Part 45: Cult of Personality

#43 - Cult of Personality



Hello everyone, and welcome back to Rivershire. Today's update is gonna be all about taking on one of the two remaining bosses. So let's get moving!



To start with, we're making a Destroyer Emblem accessory for our general purpose needs. It's actually meant for our ranged combat set, but its general stat bonuses work well with any build.



We're also going to make a bunch of Cursed Arrows just in case. Cursed flames are something I haven't really shown off, but they're the Corruption equivalent to the Crimson's ichor. They're just as easily farmed, too. You just need to find a cavern-level area that's been corrupted.

Anyway, Cursed arrows cause the cursed flames debuff, which is basically a souped up version of the on fire debuff. If you remember Spazmatism, one of the two Twins, his mechanical form was spitting out fountains of cursed flames.

I don't expect we'll need them, but you never know.



Because this is going to be such a short update otherwise, I'm going to cover what gear we'll be using. You see, this is the first of three parts of the endgame of Terraria. In our future are two boss fights and a very hectic invasion event, all back-to-back with each other.

To start off, Sam is back in the classic tee-and-jeans outfit. I've also removed the time of day hair dye, so we're back to basics. We're gonna finish this LP like we started it... wearing Disney merch.



The Influx Waver is one of the best swords you can get before the endgame. When you swing it, it shoots out a blade projectile. If that projectile hits an enemy, it gets hit by a bunch of swords in rapid succession. It wrecks enemies clumped up together.



The Tsunami Bow is why we will not be using Chlorophyte Arrows for the upcoming gauntlet. Chlorophyte arrows pierce through enemies in addition to their homing capabilities, and if an enemy is hit by a piercing attack, it gets 1/6 of a second of mercy invincibility. In 99.99% of cases, you'll never even notice the enemy doesn't take damage for a fraction of a second. But if you're, say, shooting an enemy with five arrows at once, you're wasting a bunch of shots.

The weapon itself is incomprehensibly good, especially if paired with Holy Arrows.



The Tactical Shotgun is our MVP from the Duke Fishron fight. It shoots six bullets for the price of one, which gets downright hilarious when you combine it with Crystal Bullets or Chlorophyte Ammo.

The boss we're fighting today, I should mention, takes reduced damage from homing attacks due to Reasons. So while we have Chlorophyte rounds, we're going to be using Crystal ones first.



During the Martian Madness writeup, I kinda snubbed my nose at this weapon. On a lark, I gave it a try and found it to be actually a really powerful weapon.



I sincerely doubt we're going to be using it against the upcoming boss, but the Electrosphere Launcher tears apart groups of enemies. It's more for the invasion event between bosses.



I know what I was thinking when I took them with me, but we have a better version of the same thing in our inventory. So I guess it's just wasted space?



I think I just wanted to show this off? Pity the upcoming boss fight takes place in midair, so this thing is yet more wasted space.



The one, the only. Accept no substitutes.



Well I guess there's no more putting it off. It's time to fight this boss.





Lunatic Cultist Boss Fight

Kill the four cultists, and their boss spawns. He's not very happy.



So. The Lunatic Cultist is a magic-based boss, and is also the first (and frankly only) boss in the game to be a normal human.



To get around, he simply teleports.



His fireball attack deals 60 magic damage, and he shoots three of them out. The fireballs lazily home in on you.



Kind of.



Each time the boss teleports, he fires a new magic attack.



The ice comet here spirals around and shoots six frost bolts out as it does so. The wiki calls this attack Ice Mist for some reason. It also lists the damage as 70 magic damage.



This next attack summons an orb that shoots lightning at us. The wiki claims it deals 90 magic damage.



Even with our armor and mitigation, it still hurts like a bastard.



This boss fight can get out of hand quickly. You have to be constantly moving around. Having a UFO is, in my opinion, absolutely mandatory at this point.



After the boss attacks four or five times, he creates two duplicates and starts summoning a magic attack.



The real boss is on the bottom right. The duplicates don't have a gold stripe going down the middle of their heads, and their eyes aren't narrow slits.

You can get rid of the duplicates by hitting the real boss. Otherwise, they will fly around and attack with him. If you hit a duplicate, either intentionally or by accident...



This is a Phantasm Dragon, and it is fucking horrifying.



It's at this point that the fight is really hurting, and my attacks are all way too imprecise. So I opt to switch to the Spectre gear instead.



It showed up in the previous update in a few screenshots, and I mentioned it in the one before that as an amazing weapon. But I really want to impress on you just how good the Razorblade Typhoon is.

It has a cheap mana cost, it deals high damage, and its projectiles track in ways that the cultist's fireballs wish they could.



This is something I'm going to be doing quite a lot in the future, swapping the headpieces on the Spectre set. This hood heals us for a percentage of the damage it deals. When I used it in the Pumpkin Moon event, the healing was outpacing the damage from a Pumpking swiping me with its cleavers.



The Razorblade Typhoon seems to know which one is the real target. While you don't have all the time in the world, there's still enough time (while they do whatever it is they do here) to identify the right one and smack him.



Hitting the right one causes all the duplicates to instantly vanish in a puff of logic.



This is the Ancient Light attack, by far his most dangerous attack at 120 damage.



Hitting the balls of ancient light will destroy them, so the attack is easily neuter-able as long as you're aggressive.



This is why it's vitally important to keep track of your mouse during heated combat. This happened when I accidentally clicked and dragged the title bar, causing it to revert to an 800x600 window.



Magic is pretty awesome, guys.



The Cultist is dead in this shot, he's just too stupid to realize it.

Anyway, the Cultist only has three drops in addition to the usual greater healing potions.

Ancient Manipulator - (100% chance. Used to craft endgame and postgame equipment.)
Ancient Cultist Mask - (14.29% chance. The rare cosmetic mask that I don't think looks stupid.)
Ancient Cultist Trophy - (10% chance.)

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