Cultist Archer

This is not a random spawn you can farm. Once Golem is dead, four hooded figures assemble at the Dungeon entrance around a stone tablet: two archers and two kneeling devotees. The Guide will mention strange people loitering out there if you talk to him, which is the game telling you the next step has unlocked.

Killing all four summons the Lunatic Cultist on the spot. He appears instantly where they stood, the tablet shatters, and beating him opens the Lunar Events. So the group is a gate rather than an obstacle, and clearing it is a deliberate decision about starting the endgame.

Walk into them and nothing happens. They deal no contact damage and you pass straight through them. Hit any one of the four and the archers wake up, start dealing contact damage, and begin shooting. The devotees never fight back at any point; they exist purely to be killed.

The archers look like they are firing plain wooden arrows from a plain wooden bow and hit vastly harder than that suggests. Expert raises that hit substantially and Master raises it again, which is enough to kill a careless player even at this point in progression.

Attacking anything also swaps the music to the boss theme and speeds up the devotees' animation. That is a free way to record the music box for that track without ever fighting the boss. Kill both devotees and leave the archers standing and the music stops.

Minions will not deliberately go for a passive cultist, but ones that damage on contact can bump into them anyway. Sharknados can clip them with a stray shot while aiming at something behind them. Minecart lasers from the upgrade kit will target them outright, so if you rail in, end the track well short of the entrance.

A Fallen Star landing on one counts as an attack. That is a genuine hazard if you leave the group alone overnight and come back expecting them to still be passive.

They never despawn, which sounds convenient and is the main way this goes wrong. Awakened archers follow you, and if you drag them somewhere else and finish them off there, the summon fails: the spawn animation plays and no boss arrives. Worse, the group does not come back on its own after that.

The fix is to close the world and load it again, which puts all four back at the entrance in their original passive state. They also reset by themselves after twelve in-game hours if the boss was never summoned, if you ran or died during the fight, or once all four Celestial Pillars are down. Reloading is simply faster than waiting.

Devotees do not walk and shrug off knockback, so if one ends up somewhere awkward your only options are removing the blocks beneath it, teleporting it, or hoiking it out.

The group only forms when the world is quiet: Hardmode active, Skeletron and Golem both beaten, no boss alive, no event running, no tablet already sitting there, and you standing outside a wide box around the Dungeon entrance. Journey Mode with time frozen blocks it too.

The terrain matters as well, which catches people out on unusual worlds. The tile a short distance above the Old Man's spot has to be clear, platforms and shelves included, and the ground a few tiles to either side has to be solid. On skyblock layouts that means building a small floor before anything will appear.

Neither the archers nor the devotees need the usual number of kills for their bestiary entry and banner, which is generous given how few chances you get at them. Lava and water do nothing to any of them.

The game files carry several cultist variants that never spawn in normal play, complete with stats and banner art but no way to see them. Only a white-robed archer can be pulled out with tools, and it behaves identically to the blue one.