Terraria: How to improve Luck
Having high Luck can influence all sorts of various activities in Terraria and there are a few objects you can place that will help you increase it pretty quickly.
Alongside Luck Buffs and Potions, you can place seemingly boring objects like Torches and Garden Gnomes around your home that will improve your Luck. Having high Luck increases your chances of receiving rare and unique loot drops, rare enemy spawns and NPC spawns like the Goblin Tinkerer, Wizard and Fairies. Merchants will also carry rare items too, which is nice.
To help you get started we've looked at all the items you can place that will improve your Luck, so let's take a look at what you'll need to do.
Terraria: Items that improve Luck
The first thing you need to know about Luck stat is that it isn't visible, so you can't really track it. By using special items you can increase it, but there's no real way to tell by how much. You might only have a few Torches out and are lucky enough to spawn the Goblin Tinkerer whereas your pal might use every Luck item available and get no special drops - that's the chance you take with Luck.
The only person who hints towards your Luck is the Wizard, so if you have one in your midst, have a chat and see if they reveal anything.
There's also good and bad luck to consider. Ladybug Luck is influenced by the colour of the bug, how close you are when you touch it and whether you kill it or not. If you kill a Ladybug you'll get bad luck for three minutes, which increases to six minutes if it's a golden bug. There's also a chance it'll rain after killing the bug, too.
If you accidentally release and kill a Ladybug, you can release and touch another one that will negate the bad luck effects, so it's not all doom and gloom.
Luck Potions will give you a buff from anywhere between three and five minutes, which is just about long enough to find some rare loot or try to find a rare NPC. Combine a Luck potion with a Ladybug and you've got loads of Luck to play with.
The final thing to consider is placing Torches, Garden Gnomes and Lantern Lights. There are several different types of Torches in the world and you'll need to place them in their preferred Biome to get good Luck.
The more Torches you have closer together in a specific Biome, the better your Luck will be. You can also hold a Torch in its preferred Biome, which will increase your Luck as you are technically standing next to it.
| Torch type | Preferred Biome |
|---|---|
| Bone | Anywhere except Desert, Corruption, Crimson, Hallow and Snow |
| Coral | Ocean |
| Corrupt | Corruption and Underground Corruption |
| Crimson | Crimson and Underground Crimson |
| Cursed | Corruption and Underground Corruption |
| Desert | Desert and Underground Desert |
| Hallowed | Hallow and Underground Hallow |
| Ice | Snow and Underground Snow |
| Ichor | Crimson and Underground Crimson |
| Jungle | Jungle and Underground Jungle |
Torches will give you a maximum score of one, regardless of whether it's negative or positive. It also doesn't look like the regular Torches give you any Luck, but there's no harm in placing one anyway.
Lanterns will work almost everywhere except in there's a boss or invasion attack or any alternative Moons, like a Blood Moon. Garden Gnomes don't seem to be affected by anything, so go ahead and place them anywhere.
For a visual guide, check out this video from MabiVsGames below.
Now that you've increased your Luck, you can head out and search for the best swords and whips in Terraria, as well as where to find Ecto Mist, a Cat License and a Flaming Mace.
You can also check out our guides on how to increase NPC happiness, how to grow more gems, what the different coloured fairies do and how to spawn the Empress of Light and Queen Slime.