Golden Critter Farming Tips

[Semaj]

Edit: I wrote this up as a guide instead (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855754478). Thanks for the suggestion RedHead.

I wanted to write this up because while there are lots of posts and sites explaining the intricacies of farming, I couldn't find anywhere that was focused on only the gold critters and phrased succinctly. As with anything RNG based YMMV but here we go:

Sea Horses
These are rare to begin with so these are arguably the hardest of all.
- build a long trough just under the surface of the sea, about 5 blocks high is enough.
- drain the sea by digging a hole to the underworld, quit out and reload so the water is all gone. You want no water on the sea bed at all.
- build a couple of "towns" one at the top of the slope and the other at the bottom.
- deal with other mobs by adding some lava traps (or a huge one if you prefer) on the sea bed for seagulls and scorpions to walk into and 1 dart trap on top of the trough on a 1 second timer to deal with seagulls, dolphins and turtles.
You should now start netting sea horses. Usual other farming tricks apply (see below). This setup should allow you to farm goldfish too but you are better off with a normal forest biome during rain for those.

Grasshoppers
It is still possible to use the fairy boots to make this much easier, just not as easy as it used to be:
- Make a long grass track as per the old guides.
- Put the fairy boots in a vanity slot.
- At one side of the track, equip the boots by right clicking.
- Run to the other side of the track to create flowers.
- Equip your old accessory by right clicking*.
- Switch to golden bug net.
- Run back to the other side while auto-swinging. I used an O.T.T. teleporter system so I didn't have to change direction but that's optional.
*This is because wearing the boots drastically reduces spawn rates so you have to take them off while harvesting.

Water Striders
There are 2 tricks to farming these. First, they only spawn when the wind is < 10 mph so this is easy to savescum. Second, they spawn in the oasis biome but can spawn from jungle grass blocks as well as sand so add some of those into your farm but don't allow enough jungle grass so it changes the biome and makes jungle enemies appear. I found that having alternate sand and jungle grass blocks on the bottom of the pond or a 1 block thick layer of jungle grass works well. A dart trap in the middle can deal with goldfish and pupfish but there's nothing to be done about jungle turtles because water striders appear on the surface too.

Frogs
These need jungle grass so the easiest way is to make a stack of parallel mud blocks, plant jungle grass on them and let it grow. Frogs will spawn, hop along and fall off the end. Just a simple matter of standing in the right spot and collecting them until eventually you get a gold.

Mouse
They spawn underground but away from any underground towns. I got mine in the underground mushroom biome but that might have been coincidence.

Dragon Flies
These are by far the easiest but like the water striders, they only spawn when the wind is < 10 mph. These spawn in the oasis and forest biomes so in theory you could use the same farm for water striders and dragonflies but there isn't really any point.

Butterflies
The spawn rate for butterflies is randomly decided at the start of the day (04:30). Sometimes you will have days where lots spawn, others hardly any. I found that more spawn on new moon days. If you let it get too late they won't spawn at all.

Ladybugs
You need a windy day in the forest for these, that's about it. An enchanted sundial can help fast forward to the next day but there is a limit (in game time) on how many times that can be used. Or you can savescum.

Goldfish & worms
These spawn a lot during rain but are quite common generally so there's no special tip.

Squirrels, Bunnies And Birds
These are normal forest critters so you don't need anything special, you'll probably get them when farming the grasshoppers or butterflies.

General tips for newbies:
Blood Moons And Solar Eclipses
These make farming very tedious because you can't even speed up time by sleeping through them. Just save scum.

Spawning
Mobs will spawn randomly but certain biomes and areas of the map have a higher chance, the easiest ways to increase the limit are with a water candle and battle potion, the effects of which do stack with each other but taking extra potions or having multiple candles makes no difference.

Radius
Mobs never spawn on screen, always off to the side slightly or above or below slightly. Build your farms so they dip in and out of this zone easily as you move. Dragonflies and seahorses are exceptions to this but only in specific circumstances so it's not worth considering.
Limit
If there are lots of mobs (critters and enemies) already, no more will spawn so you either have to kill them or prevent them spawning to begin with. For enemies, something auto-attacking (e.g. terraprisma) is handy. For critters, killing them is risky because you might kill what you are farming for. You can get the Guide to critter companionship from the zooologist to prevent this but then you won't be able to kill the ones you don't want, even by traps. Seting up the farm so you can clear out extras by catching them might be better.
Towns
If you have 2 NPCs next to each other, the area is classed as a town and it makes enemies spawn much less but doesn't affect the rate i.e. critters spawn more. Do this next to your farms unless you are farming rats or mice, in which case they don't like towns. It makes no difference if the NPCs are happy or not.
Blocks
Certain critters will only spawn on certain blocks. Use this to your advantage by only having the blocks for what you are farming for in the spawn zone and no others. This includes walls.
Luck
Luck in Terraria is weird, hard to understand and even harder to explain. There are far better explanations than I can provide but basically more luck = rarer drops and spawns become less rare. YMMV as to whether it's worth grinding for items that are required to increase luck or to just keep farming. The easiest ways I've found to increase luck however are to kill the guide (his house is a death trap in my farm world), have a garden gnome placed, hold a biome-appropriate torch and to take a luck potion. Getting gnomes and luck potions is a whole thing in itself as is torch luck so I won't include those topics here.
Savescumming
I found that the solar eclipse and blood moon events were the most annoying thing about farming, especially I was waiting days to get to a new moon. So I savescummed. It's a case of remembering to save just before 07:30 or 04:30 but better than waiting for 24 minutes because sleep during these is impossible. You can use the enchanted sundial to skip whole days but the cooldown is so long that I didn't bother.

tl;dr
Use fairy boots to spawn flowers for grasshoppers but take them off when harvesting.
Mice don't like towns.
Build a trough and drain the sea to get seahorses.
Convert normal torches to bone or biome specific torches via the torch god's favour to increase torch luck.
Water striders and dragonflies only spawn if the wind is < 10 mph. Ladybugs require the opposite.
Look for butterflies on new moon days.
Don't feel bad for savescumming.

[Retrolicious]

Wrong area, better put this into a guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/105600/guides/

Also maybe better formatting / chaptering might help, maybe even with cute critter pics.

You put lots of work, but it will mostly get ignored in the bazillion random discussions.

GL on guiding

[Semaj]

Originally posted by 󰀀 Redhead 󰀈:

Wrong area, better put this into a guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/105600/guides/

Also maybe better formatting / chaptering might help, maybe even with cute critter pics.

You put lots of work, but it will mostly get ignored in the bazillion random discussions.

GL on guiding

Thanks I did wonder about that but these tended to come up in my searches so figured it might for other people too. I'll definitely write it up as a guide.