Terraria: Moon Lord Arena

Boss Fight Prep and Building Tutorial

The Stardust Dragon is available to all players, as are heart statues, honey, and sun flowers. All these can aid you in the fight with the Moon Lord.

Key to defeating the Moon Lord or any other boss in Terraria is having a good place to fight them. This arena setup will work for fighting almost any boss in Terraria. Since many players cannot defeat the Moon Lord on the first try, I've decided to outline my own fight area so that it may show players features they're missing out on. Here's a guide to my basic setup, which would be helpful for many of the game's big battles with some modifications. It should work for players as early on as the beginning of Hard Mode and beating the mechanical bosses. Though they can't fight Moon Lord, this should give ideas for the Playstation, Xbox, and mobile editions of Terraria as most of the buffs here are available on those platforms and can help with bosses like Plantera, Golem, Ocram, etc.

Helpful References

Buff Potions & Stardust Dragon
Utilize the buff potions available in Terraria and have a potion farm so that you can stock up on helpful pots to give you extra buffs that add on to all of the components of this arena. All players who have finished the Lunar Events should also have access to the Stardust Dragon staff, and with the bewitching table can make it a bit longer. You can make it 3-long with a summoner's potion as well. It can deal damage - especially to the core - while you are running to dodge attacks and healing.

NPC list
I reference several NPCs in this guide. If you're missing any of them, you can see how to get them in my List of NPCs and how to get them.

Boss Summoning
Aside from my Boss Strategy Section, I've also got a list of all the Boss Summoning Items in Terraria so that you can utilize this arena.

Choosing a Spot for Building the Boss Arena
First, build a path diagonally upward from your spawn - an area that is easy to reach within 15 seconds, and away from NPCs so they aren't killed by boss fighting.

Building upward with an asphalt staircase of sorts will allow you to quickly run there. If you build each block up from the previous, you can run on solid blocks without making stairs via platforms. Asphalt is made using Stone Blocks and Gel with the Blend-o-Matic bought from the Steampunker. Don't build so high that Harpies will spawn. After destroying the last lunar pillar, you can use your magic mirror to return home and quickly run to the boss fight area.

Making the Boss Fight Arena

Click to Enlarge. This Boss fight arena allows enhanced healing, movement speed, and gives easy access to the crystal ball, bewitching table, and ammo box buffs.

Let's look at the key points here. These things will help whether you're doing this on foot as I do, or using the Cosmic Car Key to fly about with the UFO mount. Most of this will work in either situation.

Top Left/Right Solid Blocks - These are important. These two platforms allow you to duck under them to dodge the Moon Lord's beam attack, which is the most damaging attack it has. The eyes that come out also use this attack, so it's doubly beneficial. When you're running to get hearts from the statues, you'll be immune to these attacks. They must be solid blocks and not real platforms. Build upward then tear out the wall to make them float.

Campfires and Heart Lanterns for Life Regen - These are essential and increase health regen, effectively giving you more life during the fight. I have them on the extreme left and right so that if I leave the arena area a bit, I will always have the buff.

Central Platforms to let Ranged/Magic Hit the Core - sometimes the Moon Lord's core was beneath the asphalt. Given I was doing this ranged, it would block my shots and force me to rely on the Stardust Dragon to damage it. This can be disastrous. I went with platforms here but someone using Solar Eruption or anything else that can pass through blocks could use all Asphalt in order to increase movement.

Heart Statues for Free Health - Hopefully you saved heart statues you found while adventuring. If not, you can scour your map and look for the grey boxes that denote statues. It won't say which kind, but you may get lucky. You can also make a world if you ignorantly destroyed these. If you consider them cheating, think again. This game is not only about gear and dodging, it's also about world manipulation and the developers gave us wires for a reason.

The 'hearts' in this case are candy apples because this guide was written near Halloween. The highlighted timer triggers both statues to spawn hearts, so I can collect a few no matter which side of the arena I flee toward when dodging moon lord's attacks.

You can see the wiring is simple. If you've never done this, give it a shot. You need gold bars and a chain, made at a table with a chair (not work bench) in order to make a gold watch. Craft that with wire (bought from the Mechanic NPC, along with the wrenches and wire cutters you need) and you've got a 1-Second Timer. This is the best to use, because you want to make sure a heart comes out as often as possible.

So long as the wires reach each of the statues' blocks and connect to the timer, right clicking the timer will start generating a heart now and then. You'll get up to 6 on the screen at once with 2 statues. It seems a heart statue will put out 1 heart every 10 seconds. The more statues you have, the better. But I warn you that if you've done heavy fighting elsewhere in the world your hearts may not spawn. Check this before you fight, and consider turning these on before you take out the last pillar to ensure they are working.

With all the other buffs here, the arena may work fine without the statues so long as you also consume buff potions. If you don't have heart statues period but want hearts, consider making a slime/piranha grinder with those statues nearby along with dart traps and timers. They will die and sometimes drop hearts. It's an imperfect alternative, but with a heartreach potion (PC-only) you can get them without going into the dart trap area.

Sunflowers for the Happy! Movement Speed Buff must be placed on grass, so 2 dirt blocks with grass seeds will allow you to plant them. You get those from the Dryad along with the flowers. These increase movement speed, helping you dodge attacks. Like the campfires/heart lanterns, it lets me get the buff should I leave the area a bit during the fight.

Bewitching Table, Ammo Box, and Crystal Ball Buffs - increase magic powers, minion capacity, and conserve ammo by clicking these just before the fight. Having each of them nearby is very handy. You buy the Crystal Ball from the Wizard, the Bewitching Table from the Witch Doctor, and may sometimes get the ammo box from the Traveling Merchant.

Placing honey in this way will allow you to run through it without stalling, instantaneously getting the buff and improving health regeneration.

Honey for more Health Regeneration - This is something I didn't know early on, so it may enlighten some of you players who are newer to Terraria. Standing in honey gives a health regeneration buff that escalates other buffs in a way, making health regen ramp up faster when standing still while providing its own increase in regen. Leaving the honey, this buff lasts 30 seconds. What I did, was build one block up (asphalt) on each side of a 4-block area. Then dumped two honey in it, so they'd make a small pool.

You can make buckets out of iron or lead bars and gather as much honey as you have buckets. Take them to pools in the jungle and use them while standing in honey to get honey buckets, which lets you dump it where you need it. Don't get greedy, Honey is a limited resource and has some other uses. You only need 4 buckets for this arena build.

As for pooling the Honey, with the step only one block height, and it being asphalt, you can blaze through this pit and get the buff without stalling at all. The buff it gives supposedly slows you down a tad, but having sunflowers nearby nullifies this 'debuff'.

Beating the Moon Lord is much easier with an arena setup. This applies to any boss in Terraria. Even Eye of Cthulhu is easier if you have some platforms and a campfire. Some players need all the tricks Terraria provides in order to defeat him, so I hope this tutorial was helpful.

Closing Thoughts
This arena can help keep you alive, but it won't deal damage. Your build and accessories are extremely important, so too is having celestial weapons. Buff potions are also important, but more so is learning how to fight the Moon Lord itself. Once you've downed it once, you can begin making serious progress toward end-game gear. Hopefully this helps give you some ideas to improve your own boss fight area, whether you use my 'design' or not. Mine is simple and to the point and it definitely gets the job done. In Beetle Armor, I was basically able to tank most of the Moon Lord's damage. AFK farms for Moon Lord exist, so this can all be automated, but every player's first kill will likely be accomplished the old fashioned way. Share your own tips for building boss arenas in Terraria below!