There are a number of infamous weapons in Terraria, each with its own reasons for their infamy. The Wand of Sparking is known for its weakness, the Zenith is known for its power, the Blade Staff is known for how obnoxious acquiring it is. But The Daedalus Stormbow is a weapon that has had its infamy for a while and even kept it after being nerfed. So of course, it's a good idea to get it.
The Daedalus Stormbow is only dropped by one enemy: the Hallowed Mimic. This is one of the three biome mimics that appear in Hardmode. It's considered a miniboss and for good reason, it hits hard and requires a lot of effort to take down. But luckily there are plenty of strategies to help defeat the mimic and claim your powerful prize.
Before you can kill anything you need to find the mimic. Hallowed Mimics spawn rarely in the Underground Hallow Biome but it's not recommended you fight them there. Often caves are bad arenas and with the mimic’s fast movement you’re bound to get cornered. Instead, it can be summoned anywhere by use of an item.
The Key of Light is an item which will summon a Hallowed Mimic. It can be crafted at a Workbench with 15 Souls of Light and effectively works as the Hallowed Mimic’s boss summon item.
However it doesn’t work like other boss summoning items. It can’t be used from your inventory and the only way it can summon a mimic is for it to be placed in a chest. Now this will only work if it is the only item in the chest, so don't worry about your storage system getting destroyed by Hallowed Mimics. Once you place the key in the chest and close the chest menu it will transform into a Hallowed Mimic and the fight will begin.
Fighting the mimic can be difficult but the best tip during the fight is to keep moving to either side. Hallowed Mimics have lots of attacks that jump at you and land at your position so as long as you’re moving in one direction every attack will miss its mark. Now, when you get far away from the mimic, it will perform a dash attack where it goes directly for you. This may seem scary but don’t lose your cool, the attack will end before it can reach you and you’ll be able to outrun it again. If you ever need to turn around, never do so during the dash, the mimic will most definitely catch up to you.
Once you’ve dealt with the fight the mimic will drop its loot. The Stormbow isn't guaranteed, it's about a one in four chance to drop, so you might need to fight a few Hallowed Mimics but once it drops the real fun begins.
Now that you have your bow of mass destruction, how do you use it? It's very different from all other bows as instead of shooting arrows from the player’s location, it rains arrows down from the sky onto the location of the cursor.
Aiming can be a little tricky but you’ll get used to leading your shots and if you feel like it's too inaccurate, keep your cursor near the bottom of the screen. The lower your cursor is the more accurate your arrows will be.
Some of the best arrows to use with the Stormbow are piercing arrows like Jester Arrows, Unholy Arrows, Chlorophyte Arrows, and Luminite Arrows. The Stormbow already has good damage in crowds and on segmented enemies but adding piercing raises that effectiveness even more. The absolute best arrow type to use with it is Holy Arrows, crafted with 200 Wooden Arrows, three Pixie Dust, and one Unicorn Horn at a Mythril or Oricalcum Anvil. These arrows don’t pierce but upon hitting an enemy they rain down stars from the sky that do pierce.
The Stormbow plus Holy Arrows combination is actually what made the weapon so powerful that it was debuffed in the Journey’s End update but even then it's still relatively strong.
The Daedalus Stormbow is an incredibly powerful Hardmode bow dropped by Hallowed Mimics. You might need to fight a few but once you have it, pair the bow with some Holy Arrows and watch bosses fall quicker than ever before!
There are no other ranged weapons like it but there are weapons from other classes similar to it. The melee weapon Star Wrath fires its comets similarly and the magic weapon Meteor Staff fires its meteors in the same way.
Surprisingly, even after its nerf, the Stormbow can take you all the way to Moon Lord. It won't be easy as replacing the Stormbow around when you defeat the Celestial Pillars is probably a better idea but it's still not too difficult to use the Daedalus Stormbow through all of Hardmode.
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