PC Tier List: Pre-Hardmode Weapons

If weapons should be moved around, feel free to explain...?

Seconding Water Bolt's A+ status. It's purely luck-based whether or not you can get one pre-Skeletron, but is fantastic if you do get it, and it still holds up perfectly well in just about any area that isn't completely open space - Dungeon and Jungle chokepoints as well as arenas with barriers turn this weapon from good to phenomenal.

Starfury could stand to be bumped down a notch. Personally, Floating Islands tend to be a very late stage (post-Skeletron) though they're admittedly accessible long before that, but Starfury isn't quite worth the effort. Okay damage, but the projectile is virtually useless in any location with a roof and tough to tag moving enemies with unless they're extremely large or slow... and I'm just the kind of person who often lives and dies by autoswing when it comes to melee weapons.

On the other hand, Blade of Grass makes for mid to high A tier material in my books. No autoswing and relatively slow, but like the Amazon a short sweet trip to the Underground Jungle will quickly net you the materials for it. It's damage surpasses even the likes of the Blood Butcherer, and it's size is almost on par with the typically much later Fiery Greatsword. All in all a very usable and accessible sword with a penchant for outshining most alternatives for much of early to late pre-Hardmode.

Boomstick is also an A- weapon to me. Even alongside the Minishark, the burst damage and high knockback make it something of a melee weapon for rangers, and has similar availability to Blade of Grass/Amazon - if not more accessible, given you don't need to farm the dreaded Hornets and Spiked Jungle Slimes for it.

Finally, we come to one more downtick. Crimson Rod really doesn't hold up compared to its Corruption counterpart; poor damage, stationary hitboxes, and minimal crowd control unless you can find a way to bunch them all up in one place - in which case you might as well just break out a better weapon. I tried going out of my way to make this one work, but other tools often just did it better (grenades, anyone?).
 
Seconding Water Bolt's A+ status. It's purely luck-based whether or not you can get one pre-Skeletron, but is fantastic if you do get it, and it still holds up perfectly well in just about any area that isn't completely open space - Dungeon and Jungle chokepoints as well as arenas with barriers turn this weapon from good to phenomenal.
I'm not really sure what to do with this, unfortunately - haven't set a thread procedure properly. Should I just remove the point of contention that said it should be moved down?

Marked the Starfury and Crimson Rod; agreed with you on the Boomstick and Blade of Grass, so I movedthose.

In another vein, I wanted to cast vague votes for these weapons:
Arkhalis.png

Arkhalis: B-
It's incredibly good as a weapon, but its obscene rarity makes it a drag to get; many players will never see it.

Slime_Staff.png

Slime Staff: B-
A decent-enough summoner weapon, but ridiculously rare, even if you happen to grind for it (which isn't hard, but still).

Star_Cannon.png

Star Cannon: B-
Provided you have some fallen stars to operate it, it's incredibly powerful, if only for a couple seconds.

Wand_of_Sparking.png

Wand of Sparking: B+
It's excellent as an early-game weapon, even if it is all-around bad. No competition, really.
 
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Last I checked, Water Bolt was recommended for an uptick, so I seconded its current position - A+ material on account of its usability when you're intended to get one, but not S-tier on account of how unreliable it is to acquire before then (relying purely on worldgen to give you one pre-Skeletron). I suppose removing the contention point for now would work (unless someone else contests it in the future).

Overall, I feel the reliability of acquiring a weapon is one thing that makes or breaks its standing; the best weapons are both powerful and reliable/easy to acquire, and good weapons can be tragically weighed down by their rarity. The Arkhalis in particular is a fantastic weapon pre-hardmode, to the point that I believe it'd be a contender for the low/mid A tier if judging only its performance. Unfortunately, the downright atrocious odds of getting one even when you're hunting for it (the already sparse existence of sword pedestals, the still rare sword shrines, the 2 in 3 chance that any pedestal is fake, and then a 9 in 10 chance that you don't get the Arkhalis from a real pedestal) leaves it teetering right on the border of B-/C+ to me. Players can, have, and will likely continue to scourge entire worlds and walk away without a single Arkhalis in their hands.

Similarly, the Slime Staff is more of a B- weapon to me. Unless you've beaten Skeletron and can set up 1sec timers to AFK your way to a Slime Staff, you're likely resorting to macros or spacebar mashing for hours on end in order to get the single weakest minion in the game (and don't forget you still need to go spelunking for a Slime Statue and most likely a bucket of lava to begin with). Again, if it were any more accessible, it'd be more of a B/B+ weapon, but as it is...

Star Cannon is hardly difficult to acquire and operate, but using it for any longer than a few seconds means spending every night scouring the surface for ammo. It's a choice weapon against the Wall of Flesh and even holds up against the Destroyer when you can line up your shots, but the tedium of collecting Fallen Stars just makes it not worth using on almost anything else. Overall, B- sounds about right.

As for Wand of Sparking... I actually can't pass much judgement on it simply because I have never, ever gotten my hands on it before finding a better magic weapon (though that might count for something in and of itself). That said, the Terraria wiki has a surprisingly good writeup on it which may be worth considering:

Mana regeneration scales based on both the player's current and maximum mana. Regenerating 20 mana if the player only has the starting cap of 20 will take significantly longer than it would to fully recover the naturally upgraded cap of 200. Use of the Wand of Sparking as a primary weapon in place of other early weapons is nearly impossible, as casting with the Wand before consuming any Mana Crystals will allow for only a few shots per minute, and killing a single zombie will nearly deplete a starting player's mana pool.
 
I'm inclined to agree; I'll remove the Water Bolt's mark and move the suggested ranking to B- for the Slime Staff.

Didn't know that about mana mechanics; I've never really had trouble with them, interestingly enough. Does it say when that change was implemented? I haven't used the Wand since 1.3.3 or so.
 
I'm a pretty new player who's still on my first world, but I'll note that I've found the Bee Keeper to be pretty lethal -- high damage, and the bees it produces help a lot with crowd control (especially since they can attack monsters that are otherwise out of reach).

It occurs to me that folding "ahead of/behind its time" into the general rankings doesn't make all that much sense unless you give some indication of when it's the best you can get, as compared to "you earned that".
 
I'm a pretty new player who's still on my first world, but I'll note that I've found the Bee Keeper to be pretty lethal -- high damage, and the bees it produces help a lot with crowd control (especially since they can attack monsters that are otherwise out of reach).

It occurs to me that folding "ahead of/behind its time" into the general rankings doesn't make all that much sense unless you give some indication of when it's the best you can get, as compared to "you earned that".
I'll give it a little mark, then. My opinion on it seems to be a lot lower than most people's, given that it's moved up at least one tier so far.

As for relative power, it's hard to say what I mean. I guess I'm relying on people understanding what the alternatives are in terms of weapons at a given tier. That makes it a little bit hard to compare if, like many new players, you don't know the alternatives. I'm unsure how to work that into a tier list though.

(If I misunderstood, sorry! I'm a little unsure about what we're talking about, but I'm doing my best to answer)
 
I'll give it a little mark, then. My opinion on it seems to be a lot lower than most people's, given that it's moved up at least one tier so far.

As for relative power, it's hard to say what I mean. I guess I'm relying on people understanding what the alternatives are in terms of weapons at a given tier. That makes it a little bit hard to compare if, like many new players, you don't know the alternatives. I'm unsure how to work that into a tier list though.

(If I misunderstood, sorry! I'm a little unsure about what we're talking about, but I'm doing my best to answer)

Sounds like you understood the issue just fine. To make an example of myself: My general play style is slow and cautious, building platforms as I progressed downward and never leaping into anyplace I couldn't see. That also means I've been accumulating a fair bit of stuff. When I fought the Queen Bee for the first time, I'd been bumming around the Underground and Caverns in several biomes for a while, and had done a lot of fishing in various places, but hadn't seen the Underworld nor a Mushroom Biome. I'm not sure I had max health yet, and I don't think I'd broken a Crimson Heart yet. I'd explored to the ocean on that side, but not the Dungeon side. I had at least tungsten armor, maybe gold, and I was using the Thorn Chakra, a Falcon Blade, and IIRC a Ruby Staff (among other stuff) against her, but I didn't have a Bezoar yet.

... so, does that count as getting it "early", or just in the normal course of things? That's the basic issue. It might be more useful to rank items by overall power with flags for their prerequisites, with the understanding that players will move up the tiers as they progress through the game.
 
Sounds like you understood the issue just fine. To make an example of myself: My general play style is slow and cautious, building platforms as I progressed downward and never leaping into anyplace I couldn't see. That also means I've been accumulating a fair bit of stuff. When I fought the Queen Bee for the first time, I'd been bumming around the Underground and Caverns in several biomes for a while, and had done a lot of fishing in various places, but hadn't seen the Underworld nor a Mushroom Biome. I'm not sure I had max health yet, and I don't think I'd broken a Crimson Heart yet. I'd explored to the ocean on that side, but not the Dungeon side. I had at least tungsten armor, maybe gold, and I was using the Thorn Chakra, a Falcon Blade, and IIRC a Ruby Staff (among other stuff) against her, but I didn't have a Bezoar yet.

... so, does that count as getting it "early", or just in the normal course of things? That's the basic issue. It might be more useful to rank items by overall power with flags for their prerequisites, with the understanding that players will move up the tiers as they progress through the game.
I definitely see where you're coming from, and you're right, that does make things difficult. It's hard to say what we should do with items that can be obtained over a wide range of progress levels, like the gem staves or fishing equipment. Frankly, I don't have a good answer at the moment. Anyone?
 
Hellwing bow is great and Bees Knees is almost OP
[doublepost=1509923995,1509923850][/doublepost]Besides, you can use hellwing bow with normal arrows for great effect
 
shortswords were a complete crap to get, a broken copper shortsword can even make impossible challenges (kill the destroyer (one of my favourite bosses) with a broken copper shortsword) extremely ridiculous, much like in @ppowersteef's Moon Lord Patches doodle.
a Phoenix Blaster and/or a MiniShark can kill the Wall of Flesh faster than other weapons like I tried on my current modded playthrough.
 
I found Beekeeper very strong, both as a primary and secondary weapon. It autoswings, has good speed and damage, spawns bees and sometimes confuses enemies (which is just amazing for some regen during a fight)
 
I agree that Falcon Blade should be upvoted. 31 damage, autoswing and a very fast use time! AND you can get it pre-EOC!!!
 
I agree that Falcon Blade should be upvoted. 31 damage, autoswing and a very fast use time! AND you can get it pre-EOC!!!

The only problem is its range... which isn't a huge deal usually, but sometimes potentially it can be.

But yes, it is a very solid weapon, especially for Pre-Hardmode. Nothing lives for more than 2 seconds once you get in range.
 
The bladed glove is actually really good, i would put it higher. It's difficult to get, but when you do get it, it attacks so fast it's useful even against early hardmode enemies, as it slowly whittles away at their health while immobilizing them(if they're susceptible to knockback at least).
 
The bladed glove is actually really good, i would put it higher. It's difficult to get, but when you do get it, it attacks so fast it's useful even against early hardmode enemies, as it slowly whittles away at their health while immobilizing them(if they're susceptible to knockback at least).

At which point you can swap em for the baghnakhs and keep going if the ultra-close range shredder is your thing.

I've played around with both weapons and they're fun but there's a good bit of risk involved.

Certainly is fun to just walk and shred everything in front of you as you go.
 
The thing is, a plantinum sword can Carry you a long way.
[doublepost=1528269355,1528269266][/doublepost]And how the heck did the bladed glove end up the same tier as a flare gun? It’s easily obtainable early on and good until the wall.
 
I do like it, but I think that the Bone Glove should be moved to B+ or B, considering at the stage of the game you get it, there are better throwing weapons than it. It also requires bones to throw, which can take awhile to farm in the dungeon. Plus, it is an expert-mode item, and it is not very good for being an expert item.
 
Honestly, Molotov’s should be moved to probably B- now, they are very time-consuming to obtain (finding pinky, killing it, farming webs and sand) and is totally not worth it with nerfed damage, unless you are doing a thrower play through, which is quite rare. Otherwise, the list is pretty good, and VERY useful.
 
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