So, we now move onto the 2nd of 3 parts for the Revengeance Weaponless run

As before, all of the rules are on the Pre-Hardmode/PHM page, which was the last guide I uploaded before this one, so check that out if you need a refresher or if you somehow ended up here without seeing the first.


Speaking of seeing the first, the explanation for the mystery girl in the black dress is there, but in short it was community-voted over using Tomato for the skits... even tho this was his page in the Pre-Dreadon Update run...



Anyways, with that said and done, onto the challenge!

Summary:
So, lastly we left off having defeated every Pre-Hardmode boss, both individually and in a large-scale Boss Rush that, for some reason, had a weirdly lengthy Queen Bee fight. With that done, we now move onto Hardmode. However, before we can think to fight any bosses here, a lot of prior preparation must happen.

Of course, entering Hardmode automatically buffs the Abyssal Amulet. While not something we have to apply ourselves it is always something worthy of note considering how important it is.

First of all, I went to get the Shellfish Staff. As explained previously this cannot be used as a weapon, but only as a means to summon the Luxor's Gift accessory's minion; with the Clam being despawned immediately after. This Staff will act as the base damage for Luxor's throughout most, if not all, of Hardmode.

I also went to collect what Elementals I could before facing any bosses; being both Sand Elementals and the Cloud Elemental. I didn't equip the offence-oriented Sand Elemental, however, due to accessory slot limitations.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ N/A



Aftermath:
-At this point there are two routes I can take, either fight Cryogen and gain access to things like the Soul of Cryogen, or fight the first set of Mechanical Bosses for Harpy Wings and a Hardmode anvil
--However, considering how much trouble Revengeance Mechanicals give during challenge runs that ban Adrenaline and Rage, I went with the more familiar Cryogen

Summary:
Like I said before, the drastic shift in difficulty between Expert and Revengeance Mechanicals make them fairly undesirable to fight off the bat, so I went with Cryogen instead.

Cryogen's fight actually went fairly smoothly, even if the fight did take a while. Many of the same movement patterns I use for Expert mode nicely port over to Revengeance, meaning I didn't have to change my plans all too drastically to get things to work.

Overall, not a bad start to a challenge mode's Hardmode.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 6:16



Aftermath:
-I can now get the Soul of Cryogen; an item that both acts as a usable source of damage through the icicles it drops and as a pair of early wings
-I would've made Daedulus items here, such as the armour and the Ornate Shield, but it turns out I need the Tier 3 Hardmode ores for that... which means I need to beat at least 2 Mechs...

Summary:
And now we reach one of the first major roadblocks of the challenge; the Revengeance Mechanicals. These bosses very much feel like they were designed with Adrenaline and Rage in-mind, or perhaps that is just the time limit causing me a little paranoia. Whatever it is, we see a very early spike in difficulty for this run.

Now, this boss realistically needs to be beaten now rather than later, since not defeating the Mechs means no Hardmode anvil and thus a lot of items are unavailable, especially armour sets which play a critical role throughout the run.

The Twins provide a major challenge, but this moreso comes from the time limit imposed on the battle by the day-night cycle. Normally with regular weapons and Adrenaline and Rage at your disposal, time isn't likely to be an issue, but here it is a desperate race against the clock to kill both Spazmatism and Retanazer before day breaks.

Ultimately, I had to start playing hyper-aggressively to not time-out; flying into the boss to inflict Thorns effects, flying straight upwards to rain icicles upon them, and generally burning through a lot of health potions. Even then, things ended up coming down to the wire, with literal seconds left on the clock before victory was achieved.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★★
⏲ 8:57



Aftermath:
-With that fight done, arguably the most important part of Hardmode is unlocked; the Hardmode anvil. Unfortunately, I can't use it for much yet, since my next upgrade also requires the Tier 3 ores... but, hey, it's a start

Summary:
The Destroyer was a boss that required a surprising amount of theory-crafting; probably more than almost anything else I've had to do for singular bosses in these runs.

While normally you'd be able to plough through the Destroyer due to its easily-exploitable weakness, especially with minions' infinite, generally-unhindered piercing, the general lack of minions and their relatively underwhelming damage meant that going in with the same setup as the Twins wouldn't cut it.

After many attempts I ended up upgrading to Spider Armour over Aerospec since I deemed the extra damage and defence more useful that the extra Valkyrie minion. I also finally remembered to remove the Abyssal Amulet in this fight in favour of the offence-oriented Sand Elemental.

I also found that the Probes' damage was far weaker than the Destroyer's attacks... so I intentionally avoided killing Probes so their laser spam could provide me ample immunity frames to actually dodge a fairly cheesy amount of the Destroyer's own attacks.

With these changes and tactics the fight seemed possible and, after 1 or 2 more tries, the Destroyer was destroyed.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 6:10



Aftermath:
-The Destroyer unlocks Tier 3 Hardmode ores, which in turn grants the Hardmode forge and thus allows me to upgrade my items even further
--I upgraded my armour to the Daedulus Armour; both giving me a decently powerful set of Hardmode gear and an armour set bonus minion
--I also got the Ornate Shield to replace the Shield of Cthulhu. The offence-based Sand Elemental was also swapped back for the Abyssal Amulet again

Summary:
So, the image for the Twins has sadly become incorrect already, as I once again faced the same issue when it came to fighting Prime.

Prime had enough combined health to stall until daytime, high enough defence to weaken the Abyssal Amulet, and hit surprisingly hard. All factors that came together to also make this fight somewhat of a puzzle.

Once again the offence Sand Elemental took the place of the Abyssal Amulet and I had to resort to a fair bit of facetanking to give minions time to attack and effects like Thorns opportunity to trigger.

I also noticed that using the Ornate Shield's frost dash could stall limbs briefly, making a slow and easily-hit target for my minions. With these changes a few fights later and Prime was defeated, too; the three biggest threats to the run as a whole were now defeated.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★★
⏲ 8:50



Aftermath:
-With this, I have Souls of Sight, Might and Fright now, granting me access to items like the Pickaxe Axe, Angel Treads, and the Blood Orange
-Unfortunately, this is also the last time you'll be seeing the offence Sand Elemental for a while, as the Abyssal Amulet once again takes her place

Summary:
Now after the nightmare that was the Revengeance Mechanicals I went onto fight Brimmy; a boss I was assuming wouldn't be too much of a challenge in comparison and... it wasn't, really

In fact, with all my enhancements to my gear from the 4 defeated Hardmode bosses thus far, the Brimmy fight was actually the fastest boss to defeat thus far; taking less than 3 minutes total.

Unfortunately, as ever, Brimmy's fight devolved into circle simulator very quickly. Admittedly, though, a nice change of pace compared to the prior bosses.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 2:58



Aftermath:
-Abaddon, as ever, will be useful later-on due to it being a crafting material
-Another drop is useful here, however, being the Rose Stone; a powerful accessory-summoned minion permitted in the challenge rules. The problem is, however, it is a rare item; so I will likely be farming the Brimstone Elemental for-
--Oh I... got it in the 2nd fight... neat.

Summary:
Introducing the easiest fight in Hardmode for this challenge. Aquatic Scourge unfortunately remains the lesser Destroyer here due to its lower health, lack of debuff resistance, and lack of a proper time limit that make it a sitting duck for piercing attacks such as, say, the Cloud Elemental and Luxor's...

In fact, aside from the fight being easy due to our upgrades, the only thing to note is that the fight seemed to break near the end; with the Scourge remaining on 1 HP, unable to be damaged, for roughly 15 seconds at the end of the fight. I don't know what caused it, but it's something to note alright.

Maybe the Scourge does have some hidden potential, then...



Difficulty Increase:
★
⏲ 1:05*



Aftermath:
-The Aquatic Scourge allows us to access the Tier 2 Acid Rain event, where we can get the Spent Fuel Cell for a later upgrade

Summary:
Of course, having a streak of 2 easy bosses cannot come without some sort of caveat, so now we return to our previously-scheduled programming of lengthy Hardmode boss fights with Plantera, who continues the trend of massive vanilla difficulty spikes.

Plantera's first phase was simple enough, partaking in a 2nd round of circling simulator. Obviously this doesn't apply to Phase 2, where the fight amps up noticeably.

Phase 2's main threat, as always, were the tentacles as opposed to Plantera herself. These tentacles are typically best dealt with in these challenge runs via the combination of Crush Depth and a weapon or minion to reliably inflict it (the Cloud Elemental mainly in this run), but even then these things proved to be tankier than I remember.

Fortunately, the fight only took about 2 attempts, mainly coming from my underestimation of Phase 2, as well as my Luxor's minion just flying away never to return at about 60% health, but the 2nd attempt had no such issues and allowed us to best the rival plant.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 7:13



Aftermath:
-The buffed dungeon can now be explored, but at the moment doesn't help us too much
-One upgrade we can make is fighting the Great Sand Shark to craft the Sand Shark Tooth Necklace; an accessory that will prove helpful later in the run...

Summary:
Anahita and Leviathan have forever been a boss that has caused issues in these runs, being that one is small and agile and the other is massive and unnecessarily thicc for a Post-Plantera boss... and of course the same goes for this run.

Anahita herself was awkward due to her small size. If I moved away too fast my minions, mainly my primary damage-dealer in the Luxor's minion, would have a habit of missing often or sometimes just not attacking, so Anahita's phase was about taking it slow and steady when I could afford to.

Leviathan, however, was the opposite story. I could deal damage, sure, and I could keep my minions focused on it... but Leviathan's health pool is frankly colossal and thus my lacklustre damage was doing almost nothing to it. To add insult to injury not having Rage or Adrenaline due to the rules meant that, even when I filled both bars three times each or more, I couldn't use them to speed up the fight.

Overall, a nightmare, but an expected nightmare.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 20:47



Aftermath:
-The main thing we want from this boss is the Pearl of Enthralment, which I was fortunate enough to get first-time. This is our most reliable damage-dealer pre-Lunatic Cultist, which I intend to fight ASAP without disrupting the usual order of these boss fights too much.

Summary:
Now I intentionally delayed Calamitas until after Anahita and Leviathan for the simple reason that I wanted the Pearl before I attempted this boss. The Anahita accessory minion is stationed over the player's head, which puts her right next to Calamitas herself, and it fires frequently enough to ensure both reliable and consistent DPS against the boss, which is important due to her high health across her phases.

As to be expected, the fight was lengthy, but that was more or less what I expected. In fact, time-wise it seems that without the Pearl I may not have had the necessary DPS to actually defeat Calamitas before she despawned.

However, with my preparations and knowledge of the fight, I was able to prevail.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 7:02



Aftermath:
-Ashes of Calamity allow Cores of Calamity to be crafted; allowing me to finally access the Asgard's Valor
-I must also list of an item that isn't important anymore, being the Chaos Stone. This was formerly part of a later item needed for the run, but after the Draedon update is no longer related, which means I do not have to farm for it anymore.
-After this fight I also decided to fight the Pumpkin Moon, getting Tattered Fairy Wings and Statis' Blessing for later

Summary:
Astrum Aureus is a boss that I often compare to the Leviathan in these challenge runs; both are large targets with high health and defence but below-average mobility for the most part. Typically I make this connection since a long Leviathan fight usually means a long Aureus fight, but this time it doesn't seem to be the case.

Aureus' Expert fight was changed to be more like his old Revengeance fight, so I already had some idea of what to expect. There were some issues, mainly Luxor's getting distracted and flying off, but Anahita, Brimmy and the Cloud Elemental compensated more than enough.

In fact, the main issue was me just being dumb and flying into the Aureus Spawn explosions more than a few times, but aside from that the fight went very well.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 5:30



Aftermath:
-Aureus doesn't really provide anything useful for this challenge directly, but it does allow the Stellar Culex to drop the Starbuster Core for later

Summary:
Expert Golem is a boss that has a reputation of being pathetic, being considered one of the easiest bosses in the game. Low mobility, multiple vulnerable hitboxes, and infrequent attacks make it generally a free kill, especially if you're skilled enough to take on other Hardmode bosses without dying.

This, however, is not Expert Golem. This is Revengeance Golem, which is a whole different beast.

Revengeance Golem is frankly the most major difference in difficulty with the most minor changes to its behaviour. It acts mostly the same, minus some head movements, but its mobility issue is removed and its attacks become frantic and plentiful.

Of course, I forgot about how much of a difference Revengeance makes, and went into this fight expecting an easy time. After almost dying twice I got my act together just in time and managed to come out of the fight alive and with a new bundle of items available.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 7:58



Aftermath:
-I can now obtain the Picksaw, which allows me to mine Scoria Ore
--I decided to craft the Hydrothermic Armour while I was here, since I was still using Pre-Plantera armour otherwise
--I also crafted a large quantity of Life Alloy
---I started by crafting the Miracle Fruit, granting a further +25 health
---I also crafted the Star-Tainted Generator, allowing my elementals and the Luxor's to create explosions upon hitting enemies to further buff their damage

Summary:
Like I mentioned before, I wanted to fight Lunatic Cultist ASAP so I could unlock a crucial accessory for the rest of the run. I wasn't sure what to expect, since I don't remember the Cultist's Revengeance fight like the others, but considering the trend of vanilla boss buffs I prepared for the worst.

The fight was a fast one, but it wasn't an easy one. It was actually quite a tense battle since my damage was fairly solid, and as to be expected the Cultist dealt a lot of damage in response.

The fight was, overall, manageable despite my lack of familiarity and the major buffs it received, and soon I was able to claim victory.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 2:21



Aftermath:
-At this point I obtained the Ancient Manipulator, allowing me to craft one of the most critical items in this run; the Heart of the Elements
-I also used the Manipulator to craft the Absorber; a useful defensive accessory that should aid my survivability
-I also crafted the Statis' Curse by defeating the Stardust Pillar; another accessory saved for later. However, I am leaving the other Pillars for now.

Summary:
The Plaguebringer is weirdly one of those fights that I am good at, probably because of the sheer quantity of challenge runs that have led to drawn-out, lengthy Plaguebringer battles forcing me to improve. Either way, this fight was fairly tame compared to some of the other Hardmode ordeals thus far.

Honestly, there isn't much to say here. I spent half the fight without getting hit, which was cool, and the Heart of the Elements made fairly quick work of the Plaguebringer even if Luxor's kept wandering off, so overall a fairly tame fight.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 4:44



Aftermath:
-This fight houses the final Hardmode armour upgrade, and my final armour upgrade until Providence; the Plaguebringer Armour

Summary:
Now Draedon's Remote is typically a Post-Plantera fight, but I saved it until Post-Golem because of the sheer difficulty the Mech Bosses posed during the initial fights. Despite this, I think I may have postponed it a little too long.

By the time I fought them, my defences were good enough that, aside from select attacks like the Destroyer's head's melee and Prime's headspin, I was able to shrug off most of the damage in this fight so long as I played a little carefully and didn't try to facetank too much.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 2:18 (Twins)
⏲ 3:05 (Prime)
⏲ 3:34 (Destroyer)



Aftermath:
-This is the only fight thus far to not provide anything useful to this run, though this is mainly because it is simply a series of rematches against earlier bosses and thus doesn't count.

Summary:
Once again, the trend of vanilla Hardmode bosses becoming nightmares loomed overhead as I began this fight, ensuring this time I wasn't using the Double Feral Rod and thus didn't accidentally summon 2 of them.

Most of the first half of this fight was alright, being a fairly standard Duke Fishron affair, however by around 40% the fight changed for the worse.

By 40% Duke Fishron begins his charging phases, and will continue to do this until it dies, adding extra charges at around 20%. Considering Fishron's damage output and mobility, this part of the fight required careful but frequent use of the dash to avoid taking hundreds of damage which, while not overly-hard, is still fairly nerve-wracking if you're not used to baiting Fishron's charges for that long.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★
⏲ 3:24



Aftermath:
-The only item Duke Fishron provides that is useful here are the Fishron Wings, which are still only debatable compared to other wings' buffs, which may make it generally the least useful Hardmode boss fight in terms of drops in this challenge

Summary:
Ravager acts as the calm before the storm; being the last boss I could call 'bearable' in Hardmode before we begin to move into the bosses that have a history of causing me issues. In this run, the same goes; with Ravager being one of the easiest Hardmode fights here.

Ravager's first phase is highly susceptible to debuffs and piercing attacks like minions, so the Heart of the Elements among other things dealt an insane amount of damage very quickly, even though they aren't typically meant to be the player's main damage source.

Phase 2 wasn't that bad either, as Ravager's large hitbox and periods of immobility made it a target for my accessory-summoned minions all the same.



Difficulty Increase:
★★
⏲ 2:12



Aftermath:
-Ravager's drops are mainly just materials to craft other items, which are always appreciated as they save on a lot of otherwise-compulsory farming later-on
--Ravager's accessory drops may be helpful later, but at the moment aren't too useful

Summary:
A fight that, through these challenge runs, has become synonymous with unnecessarily lengthy boss fights as much as, if not moreso, than even Anahita and Leviathan. Astrum Deus was a fight I anticipated to be awful, mainly considering it is basically a half-million-health Destroyer, though I was more confident due to the nature of how the Heart of the Elements and Luxor's minions worked.

Of course, the Calamity targeting oddity is present throughout the fight; causing all my minions' autotarget to aim for the tail and not the head; thus a lot of manual targeting was happening.

But, try as I might, I could not defeat the worms before daytime approached; causing both Astrum Deus worms to enrage at roughly 18% health each. This actually helped more than it hindered me, though, as their acceleration made their turning slower and thus kept them away from me at the time they'd otherwise be at their most dangerous and aggressive.

Overall, not a fun fight, but still better than it has been at other times.



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 9:54



Aftermath:
-The only Astrum Deus drop that is generally going to be helpful here are the Lunar Fragments; though unlike Ravager's materials farming Deus is a lot more awkward and thus less desirable.
-I can craft the Deific Amulet now, though, whose reduced potion cooldown and increased immunity time are always appreciated

Summary:
Revengeance Moon Lord is another fight that I have forgotten due to not fighting it in a long time, and because I expected the newer updates to have changed it, and I must say I actually like this fight more than Expert Moon Lord.

The fact Moon Lord does not lose his main deathray attack means you always have to remain on your guard, best done by memorising the times of its attacks or watching for when it retracts its tongue after inflicting Moon Bite. This, while it did take some adjusting, was more than worth it for the fact that the True Eyes of Cthulhu were no longer allowed to perform their mini-deathrays anymore; the attack that otherwise sours the normal Moon Lord fight.

Specific to the challenge, Phase 1 was much shorter than Phase 2, even with the central eye's frequent use of invulnerability. Fortunately my accessory-summoned minions could deal with the Moon Clots, preventing the Moon Lord from healing itself as it had done in prior challenge runs.

And, with a long fight behind me, I finally managed to defeat the Moon Lord, and thus bring an end to the 2nd part of the run... mostly...



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 10:21



Aftermath:
-Defeating the Moon Lord unlocks the Post-Moon Lord content of the run, which will mainly be covered in the next guide
-Defeating Moon Lord grants 2 more accessory slots; 1 from the challenge rules and 1 from the Celestial Onion
-Using Luminite I could upgrade 2 other things as well:
--First, I crafted the Seraph Tracers for increased movement speed and a freed-up accessory slot
--Second, I crafted the Flowers of Mortality so I could use the weapon's base damage to buff Luxor's significantly

Summary:
Now, I was originally planning to do this Pre-Moon Lord, but considering how many bosses I'd just fought in a row without upgrades decided to make rematches more bearable by allowing myself to fight it Post-Moon Lord, where I was a little bit stronger than before.

As before, I fought almost every single Hardmode mini-boss and boss, as well as some powerful Pre-Hardmode bosses for reference, with the only exceptions either being mini-bosses I forgot to include or didn't deem powerful enough to include... mostly just forgetting things like the Sand and Cloud Elementals, Eidolist and Paladin

Overall, the Post-Moon Lord buffs show a fairly noticeable buff to my player, as the bosses I'd faced only moments ago often had whole minutes shaved off of their previous time. Bearing in mind a death meant rematching all of them again, I was a little more cautious than with Pre-Hardmode's Boss Rush...



Difficulty Increase:
★★★★
⏲ 0:02 (Goblin Summoner)
⏲ 0:05 (Skeletron)
⏲ 0:07 (Slime God)
⏲ 0:08 (Ogre and Dark Mage)
⏲ 0:05 (Giant Clam)
⏲ 0:29 (Twins)
⏲ 0:38 (Prime)
⏲ 0:53 (Destroyer)
⏲ 0:29 (Cryogen)
⏲ 0:08 (Aquatic Scourge)
⏲ 0:31 (Brimmy)
⏲ 0:40 (Plantera)
⏲ 0:22 (Great Sand Shark)
⏲ 1:29 (Calamitas)
⏲ 1:46 (Golem)
⏲ 3:10 (Anahita & Leviathan)
⏲ 1:08 (Betsy)
⏲ 2:41 (Draedon's Remote)
⏲ 2:27 (Duke Fishron)
⏲ 3:44 (Plaguebringer Goliath)
⏲ 1:44 (Ravager)
⏲ 2:21 (Buffed Astrum Aureus)
⏲ 6:18 (Astrum Deus)
⏲ 8:18 (Moon Lord)



Aftermath:
-Being allowed to keep their loot mainly meant I could amass a fair amount of money from fighting the Boss Rush, though I also kept the Suspicious-Looking Jelly Bean from Aureus' Bag
-With that now dealt with, I can move onto the third and final part of the run... next time

And that was the 2nd of the 3 parts of the updated Weaponless Run, with me hopefully getting all the parts out before the next big update and hopefully not seeing anything become outdated due to changes


Once again apologies for the gap between the last part and this one, I've been balancing a few projects as of recent and so progress was a bit slower than I wanted

Also getting the drawings of the 'funny lady' took longer than expected too... not much else to say there, though



Well, that aside, hope you still enjoyed and I hope to have the third and final part up soon
See you then :)