A weapon is an obtainable item capable of dealing damage. Terraria's weapon system is divided primarily into:
There are also weapons and damage-dealing items that don't fit neatly into one of those categories. (Terraria Wiki)
Melee weapons deal melee damage and normally don't consume ammunition or mana.
The major types are:
There are currently 196 melee weapons.
Melee traditionally means close-range combat, but Terraria gets increasingly ridiculous about this definition.
Some melee weapons can:
So "melee" describes the damage class, not necessarily "you have to touch the enemy with a sword."
That's an important distinction.
Ranged weapons deal ranged damage and commonly use ammunition.
Major categories include:
There are currently 112 ranged weapons.
For many ranged weapons, the actual attack depends on both the weapon and its ammunition.
The effective damage and knockback are based on the combination of the weapon's and ammunition's properties.
That means two players using the same ranged weapon can have very different results depending on their ammunition.
Magic weapons deal magic damage and consume mana when used.
The main categories are:
There are currently 76 magic weapons.
Mana.
Unlike most melee weapons, magic weapons consume mana with each use.
This creates a tradeoff:
Extremely flexible attacks ↔ managing your mana supply.
Magic weapons can have wildly different attack patterns, including projectiles, beams, area effects, bouncing attacks, and persistent effects.
Summon weapons deal summon damage.
They fall into three major categories:
Automatically attack enemies and generally follow the player.
Automatically attack enemies but remain stationed in one location.
Directly attack with a swinging arc and interact with summoned minions and sentries.
The current game has 60 summon weapons.
Minions and sentries aren't simply projectiles.
They create independent attacking entities.
Whips, meanwhile, can influence which enemy summoned creatures prioritize and can apply additional effects.
When comparing weapons, these are the major statistics you'll encounter.
The weapon's base damage.
Higher isn't automatically better.
A weapon with lower listed damage can attack substantially faster or have a much better projectile.
Usually:
Damage type determines which bonuses and equipment can improve the weapon.
The probability of an attack dealing a critical hit.
How strongly an attack pushes an enemy.
Usually described as:
How quickly the weapon can perform another attack.
Lower use time = faster attacks.
This is one of the easiest statistics to accidentally misunderstand.
A weapon with:
Use time: 10
is much faster than:
Use time: 40
because the number represents the delay between uses.
Relevant to many projectiles.
Higher velocity generally means the projectile travels faster.
Relevant to magic weapons.
Higher mana cost means greater resource consumption per use.
Relevant primarily to ranged weapons.
The ammunition can substantially change the behavior and effectiveness of the attack.
DPS = Damage Per Second
It's one of the most useful ways to compare weapons.
A simplistic approximation is:
DPS ≈ damage × attacks per second
Since Terraria attacks can involve:
actual DPS can be much more complicated.
Therefore:
Damage ≠ DPS
A 100-damage weapon isn't necessarily better than a 70-damage weapon.
Terraria weapons can produce wildly different projectiles.
Important behaviors include:
The projectile can hit multiple enemies.
It can rebound from surfaces or other objects.
It automatically adjusts its trajectory toward enemies.
It creates an area of effect when it hits.
The projectile comes back toward the player.
The projectile remains active for some time rather than immediately disappearing.
One attack creates multiple projectiles.
These behaviors can matter more than raw damage depending on the situation.
Some attacks damage multiple enemies simultaneously.
This is particularly useful against:
A weapon that is mediocre against one target can become extremely effective against a crowd.
Enemy defense reduces incoming damage.
Some attacks can bypass or partially ignore defense through armor penetration.
This is especially important against enemies with high defense.
So again:
The number written beside "Damage" isn't the whole story.
Terraria's combat system has apparently decided that elementary arithmetic wasn't sufficiently complicated. 😭
Weapons can inflict status effects.
Examples include effects involving:
Debuffs can provide damage over time or alter enemy behavior.
Some weapons are valuable primarily because of the effect they apply rather than their raw damage.
Weapons have different rarity levels.
Rarity is primarily a way of indicating how unusual or progression-oriented an item is.
Important:
Rarity does not automatically mean "stronger."
A lower-rarity weapon can absolutely outperform a higher-rarity weapon in a particular situation.
Many weapons can receive modifiers, such as:
The current game has 83 total modifiers across applicable items.
Modifiers can alter statistics such as:
The possible modifiers depend on the weapon.
The Goblin Tinkerer can reforge eligible weapons.
Reforging:
There is no "memory" in reforging. Each reforge independently chooses from the modifiers available to that weapon.
So repeatedly getting the same unwanted modifier isn't the game remembering that it annoyed you. It's just probability being an asshole.
The ideal modifier depends on the weapon.
The official Wiki identifies several general best choices:
There are exceptions because individual weapon mechanics can change which modifier is actually optimal.
Weapons broadly follow Terraria's progression.
Simple weapons:
Weapons become significantly more specialized.
You begin finding:
Hardmode introduces an enormous jump in available weapon power and variety.
More specialized weapons become available.
Weapons become dramatically more powerful and mechanically elaborate.
The progression isn't simply:
weak → stronger → strongest
It's more like:
different tool → different playstyle → different situation → different absurd pixel murder machine.
A Terraria character isn't permanently locked into one class.
You can change equipment and effectively change your combat specialization.
The four major classes are:
The official Wiki treats these as damage types/classes, rather than strict character classes.
Terraria has several things that can deal damage without being conventional weapons.
Examples include:
The official weapon list specifically excludes damaging mounts and environmental damage sources from its weapon count.
According to the current Official Terraria Wiki:
The categories aren't perfectly additive because Terraria has weapons and special cases that don't fit neatly into those four classifications.
If this is going into your Terraria reference project, don't try to memorize 595 names. Your brain has better things to do than become a fungal encyclopedia.
Remember this hierarchy:
```text
WEAPONS
│
├── ⚔️ MELEE
│ ├── Swords
│ ├── Spears
│ ├── Flails
│ ├── Boomerangs
│ └── Yoyos
│
├── 🏹 RANGED
│ ├── Bows
│ ├── Repeaters
│ ├── Guns
│ ├── Launchers
│ └── Other ranged weapons
│
├── 🔮 MAGIC
│ ├── Wands
│ ├── Magic guns
│ ├── Spell books
│ └── Other magic weapons
│
└── 🐉 SUMMON
├── Minions
├── Sentries
└── Whips
```
Then evaluate an individual weapon by:
Damage → attack speed → projectile behavior → range → knockback → critical chance → resource requirements → special effects → class bonuses → modifier.
That gives you the information needed to actually understand Terraria's weapon system, rather than possessing a 595-entry spreadsheet and somehow knowing less about the game. 😭