The final cosmic deity: Moon Lord

Learn the best strategies and gear to defeat the final boss of Terraria, the Moon Lord. This guide covers crafting, weapons, and fight mechanics to help you win.

Moon Lord is a truly terrifying boss, stronger than all that came before him by light years. He is a truly gigantic boss, with many attacks to end your very existence in the blink of an eye. He is omnipresent, able to teleport to anywhere on the entire world map that you try to escape to. Defeating him is a truly difficult endeavor. But you will not back down, you will prevent this terrifying entity from destroying the world you've worked so hard to call your home. So let's get to it.

I'll take the time to point out that the Cosmic Car Keys are truly useful here. They make avoiding his attacks so much easier than they'd normally be. Alternatively, the infinite flight time item paired with wings will suffice. If you do not have either of those, then you will need to build an Asphalt Runway that's about 15 screens in length, or you will need to build a Minecart Track with boosters that's similar.

You may also use the Ancient Manipulator you picked up from the Lunatic Cultist to craft some gear that can make killing him a bit easier. The only crafting materials necessary will be the fragments that are dropped by the Celestial Pillars. I'll list that equipment now.

Melee

You can make the Daybreak weapon with 18 Solar Fragments, which is a pretty nice melee weapon. I doubt you'll be using melee at this stage based on the advice offered throughout the guide, but if you are, you should.

More importantly, you should make the Solar Eruption weapon. It acts as a very long range sword with a huge hitbox that retracts upon using it. It also pierces blocks and has the autoswing function. It'll be incredibly useful for melee users.

Ranged

You can make the Phantasm or the Vortex Beater.

The Phantasm is a bow that rapidly auto-fires four arrows while also only using one arrow per shot. Upon impact, you will also automatically fire three magic arrows that home in on your target, each arrow dealing 30% of the initial damage (90% total). It also has a 66% chance not to consume ammunition.

The Vortex Beater rapidly auto-fires bullets in a somewhat loose spread. It also fires a rocket automatically every 0.58 seconds as well. The rockets are spaced out even more loosely, though.

I recommend the Phantasm personally. It has very high damage like the Vortex Beater, but it's more accurate due to its spread being much tighter.

Magic

You can craft the Nebula Arcanum and the Nebula Blaze.

The Nebula Arcanum fires a swirling magical orb that hits up to three times before exploding for massive damage. The first two hits will pierce enemies. It will also home in on enemies, so enemies do not need to be in a line for ideal damage. If it fails to hit a third time, it will automatically explode in 11 seconds.

The Nebula Blaze fires pink projectiles that home in on targets. It is somewhat inaccurate. Every attack has a 20% chance to instead fire a blue projectile that is much faster and deals more damage.

I would recommend the Nebula Arcanum. You'll be fighting plenty of enemies and it's pretty good at dealing with clusters as well as the pillars. It's also decent against the Moon Lord due to its strong homing capabilities and explosive properties.

Summoner

You can craft the Stardust Cell Staff or the Stardust Dragon Staff.

The Stardust Cell Staff summons a little blob minion that shoots a projectile that deals damage. It can also teleport to enemies to attack them.

The Stardust Dragon Staff is special. It summons a small stardust dragon normally that deals impact damage by flying into enemies. It moves through blocks. What makes it special is that increasing your max minion count adds an extra segment onto the dragon, instead of making more small dragons. Each segment creates more damage as it travels through enemies. This makes the stardust dragon extremely powerful against bigger enemies (such as the Celestial Pillars and the Moon Lord), but a lot worse against normal enemies and small bosses.

I recommend the Stardust Dragon Staff. With a high max minion count, you'll deal tons of damage as it rapidly flies through the air, and given the size of enemies in the postgame, it is very strong here.

In addition to this, you may want to craft the Celestial Sigil. This is how you summon Moon Lord. I mention it specially here before the boss section because of the effort involved getting to Moon Lord. In order to access Moon Lord, you must kill all four Celestial Pillars. Which means killing the Lunatic Cultist. If you die to the Moon Lord, which you likely will several times, he will despawn and you must fight the Lunatic Cultist and do all four pillars all over again. That is a lengthy and repetitive endeavor. So you may find it fruitful to forgo some equipment upgrades in order to be able to access the Moon Lord much more quickly.

Onto the actual boss fight now.

Moon Lord

Firstly, the head. Its main attack is its sweeping death ray, and by far its most damaging attack. In order to avoid it, you must circle around the head in a clockwise fashion. Which is where the Cosmic Car Keys come into play. If not, you must use the Shield of Cthulhu to dash through it, or you must use the Rod if Discord to pass to the other side. After the deathray is finished, the eye socket will blink a couple of times, firing two phantasmal bolts at you.

Additionally, the mouth will periodically attach a tentacle to you. When it does this, Moon Lord Clots will begin to spawn on you and travel along the tentacle to the m