Dart Rifle

Corrupt Mimics carry it, so this is a corruption world item and you go underground in hardmode to find one. Crimson worlds get the Dart Pistol in its place, which hits softer but fires quicker and works out at roughly the same sustained damage, so neither side of the world split is being shortchanged.

On its own the rifle is unremarkable. What you load decides how it plays, and the gap between dart types is wider than the gap between most weapons at this tier.

• Crystal Darts bounce, so they belong in tunnels and against packs standing close together. In open air most of that value is thrown away.
• Cursed Darts leave burning ground behind, which shreds anything walking through it. Fired down onto the Destroyer as it surfaces, the burn does the work for you.
• Ichor Darts split partway to the target, so at least one piece usually connects even while you are busy dodging, and the defense they strip off a boss stays useful long after the gun itself stops keeping up.

Darts are neither bullets nor arrows, so your other ranged weapons keep their ammo untouched and you never juggle types in the middle of a fight. The same quirk means the game does not treat this as a gun: the Rifle Scope and its upgrades do nothing for it, while the Shroomite Helmet is the mask that boosts it. It will also load seeds, though not usefully, and unlike a blowpipe it does not give them back.

Ichor comes out of the Crimson, and a world that handed you this weapon does not have one. The workaround is to grow a small artificial Crimson from seeds the Dryad sells while she is standing in a graveyard. It is twenty minutes of work for the best all-round ammunition the gun has, and the debuff keeps earning its keep on other weapons afterward.

With a decent modifier, Unreal being the target, and cursed darts loaded, it picks off single dangerous enemies in a shot or two and keeps doing that past Plantera. The Chain Gun is where it finally falls behind.