How does Terraria turn use time into attack speed?

Terraria runs at sixty ticks per second, and use time is measured in ticks. Attacks per second is therefore sixty divided by the use time, so a weapon with a use time of twenty fires three times a second. Lower use time means faster swings and higher DPS.

How is defense applied to damage?

Enemy defense reduces each hit by a fraction of the defense value that depends on difficulty: half on Normal, three-quarters on Expert, and the full amount on Master. The damage after reduction is floored at one, so even heavily armored enemies always take at least one point per hit.

How do critical hits factor into DPS?

Critical hits deal double damage in Terraria. The calculator averages this in by multiplying the post-defense damage by one plus the crit chance, so a fifty percent crit chance raises average per-hit damage by fifty percent rather than guaranteeing every other hit.

What is the difference between percent and flat bonuses?

Percent bonuses scale the weapon's base damage, while flat bonuses add a fixed amount on top. The tool applies the percent multiplier first, then adds flat damage, matching how Terraria stacks damage-class percentages with flat accessory bonuses.

Why does hit rate matter?

Not every swing connects, especially with projectiles or fast-moving targets. The hit-rate input scales effective attacks per second so your DPS reflects shots that actually land, giving a more realistic number than assuming perfect accuracy.

What is the Terraria DPS Calculator?

Compute accurate Terraria DPS from weapon base damage, percent and flat bonuses, crit chance, use time in ticks, enemy defense, and difficulty, using the game's real damage and defense-reduction rules. Compare builds and gear at a glance. Runs in your browser. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Terraria DPS Calculator

Name: Terraria DPS Calculator
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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The Terraria DPS Calculator gives you an honest damage-per-second figure for any weapon and build, using the game’s real damage, crit, defense, and attack-speed rules. It is built for comparing two weapons or two accessory loadouts side by side.

How it works

Damage is built up in the order Terraria uses, then reduced by the target’s defense and averaged across crits:

modified   = base x (1 + percentBonus) + flatBonus
afterDef    = max(1, modified - difficultyFactor x defense)
avgPerHit   = afterDef x (1 + critChance)        // crits deal 2x
attacks/sec = 60 / useTime
DPS         = avgPerHit x attacks/sec x hitRate

The difficulty factor is 0.5 on Normal, 0.75 on Expert, and 1.0 on Master. Because the damage after defense is floored at one, fast low-damage weapons still chip away at tanky enemies.

Defense scaling by difficulty

The defense reduction formula is one of Terraria’s more important hidden mechanics. On Normal mode, the game halves the enemy’s defense before subtracting it from each hit. On Expert it takes three-quarters, and on Master the full value is used.

This means a 60-defense boss hits significantly different across difficulties:

Normal: 30 reduction per hit
Expert: 45 reduction per hit
Master: 60 reduction per hit

A weapon dealing 80 base damage lands 50 on Normal, 35 on Expert, and 20 on Master against that same target. This is why late-game low-damage-per-hit weapons like certain flails or whips underperform on Master relative to their tooltip: each hit loses more to the full defense subtraction, and the floor-at-one fallback only saves very-fast weapons that are already hitting low numbers.

When use time beats raw damage

Use time (ticks) is measured at 60 ticks per second. A weapon with use time 12 fires 5 times per second; one with use time 40 fires 1.5 times per second. Raw damage is multiplied by attacks per second, so:

A 30-damage weapon at use time 12 deals 30 x 5 = 150 base DPS
A 100-damage weapon at use time 40 deals 100 x 1.5 = 150 base DPS

Against a high-defense target the slower weapon suffers a larger effective per-hit loss (full defense × 0.75 on Expert, for example), while the fast weapon loses the same reduction per hit but it is a smaller fraction of the lower base damage. Fast weapons often overtake slow ones against high-armor targets — this calculator captures that tradeoff.

Tips and example

A weapon with 40 base damage, a 30 percent class bonus, 15 percent crit, and a use time of 20 against a 30-defense enemy on Expert lands roughly: 40 x 1.3 = 52, minus 0.75 x 30 = 22.5 to about 29.5, times 1.15 for crits, times three attacks per second — near 102 DPS at full accuracy. Swap in a faster weapon or more crit and re-run to see which build actually wins. Remember that use time, not raw damage, often decides the comparison.