Getting Rainbow Dye

A summary of everything that needs to be done in order to get rainbow dye.

Note that this guide doesn't contain any information that can't be looked up on the wiki, it merely puts everything together to save you from browsing all the wiki pages.

Note: This was written around version 1.2.1 or so, some details may or may not have changed since.

What items will you need?

Rainbow dye is crafted from Cyan gradient dye, Yellow gradient dye and Purple gradient dye, each of which is crafted from three "elementary" dyes. You will need to craft the gradients first and then combine them into rainbow dye - in other words, you can't combine the nine dyes to make rainbow dye in one step.

Also note that these nine ingredients will make ONE rainbow dye so if you want all of your clothes dyed, you need each item three times (six times for the Intense rainbow dye, but that's not really necessary).

Here's a list of all dyes needed and the items used to craft them (all crafting involved requires a Dye vat bought from the Dye trader).

• Teal dye, crafted from Teal mushroom
  
• Cyan dye, crafted from Cyan husk
  
• Sky blue dye, crafted from Sky blue flower
  
• Lime dye, crafted from Lime kelp
  
• Yellow dye, crafted from Yellow marigold
  
• Orange dye, crafted from Orange bloodroot
  
• Pink dye, crafted from Pink prickly pear
  
• Purple dye, crafted from Purple mucus
  
• Violet dye, crafted from Violet husk

You don't need red, green, blue, silver and black dye.

All of these items can be acquired before hardmode. Actually I recommend getting them before hardmode if you can, since some of these materials are drops from fairly rare mobs, which means you'll have to spend some time waiting for them to spawn while other monsters try to jump you.

First of all: don't expect to find everything quickly. Most dye materials are moderately rare, some are rarer than others and finding them depends mostly on chance even when you know where and how to look for them. They can't be systematically farmed either since the plants don't drop seeds and the mobs are usually quite rare. Plants can grow on suitable surfaces over time.

Another note: If you find extra dye materials that you don't need, don't throw them away! They sell for a decent amount of money (EDIT: not really true anymore, thanks NerfLogic), which is particularly useful early on with Yellow Marigold, which is the most plentiful dye material (actually it's probably not the most plentiful, but it's the easiest to find in bulk amount).

Now for the actual process of acquiring all the dyes...

The easy part

Let's start with the generic stuff that you're very likely to come across even if you're not looking for it. Keeping your eyes open while mining is usually enough to get this stuff.

Orange bloodroot can be found in "normal" (i.e. not jungle, not snow biome) caves hanging from the ceiling. Although it's hard to notice at times, it is easy to find on the minimap since its saturated orange colour stands out.

Teal mushrooms grow in underground caves every now and then, the minimap can help with them too. Don't mistake Green mushrooms for Teal mushrooms - the ones you need to make teal dye have a shorter stalk and are less green.

Yellow marigold commonly grows on grass on the surface, it is therefore probably the easiest dye material to find. Counter-intuitively, it is closer to orange than yellow in colour. You can tell it from weeds by swinging a sword/using any weapon, the marigold can only be removed with a pickaxe.

The desert + the ocean

Pink prickly pear can be found growing on cacti (always on the top) in the desert and is fairly easy to distinguish. It can be removed with a pickaxe. Depending on the size of your desert and luck, you may or may not find enough of them. If not, don't worry - they can regrow, so check the desert every so often until you get enough.

The next stop is the ocean. Here you are looking for sea snails, which are found at the bottom, often not too far from shore. They don't spawn too often so you might have to wait. In the process you can get black ink (material for black dye, not used for the rainbow dye but can be useful as well) from squids and shark fins from... you guessed it. Just make sure you go away a screen or so from time to time to give them a chance to spawn (most mobs can't spawn onscreen) and you should be set.

The jungle

It's time for a trip to the jungle. Make sure you have some decent equipment since it can get rough, especially underground.

The easier thing to find is the Sky blue flower. It's exactly what it is, a blue flower. It blooms 24/7, but can be hard to notice among all the bushes that like to grow in the jungle, the trick with cutting the weeds with a weapon isn't going to cut it (no pun intended) this time, all the bushes can only be removed with a pickaxe as well. Just set your eyes to "blue/not blue" colour mode and search the surface. If you don't find anything, try it underground.

Speaking of underground, the other thing we're here for is a Violet husk. It's a 100% drop from the Lac beetle, which you're bound to run into at some point in the underground jungle. At lava level you can often find husks lying about since these guys aren't exactly good at pathfinding and the husks don't burn in lava (all dye materials are Tier 1).

The snow biome

The final two ingredients are both exclusive to the snow biome and both are only found underground.

The Lime kelp is a very easy to miss plant. It's not really lime, the colour is closer to dark green and it tends to grow in water. The minimap is not a huge help here either so make sure you have decent illumination to increase your chance of spotting it. It's the only plant found in the underground snow biome so if you see a plant, you know this is it.
EDIT: Apparently Lime kelp can grow outside of the snow biome, it is much more common there though. I've seen it grow on obsidian and ebonstone, neither of which seems like suitable substrate for a plant to grow on, it is always underwater though.

And last but not the least: introducing the elusive Cyan beetle! These guys are an extremely rare spawn in the underground snow biome so be ready for a LOT of waiting. This is where being in hardmode makes things interesting as vikings, tortoises, elementals and mermen will come out of the woodwork to whoop your bottom, so be on the lookout. You can use all of the spawn rate increasing techniques (waiting for a Blood moon, using a Water candle and a Battle potion) to lower the waiting time somewhat, but this will naturally also increase the amount of bad guys to deal with.

The reward

Once you have all nine ingredients, stand near a Dye vat and craft them into their respective dyes, then the three gradients (cyan = teal, cyan, sky blue; yellow = lime, yellow, orange; purple = pink, purple, violet) and finally the Rainbow dye. If the rainbow is not rainbowy enough for you, you can make Intense rainbow dye from two Rainbow dyes. Wearing a full set of Intense rainbow dyed clothes will make you the coolest guy in town... maybe.

Thank you for reading this (admittedly pointless) guide, hopefully it helped someone (or even inspired to start caring about the dyes).

[Azzy Dreemurr]

How to be god of hyper-death?

[Azzy Dreemurr]

I'M A GOOOOOAAAT!

[Azzy Dreemurr]

YAY!

[human resource]

I sure hope so!

[Azzy Dreemurr]

Does the dye make you gay?

[Stevo123]

so much more simpler than the other stuff i read. thank you. and i play on Xbox so yeah :D

[human resource]

From sea snails if I remember right. They should drop purple mucus, the ingredient used to craft purple dye.

[Swish in Swedish]

how do you get purple?

[Helispark]

Nope, it's still relevant. The Terraria devs don't just change how something works all of a sudden

[human resource]

can anyone confirm whether this guide is still relevant? I wrote it numerous updates ago so I wonder if anything has changed in this regard