Flying Dutchman

There is no summoning item for the Flying Dutchman. It is a mini-boss that appears on its own inside a Pirate Invasion, only once the event is past halfway, and only where there is a large open pocket of sky. Fight in a tight walled arena and one will never spawn. Several can appear across a single invasion, or none at all.

It hovers a long way above you shedding gold particles, firing explosive shot from four gun positions at the nearest player, and periodically dropping ordinary pirates off the deck onto whatever ground is beneath it. It cannot drop through platforms, and it stops dead when it meets a wall.

You are not fighting the ship, you are fighting its cannons. Empty all four and the whole thing comes apart. They sit close together, so anything that hits several targets in one go clears them far faster than single target damage.

Its aim is the exploitable part. Between its drift and the arc of its shots, there are spots where it cannot reach you while you can still reach it. Minions ignore the problem entirely, and weapons that work from cover, the Daedalus Stormbow, Meteor Staff, Nimbus Rod and Flying Knife, all keep hitting from safety. The other reliable answer is a long minecart track: keep moving along it and the cannonballs never lead you correctly, and you can shoot back from the cart.

Get too far away and it despawns. In Expert and Master it gains less bonus health than most enemies do, so it does not become the slog you might expect.

Killing one does not end the invasion, it just adds a slice of event progress. Leaving one alive is fine too: it stays in the sky after the invasion finishes, and only blows itself up if you never engaged it at all.

The ship is where the invasion's good drops actually come from. Grinding regular pirates for a Gold Ring, the Discount Card or a Lucky Coin is far slower. Push the event past halfway, then get onto a small high platform or a flying mount. Height matters in both directions: high enough that the pirates it unloads land outside the active area and despawn fast, freeing the budget for another ship, but not so high that it stops coming to you. Done right, the only things reaching you are more Dutchmen and Parrots, which are harmless.

The other approach is to park one over a shallow lava pit or another trap, since it halts against a wall and keeps producing pirates on its own.

The torn sail pieces it leaves behind drift on the wind instead of falling, which no other gore does. The name comes from the ghost ship of legend, a vessel condemned never to reach harbor, and sighting one meant disaster was coming.