This is how you actually maximize the Terra Blade

[TheFlyingSoda]

Overview

The Terra Blade is one of, if not the most iconic weapons in the entire game. It's a weapon that's favored by most players for its visuals and mechanics. What quite a lot of people may not realize, however, is how it plays in the meta. There's a chance that even some of you browsing the forums wouldn't know much about the full potential of the weapon. That's why I'm here. In this discussion, I'll explain to you how you can use the weapon to full advantage, both in post-Plantera and in post-Golem. There's not much to say in the intro, let's get into it.

The Basics of the Terra Blade

Before I get into the loadouts, I should first explain the basics. The Terra Blade is a projectile sword that swings in a big wave alongside shooting it. Prior to Labor of Love, it used to shoot a sword beam as well as having stats consisting of 115 damage (95 prior to 1.4 and 88 in Legacy), 6.5 knockback, 4% critical chance, and 14 (16 both prior to 1.4 and in Legacy). Each beam only pierces up to 3 enemies and all beams that are shot from the blade are only affected by use time, not use animation. In this version, however, it has 85 damage and 18 use time. Both knockback and crit chance are the same. While the stats are nerfed, it makes up for it by having it shoot a larger projectile that pierces more enemies, although it loses 25% damage upon hitting the first enemy, and both use time and use animation are linked together in this weapon. Use time and use animation are entirely different beasts. The former affects how the sword shoots projectiles and any melee speed boost except weapon prefixes won't affect it. This likewise goes to mining speed. The latter affects how fast you swing your sword and all melee speed boosts will affect it regardless. The Terra Blade has both of these mechanics merged into one uniquely to itself. The key thing to note, however, is that it only gains 75% of melee speed buffs as opposed to the usual 100% like almost all other melee weapons. You may think that with stats like these, the Terra Blade would be a decent or even mediocre weapon, right? To that I answer: wrong. The Terra Blade is far more potent and versatile than you might realize, and this is where we get to a bigger picture.

Loadouts (Post-Plantera)

I elected to split the loadout choices into 2 stages because, although you can technically do the same thing as the post-Golem one which we will get into later, realistically speaking, there aren't many options where you can go whole-hog on melee speed benefits. Yes, the best way to boost the Terra Blade is to NOT shove all your efficiency credits on melee speed, but rather, to find a smoother balance between damage and speed. So for post-Plantera, the max melee speed you want to cap is 81%. The reason for that is that it gives the weapon a 9 use time, and that number gives the Terra Blade the most sustainable hits in this available stage. To achieve that, you'll need a Hallowed Helmet, a Berserker's Glove, a Mechanical Glove, a Fire Gauntlet, a Moon Stone, and buffs consisting of Ale and Exquisitely Stuffed, with the latter being preferred with bacons from pigronatas. Two of your accessories will be reforged to Violent and the rest will go to Menacing. You may lose out on a few of those benefits during the day, but realistically speaking, fighting bosses during the night is a far more appropriate decision.

Loadouts (Post-Golem)

If you think the Terra Blade is already great in post-Plantera, that is nothing compared to what it is in post-Golem. The best number to achieve in this stage is 104%. Yup, 104%. This number gives the Terra Blade a use time of 8 and it's surprisingly super effective. For the loadouts in this stage, same gravy, different fried chicken. The buffs remain the same but now, instead of using 3 gloves, you only need a Mechanical Glove, a Fire Gauntlet, and a Celestial Shell. This is because your main armor of choice, the Beetle Armor with the Scale Mail, greatly buffs melee speed alongside melee damage. You also only need 2 accessories reforged to Violent (1 during the night due to the Moon Charm effect) while the rest will be Menacing. Again, this is very optimal. Not only does this number give more room for more damage boosts, but also more mobility-based accessories, making this very efficient for bosses. And as for events, you can switch the wings, Ninja Gear, and Insignia into more damage boosts, making the Terra Blade even stronger than it already is, regardless of stage. These loadouts make the Terra Blade easily the most versatile weapon in the late game barring Vampire Knives and Razorblade Typhoon while also arguably being amongst the strongest.

Conclusion

And... that's it. That's how you max out the Terra Blade in both stages in the late game. I'm aware that I'm not perfect with how I tackle these things so I'm open to any criticism. I'm also aware that this isn't for everybody since everyone has their own ways of playing the game, given that Terraria is a sandbox game and not an RPG or something like that. But if you care about exploring more of the meta, especially when doing a melee playthrough, I highly recommend you give these a try because I promise you, they're a game-changer, especially in post-Golem.

 

[spookyPS]

So ancient chisel affects melee weapon speed? Or atleast terra blade?

 

[zenithspeed]

how would one go about optimizing the TB with only lasting stat increases? (i.e. no buffs such as well fed or similar; only armor and accessories)

 

[Warm Water]

how would one go about optimizing the TB with only lasting stat increases? (i.e. no buffs such as well fed or similar; only armor and accessories)

probably more violence

 

[TheFlyingSoda]

So ancient chisel affects melee weapon speed? Or atleast terra blade?

Sorry if what I said was confusing, but no. Ancient Chisel only affects mining speed (drills and chainsaws aren't affected by this).

how would one go about optimizing the TB with only lasting stat increases? (i.e. no buffs such as well fed or similar; only armor and accessories)

That's hard, actually. My best suggestion would be to use more violent reforges and/or equipping the Berserker's Glove (and Feral Claw in pre-Golem, if any).

 

[spookyPS]

Sorry if what I said was confusing, but no. Ancient Chisel only affects mining speed (drills and chainsaws aren't affected by this).

That's hard, actually. My best suggestion would be to use more violent reforges and/or equipping the Berserker's Glove (and Feral Claw in pre-Golem, if any).

Ye i just misread mb i thought the “this likewise goes to your mining speed” part meant that mining speed made the use time better, but it was just that use time is part of how fast you mine basically

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

I don't think weapon flexibility is based on sliding mobility accessories into damage accessories for OOA. Terra Blade is easy to use due to huge projectiles and high projectile speed, coupled with its damage directly scaling with melee speed for a third damage stat and the option of close range melee hits for double damage if you want to squeeze more damage out of it. But if we're talking about build flexibility, in my mind that refers to weapons that don't care as much about offensive bonuses, like Daybreak or Flying Dragon. These are weapons which can benefit from damage bonuses, but still perform fine with raw tank builds because their scaling is less extreme. This point's mostly a nitpick in wording, since really this is just a guide about optimal melee speed thresholds for optimizing Terra Blade's damage in damage builds.

Also, I'd recommend doing testing and demonstrations in vanilla, not in tmod, as tmod nerfs Terra Blade and all other weapons with swing speeds that benefit from melee speed. In your calculation you mention that 104% melee speed gets Terra Blade to 8 use time, but this is only in tmod - in vanilla, it hits 7 use time with these bonuses due to some shenanigans in how weapon animations are handled. No this is not a bug, this has been known for years in cases like Fetid Baghnakhs hitting 1 use time with +134% melee speed, and instead of this phenomenon getting removed, they just nerfed melee speed synergy for some weapons instead. tmod retains these melee speed nerfs despite the underlying reason for them being removed.

 

[Asternove]

I don't think weapon flexibility is based on sliding mobility accessories into damage accessories for OOA. Terra Blade is easy to use due to huge projectiles and high projectile speed, coupled with its damage directly scaling with melee speed for a third damage stat and the option of close range melee hits for double damage if you want to squeeze more damage out of it. But if we're talking about build flexibility, in my mind that refers to weapons that don't care as much about offensive bonuses, like Daybreak or Flying Dragon. These are weapons which can benefit from damage bonuses, but still perform fine with raw tank builds because their scaling is less extreme. This point's mostly a nitpick in wording, since really this is just a guide about optimal melee speed thresholds for optimizing Terra Blade's damage in damage builds.

Also, I'd recommend doing testing and demonstrations in vanilla, not in tmod, as tmod nerfs Terra Blade and all other weapons with swing speeds that benefit from melee speed. In your calculation you mention that 104% melee speed gets Terra Blade to 8 use time, but this is only in tmod - in vanilla, it hits 7 use time with these bonuses due to some shenanigans in how weapon animations are handled. No this is not a bug, this has been known for years in cases like Fetid Baghnakhs hitting 1 use time with +134% melee speed, and instead of this phenomenon getting removed, they just nerfed melee speed synergy for some weapons instead. tmod retains these melee speed nerfs despite the underlying reason for them being removed.

Just in case you wanted the technical side of things, I grabbed an earlier post of the user that explains the stuff in more detail.

Spoiler: Kellam Yoshikage explaining it in detail elsewhere

Also, Space Gun isn't slower than Flintlock Pistol, due to niche but ubiquitous use time mechanics. A weapon that has autoswing will attack for the duration of its use time, and if the attack button is held on the final tick of animation, the animation immediately starts again on the next tick. So Space Gun fires a projectile once per 17 ticks with no modifier, 15 with mythical. A weapon that does not have autoswing will attack for the duration of its use time, then stop with no check for autouse. This forces 1 tick where the player is doing nothing, and this tick reads the next attack input to start using the weapon again. This applies even with autouse turned on, so Flintlock Pistol fires a projectile once per 17 ticks with no modifier, 15 with unreal. If you were to have a weapon like Clockwork Assault Rifle or Golden Shower but remove their autoswing, I'm not really sure how this would work, but I'd imagine it would be analogous to Starfury where the projectile comes out whenever the item animation is active and the cooldown is at 0.

Speaking of Starfury, I mentioned the melee speed tick and no one asked about what I meant. I'm sad. Y'all learning what the melee speed tick is now. So when a weapon's use time is affected by melee speed (i.e. spears, swords, shortswords, but not boomerangs or guns), its attack cycle is actually 1 tick faster than what the melee speed calculation would suggest. Break out OBS and check it yourself, base copper shortsword with no bonuses extends the sword for 12 ticks before it gets put away for a tick then reused due to no autoswing, legendary fetid baghnakhs with 1~66% melee speed have a 5 tick swing animation despite the calculated 6. This is something the devs have been aware of for a while and something you saw highlighted in old Baghnakhs builds reaching 1 swing time with 134% melee speed, but no one really talks about it. Because this tick is lost after melee speed calculations, it gives a bigger and bigger bonus the faster the weapon is and the more melee speed you have. This is why 134% Fetid Baghnakhs used to throw out 4x as many swings as 41% Fetid Baghnakhs, instead of the 2.5x you would expect from the math. And, why Fetid Baghnakhs and other extremely fast weapons were nerfed to only receive a fraction of their normal melee speed benefits. If not for the melee speed tick, this never would have happened - there's no other reason why attacking 1.5x faster would benefit the fast weapon more than the slow weapon, it's still the same damage increase. Baghnakhs now has melee speed thresholds of 1% for the first tick, 67% for the second tick, and the basically impossible 160% for the third tick drop, so generally I'd recommend treating it like Daybreak and just not bothering with melee speed, unless you're naturally near 67% somehow.

This means spears, which benefit from melee speed but don't have autoswing, have an effective use time that actually matches their listed use time, much like every non-melee weapon with autoswing does.

One final thing with autoswing vs no autoswing is that buffered hotbar switches only go through when no item animation is playing, which makes them clunky to use with autoswing weapons. Whips' lack of autoswing is what turns whipstacking from a niche, annoying gimmick that would sometimes lose DPS from human lag to a fairly widely useful but somewhat difficult skill.

 

[TheFlyingSoda]

I don't think weapon flexibility is based on sliding mobility accessories into damage accessories for OOA. Terra Blade is easy to use due to huge projectiles and high projectile speed, coupled with its damage directly scaling with melee speed for a third damage stat and the option of close range melee hits for double damage if you want to squeeze more damage out of it. But if we're talking about build flexibility, in my mind that refers to weapons that don't care as much about offensive bonuses, like Daybreak or Flying Dragon. These are weapons which can benefit from damage bonuses, but still perform fine with raw tank builds because their scaling is less extreme. This point's mostly a nitpick in wording, since really this is just a guide about optimal melee speed thresholds for optimizing Terra Blade's damage in damage builds.

I understand where you're coming from. The Terra Blade by itself is a strong and easy-to-use weapon, but like I said, ReLogic implemented a 25% penalty for how much speed bonuses the weapon receives. In this case, going full damage, especially in post-Golem, is kinda less powerful than using gloves and slipping 1 or 2 points of Violent. Daybreak and Flying Dragon are stronger than the Terra Blade, especially on tank builds; there's no way I could deny that, but you still have to consider the longevity of these weapons. Daybreak is only dominant in post-Cultist, and while the Flying Dragon is more available than the former, it's locked behind not only post-Golem, but particularly the Old One's Army. As much as I really like the OOA and would defend it, I understand why not many players would engage in it. It does take time and effort to get through. The Terra Blade is very unique amongst meta/hard-hitting weapons because it's obtained right after killing Plantera only gets stronger the better your armor and accessories. While it still may not be on the same level as the Daybreak or Flying Dragon, its longevity and ease of use give it the edge. The reason why I made this guide is that the Terra Blade is a pretty complex weapon with strategizing, and that strategizing is unique amongst what you normally see from DPS meta builds. (Admittedly, it's also because I don't want misinformation regarding weapons like the Terra Blade to grow further.) For the record, even ignoring the Terra Blade entirely, the Daybreak does have a bit more use than the Flying Dragon if you want to progress your playthroughs faster, but it's not like the FD is close to being remotely mid or something.

Also, I'd recommend doing testing and demonstrations in vanilla, not in tmod, as tmod nerfs Terra Blade and all other weapons with swing speeds that benefit from melee speed. In your calculation you mention that 104% melee speed gets Terra Blade to 8 use time, but this is only in tmod - in vanilla, it hits 7 use time with these bonuses due to some shenanigans in how weapon animations are handled. No this is not a bug, this has been known for years in cases like Fetid Baghnakhs hitting 1 use time with +134% melee speed, and instead of this phenomenon getting removed, they just nerfed melee speed synergy for some weapons instead. tmod retains these melee speed nerfs despite the underlying reason for them being removed.

How the ever-living hell? I thought TMod works just as functionally as regular Terraria. How am I not warned about this until now? Even then, though, I still stand by the setups I mentioned being very strong and versatile. For further evidence, Moo-ing Time demonstrated the strength of the loadout on some of the most powerful bosses like Duke Fishron, Empress of Light, and Moon Lord (even if this one doesn't use a few points of Violence, but whatever) (approximately 1 minute on the former and latter sides isn't really that fast, but still).

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

Maybe I'm bad at expressing my points... I wasn't saying FD and Daybreak are stronger weapons than Terra Blade so Terra Blade's trash. I was nitpicking specific word choice of versatile and why the weapon is versatile. Is the weapon versatile? Absolutely, incredibly so. Is it versatile because you can put on extra damage accessories during events? I think that's a pretty silly notion, it's versatile because of massive, fast projectiles, ease of attainment, and good damage on top of all that. I'd imagine that you probably thought I had a more substantial point here than just stirring the pot, but sorry.

As for the second point, my point there is that Terra Blade is stronger in vanilla than it appears in your demonstration gifs. Again, I'm not saying the weapon's bad by any means, I absolutely agree that it's one of the strongest weapons in the entire game and quite frankly hope it gets nerfed. I'm saying that you're somehow still underselling it. As to why you weren't warned about it, it's a niche mechanic that you only really notice once you start counting weapon swings tick by tick to see how your calculations compare to reality, or you start asking why Fetid Baghnakhs had its melee speed stacking nerfed. But well, tmodloader isn't the same code as vanilla, there's a lot of methods that get changed and rewritten and while they do try to match vanilla, there are cases where they either fail to match vanilla and introduce their own bugs. Or the case here, where they fix what they perceive to be a vanilla bug, melee weapons being faster than listed. Some funny other bugs, swinging a no autoswing broadsword will cause you to drop off of rope in tmod only. Divine Crates drop way more ores and money in vanilla, while they drop more potions and bait in tmod.

 

[Johnathan Morrow]

Cool post—love seeing my favorite sword get some attention! I used to dream about getting the Terra Blade back on the Xbox 360. I never realized it could reach such high DPS (even if it takes consumable buffs). I’ll definitely be trying your method next time I play!

 

[TWillyH]

So ancient chisel affects melee weapon speed? Or atleast terra blade?

ancient problems require ancient solutions