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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

Fright
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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.