Terraria Empress of Light - How to summon and defeat the new boss
Sparkling in the night sky is a new boss in the world of Terraria: the Empress of Light.
Described as a “bullet-hell” style boss by developers on Discord, the Empress of Light is one of the toughest and most beautiful encounters in the entire game. Here’s how you can summon the fight for yourself, some tips on how to beat her, as well as a few of the items she drops.
It goes without saying that this is a late-game activity and is only accessible in hardmode, which unlocks after you take out the writhing Wall of Flesh boss.
The Empress of Light is significantly more difficult than many of the hardmode bosses however, so you’ll need to stock up on the most powerful drops you can find.
She also has an extra-crazy variation of her fight which triggers if you summon her just as night finishes and turns to daytime - which we’ll cover below the regular encounter.
How to summon the Empress of Light in Terraria - find a Prismatic Lacewing
First off, to summon the Empress of Light you need to head to a Hallow biome - ie. the rainbow fairytale land - and wait until night time.
As we said, the Hallow unlocks in Hardmode after you’ve beaten the Wall of Flesh, so you should know where to find some by the end-game. You also need to have defeated Plantera.
Next, look for the Prismatic Lacewing critter flying around the surface area. They’re orange rarity so you might need to look around a bit. You need to attack and kill the Prismatic Lacewing to summon the Empress of Light. Remember, this can only be done at night.
She appears pretty much instantly when you squish the rare butterfly - and she is mad.
For a visual guide, the embedded video from YouTuber HERO shows what you’re looking for in the Hallow area:
Battling the Empress of Light in Terraria
The video above makes it look easy, but the Empress of Light is a powerful foe who’s capable of chewing through your hearts with startling speed.
To beat her, your best bet is to keep your distance with some ranged weaponry. This gives you the most wiggle room to dodge her onslaught of color-streaming projectiles while chipping away at her health.
This becomes particularly important during the modified version of the fight, which reportedly kills you in one hit.
Empress of Light drops in Terraria - Terraprisma, Soaring Insignia
Beating the Empress of Light bags you all manner of sparkly items, including the customary relic, prismatic dye, and a mask for your character.
To aid with your movement, she can also drop her Empress Wings and the Soaring Insignia which gives you infinite wing and rocket boot flight.
On top of that, the Empress drops six weapons, some rarer than others.
The first five seem to be usable versions of the boss’s attacks:
- Eventide
- Kaleidoscope
- Nightglow
- Starlight
- Stellar Tune
The final weapon - Terraprisma - only drops from the extra-hard, one-hit-kill variation of the battle, but is one of the best summon weapons in Terraria. You can see how it works in the embedded Happy Days video:
Instructions for triggering this encounter variation are below.
How to trigger the alternate day time Empress of Light fight
To get Terraprisma, you need to defeat the Empress of Light during the day - as shown in the following vid from Leviathan:
To do this, squish the Prismatic Lacewing between 4:00AM and 4:30AM in the morning and wait for dawn before engaging the Empress.
During the day time, her attacks will be much more powerful - as in kill you in one hit kind of powerful.
Remember to keep your distance so you can judge the trajectory of the projectiles and retaliate with ranged. This is much easier to do with the infinite flight from the Soaring Insignia the regular version of the boss drops.
Surviving this modified encounter nets you the Terraprisma.