An indeterminate amount of days ago, I saw someone on PvP who had several loadouts resembling Terraria’s bosses, only using weapons that the boss drops.
That got me thinking: How good would a loadout with only a specific boss’s drop be?
The short answer is: Not good at all. Boss drops weren’t explicitly made for PvP, and they don’t have enough variety to cover all the options that are required for a good loadout. This doesn’t mean you can’t not have a fun time using a boss-themed loadout.
I’m going to go through every boss and event boss (but not every miniboss) and their drops, and then rank them by how close to a legitimate loadout they get.
There are 2 things i should mention:
- I’m going to be ranking weapons only, since bosses rarely drop any armor or accessories.
- In order to include as many bosses as possible, I’m going to count weapons made from materials bosses drop (Demonite Ore, Hallowed Bars, etc.)
Bosses with non-existent loadouts
Even with the inclusion rule I gave, there are still a lot of bosses that don’t have any weapon drops that are useful in the slightest, mostly Pre-Hardmode bosses.
Here is a list of all bosses that can’t have loadouts themed around them whatsoever:
- King Slime - He drops Slimy Saddle, the best mount, but that’s about it.
- Queen Bee - The only pre-hardmode boss to have a banned weapon (Beenades).
- Skeletron - Book Of Skulls is the only weapon Skeletron drops, and it hasn’t been changed from vanilla and likely will never be.
- Deerclops - Has a lot of drops that would be interesting weapons, but Dark Gaming isn’t updated to 1.4.3, so none of them work.
- Queen Slime - Has the Gelatinous Pillon and Crystal Assassin Armor, but that’s about it.
- Pirate Captain - Coin Gun and Cutlass both do nothing.
- Mothron - I would include the Broken Hero Sword weapons, but those are all broken now after 1.4.4.
- Dreadnautilus, Lunatic Cultist, Dark Mage, Ogre, Flying Dutchman, Headless Horseman - Don’t drop any weapons.
Eye of Cthulhu, Eater of Worlds, & Brain of Cthulhu
The only saving grace these bosses have is Demonite Ore, which is used for Light’s Bane. That’s it.
Light’s Bane was buffed in 1.4.4, getting a new projectile. Its stats were buffed for DG PvP as a result. But the projectile doesn’t function properly, so this weapon was relegated to being a stubby sword with mediocre damage.
If you want to make a loadout with only Light’s Bane, be my guest.
Wall of Flesh
Wall of Flesh is the only pre-hardmode boss with good options. And they are pretty good options.
Breaker Blade is pretty good, it’s a contender for the best sword, but it’s still only a sword, so it’s got a lot holding it back.
Clockwork Assault Rifle and Laser Rifle, however, are really, really good. I think it’s pretty obvious to see why.
Theoretically, you could perform decently with these three weapons only, spamming Clockwork Assault Rifle or Laser Rifle at long range, and going for Breaker Blade hits at close range, but note that you’re using a three-weapon loadout where 2 weapons function very similarly.
Goblin Warlock
You don’t really have much to work with for a Goblin Warlock loadout.
Shadowflame Hex Doll has good damage but poor range, and Shadowflame Knife has decent stats all around. They’re both good weapons, but not great.
Does Shadowflame Bow even do anything?
The Mech Bosses
All three mech bosses drop Hallowed Bars, which leads to a few good options. Aside from weapons crafted with the boss souls, there’s Gungnir, Hallowed Repeater and Super Star Shooter.
Gungnir has great range and Hallowed Repeater does insane damage, and while Super Star Shooter isn’t very good, these two weapons combined with boss soul weapons could make for a loadout with a lot of variety for a boss drops only loadout.
The Twins
I totally forgot Souls of Sight are used to make these two weapons.
Magical Harp sucks, but Rainbow Rod is really good. It’s the only point-and-click weapon to still have good damage.
If you don’t think these two weapons fit the theme of The Twins, you could just use Cursed Flames to represent Spazmatism and Laser Rifle to represent Retinazer. I don’t really care.
The Destroyer
Light Disc good, Megashark bad. But both of these weapons do provide a lot of variety when used alongside the Hallowed Bar weapons.
Skeletron Prime
Flamethrower isn’t really that great as a rush option, but I think it’s the best option when paired with the other Hallowed Bar weapons.
If you want to have even more variety, just have a weapon for each of Skeletron Prime’s arms. Laser Rifle, Grenade Launcher and Butcher’s Chainsaw are a few examples.
Plantera
Plantera has a lot of interesting options, however, most of them aren’t very good.
Venus Magnum is the only real standout weapon here, as it was buffed by 1.4.4’s Autofire feature. Grenade Launcher and Leaf Blower are too slow, Seedler does too little damage, and Flower Pow and Nettle Burst are tricky to hit with.
Although most of these aren’t very good, they do offer a lot of variety, so they could make a decent loadout, one that isn’t really cohesive, though.
Golem
Half of Golem’s weapons are really good, while half of them aren’t. Possessed Hatchet is one of the best anti-rush weapons, while Heat Ray is one of the best weapons outright. The other three weapons are lackluster.
Golem Fist is a funny weapon that isn’t very reliable, Staff of Earth is just a mediocre spam weapon, and Stynger has good damage but slow projectiles.
Like with Plantera, there is a good amount of variety here, and you could make Heat Ray and Possessed Hatchet alone work well, but your other options don’t really help you too much, except maybe Stynger.
Despite a few weak options, Golem is one of the best options for a boss-themed loadout.
Duke Fishron
Duke Fishron has the same problem as Plantera, where it has only one great option, and a bunch of mediocre/bad options.
Tsunami is broken, Bubble Gun is pretty good, Flairon is bad, and Razorblade Typhoon is dysfunctional.
Unlike Plantera, however, Duke Fishron has only 4 options, as opposed to 6. It might as well be 3, because of the non-functionality of the Razorblade Typhoon.
Variety is scarce in a Duke Fishron loadout, but you do have access to Tsunami and Bubble Gun, so you could make it work somewhat.
Empress of Light
Empress of Light is spoiled with three great options. Starlight and Stellar Tune are both amazing and Eventide is good for what it does. Those three weapons are distinct in their purpose, so they alone could make a good loadout.
You can just ignore Nightglow and Kaleidoscope, they’re terrible anyway.
Betsy
A Betsy-themed loadout would seem good, but it has a lot of problems.
Betsy’s Wrath and Aerial Bane are both very good, but they function quite similarly, Sky Dragon’s Fury’s right-click attack is banned, and Flying Dragon has lackluster damage, even if it has a wall-piercing projectile.
Betsy’s weapons are pretty niche, even if the niche is pretty good. They lack a consistent damage option, for both the long and short range.
Mourning Wood
Stake Launcher good. If you wanna ride around on a Hexxed Branch and spam this weapon, go ahead. I recommend you make a Pumpkin Moon themed loadout, incorporating Pumpking’s weapons.
Pumpking
In general, Pumpking has some mediocre options. Dark Harvest and Bat Scepter are pretty good, but Candy Corn Rifle and Jack ‘O Lantern Launcher are just kinda spam weapons and not really reliable.
Again, pair this set of weapons with Stake Launcher and you’ll get a pretty decent loadout with a combination of Dark Harvest, Stake Launcher and Bat Scepter.
Everscream
You could either spam Razorpine to your heart’s content, or just make a Frost Moon loadout.
Santa-NK1
Running around in a Toy Tank spamming these two weapons sounds like a fun time to me.
Ice Queen
North Pole is banned, but even if it was, I don’t think it would save an Ice Queen loadout.
Blizzard Staff is pretty good, but it doesn’t have much damage and it has a rather specific use, and Snowman Cannon is mostly just a brainrot spam weapon.
Martian Saucer
All of the (not banned) Martian Saucer weapons have their own unique flaws.
Xenopopper’s projectile comes out on a delay, Laser Machinegun has a slow initial fire rate, and Influx Waver has a slow projectile.
Also, the UFO sucks as a mount.
The Lunar Pillars
I decided to lump all the (usable) Lunar Pillar weapons together, since loadouts based on the individual pillars sounds lame.
Even after combining all the pillar weapons together, the loadout isn’t that good.
Daybreak, Solar Eruption and Nebula Blaze are all very good, but the two Vortex Pillar weapons are awful, and Nebula Arcanum is the worst weapon in PvP.
Just like with Golem, half the options are good, and the other half aren’t.
Moon Lord
Despite having the most weapon drops of every boss, with 9 of them, only 5 are allowed to be used, and 3 of those 5 suck.
Celebration Mk2 is incredibly spammable, but it does no damage. Lunar Portal Staff is just a slower, less damage version of Rainbow Crystal Staff. S.D.M.G has great fire rate, but its dps is neutered by iframes.
That leaves Terrarian and RCS. Both are pretty gimmicky, and RCS’s gimmick is pretty good, but these weapons being gimmicky means they aren’t too reliable or consistent.
Tier List & Conclusion
With all the bosses covered, now it’s time for a tier list of how good these boss-themed loadouts would be:
(Sidenote: I would put a combined Lunar Pullar themed loadout at B, a combined Pumpkin Moon themed loadout at A, and a combined Frost Moon themed loadout at B.)
As you can see, the S tier represents an actual loadout. This means that no boss-themed loadouts are good enough to rival actual loadouts. So why did I make this tier list?
Well, mostly for fun, and to present an idea for a challenge to those who are bored by killing randoms and getting triple digit killstreaks so easily. Themed loadouts are a way to freshen the PvP experience, and boss-themed loadouts are just one idea for themed loadouts.
You could make a loadout themed around a specific material like Chlorophyte, or a loadout themed around Dungeon items.
There’s a lot of potential with themed loadouts, I just wanted to see what bosses would make the most viable themed loadout.