Welcome back to birbs only

Last time we had managed to bring the Finch Staff all the way through Pre-Hardmode, which ended up being a lot easier than I expected for what was a run mostly centred around the use of pre-boss weapons

This page will consist of all the Hardmode content, as the title would suggest, in the order I fought them in


Rules are on the previous page but in-summary:
-Bird summoning weapons only (For Hardmode, that's the Finch Staff and Raven Staff
-Whips are allowed, but 'typeless' weapons aren't
-Teleportation not allowed


Anyways, with that said, onto the run; featuring even more birbs than there were before:

Goings-On:
Initially, I had plans to try and beeline my way to the Raven Staff as quickly as possible, but before then I had to still make the usual Hardmode preparations so I can have good enough armour and accessories before I fight any bosses.

The first thing I did was rush to get a better whip: the Cool Whip. While I could've re-fought the Wall of Flesh for the Firecracker I expected that the Cool Whip had the chance to be better due to its better range and my birbs' low damage likely not creating very powerful explosions. Thankfully it didn't take too long to get even though I had to basically poke the Ice Golem to death.

Next up was the Ankh Shield, which was as-ever fairly awkward to get. I also remembered halfway through that I hadn't got the Jelly-Charged Battery, and so after making the shield I fought Slime God again and it was a lot easier than the first fight.

After that I went to craft Angel Wings since I figured that the damage buff from the alternative wasn't worth it, so I spent 20 minutes waiting for Wyverns and ended up with 3 more Coco's Feathers before I even had the first Wyvern spawn, as well as some headphones?

Next, I went to the spider nest halfway down the hellavator and farmed out some Spider Armour. With that I now increased my birb army all the way up to 6 birbs.

I then had to go and farm for Life Fruit since I was worried that most things I had to fight would take a while to defeat and so the bonus health would be important. Found a few and managed to also get a Dual Hook from a particularly unfriendly chest I found along the way.

The last thing I did was find the shimmer pool since I also wanted some extra buffs I could get. I managed to get the Aegis Fruit, Arcane Crystal, Vital Crystal and Galaxy Pearl.

At last, I was ready to try out my plans and headed not to the surface at night, but instead to the underground jungle again...

Difficulty: oo
Time: 7:44


The Fight:
Like I said earlier, Plantera gatekeeps the Pumpkin Moon and thus access to the Raven Staff. Since she doesn't have a time limit I was more than fine with slowly poking her health down if I needed to if it meant progress, so I decided to fight her before anything else.

Plantera got big buffs from Calamity, with over 100,000 health to her name. I could deal decent damage by this point, but decent damage was still fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things.

After 4 minutes mainly consisting of finicky flora circling, it entered its 2nd and more dangerous phase. Thankfully, with all my debuff sources I could keep the tendrils at bay and so had to mainly focus on chipping down Plantera's remaining health without playing too recklessly.

Overall, a long fight but not a majorly challenging one.


Post-Boss:
With Plantera defeated I gain access to the Post-Plantera dungeon and thus the Pumpkin Moon, alongside other things that will be unlocked for when I get to use them later.

I could have gotten the Raven Staff here but, given the speed Plantera was defeated, I decided instead to actually hold out on getting it until I either beat all 6 Pre-Plantera bosses or reached a wall that my current birbs simply couldn't overcome.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 4:35


The Fight:
The mechanical bosses were the trio I expected would stonewall my progress before I picked up the Raven Staff due to their time limits being an ever-present factor that forces a time limit for each fight. They were the main reason I decided to fight Plantera first, so how did the first one turn out?

The Twins didn't end up being that bad of a fight at all, honestly. In Phase 1 Spazmatism was just about in-range of my Cool Whip and so I could hit it while dodging, though it did give me some problems when it transitioned into Phase 2 and constantly kept a stream of cursed flames between us. However, as it is slower while breathing fire, the birbs actually managed to get consistent hits in while I couldn't.

Retinazer, on the other hand, basically never proved to be a big problem at all. Because of my warding accessories and good defence, Retinazer could barely do any damage to me while I slowly cut through its health.

Overall, not that bad.


Post-Boss:
With one mechanical boss down I got access to Mythril and Orichalcum, but didn't end up upgrading any of my items between this fight and the next.

Speaking of the next fight, it was the one I was most worried about: Destroyer.

Difficulty: o
Time: 7:13


The Fight:
So Destroyer... didn't end up being much more than a massive damage sponge despite all my earlier concerns.

The start of the fight had my birbs, Cool Whip and snowflake hit the Destroyer's segments for pitiful damage, spawning a colossal number of its Probes to pursue us that filled the entire screen around me. The Probes thankfully don't deal contact damage anymore, but their sheer number meant that cleaning them all up took a while.

After the initial wave of Probes was down, it was simply me and the birbs vs Destroyer. As it turns out, he has the same issue as Retinazer did and Destroyer's lasers also did only 1 damage a hit to me; making the only threat he could pose based on his contact damage.

At this point I just had to... walk back and forth along a platform and maximise my whip chip damage by hitting overlapping or clumped-up segments.

So, again, not that bad of a fight and definitely didn't require Ravens yet (outside of saving a lot of time).


Post-Boss:
With 2 mechs down, Prime would have its full strength when I faced it, which I figured would make it fairly dangerous since it would have a decently high health pool and full damage.

I, again, didn't really have anything worth upgrading between the fights, and so went on to fight Prime the very next night...

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 5:16


The Fight:
Unlike the other two mechs, Skeletron Prime was able to pack a punch and was a significantly stronger foe than the others.

Despite this, there isn't really all that much to say since the fight itself was fairly standard for fighting Prime. Focus on the laser so it can't snipe you, then try to focus on the head.

Prime did end up almost catching me with the headspin a few times, and I did have to stay fairly still while it flew overhead to maximise damage, but aside from that things went reasonably well.


Post-Boss:
With all 3 mechanical bosses down I gain access to Hallowed gear and all 3 Soul types. I created a full set of Hallowed Armour, complete with a Durendal for a stronger whip. I then crafted the Angel Treads for the increased mobility, the Blood Orange for the boosted health, and the Pickaxe Axe for a pickaxe upgrade.

With the three biggest threats to the run at this point dealt with, I quickly doubled-back to find the remaining four bosses intended to be fought before Plantera.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 6:47


The Fight:
Cryogen is generally a tougher fight than the mechs were, and may have actually been even harder if I had fought it earlier.

The phases where Cryogen flies overhead are fairly simple with my current gear as the Durendal has enough reach to hit Cryogen even while it flies overhead. The Cool Whip, meanwhile, likely would have struggled for the phase where Cryogen flies a little higher and may have had to wait for the dashes to 'tag' Cryogen. The birbs, either way, did decently well at hitting it and never had trouble hitting the shield's larger hitbox.

The phases where it dashes are where the fight begins ramping up, since the dashes do high damage and move Cryogen away from the birbs too fast for them to keep up. The more Cryogen dashes, the worse the problem becomes.

However, despite some difficulty, Cryogen wasn't too bad to defeat. If the Cool Whip thing was a problem, though, it might have been worthy of 3-star difficulty instead.


Post-Boss:
I saved a funky ice man from the big ice cube, which he was probably appreciate of, though he couldn't really offer me much else than weapons I couldn't use.

The Frost Flare actually got buffed and can provide buffs for more than just melee and ranger now, which means it can actually be quite useful for me.

The final upgrade is the Ornate Shield, which provides me a better dash for some added mobility.

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 5:45


The Fight:
Scourge seems to have had a few significant buffs since the last time I fought it, possibly because they changed how debuffs work on worm enemies (that I never really noticed much until now). Scourge had quite high resistance to all of my debuffs, meaning that even when I was able to inflict debuffs on all its segments it didn't really 'shred' it like in previous runs.

The Scourge fight is fairly standard, though. Most of the fight was moving in a wavy pattern in one direction, then moving to a different level of my arena and doing it back the other way. When its health got lower and its speed increased the wave motion became taller and made manoeuvring generally more awkward; again something I barely noticed due to how often I managed to trivialise Scourge before.

Scourge, following in the footsteps of the Eye and Skeletron, managed to get hit by a falling star and took 5,000 damage which was pretty silly.

With only 20 health to spare near the end I eventually managed to defeat Scourge. Would have probably been smoother if I didn't run into a bunch of projectiles I definitely should've been able to avoid, but a win is a win I guess?


Post-Boss:
Tier 2 acid rain is unlocked which grants me access to the Nuclear Fuel Rod; the replacement for the Jelly-Charged Battery that has similar effects but replaces the Electrified debuff and orbs with Irradiated and explosions.

Scourge itself doesn't really drop anything else I can use for the run itself, however.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 4:33


The Fight:
I would have fought Queen Slime earlier but it genuinely took me this long to find a Gelatinous Crystal to fight it.

There is not all that much to say about Queen Slime honestly. Her large hitbox makes her an easy target for the birbs, especially in Phase 1, so after less than 2 minutes she was already down to her second phase.

The second phase was a little more tricky, since her faster movements made her more dangerous and also generally a little harder to hit with the birbs, but they proved to be fast enough to keep up with Queen Slime most of the time anyways.


Post-Boss:
The main thing I get from Queen Slime is the Gelatinous Pillion, which is essentially just a fancier slime mount. Aside from that, not much else to mention.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 5:40


The Fight:
The final boss before my birbs get upgraded again, Brimmy had the potential to be fairly dangerous with her decent damage and debuffs, but ended up not really being much more than a damage sponge for a lot of the fight.

While she chases the player, tight circling keeps her fairly stationary and thus in a fairly advantageous position for the birbs to attack. Circling too tight might lead to being hit but you can actually get very close without being in any real danger.

While she's flying overhead and firing fireballs at you running in a straight line is generally the best way to avoid it. Like Queen Slime the birbs do a decently good job of keeping up, too, so the main problem is running out of arena room and having to turn around, though this again isn't too tricky if you know the timing of the fireballs.

The shield phase is still the same as ever, as the birbs won't directly attack her... plus even if they did they'd deal negligible damage anyways.

Overall, not too tough, but a fight that could cause problems for people who struggle with her normally.


Post-Boss:
Brimmy doesn't really provide anything I need for the run, but she was the last Pre-Plantera boss I needed to defeat.

Now, the next step in progression is one of the biggest leaps in power in the run... the Pumpkin Moon...

Goings-On:
Now that I've defeated all the bosses up to Plantera, I decided to finally take on the Pumpkin Moon in order to get my hands on the Raven Staff; the first significant upgrade not to me, but to the birbs themselves.

Now, normally this would go as a footnote after a boss, but I feel like I need to mention it in its own segment because boy howdy did this take a while.

Also bear in-mind each Pumpkin Moon takes 9 minutes to complete, and that doesn't include any breaks between them to craft items or to clean up my arena of all the stuff they dropped previously.

Pumpkin Moon 1: Got absolutely nothing from it outside of a single piece of Spooky Armour. Didn't even see a Pumpking due to how poor my damage is.

Pumpkin Moon 2: Managed to reach a Pumpking and defeat it shortly before daytime only to get... a Horseman's Blade... darn.
I also realised I should probably get the Morning Star from the Dungeon for this since my damage is pretty terrible and that would increase it substantially.

Pumpkin Moon 3: Huge damage boost meant I got in a lot more progress. Couple of enemy banners for faster early waves, a Spooky Hook, and I completed the entire set of Spooky Armour.

Pumpkin Moon 4: Managed to beat 2 Pumpkings but, again, got nothing from them. Did manage to get a Necromantic Scroll for a Papyrus Scarab and a Spooky Twig for some wings. Also caught a Gold Bird right afterwards which was fitting.

Pumpkin Moon 5: Made it to Wave 15 and even got my hands on the Dark Harvest whip but, again, no Raven Staff.

Pumpkin Moon 6: Got interrupted by pirates. I thought the Pumpkin Moon was meant to override invasions like that but apparently it didn't and most of the event was wasted on pirates.

Pumpkin Moon 7: Got absolutely nothing

Pumpkin Moon 8: Finally got my hands on a Mythical Raven Staff from one of the Pumpkings.

In all, it took 26 Pumpkings in order to get the Raven Staff and several hours of my life I was not expecting to pour into the Pumpkin Moon. I also defeated 48 Mourning Woods in that time so if it was allowed to drop a banner it also would've been close.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 2:34


The Fight:
The first boss I get to battle with the Ravens and, as you might be able to guess from the time, a big improvement in terms of how quickly I can defeat enemies now.

Calamitas' fight is, for the most part, fairly simple. The birbs are able to get in a lot of damage while Calamitas flies overhead and then lose some when she moves before swarming her again when she has repositioned herself. Given my gear is on-tier for this fight it felt like a fairly normal boss fight.

The brothers and the seekers were also fairly easy to deal with this time since, again, they have phases of being fairly stationary that give my birbs opportunities to attack them and rack up solid damage.

I did have one small problem on my first attempt where I got some absolutely atrocious bullet-hell patterns that led to some forced damage that ultimate meant I lost, but the second attempt went much smoother.


Post-Boss:
I now gain access to Cores of Calamity which primarily mean I get the Asgard's Valor to free up an accessory slot. I can now actually equip the Papyrus Scarab that I got earlier, which is another good boost in damage and another birb for the group.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 1:36


The Fight:
At this point I was using both the Morning Star and Dark Harvest: the former for single-target damage and the latter for groups since that seemed to be the best way to optimise my birbs' damage. Aureus ended up being the first boss targeted after this discovery and oh boy does it show.

Aureus did not appreciate the Morning Star's high damage and the boosts it gave to my birbs via the Flask of Ichor. The birbs themselves also swarm Aureus easily thanks to its colossal hitbox granting them every opportunity to attack, even while it walks. The only time they can't hit it consistently is during the jumps but, given how short the fight was, it didn't even get to do that very often.

Overall I am super happy that I got a short and simple Aureus fight for once, especially after... the last challenge run...


Post-Boss:
Aureus' defeat means that various Astral Infection enemies get buffed and, in my case, that means the Stellar Culex can now drop the Starbuster Core; an 'upgrade' to the Nuclear Fuel Rod I got back from Aquatic Scourge.

Outside of this I didn't really get too much from Aureus this time outside of the Suspicious Looking Jelly Bean for what is objectively one of the best mounts in the game.

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 3:48


The Fight:
So this fight ended up going the complete opposite way that I expected it to go. I expected Leviathan to be a complete nonissue due to the same reasons as Aureus, the large hitbox making it easy to hit, and Anahita to be a problem due to her smaller hitbox and groups of dashes, but apparently I was wrong.

Anahita was, for the most part, fairly trivial. Her attacks hurt, sure, but she was easy to dodge and didn't have much health, plus the birbs did a surprisingly good job of staying close. In fact, she was down to 40% health in 26 seconds before she dipped and Leviathan showed up.

Leviathan, meanwhile, was the actual problem. Despite the big hitbox she proved to be very, very durable and could still hit me very hard when I inevitably failed to dodge the meteors well. Worse yet, the Aquatic Aberrations ended up being a problem again because the whips couldn't keep them away: the Morning Star was too slow while the Dark Harvest lacked knockback. After a few attempts I even had to start using Tesla Potions again like I did in the previous challenge run.

After around 2 minutes both of them were active again, which in-turn caused some failures too since Anahita's projectiles caused me to screw up a few of my attempts to dodge Leviathan. On the winning run Anahita lasted another 40 seconds before being defeated; leaving me with an aggressive Leviathan.

At this point things went alright, arguably even better than Levi's first solo phase since she spits less meteor projectiles at you. In fact, speaking of meteors, Levi even managed to join the 'get hit by a falling star' club, now making 3 hits and 1 near miss.

A surprisingly tough battle, honestly, but not a bad one.


Post-Boss:
And for my troubles I get basically nothing here except a decently good fight. Anahita's drops are, again, mostly weapons and so I can't make use of them.

Difficulty: o
Time: 0:56


The Fight:
It's... Expert Mode Golem... there really isn't that much to say.

Golem gets its health shredded worse than any other Hardmode boss, possibly even harder than if I'd fought the mechanical bosses with the Ravens earlier.

There... just isn't anything to go over Golem here just reawakened, tripped over and hurt his knee or something.


Post-Boss:
The real interesting stuff comes after Golem, with various changes to the world that unlock new items for me. One great, one decent and one that actually turned out kinda... bad.

The Great: Firstly I got access to Scoria meaning I also get access to Life Alloy. I crafted the Miracle Fruit and Star-Tainted Generator, as well as the Living Dew which I figured would be useful for later and the... Statis' Blessing that I could have and should have probably made a long time ago...

I also made Hydrothermic Armour and started gathering materials for the Hadal Mantle as well.

The Decent: Plague-themed enemies are now in the jungle. This is mainly useful for gaining access to Plaguebringer Goliath for now, but might become more useful later.

The Bad: Martian Probes. Now, I had to go and farm for exactly 2 Wyverns while I was gathering materials for the Hadal Mantle. A Martian Probe showed up and I failed to kill it in-time. Unfortunately I had NPCs living near my Wyvern farming point so I had to fight the Martians before I could continue hunting for Wyverns since the enemies' laser spam was becoming too overwhelming to farm through.

I eventually defeated the Martians, headed back up and... grazed another Probe while I was slow-falling with my wings... and had to fight the Martians again.

After the second defeat of the Martians I managed to fight my first Wyvern and... grazed another Martian Probe. That is now 3 Martians for 1 Wyvern.

Beat it, headed back, grazed another Probe that escape with a sliver of health. Fought the Martians again. Got all of their banners. Found my 2nd Wyvern alongside, you guessed it, a fifth Martian Probe... that escaped again.

In addendum: I had to defeat the Martian Invasion 5 separate times for a single set of wings that didn't even come from the invasion itself.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 1:33


The Fight:
Duke Fishron ended up being a very quick fight despite Calamity buffing its health, which surprised me given that Duke is a boss that dashes often and so I just assumed my birbs would have some trouble.

The birbs were able to hit it very often, each getting in a hit during charges or managing to catch it and swarm it while it was using one of its non-dash attacks. Additionally, the Hydrothermic Armour's vent minion also does surprisingly well despite me not being beneath Duke very often.

Asgard's Valor let me keep away from Duke's dashes while the birbs quickly took him down, leading to a swift and fairly simple win.


Post-Boss:
So, basically all of Duke's drops are weapons so there's nothing I got from this- oh? So apparently Duke was pleased enough with my birb army that he was willing to give me the Fishron Wings from the very first fight. I wasn't really planning on farming him or anything but I will happily accept them still.

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 1:24


The Fight:
Empress, like Fishron, ended up being a fairly quick fight since my gear is still roughly on-tier for the fight.

While my birbs do have a little bit of trouble with her dashes, she does have many attacks where she stars relatively still and most of them are positioned above the player, so both my birbs and the Hydrothermic Armour's vent minion get to do a lot of work really, really quickly.

Admittedly the fight was a little close, but that was more due to my own recklessness near the end, so overall another fairly swift fight.


Post-Boss:
The Empress has one specific drop that I am interested in, that being the Kaleidoscope; the final whip I can obtain throughout the rest of the game. In 3 attempts I managed to get it.

Unlike Duke, Empress was not willing to drop her wings quickly, so I decided to instead simply move onto the next boss I planned to face and headed back to the jungle.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 1:55


The Fight:
This fight was the primary reason that I made the Living Dew, since it boosts my health and halves how long I have to deal with the Plagued debuff. However, as it turned out, I might not have really needed this, either.

The Kaleidoscope I got from the Empress proved to be extremely powerful, both through its own raw damage and its minion-boosting abilities; forcing the Plaguebringer to activate the 'plague nuke barrage' in only 57 seconds. It seems that, being a big target that stays above me a lot, it is incredibly weak to all of my minions and, within less than 2 minutes, the birbs had taken her down.


Post-Boss:
With the Plaguebringer defeated I decided to try out the Plaguebringer Armour to see whether it or the Hydrothermic Armour provided me the best overall buffs. My plan was to face the final remaining boss before the final stretch of Hardmode, Ravager, with both armour sets to see how easy and how long the fight ended up being.

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 2:54 (Plaguebringer Armour) / 1:31 (Hydrothermic Armour)


The Fight:
Ravager is generally quite an easy fight for challenge runs... most of the time. I've fought it a lot for materials or in older runs where I had to fight both its original and Bloodflare-boosted variants so most challenge runs, even ones lacking damage, end up being more of a long fight than a particularly hard one, so what happened here?

For some reason, whether because I was having an 'odd day' or just because I didn't really make a good arena, Ravager ended up being surprisingly tough to deal with for some reason. Not a particularly long fight or anything, but he did nearly beat me up in both runs of the fight, which was surprising.

Ravager, for the most part, plays the same as usual. Destroy the limbs, destroy the floating head, then destroy the body. In my 2 fights testing my 2 armour sets it seemed that the Hydrothermic Armour was better but not by a small margin; instead nearly halving how long it took to beat it. Now this might just be because Plaguebringer Armour isn't suited for Ravager specifically, but the remaining 3 bosses didn't exactly make good targets for testing things out, so Ravager had to do.


Post-Boss:
Ravager mainly drops accessories that become useful a lot later and materials that are generally just useful to get. Nothing is helpful right now, but I appreciate having to farm less.

I also decided at this point to just stick with the Hydrothermic Armour for the remainder of Hardmode, given the times I got from testing.

Difficulty: o
Time: 1:04


The Fight:
Introducing probably the easiest boss in all of Hardmode for the challenge run; easier than even Golem ended up being.

My build is primarily defence-focused, I have birbs that are specifically great at dealing with slower targets, and my armour set bonus minion lingers above my head and deals with things that sit above me especially well, so it just seems like the odds were stacked almost comically against the Cultist.

To make matters worse for him, his health is scaled up in exchange for a forcefield that increases the size of his hitbox that just makes him easier to hit; offsetting his health boost for this fight.

Honestly this just felt somewhat unfair as I facetanked a lot of hits and shredded through Cultist's health before he could do anything of note.


Post-Boss:
I gain the Ancient Manipulator and access to the celestial pillars, which in-turn give me access to two more upgrades.

I first took on the Solar Pillar since it was nearest to my base, using the Meld Blobs to craft the Sponge; a powerful defensive accessory that, while very different from how it used to be, is still pretty good for defensive builds.

I then found the Stardust Pillar in my Astral Infection biome and defeated it in order to get access to the Statis' Curse.

While I was here, I also decided now would be a good time to deal with the final boss I had to defeat before I faced off against the impending doom...

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 2:42


The Fight:
Astrum Deus is always a very troubling fight for challenge runs for two main reasons. The first is Deus has a huge health pool across its two phases, which may be a problem since a lot of challenge runs end up lacking damage against it, and secondly because minions like targeting worm boss' tails; which lead to them lagging behind faster bosses and struggling to deal meaningful damage.

In this run, however, the birbs surprised me greatly. Every time Deus rushed past me they'd get off a lot of rapid, heavy hits against it; having more than enough damage to put heavy dents in the space worm. In fact, they were even able to get off over 20,000 damage before its damage reduction had worn off from when it initially appeared; an impressive feat for some birbs.

Phase 2 did bump up the difficulty, as expected. Having both worms on me at the same time was still somewhat awkward to deal with, so I did my usual challenge run strategy of focusing heavily on one worm and avoiding hitting the other so that only one of them would get fasted; a strategy that ultimately worked and managed to secure me a win.


Post-Boss:
The main thing I get from this fight is access to the Deific Amulet for some additional defence, but I'd also say I get a little confidence boost from being able to actually partake in a fun Astrum Deus battle.

With Astrum Deus defeated it was time to take down the remaining two pillars to enter the end of Hardmode

...Impending Doom Approaches...

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 2:38


The Fight:
Moon Lord was one of the fights I was worried about most, since it had a lot of health and hits incredibly hard with some of its attacks. My build was mostly defence-oriented, so I expected a long fight, but it seems my choices were overall a good call.

The birbs were quick but accurate enough to hit the eyes as I fled, allowing me to deal with the two eyes on the hands with relative ease while trying to keep my distance. The central eye, often the biggest issue in the fight, is seemingly incredibly weak to the Hydrothermic Vent and my birbs and was taken down in only 2 'cycles' - leaving the core exposed and vulnerable in only 1:40; a blazing fast time for a challenge run.

The last thing I had to do was take on the core. Similar to the eyes on the hands the birbs could actually hit it fairly consistently, but I had to watch out for the barrage of spam projectiles and deathrays the eyes bombarded me with in response.

After a fairly quick but reasonably challenging affair the Moon Lord was defeated, bringing an end to the second part of the challenge.


Post-Boss:
I genuinely don't know how the upgrade from the Finch Staff to the Raven Staff was such a huge boost in damage that most bosses were taken down in only a few minutes, but honestly I'm completely fine with that after my last challenge run.

With Moon Lord defeated I gained access to a few new things, but I was mainly focused on the Celestial Onion for its accessory slot and to craft the Celestial Tracers and Stardust Armour using the Luminite; thankfully not taking as long as I'd expected thanks to the Luminite planetoids that spawn after the Moon Lord's defeat.

And with that the second part of birbs only comes to a close; being a surprisingly simple part of the run despite the jump in boss health. While the difficulty did jump up noticeably from part 1 it didn't ever reach a point where things become 'too' challenging, unlike a few previous challenge runs that often had a few standout bosses with huge difficulty spikes.

Don't worry, though, I'm sure Post-Moon Lord will come with its fair share of awkward bosses since I'm stuck with the Raven Staff until I unlock the boosted Pumpkin Moon... if only they let you craft, say, a bumblebirb-themed staff after Dragonfolly or something...



Anyways, wishful thinking over niche topics aside, I will hopefully have Part 3 written up and out soon. I do have two other art things I'm working on at the same time; a larger individual piece and a page with 17 more smaller bits of art to make, so I can't make any guarantees as to when I can have the next part out - but I'll try my best

Next part will cover the ending of the run, and I hope to see you guys then when I get it uploaded.

See you next time 'v'



[18/10/23]: So Calamity just... uhh... buffed the Raven Staff?

To whoever the secret Calamity Dev is reading these pages wanting me to have an easier time up to the Devourer:
1. Hi and thanks 'v'
2. Post-Moon Lord has already been completed and the write-up is under way, so I don't actually get to see the buff in the run unfortunately