Medusa Head

Hold the button and anything close enough starts taking hits. You do not lead a shot, you do not reload, and it does not care which way you are facing, so all of your attention goes into moving instead of tracking. It also costs nothing while idle. Mana only leaves your bar on a pulse that actually finds something, which means you can keep it held down while you reposition and pay only when a target arrives.

The effect radiates from the front of your torso, not from the head you are holding above you, so the circle sits lower and further forward than it looks. Things that appear to be standing inside it get skipped. It also needs roughly two tiles of clear space to travel through, which is why firing straight up or straight down a one wide shaft usually does nothing at all: the origin point is off center from the tunnel and the wall eats the attack. Small enemies pressed against a slope get missed a lot, and green slimes in particular seem to live in a blind spot.

Crowds on foot. A Pirate Invasion or a Goblin Army pushes a wall of bodies into melee range, and this clears them while you concentrate on not being cornered. It is just as good against anything quick enough that aiming at it is a losing game. There is a second, smaller use as a detector, since the beams reach out toward things you have not seen yet. A streak flying off into the dark tells you what is coming before it appears on screen.

Anything with one big body. Only a few targets get struck per pulse, so a worm or a boss shrugs this off next to a weapon that truly pierces, and the range means using it on a boss parks you in the worst spot on the screen. There is a short built in pause after each volley too, so the rate it fires at is a ceiling rather than a promise. In multiplayer it will not touch other players at all, so it is dead weight in a duel.

Medusas drop it, which puts this behind Hardmode and puts you in front of an enemy that petrifies you on sight while everything else in the marble caves walks over. Breaking line of sight is the entire fight against her, and that does not combine well with farming. A statue setup is far safer at the cost of speed: statue spawns pay a reduced rate, and even a three statue rig can run for over an hour of real time before one falls out. Build it somewhere you already spend time and let it work in the background. Mythical is the modifier to reforge toward.

• The name comes from the Perseus myth. He was sent to bring back the gorgon's head and later used it to petrify the sea monster that was about to eat Andromeda.
• It cannot inflict Stoned, which is the one thing the enemy it is named after is known for.
• The head animates when you fire. The snakes stick their tongues out and her eyes flash.
• Use it while riding a minecart up a slope and the head visually detaches and floats beside you.
• It used to work completely differently. You held the button to build a charge and released it for one large burst that reached most of the screen, rather than the constant close range pulse it has now.