Chlorophyte Terraria Guide - Indie Game Culture (2024)

Terraria has many different ores and gems, but one of the most useful ones is optional and just a tad difficult to obtain. This, of course, is Chlorophyte, and this guide will help you understand the ins and outs of everything you can do with it.

Chlorophyte is the green and powerful ore you’ll only find in the jungle in hardmode. Most people would think it spawns after defeating the mechanical bosses, but it generates right after the Wall of Flesh; you need to beat the mechs to mine it.

As someone who plays ranger often, I would rarely skip Chlorophyte, the only class setup that doesn’t benefit massively from it is summoner, but that’s because re-logic hates summoner. For melee, you get the best sword in the game until after moon lord. For ranger, you get the best ammo. And for mage, you can turn it into the best armor. Welcome to a Chlorophyte Terraria Guide.

Bottom Line Up-Front

Chlorophyte is only obtainable with the Pickaxe-axe or Drax, which can only be obtained after fighting all three mechanical bosses. Once you have it, you can turn it into three different melee armors, two ranger armors, and two mage armors.

You can also make tools or weapons from Chlorophyte, decorative blocks, an extractinator upgrade, and most importantly, the best ammunition at this stage and arguably in the entire game. This green jungle ore is incredibly versatile, highly sought after, and can be farmed.

Key Info

• Item Type: Ore/Material
• Valid For: Every Class except Summoner
• Renewable:Yes, Chlorophyte ore touching mud underground will spread and create more Chlorophyte, and mud is infinitely renewable.
• Location:Underground Jungle
• Difficulty to Obtain:It isn’t hard to find, but it is hard to get a large quantity.
• Availability:Hardmode, only able to be broken after the Mechanical Bosses
• Rarity:Lime

What is Chlorophyte?

While the word Chlorophyte is a combination of chlorophyll and the suffix -phyte, meaning photosynthetic plant matter, Chlorophyte itself is incredibly strong, indeed no garden variety plant.

Contrary to all the references to photosynthesis, Chlorophyte can only be found underground, and the deeper you go, the more of it you will find. This is because Chlorophyte spreads to nearby mud blocks. However, many things can slow this spreading, and it will probably take a while before you can acquire a lot.

As mentioned above, Chlorophyte helps a ton with mid-hardmode progression and unlocks some of the best items in the game. It is absolutely worth going for before doing anything else after you defeat your third and final mechanical boss.

How to Find Chlorophyte

Chlorophyte will start spawning as soon as hardmode starts upon killing the Wall of Flesh. While it can technically spawn in any biome, it will only begin to generate underground in mud connected to Jungle Grass blocks, so, like, the jungle.

After it spawns the first time, it will continue spreading to nearby mud. The easiest way to find it would be to delve into the underground jungle after some significant amount of time has passed since you defeated the Wall. Make sure to bring a Spelunker potion whenever you want to go on a Chlorophyte run.

You need to have the Pickaxe-axe or Drax to mine it, and while the Drax might be faster, go with the Pickaxe-axe if you have ears. You can then use that pickaxe to find as much green ore in the underground jungle as you’d like. As with every ore in Terraria, remember that the lower you go, the more you find.

Some Notes on the Jungle

The jungle is easily the most dangerous location for you to be at this point, with the corruption and crimson in a distant 3rd and 2nd place. You’ll need tips and tricks to survive while you’re going on Chlorophyte runs; even with full hallowed armor and the best gear, you can still get killed incredibly quickly.

• Giant Tortoisesare the bane of any Terraria player who has ever stepped foot into the hardmode jungle. They tend to jump at you while spinning and hit you with their shell, doing more damage than the Moon Lord’s death laser. This can kill anyone playing on a difficulty greater than classic mode, and it would be wise to avoid them by boxing yourself in with any blocks in your inventory. Melee players should be killing them often since they drop a crucial ingredient for Turtle Armor.
• Moss Hornetsare the upgraded hardmode variant of hornets and not the one from Hollow Knight. They are generally more annoying and do more damage, but if you could handle normal hornets, you can probably take them.
• Angry Trappersreplaced the Snatchers and not the one from a Hat in Time. These are incredibly annoying. Loving to pop into a wall where you can’t hit them, be entirely obscured by blocks sometimes, and generally do a ton of damage. Deal with these by smacking them away and waiting patiently for them to return. Also, they rarely drop the Uzi, a great gun but exceedingly rare.
• Mothsare scarce, and if you ever see one, make it a high priority to kill it. If you’ve defeated one mech, you can get butterfly dust from them, which turns into great wings.
• Arapaimawill spawn in any pool of water in the jungle, and while they might seem dangerous, you avoid them altogether by not going in the water. Otherwise, these fish bite back and aren’t that hard to kill due to their low defense.
• Jungle Creepersare probably the easiest enemy to contend with that is exclusive to hardmode, they slowly crawl towards you, and even if they manage to reach you, they only deal 50 damage. So just hit them and run; it won’t be hard.
• Plantera Bulbsare those pink, bulbous flowers that kill you immediately if you break them accidentally. These summon the next boss in progression, and you shouldn’t take that lightly. Keep these safe, and do not break them until you’ve made an arena and are ready to fight Plantera, lest you face the consequences.
• Life Fruitis the only positive thing besides the Chlorophyte you can look out for. They look delicious, and I want one in real life. They also increase your health, and if you want a complete guide on how to get them, look here.

While ranger might get the Uzi from the Angry Trappers and Melee could get the Yelets from any enemy, most enemies are better left avoided than fought. Learn to box yourself in with blocks, run away, and abuse knockback to its full extent, and you’ll be fine.

How To Farm Chlorophyte

Once you’ve gotten quite a bit of Chlorophyte ore, you can set up a decent farm to get it in a safer environment. It won’t necessarily be a fast method, but you can safely obtain it without fear of death by turtle this way. Make sure to make it in the bottom half of your world in any biome, and you’ll be golden. Or, more fittingly, you’ll be green.

The only things we need to make this farm are mud and Chlorophyte ore. You can renew mud by spending money on getting a bomb, crafting it into a dirt bomb, throwing it, and mining it up for more dirt than you started with. Then, you can stand next to some water and craft your dirt into mud for infinite mud blocks and, thus, endless Chlorophyte.

You can make long, 5-block tall strips of mud, with a single chlorophyte block in the middle, space about five blocks or more from each other. Chlorophyte grows faster when surrounded by mud and won’t grow if there is too much Chlorophyte near, so keep them decently far, let the farm sit for a while, and you should have a decent supply of green stuff.

When it’s time to harvest, hold mud and left-click the Chlorophyte with it. As long as the pickaxe you’re using can mine Chlorophyte, you can block-swap the ore into the mud and quickly get the ore while renewing the mud it’s replacing. Remember to keep one ore left every five blocks, and your farm will keep perpetuating itself.

None of this is exact, like with the above images; I just threw some mud blocks underground with a few Chlorophyte ores inside and came back to quite a bit of it generating. So even a smaller farm like this can provide quite a bit of Chlorophyte, given enough time.

Just remember that Chlorophyte will stop growing if there is too much Chlorophyte nearby, so space your ores out quite a bit to avoid this issue. My farm up here more or less just stopped producing more Chlorophyte than this after a day because it grew too much, and there was too much other ore nearby.

Crafting with Chlorophyte

Now for the main attraction: the crafting recipes that make Chlorophyte worth the headache are almost all outstanding and worth crafting, but some more than others, and some are not worth going for at this point in the game.

To make anything with Chlorophyte, you’ll want to craft it all into Chlorophyte bars. Except for the decorative Chlorophyte bricks or the downgrade into Titanium using Shimmer, everything uses bars, not the ore itself. So craft your bars at your adamantite or titanium forge.

Armor

Armor is probably the thing you want the most out of CChlorophyte Unless you’re playing summoner, in which case, get tiki armor from the Witch Doctor and then disregard this entire guide. However, for every other class, there are at least two sets worth looking into.

• Chlorophyte Armoris the set that melee, ranger, and mage can use. While Chlorophyte is the critical ingredient in creating better and more specialized armor for each class, this is the lazy option and not even a bad one. If you don’t want to put in the effort, you get some class-specific buffs and become a sim, which, apparently, lets you shoot projectiles from your head. Nevertheless, this is an excellent option if you want some extra damage, some easy-to-obtain armor, and don’t feel like putting in a bit more effort for your armor set. This set takes 52 Chlorophyte bars to craft.
• Turtle Armoris difficult to get considering the only way to get turtle shells is by killing the aforementioned torturous tortoises, but the reward is well worth the effort. You only get 65 defense, but you also get an extra 15% damage reduction and a thorns effect that is twice as effective as the thorns potion. The only thing this armor is missing is the frankly insane Dungeon Guardian kills you used to be able to get with it. 2013 was a wild time for Terraria. This takes 54 Chlorophyte bars and 3 Turtle Shells.
• Beetle Armoris an even further upgraded form of Turtle Armor; you can choose between more offense or more defense at the cost of that thorns effect. If you ever go for Turtle Armor, you should probably get it since you get the 18 Beetle Husks you need from Golem anyways. The set has either 61 or 73 defense, depending on your chest plate, with the lower defense chest plate providing you significant damage boosts. This armor also gives you extra damage reduction or extra melee damage when either avoiding taking damage or dealing enough damage.
• Shroomite Armoris relatively complex, but the ranger buffs cannot be overlooked. Firstly, make an aboveground mushroom biome with an NPC house on it. This can quickly be done by having a big mud block in the sky and planting mushroom grass seeds. While searching mushroom biomes for seeds, stock up on a ton of glowing mushrooms for later. Once you have the truffle move in, buy the Autohammer from him, you can now make Shroomite bars with one Chlorophyte bar and fifteen Glowing Mushrooms. You can make Shroomite armor with 54 bars, providing a stealth mode on top of many ranger buffs. You need to choose a helmet according to your ammo type, but you could also craft every helmet with an extra 24 Shroomite Bars.
• Spectre Armorcomes quite a bit easier than Shroomite. If you’re playing mage, all you need to do is defeat Plantera, dive into the dungeon, and grab a ton of ectoplasm by defeating enemies. Now you can make two Spectre bars with two Chlorophyte bars and one ectoplasm. The whole set costs 54 Spectre bars, or 66 if you want both headpieces. The mask will provide you with a boatload of damage, and the hood will help you with healing. I usually recommend getting both and swapping between them as needed.

Tools

Any veteran Terraria player can tell you that Chlorophyte tools aren’t wise to create. It might seem like the better ore would make the better tool, but the Pickaxe-axe is usually better than the Chlorophyte pickaxe and jackhammer, and you get an upgrade in the form of the Picksaw from Golem, anyways.

So for your sake, I’ll only briefly cover these tools since I don’t recommend most of them at all.

• Chlorophyte Pickaxes/Drillsare a great way to waste the Chlorophyte that you already need a Hallowed tool to mine. They have the same use-time and mining power as the Drax and Pickaxe-axe and make no sense to craft whatsoever. As a fun fact, they used to have even less mining power than Hallowed tools, so the Chlorophyte tools could not even mine Chlorophyte. Hilarious.
• Chlorophyte Chainsaws/Greataxesmight sound extremely cool, but they’re almost as lame as the mining tools. They provide a very slight 5% axe speed bonus, but is that worth taking up another space in your hotbar? I think not. They also do terrible damage, so don’t even bother trying to use them for a melee build.
• Chlorophyte Jackhammers/Warhammers are the only ones of these that there is a solid reason to get. They have twice the speed of the Pwnhammer, which is probably the hammer you still have. You’d need to keep the Pwnhammer on you if you plan on breaking demon altars, but if you destroy walls a ton, then sure, go for this.
• Spectre Pickaxesmight seem strange, but they provide a +3 range, meaning you can break blocks up to 3 blocks further away from you than usual. This is handy if you need it, so consider it if you’re a builder who hates the martian invasion.
• Spectre Hamaxes are a great idea, especially if you don’t play mage and have a lot of ectoplasm on hand. You get a good hammer and axe power with the same +3 range buff. This should be in any builder’s toolkit for a long while.
• Spectre Paint Roller, Spectre Paint Scraper, and Spectre Paintbrushall fall into the category of painting tools that are technically better than the defaults, but they all take 8 Spectre bars each if you make them; that is quite weird. They are just for painting, so only make them if you reallylove painting.
• The Shroomite Digging Clawis unequivocally the best mining speed in the entire game, so if you want to dig fast, go for it. Just be aware it has a pretty low pickaxe power and won’t be able to mine many of the later ores.
• The Hoverboardis a cool option, but in reality, it controls bizarrely and makes me prefer going for regular wings instead. Considering how quickly you will get Beetle wings instead of this, I can’t recommend it for anything other than aesthetics.
• The Chlorophyte Extractinator is an upgraded extractinator that gives you hardmode ores, on top of being able to convert some ores into their counterparts. I don’t see the point in this; hardmode ores are irrelevant since it doesn’t give you Chlorophyte, and the conversion thing is pretty much just, “mom said we have shimmer at home.”
• The Drill Containment Unitis an incredible mount that mines things quickly and is post-Moon Lord. But it does take 40 Chlorophyte, Shroomite, and Spectre bars to craft, so technically, I needed to mention it. Go for this if you’ve beaten the game and want to clear out large areas.

Weapons and Ammo

Otherwise known as the good stuff, Chlorophyte weapons come in as either useless or the best of their type in the game. We have a ton of Melee weapons, various Ranger weapons, a lone mage weapon, and again, absolutely nothing for summoner.

• The Chlorophyte Claymoremay seem like a decently viable weapon at first, but believe me when I say it isn’t worth making compared to one of the melee options. It’s a slow-moving heavy sword that fires one single projectile. The orb it fires has terrible range but does have infinite piercing. The problem with this sword is it’s doing terrible damage at this game stage. They buffed it recently, yet it still isn’t close enough to be viable.
• The Chlorophyte Saberis a bit closer to being viable but still lacks in the damage. You could pick this one up just for its poison gas cloud projectile, but generally, there are better swords made with Chlorophyte to be focused on.
• The Chlorophyte Partisanis one of the last spears you can ever get, and I will be honest, this entire sub-class is something I’ve never been interested in ever using. Spears are slow and unwieldy and do almost nothing to compensate for it. If you want to use spears, then go for it, but we all know what’s coming.
• True Excaliburis made with just 12 Hallowed Bars and 24 Chlorophyte, which is not inexpensive by any means, but the reward is well worth it. It does a powerful true melee hit, with insane DPS to back it up, and the best part is that it isn’t even anywhere close to what we’re going after when we’re post-Plantera.

• The Terra Bladeis second to none,thebest sword pre-Moon Lord, and that isn’t just because of its DPS. It does significant damage, fires a massive projectile on every swing, and swings fast with a huge true melee hitbox to boot. Go for this, it may seem like a gigantic and overwhelming crafting tree, requiring a True Night’s Edge, True Excalibur, and Broken Hero’s Sword, but the reward is insanely good.
• The Chlorophyte Shotbowis the best bow for damage at this point. If you prefer broader coverage, I’d go with the Daedalus storm bow (especially with the ammo I will discuss in a minute), but the shot bow is the way to go if you care more about damage than anything else.
• Chlorophyte Arrowsbounce off walls and will even home in on a target after bouncing a few times. They do the best damage of any arrows at this point and are incredible in enclosed spaces, such as where you would fight Plantera and Golem, the very next bosses. Funny how that works out.
• Chlorophyte Bulletsare the best bullets for people who can’t aim, so like, me. They automatically home-in on any enemy you fire anywhere close to hitting and are practically a necessity for every single boss coming up. I honestly think that for most people, any ammo that does more damage isn’t even worth it, as the extra hits you get in with the homing shots are more than enough to compensate for the damage.
• The Venom Staffis an item I forget about entirely because the Poison Staff hasn’t been helpful since the start of hardmode, and even then, it wasn’t great. It inflicts acid venom and does some damage. Still, I don’t think this one is worth grinding out spiders and then spending your Chlorophyte on the upgrade, considering you can get way better mage weapons from the dungeon, which you should, as a mage, already be grinding in.

Questions and Answers

Conclusion

Chlorophyte is a beneficial material in Terraria, it’s practically essential if you want to play melee or mage, and while ranger can get away with never getting it, Chlorophyte bullets and Shroomite armor are an extremely deadly combo. Nevertheless, Chlorophyte provides some of the best protection and weapons in Terraria and will have you well on your way to taking down Plantera.

The only thing Chlorophyte can’t help is a summoner, as there is nothing there for it. It would have been cool if they added a 3rd bar where you used Chlorophyte to craft and turn into Summoner armor and weapons, but some things just aren’t meant to be. Either way, go for some photosynthesis in the game and maybe get some sun in real life.