World Feeder

Corruption worms get an upgrade the moment Hardmode starts. Standing inside the Corruption biome is the entire requirement; the blocks under the spawn point do not themselves have to be corrupt, so the ragged edges of a spreading Corruption produce these just as well as its center does. Three out of every four of those worm spawns come out as World Feeders, which quietly demotes the Devourer into the rare one for the rest of the run.

They also obey the tight spawn rules the game uses underground. A town NPC living nearby shuts them off, safe background wall behind the tile at your center shuts them off, and so does standing idle without pressing a movement key or using anything for a few seconds. A Shadow Candle in hand or placed on the ground removes all three restrictions.

Every drop it carries comes off the head. That matters more than it sounds, because cutting a worm in the middle splits it and the front half keeps tunneling on its own. Destroy a body segment first and the head can wander off, die somewhere buried in stone, and leave its loot sitting inside solid rock where you cannot reach it without a pickaxe and a good guess. Work front to back where the terrain allows, or accept that you are going to be digging.

A worm is a long chain of separate targets, and that inverts the usual weapon math. Anything that pierces or splashes hits several segments per swing, and any damage over time effect you apply gets applied to each segment it touches. A Dark Lance or any better spear is the cheap answer, since the reach keeps the body off you while the tip covers three or four segments at once. The Ice Sickle shreds it up close, and the Magical Harp or Magic Dagger do the same work from range. Cursed Inferno is the standout debuff against it, applied through cursed bullets or cursed arrows, and the joke is that the worm hands you the Cursed Flames you need to make that ammunition. It neither inflicts that debuff itself nor resists it.

On a Purify this world the game simply refuses to spawn these anywhere near the middle of the map. The exclusion is measured outward from the world spawn point rather than from the literal center of the map, so any other secret seed that relocates spawn drags the dead zone along with it. Combine Purify this with Royale with cheese and the enemy is removed from the world entirely.

• Body length is rolled per worm, so no two are quite the same size and a long one takes noticeably more chewing through.
• The code calls it Seeker, a leftover from how directly it copies the Eater of Worlds.
• The resemblance is deliberate. It is meant to read as the same old magic producing smaller versions of the same thing.