How to kill Expert mode Moon Lord the "right" way, no exploits or cheeses involved

[J Bame]

W.I.P FOR 1.4​

No cheesing meaning: no Nursing, using complicated arenas with blocks, Teleporters, etc. Most non-gear preparations that take a lot of the difficulty out of the fight are considered a "cheese" to me.

Before starting, let's get one thing out of the way: you are not going to do this in your first try. Take it from someone who has already done this fight dozens of times and still finds himself dying to him on occasion; this fight is much harder than anything else in the game. Moon Lord isn't any easier to cheese than any other boss, yet the fact that he is by far the most commonly exploited speaks volumes. Worse of all he is a hard challenge for a bad reason, but more on that later.

For now, let's focus on killing this monstrosity. The best way to beat a difficult challenge in Terraria is to use the best gear, and in most cases that means using broken things to your advantage.

Let's start with what I consider the two most broken weapons for the fight:

Phantasm:

There was a time where you could be using a melee tank setup and still reach 5k+ DPS with this thing. Those times are over and this got nerfed to hell, yet funnily enough it's still the strongest single target weapon available, and by quite a long shot compared to most other things.

You will want to use

Ichor arrows for this, due to their incredible velocity, their high base damage and the fact Moon Lord is not immune to Ichor. If Ichor isn't available then you'd want to use

Venom arrows instead, as they are pretty much the same thing but without the debuff.

Holy arrows may have been the best partner to any multishot bow up to this point, but with all the movement in ML's fight the stars will barely hit and the loss in velocity will be very noticeable.

Stardust Dragon Staff:

The only weapon that rivals the Phantasm in power... is a minion that can be used alongside it. Good for us. With the setup we'll be using (more on that later) an incomplete Stardust Dragon is already the equivalent to another player attacking with a Vortex Beater, which tells you all you need to know about the DPS you'll have with these two things combined.

The Dragon is well known as an Iframe generator for enemies; that won't be a problem here as the as they only affect other piercing attacks and Phantasm doesn't pierce, just keep it in mind if you want to use another weapon that pierces, as then this will be a hindrance to your DPS.

Speaking of...

Spoiler: Other Options

Even if the two above are the best, they are far from being the only things that work. Keep in mind that these are significantly weaker than those, so only use these if you don't feel like tryharding.

Vortex Beater:
Most likely the 3rd best weapon for this. The spread isn't too big of a deal in the first phase so you can afford to use

Crystal bullets to kill the eyes faster, while

Chlorophyte bullets will be very important for the second phase as you'll be running away from him unlike in phase 1 where you have to stay close.

/

Razorpine/Blizzard Staff:
Best choices for a mage character. The DPS/Mana cost ratio of the two is practically the same, but one has issues with its short range and the other is bad against small things. I prefer to use Razorpine and then switch to Blizzard when the eye starts moving out of range, and then go full Blizzard on Phase 2.

Nebula Arcanum:
This is incredibly unreliable as a main weapon: The galaxies are incredibly slow and they rarely hit, and when they do they will all pile up on one Eye, killing it instantly and most of the time way before you even scratched the others. This, however, is an amazing secondary weapon: With the huge lifespan of the galaxies you can always afford to throw a couple down every now and then, and even if they are not guaranteed to hit, the massive damage when they do is very worth it.

Remember the huge anti-synergy this has with the Dragon.

Betsy's Wrath:
Applies a massive -40 defense debuff that ML isn't immune to. Do not use this on the first phase as every blink will reset the buff, and don't use this with Phantasm as swapping to it will reset its attack speed back to base and you will pretty much be losing DPS.

Stardust Cell Staff:
Sometimes the Dragon makes you forget that this is a good weapon. The only non-subjective reason to use this over its better counterpart is when you use a main weapon that pierces, mostly Solar Eruption.

Solar Eruption:
The best Melee choice. Very good DPS, especially at point blank range. However the short range makes this impossible to use properly on phase 2 without getting killed. Also an abysmal partner with the Dragon, so you'll have to stick with the Cells which makes your actual power with it not actually that great.

/

Daybreak/Influx Waver:
You should only ever use these as sidearms for your Solar Eruption at long range. Note: Daybreak is abysmal on phase 1 as the debuff resets on every little blink, while Influx Waver doesn't do its multihit properly against the Core because of how fast you'll be moving. They are still piercing weapons despite the looks so no Dragon for you.

Seedler:
It may sound ridiculous to recommend a Plantera drop against the final boss of the game, but when said weapon is as busted as this Sword is then it's pretty reasonable. The Seedler may be worse than the two above overall, it doesn't pierce, which makes it the best Melee partner for a Dragon.

Quick reminder to have all your weapons with their best reforges; you probably know that if you've made it to this point.

Now with the weapons selected, let's move on to the armor, which is arguably the most important part of the fight. We are going to use an hybrid set that puts as much damage into the Phantasm and the Dragon as possible while keeping very good survivability.

• 
  Shroomite Headgear: 15% extra arrow damage with a 5% crit bonus makes this the best armor piece for the Phantasm. Note increases to Arrow damage are applied after all other damage ups, which means the increase to damage is much more than the 15% it tells you.
  
  Squire's Great helm is a possible alternative, it gives a ton of extra regen at the cost of all the extra Phantasm DPS.
• 
  Valhalla Knight Chestplate: 8 HP/s. Imagine a Shiny Stone that is always active. This is completely broken and it will be half of your survivability in this fight. If you for some reason feel like you won't need the regen then you might as well go for the
  
  Red Riding Dress, which will increase Ranged and Minion damage by a massive 25%.
• 
  Forbidden Treads: Most leg slots in the game are bad, however this one is the rare exception that also happens to be extremely good since it increases your minion slots by 2. This is the main reason you are splitting damage between the Dragon and the Phantasm instead of just focusing on one of the two.

Since the damage of a minion is set the moment it is summoned, you can increase the DPS of the Dragon even further by summoning it while wearing a full set of Spooky armor and then swapping to the Forbidden Treads and the VK Chesplate, in that order.

Spoiler: Other Options

No matter what class you are playing, you will always want the VK Chestplate. The difference between classes is determined by the Head and Leg slots.

• As a mage you will want the
  
  Hallowed Headgear, as it provides the best bonuses for a mage.
  
  Dark Artist's Leggings look tempting with their 25% crit chance increase, but they are not better than two extra Dragon segments from the Forbidden Treads.
• If you want to do this as Melee, you will want the
  
  Chlorophyte Mask (strongest Melee Helm) and
  
  Valhalla Knight Greaves (20% crit chance increase). No Forbidden Treads this time; you are stuck with Cells due to your terrible weapon pool, and they are not on the same level as the Dragon and are therefore not worth it here. If you don't want Valhalla regen for whatever reason then go for
  
  Monk's shirt, with its massive 20% Melee and Minion damage increase.
• 
  Spooky Helmet is best for a pure Summoner.

Moving on to Accessories now. You have pretty much every accessory available at this point in the game, which means there are a ton of combinations, so it's hard to say there is a "best" setup out there. I'll just list what I believe are the best things and let you figure out the rest.

• 
  Fishron Wings: You obviously need Wings, so the fastest pair in both vertical and horizontal movement are the go-to.
  
  Betsy's Wings are a possibility; their regular horizontal speed is much slower than average which means they are terrible for moving diagonally, but I can't act like the hover doesn't exist. I haven't used those enough to know if they would work well, but you can try.
• 
  Master Ninja Gear: If you reached this point you should already know how massively useful the dash is. For a quick reminder: An Incredible and reliable movement option that with the unique ability of changing your direction instantly with a 10% dodge chance as a bonus. There is no reason to not have this unless you are going for an all-in hyper offense strat, which wouldn't even be using anything that isn't DPS anyways.
• 
  Frog Leg: Increases your ascent speed by 50%. Since most attacks are dodged by flying this is very, very important for mobility.
• 
  /
  
  Double Jump Balloon (usually Blizzard or Sandstorm): I consider this a clone of the Frog Leg that trades some speed for a double jump. The double jump isn't really that useful here however, especially because the height is terrible without the Frog Leg's jump boost, so if you want this you either use Frog Leg with it or not use it at all.
• 
  Bundle of Balloons: You probably won't have this, but if somehow you do then you definitely should use it as it's incredible for your mobility. Never use it without a Frog Leg. Your character doesn't start to fly until you've used up all 3 jumps, and since the jumps are pathetic by themselves this alone is a massive hindrance to your Wings' mobility. You need that Jump Height boost to make this insane, otherwise it's insanely bad.
• 
  Philosopher's Stone: For clarification, you never want to have this equipped. What you want is to keep it in a vanity slot, and then quickly switching to it when you need to use a potion. That way you get all the benefits without using up a slot. Upgrading to a
  
  Charm of Myths doesn't give you any real benefit for this reason.
• 
  Celestial Stone: Best stat booster in the game. 10% damage with 2% crit and 1 HP/sec of regen with 4 defense is the perfect balance of offense/defense that no other item gives you. The
  
  Celestial Shell is barely an upgrade, but it lets you equip two of these and get double buffs. And might as well make that three with a
  
  Sun/
  
  Night Stone now that we are at it, but that's pushing it a bit.
• 
  Magic Quiver: Provides a very good damage increase to the Phantasm; quick reminder that Arrow damage upgrades are applied after all other increases. Also makes all arrows as fast as Ichor/Venom ones, but since it doesn't actually affect those two there is not much use to this effect.
• 
  Papyrus Scarab: Significant damage increase to the Dragon. Might as well stack it with a
  
  Necromantic Scroll if you want even more power to it.
• 
  Worm Scarf: -17% damage taken is nice, but it's pretty hard to find a slot for this when the Celestial Stones are a thing and they give a better balance of stats.
• 
  Sniper Scope/
  
  Destroyer Emblem: Best pure combat item in the game, however has the exact same issue as the above.

Everything should be reforged to Menacing. I consider Lucky to be practically the same thing most of the time, however now we want extra raw damage to maximize the Arrow damage multipliers from the Headgear, the Archery Potions and (if you have it) the Magic Quiver. Warding scales horribly into this point in the game since -16 damage isn't very useful when the "low damage" attacks hit for 120.
As for Equipment slots, you should have a

Slimy Saddle for the quick fall speed increase and a good Hook; preferably

Dual/

Lunar and ideally

Bat. I rarely use them but when I do they are lifesavers (plus it costs nothing to have them so why the heck not).

Let's also have a quick runover of Potions, because I seriously doubt you'd attempt this without them. Ordered by relevance, you want:

• 
  Lifeforce,
  
  Regeneration,
  
  Endurance,
  
  Heart Reach and
  
  Ironskin potions for all your defensive needs.
• 
  Archery,
  
  Summoning,
  
  Bewitching Table,
  
  Wrath and
  
  Rage for all your offensive needs.
  
  Mana Regeneration,
  
  Magic Power,
  
  Ales and
  
  Ichor Flasks are mandatory if you want to do this with a Magic/Melee weapon instead.
• I don't have to remind you of
  
  Well Fed and
  
  Super Healing Potions, right?

And of course, you must have a good arena. My main arena looks like this:

Spoiler

You are clearly going to need something big here. As you can see in the pic, the arena I use is two oceans long, and I still find myself running out of it every now and then. Don't make it any taller than this however. A bit more height and it gets to Space, and you absolutely never want to fight him there. The gravity is so low that you will get stuck at the top, and you will take a ton of hits while trying to fall back down.

You will also, of course, want Campfires, Heart Lanterns, Honey inside of Bubble Blocks and Heart Statues* to survive for longer.

* If you have multiple remember to space them out, so you are not limited to 3 hearts on screen. I don't actually know how the mechanic works, just make sure all statues are about 20 blocks away from each other.

Alright, let's get to the actual fight already. As with any other boss, you want to know what he can do before starting. Moon Lord is quite a spammy boss, but he only has 4 real attacks in total.

First we have the

Phantasmal Spheres. These come from the hands in waves of 6, and it's the main and most dangerous attack Moon Lord has. They hit very hard, cover a very wide area and if you aren't keeping track of them properly they can catch you off guard when they are released. Never get near and much less above a hand that is spawning Spheres. They will hit you right as they spawn and you'll lose a lot of health. I make this mistake way too often, don't be like me.

If a Hand isn't spawning Phantasmal Spheres, then it will spawn a horde of

Phantasmal Eyes instead. Never underestimate this attack, it's the second most dangerous he has. The little eyes may deal little damage (yes, 120 is "little" at this point in the game), but there will always be a ton of them at all times; Stop moving for even a second and 3-4 eyes will pile up on you and take out over 1/4th of your health. These little eyes are persistent and very good at chasing you, but they can't actually fly up, so getting above a wave will completely neutralize it, until another one spawns that is. This attack forces you to stay on the move at all times.

Then we get to ML's trademark attack, the Phantasmal Deathray. This attack is very easy to dodge, all you have to do is go around his head. However, if this gets you, then game over. Not even Vallhalla Knight Chestplate can save you if you take 300 damage all at once. This is the main reason you must never kite Moon Lord phase one, otherwise you won't be able to see it coming until it's too late. You always want to keep Moon Lord at least partly on screen so you can check on the main eye from time to time.

Right before any eye (including the center one) closes it will start to look at you, and then fire a pair of

Phantasmal Bolts where it thinks you'll be. This is kinda tricky to dodge because it tries to predict your position, but you can mess up its aim by dashing at the right time. It's fairly weak though, just think of it as mild chip damage you'll take from time to time.

And that's pretty much it for Phase 1. To get a smooth transition to Phase 2 try to get all eyes to very low health, and then pop them out all at once. This isn't too easy to do with a Dragon that engages everything that breathes with a DPS of 3k, but it's not hard either. Don't save the main eye for last; it doesn't reveal itself as often as the hands' so you may have to deal with two True Eyes for a fairly long time until you get the chance to damage it again.

Anyways, with all 3 eyes down Moon Lord reveals his Core and Phase 2 begins, and that's also where a boss battle that is honestly fairly clever designed goes downhill by getting the stupidest, most unfair attack of anything in the entire game. That is, the mini-Deathrays from the True Eyes.

Let's see: Moon Lord's Phantasmal Deathray is a fair attack. It is slow, gives you ample time to prepare for it, and there is a very clear indicator on when it is coming, and when it does it can only reach below or above him, and since Moon Lord moves trying to keep you at his center, right below his forehead, he literally positions himself for you to dodge the Deathray more easily. This means that the only time you will ever get hit by it is when you aren't paying attention and it catches you off guard. It's a trick meant to punish mindless kiting, and it does that very well.

Now we get to the True Eyes' version of this attack and it's just stupid. The only way to tell when an Eye is charging up its Deathray is when you see it stop completely. Let me remind you that every single one of the True Eyes' attacks start out with it stopping for a moment, so in order to see if it's charging up you'd have to see if the Eye stopped for longer than usual. Let me say that again: In the middle of a ing bullet hell where a horde of Phantasmal Eyes eats you alive if you slow down for a second, you'd have to constantly check if one of the three eyes that is relentlessly spamming attacks stopped moving for more than a second and then somehow dodge it.

Because Phase 2 isn't like Phase 1, where you know exactly where Moon Lord's main eye is and thus you know exactly where to move to avoid the Deathray. The True Eyes fire their Deathrays from wherever the hell they were standing. And all 3 Eyes love to spam it, and each of them hits as hard as a Phantasmal Sphere so you can't even tank them and hope you somehow out DPS them, because even Valhalla, the Phantasm and the Dragon don't let you do that.

So, it's spammy, there's no realistic way for you to see it coming and even if you do you have pull off some mad acrobatic stunts to actually dodge them. But there is one reliable method to avoid it: Mindless kiting that exploits the fact the Mini Deathray has limited range. Yes, you are now encouraged to do the one thing it was originally meant to counter. How ironic. You can also synchronize the eyes' release so they all move identically and therefore fire the Deathray at the same time, from one position, but that's an exploit right?

I'm pretty sure that not as many people would cheese the fight if this attack didn't exist, but what can I do about it. Everything else the True Eyes can do are watered down versions of the attacks the hands had. The phase is still more dangerous than the the one before since they are much more aggressive and there is a third attacker, but at the end of the day the Deathrays are the things that you will be worrying about.

And that's pretty much it for the guide. I've told you everything I could, so now it's all up to you to fight him and hopefully win. I can show you a laggy video of me killing it so you can get an idea of what the fight's like, but I can't do much more than that and wishing you good luck.

 

[Cjjedik]

This is awesome and very detailed, once I get there in my playthrough I will surely make use of this!

Thanks for the great guide!

 

[Dapling]

I actually tend to have better luck with the Squire's Great helm, as the damage lost from the phantasm is offset by the bonus to the dragon's damage, and the regen it gives is half of that of the valhalla knight's breastplate and stacks with it. I also use a rod of discord to dodge the mini-deathrays in phase two, but that's not always an option.

 

[J Bame]

I don't think Squire's Helm will work better since that is a lot of Phantasm damage you are trading for not-so-insane regen. It doesn't actually boost minion damage either, so you are not compensating with more Dragon power.

I haven't considered RoD for phase 2, that may actually work. Imagine having to grind for hours on end just to stand a chance on phase 2...

 

[Dapling]

I don't think Squire's Helm will work better since that is a lot of Phantasm damage you are trading for not-so-insane regen. It doesn't actually boost minion damage either, so you are not compensating with more Dragon power.

I haven't considered RoD for phase 2, that may actually work. Imagine having to grind for hours on end just to stand a chance on phase 2...

I just don't get hit very much, and the extra regen really puts in work that way. I suppose if you get hit a little more than I do you could probably go for the greater damage...

I soloed expert moon lord scaled up to four players (the other players were hiding in a bunker and watching me on the map, not helping me.) using the squire's great helm+valhalla knight breastplate, and it actually does work, trust me.

 

[J Bame]

I know it works since regen is insane but I really doubt the regen gain beats the 1.15 times extra Phantasm DPS. There might be no right answer between the two, I'll add it as well.

 

[Wolfkey]

Rod of discord makes the phantasmal deathray useless against you

 

[J Bame]

The Rod of Discord is also a nightmare to obtain, to the point where I won't include it in the guide because I don't want to tell people to spend hours AFK before a boss.

 

[Jetthatoneguy]

How to kill Expert mode Moon Lord the "right" way, no exploits or cheeses involved

W.I.P FOR 1.4 No cheesing meaning: no Nursing, using complicated arenas with blocks, Teleporters, etc. Most non-gear preparations that take a lot of the difficulty out of the fight are considered a "cheese" to me. Before starting, let's get one thing out of the way: you are not going to do...

forums.terraria.org

This guy has a guide to doing just that

 

[Dapling]

How to kill Expert mode Moon Lord the "right" way, no exploits or cheeses involved

W.I.P FOR 1.4 No cheesing meaning: no Nursing, using complicated arenas with blocks, Teleporters, etc. Most non-gear preparations that take a lot of the difficulty out of the fight are considered a "cheese" to me. Before starting, let's get one thing out of the way: you are not going to do...

forums.terraria.org

This guy has a guide to doing just that

Did you just link a thread inside of the linked thread?

 

[The Storm]

Did you just link a thread inside of the linked thread?

Well he's not wrong, that guy does have a guide that does just this one

 

[Jetthatoneguy]

Yes, yes I did

 

[Augustulus]

Big fan of this guide right here. I think that this would be very helpful for someone who has problems or struggles with the fight, since I know that ML is a commonly exploited boss which should speak volumes about the fight which sucks since it's intended to be the final boss in terms of progression. Anyways nice guide, hybrid sets should be more recommended in guides overall.

Also I wonder why the BoB is on here, wonder which person made the fight seem possible could be, hmm.

 

[J[Y]anin]

Now reading this I realise how broke using the Zenith sword is, using the broomstick mount and just flying around in circles, whilst wearing full Solar Flare armour and various melee boosting trinkets all reforged to +4def. This takes less than a minute and is probably so far broken it's beyond madness

OP, damned good job on this post, very nicely written up!

 

[Dapling]

Now reading this I realise how broke using the Zenith sword is, using the broomstick mount and just flying around in circles, whilst wearing full Solar Flare armour and various melee boosting trinkets all reforged to +4def. This takes less than a minute and is probably so far broken it's beyond madness

OP, damned good job on this post, very nicely written up!

He's actively doing a playthrough right now, so this won't be updated until he's finished.

 

[SkyanUltra]

Now reading this I realise how broke using the Zenith sword is, using the broomstick mount and just flying around in circles, whilst wearing full Solar Flare armour and various melee boosting trinkets all reforged to +4def. This takes less than a minute and is probably so far broken it's beyond madness

OP, damned good job on this post, very nicely written up!

you could also replace the broomstick with an anti grav hook on a single block. seriously underrated hook, you can beat enraged duke fishron using this thing.

just in general though, this """right way""" to beat the moon lord works, but really it isnt that good. there are better choices for fighting the moon lord. after all, expert moon lord is hard, but they aren't THAT hard.

 

[Dapling]

you could also replace the broomstick with an anti grav hook on a single block. seriously underrated hook, you can beat enraged duke fishron using this thing.

just in general though, this """right way""" to beat the moon lord works, but really it isnt that good. there are better choices for fighting the moon lord. after all, expert moon lord is hard, but they aren't THAT hard.

They nerfed two of the items that this strategy revolved around (valhalla knight's breastplate and forbidden treads) and also nerfed moon lord to be less chaotic in 1.4. This update was made before either of those nerfs.