demolitionist won't spawn

[les8ean]

my friend and i are playing a server togther and no matter what we do we can't get the demolitionist to spawn. the housing is valid (and doesn't have platforms for floors or corruption blocks), we've had and used both explosives and bombs, and have kept bombs in our inventories for several in-game days, we have the merchant.
is there something we're doing wrong? we've ever built other houses and he won't spawn for any of them

[Lucifer]

That does sound puzzling. It sounds like you're doing everything right so I'm not sure what the issue could be. I don't know where your housing is located but, just to be extra sure, make sure it is not near corruption/crimson blocks if you've built the houses further away from spawn. Having enough corruption/crimson blocks within a close enough distance of a house (even without directly being a part of the structure) can also prevent NPCs from moving in if I'm not mistaken. I had this issue once when crimson decided to spread around the area of my NPC housing. When I cleared enough of it from around the houses, the NPCs could be moved back in. Also, make sure there is not an ongoing invasion of some sort. That may be preventing NPCs from arriving/respawning. And if you've been hanging around the houses all the time, try (both you and your friend) moving offscreen for a bit to allow NPCs to spawn in. It's possible they might not be inclined to do so if you're always onscreen where they're expected to move in. Lastly, all I can think of to mention is to make sure the Demolitionist has not already spawned in a house somewhere else in the world and you just haven't noticed it. I'm not sure if it's still a risk in the current version of the game, but I had an issue once where I placed a torch in a sky building while exploring so that I could see better and it turned the structure into valid housing which one of my NPCs ended up moving into. I couldn't figure out where in blazes they were until I revisited that building later.

[Lucifer]

I just had another thought. I'm not sure if freezing time in Journey Mode has an effect on certain things progressing, like the arrival of new NPCs. I think NPCs tend to arrive/respawn around the start of a new day, so if you happen to be playing in Journey Mode and have kept time frozen, that might possibly be something to look at.

[les8ean]

ok we figured it out through a bit of trial and error
we were building our base underground, and housing all the NPCs down there too
and the Merchant, and Nurse both spawned just find
but the Demolitionist wouldn't spawn until we built a small house ABOVE ground