otherwise do something besides fighting -- indeed, for such projects it may be worth adding a second minion to help fend off interruptions.
 * 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.
 * All the Tavernkeep's Sentries can be constantly resummoned to automatically refresh their attack. This is, however, less efficient than using a weapon from another class.
 * In an Expert mode world, summoners can usefully wire a Bat Statue to a switch near the base or spawn zone. Spawning a bat and tanking a few hits (to contract the Feral Bite) lets the player summon their minions with an extra 20% damage bonus, but that's best done while safe at home.

Minion Count
The maximum possible minion capacity is 12. It requires equipping Stardust Armor that also gives you a Stardust Guardian, and the Papyrus Scarab, Necromantic Scroll, and Pygmy Necklace accessories. It also requires being under the temporary effects of the Summoning Potion and the Bewitching Table.


 * The maximum possible minion capacity is 9. It requires equipping Tiki armor, and the Papyrus Scarab, Necromantic Scroll, and Pygmy Necklace accessories. It also requires being under the temporary effects of the Summoning Potion.

Minion Damage
Note that damage is calculated in a two-step process. First the weapon damage itself is adjusted for the weapon modifier (and rounded to the nearest integer). Only after that are all other modifiers added and applied to the weapon damage.

Damage bonuses only need to be active while actually summoning the minions. This allows summoning some minions at maximum damage, and then unequipping some of the damage bonus for limit increases, to summon more minions at slightly lower damage. Update 1.4.0.1 changes the damage bonus to be calculated concurrently, meaning any damage bonus that is removed while a minion is active will be removed from the minion.

A Ruthless modifier on the minion-summoning staff yields +18% up front.

Other modifiers can be maximized as follows:


 * A mixed armor set:
 * + 22% from the Stardust Helmet.
 * + 30% from either the Dark Artist's Robes or the Valhalla Knight's Breastplate.
 * + 25% from Red Riding Leggings.
 * Accessories:
 * + 15% from the Papyrus Scarab.
 * + 15% from the Hercules Beetle.
 * + 15% from the Summoner Emblem.
 * + 12% from the Avenger Emblem.
 * + 10% from any of the following accessories: Necromantic Scroll, Destroyer Emblem, Celestial Stone, Celestial Shell, any of the Ogre accessories (Apprentice's Scarf, Huntress's Buckler, Monk's Belt, Squire's Shield), or either the Sun Stone (during the day), or the Moon Stone (at night).
 * These all offer the same damage bonus for the actual summoning of minions, but they have different features for continued use: The Necromantic scroll gets you an extra minion slot, the Ogre accessories get you an extra sentry slot, while the others extend their damage bonus to other damage types, and provide other bonuses.
 * + 20% from reforging all five accessories to have Menacing (+4% damage ).
 * Buffs:
 * + 5% from Well Fed (from eating food).
 * + 10% from Wrath (from drinking a Wrath Potion).
 * + 45% from a 3-stack of Damage Booster buffs from Nebula armor (a teammate's, or see below).
 * Expert mode only:
 * from a second accessory from the "10%" list above, likewise reforged to Menacing.
 * from Cute Fishron Mount (riding the Cute Fishron in water and for 6 seconds afterwards).
 * from the Feral Bite debuff (inflicted by Bats in Expert mode).

Total maximum: +224%. On top of the bonus for a Ruthless weapon, this will yield approximately +282%.

Examples

 * An ordinary Stardust Cell Staff would summon a Stardust Cell hitting for 60 summon damage. After reforging the staff to have the Ruthless modifier, the staff would summon a Stardust Cell hitting for 60 + 18% = 71 summon damage. After wearing the above gear, eating food, drinking a Wrath Potion, dousing yourself with water while riding the Cute Fishron, getting bitten by a bat (in Expert mode), and picking up a 3-stack of Damage Booster buffs in multiplayer, the staff would summon a Stardust Cell hitting for 265 damage.
 * A Ruthless Stardust Dragon has a modified damage of 47. With a Summoning Potion and Bewitching Table, the above will allow up to six summons (188 base damage).  With the above damage bonuses, the resulting dragon will do an average of 609  damage per hit.

The Procedure
To achieve "maximum minion power" in single-player, follow the following procedure (auto-pause will help a lot):
 * 1) Make sure all the accessories you'll be using are reforged to Menacing, and all the summoning weapons to Ruthless.
 * 2) In an enclosed area, prepare one or two Bat Statues wired to (staggered) 1-second timer(s).
 * 3) *Expert mode: Set up a  next to the Bat generator.  Make sure you can trigger the statue(s) from within the pool.  Select a Shrimpy Truffle as your mount.
 * 4) Arrange your desired summoning weapons on the hotbar.
 * 5) Wear your accessories:  Papyrus Scarab, Hercules Beetle, Summoner Emblem, Avenger Emblem, Necromantic Scroll.  Keep a Pygmy Necklace handy for later.
 * 6) * For Expert mode's, just take any of the other "10%" accessories from the list above. When you "ice the cake" below, you'll be trading it for the Pygmy Necklace anyway.
 * 7) Armor: Start off in Nebula armor, with the mixed set handy (Stardust Helmet, Dark Artist's Robes/Valhalla Knight's Breastplate, Red Riding Leggings).  Also keep handy the rest of the Stardust armor set.
 * 8) Use the potions: Food, Wrath, Summoning.  Use a Bewitching Table.
 * 9) Start the timer(s) to spawn some bats.
 * 10) * In Expert mode: until they inflict Feral Bite before continuing.
 * 11) *Kill bats until reaching level 3 Damage Booster. If possible leave some extra damage boosters lying around.
 * 12) Rush: All of the steps after this need to be finished before the Damage Boosters start to expire.  If the 8-second duration runs out, put the Nebula armor back on and kill more bats to replenish it.  (Your minions will help.)  Then continue again below.
 * 13) Switch to the mixed armor set as above.
 * 14) *In Expert mode: and trigger your mount.
 * 15) Summon your desired minions. This should result in six minions (or pairs of twins, or Dragon segments, or 7 spiders and a ¾ slot) at the maximum of +224%  damage over the Ruthless damage rating.
 * 16) * Minion sources: Default, Stardust Helmet, Papryus Scarab, Necromantic Scroll, Summoning Potion, Bewitching Table.
 * 17) (Before version 1.4) To ice the cake with five more minions at slightly lower damage:
 * 18) Replace the Avenger Emblem (or in Expert mode, the sixth accessory) with the Pygmy Necklace.  This brings you down to +212%  damage.  (If you had a ¾ slot, summon that spider now.)   Summon another minion.
 * 19) Wear the Stardust Leggings, and summon another two minions at +209%  damage.
 * 20) Wear the Stardust Plate, dropping to +201%  damage.  (If those last three minions were spiders, summon another spider now.)  Summon a final two minions.
 * 21) Note:  If the player later loses some of the many extra-slot bonuses in use (removing accessories or armor, letting buffs expire), the minion(s) that vanish will be chosen randomly.  Each individual minion will keep the damage bonus in effect when it was summoned.

If your chosen summons are all Stardust Dragon segments, the "icing the cake" phase will likely reduce the damage bonus for the dragon as a whole, but even so this will yield diminishing returns rather than an actual drop in damage. An 11-segment Dragon will end up doing an average of 893 damage per hit. If all your minions were spiders, you will have 14 of them, half doing the max of 100, the rest trailing down to 93

Trivia

 * All minion summoning items (with the exception of the Terraprisma) 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.
 * That said, a number of other magical weapons and tools are also called "Staff" or "Rod".
 * 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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