NUMEROUS early Hardmode weapons tested against the Destroyer

mathbrush

Terrarian
Inspired by two previous posts, I fought the destroyer hundreds of times and recorded my results. There are a few I didn't try due to availability, and a few I may have just not thought of. Doing this I learned that a lot of info on the wiki from pre-1.4.1.2 is outdated.

Done in Journey mode, Godmode off, no enemy spawns and difficulty at 2.0x (expert). No life hearts. Color of weapon name indicates safety.

Buffs for all classes:
Accessories for all classes: Shield of Cthulhu, Fairy Wings, Amphibian Boots
Buffs for all classes: Stoneskin, Regeneration, Wrath, Endurance, Heartreach, Hunter, Plenty Satisfied
Armor: Adamantite, Spider and Obsidian
Arena: Two long rows of platforms, one about 10 blocks off the ground and the other about 40 blocks above that. Flew back and forth, dodging head. Built a similar arena with dirt blocks for some of the Obsidian Armor whip combos, since it blocks lasers and the whips attack through it (though summons can get trapped on one side).

Melee
Accessories: Power Glove, Warrior Emblem, Obsidian Shield
Buffs: Tipsy, Sharpened
1. Drippler Crippler. 30-115 seconds. This weapon had wild variability depending on whether it hit the opening cluster (30 seconds) or never lined up straight (115 seconds).
2. Fetid Baghnakhs. 64 seconds. Very dangerous but rewarding.
3. Ghastly Glaive. 86 seconds. By far the best spear. The piercing 'ghost' hits both the destroyer and probes no matter which you're attacking.
4. Dao of Pow. 123 seconds. Probably the best, safest option for a melee user taking on the Destroyer as their first boss.
5. Sleepy Octopod. 123 seconds. Surprisingly great here. Destroys probes with ease, but getting close to the Destroyer is dangerous.
6. Shadowflame Knife. 125 seconds. Frequently recommended, and it makes sense here. Very safe compared to the other options.
7. Ice sickle. 155 seconds
8. Sergeant United Shield. 159 seconds. Good for its homing ability on both probes and main body.
9. Chain Guillotines. 237 seconds. The lack of pierce hurts it here, but great against probes.
10. Bananarangs. 238 seconds.
11. Obsidian Swordfish. 287 seconds. Its short range and high damage makes it better against probes, which is spear's biggest problem.
12. Amarok. 288 seconds. The only yoyo I tested.
13. Flying Knife. 331 seconds.
14. Frostbrand (using beam). 480 seconds. Very safe, very slow. The sword itself destroys probes.
15. Breaker Blade. 480 seconds. The only sword that I could safely hit both destroyer and probes with.

Not found: Sergeant United Shield, Bananarangs, Beam Sword
Forgot about: Mushroom Spear
Died too many times (>4 times): Excalibur, Brand of the Inferno, Bladetongue, Gungnir, Jousting Lance, Hallowed Jousting Lance (though the lance is very fun to use)

The wiki lists Swords and Spears as the first two options against the Destroyer. I'd love to see someone beat the Destroyer with Excalibur or Gungnir; I'm sure someone's done it but it just doesn't make sense in my head. A video might help me learn how.

Ranged
Accessories: Magic Quiver, Putrid Scent, Ranger Emblem. I just left in the magic quiver for the guns and darts.
Buffs: Archer potion

1. Phantom Phoenix. Unholy arrows: 33-58 seconds. Holy Arrows: 48 seconds. Another very variable weapon depending on if you line up the Phoenix shot or not, which is what's carrying it here. Definitely outperforms the Daedalus.
2. Daedalus Stormbow. Unholy arrows: 60 seconds. Holy arrows: 60 seconds. The classic way to destroy the destroyer quickly.
3. Dart weapons (Dart rifle, cursed: 63 seconds. Dart rifle, crystal: 76 seconds. Dart pistol, ichor: 176 seconds). Shoutout to the crystal darts for releasing essentially every probe at once. I had to use a different arena for the crystal darts so I had a vertical wall to 'bounce' shots off of to reliably hit more probes. Dart rifle with cursed darts is cheaper to get ammo for than Holy arrows for the Daedalus and doesn't require a workbench.
4. Coin Gun, gold coins (about 3.7 platinum used). 77 seconds.
5. Flamethrower. 98 seconds.
6. Adamantite repeater: Unholy arrows: 104 seconds.
7. Shadowflame Bow. 151 seconds. Hard to hit and kill probes with.
8. Onyx Blaster (meteor shot, 171 seconds. explosive bullets, 288 seconds. Crystal bullets called off for being too slow). Meteor shot was recently buffed and was clearly the best bullet out of the three types I tried. The Onyx blast was great against probes.
9. Toxikarp. 270 seconds. Hard to aim.
10. Ice bow. 287 seconds.
11. Shotgun. Meteor shot, 328 seconds.
12. Clockwork assault rifle. Meteor shot, 403 seconds. Crystal bullets, too slow to finish.

Not found: Marrow, Uzi, Gatligator, Toxikarp

I also tried the Hellwing bow, which is recommended on the wiki, and found it terrible.

Magic

Accessories: Mana Cloak, Celestial Cuffs, Sorceror Emblem
Buffs: Mana Regeneration, Mana Power, Clairvoyance

0. Tome of Infinite Wisdom. 13 seconds. And I forgot to give it the damage buffs, so this is missing +30% damage from potions.
1. Crystal Vile Shard. 58 seconds. Wow, this must have gotten a huge buff. Outperforms (or essentially ties) the Fetid Baghnakhs and the Daedalus Stormbow. Great against both destroyer and probes. Who cares about healing if the destroyer dies so fast?
2. Nimbus rod (+3 sanguine bats). 60 seconds. Bats were there to kill probes, probably a bit unfair.
3. Magic harp. 62 seconds.
4. Unholy trident. 72 seconds.
5. Life drain. 77 Seconds. Excellent for killing probes.
6. Rainbow Rod. 85 seconds. Fantastically safe. It's homing, long range, kills many probes at once.
7. Meteor Staff. 103 seconds. Somehow I expected more.
8. Cursed Flame. 107 seconds. Also recently buffed.
9. Spirit Flame. 150 seconds. Really hard to aim without getting close.
10. Magic Dagger. 156 seconds.
11. Laser Rifle. 189 seconds.
12. Crystal storm. 200 seconds. Surprisingly outperforms Golden Shower. Somewhat short range.
13. Shadowflame Hex doll. 204 seconds.
14. Flower of Frost. 206 seconds.
15. Golden Shower. 223 seconds.
16. Crystal Serpent. 232 seconds
17. Sky Fracture. 235 seconds
18. Poison Staff. 240 seconds. Bad at hitting probes, requires dangerous proximity to destroyer.
19. Frost Staff. 278 seconds
20. Ice Rod. 442 seconds. Exceptionally safe; you can fly up to where Destroyer doesn't hit you, make an ice cave and probes won't hit you either. Very weak DPS but might work well with Nimbus rod.

Not found: Medusa Head
Died too many times: Blood Thorn.

Summons
Accessories: Power Glove, Summoner Emblem, Pygmy Necklace
Buffs: Summoning potion, Summoning Table (5 minions for Obsidian armor, 7 for Spider Armor)

Obsidian ArmorSpinal TapFirecrackerCool WhipDurendal
Optic Staff71555046
Sanguine Staff101588155
Blade Staff>120>12011955
Spider Staff>15013813990


Spider ArmorSpinal TapFirecrackerCool WhipDurendal
Optic Staff82758747
Sanguine Staff1008210763
Blade Staff16419419789
Spider StaffNot tested14822097

Pirate Staff with Durendal and Obsidian armor: 82 seconds, so rare and so not impressive that I didn't try more. Better than Spider if you find it.

All of the whips were slightly variable based on whether I could hit multiple segments of the Destroyer at once.

Optic staff: Outperformed the Sanguine Staff in every single setup, showing that its buffs have helped it significantly for this matchup.

Cool Whip: Never much better than Firecracker, and releases a lot of probes. Not horrible though, and can replace Firecracker if you don't feel like farming Wall of Flesh.

Blade Staff: Shoutout to Blade Staff+Cool Whip basically releasing every probe from the destroyer at once. The Blade Staff was never a great option. It releases tons of probes and is better suited for single target damage.

Obsidian Armor: outperformed Spider armor everywhere except possibly Sanguine Staff with Spinal Tap, where whip damage is the lowest. With good summons and whips it sustains itself with probe hearts, but otherwise gets overwhelmed.

Sanguine Staff: this plus Firecracker outperformed Daedalus Stormbow and tied with Crystal Vile Shard!

Conclusion:

Ranged was the safest, with the Daedalus Stormbow and Dart Rifle being easy to reliably get. The Crystal Vile Shard is just as easy to get but slightly riskier to use.
Melee is very unsafe in general. The Dao of Pow is probably the best craftable weapon with the Shadowflame Knife being the safest farmable weapon.
Magic Weapons are generally pretty similar: Shoot the destroyer from far away. The magic power potion really helps out here.
Summoning is exciting and fun, with the most variety and some of the best risk/reward ratios, especially with Obsidian Armor.

The tiers of items are generally Ice Weapons < Craftable Pre-mech items < Craftable post-mech items < Biome Mimic items < Old One's Army weapons, with some notable exceptions such as the Dao of Pow.

I did most of the math for times in my head, so I'm sure there are errors. If anything seems really off, let me know and I can try again!
 
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Were you using your free minion slots on the non summon builds?

Edit: Some of the acceory choices seem odd.
Why does the melee build have obsidian shield? Short range? Don't whips also have short range? Yet you didn't feel like it was necessary on the summon builds.
2 mana accesories is complete overkill. I'd change the cuffs to magnet flower and then change the mana cloak to putrid scent.
Do I really need to explain why using magic quiver with non bow weapons is weird.
 
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Were you using your free minion slots on the non summon builds?

Edit: Some of the acceory choices seem odd.
Why does the melee build have obsidian shield? Short range? Don't whips also have short range? Yet you didn't feel like it was necessary on the summon builds.
2 mana accesories is complete overkill. I'd change the cuffs to magnet flower and then change the mana cloak to putrid scent.
Do I really need to explain why using magic quiver with non bow weapons is weird.
I didn't use the free minion slots. I had fun doing this, so I think that would be a good thing to try again; I expect that Spiders and Blade Staff will have very little effect, while Bats and Optic Staff will have a more significant effect. I suspect that Gungnir could actually work well with minions.

For the shield, it was mostly for the swords, since the lasers kept knocking me away. I left the magic quiver in for guns since I couldn't think of a useful accessory and I just needed a menacing slot.

I'll retry some of the weapons with putrid scent in place of mana cloak.

(sorry for two accounts, it's on two computers and I need to merge them at some point).
 
haha i knew this would become a trend
2. Nimbus rod (+3 sanguine bats). 60 seconds. Bats were there to kill probes, probably a bit unfair.
Makes me wonder what would happen if you used this alongside Tome of Infinite Wisdom, Clinger Staff and Forbidden armor's set bonus with Mini Twins.

12. Crystal storm. 200 seconds. Surprisingly outperforms Golden Shower. Somewhat short range.
13. Shadowflame Hex doll. 204 seconds.
ok... I knew the Shadowflame Hex doll wasn't the best weapon but damn, worse than a single target weapon against Festroyer is too depressing.
8. Onyx Blaster (meteor shot, 171 seconds. explosive bullets, 288 seconds. Crystal bullets called off for being too slow). Meteor shot was recently buffed and was clearly the best bullet out of the three types I tried. The Onyx blast was great against probes.
Did you try High Velocity Bullets? The Destroyer won't necessarily be your first mechanical boss.
6. Adamantite repeater: Unholy arrows: 104 seconds.

What about the Hallowed Repeater, and what about Jester's arrows?
 
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The destroyer has 30 defense, which negates 15 damage by default. By having two types of sharktooth, it only negates 10 damage. And paired with crystal vile shard, meaning that each hit deals 5 more damage. Is that worthwhile? Similarly, what about other fast-hitting weapons such as life drain, magic harp, daedulus (holy arrows), cursed dart, blade staff, nimbus, and fetid? how much does that impact the damage?
 
The destroyer has 30 defense, which negates 15 damage by default. By having two types of sharktooth, it only negates 10 damage. And paired with crystal vile shard, meaning that each hit deals 5 more damage. Is that worthwhile? Similarly, what about other fast-hitting weapons such as life drain, magic harp, daedulus (holy arrows), cursed dart, blade staff, and fetid? how much does that impact the damage?
I will try that too. I should also say that I'm not as talented as the ones who did the other big 'showcases', so I definitely would be interested in seeing what times a 'master player' could get. I bet some of my times could be cut in half by someone very talented.

haha i knew this would become a trend

Makes me wonder what would happen if you used this alongside Tome of Infinite Wisdom, Clinger Staff and Forbidden armor's set bonus with Mini Twins.


ok... I knew the Shadowflame Hex doll wasn't the best weapon but damn, worse than a single target weapon against Festroyer is too depressing.

Did you try High Velocity Bullets? The Destroyer won't necessarily be your first mechanical boss.


What about the Hallowed Repeater, and what about Jester's arrows?
I'll try the high velocity bullets. It's possible I wrote down the time wrong, I'll try crystal storm again. Jester's Arrows seem like a good idea, too.
I'm pretty sure if you catch the destroyer right when it spawns with all the things you suggest, you could get down to a couple of seconds, but it would require amazing timing.
 
I'm pretty sure if you catch the destroyer right when it spawns with all the things you suggest, you could get down to a couple of seconds, but it would require amazing timing.
Have you seen Crabbar's videoo "Rain"? He used nimbus rod on the coiled up part and literally dealt over 10000 dps, just purely due to the fact that nimbus rod's water drops pierce infinitely, which means jester arrow should work too. However do note that they are nerfed in 1.4.2.2 and now it decreases in damage after piercing an enemy :(
 
I didn't use the free minion slots. I had fun doing this, so I think that would be a good thing to try again; I expect that Spiders and Blade Staff will have very little effect, while Bats and Optic Staff will have a more significant effect.
I feel like if you want to compare builds you should use your free minion slots, you effectively gave spider and obsidian armor 3 extra minion slots.

One other thing I'm curious about is if you ca make blades good with an armor penettration build, stacked shark necklaces + sharpened while holding a melee weapon.

For the shield, it was mostly for the swords, since the lasers kept knocking me away.
So maybye you could use a different acceory for the safer melee weapons.
I left the magic quiver in for guns since I couldn't think of a useful accessory and I just needed a menacing slot.
You could use a pygmy necklace or volitile gelatin to just get a bit of extra passive damage.
 
One other thing I'm curious about is if you ca make blades good with an armor penettration build, stacked shark necklaces + sharpened while holding a melee weapon.
Sharpened doesn't compare with whips. With whip stacking, it easily exceeds the 6 damage sharpened provides, and even with just spinal tap it still ties with it. Sure you can use a safe melee weapon like shadowflame knife with it but then it wouldn't count as a summoner build personally.
 
I didn't expected that the Tome of Infinite Wisdom would've outperformed all weapons by such a huge margin.
Would you mind give that one more detail?
 
I didn't expected that the Tome of Infinite Wisdom would've outperformed all weapons by such a huge margin.
Would you mind give that one more detail?
I think its clear that this is a known ""exploit"", kinda like the old daedulus. The thing make it strong is its secondary attack, as it can pretty much hit every segment very effectively plus its high base damage.
 
I didn't expected that the Tome of Infinite Wisdom would've outperformed all weapons by such a huge margin.
Would you mind give that one more detail?
Big projectile + Hits rapidly with no iframe issues + Infinite Pierce with no penalties = this.

The weapon sucks everywhere else though, it's really not worth your time since Jester's Arrows or a Nimbus Rod shred him just fine.
 
Okay, I'm beginning to do some additional tests with different suggestions.

Replacing Obsidian Shield and using Putrid Scent to retest, as well as summoning 3 bats (optic staff as support kept summoning lots of probes, which wasn't good for some of these weapons, so I used Sanguine as a baseline and because it's pre-mech):
-Fetid Baghnakhs+3 bats: 64 seconds. No real improvement (variability is high for the faster weapons).
-Dao of Pow+3 bats: 103 seconds. Some improvement (again lots of variability with flails)
-Flying Knife+3 bats: 165 seconds. Amazing improvement.

As a baseline, I tried using:
-Just 3 bats with melee equipment (holding sharpened weapon): 403 seconds.

So it seems the summons help a lot for bad weapons and little for good weapons. It's best use is that it enabled some of the unusable weapons and made them great by defeating probes:
-Excalibur+3 bats: 75 seconds
-Brand of the Inferno+3 bats: 60 seconds
-Gungnir+3 bats: 147 seconds (could probably be improved).

I had foolishly taken swords out of the recommendations on the wiki, I guess I'll put them back in with a caveat as to the danger.

I also tried switching to Magnet Flower+putrid scent for mages and to use bats. With this combo, I kept getting higher numbers like 75. Going back to original I got 77. Maybe I was just lucky with the 58 number?

High velocity bullets are a real gamechanger.

-Onyx Blaster, High Velocity Bullets: 150 seconds, basically half the time of meteor shot.

Added a new weapon:
-Orange Zapinator: Highly variable (38 seconds and 55 seconds in 2 runs). It's just a broken silly weapon that can do crazy damage if it's in the mood. Or not. More piercing leads to more effects.

More testing to follow. Thanks so much for the advice! I'd like to do the Forbidden armor sandstorm and the Clinger Staff, and shark tooth necklace+tinkers and sharpened with Blade staff (Do I not use Durendal with it? I guess pre-mech I wouldn't)

Edit: More stuff

ok... I knew the Shadowflame Hex doll wasn't the best weapon but damn, worse than a single target weapon against Festroyer is too depressing.

I repeated the test, and you were actually right. Crystal storm was almost the exact same time (195 seconds vs 200 the first time), but I was using the Hex doll all wrong, stopping to hit the probes separately. This time I was hyperaggressive. I died a lot, but I got it down to 114 seconds, almost half the time. Thanks for the heads up, and let me know if anything else seems really off.

Medusa Head: 138 seconds. About as dangerous as a spear, pretty risky.
Clinger Staff + 3 bats. 156. Struggles a bit with probes but works.
Bladetongue + 3 bats. 97 seconds.

As for mage accessories, I went back to Mana Cloak and Celestial Cuffs. The Mana Cloak's stars were actually contributing good DPS and killing probes pretty well, while the celestial cuffs picked up the stars. Celestial emblem would probably be better in the long run.

Sentry Sets:
These use one of the armor sets from the tavernkeep. Custom accessories are Squire's Shield (or equivalent), Pygmy necklace and summoner emblem.

Monk's armor, 4 lightning sentry + 4 Optic Staff: 102 seconds. The nice thing is if you cast it near the head, the whole body slowly passes through for a long time, so you can just recast one at a time.
Monk's armor, 4 Queen Spider Sentry + 4 Optic Staff: 165 seconds. Flying below the spiders lets them rain down on the probes nicely.
Huntress armor, 4 Exploding Sentry + 4 Optic Staff: 58. Makes sense for a post-mech armor set and two post-mech weapons.

Hybrid set
Forbidden armor + summon emblem + mage emblem + magnet flower + pygmy necklace + wings + boots (no shield)
5 Optic Staff plus armor whirlwind: 101 seconds.
5 Optic Staff plus Nimbus rod plus clinger staff plus whirlwind plus Crystal Vile Shard: 34 seconds. Should work well with other minions, too.
5 Optic Staff plus Nimbus rod plus clinger staff plus whirlwind plus Tome of Infinite Wisdom: 24 seconds. Infinite Wisdom only works super well when the destroyer is perfectly flat, while nimbus, clinger and whirlwind work better vertically. Still performs better than almost anything, and better than just Infinite wisdom when the destroyer isn't perfectly flat.

The sharpened hack (summoner + melee weapon)
I used the Shadowflame knife. If I have to hold it, why not use it? And this is a safe weapon, so meshes well with blade staff. I think I took off the shield of cthulhu for this (to keep summoner emblem and pygmy necklace).
Spider armor, 7 Blade Staff + 2 sharktooth necklaces + Shadowflame Knife (without sharpened): 134 seconds
Spider armor, 7 Blade Staff + 2 sharktooth necklaces + Shadowflame Knife (with sharpened): 116 seconds
Spider armor, 5 Blade Staff + 2 sharktooth necklaces + Shadowflame Knife (without sharpened): 142 seconds
Spider armor, 5 Blade Staff + 2 sharktooth necklaces + Shadowflame Knife (with sharpened): 124 seconds

Sharpened definitely helps. I'm afraid this won't completely end the debate in the other thread about Cool Whip vs Shadowflame Knife and Sharpened. For Spider Armor, Shadowflame Knife is clearly a better alternative, while for Obsidian Armor, the Cool Whip is better, but only marginally. This makes complete sense, since a big chunk of Obsidian Armor's DPS comes from the whip itself.
 
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Have you tried Hellfire arrows at all? With the high base damage and decent splash radius, there's a good chance it could do better than unholy at least on some weapons, albeit with a lot more inconsistency.
I'd also like to see an attempt at making the pirate staff work, if you can. I remember it being a good option in this case back in the day. Keep in mind it only works on the ground.
As for jousting lances, while they are very risky, they should be very rewarding if you fly parallel to the worm whilst holding them in the correct directions. They are notably hard to use against probes though.
Another point that I just noticed: why use the power glove when you can use the berserker's glove instead? The only notable difference is the extra defense, which could help you play a little riskier when needed.
 
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