Ark of the Cosmos
| Type | Weapon |
|---|---|
| Damage | 1700 Melee |
| Knockback | 9.5 (Extremely Strong) |
| Critical chance | 19% |
| Use time | 15 Average |
| Velocity | 28 |
| Tooltip | Left Click to perform a 5-swing combo that ends by throwing the blade The thrown blade will follow your cursor Releasing while the blade is out will cause an exploding snap Right Click to snip out the scissor blades in front of you Hitting an enemy with it will parry them, granting you brief invulnerability You can parry projectiles to make them deal 160 less damage for a short period Parrying anything will empower the next 10 swings of the sword Pressing Right Click while holding UP with empowered charges will provoke a Big Rip in spacetime and use all charges If more than 5 charges were used, you can dash across the rip by holding UP The physical culmination of your journey, capable of rending gods asunder |
| Rarity |  |
| Sell | 30  |
| Research | 1 required |
Sundering Scissors
Rending Needle
Eon Bolt
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The Ark of the Cosmos is a craftable post-Moon Lord melee weapon that is the final upgrade of the Fractured Ark and Broken Biome Blade. It uses a custom swing animation and performs a five-swing combo of a small upwards slash followed by a very wide circular one that shoots 6 homing eon bolts, repeating the last two swings once, and then following it up with a medium-ranged throw, where the ark will be sent out spinning, following the player's cursor for a maximum of 2.33 seconds, before coming back to them.
During the first four swings of the combo, a fast non-homing rending needle projectile will also be shot, and during the final part of the combo, the spinning ark will be connected to the player by a constellation chain that deals 10% of the weapon's base damage. The rending needle deals 70% of the weapon's base damage, and the 6 eon bolts will deal the combined amount of 70% of the weapon's base damage (11.66% base damage per bolt). If the player releases the left mouse button right in the middle of the throw (between 20% and 75% of the way through, indicated by a blip sound alongside a pulse visual effect), the second half of the Ark will be sent out and both scissor blades will snap together, boosting their damage by 120%, and shooting out 3 more homing eon bolts that deal 10% of the weapon's base damage each.
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. Parrying will 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's scissor blades will get rapidly snapped in front of the player. If an enemy is hit by the blades during the parry, the owner will gain a little more than half a second worth of invincibility. If a projectile is hit by the ark, the projectile's damage will be lowered by a maximum of 160 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 Cosmos possesses a unique charge system, being able to hold up to 10 charges indicated by a small rainbow bar over the ark'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 1.4 and its blades will get bigger. The charges are indicated by the two scissor blades being swung as one, instead of alternating during the combo, with the entire ark being thrown out during the last part of the combo (Functionally, it remains unchanged, but instead of throwing the second blade towards the spinning one, the two spinning blades will just shut close on their own).
If the Ark holds any amount of charges, Right-Clicking while holding up will replace the parry with a Big Rip attack, where a ghostly projection of the scissor blades is thrown in the direction of the player's mouse before snapping shut, creating a damaging spacetime rip in their wake before it gets stitched back up, depleting all of the weapon's charges in the process. The damage of the rip is dependent on the amount of charges consumed to release it, on top of receiving the 1.4x 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 700% damage multiplier (1.4 * 10 * 0.5), while using the attack with only one charge remaining will give the blast a 70% damage multiplier (1.4 * 1 * 0.5).
If the up key remains pressed as the rip happens, the player will quickly dash towards the blades, gaining a sixth of a second worth of invincibility frames, and creating an explosion of 5 bolts around themselves, that each deal 20% of the weapon's base damage.
Crafting
- For a full crafting tree, see here.
Recipe
| Crafting Station | ||
|---|---|---|
 Cosmic Anvil | ||
| Ingredient(s) | Amount | |
 | Galaxia | 1 |
 | Ark of the Elements | 1 |
 | Auric Bar | 5 |
| Result | ||
 | Ark of the Cosmos | 1 |
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 160 damage will make it completely harmless for one second, but it can still work on projectiles that deal more than 160 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 colored tooltip lines all alternate between two colors.
- The paragraph describing its combo alternates between the gold (#FFD700 ●) and goldenrod (#DAA520 ●) colors.
- The paragraph describing its parry alternates between the cyan (#00FFFF ●) and deep sky blue (#00BFFF ●) colors.
- The paragraph describing the big rip attack alternates between the hot pink (#FF69B4 ●) and crimson (#DC143C ●) colors.
- The spin throw part of the Ark of the Cosmos' combo only deals 75% damage to XM-05 Thanatos, and 80% damage to XF-09 Ares and its weapons.
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 rip attack is best used in situations where landing every shot is not guaranteed, as it can be used to deal a huge burst of damage in one time, alongside having piercing capabilities. If one can confidently 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 rip makes it deal a bit more than half of the damage one would have gotten if they landed every shot with the rending needles.
- While the rip attack has infinite piercing, it has damage falloff, meaning the more enemies it hits, the less damage it will deal.
Trivia
- The Ark of the Cosmos' attacks are based on a lot of attacks from its two components combined. The general function is based on the Ark of the Elements, the large circular swings are taken from Galaxia's Phoenix's Pride attunement, the constellation during the throw is based on the Aries' Wrath attunement and the dash that happens when using the big rip attack is inspired by the similar dash from the Polaris' Gaze attunement.
- This makes Andromeda's Stride the only Galaxia attunement to not get represented in any of its attack patterns.
- The inventory sprite of the Ark of the Cosmos has its blades fluctuate in opacity over time. However, to go along the charge meter that gets overlaid over the sprite, the blades will also become fully opaque.
- The Big Rip attack is not only based on the scissor-like nature of the Ark of the Ancients, but also on a hypothetical model of the end of the universe also named the Big Rip, in which spacetime itself would get torn apart by the accelerating expansion of the universe.
- Alongside its Elemental predecessor, the Ark of the Cosmos's design as a pair of cosmic scissors was inspired by the Rending Scissors from the 2013 Japanese anime television series Kill la Kill. However, it retains some sword-like traits from Galaxia.
History
- 2.0.3.007:
- Nerfed damage from 1770 to 1700, but buffed parry damage multiplier from 1.2x to 1.4x.
- Increased the spin throw's range from 40.625 tiles to 47.5, but snapping the blade no longer gives parry charges.
- 2.0.3.006: Fixed parry bar being offset.
- 2.0.3.003: Fixed parry meter being offset.
- 2.0.2.001: Buffed damage from 1670 to 1770.
- 2.0.1.002: Buffed damage from 1300 to 1670.
- 2.0.1.001: Nerfed damage from 2000 to 1300.
- 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.
- Fixed a typo in its tooltip.
- 1.5.1.001:
- Reworked:
- Buffed damage from 140 to 2000.
- Now has a custom swing animation and no longer summons projectiles on each swing.
- Stars are fired on the second and fourth swing and beams are fired on the first four swings of a five-attack sequence.
- The fifth attack launches the sword which spins in place before returning to the player.
- 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.
- The player can also project a damaging trail by using up all the charges gained from a parry.
- Holding up launches the player in the direction of the trail if it was created with over half charge remaining.
- Projectiles no longer inflict debuffs nor grant buffs to the player.
- Resprited.
- Reworked:
- 1.5.0.001:
- Nerfed damage from 501 to 140.
- Sword beam projectiles now grant enemies 10 local immunity frames instead of 6-3.
- Galaxy blast explosions now grant enemies 10 local immunity frames instead of 1.
- Star projectiles now grant enemies 8 local immunity frames instead of 4.
- Main beam projectile no longer inflicts Glacial State and now inflicts Frostburn for 2 seconds.
- Now uses 5 Auric Bars in its recipe instead of 4, and now requires a Cosmic Anvil to craft instead of a Draedon's Forge.
- 1.4.4.004: Buffed damage from 500 to 501.
- 1.4.3.002:
- Nerfed damage from 680 to 500.
- Now grants the Gravity Normalizer buff, spawns astral star projectiles, and inflicts the Astral Infection debuff when in the Astral Infection.
- 1.4.3.001: Swing now functions in PvP.
- 1.4.2.108: Now uses 4 Auric Tesla Bars in its recipe instead of 25 Auric Ore, 5 Nightmare Fuel, 5 Endothermic Energy, 5 Darksun Fragments, and 3 Yharon Soul Fragments.
- 1.4.2.107: Projectiles are now briefly invisible upon spawning.
- 1.4.2.105: Solar Pillar star explosions now use a custom projectile instead of the vanilla solar explosion projectile.
- 1.4.2.103:
- Stars now have afterimages.
- Resprited it and stars.
- 1.4.2.102: Main beam now inflicts Brimstone Flames, Glacial State, Holy Flames, and Plague instead of just Holy Flames, and decreased Brimstone Flames, Glacial State, Holy Flames, and Plague durations from other beams from 8.33 seconds to 2.
- 1.4.2.001: Buffed damage from 350 to 680.
- 1.4.1.001:
- Buffed damage from 320 to 350.
- Resprited star projectile.
- 1.3.3.001: Buffed damage from 315 to 320.
- 1.3.2.001:
- Buffed damage from 210 to 315.
- Now uses 25 Auric Ore and 3 Yharon Soul Fragments in its recipe.
- 1.2.4.204: Terrarian orbs, mini star cells, ichor shots, and water bolts now pierce once.
- 1.2.1.004: Nerfed damage from 250 to 210.
- 1.2.1.001:
- Nerfed damage from 380 to 250.
- Removed random star damage.
- 1.2.0.004:
- Adjusted Eon Beam dusts.
- Orbs now resemble stars and no longer apply biome-based debuffs to enemies.
- Resprited.
- 1.1.7.971: Now uses 5 Darksun Fragments, 5 Nightmare Fuel, and 5 Endothermic Energy in its recipe.
- 1.1.7.901:
- Beams no longer collide with blocks, and orbs now produce less dust.
- Now requires a Draedon's Forge to craft instead of an Ancient Manipulator.
- 1.1.7.863:
- Buffed damage from 300 to 380.
- Decreased the randomness of projectile speed.
- 1.1.7.861: Buffed use time from 18 to 15.
- 1.1.7.855: Pink beams now hit every 6 frames, blue beams hit every 5, green beams hit every 4, and orange beams hit every 3.
- 1.1.7.701:
- Now uses the rarity instead of
. - Resprited.
- Now uses the
- 1.1.7.57: Orbs now set target immunity frames to 1.
- 1.1.7.5: Introduced.
