During the gameplay of Terraria, a wide variety of exciting weapons are encountered on the player’s way. Among them is a significant subcategory of magic armaments that give various effects when used. Having the necessary mana reserve, the player can cast powerful combat spells and summon different familiars to his side. Among the summoning weapons are two unusual staffs – The Pirate Staff and The Spider Staff.
Each of these staves is unique in its way. In this article, you can learn about their features, advantages and disadvantages, as well as similarities and differences.
Pirate staff in Terraria
The Pirate Staff is one of the staffs that the player can only access when playing in the Hardmode world. This weapon belongs to the category of magic, summoning a minion to the side of the player.
He plays the role of a defensive ally, attacking all opponents near the main character. The summoning costs ten mana points.
The pirate fights with a sword. Like other minions, he is invulnerable and will stay with the player until he dies, uses another summoning staff, or cancels the buff. This minion has high speed; besides, it is able to move almost instantly at short distances if opponents surround the player from several sides at once. Also, if the player runs away from the minion for a long distance, then a parrot appears, which carries the pirate through the air back to the player. The damage during his attack is 40 HP; there is also a knockback with a value of 6.
When summoning a pirate using the Pirate Staff, there are three options for the minion’s appearance sprite, but there is no functional difference between them.
This staff can only be obtained as a drop from pirates during the Pirate Invasion with a 0.05% chance. It also has a 1% chance of being dropped by Flying Dutchman.
The developers of Terraria introduced this item as one of the references to the Pixel Piracy game.
Spider staff in Terraria
Spider Staff is a type of staff in Terraria that, when applied, summons a tiny spider to the player’s side.
This minion performs a protective function. He clings to enemies near the character and begins to inflict continuous damage. The advantage of this minion is the small stun-locks during biting. In case there are several spiders, it is likely that the enemy (except for bosses) will not be able to move. One of the main advantages of this staff is the effect of poisoning, which is applied to opponents attacked by the summoned spider. The debuff lasts for four seconds.
Like other minions, the spider is invulnerable and immune to enemy attacks. In addition, this familiar has unique movement characteristics. It is able to move freely on background walls, making it much more effective in areas with good wall coverage. In other cases, he is limited to walking and jumping. Since this minion cannot fly and has no throwing attacks, it becomes ineffective against flying enemies.
The Spider Staff is one of the best summoning staffs at the start of the Hardmode stage and before killing Plantera. This is primarily due to the simplicity of crafting since 16 Spider Fangs are required to create a staff. It is pretty easy to collect this resource if you find the spider hole and kill enough Black Recluses. Even though the minions created by the Spider Staff do only 26 damage, and the recoil rate is 3, this is occupied by the effect of poisoning applied when attacking, quick hits, and slowing down the enemy. In addition, a spider only takes up .75 of 1 minion slot. For this reason, the player can potentially summon 4 spiders instead of 3 or 8 instead of 6.
In total, in Terraria, you can spawn three different familiar sprites when using the Spider Staff. At the same time, they have no difference in terms of functionality.
Pirate staff vs Spider staff in Terraria
Having familiarized yourself with Pirate Staff’s and Spider Staff’s main characteristics, you can compare them and highlight their advantages and disadvantages in relation to each other.
First of all, it is worth noting the difficulty of mining. In this case, the Spider Staff is much more attractive since everything depends on the player and his desire to get this weapon. With Pirate Staff, things are much more complicated since you can only get it with good luck. Sometimes it may be necessary to survive 6-7 Pirate Invasions, actively farming all event mobs for this weapon to drop finally.
In terms of the effectiveness of minions, Pirate Staff is significantly superior to Spider Staff, which is justified by the difficulty of obtaining it. 40 damage per pirate hit versus 26 damage per spider hit. The same goes for knockback – 6 versus 3.
It is worth noting that both staves are effective only in a battle with ground enemies and bosses since the air type of enemies will be out of their reach. Despite the difference in the difficulty of obtaining and the level of rarity (level 5 for the Pirate Staff and 4 for the Spider Staff), the cost when selling each of them is equal to one gold coin.
Weapon modifiers are applied to them. The best option for each of these would be the Ruthless modifier.
Summing up, I would like to say that the Spider Staff is a pretty good summoning weapon that will cost the resources and money spent on its crafting. However, against the Pirate Staff background, it loses in terms of basic parameters and has an advantage only in minor situational aspects.