The Twins Terraria Guide

The Twins are one of the big three mechanical bosses that gate your progression right at the start of hardmode, and while they may seem overwhelmingly tricky given that you have to fight two separate bosses at the same time, they’re pretty fun to fight once you get the hang of it.

In my 2000 hours on PC alone of playing this game, I’ve decided that this is hands down my favorite Terraria boss, the dynamic of dodging and weaving, especially with a strategy I detail later in this guide, is an unmatched feeling.

This boss is one I’ve fought for fun many times, as nothing else in this game gets me to focus as hard as dodging lasers and flames simultaneously. You might be having trouble if this is your first time facing Retinazer and Spazmatism, though; if so, this The Twins Terraria guide is for you.

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Bottom Line Up Front

The Twins test you on your movement; thus, obtaining a pair of wings is vital before fighting them.

A gravity potion is also helpful in gaining the upper hand in this fight, quickly allowing as much vertical movement as possible. Finally, it would be best if you considered getting better armor, namely Titanium or Hallowed armor.

Key Info

• You must dodge and weave between two separate beefed-up Eyes of Cthulu or this fight.
• Retinazer will try to keep its distance and shoot lasers the whole fight.
• Spazmatism is much more aggressive and will often dash at you and use its cursed flame balls.
• They do not share a health bar, so you can focus on a single one the whole fight to make it easier.
• Under half health, the Twins will enter their phase 2 form, independent of each other.
• Retinazer will stop approaching entirely and start barraging you with lasers.
• Spazmatism will aggressively chase you down while firing a cursed flamethrower.
• The boss will either spawn naturally or when summoned with a mechanical eye.
• Beating the boss gives you Hallowed Bars and Souls of Sight.

The Stats of the Twins

The Twins have an extensive health bar with very little defense to back it up. This makes any accessories that grant extra armor piercing great since you can bring them down to 0 protection and shred that green bar down to red.

• Max Life: 43000 (64500 in Expert, 82237 in Master)
• Defense: 10 
• Retinazer Phase 2 Defense: 20
• Spazmatism Phase 2 Defense: 28
• Laser Damage: 40 (76 in Expert, 114 in Master)
• Flame Damage: 50 (88 in Expert, 132 in Master)
• Contact Damage: 50 (85 in Expert, 127 in Master)
• Phase 2 Contact Damage: 75 (127 in Expert, 190 in Master)
• Immune to Poison and Confusion
• Inflicts Cursed Flames, rapidly decreasing your life when afflicted.

This is going to be a terrible night…

If you see the above message appear in the chat, run.  This, “You feel vibrations from deep below…”, and “The air is getting colder around you…” are all signifiers that a mechanical boss will come and murder you, with the former being for the Destroyer and the latter being for Skeletron Prime.

Generally, if you see these messages, you should be panicking. Fix up any bit of your arena, grab your buffs and your best weapons, and get ready.

Of course, if you’d like to end the fight without dying, you could leave the world and rejoin as soon as the boss spawns, but that’s lame, and I’ve definitely never done something like that before.

If you’d like to summon the boss manually, you’ll need a mechanical eye, and it also needs to be nighttime. Just be aware that once you summon it, you either need to fight it or die. You can’t easily run from this boss.

The Best Armor for the Twins

Hallowed armor is the ideal armor set for this boss. Still, not everyone will have beaten a mechanical boss before this one, so generally, you should try going for Titanium armor.

For All Classes

Titanium gives you a bunch of buffs for every class except summoner and a massive amount of defense. Unfortunately, Re-Logic has something against summoners and refuses to provide them with anything other than Hallowed armor to share with the other classes.

So if the boss ever approaches you, you can get in some free damage with the metallic spikes hovering around you. But if you want some extra buffs and set bonuses, then maybe the other armors are for you.

Melee & Ranger

Frost Armor is the best if you’re playing either melee or ranger and don’t want to use Titanium armor. For some reason, both dual-class armor sets in the game are only helpful at this stage. One of which is the Frost Armor.

It can take a while to grind; given the Frost Core requirement, you must wait for a snowstorm. However, it buffs melee and ranger with frost burn and some extra damage. I would love more dual-class sets, but this and the next armor set are the only ones in the game.

Mage & Summoner

Forbidden Armor may not provide the best Summoner buffs, but it is an excellent mage set. The only significant drawback is that it requires grinding in a sandstorm for a rare enemy.

I think you should specifically play this if you don’t want to have a religious dedication to a class and are okay with playing mage and just keeping some summons out for extra damage.

Summoner, Specifically

Spider Armor is your best bet if you’re playing summoner. Unlike Hallowed armor, Titanium has no summoner set. And it would be best if you instead went for the Spider armor, which requires a bit of grinding but is well worth it for the great summoner buffs.

In addition, you’ll get extra damage, and another summon slot compared to the Forbidden armor.

The Best Weapons for the Twins

While it may be easy to tell people, “just craft titanium weapons,” it isn’t always that simple. Titanium takes forever; for some classes, that is not the best option, and sometimes isn’t an option at all. I will also generally write assuming you have no hallowed bars or souls from other mechanical bosses.

This list will include primarily the somewhat obscure or less thought-about items that have the potential to do a bunch of damage. Of course, the more damage you do, the quicker this fight is over and the less chance you have of dying.

Melee

The Night’s Edge

The Night’s Edge is honestly still great for this stage of the game. It will tear through any enemy you throw at it, and for the few times you can get close to the twins, it’s a great damage dealer. I always go for this in any melee playthrough because collecting a ton of swords and combining them is just fun.

However, it definitely shouldn’t be your only option, and if you have Hallowed bars, then go for Excalibur instead.

A Yo-Yo

A Yo-Yo could end up being a decent damage dealer for this fight. You can get the Hel-fire rarely from any enemy in hell or the Amarok from any enemy in the Snow biome.

You can also go for the Yelets from any enemy in the Jungle if you’ve defeated a mechanical boss already. So make like Ness and start yo-ing your way to victory.

The Flying Knife and Shadowflame Knife

The Flying Knife and Shadowflame Knife are knives you can throw at your enemy for significant damage, and either is highly recommended for this fight.

The Flying Knife can be obtained from the Hallowed Mimic, a challenging foe, but the Shadowflame Knife is only from the goblin invasion in hardmode, which is primarily dependent on luck. Pick your poison; either one is a great option.

A Seargent United Shield

A Seargent United Shield is not only one of the most obvious references in Terraria but is also only sold by the Travelling Merchant. This makes it almost entirely luck-based to get, but if you do, it will home in on the enemy and do pretty decent damage. So go for this if you can get it.

Ranger

A Titanium Repeater or Daedalus Stormbow

A Titanium Repeater or Daedalus Stormbow will be your best bow options. The Titanium/Adamantite Repeater will be your best option for pure DPS.

Still, the Daedalus Stormbow will be the best option if you want comprehensive coverage and easy hits. For this fight and no other boss at this stage in the game, I will recommend the Titanium/Adamantite Repeater since it would be wise to only focus on one target rather than both twins.

The Onyx Blaster

The Onyx Blaster has my favorite sound effect of any gun in the game (It’s just so incredibly chunky and great whenever you fire it) and tremendous damage.

You’ll see any content creator who doesn’t want to give in to the stormbow go for this gun instead, the only issue being the necessity of grinding in a Corrupt/Crimson desert. After that short grind, you’ll have an awesome weapon. Obviously, this is what I would go for.

The Dart Pistol and Dart Rifle

The Dart Pistol and Dart Rifle are both underdog choices you’ll often see instead of the bows or blaster, but they’re honestly pretty great in their own right.

They come exclusively from Corrupt/Crimson mimics and do insanely good damage. They’re also capable of inflicting Ichor or cursed flames and are very good if you want a precision shot and good DPS. Of course, any choice for ranger will be more based than the stormbow, but that’s how it goes.

Cursed and Ichor Ammo

Cursed and Ichor Ammo are what you should be going for. You can get these by going into your Corruption or Crimson biome, getting Cursed flames and Ichor, and then making them into ammo.

If you can get both and swap between them, then go for it. Holy Arrows would also work for raw damage using a bow, but they’re far removed from their heyday.

Mage

Mage has an excessive number of options at this point in the game, so you only need a few of these great ones to take down the Twins. Any of these options will do, and I’d only recommend grabbing the ones you like.

The Golden Shower

The Golden Shower is not only THE funny item but also insanely useful and practically a requirement for any mage player. It inflicts your enemies with a piercing stream of Ichor, which lowers their defense on top of doing damage. So even if you’re playing another class, I’d recommend this one, as it’s just that useful.

Cursed Flames

Cursed Flames are the corruption variant of the Golden Shower, and while it is undoubtedly a worse tome, it does do some decent damage on top of a good debuff. So if you have the cursed flames to make it, then why not.

The Spirit Flame

The Spirit Flame is a relatively obscure weapon. You get a Desert Spirit Lamp and Forbidden Fragments from the desert and some souls of night. In return, you get a neat weapon that deals significant damage for this stage. It will automatically home in on enemies with spirit flames and look fabulous.

The Tome of Infinite Wisdom

The Tome of Infinite Wisdom necessitates doing the Old One’s Army, which I hate, but it does some frankly stupid damage. This weapon is excellent for its right-click ability if you’re ever near the ground, but it also does substantial damage in general. If only you didn’t need to go through the most boring event in the game for it.

The Crystal Serpent and Sky Fracture

The Crystal Serpent and Sky Fracture just fire in a straight line and deal almost the same damage.

The Crystal Serpent can be caught by fishing in the underground hallow biome, and the Sky Fracture takes grinding out some light shards in the hallowed desert. If you want plain and straightforward damage dealers, these are great.

The Meteor Staff

The Meteor Staff is a fun weapon since it allows you to cast Supernova and pretend you’re Sephiroth. It’s also relatively cheap, only taking some Meteor bars, Pixie dust, and souls of light, and it casts down a rain of meteors on your enemies. It is my personal mage choice for this fight because it’s just enjoyable.

The Orange Zapinator

The Orange Zapinator is an amusing weapon. Unfortunately, the damage it does depends entirely on luck, and it’s only sold occasionally by the Traveling Merchant. However, if you want to trust a dice roll, this could be the best or worst weapon in the game.

The Blade Staf

The Blade Staff is one of the highest damage dealers for summoners in early hardmode. It requires fighting Queen Slime, but she’s not too hard. When you have a ton of these going at once, they can do a ton of damage.

Make sure to have the Shark Tooth Necklace on for that extra armor penetration. Shoutouts to the poor souls (me) who endured the pain of grinding this one out when it was first introduced. I’m so glad they changed it to be a Queen Slime drop.

The Sanguine Staff

The Sanguine Staff requires fighting Dreadnautilis during the Blood Moon, which also involves fishing. However, the boss isn’t too hard, as it will barely hit you if you stand still, and the bats you get from this summon do quite a bit of damage.

The only downside to this weapon is that the bats have to hit the enemy and then return to you before they do more damage, which slows down their damage rate.

The Firecracker and Cool Whip

The Firecracker and Cool Whip are your whip options for this part of the game. The Firecracker drops from the Wall of Flesh and explodes enemies with its mind.

The Cool Whip has one of the best item names in this game, but it takes grinding frost giants to get. The Cool Whip does more damage, but the Firecracker is significantly easier to get, so once again, pick your poison.

The Best Accessories for the Twins

Accessories are going to make or break your fight with this pair. You could go in with the best armor and weapons you can get at this game, but if you don’t get great movement to back it up, you will perish.

For Every Class

• Lightning Boots are practically a requirement for someone who isn’t super familiar with dodging and weaving. While you might have been able to get away with Spectre boots before, the extra movement speed is necessary to avoid all the attacks this duo will throw.
• Wings will help you quickly fly up from any situation and dodge out of the way when necessary. Pretty much all of them will require fighting the annoying wyverns you find at the top of the world, but some of the easiest to get is the Pixie wings you can make with souls of flight and pixie dust.
• The Shark Tooth Necklace and any upgrades will grant you armor penetration. However, the Twins only have ten defense, so you can remove that entirely with the right build.
• An Obsidian Shield will prevent you from taking knockback from any enemies. You should have this one on if you are knocked around and ping-ponged between the two bosses.
• Putrid Scent drops from corrupt mimics and gives every class extra damage, so why not?
• (Expert and Master Only) a Shield of Cthulu will give you a quick dash that you can use as an easy get-out-of-jail-free card. A burst of horizontal movement is greatly appreciated in the game. I have reached the point where I can no longer go back to Classic mode because this accessory is so great.
• Use Whatever You Want because no matter what, the accessories and items you want to use will be the best choices. Going with what you like and what you’re comfortable with will often lead to you doing the boss better than if you just got every single optimal item.

Class Specific Accessories

These accessories are all great for buffing your damage and giving you some extra effects depending on what class you’re playing. Throw these on if you want some extra boosts to your gear.

• The Emblem For Your Class will be your best bet for extra damage. You can get these from the Wall of Flesh, and if you get the wrong one, drop it into some shimmer to change it.
• The Power Glove is a great accessory that grants extra melee speed, knockback, and auto-swing. Great for any sword user and whips if you’re playing summoner. You could also opt for the Flesh Knuckles instead, but I prefer the upgrade that comes after fighting all the mechs.
• The Moon Stone gives you some great buffs at nighttime, and since you can only fight the Twins at night, that makes this worth going for. Vampires drop this during the solar eclipse, giving you some clean extra melee speed and damage across the board.
• The Stalker’s Quiver buffs your bows and your ranged damage in general. You get it from killing skeletons underground and combining that quiver with the putrid Scent.
• A Mana Cloak is excellent for automatically giving you extra mana potions, meaning you never have to stop firing your magic weapons. It will also drop heavily damaging stars whenever you’re hit, giving you extra hits on the boss.
• The Celestial Cuffs allow you to pick up mana stars from further away and recover mana whenever you’re hit. These will generally keep you topped up on MP.
• The Pygmy Necklace gives you an extra summon slot, which means more damage, so why not.

The Best Buffs for the Twins

The Twins are pretty tricky in terms of buffs. There isn’t much that can help other than the apparent movement, defense, and damage buffs, but a few can help significantly in this fight.

Of course, you could be like me and throw yourself at fights without buffs, hoping to spend less time getting potions. But if you do it that way, you’ll probably spend more time dying to the boss than you would have spent just getting buffs.

Buffs for All Classes

• Ironskin, Lifeforce, Endurance, and Regen all improve your survivability, increasing your defense, health, damage reduction, and regeneration. You should try and grab these for any fight you do since being able to soak up all those hits is a pretty great thing.
• Rage, Wrath, Luck, and Food all significantly improve your damage output. While they all require a bit of grinding and monotony, the reward is worth going for. You will get extra critical strike chances, extra damage, and improvements to every stat.
• Gravity may sound weird, but it gives you practically infinite vertical movement at the cost of disorienting you. I highly recommend trying this out with wings to easily glide your way to victory and have total control over your height.
• Inferno will give you an AOE fire shield that will damage the twins if they ever get close; you should try and get this one since it’s beneficial for dealing with Spazmatisms constant charging.

Class Specific Buffs

Every class has some buffs that give it more damage or do something to provide you with the edge. Consider going for the ones that apply to your style.

• A Sharpening Station will provide your whips and melee weapons with extra armor penetration, which means additional damage to these robots. However, considering they already have low defense, you can bring them down to 0 defense.
• Flasks give you some extra debuffs on your weapons. For example, I’d recommend the Ichor or Cursed flames flasks to buff those whips and melee weapons.
• The Ammo Box and Ammo Reservation Potion exist to let you not need to craft nearly as much ammo as usual. Those ichor arrows and cursed bullets are expensive and take some grinding, so you might want to get these and not need to refill as often. I don’t even bother, but you might be more stingy with ammo.
• The Crystal Ball gives you a variety of mage buffs and is a must-have for mages considering you can buy it from the Wizard.
• Magic Power and Mana Regeneration give you extra magic damage and extra MP recovery, respectively. Again, these are easy to recommend to any Mage player since they’re similarly easy to get.
• The Bewitching Table and Summoning Potion give you an extra free summon slot. The bewitching table is just in the dungeon, and the summoning potion is obtained through fishing, but both are easy to recommend.

Building an Arena

The twins require vast space to fight them. Also, dodging and weaving wouldn’t be as easy if you had to double back on yourself constantly, so for this fight, I’d recommend making a very long, singular platform.

You can have multiple layers to this if you want more room to move around; I would recommend doing that if you lack vertical movement, but I’d also say to spend the time you would have spent making that second layer on getting better wings instead.

Arena buffs that I’d recommend are campfires for the easy health regen, Heart Lanterns for extra health regen, any bast statues you can find, and periodically placed sunflowers for the tremendous extra movement speed they provide. This fight is about movement, so the more movement speed you can manage, the better.

The Twins fight fits a fantastic, frantic foray into furious fire and flames, and you should be ready to dodge your way out of all the tight scenarios it puts you in. You need to be aware of Retinazer’s position and lasers while focusing your attacks on Spazmatism. Killing it first will make the fight against Retinazer much easier.

Rewards for Beating the Twins

The reason you want to beat the Twins is likely for game progression since they’re a required boss, but they don’t slack on giving you rewards.

Every mechanical boss at least tries to provide you with items to make the next ones you fight easier, and Twins are what to go after if you play summoner. I’d recommend hitting the line of the Destroyer or Skeletron Prime first, but regardless, the Twins give you some great stuff.

• 25-40 Souls of Sight (100% Chance)
• 15-30 Hallowed Bars (100% Chance)
• 5-15 Greater Healing Potions (100% Chance)
• Twins Mask (14.29% Chance, but can drop from either Twin)
• Mechanical Wheel Piece (100% Chance, Expert/Master Only)
• Pair of Eyeballs (25% Chance, Master Only)
• Twins Relic (100% Chance, Master Only)

The Hallowed bars allow for making some great items for this stage of the game. The souls of sight might seem like you can only use them in combination with the other souls, but you can make the Optic Staff, my favorite summon in the game. It’s just a tiny pair of Twins! It’s adorable.

Speedrun Strats in Journey Mode

Speedrunners have again got your back with a far easier strat if you’re playing on Journey Mode. You can switch the time of day to noon, wait for one of the Twins to disappear from your minimap, and then go back to night.

With the right timing, this will despawn one of the Twins, and with luck, Spazmatism will despawn. I don’t recommend doing this your first time, as it ruins the fight, but if you’re tired of fighting these two, then go for it.

Questions and Answers

In Conclusion

The Twins is my favorite fight in Terraria. You don’t get the feeling they give you anywhere else in this game; it’s incredible how fun it is to weave between attacks and dodge whatever they throw at you.

This fight is required, but I’d recommend doing it after the other two mechanical bosses if you’re inexperienced. You can stand your ground for most of Skeletron Prime’s fight, and the Destroyer soaks up damage. The Twins have a high skill requirement, but the reward is well worth it.

Craft Your Adventure in Terraria’s Pixelated Realm | GOG

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.

Check Price Buy at Amazon

We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

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Monica Phillips

Monica is a writer, artist, YouTuber, modder, musician, and general doer of all things related to video games. She’s a trans woman with a bit of experience and love for every game genre. From her first experience with Cave Story to loving Celeste and going through the life-changing Outer Wilds, indie games have become the core thing she’s grown to love and care about when it comes to video games. They’re all about finding new games to fall in love with, new genres to dive into thoroughly, and new experiences to attach to forever.

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