Guide:Harvesting Souls

Souls are a valuable endgame material used for virtually every endgame piece of equipment.

Light
Souls of Light are found deep underground places of the Hallow. The easiest ways to identify the appropriate regions are the background music, the presence of Crystal Shards everywhere, and the bright pink and purple enemies.

Any enemy killed in the deep Hallow, by any means, has a one in seven chance to drop a Soul of Light. For rapid gathering, the optimal method is to locate or create a large open area deep underground, with plenty of room to maneuver and within quick access of your spawn point. Put on your best equipment and kill everything that appears. Advanced players may wish to bring a Water Candle or several Battle Potions.

The presence of lava may speed up the process; as Souls do not fall and are not destroyed by lava, a lava pool or two may gather quite a few souls for easy collection over a few minutes of fighting. Additionally, try to ensure that every area within a reasonable distance has a path to you; extended fights may lead to enemies clustering in unreachable areas.

Placing 50 or more tiles of Meteorite will replaced the natural spawns with Meteor Heads, which will still drop Souls of Light. Not only are Meteor Heads weaker than the local spawns, but they will also fly through solid blocks, so they will not get trapped trying to reach the player. The video to the right illustrates this method.

For the ambitious, a fully designed arena can make for fun and easy soul collection. Alternately, players may wish to simply gather Crystal Shards across a large cave system and kill every creature that they come across.

Another way for getting tons of Souls of Light is making an automated Slime farm in the Underground Hollow. As every enemy killed in the Underground Hollow will drop Soul of Light, you could use this strategy with every statue that spawns mobs. If you build the farm in the Underground Corruption, it can also be used for gathering Souls of Night.

Night
Souls of Night are found deep underground in Corrupt caverns. The easiest way to identify the appropriate regions are the background music, green fireballs and spittle being shot at you, and a rapidly declining health meter if you are new to Hardmode.

As in the Hallow, any enemy killed here has a one in seven chance to drop a Soul of Night. Most of the same rules apply, from lava to battle potions. Note that Corrupt Slimes spawn three more slimes when killed, leading to four chances to get souls from one enemy.

The biggest difference with the Underground Corruption is the presence of Clingers and Corruptors, both of which have highly damaging projectiles that are difficult to dodge. As in the Hallow, an artificial Meteorite biome can make collection of souls much easier.

Flight
Souls of Flight are only used in the creation of wings, and can only be gathered from Wyverns. The fastest way to gather these is to build a quick wall of dirt up until you spot your first Harpy, and then build a horizontal platform to fight on. Fighting wyverns can be difficult as they deal respectable amounts of damage and are very fast.

The first tip is to play on fullscreen. A bigger field of view gives you more warning about its attacks. Not playing on fullscreen makes it pretty much impossible to dodge.

Secondly, learn how to dodge. As long as you are moving at a decent speed in a straight line, as perpendicular to the next attack as you can manage, the wyvern should miss you most of the time. Ideally, you can alternate dodges left and right to make the wyvern's movements more predictable - it should follow a big figure eight. In practice, this isn't always the case, and you'll be fending off Harpies during the fight anyway. Full Adamantite armor is generally a good idea, full Mythril could be considered a minimum.

Your actual weapon doesn't matter terribly much; most melee and ranged weapons work well. Multihit and rapid-fire projectiles are especially effective, which encompasses the majority of available weapons by this point in the game.

One approach that seems to work well when fighting this monster (especially on Large-sized maps) is to let one spawn and then fall downwards without moving to the left or right. The Wyvern will follow you, ending up in a perfectly vertical angle. You could then attack it with any high-damage, high-speed weapon, such as the Minishark, Muramasa or Megashark.

When fighting the Wyvern for the first time, it is recommended to use Rocket Boots in order to change altitude quickly to avoid its sweeping passes. Featherfall Potions could optionally be used to help avoid contact with any part of the body as it passes. While fighting, wait until the Wyvern is visible flying at you, then use the Rocket Boots quickly to get as high as possible in the air, avoiding the pass. Having Featherfall on would make avoiding contact with the body easier. Once in the air and above the sweeping Wyvern, blast away at it with your weapon of choice (Clockwork Assault Rifle or Shotgun recommended) until it passes you completely. Then allow yourself to land and repeat until the Wyvern is dead.

Once the player has access to the Angel Wings or Demon Wings, simply repeat the process above, but using the wings to stay in the air easily. This makes fighting the Wyvern far easier. A Cloud in a Balloon makes the fight very easy when paired with one of the "wings"

A warning about the Wyvern, unlike a worm, no matter where it is it can maneuver and change direction. This renders most of your attempts at dodging forfeit. Despite the aforementioned 'advantage' of low gravity, all it does is increase the window the Wyvern has to attack you while you have impaired motion. When fighting a Wyvern, it is best to have equipment that either allows a rapid kill, or extreme defense, instead of maneuverability.

Another method is to take advantage of it's attack pattern, which is highly predictable. The Wyvern will always sweep next from the opposite side it just attacked from. IE:If it just attacked from the left, it will attack from the right, and vice versa. With the rocket boots, jump and fly the same direction the Wyvern is going to attack from. It will be tricky at first but once you get the timing down you will be hit less often. Use the Grappling Hook or Ivy Whip to pull yourself back to the ground to quickly prepare for the Wyverns next sweep as well.

An easy way to farm Wyverns is to build a skybridge. Run on it until a Wyvern shows up. If you have the hermes/specter boots, he will be only slightly faster than you, and you can easily aim back with a high damage piercing weapon, such as the star cannon. When he gets close, simply jump over him and start running the opposite direction. Continue this until he is defeated!

Another easy way to beat the Wyvern without constructing anything is to find a floating island, and use a spear. When the Wyvern attacks from the left, run left and when it attacks from the right, run right. Don't go for the harpies until the Wyvern has stopped its attack. This method can be seen in the video at the right.

A Wyvern is also easily defeated by a Flamethrower since Flamethrowers can shoot continously, hitting the Wyvern with 200-500 damage everytime it passes.

Another method is to use a flail. The Wyvern usually flies up and around then comes straight down at an angle. If you aim at this angle your flail will go straight and usually goes all the way through. Jump when the Wyvern gets close (you will need to go high in order to avoid it). It will repeat the same pattern only in the opposite direction. Do this as many times until you defeat the Wyvern. This method allows you to defeat quite easily on only one or two blocks of manuverability. It is quite easy to predict where the Wyvern will strike next once it goes into this pattern.

Might
.

The Destroyer is generally the first hardmode boss you will fight. Adamantite armor and a Phasesaber or better are recommended.

Sight
.

The Twins are generally the second boss you will fight. They require a powerful ranged weapon, such as the Megashark.

Fright
.

Skeletron Prime is the hardest boss in the game as of 1.1. Even players with access to every item available may have difficulty with him.