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Terraria – Arkhalis and The Enchanted Sword

A short guide describing two pre-hardmode weapons. Their usefulness, Differences and how to obtain them.

How to find an “Enchanted Sword Shrine”

First things first, both the enchanted sword and Arkhalis are found underground in an area called an “Enchanted Sword Shrine”, an enchanted sword shrine is visible from the surface as a one wide hole in the ground. A small world will contain 1 shrine, a medium will contain 3 and large will contain 4.

The number of shrines is guaranteed, finding a sword in one is not. Each shrine has sword in a stone at the bottom of the shrine, their is a 2/3 chance the sword will be beige with a flat guard and no other adornments, this sword will drop nothing upon being broken–I personally think it should drop an iron or lead sword, but it doesn’t–however there is a 1/3 chance that the sword in the stone will be blue with a red gem, Breaking this will give you a powerful sword, there is a 9/10 chance the dropped sword will be the enchanted sword & a 1/10 chance for it to be Arkhalis.

If you’re having trouble finding the shrines, there are a few different ways to go about it.
for one thing the only biome they can be found in is the forest biome, but not the one you spawn in, each world–with a few exceptions do to odd world generation–has a forest at the center of the world. And another forest just before the ocean, It doesn’t matter if this area is corrupt or crimson, It will never be under desert or jungle, in short, the surface has to be made of dirt & stone (The jungle beingmade of mud, desert sand, etc).

The simplest way is to dig a tunnel about 15-40 blocks deep, then keep digging sideways until you find a vertical tunnel or a the shrine itself. The downside to this method is it’s quite time consuming, Either weapon is only useful pre-hardmode or very early hardmode meaning your pickaxe will be quite slow if your looking for one. an easier way is to exploit a small bug concerning mounts. While flying with any type rocket boots, regardless of whether your wearing spectre boots, lightness boots, frostspark boots.

As long as they fly it works–what mount you have is irrelevant–if you start riding your mount while flying with boots several flames like those of rocket boots will come from your feet and go very far underground illuminating what’s beneath you, I have no idea why this happen, that it would replace spectre or frostspark with rocket boot fire seems like a fairly normal glitch but why it would would show most of what beneath you is beyond me. Nevertheless, this is a highly effective means of finding shrines, using a flame lash or a magic missile and attacking the ground makes a large number of particles with similar effects, although they are somewhat harder to get then a pair of rocket boots & any mount.

Arkhalis & The Enchanted Sword

If you’ve run away with the idea that arkhalis is far more powerful than the enchanted sword, put such a notion from your mind, despite the large difference in rarity, both swords are equally powerful.

The enchanted sword when swung fires a projectile at the cost of no item or mana, a beam is only fired roughly every 1-2 seconds, the player will hear a faint noise when the beam is recharged. The statistics of the enchanted sword are as follows:

  • Type: Weapon
  • Damage: 24 Melee
  • Knockback: 5.25 (Average)
  • Critical chance: 4%
  • Use time: 17 Very Fast
  • Velocity: 9.5
  • Tooltip: Shoots an enchanted beam
  • Rarity: Rarity Level: 2
  • Sell: 40 Silver Coin

Arkhalis is a very different weapon, whereas the enchanted sword is powerful due to its range, Arkhalis has very little range and no beam, however, it’s damage more than makes up for this lack of range, rather than the overhead swing stereotypical of swords, Arkhalis swings up and down incredibly quickly. Despite having a lower damage per hit than the enchanted sword, Arkhalis far outstrips it’s counterpart’s damage at close range. Without any melee accessories or armour, Arkhalis against 1 target has about the same damage per second as the enchanted sword against 3. The actual statistics are far lower on Arkhalis, however, as the use time doesn’t effect arkhalis’s unique attack, the damage per second of Arkhalis is far higher. Here are the statistics of Arkhalis:

  • Type: Weapon
  • Damage: 20 Melee
  • Knockback: 4 (Weak)
  • Critical chance: 4%
  • Use time: 24 Fast
  • Velocity: 15
  • Tooltip: ‘I didn’t get this off of a Schmoo’
  • Rarity: Rarity Level: 2
  • Sell: 80

All this in mind, at long range, the enchanted sword is infinitely superior, at close range Arkhalis is the weapon of choice. My personal preference is Arkhalis, just because it’s more fun when playing melee to have to get close to your enemy. Such a weapon wouldn’t be practicable in hardmode, but I still think that it’s fun to play with some risks.

Written by Willow

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