Introduction
The Dryad is an NPC that every player will eventually encounter during their playthroughs of Terraria. She appears as a female character with green hair and green clothes, similar to the way dryads and druids are portrayed in high fantasy fiction. She provides useful benefits to a player’s world and sells an assortment of unique items only available from her.
She can serve as a valuable defensive NPC that can buff players and other NPCs and additionally debuff incoming enemies. These two effects are covered in more detail later in this Dryad Terraria guide.
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Key Details Up Front
The Dryad’s main value is selling a variety of seeds and powders. The seeds she sells can be used to spread grass, corruption, or crimson. The powders have the same uses as the seeds. This will allow the players to either stave off the spread of crimson or corruption, which is crucial for late-game worlds. You don’t want to end up in a world entirely engulfed with corruption or crimson, after all!
How Do I Unlock the Dryad?
You have to meet two conditions for the dryad to move into your home or into a suitable home. Once both of these conditions are met, a dryad will move into the suitable house, and you will see this message in chat notifying you. Here are more details regarding the two conditions that need to be met:
- You have to have an empty house. In Terraria, a house is any space that is fully enclosed by blocks and has walls, a door, a light source, a table, and a chair.
- You have defeated either the Eye of Cthulhu, Skeletron, or the Eater of Worlds/Brain of Cthulhu bosses. Defeating only one of the above is sufficient.
What Stuff Does The Dryad Sell?
- Purification Powder: 75c
- Vile Powder: 1s
- Vicious Powder: 1s
- Grass Seeds: 20c
- Corrupt Seeds: 5s
- Crimson Seeds: 5s
- Sunflower: 50s
- Acorn: 10c
- Dirt Rod: 20g
- Pumpkin Seed: 2s 50c
- Grass Wall: 10c
- Corrupt Grass Wall: 2s 50c
- Crimson Grass Wall: 2s 50c
- Flower Wall: 10c
- Jungle Wall: 10c
- Hallowed Seeds: 20s
- Hallowed Grass Wall: 2s 50c
- Mushroom Grass Seeds: 1s 50c
- Dryad Coverings: 3g
- Dryad Loincloth: 3g
- Daybloom Planter Box: 1
- Moonglow Planter Box: 1s
- Blinkroot Planter Box: 1s
- Deathweed Planter Box: 1s
- Waterleaf Planter Box: 1s
- Shiverthorn Planter Box: 1st
- Fireblossom Planter Box: 1s
- White Flower Seeds: 5s
- Yellow Flower Seeds: 5s
- Red Flower Seeds: 5s
- Pink Flower Seeds: 5s
- Magenta Flower Seeds: 5
- Violet Flower Seeds: 5s
- Blue Flower Seeds: 5s
- Wild Flower Seeds: 5s
- Tall Grass Seeds: 5s
- Potted Forest Cedar: 3g
- Potted Jungle Cedar: 3g
- Potted Hallow Cedar: 3g
- Potted Forest Tree: 3g
- Potted Jungle Tree: 3g
- Potted Hallow Tree: 3g
- Potted Forest Palm: 3g
- Potted Jungle Palm: 3g
- Potted Hallow Palm: 3g
- Potted Forest Bamboo: 3g
- Potted Jungle Bamboo: 3g
- Potted Hallow Bamboo: 3g
- Sparkly Wings: 40g
- Pylon: 10g
The Standout Items
Purification Powder: Purification Powder is incredibly useful, especially for late-game worlds, because it allows players to revert Corrupted or Crimson blocks back to their original form.
This is crucial because Crimson or Corruption will spread throughout the world, and purification powder is one of the only ways to stop it. Without cleansing those blocks, your entire world will be corrupted or covered in crimson, which makes it hard to survive and impossible to obtain a lot of different materials and monsters.
Additionally, the purification powder can be thrown onto a Tortured Soul monster in order to convert it into a Tax Collector NPC. Tortured Soul NPCs spawn only in hard mode worlds, and this is the only way to get the Tax Collector NPC.
Vile Powder / Vicious Powder: Unlike Purification Powder, these two powders are only available during a Blood Moon event. If your world is a Crimson world, the Dryad will sell Vicious Powder for one silver coin each, and if your world is a Corruption world, the Dryad will sell Vile Powder for one silver coin each. It is not possible to get the Dryad to sell both.
These powders can be used to turn any convertible blocks, such as dirt or stone, into their corruption or crimson counterparts, respectively. This can be particularly useful if you’re trying to farm a specific corruption or crimson monster and don’t have enough surface area in your existing world. Use these powders sparingly because you can end up with a world completely covered in corruption or crimson!
Grass Seeds: Grass seeds can be used on dirt blocks in order to grow grass. This can be particularly useful if you intend on starting a farm somewhere remote or in the sky. These seeds are always available for 20 copper each from the Dryad.
Corrupt Seeds or Crimson Seeds: Much like the Grass Seeds, Corrupt and Crimson Seeds can be used on dirt blocks to turn them into corrupt or crimson blocks. These can be bought in the appropriate world during a Blood Moon event for five silver each.
Sunflower: These can be purchased from Dryad at any time except a Blood Moon for 50 silver each. Sunflowers can be planted and serve a few very interesting functions. For example, they prevent the spread of Corruption or Crimson and give nearby players a buff called “Happy!” which grants a 10% bonus movement speed and fewer enemy monster spawns.
Acorn: These are always available from the Dryad for ten copper each. When an acorn is planted into the ground, it will eventually grow into a tree. This is good for farming wood.
Dirt Rod: This tool is always available for five gold. It is a fairly unique and non-combative tool. It allows the user to move around dirt blocks.
Walls: The Dryad also sells a wide assortment of wall tiles such as Grass Walls, Jungle Walls, Flower Walls, and much more. These can be an excellent source of decoration for a player’s home or base.
Clothes: During Halloween, much like other NPCs, the Dryad will sell her costume to players. The full set will cost six gold coins.
Plants & Planters: The Dryad also sells a wide assortment of planter boxes and plants. When a plant is placed inside the planter box, it can be harvested with a pickaxe or staff of regrowth without accidentally breaking the planter. This is incredibly useful for players trying to grow a lot of plants in a relatively confined space.
Sparkly Wings: Wings are incredibly useful and fairly difficult to obtain. Once your world is in hard mode, the Dryad will sell these Sparkly Wings for 40 gold coins during a Blood Moon. They aren’t the overall best wings you can get, but they’re fairly straightforward to obtain.
Dryad’s Blessing and Dryad’s Bane
The Dryad is one of a few NPCs that can provide a tangible buff to players during combat. When there are enemies nearby, the Dryad will automatically cast Dryad’s Blessing on all nearby players and NPCs. Players and NPCs will gain the following bonus stats :
- +8 defence to players and +6 defence to NPCs. Keep in mind the bonus to NPCs changes to +10 or +14 for hard mode and expert mode, respectively.
- +50% Thorns affect to all players. This will cause 50% of the damage players receive to be reflected towards the monster attacking them. Additionally, NPCs will receive a 33.33% Thorns effect.
- +3 health per second regeneration for players and 3.33 health per second regeneration for NPCs
In addition to the Dryad’s Blessing buff for players and NPCs, the Dryad will also cause nearby enemies to be affected by the “Dryad’s Bane” debuff. This debuff deals four damage per second plus an additional modifier based on the world’s boss progression and difficulty level.
To give you an idea of the math, with no bosses defeated and normal difficulty, Dryad’s Bane will deal four damage per second, and with all bosses cleared on the normal difficulty, it will deal ten damage per second.
Does The Dryad Do Anything Else?
Actually, yes! If you speak to the Dryad, she will report the overall world status to you. Her main concern is reporting the level of corruption or crimson in your world. She will also use the level of Hallow to offset the corruption or crimson value since she considers Hallow to be “good.”
Her responses range from “You have a lot of work to do” when you have a high amount of crimson or corruption to “We are living in a fairy tale.” when there is way more Hallow than crimson or corruption. She will also say, “The world is completely pure,” when you have no corruption, crimson, or hallow.
The Inspiration Behind the Dryad Design
According to the official game lore, the Dryad is part of a race of Dryads that once fought a war with Cthulhu. They were unable to defeat Cthulhu, but they managed to rip out his eyes, spine, and brain. Those three pieces of Cthulhu are all bosses that can be fought in Terraria. The NPC we know as the Dryad is the last of her kind.
The Dryad is modelled largely off of the nature spirits called Dryads depicted in Greek mythology. The reference to Greek mythology is reinforced by some of the names the Dryad can spawn with. Names such as Elysia, Fae, Caelia and Titanina are all references to fairies or nature spirits. The Dryad even mentions in one of her quotes in-game that she is over 500 years old!
FAQ
Question: How many other NPCs are there in Terraria?
Answer: There are 26 NPCs in Terraria. Eight of them are only available after Hardmode has been unlocked. Some of them sell items, and some of them serve other purposes! There is an incredible amount of depth in Terraria’s NPC system.
Question: No NPCs are moving into the houses I build; what’s wrong?
Answer: You have to make sure you’re constructing the individual rooms for the NPCs, probably. Here is a breakdown of what will be required for a room to be considered a viable home for an NPC:
• The house has to have a minimum area size of 60 tiles. This includes the frame. The easiest dimension would be three tiles wide and ten tiles high rectangle.
• The house needs to have at least one valid light source like a torch.
• The house needs to have at least one “flat surface” item, such as a table or workbench.
• The house needs to have at least one valid entrance, such as a door.
Question: How do I earn enough gold to buy the items from the Dryads shop?
Answer: Although the individual items in the Dryads shop are not incredibly expensive, you can wrack up a big bill when buying lots of powders or seeds from her. There are lots of ways to farm money. Perhaps the easiest method is to kill monsters; they will drop coins and items. You can then sell the items for additional gold income.
Question: I only have one of the powders or seeds in my shop and not the other one; what’s wrong?
Answer: The Dryad will only sell powders and seeds according to the world she’s in. If she is in a Corruption world, she will only sell the Corruption variant of those items; the same is true for Crimson worlds. If you want to get the other variant of those items, you will need to make another world.
Conclusion
The Dryad definitely isn’t the most critical NPC to have in your base, but she serves a lot of unique purposes. Most of her items deal with nature, corruption/crimson, and plants. Lots of interesting stuff to explore for people looking to architect their world with more nuances. Another amazing use-case for her is to include her in your boss battle bases due to the buffs she provides. Granted, she will die a lot, but like all other NPCs, she will respawn.
Embark on a boundless adventure in the pixelated sandbox world of Terraria, where you can dig, build, and explore to your heart's content. With endless possibilities for creativity and discovery, join millions of players in crafting your own epic journey.
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