Welcome to the third and final part of the birbs only page; covering all of the Post-Moon Lord main content up to Draedon and Supreme Calamitas.

Last time we took down every Hardmode boss, upgraded from the Finch Staff to the Raven Staff, and ended with Moon Lord's defeat.


Also, since the last part was written up, Calamity buffed the Raven Staff. Unfortunately I'd already finished the Post-Moon Lord content before the update... if I'd only held out a couple weeks some of the bosses here would've been much easier...



Rules are listed on the original, Pre-Hardmode page, but in summary I can only use whips and the various bird-themed summoner staves for weapons. Teleportation is also banned because birds... cannot do that.

Anyways, stalling aside, onto the actual content:

Goings-On:
We left off with Moon Lord being defeated, giving me access to Luminite. With this I crafted the Stardust Armour and Celestial Tracers and used the Celestial Onion for another accessory slot; something very useful for helping offset my damage slowly being out-scaled by bosses.

Aside from these things, however, I didn't have anything else I needed to do before fighting any bosses. The main thing I had to do was decide exactly which boss to face, since the main two paths at this point are to fight Providence immediately and risk lacking the damage or to face Polterghast and use Polterghast-tier loot to fight it and hope the damage boost matters.

I ended up doing the latter since I am still using Post-Plantera birbs and Providence has a lot of health.

Difficulty: oooo
Time: 8:19


The Fight:
Polterghast is always an awkward fight when it comes to challenge runs because I always end up having to fight it early with weak weapons. This wasn't all too different.

The main thing about Polterghast is that you don't need to actually fight it in the dungeon; one of the ever-useful things for challenge runs since it lets me make my underworld arena bigger to fight it there instead and even prepare for the next couple of bosses early. I had tried to fight it in a smaller arena inside the dungeon but my birbs could barely damage it so I opted to do this instead.

The first phase of Polterghast can actually be circled fairly well outside of its charges, though this slowly falls apart later when the hooks detach since their projectiles force me to stay away and prolong the fight.

When the clone becomes active I tried to focus the birbs on it as much as possible so I would only have to dodge Polterghast for the rest of the fight instead of two of them. This ended up taking a little longer than I'd hoped, but once the clone was down the fight became significantly easier.


Post-Boss:
With Polterghast defeated I get access to 3 accessories; the Affliction for general buffs, the Phantomic Artefact that grants buffs and can damage enemies, and the Reaper Tooth Necklace for additional damage against bosses. Unfortunately I seemingly only had room for 1 and ended up using the Artefact.

In hindsight it would have probably been smarter to use the Necklace for the armour penetration due to how one of the bosses coming up soon turned out...

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 5:16


The Fight:
I expected the Guardians to be a fairly easy fight, given my first experience with the new Guardians was in... 'fun mode'... and thus should've been significantly easier. Surprisingly, the Guardians actually put up quite a decent fight.

Targeting the Guardians and dealing good damage was actually quite tough. The Guardian Healer was immediately way faster than the birbs and could outrun them outside of when it stopped to attack, which was an issue.

The Guardian Defender was easily the toughest of the three, mainly due to the issue of range. Using my whip to 'tag' the Defender was deceptively hard to do and, again, the birbs had a hard time keeping up while the Guardian moved around to follow my dodges and keep up with me.

The Guardian Commander was, surprisingly, easier than the other two. Its dashes gave me ample opportunity to use the whip's tag function and it had periods of the fight where it was easier to hit such as the ends of dashes and between the giant fireballs during one of its attacks that I could use to get good damage in with the birbs.

These Guardians are a lot more capable than the old ones used to be, definitely.


Post-Boss:
Defeating the Guardians unlocks access to Providence; one of the scariest fights in challenge runs. Lets hope I don't get reduced to overly-scorched nuggets this time...

Difficulty: ooooo
Time: 15:27


The Fight:
Providence is the first boss that truly showcases how the boss scaling compares to my birbs, and as you couldn't tell things scale very poorly for me. I knew the fight would be a long one, but was not quite expecting more than a full in-game day for a successful attempt.

Providence hits hard and has lots of projectiles, and being a simple birb with an army of birbs I am fairly poorly-equipped to deal with it all. While I can withstand a decent amount of hits and am mobile enough to dodge most attacks, my poor damage output means that damage and debuffs stack up until I'm pretty crispy. Providence is also mobile enough to outrun my birbs often, making my damage even worse.

Eventually I managed to chip Providence down to the Guardian phase, though it took until 1 PM to do so. The Guardians are, again, a huge problem because each of them provides a huge buff to Providence and are hard to target, too, made worse by their rotation making it exceptionally hard to focus any one of them down. I tried, as ever, to prioritise the healter Guardian before the others.

Eventually, by 4:13 PM, I had taken down all 3 Guardians and was left to deal with a 131,000 health Providence; not a great place to be since that is a lot of health to get through in a little over 3 minutes.

By the end of the fight Providence was able to enter her nighttime mode; something very bad for me since she attacks faster and can output far more damage. The only relief I got was that she was only able to stay in this state for 27 seconds before the fight finally came to a close.


Post-Boss:
Providence's defeat unlocks a lot more stuff than Polterghast did, though mainly through unlocking access to things rather than directly dropping them.

The main drop Providence provides is the Elysian Aegis, used to upgrade my dash. I could attempt to get the Elysian Wings as well now, but decided to leave that until later given how much trouble on-tier Providence was.

Defeating Providence also unlocks Uelibloom and Bloodstone; allowing me to immediately craft Bloodflare Armour. On a side-note the Kaleidoscope's crit bonus does actually work on the mines, which is neat.

However, before I actually equip the Bloodflare Armour, I wanted to quickly head back to one last boss; one tied very heavily to the run.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 3:16


The Fight:
Dragonfolly is the replacement for Bumblebirb, as most people know, which means there would be an intrinsic rivalry between it and the birb harpy. Thus, for the sake of 'honour' (and not skipping this boss for once because that keeps happening), I must fight it with on-tier equipment; the same used for the Guardians and Providence.

Dragonfolly didn't end up being that bad. My damage was solid despite being worried my birbs wouldn't keep up with its dashes, and I was additionally able to output heavy damage whenever the Dragonfolly was stationary. By 1:40 it was already down to half health.

The later phases played very similarly to the first, so there isn't really much to say. Overall just a relatively simple fight.


Post-Boss:
Dragonfolly doesn't provide me anything useful to me right now, but the Effulgent Feathers will be useful later. Folly was also kind enough to provide me with the Folly Feed (which I admittedly never used) and the Swordsplosion (which I admittedly cannot use).

Also, with Folly defeated, I was allowed to upgrade to Post-Providence/Polterghast gear; including a health upgrade via the Elderberry, and Bloodflare Armour.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 3:34


The Fight:
Void is, thankfully, a fairly simple fight. The birbs hit often and are in large numbers and the whip can hit multiple Dark Energies at once, so the Dark Energy phases are all relatively simple and straightforward.

The vortex phases are also very simple because Void becomes stationary and, thus, a super easy target for my birbs.

Overall, a very quick and clean battle.


Post-Boss:
1/3 of the way to the Devourer, though nothing from Void itself...

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 4:34


The Fight:
Weaver ended up being the toughest of the 3 Sentinels, again due to its high movement speed and its dashes.

Phase 1 was fairly simple and could be dealt with through basic circling; going down in 56 seconds. Not really much to say there.

Phase 2, meanwhile, gradually scaled up in difficulty. While being able to hit all its segments for damage increased my overall damage its dashes meant my birbs would often have trouble keeping up.

When the ice waves were added it got a bit tougher since I had to adjust. I also realised that Weaver's dashes and the ice waves don't sync up right now, so the difficulty at this point actually fluctuates based on when it wants to dash and when the ice waves fall. The tornadoes, meanwhile, were not too bad to deal with.


Post-Boss:
Weaver's defeat means 2 of the 3 Sentinels have been defeated on my way to face the Devourer. Again, I don't get anything useful from Weaver itself for the run.

Difficulty: oo
Time: 2:51


The Fight:
For a large amount of the fight Signus is kind of a pushover. It takes knockback during the 'chase' phase and thus can be stun-locked through use of the whip and the birbs swarming it.

When Signus stops taking knockback things do become a bit harder, but outside of his teleportation and dashes the birbs don't have much trouble keeping up with him at all.

The projectile attack is fairly simple to deal with, since Signus' movement is fairly limited during it. The birbs can hit Signus while I circle him for a fairly easy time here.

The dash phase is technically the hardest one. The dash itself does high damage and can be awkward to time the end of, but it isn't too awful either. The main problem is a slight loss of damage from the birbs.


Post-Boss:
With all 3 Sentinels defeated, we now get to move towards the third and final birb upgrade from none other than the Devourer-

wait? what's that?

Oh, right, we have to defeat every available boss before we upgrade. This means we have to take a small detour over to the Sulphurous Sea before we can take on the space worm.

Difficulty: oooo
Time: 13:33


The Fight:
Old Duke wasn't just a tricky boss, but actually getting it to appear was awkward. Acid Rain tier 3 has lots of enemies thrown at you, including 2 mini-bosses, and I'm still using Hardmode weapons for something intended to be mildly challenging even using Post-Polterghast loot.

In fact, it took until the third Acid Rain to actually get a chance to fight Old Duke; with the banners speeding up the event's progression significantly.

Old Duke is, as ever, a tough fight. Staying close is dangerous, he has predictive dashes, and he utilises the birbs' biggest weakness in having fast, sudden movements. Old Duke seems like it has basically been designed to end my run. So how did I get through?

Most of my damage actually came from when Old Duke was immobile; either when it was summoning projectiles or during its move vulnerable, 'rest' phases. While I could deal some chip damage while running away, these were the main times I could attack as Old Duke was immobile and large enough for the birbs to hit consistently.

Phase 2 added further difficulty through the vortexes, but my arena was intentionally designed to be far larger with them in-mind; with me avoiding any areas vortexes were spawned almost entirely. Old Duke's eye glow also made it far easier to tell when he was resting, allowing me to be more reckless at times.

Also, Old Duke managed to join the 'get hit by a falling star' club; though with how much health he has it barely dented him. It is quite funny though that such a mobile boss managed to also get hit by a star.

Overall, definitely a tough fight, but definitely manageable with careful play.


Post-Boss:
Every Pre-Devourer boss has now been defeated, allowing me to access his fight.

Unfortunately I don't really get anything from Old Duke itself, since most of its drops are weapons. However I did notice that the Mutated Truffle was changed from an accessory to a minion... something that worries me if I ever did a Weaponless run again...

But that aside, onto the fight I was dreading most...

Difficulty: oooooo
Time: 29:05


The Fight:
Introducing the largest difficulty spike in the run and, without question, the hardest boss of the run also. The Devourer manages to encapsulate every issue with this run; all condensed into a single, monstrous foe.

Devourer is a worm boss, leading to problems with inconsistency in my minions' targeting, and also has many segments with high damage resistance that effectively reduce the size of its useful hitboxes. Devourer hits like a truck which means I've essentially got to expect several rematches from the get-go. It moves incredibly fast and can teleport to evade by birbs and remove my whip's summoner tag, made worse by its 'flying' phases actually being mostly out of the Kaleidoscope's range. Finally, it is easily the longest time spent without any weapon upgrades; showing just how out-scaled and outclassed my birbs truly are by this point.

Getting hits off against the Devourer, significant ones at least, was a tricky process; mainly limited to brief moments I could hit it while it switched from passive to aggressive, and while I was evading the head while it charged at me. The latter was the most common of these, which kept me in significant danger for a large portion of the fight.

A whole 13:40 later, more time than nearly any other boss, I was able to enter just the second phase. Phase 2 is better in some ways but worse in others. The Devourer is much more aggressive which provides more opportunities to hit it, but also puts in in far more danger. The body is larger, especially the head, which makes landing hits easier for the birbs, but also makes the Devourer have an easier time hitting me as well.

By 16:15 I managed to get to the laser wall phase, which is actually easier due to the Devourer losing contact damage and giving me safer opportunities to attack. While I did get some bad laser wall patterns that was basically to be expected, but I made-do with what I had.

Finally, by 25:06 the Cosmic Guardians were spawned and by 26:11 the background turned black; signalling the final phases of the fight. The Guardians are annoying and refuse to die while catching me off-guard a few times, though the background change is most easily dealt with be either memorising the timings or just by assuming the Devourer is almost always in its aggressive phase.

After a long time and several lengthy attempts, the Devourer was finally defeated.


Post-Boss:
Defeating the Devourer grants access to Cosmilite and Ascendant Spirit Essence, as well as the latter's 3 new components.

Obviously the first thing I crafted was the Corvid Harbinger Staff; the third and final birb weapon and a gargantuan boost in my damage output that is greatly appreciated. These new birbs can also... teleport... which I'm not allowed to do under the rules of the run... I'll just pretend I can't do it because of being bigger and less mobile I guess?

Accidental lore inconsistency aside, I also crafted the Nucleogenesis to give my birbs the most powerful electric abilities they can get and the best summoner buffs available. I also crafted the Asgardian Aegis for more defence and I also equipped the Nebulous Core for the revival ability since it seemed very helpful.

However, before I farm for the rest of the ingredients I need, I wanted to have a little fun first and test out my new and improved birb swarm.

The Fights:
In order to see just how strong my birbs were, I decided to re-fight every Hardmode and Post-Moon Lord boss up to this point, as well as some noteworthy mini-bosses in a boss rush-style gauntlet.

While I knew basically nothing from Hardmode would stand a chance, I figured it'd at least be interesting to show just how much stronger these birbs are compared to my original attempts.

Below are the bosses, their times, and the cumulative time for the boss rush (outside of actually getting to summon some of them since I had to do a lot of moving around the world):

0:03 (0:03): Dreadnautilus - Great start
0:10 (0:13): Cryogen - Again, not expecting much yet
0:08 (0:21): Aquatic Scourge - First long trek to the arena
0:16 (0:37): Brimstone Elemental - Longest fight yet, thankful for my Cavern Pylon
0:21 (0:58): Flying Dutchman + Cragmaw Mire - Fighting some mini-bosses together for time's sake
0:09 (1:07): Paladin + Armoured Digger - Even the Post-Moon Lord buff didn't save Paladin
0:03 (1:10): Great Sand Shark - Ouch
0:24 (1:34): Mechanical Bosses - Fought together, still shredded
0:16 (1:50): Plantera - Huge difference from the original fight
0:46 (2:36): Calamitas Clone - Longest fight thus far, probably due to the bullet-hells
0:03 (2:39): 10 Eidolists - Idk what I expected
0:40 (3:19): Anahita & Leviathan - Mostly just Leviathan
0:22 (3:41): Astrum Aureus - Same weaknesses but I have more damage
0:20 (4:01): Golem - Survived longer than expected
0:11 (4:12): Martian Saucer - Wasn't sure what to fight alongside it, so fought it alone
0:18 (4:30): Betsy - Didn't fight it before but here we are I guess
0:21 (4:51): Plaguebringer Goliath - Its health did not save it from being shredded
1:44 (6:35): Ravager - Didn't factor in its health boost so its health did save it from being shredded
0:33 (7:08): Empress of Light - Went down real quick
0:42 (7:50): Duke Fishron - Invulnerable phases saved it a little
0:24 (8:14): Lunatic Cultist - There's pillars everywhere now, oops
0:48 (9:02): Astrum Deus - Its invulnerable phases did not save it
1:22 (10:24): Moon Lord - Fittingly the first Moon Lord-tier boss brings us over 10 minutes
0:39 (11:03): 5 Mothrons - The Eidolist wave but it actually survived
0:32 (11:35): Pumpking + 2 Mourning Woods - 2 of the latter to match the Frost Moon bosses
0:27 (12:02): Ice Queen + Santa-NK1 + Everscream - Surprisingly quicker than Pumpkin Moon stuff
0:26 (12:28): Nuclear Terror - Seen enough of these after the Acid Rain
0:26 (12:54): Mauler - Beginning of the underwater mini-boss rush
0:27 (13:21): Reaper Shark - Kinda hurts
0:21 (13:42): Colossal Squid - Did barely anything
1:19 (15:01): Eidolon Wyrm - Only just noticed but did they take away the Cultist attacks?
1:01 (16:02): Dragonfolly - Back to the surface and back to purely 'proper' bosses
1:11 (17:03): Profaned Guardians - Lot easier with faster minions
1:40 (18:43): Providence - A lot easier with these stronger birbs
1:27 (20:10): Signus - Not much to say but we're over 20 minutes now
1:34 (21:44): Weaver - Went down very quickly as well
1:31 (23:15): Void - Mostly just waiting for the final phase to end
1:57 (25:12): Polterghast - Lot quicker than before and nearly done
4:28 (29:40): Old Duke - Huge leap on time because I'm a lot closer to progression
5:17 (34:57): Devourer - Over 5 times faster than the original winning attempt


Post-Boss:
The boss rush was quite fun and was a nice confidence boost after the struggle from the last couple of bosses but it did also teach me something about the new birbs, being that sometimes they could despawn themselves. I made this something to look out for in the future.

Finally, I crafted up the Silva Armour and the Silva Wings. Normally I'd use the Elysian Tracers here but I recently learned the wings are just better for the next fight... something I never bothered to test before...

Difficulty: ooo
Time: 3:48


The Fight:
Given my last Yharon fight was during Fun Mode I was a little worried about the fight initially, but then I considered that I had a squad of the best birbs available and so decided to press onward optimistically.

The birbs were able to easily keep up with Yharon's charges and keep up damage throughout the fight; boosted further by summoner tag damage from the whip whenever Yharon tried to dash at me.

Damage stacked up very quickly against Yharon, which I decided to capitalise upon by staying as close to Yharon as much as I could afford to. This allowed me to make sure my birbs didn't randomly despawn again, as well as letting me get in a few thousand extra damage via the Kaleidoscope.

Whenever I took notable damage I would retreat and start playing defensively again, trying to keep away from Yharon and his fireballs, until my health was able to regenerate. Unfortunately I did fumble a few dashes, but it was never enough to trigger any of my revives; just stalling the fight a little bit.

Overall, not actually that bad of a fight from the big chicken nugget dragon.


Post-Boss:
Got the McNuggets pet, so the little Yharon now gets to be an honorary birb.

With the Yharon Soul Fragments and Auric Bars at my disposal I started getting ready to craft. I re-fought Providence in the hallow and obtained the wings for the Elysian Tracers, then went on to craft the Dragonfruit, Purity, and Rampart of Deities.

Finally, I gathered the ingredients needed for the Auric Tesla Armour and made the summoner set. I had almost everything already, but did have to do a little extra mining for Uelibloom Ore.

With that, I was ready to move onto the two final hurdles of the run...

Difficulty: oooo
Time: 10:33


The Fight:
Draedon was a fight that worried me a little, since all 3 of the Exo-Mechs had something about them that had me worried. Ares has high damage, Thanatos has invulnerability to mess with my targeting, and Artemis and Apollo keep their distance which might stop me tagging them.

I decided to start with Thanatos on my successful run, figuring him to be this run's main 'problem mech'. Thanatos' ability to make its segments invulnerable was indeed an important factor, but it wasn't unmanageable by any stretch.

After 1:01 Ares, Artemis and Apollo entered the fight and took over from Thanatos. My concern regarding Artemis and Apollo was confirmed true; they stayed out of my whip's range and so were very hard to target. Because of this, I decided to instead focus more on Ares.

My 3:04 all 3 mechs were active, causing my arena to become cramped. As it turns out my arena was definitely way too small for this fight, given that it was basically my Providence arena with a slightly higher ceiling. I increased it a little between the first 2 failed attempts.

By 4:48 Ares fought me on its own and was able to enter its berserk phase. Thankfully, given that my damage against it was solid, this didn't last too long.

At 6:05 Artemis and Apollo became active again and had very little damage on either of them. While I could tag Artemis during his dashes, I did still have to spend a lot of time relying purely on the base damage of the birbs to progress.

By 7:03 Artemis, Apollo and Thanatos were all active. My health was getting a little low so I decided to focus on Thanatos to minimise the time spent with multiple mechs on-screen at the same time. By 8:17 it was just me and Thanatos, who again entered its berserk phase and was defeated shortly after.

Finally, by 8:50 I just had to fight Artemis and Apollo. They both still had fairly high health, so I mainly relied on playing defensively to regain lost health. I could also get in a lot of hits against Artemis during the deathray attack, though not so much against Apollo during the dashes since they were much faster.

Ultimately a tough fight, but surprisingly manageable.


Post-Boss:
Unfortunately I didn't really get anything from defeating Draedon first. Most of the mechs' drops are weapons and so aren't useful, while I lack the room for Draedon's Heart. I did consider the Exo Box for the final fight, but decided against using it due to it being a little cheesy.

But, with Draedon down, we only have 1 fight left before I can call birbs only 'complete'...

Difficulty: oooo
Time: 6:10


The Fight:
Supreme Calamitas hits like a truck, so I was very worried that I'd be turned into birb flambé even with gear that's pretty much on-tier for this fight, but I persevered.

The Brimstone Hearts seemed like they would be very awkward, since they're made of lots of small targets, but by 0:35 the hearts were all destroyed; much faster than I expected.

Calamitas herself was actually quite tricky. Outside of her high damage, she spends a lot of time outside the whip's range; limiting the damage I can output with it. I also had to reset the tag bonus between some of the phases, such as the 2nd and 3rd bullet-hells at 1:15 and 2:00, respectively.

At 2:23 I had to face off against the brothers. Unfortunately, they also like staying out of tag range, and unlike their older counterparts trying to 'swing' them into range is significantly riskier; so I just had to wait for the birbs to do their thing, which they admittedly did very well. By 3:27 the brothers were defeated and I returned to fighting Calamitas.

At 3:54 the 4th bullet-hell phase occurred, followed shortly by the Seekers being spawned at 4:27. The Seekers were easily the toughest part of the fight as they are in most challenge runs due to their number and additional attacks making it harder to dodge Calamitas', though at least it was easier to get some of them into whip range I guess? By 5:08 the Seekers were down and by 5:22 I encountered the 5th and final bullet-hell.

Finally, by 5:38 the Sepulcher phase was summoned again, which the birbs dealt with efficiently and beat in 5:57. With Calamitas essentially out of options, it was only a matter of time before Calamitas was defeated and the run was over.


Post-Boss:
With Calamitas defeated, the run has officially ended.

Yes, you can indeed beat Calamity only using birb weapons. While some bosses were definitely tricky and/or required use of the whip, I didn't have to extend my rules any further, which I consider a success 'v'

And with that, the third and final page of Birbs Only comes to a close.

Yes, I know I didn't fight Terminus or Eidolon Wyrm, but Terminus is incredibly slow and I was fairly busy and I don't like fighting the Eidolon Wyrm - however I did defeat every main-game boss so the run is still definitely a success



While Birbs Only comes to a close I do have one more page to write about another, smaller challenge I tried shortly after. However, when I say 'shortly' I do not mean 'easy'; in fact it was another one among my toughest challenges... but I won't spoil anything until I get around to the write-up and it's... single page of content?



Anyways, with all that aside, thanks for reading and I hope to see you next time for whatever my next challenge run ends up being

See you then 'v'