Moon Lord

There are two routes in. Clear all four celestial pillars and he comes on his own about a minute later, or trigger him yourself with a Celestial Sigil, which works in any world that has already seen Golem die and cuts the wait to a dozen seconds. Either way the warning about impending doom is your cue. The world dims, tiles and walls sway, and the sound drains away to nothing, five separate times by pillars and once by sigil. That gap is the last chance to patch an arena or drink anything. If you are not ready, leaving the world before he lands cancels the whole thing. The sigil is also how you refight him, which is what farming the endgame drops looks like.

The core in his chest is the real target, and it takes nothing until the three eyes are gone: one in the forehead, one in each hand. Each eye spends most of its cycle behind a lid and only takes damage while open. He does not chase you so much as assemble around you, head above and a hand to either side, and that can bury the core inside your arena floor where any weapon that will not pass through blocks does nothing. Keep the platform thin and be ready to drop underneath him. He teleports to whoever is closest when he spawns, when you get far enough away, or when the player he was locked onto dies.

Each hand cycles three attacks. It drifts out to the side and grows a ring of glowing spheres that detonate a couple of seconds later, or charge you first if you have opened up distance. It spins and scatters homing eyes that wander before locking on. It fires paired bolts at high speed that travel through terrain. All three have exploitable limits. Neither the spheres nor the homing eyes can climb at a steep angle, so gaining height beats both outright, and the bolts aim at where your current speed and heading say you will be, so changing either one the instant they fire sends both wide.

The forehead eye is the one that ends runs. It opens roughly every twenty seconds, fires bolts, charges visibly, then sweeps a wide laser upward across you. It cuts through solid blocks, so there is nothing to hide behind, and it always sweeps away from the side you are standing on. The safe answer feels wrong: get close to his head. An arc moves slowest near its own origin, so you can walk around the base of the sweep instead of trying to outrun the far end of it. In For the Worthy and Zenith worlds each ray is followed by a spray of boulders that ricochet around the arena, last a long time, and move much faster than the ordinary bouncing sort.

After the ray his mouth opens and a tentacle reaches for you through anything in the way. It plants leech clots at your position, and each one that gets home restores a large chunk of health to a part you have not finished yet. They move relative to where he is rather than at a fixed speed, so from far away they appear to hang still and then vanish into the mouth, while up close they stay in your fire. The tongue also applies Moon Bite, which shuts off weapon based lifesteal for a while, so Vampire Knives and the Spectre Hood go dead. Regeneration is untouched, so regen builds barely feel it. Once the head eye is destroyed the tongue comes back every couple of seconds, and that is the phase most deaths happen in.

Every eye you break leaves two things behind: a thorny socket that still hurts to touch, and a True Eye of Cthulhu that cannot be killed at all and only leaves when he dies or you do. They come in from above and run their own loop of bolts, sphere rings, homing eyes and a smaller deathray, which at least cannot pass through blocks. The sphere volley is where most of the damage in this half comes from, and it has to be dodged sideways. Kill the forehead eye first. It owns the real deathray, it stays shut far longer than the hands do, and saving it for last gives its permanent replacement the longest possible time to work on you.

• His attacks ignore invincibility frames, so two hits from separate sources land back to back and can take you from full health to dead.
• The eyes shed every debuff when they close, so Ichor and Betsy's Curse have to be reapplied each time they open.
• Nothing else spawns near him, which keeps the arena clean but also means no hearts dropping from trash mobs.
• Teleporting home for the Nurse drags him along with you and usually kills her. In multiplayer, take turns instead.
• The empty sockets keep dealing contact damage right through the death animation, so move away the moment the bar empties.

The credits roll, and a lot opens up behind them. Luminite unlocks the last armor sets, tools and furniture. The Steampunker starts stocking the final Clentaminator solutions, the Dye Trader begins paying out Skiphs' Blood for Strange Plants, the Princess adds the closing theme as a music box, and the Cyborg sells a Portal Gun Station while you carry the Portal Gun. Shimmer starts producing the Rod of Harmony, the Terraformer and a bottomless shimmer bucket. Your world gets a border on its icon in the menu. In Expert the treasure bag skips the portal gun if you already own one, which Classic does not do. If you are farming him for the Meowmere and Star Wrath to build the Zenith, expect to walk away with neither more often than with either.