Terraria 1.4.5.7 added the Clay Bud Staff, a pre-Hardmode summon weapon that finally gives summoners a starting minion they can build instead of farm. It costs a stack of clay and three cheap items, and it can be made within the first few minutes of a world. It also hits for 5 damage, which is the lowest minion damage in the game.
Quick answer: Craft the Clay Bud Staff at a Furnace with 30 Clay Blocks, 1 Lesser Healing Potion, 1 Daybloom, and 1 Blinkroot. Use it to hold whip tag damage on grounded enemies, and swap off it before any boss fight.
Clay Bud Staff stats
The staff summons a Clay Bud minion that walks and jumps into enemies, damaging them when it slams down with its arms. If it drifts too far from you, it uses the leaves on its head to lift off and fly back. Its best modifier is Fabled.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Damage | 5 (Summon) |
| Knockback | 2 (Very weak) |
| Use time | 36 (Very slow) |
| Velocity | 10 |
| Rarity / Sell | Blue (level 1) / 1 Silver |
| Buff granted | Clay Bud |
| Target range | 31.25 tiles |
| Hit rate | 30 ticks of local immunity frames, so up to 2 hits per second |
Note: like every minion staff, it summons next to you rather than at your cursor. That is normal behavior, not a bug.
How to craft the Clay Bud Staff
You will know it worked when the staff appears in your inventory with the tooltip “Summons a clay bud to fight for you.” Using it applies the Clay Bud buff and spawns the minion beside you.
What the Clay Bud is good at: whip tag damage
Five damage per hit is chip damage, so the minion is not your damage source. Its real job is carrying whip tag effects. Crack a whip at an enemy to apply the tag, and the Clay Bud’s follow-up hits deliver the bonus damage tied to that tag.
That combination clears the early surface and cavern layer fine. Slimes, zombies, and other slow grounded enemies stay in range long enough for the bud to land its two hits per second while you keep whipping.
One more thing works in its favor. The Clay Bud uses local immunity frames rather than static ones, so extra Clay Buds do not steal hits from each other. Damage scales in a straight line with the number you have summoned, which is not true of every pre-Hardmode minion.
Where the Clay Bud minion fails
The bud attacks by jumping into things and slamming down. That attack pattern breaks against anything that does not stand still on the ground.
- Flying enemies sit above its jump arc, so it whiffs repeatedly.
- Fast enemies outrun it, and it spends the fight chasing instead of hitting.
- Submerged enemies are close to unhittable, since the bud can end up right on top of a target in water and still register nothing.
Since Terraria 1.4.5.8, the Clay Bud always knocks enemies away from you rather than in an arbitrary direction. That helps with crowd control, but the knockback is rated very weak, so do not expect it to hold anything off.
Clay Bud Staff against King Slime and Eye of Cthulhu
Boss fights are where this weapon is not recommended. Against King Slime, the minion has to reach the center of the boss sprite to register damage at all, so it spends most of the fight bouncing off the edges of a very large target. Eye of Cthulhu flies, which reintroduces the whiffing problem.
Boss defense also eats a 5 damage hit almost entirely. To get meaningful numbers out of the bud in a boss fight you need armor penetration, from an accessory such as the Sharktooth Necklace or from the Fabled modifier on the staff itself. Even then, it is a supporting trickle of damage rather than a main weapon.
Judged on its own numbers, the Clay Bud Staff is weak. Judged on when you can get it, it fills a real gap. A summoner used to depend on a Finch Staff from a living tree chest or a Slime Staff drop to start the class at all, and this recipe removes that luck entirely. Craft it, pair it with a whip, and treat it as the thing that keeps tag damage running until a Flinx Staff, Hornet Staff, or Imp Staff takes over.
