Guide:Enemy farming

There are many rare drops from enemies that are vital to progression. Farming for some of these items can take a long time, but there are many different methods that can make it a significantly simpler task.

Basics
An essential part of enemy farming is knowing the basics of NPC spawning. Entities will only spawn in a 168x94 area around the player, and there is a limit to how many enemies can exist in an area at the same time.

The Spawn Rates have special properties:
 * Spawn rates are different depending on the Biome, depth, and the time of day. These factors also change what type of enemies spawn, so you will need to pick the right location.
 * Various special events can increase the spawn rate and limits. Additionally, they offer their own list of enemies. Most of these events can be manually summoned by the player with an appropriate item.
 * A notable mention is the Blood Moon, as it increases the global spawn limit, meaning that it increases spawn rates anywhere in the world.
 * Enemy spawns are suppressed near friendly NPCs, including not only the "town" NPCs, but the Traveling Merchant and the Skeleton Merchant. If there are three friendly NPCs on screen, no enemies will spawn. Friendly NPC presence does not affect spawning during events such as the Blood Moon or invasions.
 * Use of a Water Candle and/or a Battle Potion will increase spawn rates. Contrarily, a Peace Candle and/or Calming Potion will reduce spawn rates (as will the presence of a Sunflower). Invasions are not affected by these items, but Blood Moons and Solar Eclipses are.

It's also important to know the limits on dropped items: while they do not expire, there is a world-wide limit of 400 such items that can exist at once. If more items are dropped into the world, the oldest item will despawn. This becomes particularly important when large numbers of enemies are being killed and dropping items.

Farming Areas
The basic idea of farming enemies is to find or build an area where they can be gathered and killed in one place. This can be a wide section of a Cave, which should be modified to focus most spawns in one surface, as seen in the picture. The Farming area can also be built artificially. This is more efficient as all enemies will spawn around the player if they stand on its center, however it's also more time consuming. Explosives and Mining Potions can help with this.

It's a good idea to place Campfires, Heart Lanterns and Honey to increase regeneration. The spot should also include a Safe zone, which is usually a small enclosed place to hide when at low health.

The Farming can also be automated with Minions or other Methods:

Lava Pits
The simplest way to keep most enemies contained is with a pit, filled with Lava. It can deal effectively with most basic grounded enemies, as well as some flying ones, however it is ineffective against Casters and those that can phase through blocks.

The Pit should be at least 8 blocks deep so grounded enemies cannot jump out. Lava will destroy any item of Gray or White Rarity including Coins, so the Lava pool should be very shallow to not burn your loot.

A variation of this method is the "Volcano farm", which also works on flying enemies. This farm consists of a Lava Pit in the middle of two ramps, made with hammered Blocks. The player must stand below the pit, so when an enemy spawns, they will climb up the slopes and fall into the Lava Pit.

Mechanisms
Once the Mechanic has been rescued, Dart Traps and their improved variants, Geysers or Flame Traps, Spear Traps, or Spiky Ball Traps can all be used to speed up farming.

The use of Actuators can be used to make safer entrances and to improve Lava Pits; covering them with a layer of actuated Blocks makes it so they can be activated only when in use. After the Steampunker has arrived, Teleporters and Conveyor Belts can also be used to make even safer entrances and to easily collect the loot.

Statue Farms
With a Mechanism, Statues can be used to spawn particular enemies or critters on a mechanical trigger, usually via a Timer. By putting the statue in an enclosed box with Traps or Lava, it's possible to automatically kill the enemies with little effort.

They can be used in order to easily obtain special items from different enemies, however there are limits to Statue farming:
 * Statue-spawned enemies do not drop coins and often have reduced drops. An already-rare drop with reduced chances can require considerable amount of time to farm.
 * Some statue-spawned enemies will not drop items at all if they are killed by Traps.
 * You can circumvent this limitation by using a lava-based setup.
 * If a statue for a Hardmode enemy is used before Hardmode, it either will not spawn or will not drop loot.
 * Statue-spawned critters cannot be captured. Critters converted to evil forms by a Blood Moon will not drop coins, but can drop other items.

Enemies to Farm
There are many different items that can only be obtained for specific enemies, especially in Hardmode. These items can be very useful for game progression, but some of them can be harder to farm than others.

Pre-Hardmode

 * During a Blood Moon, Blood Zombies and Dripplers drop the Shark Tooth Necklace and Money Trough, both being very useful items.
 * This is also a good time to farm Demon Eyes for the Black Lens required to make an Optic Staff.
 * Angry Bones in the Dungeon drop the Clothier Voodoo Doll, which can be used to summon Skeletron again.
 * Demons drop the Demon Scythe for Mages, and its Voodoo variant drops the Guide Voodoo Doll that is required to summon the Wall of Flesh. The player may want to kill the boss multiple times due to the very useful items it drops, so farming them in Pre-Hardmode is never a bad idea. If a Voodoo Demon drops its Voodoo Doll in Lava, the Wall of Flesh will be summoned, hence it is better to cover all nearby Lava lakes before farming. If a Hellbridge has been built for the Wall of Flesh, it can be used as a Farming Spot.

Hardmode

 * At the beginning of Hardmode, Mimics found Underground can be farmed to obtain a large amount of money and very useful drops. The Lifeform Analyzer and Hunter Potions greatly help when looking for them.
 * Skeleton Archers drop the Magic Quiver, which increases Arrow damage by 10%, and the Marrow Bow.
 * The Ice Sickle is dropped by many enemies in the Underground Snow Biome. Additionally, the Frozen Turtle Shell can be obtained from Ice Tortoises.
 * The Wyvern miniboss needs to be killed in order to obtain Souls of Flight used on Wings. It only spawns in Space, so it is better to farm in a Floating Island. Like many Worm type enemies, it is very vulnerable to piercing weapons.
 * Souls of Night and Light are required for many early Hardmode recipes. They can only be obtained from enemies in the Underground Corruption/Crimson and Hallow, respectively. Farms built in the Caverns work just as well for both of them, as any enemy killed can drop them. King Slime can yield a great amount of Souls due to the many Blue Slimes he spawns.
 * Ichor and Cursed Flames can be obtained from certain enemies in the Underground Crimson or Corruption respectively. They are used for multiple Ammo types.
 * Chaos Elementals will very rarely drop the Rod of Discord used to teleport. They can only teleport to the ground, and cannot appear on top of a player. These two traits should be exploited when farming them.
 * The Uzi and Turtle Shells can be obtained from Angry Trappers and Giant Tortoises respectively. Due to the nature of the Hardmode Jungle, these items are hard to obtain before killing a Mechanical Boss.
 * Solar Eclipses spawn many enemies, most of them having different drops:
 * Creatures from the Deep will drop the Neptune's Shell.
 * Vampires can drop the Moon Stone and Broken Bat Wing when killed.
 * Reapers can drop the Death Sickle.
 * Mothron can drop Broken Hero Swords and, once Plantera has been defeated, its Wings and The Eye of Cthulhu yoyo.

Post-Plantera

 * Once Plantera has been defeated, many new items and weapons can be obtained, including:
 * Shadowbeam Staff, Inferno Fork and Spectre Staff from Necromancers, Diabolists and Ragged Casters respectively.
 * The Paladin will drop its Hammer and/or Shield when killed.
 * Bone Lee will drop the Tabi or Black Belt.
 * All variants of Armored Bones can drop the Magnet Sphere and Keybrand.
 * Skeleton Commandos, Tactical Skeletons and Skeleton Snipers can drop their Rocket Launcher, Tactical Shotgun or Sniper Rifle respectively.
 * All enemies have a chance to spawn a Dungeon Spirit when killed, which will drop Ectoplasm used for many recipes.
 * Farming these enemies is harder with common methods due to most enemies having the ability to attack through blocks.
 * New enemies will spawn during the Solar Eclipse:
 * Butchers can drop their Chainsaw.
 * Deadly Spheres can drop the Deadly Sphere Staff.
 * Dr. Man Flies can drop the Toxic Flask.
 * Nailheads can drop the Nail Gun.
 * Psychos rarely drop their Knife.
 * Lihzahrds and Flying Snakes from the Jungle Temple can drop Solar Tablet Fragments and Lihzahrd Power Cells.
 * From the Martian Madness event, the Martian Saucer and Scutlix Gunners can drop unique weapons and mounts.

Examples
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