Overview
The Deerclops is a pre-hardmode boss. He is useful to defeat if you want to get the items from the Don’t Starve crossover as you can drop most of them from him. You will also get 5 gold coins for defeating him. He is not required for game progression. When fighting the Deerclops, exclusive music will be played.
There are no prerequisites to fight it. But he’s not easy so consider waiting at least until you defeat Skeletron before trying to defeat the Deerclops.
Spawning the Deerclops
The Deerclops can spawn either naturally, or using an item.
To make it spawn naturally, you have to go to the Snow Biome at midnight during a blizzard. You may encounter him if at least one player in the world has either 9 defense or 200 health.
To make it spawn with an item, you have to craft a Deer Thing at an altar using 3 Flinx Furs, a Lens, and 5 Crimtane/Demonite Ores. You can then use it at any time of the day in a Snow Biome or an Ice Biome to make the Deerclops spawn.
Items Dropped
- Eye Bone: the Eye Bone is an item summoning a Piggy Bank named Chester. It can be considered as an update to the Money Trough as you don’t need to re-summon Chester every time you want to access your Piggy Bank. You have a 33% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
- Eyebrella: the Eyebrella is a vanity item summoning a raincloud over the player’s head when equipped. As it is a vanity item, it doesn’t give any bonuses and doesn’t have any effect. You have a 33% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
- Radio Thing: the Radio Thing is an accessory activating a screen effect identical to the one of the Constant world seed (if you want to know more about it, check this article: THE 8 BEST WORLD SEEDS IN TERRARIA) If you use it in the Constant world, it will instead disable the effect. This item functions both in accessories or vanity slots. You have a 33% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
- Pew-matic Horn: it’s a gun firing random items with a high fire rate. No matter what bullets you use, it will fire random items so use the bullets you can get the more easily (as the musket balls for example). Bullets fired by this weapon quickly lose their horizontal speed once shot and are heavily affected by gravity. You have a 25% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
- Weather Pain: it’s a magic weapon casting a kind of small tornado upon use. The tornado homes in on nearby enemies and stays latched onto them for a few seconds, dealing consistent damage. It can ignore up to 10 points of defense, bounce off blocks and pierce enemies up to 12 times. You have a 25% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
- Houndius Shootius: it’s a summoning weapon summoning a sentry lasting for two minutes. It doesn’t count in the player’s minion capacity. It stays stationary trying to shoot projectiles from an eyeball. You have a 25% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
- Lucy the Axe: it’s an axe that can occasionally display a line of dialogue. It has an axe power of 150% which is equal to axe powers you can get post-Moon Lord. You have a 25% chance to drop it from Deerclops.
How to defeat the Deerclops
Now, let’s talk about serious things. We will see how to defeat the Deerclops. first, you need to be aware of the attacks it can use.
Deerclops Attacks
The Deerclops has four attacks (five in Expert and Master):
- Ice spikes: if you’re close to the Deerclops, it will smash the ground and summon a wave of ice spikes traveling towards you. Every third consecutive wave doesn’t go as far but spreads in both directions.
- Debris: when you’re far to the Deerclops, he will throw debris into the air that falls back and pass through blocks.
- Slow debuff: The Deerclops stay in place and roar, inflicting the Slow debuff on players.
- Shadow hands: if you stay above the Deerclops for too much time, he will summon five shadow hands around you.
- (Expert/Master) Shadow hands bis: the Deerclops will periodically summon shadow hands moving around and trying to hit you. The lower his life is, the more often hands will be summoned.
Behavior
- The Deerclops can’t pass through blocks, but if you’re too far from him, he may try to reach you by passing through blocks.
- If you’re more than 30 tiles away from him, his appearance will change (as in the gif below) and he will become immune to every damage.
- If all the players die while fighting him, he will keep walking around instead of despawning. So you can come back to the Ice/Snow Biome and fight it again.
Fight tips
- It can be useful to bring items protecting you against Chilled and Frozen debuffs because they can easily kill you if inflicted. Some useful items are the Warmth Potion (you craft it using a Bottled Water, a Frost Minnow, and a Shiverthorn), or the Hand Wammer (you get it from Presents with a 0.62% chance in pre-hardmode).
- You can build a platform of non-solid blocks about 6 blocks up in the air so that the Deerclops can go on it and he won’t be able to use its debris attack entirely, making the fight a lot easier.
- As the boss can inflict the Slow Debuff no matter how far you’re from him, it can be useful to bring items increasing your movement speed such as the Anklet of the Wind, the Magiluminescence, or Swiftness Potions to keep your mobility.
- Don’t stay too much time above the boss to avoid him summoning shadow hands.
- You can run between the boss‘ legs without taking damage. It is useful to dodge his first two spikes attacks (but you can’t dodge the third one this way).
- You can use platforms and a grapple to dodge his spikes. When he summons a spike, quickly use your grapple on a platform to dodge it.
- As the spikes can interrupt you while using your grapple, it can be good to avoid overusing the grapple and overextending.
For more guides or tutorials, be sure to see our other articles as THE BEST WAY TO FARM ROTTEN CHUNK IN TERRARIA or TERRARIA WIRE: EVERYTHING YOU SHOULD KNOW.
