The Pirate Staff is a Hardmode, pre-mechanical bosssummon weapon. It spawns a pirate minion that attacks enemies by slashing them with a sword. Like other minions, the summoned Pirate is invincible and follows the player for an unlimited amount of time, unless the player dies, summons a replacement minion, cancels the buff, or leaves the world. The Pirate Staff is dropped with a 0.05*1/2000 (0.05%) chance by pirates, with a 1*1/100 (1%) chance by the Flying Dutchman or in a loot_box (every type of it)
Its best modifier is Ruthless. The Mythical modifier provides the widest array of stat bonuses, but these primarily affect the initial summon rather than the resulting minion. Additionally, minions cannot deal critical hits. The only lasting advantage a Mythical Pirate Staff has over a Ruthless one is knockback.
The Pirate Staff has a damage cooldown of 0.3 seconds per enemy. It does not trigger invulnerability frames.
The item is quite rare. On average, it will take 6–7 complete Pirate Invasions before this item drops (assuming the player can kill two Flying Dutchmen and 200 pirates per invasion).
In Celebrationmk10 worlds, the Pirate Staff can be purchased from the Princess for 5 after a Pirate Invasion has been defeated.
Tips[]
The Pirate Staff is exceptionally deadly against ground-based enemies and bosses, or enemies with multiple segments such as The Destroyer, as each pirate will deal its full listed damage on every segment.
Because the pirates are grounded minions with a limited jump height, the Pirate Staff is ineffective against flying enemies and bosses with very high mobility, such as The Twins.
Trivia[]
Each time the pirate minion is summoned, it has a random one of three possible sprite graphics, all of which are functionally identical. In the game code, they are called the "One Eyed Pirate", "Pirate Captain", and "Soulscourge Pirate".
The "One Eyed Pirate" variant seems to resemble a miniature version of the Pirate Deadeye enemy.
The pirates seem to use a miniature version of the Falcon Blade when attacking.
The three variations of the minion's feces.
The pirates will defecate occasionally, similar to their behavior in the Pixel Piracy game, and similar to the effect of activating a Toilet. This has no functional effect.
This occurs every 30–40 seconds of the pirate not moving horizontally.[1]
↑Information taken from the PC1.4.1.2 source code, method AI_067_FreakingPirates() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. There may be inaccuracies, as the current PC version is 1.4.4.9.