Stardust Dragon Staff

The Stardust Dragon Staff is a Hardmode, post-Lunatic Cultist summon weapon that summons a Stardust Dragon that attacks enemies. The Stardust Dragon constantly flies around the screen surrounding the player, and flies through blocks, attacking enemies by flying through them. It leaves a trail of sparkles that provide periodic bursts of light as it moves.
The Stardust Dragon Staff is special in that if summoned more than once, multiple Dragons do not spawn — instead, the first spawned Dragon becomes longer by one segment for each additional summoning, broadening its area of attack and increasing its damage output. Each summon creates additional segments between the tail and the pre-tail segment, and re-summons the tail.
The Stardust Dragon hits ten times per second. It inflicts damage according to the formula: summon dmg*(1.69 + .46[summon length - 1]), which is then all multiplied by a random multiplier between 0.85 and 1.15. Each segment of the dragon deals damage based on the damage modifier on the staff used to summon them, which means that different segments of the dragon can deal different damage.
== Crafting ==
=== Recipes ===
== Notes ==
* Piercing attacks do not damage the target when it is under attack by the Stardust Dragon. This can be circumvented by using non-piercing weapons, such as most bullet-firing guns. While Luminite Bullets do not create piercing invincibility frames of their own, they are still classified as piercing damage, and do not work against a target that is being attacked by a Stardust Dragon.
* Like most minions, right-clicking an enemy while the Staff is held will cause the Stardust Dragon to focus on that enemy, but it may change targets before killing the enemy it was focused on.
== Tips ==
* The Stardust Dragon Staff is useful for farming, as high-level summons of it are capable of killing even the toughest non-boss enemies.
* With proper minion damage bonuses the Stardust Dragon can easily take out all bosses, including the Moon Lord.
* The Dragon will inadvertently damage any entities it flies over, including Critters and Cultists, which will be killed quickly or instantly. Dispel the Dragon minion or hold the Guide To Critter Companionship in the inventory if one is trying to avoid killing them.
* The Stardust Dragon has a frequent habit of attacking off-screen enemies. Keep that in mind in case the player is searching for a specific rare item drop.
* Due to its high amount of damage with many segments, the Firecracker's tag can deal immense amounts of damage in one hit when used alongside it.
* When picking Armor and Accessories to maximise the Stardust Dragon's damage, as a general rule, increasing the length of the dragon with additional summons is almost always better than increasing its damage by some percent.
== Trivia ==
* The Stardust Dragon buff icon is also used internally as the Daybroken debuff icon. It is merely a placeholder icon, as it cannot be inflicted upon players, so the icon never actually displays in-game.
* The and are the only other summon weapons that do not spawn a new minion but rather enhance the existing one.
* Its buff tooltip is similar to the buff tooltip for the Stardust Guardian, being "" and "" respectively.
* The Stardust Dragon Summon may also be a reference to the popular card game Yu-Gi-Oh's Stardust Dragon monster card where it was the main character Yusei Fudo's signature card in the 5D's series.
== History ==