How to defeat Moon Lord the "right" way; no Blocks, Cheesing or Nurse involved.

Moon Lord is an extremely hard boss that many people choose to defeat with cheap methods and exploits that trivialize the fight. This guide will aim to let you defeat Moon Lord like any other boss, letting you become the True Master of Terraria.

Introduction

No cheesing meaning: no Nursing, using complicated arenas with blocks, Teleporters, etc. Any preparation beyond "make an arena with platforms and get good gear", meant to take a lot of the difficulty out of the fight are considered a "cheese" to me.

Before starting, let's get one thing out of the way: you are not going to do this in your first try. Take it from someone who has already done this fight dozens of times and still finds himself dying to him on occasion; this fight is much harder than anything else in the game. Moon Lord isn't any easier to cheese than any other boss, yet the fact that he is by far the most commonly exploited speaks volumes. Worse of all he is a hard challenge for a bad reason, but more on that later.

For now, let's focus on killing this monstrosity. As always, you want to use the best gear available to stand a chance against this boss. Since Moon Lord is an extremely hard boss, we are going to need the best of the best to beat him.

Gearing up: Weapons

Since Moon Lord is extremely powerful, we are going to need extremely powerful weapons of our own to beat him. There are two weapons at this stage that are remarkably more powerful than anything else:

First, we have the Phantasm[terraria.gamepedia.com]:

There was a time where you could be using a melee tank setup and still reach 5k+ DPS with this thing. Those times are over and this got nerfed to hell and back, yet funnily enough it's still the strongest single target weapon available, and by quite a long shot. The highest DPS I could get with this thing alone was 7k DPS, something that is quite insane.

The ammo of choice here should be Ichor arrows[terraria.gamepedia.com], due to their incredible velocity, their high base damage and the fact Moon Lord is not immune to Ichor. If Ichor isn't available then Venom arrows[terraria.gamepedia.com] are a suitable replacement, as they are slightly better statwise yet they lack the Ichor Debuff. Holy arrows[terraria.gamepedia.com] may have been the best partner to any multishot bow up to this point, but with all the movement in Moon Lord's fight the stars will barely hit and the loss in velocity compared to Ichor Arrows is very noticeable.

Second, the Stardust Dragon Staff[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
The only weapon that rivals the Phantasm in power... is a minion that can be used alongside it. Good for us. With the setup we'll be using (more on that later) an incomplete Stardust Dragon is already the equivalent to another player attacking with a Vortex Beater, which tells you all you need to know about the DPS you'll have with these two things combined.

The Dragon is well known as an Iframe generator for enemies; that won't be a problem here as the as they only affect other piercing attacks and Phantasm doesn't pierce, just keep it in mind if you want to use another weapon that pierces, as then this will be a hindrance to your DPS.

Speaking of other options...

Other Options

The two above may be the best and most broken weapons, however they are far from being the only things that work. Keep in mind that these will be worse choices than those, so only use them when you don't feel like tryharding.

Vortex Beater[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
Pretty much, the 3rd best weapon in the game available for the fight. The little spread it has isn't too big of a deal in the first phase so you can afford to use Crystal bullets [terraria.gamepedia.com]to kill the eyes faster, but Chlorophyte Bullets[terraria.gamepedia.com] will be very important for the second phase as you'll be constantly running away from him unlike in phase 1 where you have to stay pretty close.

Razorpine[terraria.gamepedia.com]/Blizzard Staff[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
Best choices for a mage character. The DPS/Mana cost ratio of the two is practically the same, but one has issues with its short range and the other is bad against small things. I prefer to use Razorpine and then switch to Blizzard when the eye starts moving out of range, and then go full Blizzard on Phase 2.

Nebula Arcanum[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
This is incredibly unreliable as a main weapon: The galaxies are incredibly slow and they rarely hit, and when they do they will all pile up on one Eye, killing it instantly and most of the time way before you even scratched the others. This, however, is an amazing secondary weapon: With the huge lifespan of the galaxies you can always afford to throw a couple down every now and then, and even if they are not guaranteed to hit, the massive damage when they do is very worth it.

Remember the huge anti-synergy this has with the Dragon.

Betsy's Wrath[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
Applies a massive -40 defense debuff that ML isn't immune to. Do not use this on the first phase as every blink will reset the buff, and don't use this with Phantasm as swapping to it will reset its attack speed back to base and you will pretty much be losing DPS.

Stardust Cell Staff:[terraria.gamepedia.com]Sometimes the Dragon makes you forget that this is a really good weapon as well. Much like Vortex Beater, the reasons to use this over the Dragon are subjective unless you are very serious about using something that pierces.

Solar Eruption[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
The best Melee choice. Very good DPS, especially at point blank range. However the short range makes this impossible to use properly on phase 2 without getting eaten alive by all the Phantasmal Eyes. Also an abysmal partner for the Dragon, so you'll have to stick with the Cells which makes your actual power with it not actually that great.

Daybreak[terraria.gamepedia.com]k/Influx Waver[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
You should only ever use these as sidearms for your Solar Eruption at long range. Note: Daybreak is abysmal on phase 1 as the debuff resets on every little blink, while Influx Waver doesn't do its multihit properly against the Core because of how fast you'll be moving. They are still piercing weapons despite the looks so no Dragon for you.

Seedler[terraria.gamepedia.com]:
It may sound ridiculous to recommend a Plantera drop against the final boss of the game, but when said weapon is as busted as this sword is then it's pretty reasonable. The Seedler may be worse than the two above overall but it doesn't pierce, which makes it the best Melee partner for a Dragon.

Gearing Up: The best Armor Set in the game

Now with the weapons selected, let's move on to the armor, which is arguably the most important part of the fight. We are going to use an hybrid set that puts as much damage into the Phantasm and the Dragon as possible while keeping very good survivability.

• Shroomite Headgear[terraria.gamepedia.com]: 15% extra arrow damage with a 5% crit bonus makes this the best armor piece for the Phantasm. Note increases to Arrow damage are applied after all other damage ups, which means the increase to damage is much more than the 15% it tells you. Squire's Great helm [terraria.gamepedia.com]is an alternative that gives a ton of extra regen at the cost of a lot of Phantasm DPS.
  
• Valhalla Knight Chestplate[terraria.gamepedia.com]: 8 HP/s. Imagine a Shiny Stone that is always active. This is completely broken and it will be half of your survivability in this fight. If you for some reason feel like you won't need the regen then you might as well go for the Red Riding Dress[terraria.gamepedia.com], which will increase Ranged and Minion damage by a massive 25%.
  
• Forbidden Treads[terraria.gamepedia.com]: Most leg slots in the game are bad, however this one is the rare exception that also happens to be extremely good since it increases your minion slots by 2, which ends up being a massive damage upgrade to all minions. This is the main reason you are splitting damage between the Dragon and the Phantasm instead of just focusing on one of the two.
  
• Since the damage of a minion is set the moment it is summoned, you can increase the DPS of the Dragon even further by summoning it while wearing a full set of Spooky armor[terraria.gamepedia.com] and then swapping to the Forbidden Treads and the VK Chesplate, in that order.

Other Options

To put it simply, you are not always going to be playing as a Ranger with Phantasm. No matter what class you are playing however, you will always want the VK Chestplate. The difference between classes is determined by the Head and Leg slots.

• As a mage you will want the Hallowed Headgear[terraria.gamepedia.com], as it provides the best offensive bonuses for a mage. Dark Artist's Leggings[terraria.gamepedia.com] look tempting with their 25% crit chance increase, but they are not better than two extra Dragon segments from the Forbidden Treads.
  
• As Melee, you will want the Chlorophyte Mask[terraria.gamepedia.com] (strongest Melee Helm) and Valhalla Knight Greaves[terraria.gamepedia.com] (20% crit chance increase). No Forbidden Treads this time; you are stuck with Cells due to your terrible weapon pool, and they are not on the same level as the Dragon and are therefore not worth it here. If you don't want Valhalla regen for whatever reason then go for Monk's shirt[terraria.gamepedia.com], with its massive 20% Melee and Minion damage increase.

Gearing Up: Accessories and Else

Moving on to Accessories now. You have pretty much every accessory available at this point in the game, which means there is a countless amount of combinations, so it's hard to say there is a "best" setup out there. I'll just list what I believe are the best things and let you figure out the rest.

Fishron Wings:[terraria.gamepedia.com] You obviously need Wings, so the fastest pair in both vertical and horizontal movement are the go-to. Betsy's Wings are a possibility; their regular horizontal speed is much slower than average which means they are terrible for moving diagonally, but I can't act like the hover doesn't exist. I haven't used those enough to know if they would work well, but you can try.

Master Ninja Gear[terraria.gamepedia.com]: If you reached this point you should already know how massively useful the dash is. For a quick reminder: An Incredible and reliable movement option with the unique ability of changing your direction instantly with a 10% dodge chance as a bonus. There is no reason to not have this unless you are going for an all-in hyper offense strat, which wouldn't even be using anything that isn't pure DPS anyways.

Frog Leg[terraria.gamepedia.com]: Increases your ascent speed by 50%. Since most attacks are dodged by flying this is very, very important for your mobility.

Double Jump Balloon[terraria.gamepedia.com] (aim for Blizzard, use Sandstorm if you can): I consider this a clone of the Frog Leg that trades some speed for a double jump. The double jump isn't really that useful here however, especially because the height is terrible without the Frog Leg's jump boost, so if you want this you either use Frog Leg with it or not use it at all.

Bundle of Balloons[terraria.gamepedia.com]: You probably won't have this, but if somehow you do then you definitely should use it as it's absolutely incredible for your mobility. However, Never use it without a Frog Leg. Your character doesn't start to fly until you've used up all 3 jumps, and since the jumps are pathetic by themselves this alone is a massive hindrance to your Wings' mobility. You need that Jump Height boost to make this insane, otherwise it's insanely bad.

Philosopher's Stone[terraria.gamepedia.com]: For clarification, you never want to have this equipped. What you want is to keep it in a vanity slot, and then quickly switching to it when you need to use a potion. That way you get all the benefits without using up a slot. Upgrading to a Charm of Myths doesn't give you any real benefit for this reason.

Celestial Stone[terraria.gamepedia.com]: Best stat booster in the game. 10% damage with 2% crit and 1 HP/sec of regen with 4 defense is the perfect balance of offense/defense that no other item gives you. The Celestial Shell is barely an upgrade, but it lets you equip two of these and get double buffs. And might as well make that three with a Sun/Night Stone now that we are at it, but that's pushing it a bit.

Magic Quiver[terraria.gamepedia.com]: Provides a very good damage increase to the Phantasm; quick reminder that Arrow damage upgrades are applied after all other increases. Also makes all arrows as fast as Ichor/Venom ones, but since it doesn't actually affect those two there is not much use to this effect.

Papyrus Scarab[terraria.gamepedia.com]: Significant damage increase to the Dragon. Might as well stack it with a Necromantic Scroll if you want even more power allocated to it.

Worm Scarf[terraria.gamepedia.com]: -17% damage taken is nice, but it's pretty hard to find a slot for this when the Celestial Stones are a thing and they give a better balance of stats.

Sniper Scope[terraria.gamepedia.com]/Destroyer Emblem[terraria.gamepedia.com]: Best pure combat item in the game, however has the exact same issue as the above.

Everything should be reforged to Menacing. I consider Lucky to be practically the same thing most of the time, however now we want extra raw damage to maximize the Arrow damage multipliers from the Headgear, the Archery Potions and (if you have it) the Magic Quiver. Warding scales horribly into this point in the game since -16 flat damage taken is hardly useful when "low damage" attacks hit for as much as 120.

As for Equipment slots, you should have a Slimy Saddle in your mounts for the quick fall speed increase when you need it and a good Hook[terraria.gamepedia.com]; preferably Lunar Hook and ideally but unlikely Bat Hook. I rarely use them but when I do they are lifesavers (plus it costs nothing to have them so why the heck not).

Let's also have a quick runover of Potions, because I seriously doubt you'd attempt this without them. Ordered by relevance, you want:

• Lifeforce, Regeneration, Endurance, Heart Reach and Ironskin potions for all your defensive needs.
  
• Archery, Summoning, Bewitching Table, Wrath and Rage for all your offensive needs. Mana Regeneration, Magic Power, Ales and Ichor Flasks are mandatory if you want to do this with a Magic/Melee weapon instead.
  
• I also don't have to remind you of Well Fed and Super Healing Potions, right?

Final preparations: Quick arena rundown

Of course, you must have a good arena. My main arena looks like this[forums.terraria.org]:

You are clearly going to need something big here. As you can see in the pic, the arena I use is two oceans long, and I still find myself running out of it every now and then. Don't make it any taller than this however. A bit more height and it gets to Space, and you absolutely never want to fight him there. The gravity is so low that you will get stuck at the top, and you will take a ton of hits while trying to fall back down.

You will also, of course, want Campfires, Heart Lanterns, Honey inside of Bubble Blocks and Heart Statues* to survive for longer.

* If you have multiple remember to space them out, so you are not limited to 3 hearts on screen. I don't actually know how the mechanic works, just make sure all statues are about 20 blocks away from each other.

The Fight.

Alright, let's get to the actual fight already. As with any other boss, you want to know what he can do before starting. Moon Lord is quite a spammy boss, but he only has 4 real attacks in total.

First we have the Phantasmal Spheres. These come from the hands in waves of 6, and it's the main and most dangerous attack Moon Lord has. They hit very hard, cover a very wide area and if you aren't keeping track of them properly they can catch you off guard when they are released. Never get near and much less above a hand that is spawning Spheres. They will hit you right as they spawn and you'll lose a lot of health. I make this mistake way too often, don't be like me.

If a Hand isn't spawning Phantasmal Spheres, then it will spawn a horde of Phantasmal Eyes instead. Never underestimate this attack, it's the second most dangerous he has. The little eyes may deal little damage (yes, 120 is "little" at this point in the game), but there will always be a ton of them at all times; Stop moving for even a second and 3-4 eyes will pile up on you and take out over 1/4th of your health. These little eyes are persistent and very good at chasing you, but they can't actually fly up, so getting above a wave will completely neutralize it, until another one spawns that is. This attack forces you to stay on the move at all times.

Then we get to ML's trademark attack, the Phantasmal Deathray. This attack is very easy to dodge, all you have to do is go around his head. However, if this gets you, then game over. Not even Vallhalla Knight Chestplate can save you if you take 300 damage all at once. This is the main reason you must never kite Moon Lord phase one, otherwise you won't be able to see it coming until it's too late. You always want to keep Moon Lord at least partly on screen so you can check on the main eye from time to time.

Right before any eye (including the center one) closes it will start to look at you, and then fire a pair of Phantasmal Bolts where it thinks you'll be. This is kinda tricky to dodge because it tries to predict your position, but you can mess up its aim by dashing at the right time. It's fairly weak though, just think of it as mild chip damage you'll take from time to time.

And that's pretty much it for Phase 1. To get a smooth transition to Phase 2 try to get all eyes to very low health, and then pop them out all at once. This isn't too easy to do with a Dragon that engages everything that breathes with a DPS of 3k, but it's not hard either. Don't save the main eye for last; it doesn't reveal itself as often as the hands' so you may have to deal with two True Eyes for a fairly long time until you get the chance to damage it again.

Anyways, with all 3 eyes down Moon Lord reveals his Core and Phase 2 begins, and that's also where a boss battle that is honestly fairly clever designed goes downhill by getting the stupidest, most unfair attack of anything in the entire game. That is, the mini-Deathrays from the True Eyes.

Let's see: Moon Lord's Phantasmal Deathray is a fair attack. It is slow, gives you ample time to prepare for it, and there is a very clear indicator on when it is coming, and when it does it can only reach below or above him, and since Moon Lord moves trying to keep you at his center, right below his forehead, he literally positions himself for you to dodge the Deathray more easily. This means that the only time you will ever get hit by it is when you aren't paying attention and it catches you off guard. It's a trick meant to punish mindless kiting, and it does that very well.

Now we get to the True Eyes' version of this attack and it's just stupid. The only way to tell when an Eye is charging up its Deathray is when you see it stop completely. Let me remind you that every single one of the True Eyes' attacks start out with it stopping for a moment, so in order to see if it's charging up you'd have to see if the Eye stopped for longer than usual. Let me say that again: In the middle of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bullet hell where a horde of Phantasmal Eyes eats you alive if you slow down for a second, you'd have to constantly check if one of the three eyes that is relentlessly spamming attacks stopped moving for more than a second and then somehow dodge it.

Because Phase 2 isn't like Phase 1, where you know exactly where Moon Lord's main eye is and thus you know exactly where to move to avoid the Deathray. The True Eyes fire their Deathrays from wherever the hell they were standing. And all 3 Eyes love to spam it, and each of them hits as hard as a Phantasmal Sphere so you can't even tank them and hope you somehow out DPS them, because even Valhalla, the Phantasm and the Dragon don't let you do that.

So, it's spammy, there's no realistic way for you to see it coming and even if you do you have pull off some mad acrobatic stunts to actually dodge them. But there is one reliable method to avoid it: Mindless kiting that exploits the fact the Mini Deathray has limited range. Yes, you are now encouraged to do the one thing it was originally meant to counter. How ironic. You can also synchronize the eyes' release so they all move identically and therefore fire the Deathray at the same time, from one position, but that's an exploit right?

I'm pretty sure that not as many people would cheese the fight if this attack didn't exist, but what can I do about it. Everything else the True Eyes can do are watered down versions of the attacks the hands had. The phase is still more dangerous than the the one before since they are much more aggressive and there is a third attacker, but at the end of the day the Deathrays are the things that you will be worrying about.

Conclusions

And that's pretty much it for the guide. I've told you everything I could, so now it's all up to you to fight him and hopefully win. The only thing left for me to do is show you a laggy and badly played video of me killing it with the gear I recommended so you can get an idea of what to expect, but I can't do much more than that and wishing you good luck.

[J. Bame]

There are so, so many flaws with your reasoning.

Because I have 20/HPs, you concluded that I must absolutely get hit every 6 seconds in the strategy. This makes 0 sense, not only because you literally can't calculate how someone plays a game (especially when you only look at one single number) but also because it implies that having less regen would mean I get hit less or something. It makes even less sense when you realized almost all of that regen either costs nothing due to being part of Potions or the arena itself, or it's from the incomparably broken VK chestplate which is never getting replaced in any strategy that wants to be the best.

[One Piece Was A Mistake]

No, I'm saying that the way you have your strategy set up is inconsistent by your own admission, with problems associated with it that are apparent and easily avoidable. The reason math works is because of the fact that your strategy is inconsistent, which shows that the average damage taken is more than your regen.

Also, I never complimented arenas, despite what you thought I said. They're a waste of time in my eyes, only offering nominal benefits at best and being horribly limiting at worst, while taking an immense amount of time to build a competent one.

[J. Bame]

What are you even trying to prove at this point

Are implying that math can calculate the way you move and take hits in a fight?

Are you trying to say that having more regen than the damage you take every second and thus being practically unkillable is a bad thing? Against the hardest boss in the entire game that most of the playerbase chooses to skip due to his difficulty?

Im not even sure what this has to do with Arenas being bad, especially since you yourself are admitting that they give objective advantages at no real cost.

[One Piece Was A Mistake]

Math is fun. Assuming you actually used that much healing, this guide says that your strategy is inconsistent. That means that you take more damage than that, which isn't unbelievable. Celestial Shell and Celestial Stone give you a whopping 2HP/sec together, which you recommend duplicating (personally, I'd rather have other accessories for their effects, but that's just me). Guaranteed from equipment, that's 10HP/sec. Add onto that your 6.5, and that's you healing 100 health every 6 seconds, give or take a few frames. Given that each of his attacks that aren't the deathray do around that much with the equipment you have (either a bit more or a bit less with each attack, but generally it evens out), that means that you, using this strategy, get hit at least every 6 seconds.
That's abysmal. That's getting hit with every third attack, and from the looks of it you have every buff under the sun as well, so even with just about 20HP/second, this strategy still doesn't guarantee success.

[J. Bame]

Heart Lantern and Campfire are 2.5 HP/s. With Honey, that's 4.5 HP/s. With just one Heart Statue, that's 6.5 HP/s, since they make 20 health every 10 seconds, without even mentioning that they can be used at any time. So we have at worst 3/4ths of the most broken armor piece in the game, and god forbid ML if you have more than 1 Statue to use.

It's kinda funny how you just proved my point that Platforms are super important yet you still dismiss them as just "a nice option", even though you just admitted that it's better than fighting in plain ground, especially since they also comes with a VK chest for essentially free.

[One Piece Was A Mistake]

No, actually, vertical mobility is still just fine. You can't move down, but considering that's the most dangerous direction to try to go at any time in the fight, that's not particularly missed. Meanwhile, you can fly much, MUCH higher. This also means that you can fly up much farther, which, while not necessary, is a nice option to have.
Besides, Heart Lantern and Campfire is 2.5HP/second. Valhalla Knight's Chestplate is 8 on its own. If you're really worried about the missing regen, you can chug a regen potion and be on your way, the fight shouldn't last more than 4 minutes anyway.

[J. Bame]

So because you are too paranoid to run outside of your arena for a single moment you are willing to give up the massive amount of vertical space and versatility from platforms and the broken survivability from Heart Statues and Honey.

I'm unconvinced that this is the right way to do things, especially against Moon Lord where most of the fight is decided by how much vertical mobility and regeneration you have on you.

[One Piece Was A Mistake]

Most of them time, arenas, even ones as large as yours, can be somewhat limiting. In fact, a lot of the times I run into trouble even with world size, let alone any type of platform I make. Horizontal movement is such a critical aspect in fights that rarely, if ever, do I even want to suggest a limit, even if it's super forgiving. That way, not only do I not waste my time building (which, along with all the other prep, any time saved is a godsend), I can also move absolutely freely without having to improvise a way back to the ring.

[J. Bame]

If you simply want to "get it over with so you can experience endgame" (why would you, there is literally nothing new you could do besides show off ML drops), then don't come to a guide that makes it clear that it's going to avoid cheap methods to remove all difficulty from the fight.

To Jerry... how exactly does an Arena limit you, even though it's literally meant to let you move freely during a boss fight? I made it as wide as I did just to make completely sure I'd never accidentally run out of it and have to come back, which I believe is what you are referring to.

[Coleyohley!]

If "Getting the fight over with" is what the players want, that inherently means the fight is poorly-designed and not a fun experience. You literally just proved his point.

However, this guide is useful because it proves that Moon Lord CAN be beaten the way the developers intended. Whenever someone asks how to beat the Moon Lord, the first reply is never "Adequately set up your character and learn his attacks," it's "Build a box with campfires, honey, nurse, and Heart lanterns."

A boss that most players WANT to cheese is objectively a terrible boss.

And honestly, if you NEED to cheese the boss in order to win, you really don't deserve to win in the first place.