Chattering Teeth Bomb

Nothing spawns these on the ground. Clowns throw them during a Blood Moon in Hardmode, which is the only way you will ever meet one, and only a single one can exist in the world at a time. Deal with the clowns and the supply stops.

It hops toward you, opening with short bounces and building into long ones, and detonates once it is within a few tiles. Any liquid sets it off on contact, so a moat under your base triggers it early rather than stopping it. It does not need to see you either: a thin wall between the two of you changes nothing, since it still goes off and the blast reaches straight through. That blast covers a wide square, so backing up a single tile is not enough room.

Killing it before it closes cancels the explosion entirely, and it drops nothing when it does explode, so there is never a reason to let it finish the approach. Treat it as a target rather than a hazard. It is small and it travels in arcs, which makes it awkward to hit, and homing weapons will happily lock onto the fatter targets a Blood Moon provides instead. Splash damage or sheer rate of fire solves it faster than careful aim.

It cannot jump onto a platform much more than ten tiles off the ground. A raised perch turns the whole thing into target practice, as long as nothing nearby offers it a step up. It is also excluded from the event's own signature drop, so there is nothing lost by staying out of reach.

• Wind up chattering teeth are a real novelty toy, a pair of plastic dentures on little feet that clack their way across a table.
• The resemblance to a certain walking bomb from Nintendo's plumber games is hard to miss.