Frost Legion

The Frost Legion is a hardmode invasion made entirely of snowmen. It never occurs on its own: somebody has to use a Snow Globe, which only comes out of Presents opened in a hardmode world at roughly a one in thirteen rate. Clear it once and Santa Claus will move in during the Christmas season.

That is the reward in full, and Santa sells decorations. No weapon or accessory hides behind this event, so it is the one invasion you can honestly skip if you are only chasing progression. The Clothier picks up two hats afterward and the Traveling Merchant picks up a handful of paintings, which tells you the tier of prize on offer.

Three snowman types show up, and none of them fly, cast, or shoot through walls. Roughly four in seven are Mister Stabby, two in seven are Snowman Gangsta and one in seven is Snow Balla. They are individually tougher than goblins and they hit harder, but they cannot drop down through platforms. A platform floor a tile or two above ground level turns the whole event into target practice. A Warmth Potion also cuts their damage, since every one of them counts as cold-themed.

The kill requirement is the standard invasion figure: 120 solo, plus forty for each extra player at 200 or more health when it begins. Every snowman is worth exactly one, with no exceptions to look up.

• Money. The snowmen arrive in a steady stream and die quickly, which is exactly the shape of fight a Coin Ring and a Slime Staff want. Coins from a swarm this dense pile up fast.
• Snow. Natural Snow Blocks are finite in a world, and this event is the only renewable source. A solo legion leaves around 900 on the ground, with roughly 450 more for each extra player, on top of everything the snowmen throw at you during the fight. If you want a snow-themed build without carving up the actual snow biome, this is the run to make.

Snowmen place blocks while they fight and they are not tidy about where. Trigger this a few hundred tiles from anything you care about, or budget an evening for cleanup afterward. The blocks are half the point, but only if they land somewhere you are happy to shovel them out of.

During Christmas the snowmen drop presents, and presents drop globes. In practice a solo run has better than even odds of replacing the globe you spent, so the loop sustains itself as long as the season lasts. The season is not purely a calendar matter either: reaching wave 15 of the Frost Moon converts one in-game day into Christmas regardless of the real date, which is long enough to farm presents and pull another globe out of them.

This event has the shortest loot table in the game, since snow blocks are the only thing it reliably leaves behind. A fourth snowman exists in the art files with a stick of dynamite lodged in its head and was never used, though a patch note at the time hinted at a new member. The naming is a joke that runs one level deeper than it looks: snowman is old slang for a gangster, which is where Mister Stabby and Snowman Gangsta both come from.