Ark of the Ancients
| Type | Weapon – Crafting material |
|---|---|
| Damage | 188 Melee |
| Knockback | 6.5 (Strong) |
| Critical chance | 4% |
| Use time | 25 Slow |
| Velocity | 12 |
| Tooltip | Right Click to extend the Ark out in front of you Hitting an enemy with it will parry them, granting you brief invulnerability You can also parry projectiles to make them deal 80 less damage for a short period Parrying empowers the next 10 swings of the sword, letting them throw stronger projectiles Pressing Right Click while holding UP will release all empowered charges in a powerful burst of energy A heavenly blade forged to vanquish all evil |
| Rarity |  |
| Sell | 12  |
| Research | 1 required |
True Ancient Beam
Ancient Star
- Not to be confused with Wrath of the Ancients, a Hardmode spell tome.
The Ark of the Ancients is a craftable Hardmode melee weapon that is a direct upgrade to the Fractured Ark. It uses a custom swing animation and performs a simple combo of a downwards slash followed by an upwards one that shoots an arc of three homing ancient stars, which deal 40% of the weapon's base damage.
Right-clicking with the weapon performs a parry attack that grants the player brief invincibility frames on direct hits and reduce the damage of projectiles. Successful parries will also fill up the weapon's charge.
Its best modifier is Godly. It cannot get modifiers that affect size.
Parry and Charge System
Right-clicking performs a parry, where the Ark will get rapidly extended in front of the player. If an enemy is hit by the sword during the parry, the owner will gain a little more than half a second worth of invincibility. If a projectile is hit by the sword, the projectile's damage will be lowered by a maximum of 80 damage for one second. In both cases a sound effect will play and a line of text will pop up above the player to indicate the parry was successful. After the parry finishes, successful or not, it will go on a cooldown, indicated by a rainbow bar above the player's head.
The Ark of the Ancients possesses a unique charge system, being able to hold up to 10 charges indicated by a small rainbow bar over the sword's inventory sprite. Swinging the sword will consume one charge per swing, and landing a parry, be it on an enemy or a projectile will entirely refill the Ark's charges. When the ark holds any amount of charges, its damage will be multiplied by 1.45, the sword will get bigger, and each swing will fire a medium-ranged True Ancient Beam projectile which deals 80% of the weapon's damage (Functionally 116% of the weapon's base damage, if we account the 1.45 damage multiplier from the Ark being charged up). The ancient beam will replace the central star in the upwards swing part of the combo.
If the Ark holds any amount of charges, Right-Clicking while holding up will replace the parry with a concentrated blast of energy that covers about a third of the screen, depleting all of the sword's charges in the process. The damage of the beam is dependent on the amount of charges consumed to release it, on top of receiving the 145% damage boost from the Ark being charged up. The damage is equal to the base damage (alongside the charge damage boost) multiplied by half the amount of charges consumed by the blast, meaning that using the attack with all 10 charges up will give the blast a 725% damage multiplier (1.45 * 10 * 0.5), while using the attack with only one charge remaining will give the blast a 72.5% damage multiplier (1.45 * 1 * 0.5).
Crafting
Recipe
| Crafting Station | ||
|---|---|---|
 Mythril Anvilor  Orichalcum Anvil | ||
| Ingredient(s) | Amount | |
 | Fractured Ark | 1 |
 | Starfury | 1 |
 | Broken Hero Sword | 1 |
| Result | ||
 | Ark of the Ancients | 1 |
Used in
| Result | Ingredients | Crafting station |
|---|---|---|
 Ark of the Elements |  Ancient Manipulator |
Notes
- Due to the Ark's unique swing animation, it is entirely unaffected by the player's attack speed.
- The parry doesn't work on harmless or static projectiles, or if the projectile is too large.
- The parry lasts for 5.66 seconds, with the actual parry lasting a quarter of a second, and the remaining time being taken up by the cooldown.
- The parry cooldown applies to all of the Fractured Ark's upgrades.
- The blast attack can still be performed even if the parry is on cooldown.
- Parrying a projectile that deals less than 80 damage will make it completely harmless for one second, but it can still work on projectiles that deal more than 80 damage, although the player will still be hit by the projectile for the remaining amount of damage.
- This can make it dangerous to parry strong projectiles that inflict debuffs, since the player will be inflicted by them even when successfuly parrying.
- The paragraph describing the parry function is colored in a cornflower blue color (#6495ED ●)
Tips
- While parrying a projectile makes it harmless for a second, it may at times be preferable to directly hit an enemy with the parry to recieve the 0.58 seconds of invincibility, due to the latter providing immunity to every source of damage, while the former only reduces the damage of a single projectile.
- The blast attack is best used in situations where landing all of your shots is not guaranteed, as it can be used to deal a huge burst of damage in one time, alongside having piercing capabilities. If you're confident that you can land all of the charged shots and if piercing is not needed, it may be wise to refrain from using it, since the damage scaling on the blast makes it deal a bit more half of the damage one would have gotten if they landed every shot with the ancient beams.
- While the blast has infinite piercing, it has damage falloff, meaning the more enemies it hits, the less damage it will deal.
Trivia
- The Ark of the Ancients was formerly known as the True Ark of the Ancients and is still referred as such in the files. Its current name was formerly used by its predecessor, the Fractured Ark.
History
- 2.0.3.006: Fixed parry bar being offset.
- 2.0.3.003: Fixed parry meter being offset.
- 2.0.2.001:
- Now uses a Broken Hero Sword and Starfury in its recipe instead of True Excalibur, a Core of Calamity, and 15 Living Shards.
- Decreased sell price from 16 to 12 .
- 2.0.1.001: Now uses 15 Living Shards in its recipe instead of 3.
- 1.5.1.005: Fixed a tooltip error that caused the game to crash when using a translation mod.
- 1.5.1.003: Fixed an issue that could lead to corrupted data.
- 1.5.1.001:
- Renamed from "True Ark of the Ancients" to "Ark of the Ancients".
- Reworked:
- Buffed damage from 98 to 188.
- Now has a custom swing animation and no longer summons projectiles on each swing. Instead, stars are fired every other swing.
- The player can right click to parry an enemy or projectile, granting the player immunity frames, reducing damage taken from said attack, and causing the sword to be temporarily empowered and fire beams.
- The player can also fire a laser beam by using up all the charges gained from a parry.
- Projectiles no longer inflict debuffs.
- Now uses True Excalibur in its recipe instead of a Broken Hero Sword.
- Resprited.
- 1.5.0.001:
- Sword beam projectiles now grant enemies 10 local immunity frames instead of 6-3.
- Main beam projectile no longer inflicts Glacial State and now inflicts Frostburn for 2 seconds.
- Fixed an oversight that allowed Eon Beam projectiles to pierce infinitely.
- 1.4.5.001: Terra Stars no longer inflict Cursed Inferno.
- 1.4.4.004: Nerfed beam damage from 100% base damage to 75%.
- 1.4.3.002:
- Nerfed damage from 100 to 98.
- Beams now pierce once instead of twice.
- True melee hits and beams no longer inflict Brimstone Flames, Glacial State, Holy Flames, and Plague.
- Beams now grant enemies 12 local immunity frames.
- Green stars now inflict Cursed Inferno for 3 seconds instead of 5.
- Gave it a 50% chance to fire two stars instead of three.
- 1.4.3.001: Swing now functions in PvP.
- 1.4.2.107:
- Projectiles are now briefly invisible upon spawning.
- Green balls now use actual sprites instead of dust.
- 1.4.2.105:
- Buffed damage from 60 to 100.
- Stars now deal 33% base damage instead of 100%.
- 1.4.2.102:
- Decreased Holy Flames duration from true melee hits from 8.33 seconds to 5.
- Beams now inflict Brimstone Flames, Glacial State, Holy Flames, and Plague instead of just Holy Flames, and decreased Cursed Inferno duration from green balls from 6.67 seconds to 5.
- 1.4.2.101: Nerfed damage from 85 to 60.
- 1.4.1.001: Buffed damage from 82 to 85, and it now shoots more stars and in a larger spread.
- 1.3.4.101: Stars now deal melee damage instead of ranged damage.
- 1.3.3.001: Buffed damage from 77 to 82.
- 1.3.1.001: Now uses the rarity instead of
.
- 1.2.0.004:
- Adjusted Eon Beam dusts.
- Slightly increased the maximum damage of the ball projectiles.
- Resprited.
- 1.2.0.001: Nerfed damage from 89 to 77.
- 1.1.7.855: Blue beams now hit every 5 frames, and pink beams hit every 4.
- 1.1.7: Buffed damage from 73 to 89.
- 1.1.6.13: Now has use turn.
- 1.1.5.093: Resprited.
- 1.1.5.06: Nerfed damage to 73.
- 1.1.5.05: Fixed terra balls interacting strangely with tiles.
- 1.1.5: Introduced.
