Imp Staff

The Imp Staff is a pre-Hardmode summon weapon. It spawns a miniature Flying Imp minion that follows the player around and fires fireballs at enemies. The Imp's fireballs always inflict the On Fire! debuff for 3–6 seconds, and travel in a straight line, piercing an infinite number of enemies. 
 
 Rounding reveals that both the Mythical and Ruthless modifiers provide the same increase to damage, increasing it from 17 to 20.
== Crafting ==
=== Recipes ===
== Notes ==
* The Imp attacks with an average rate of fire of once every 1.25 seconds. The delay between attacks can range between 0.75 and 1.5 seconds.
* While the Imp can fly through water, its fireball projectiles cannot travel through water. They stop at the water's surface and will not appear at all when the Imp is submerged in water. Regardless, the Imp will still attempt to fire at underwater enemies.
== Tips ==
* Crafting this weapon requires mining Hellstone from the Underworld, which requires a pickaxe power of 65%. Only 3 / 4 pre-Hardmode pickaxes are strong enough:
** The Nightmare Pickaxe requires Shadow Scales dropped by the Eater of Worlds boss.
** The Deathbringer Pickaxe requires Tissue Samples dropped by the Brain of Cthulhu boss' treasure bag and its Creepers.
** The Molten Pickaxe requires Hellstone Bars made from Hellstone and Obsidian.
** The Reaver Shark can be fished from the Ocean, making the Imp Staff craftable prior to fighting any boss.
*** The Reaver Shark's pickaxe power is only 59%, rendering it unable to mine Hellstone.
* Despite receiving a fire rate buff, it has a significantly slower fire rate than the Hornet Staff. This means that its damage output is only slightly better against a single target. 
** Due to the Imps' very slow attack speed, they receive very little benefit from whip tag damage or armor penetration compared to the much faster Vampire Frog Staff or even the Flinx Staff.
* Multiple Imps will consistently interfere with each other due to how piercing attack works.
* When an Imp is summoned using the Imp Staff with an enemy in its line of sight, it will usually fire immediately. This means that continuous summoning will generally give the Imp a more consistent fire rate, though this is weaker than using a Ballista Rod, which has higher base damage.
== History ==