Hidden Luck Mechanics in Terraria 1.4 Journey’s End

Terraria has a hidden indicator of the player’s luck, which affects many random outcomes and changes depending on the specific actions you take. In this guide, we will help you to learn all the details.

How Does Luck Work in Terraria?

When the game rolls the dice to check some random outcomes, the player’s luck indicator is taken into account, which can be in the range from -0.7 to 1. This indicator affects the success or failure of the outcome. For convenience, let’s take an example:

• 1 luck means that any outcome has a 100% chance to have a double chance of being triggered.
• Player Luck 0.5 means that any outcome has a 100% chance to have a double chance of being triggered.
• Player Luck 0 means any outcome will have a base probability of triggering.
• Player Luck -0.5 means that any outcome has a 50% chance to have half chance of being triggered.

What Does Luck Affect in Terraria?

The complete list of all the phenomena that are affected by luck is quite long, but I will try to mention the most important ones:

• The drop chance of all crafting materials and unique rare items.
• The appearance of a rarer assortment of a traveling merchant.
• The appearance of gold portals when breaking jugs, replacing ordinary animals with gold ones, as well as spawning more rare ones.
• Chances of falling food, hearts, and stars when killing enemies.
• Spawn mimics and rare enemies.

How to Change Your Luck in Terraria

There are several ways to influence the current luck score for a player.

Ladybugs

Kill this harmless insect, and for the next 3 minutes, you will have a negative debuff giving -0.2 luck. If you catch a ladybug, and then release and touch it with your character, then you will be rewarded with a positive effect for 12 minutes, giving 0.2 luck.

RELATED: How to Obtain a Mana Flower in Terraria

Interestingly, the golden versions of the insect have twice the performance and duration of both positive and negative effects. I also do not recommend fishing with a bug as bait: this will count as killing an insect!

Torches

Placing and simply holding a torch corresponding to the biome where you are at the moment in the active slot has a positive effect on luck. The most common torch does nothing, but the rest add 0.1 or 0.2 to the indicator of luck, depending on other parameter amounts.

Good Luck Potions

The effectiveness of the potion depends solely on how long ago you drank it. At 5 minutes, you are given 0.3 luck, at 3 minutes 0.2, and later only 0.1.

Lantern Night

When the night sky is illuminated by thousands of flying lanterns, your luck favors you, increasing by 0.3. It doesn’t matter if you are on the surface or underground. Please note that if you launch an invasion or spawn a boss, the effect will not be active.

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Garden Gnomes

If you place a garden gnome decoration nearby, your luck will increase by 0.2. You can find out more about how to catch these bearded short men in a separate guide.