Princess

She needs a spare house and every other town resident alive at the same moment. Santa Claus and the town pets do not count toward that headcount, but everyone else does, and since the Cyborg is locked behind Plantera, she cannot show up until Plantera is dead. In practice she is the last person to arrive in any world.

That check only runs for her first arrival. Once she has lived in your town, killing her does not put you back through the roster requirement, and she wanders back in on her own after a while. The trap before that first arrival is losing someone: a Blood Moon that takes out an NPC while you are waiting quietly resets the condition. If she is not appearing, count heads rather than assuming something is broken.

Every other resident cares about who lives next door and what biome the house is sitting in. She does not. She has no biome preference of any kind, she is pleased by up to three neighbors regardless of who they are, and every other NPC in the game is pleased to have her nearby. Drop her into whichever pylon town is a body short and prices fall for everyone living there.

The one thing she will not tolerate is isolation. If she does not have a couple of residents close by, or a couple more sitting in the middle distance, her own mood collapses to the worst value the system allows. She hands out happiness for free and needs company in return.

Because biome preference does not apply to her, she will sell the local pylon in any biome she happens to be standing in, provided she has a neighbor and is not miserable. For her, that only means company. She is the cleanest way to finish off a pylon network late in a run, since you no longer have to work out which resident is willing to tolerate a desert or an ocean shack.

Almost everything else on her shelf is decoration. The royal and prince outfits are vanity, the potted crystal plants are furniture for a hallowed build, and the paintings are wall filler. Bernie's Button is the one line with a gameplay effect on it, and for most players it is the reason to visit at all.

Two entries are gated behind work. Royal Romance only appears once both slime monarchs are dead, and the closing theme music box waits until the Moon Lord has fallen in Hardmode. She is one of a small group of vendors who add anything new after the final boss, so it is worth walking back to her once.

She is not defenseless. She attacks anything that wanders into town with the Resonance Scepter, and in a Hardmode world she has a fair chance of leaving it behind when killed. Since she reappears by herself afterward, farming her for it costs nothing but patience and a little guilt. In pre-Hardmode she will not drop it at all, so there is no route to getting the weapon early.

In those two seeds she is already present when you spawn, always named Yorai, and her stock is a different thing entirely. She carries a Slime Staff, a Heart Lantern and a Flask of Party outright, which is an absurd head start. Move her into a desert and she adds a Sandstorm in a Bottle. During a Blood Moon she puts Terragrim on the counter.

The interesting part comes after the pirates are beaten in Hardmode, when she rotates one pirate drop per moon phase. That turns the Coin Gun, Lucky Coin, Discount Card and Pirate Staff from long grinds into a purchase you make on the correct night. Check the moon before you spend the trip.

• She is a child, like the Angler. Her sprite is shorter than everyone else's, she vanishes in a puff of smoke rather than playing the usual death animation, and her death message says she has left instead of saying she was slain.
• Several of her possible names come from fairy tales and animation, and five are Japanese words meaning light, princess, peach, love and courage. A princess named Momo is a peach princess, which is the joke.
• Yorai is named after one of the game's lead developers.
• Dunking her in Shimmer switches her to an alternate look. It changes nothing about her dialogue or her shop, and a second dunk puts her back.