1.4.4 Summoner Minion, Whip & Armor In-Depth Tier List (2024)

Shyguymask said:

Frostburn arrows with a high tier wood bow is enough for UD, especially on Expert. From there you get PLENTY of desert fossil to mine, and they can even be mined with Copper pickaxes (Pots in UD also shower you with Scarab Bombs). You can also get Fossil Pickaxe that way, which is apparently slightly faster than Gold/Platinum Pickaxes while having the same mining power.

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It's not that you can't do it, it's that compared to the loot you get UD generally isn't worth it. Underground snow weapons (flinx staff, snowball cannon, ice blade) are stronger than the UD weapons. UD is harder than even the underground jungle, and the jungle has better weapons as well (Boomstick, amazon, thorn chackram). Bone throwing knives are the only weapon that can compete with the weapons mentioned earlier and making fossil armor means you get 1,800 less of those. Whenever I rush UD I feel like I never have enough fossils to spare for the armor after making knives and a pick.

qwerty3.14 said:

It's not that you can't do it, it's that compared to the loot you get UD generally isn't worth it. Underground snow weapons (flinx staff, snowball cannon, ice blade) are stronger than the UD weapons. UD is harder than even the underground jungle, and the jungle has better weapons as well (Boomstick, amazon, thorn chackram). Bone throwing knives are the only weapon that can compete with the weapons mentioned earlier and making fossil armor means you get 1,800 less of those. Whenever I rush UD I feel like I never have enough fossils to spare for the armor after making knives and a pick.

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The difference is that in UD you can potentially get a weapon (bone knives), a full armor set AND a pickaxe. Not to mention potentially finding Ancient Chisel and Magic Conch too. And honestly UD isn't as hard as you're making it out to be, it's more slow-paced than dangerous at times. As long as you take it slowly and kill enemies one by one you won't have to worry about much. Only Tomb crawlers are a major threat.

Shyguymask said:

The difference is that in UD you can potentially get a weapon (bone knives), a full armor set AND a pickaxe. Not to mention potentially finding Ancient Chisel and Magic Conch too. And honestly UD isn't as hard as you're making it out to be, it's more slow-paced than dangerous at times. As long as you take it slowly and kill enemies one by one you won't have to worry about much. Only Tomb crawlers are a major threat.

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You have to admit though: The weapons in this place are as terrible as they come: Storm Spear is almost wooden-chest tier bad. I didn't find the Staff particularly good either.

Conch and Chisel are almost invaluable, I admit, but the rest of it is pretty terrible.

Shyguymask said:

The difference is that in UD you can potentially get a weapon (bone knives), a full armor set AND a pickaxe. Not to mention potentially finding Ancient Chisel and Magic Conch too. And honestly UD isn't as hard as you're making it out to be, it's more slow-paced than dangerous at times. As long as you take it slowly and kill enemies one by one you won't have to worry about much. Only Tomb crawlers are a major threat.

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Materials for platinum and gold pickaxes can be foound in underground ice and jungle too. (same as fossil pick, insignificantly slower)
Bone knives are worse than snowball cannon, and significantly worse than boomstick.

Boomstick without fossil armor is better in DPS than bone knives with fossil armor. So, using jungle armor + boomstick you have both a great ranged weapon and good magic potential.

Ancient chisel / conch are useful, but:
- feral claws, anklet of the wind, snapthorn, thorn chakram
- Flinx staff, ice skates, fur coat, snowball cannon
Ice blade is also better than storm spear

In both ice and jungle you can find materials for Diamond/Ruby staff (to counterargue Amber Staffs presence)

Overall, in terms of loot, doubtlessly – jungle and snow win. And Flinx staff makes UD/jungle exploration so much easier that I persanally prefer that as the first weapon, plus snowball cannon. Then I'd go in the jungle.

Shyguymask said:

Frostburn arrows with a high tier wood bow is enough for UD, especially on Expert. From there you get PLENTY of desert fossil to mine, and they can even be mined with Copper pickaxes (Pots in UD also shower you with Scarab Bombs). You can also get Fossil Pickaxe that way, which is apparently slightly faster than Gold/Platinum Pickaxes while having the same mining power.

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I half agree with this. While I don't think that bow + frostburn arrows are enough for fighting off UD enemies very well, UD isn't exactly the most combat intensive biome. It's structured and plays out such that you'd usually be best off NOT shooting your weapons everywhere, instead playing cautiously. And for this purpose I think it's non-dependent upon weapons and thus more universal across progression.

AngryNimbus said:

Bone knives are worse than snowball cannon, and significantly worse than boomstick.

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Bone knives can pierce unlike snowball cannon, and they can multihit large bosses. If they were just as easy to get as snowball cannon they'd be a sidegrade.

Everything is worse than boomstick, no reason to limit yourself to ranged weapons (well until snapthorn touches obsidian armor).

Shyguymask said:

The difference is that in UD you can potentially get a weapon (bone knives), a full armor set AND a pickaxe. Not to mention potentially finding Ancient Chisel and Magic Conch too. And honestly UD isn't as hard as you're making it out to be, it's more slow-paced than dangerous at times. As long as you take it slowly and kill enemies one by one you won't have to worry about much. Only Tomb crawlers are a major threat.

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Again not saying you can't rush UD early just that it is harder than other biomes. And every time I do it I don't have enough fossils to spare since as I've already said twice, I'd rather have 1,800 bone knives.

Coleyohley said:

Storm Spear is almost wooden-chest tier bad. I didn't find the Staff particularly good either.

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Thunder Zapper has less DPS, more mana drain, and worse crowd control than Amber Staff. Guess where you get that weapon from.

J Bame said:

Thunder Zapper has less DPS, more mana drain, and worse crowd control than Amber Staff. Guess where you get that weapon from.

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I was actually referring to the Thunder Zapper when I mentioned the staff. I guess this only goes to strengthen my point: Underground Desert equipment really sucks.

(And for the record I don't consider Chisel to be equipment. I consider that to be something you just have on you and swap to whenever you need to mine. It'd be like calling Philosopher's Stone an accessory when all you're doing with it is equipping it when you need to drink a potion and immediately taking it off afterwards.)

qwerty3.14 said:

Bone knives can pierce unlike snowball cannon, and they can multihit large bosses. If they were just as easy to get as snowball cannon they'd be a sidegrade.

Everything is worse than boomstick, no reason to limit yourself to ranged weapons (well until snapthorn touches obsidian armor).

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Their range makes piercing less useful. I barely remembered situations when I hit more than 2 enemies at once. Good point though.
Almost forgot: Bone Javelins. You can stick them to EoC and deal 18 dmg per tick. Sound nice as a sidearm.

So, boomstick + jungle armor = full variety of magic weapons. Diamond Staff, Demon Scythe.
No, never mind – jungle head, flinx coat, jungle leggings. Boomstick, Flinx, Snapthorn, Magic weapon = truly powerful combo
I'm not limiting myself, no point in doing that

Vikilum said:

You do know that half the game is dealing with Wall of Flesh as a boss and the other half is so easy that I have literally beat the entire game with minecart cheese exclusively, right?

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Not everyone wants to just cheese most of the game and rush it.

Vikilum said:

Nobody sees dodging bosses in Terraria as "challenging". You memorize the pattern and then you just dodge it.

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You talk really boldly and confidently.

Seriously, who are you? Did you even achieve any of the stuff you're claiming and calling "easy" like Daytime Empress no WASD or even beating Calamity Death Mode? Do you have some videos of yourself playing the game even? All you do here is calling everything "ez ez ez ez ez" and pretending you are the next Ningishu/Yrimir or something. Until you prove to me you're not just all-talk, I won't take future "lol this is ez duuuuuuuude" claims seriously.

Vikilum said:

You can use a macro to beat EoL.

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Indeed, EoL is easy if you resort to cheating and using a script...

You aren't as clever as you think you are.

AngryNimbus said:

Materials for platinum and gold pickaxes can be foound in underground ice and jungle too. (same as fossil pick)

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See Also

1.4.4 Summoner Minion, Whip & Armor In-Depth Tier List

Fossil Pick is actually slightly faster than Gold/Plat Picks according to wiki. Additionally, Fossil Pick is kind of a guaranteed pickup if you mine enough fossils, where you need a bit of luck to find Gold/Plat bars from chests (or a lot of gold/plat ore veins).

AngryNimbus said:

Bone knives are worse than snowball cannon, and significantly worse than boomstick.

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I never used Bone knives myself but I did use Snowball cannon. From what I can see Bone knives pierce up to 5 enemies (snowball cannon & boomstick don't pierce), and considering Bone Knives attacks faster it seem on par with Snowball cannon in DPS. Additionally, there are other options like Bone Javelin which have a fairly high base damage of 20 and deal more damage overtime, and additionally Amber Staff (on par with Ruby Staff, which means it's actually quite strong).

Lastly, if you manage to find Ancient Chisel then that can significantly speed up exploration of the Jungle & Snow biomes.

Coleyohley said:

(And for the record I don't consider Chisel to be equipment. I consider that to be something you just have on you and swap to whenever you need to mine. It'd be like calling Philosopher's Stone an accessory when all you're doing with it is equipping it when you need to drink a potion and immediately taking it off afterwards.)

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Charm of Myth is actually really good. The health regen being doubled combined with the shorter potion cooldown can make a big difference in exploration or during more lengthy boss fights, healing so much more HP overtime.

Shyguymask said:

Lastly, if you manage to find Ancient Chisel then that can significantly speed up exploration of the Jungle & Snow biomes.

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Oh, didn't cosider this. Fair, so for me optimal strategy is Flinx - > Chisel - > Jungle

Seems that I need to do digging speed tests. Do you know by how much fossil pick + chisel is faster than gold/plat pick?

The Storm Spear is a great weapon; it does 1.5x the listed damage with its beam and does regular spear stuff up close.

I almost always explore the entire UD before any bosses trying to find Bast statues and Magic Conch. I also go Flinx->UD-> Jungle

Mathbrush1 said:

The Storm Spear is a great weapon; it does 1.5x the listed damage with its beam and does regular spear stuff up close.

I almost always explore the entire UD before any bosses trying to find Bast statues and Magic Conch. I also go Flinx->UD-> Jungle

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in my experience it always lacks both the range and dps to be truly worth getting. Saying its a wooden chest tier weapon would be wrong but that's a very low bar to overcome there

Shyguymask said:

Charm of Myth is actually really good. The health regen being doubled combined with the shorter potion cooldown can make a big difference in exploration or during more lengthy boss fights, healing so much more HP overtime.

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Looks like my wording needed some work.

I was more talking about the technique of just quipping it when you need to heal and then immediately taking it off afterwards. If you're wearing it the whole time then I'd definitely call it a part of your build, but if you're just using the above technique then you're really not using it as an accessory, are you?

Cazmatism said:

in my experience it always lacks both the range and dps to be truly worth getting. Saying its a wooden chest tier weapon would be wrong but that's a very low bar to overcome there

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I'll agree that it's worse than ice chest weapons (Ice Blade, Snowball Cannon) and jungle-crafted weapons (any of them).

To move back on topic, I made a few changes to the list for now after a few more playthroughs:

Finch Staff was raised from B- to B+ thanks to its surprisingly high effectiveness against Brain of Cthulhu's creepers. Not just because they pierce and give no i-frames, but fighting fire with fire (erratic movement) works very well. More tests may be needed though as I only tried this once in multiplayer (with amazing results).

Terraprisma was lowered from S- to A+ because its lower aggro range compared to Dragon makes Dragon arguably better for Moon Lord if you are playing defensively and relying on passive minion damage (its availability remains the main reason why it's not ranked higher).

Shyguymask said:

Finch Staff was raised from B- to B+ thanks to its surprisingly high effectiveness against Brain of Cthulhu's creepers. Not just because they pierce and give no i-frames, but fighting fire with fire (erratic movement) works very well. More tests may be needed though as I only tried this once in multiplayer (with amazing results).

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It is also works fine in EoW fight. Target the farthest segment either with a whip and move away, or simply via rightclick.
Requires reasonably large open area.

Shyguymask said:

Not everyone wants to just cheese most of the game and rush it.

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if i could do it automatically i could do it manually, but this game is honestly so ez that i got bored after doing master FTW

Shyguymask said:

Seriously, who are you?

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A high MMR Dota player. Someone who beat Rabi-Ribi, a game where you can't macro your way out of all problems, on the hardest available difficulty. You?

Shyguymask said:

You aren't as clever as you think you are.

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You do know that memorizing a boss's patterns that literally never change is literally like using a macro, right? No self-respecting bullet hell would ever be beatable by macros, for replayability reasons.

You clearly are garbage at the game if you think beating a boss that can literally be beaten by macros is an achievement. I could wire up a teleporter arena that allows me to press 2 buttons and beat EoL if I wanted to, again without pressing movement keys, and so on - but truth be told this game is boring af so i can't be bothered to commit a significant amount of time to it.

Bet you never beat MMFTW without Shield of Cthulhu or some other ~60mph OP item or without arenas. I did all 3 at once before. Game is EZ.

Go beat Rabi Ribi on the hardest available difficulty and the hardest boss settings when available then we can talk about how clever I really am. Until then, continue pretending that Terraria boss fights have any difficulty whatsoever on any vanilla mode.

Shyguymask said:

Finch Staff was raised from B- to B+ thanks to its surprisingly high effectiveness against Brain of Cthulhu's creepers.

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Test it in For The Worthy lol, creepers do jack in non-FTW worlds

Vikilum said:

A high MMR Dota player[...]

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I don't care about that.

Show us some videos of you playing Terraria and doing feats like beating Death Mode or beating Daytime EoL without WASD keys. Show us you're not just all-talk.

Sorry mate, this game gives me a migraine when I play it. I literally don't care enough about the opinions of some random no-life SoC-using nerd on the internet. It's fun to see that you are as insufferably stupid as the Undertale community, who love to pretend that Sans is a hard fight, or as MrSephy, another no-lifer SoC-using nerd who still managed to die to Skeletron while playing seriously despite having around 1 year's worth of playtime.

If it makes you think I'm all-talk, sure, go ahead, but I simply do not have the passion required to spend 1 week planning route and 1 day TEditing the whole thing to beat the boss. I have nothing to prove to a bunch of low-skill nerds who think that Terraria is mechanically intensive at all.

Also I cannot stand 1.3.5.3 at all. After playing 1.4, 1.3.5.3 gives me an even worse splitting headache every time I try to play it. I have better things to do with my life than to play a mod which literally gives you eye strain because of the dark colors.

Maybe if there's a Calamity texture pack which fixes the major issues of Calamity's graphics (lack of readability, dark colors) I might play it. Again, the hard part of Terraria is trying to not faint because the game is so dimly-lit that you either strain your eyes or step on a random pressure plate.