Terraria Golden Critter Farming Guide (Journey Mode)

The first thing you’re gonna need to know, is what tools work best, and what environment you’ll need to make all this work, so I’ll go over it step by step..

Here’s a very basic list for things that will assist with critter farming.

– Village NPCs ( Encourages/Enables Critter Spawning)
– x10 Spawn Rate
– Water candles (+Critter Spawn)
– Battle Potions (+Critter Spawn)
– Walls (Prevents hostile spawning entirely, but can also decrease spawning in general. Not reccomended)
– Garden Gnomes (+Luck)
– Groping ladybugs (+Luck)
– Luck Potions (+Luck)

Firstly, you’re going to want your farm to either be on the side of, or ON your village.. NPC’S
completely disable the spawning of enemies, except on expert mode (I farmed on master mode so bleh).
This is a big factor when encouraging critter spawns.
I’m sure it doesn’t really have to be said, but make sure your village is nestled within a forest biome (the default biome), without any other biomes being too close by.

Secondly, you need a boss arena.. Why? Because having a few layers of platforms will encourage mob spawning. I only had around 3 levels of platforms, all on-screen, and that seems to help a lot. Besides, if you only tried to critter-farm on a single flat plain, that’d make your critters a LOT more vulnerable to a random slime popping up and nomming them.

Next, are water candles and battle potions.. I’m not sure if they stack with the x10 Spawn Rate Slider, but I use them anyway.

Walls are an optional way of discouraging enemy mob spawning, but I’ve found they also discourage critter spawning to a degree.. Using them at ground-level seemed to help with preventing slimes from appearing so often, and didn’t effect ground-spawning critters
from spawning like rabbits squirrels and birds. But, putting walls around the platforms in the air seemed to mess with the spawn rates of ANY mob, hostile or otherwise.

Luck could be an entirely negligable factor in this, but I still use it regardless.. Dot some garden gnomes around your arena, and always have a stack of greater luck potions on hand when farming.. Every little bit counts.

After you’ve got all this set up, you’ll want to grab a “Guide to Critter Companionship” for obvious reasons, and also a weapon that can easily take out mobs from long range, typically something homing. You could use a chaingun with chlorophyte bullets or something, but you’re
gonna want something that can 1-2 hit mobs, as using anything that doesn’t kill them quickly may bounce them back into a critter.
Personally I use the spectre staff, since it kills master-mode slimes in 1-2 hits, and actively homes on them.

Now all that’s left is to check your power menu settings. Disable weather/wind changes, freeze the time to noon, and, once you’re completely ready and in-position, set that spawn rate to x10 and get farming!

The critters to farm will be listed from easiest to hardest.

Other tips————

Remember to catch EVERY CRITTER you see, regardless if you need it or not, this does two
things. it actively keeps the spawn pool low so more critters can appear, and it helps kill time
and keep you focused.. Plus the movement from going towards them can also encourage
critters to spawn offscreen.

I find it better to stay in one place and occasionally move 3-7 blocks to the left and the right,
rather than run full speed back and forth across a distance, when it comes to encouraging
spawns.. In most cases, staying perfectly still in an optimal location will get you a lot more
critters than moving will.

Freezing Time does NOT inhibit spawn rates.. It does however stop passive terrain generation
like grass from growing, corruption spreading, ect.

Additional/Special Tools Needed: Can of Worms

Research “Can of worms”, grab a stack of them, and spam right click.
I got 3 gold ones before I even got through the stack. Maybe your luck will be different, but
there ya go.

Additional/Special Tools Needed: Normal Bug Net, Medusa’s Head, Terraspark Boots.

Carve out a very long lake near a village. You want to make sure the water is only 7 tiles
deep, any deeper and cattails won’t grow.

Also add a temporary layer of platform above the lake so that falling stars don’t destroy the
cattails while you’re waiting for them to grow.

Now speed up time to x12-x24 (Whatever your comp can handle. Mine is stable at x12 but chugs going any faster), and just wait for the cattails to grow.. Once you have at least one
fully grown cat tail every 6 or so blocks along the lake, you’re ready to go.

Pause time, crank up the spawnrate, and enjoy the farming.

Those cattails are precious.. The dragonflies will only spawn if they are fully matured, so making sure to avoiding breaking them is extremely important, but this is where medusa’s head and bug net come in..

Medusa’s head is one of only two weapons in the entire game that can deal non-physical damage, meaning it can damage mobs without breaking grass or other things. The other weapon is “Life Drain”. Use either one you prefer.

DISCLAIMER: Medusa’s Head actually “can” break grass. The damage happening to the enemy
itself can break grass, meaning if the enemy is in front of a cattail, it will break if the enemy is attacked. I haven’t checked if the life drain does this too.

As for the normal bug net, unlike the golden net, it will NOT break grass/cattails when swung, allowing you to run at the dragonflies full speed ahead without worrying about trimming the cattails.

Once everything is ready, removes ALL platforms around the area, even the boss-arena ones, as
they will encourage non-dragonfly critters to spawn, as well as slimes.. Seal off the edges of the
lake to prevent slimes from spawning off screen and skipping across the lake to nom your bugs.

There are two ways you can do this..

Firstly, you can just lock the weather to permanent rain so that walking goldfish spawn.

Or, you can just catch them passively while farming for dragonflies.

By the time I finished farming gold dragonflies, I had 3 extra gold goldfish, aside from
the other gold critter’s I’d obtained doing that.

Both ways are equally viable, but if you haven’t done either yet, I’d suggest the dragonfly
farming.

Bunnies are the easiest and most common of the golden critters.. I shouldn’t have to tell
you how to even farm these, or to farm them in general.. I already had these researched
acquiring them passively before I even began officially farming for gold critters.As for squirrels and birds, don’t bother specifically farming for them, you will inevitably
run into enough to research while trying to farm ladybugs, and butterflies.

Butterflies have a random spawn rate set per day. So to get the setup you need, pause time, and
flip back and forth between midnight and noon, waiting a minute at noon to see how many tend to spawn.Make sure to give this some time.. You might get 1-2 in a group, and have nothing happen for a minute, then suddenly see a group of 7, so give it a few solid minutes before deciding to skip to another day if you think the spawn rates aren’t high enough..You can tell you have a good day for farming if you’re getting groups of 2-5 about every other minute, or faster.

Stay in one spot, and let them spawn offscreen, only going to catch them after it looks like a full group
has appeared on screen.

This will take a VERY long time, but I got it done over the course of 2-3 days, so it’s not that terrible.

You won’t have to worry as much about mobs killing the critters, since most of the time they’ll spawn in the air.

The wiki says there is a 1/150 chance for a golden butterfly to spawn.. During my entire time farming for them, I kept a chest where I put all critters caught in it from start to finish. You tell me if this sounds like 1/150 to you..

[This does not include non-butterfly mobs caught]
344 Monarch (5% bait)
344 Sulphur (10% bait)
265 Zebra Swallowtail (15% bait)
209 Ulysses (20% bait)
152 Julia (25% bait)
84 Red Admiral (30% bait)
32 Purple Emporer (35% bait)
10 Tree Nymph (50% bait)

After you are finished farming for butterflies, make sure to skip a day or two ahead to assure the butterfly spawn rate is low again, so as to help other mobs you may be farming appear more often.

Make sure the weather is set so wind never changes, and set the wind to maximum in one direction.

This will enable ladybugs to spawn.

Stay in one place, and shimmy a small distance from left to right to encourage spawning, and eventually some clusters will appear for you. They’ll usually appear on boss-arena platforms a lot more than on the ground, I find.

I obtained all of my gold squirrels and birds while farming for ladybugs, and my collection chest had
3 extra gold bunnies, and 2 squirrels. That should help give you an idea of how long it took to farm these suckers..

Don’t forget to “touch” some of them once in a while to get that invisible luck buff!

I haven’t gotten this far yet, I’ll give info as I farm the mobs one by one.