Guide:Bard

This is a Guide page.
This means the page will walk you through a specific task, strategy, or enemy/boss fight.

This is a general progression and mechanic guide on the Bard Class introduced in the Thorium Mod. This guide will go in depth into the inner workings of the class, how to be an effective bard, and when it is best to play as one.

A bard (left) performs for his audience.

Class Background

WIP

Knowing Your Role

As a bard, your gameplay isn't remarkably different from classes like the ranger or mage. The primary mechanic that draws attention away from damaging enemies and bosses are the bards Empowerments. Empowerments are powerful buffs that get applied to the bard and his nearby allies when an instrument is used. Much of the power behind a bard comes from these boosts, allowing for better damage, defense, movement, and resource spending. As a bard you'll want to carry multiple instruments at once to allow a broader array of empowerment options. If you or your team is on the move, player percussion instruments to improve your mobility. If you're safely damaging enemies, use a brass instrument to increase you or your teams damage potential. If you or your team is stuck in long winded battles and boss fights, use string and wind instruments to improve your survivability and resource management.

Good job you little musician!

Progression

The following is a very simple progression guide for new bards. Many items lie behind boss and enemy kills, town NPCs, events, and crafting requirements, so your ability to get certain items is made easier or harder by RNG. The list is broken into sections of the game, where prominent or important sets of items become available to a bard.

Early Game

At the start of the game, you have access to a variety of items from safer biomes like the Surface and Cavern. This guide assumes you haven't defeated a single boss or invasion yet.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Wooden Whistle Icy Piccolo Harmonica Flute Obsidian Rackett	Ukulele Grand Piano Dynasty Guzheng Skyware Lute	Gold Bugle Horn Platinum Bugle Horn Alphorn	Drum Mallet Tambourine Antlion Maraca Seashell Castanets‎	n/a	Crier armor	Music Notes Mix Tape High Quality Reed Marching Boots Faberge Egg Opal Ring	Earworm Potion Creativity Potion

Eye of Cthulhu

After defeating the Eye of Cthulhu, you have access to a few items. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss(The Grand Thunder Bird,King Slime) and completed a Blood Moon.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
n/a	Ukulele Grand Piano Dynasty Guzheng Skyware Lute	Didgeridoo Vicious Mockery	Sinister Honk	n/a	n/a	Guitar Pick Mouthpiece Plunger Mute Vibration Tuner Concert Tickets	n/a

Eater of Worlds / Brain of Cthulhu

After defeating the boss of the world's evil, you have access to a few items. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss(Eye of Cthulhu and the mentioned before bosses) and have not encountered the Goblin Army yet.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Meteorite Oboe	Sitar	n/a	Ebonwood Tambourine Shadewood Tambourine Jar O' Mayo	n/a	Jester armor	Pad o' Paper Fan Letter	n/a

Pre-Skeletron

Before fighting Skeletron, a number of items are available to the player. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss(Queen Jellyfish,Viscount,Queen Bee) the Goblin Army, the first tier of Old One's Army and have entered the Jungle or the Aquatic Depths.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Riveting Tadpole Forest Ocarina Panflute Honey Recorder	Yew Wood Lute	Scuba Curva Conch Shell	Steel Drum Marine Wine Glass Blooming Bell	Sonar Cannon	n/a	Cork Grease Kick Petal Waxy Rosin Band Kit	n/a

Post-Skeletron

After defeating Skeletron, a sizable amount of new bard items will be made available to the player. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss(Skeletron), event, and have explored the world thoroughly.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Song of Ice & Fire	Calaveras Nocturne	Bone Trumpet Hot Horn	Bongos Bronze Tuning Fork	Microphone Granite Boom Box Roboboe	Noble armor	Subwoofer Track Player Metronome Devil's Subwoofer Brass Cap Shock Absorber	n/a

Post-Wall of Flesh

After defeating the Wall of Flesh, Hardmode begins and bards gain access to many new weapons and items. This guide assumes you have defeated every boss up until the mechanical bosses.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Mythril Melodica Orichalcum Slide Whistle Bagpipe Geode Saxophone Chrono Ocarina Concertina Kazoo	Acoustic Guitar Scholar's Harp Lullaby Riff Weaver Violin Snowstorm Banjo	Dragon's Wail Trombone Serpent's Cry 24-Carat Tuba Shadowflame Warhorn	Vinyl Record Frostwind Cymbals Hell's Bell Wind Chimes Xylophone	n/a	Marching Band armor	Conductor's Baton Bard Emblem Epic Mouthpiece Digital Tuner Straight Mute Guitar Pick Claw Headset Musician's Handbook	Inspirational Reach Potion Conductor's Stand

Post-Mechanical Bosses

After defeating the three mechanical bosses, more items are made available through the Souls, Life-Powered Energy Cells, Hallowed Bars, Strange Plating and the Solar Eclipse.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Steam Flute	Sunflare Guitar	Prime's Roar Cadaver's Cornet Zunpet	Portable Wintergatan The Green Tambourine Turtle Drums	Midnight Bass Booster Hallowed Megaphone	Cyber Punk armor Hallowed Chapeau	Auto Tuner Music Player Diss Track	n/a

Post-Plantera

After defeating Plantera, the Jungle Temple, Frost Moon, Pumpkin Moon and their items become available.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Pungi Bassoon Clarinet Vuvuzela	Fishbone The Maw Strawberry Heart Siren's Lyre	Buisine Ghastly French Horn Organ	Haunting Bass Drum Jingle Bells	The Black Otamatone The Bopper	Ornate armor Maestro armor	n/a	n/a

Post-Golem

After defeating the Golem, the Martian Madness event, third tier of the Old One's Army, Celestial Towers, and their items become available.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
n/a	Shooting Star Blast-Guitar	Betsy's Bellow	The Triangle	Terrarium Autoharp Turntable Sound Sage's Lament	n/a	Terrarium Surround Sound	n/a

Post-Moon Lord

After defeating the Moon Lord, you will have access to The Primordials fight and its items. This guide assumes you have done everything else in vanilla and the mod.

Wind	String	Brass	Percussion	Electronic	Armor	Accessories	Buffs/Potions
Holophonor	Edge of Imagination	Sousaphone	The Set	Sonic Amplifier Black MIDI	Shooting Star armor Rhapsodist armor	n/a	n/a

Mechanics

The Bard class has various unique mechanics that are relevant to their success. A simplified version of this list can be found on the main Bard page, but this guide will go slightly more in-depth in this section.

Empowerments

Empowerments are temporary stat boosts that the bard constantly provides to himself and nearby allies when using their instrument weapons. As one of the defining features of the class, many bard items are associated with the application or power of empowerments. Empowerments are grouped into 5 categories and are given by specific instrument types with the general rule being:

Brass Instruments -> Damage Empowerments
String Instruments -> Defensive Empowerments
Percussion Instruments -> Movement Empowerments
Wind Instruments -> Resource Empowerments

Electronic is unique in that it provides no stat boosting empowerments themselves, but instead prolongs the active duration of any empowerments currently active on players.

A comprehensive list of each empowerment can be found on the Empowerments page.

Inspiration

Main article: Inspiration

Instead of using Mana, the Bard weapons draw from a unique resource called inspiration, which is increased using Inspiration Fragments, Inspiration Shards, and Inspiration Crystals. Inspiration regenerates automatically. Although many of the Bard items are specific to inspiration, the fact that it's separate from Mana makes it a tempting choice for another class' backup. Inspiration regenerates far more quickly when allowed to run its course, encouraging a sort of "reload" period for the resource.

Symphonic Damage

The Bard's musical weapons hit with a specific damage type called symphonic damage. Accessories and armor can be used to augment symphonic damage output, and generic 'damage' buffs, such as the one from the Scuba Curva, still increase Bard's damage.

Big Instruments

Big instruments are a subset of Bard weapons that utilize a timing mechanic. When held out, a timer will appear underneath the player (or underneath the cursor if the Move Instrument Timer to Mouse configuration setting is set to true); the instruments' effects vary depending on whether their attacks are used within a specific window of time or not. As the player successfully times their attacks, the big instrument will gain power, provided empowerment level, along with other effects, whereas missing the timing will greatly decrease these bonuses.

Each instrument category, except for Electronic, has its own unique timer, with differing patterns:

Instrument Category	Timer	Instruction	Instruments
Brass		Hold the attack button while the marker is over the highlighted area.		Alphorn
				Organ
Percussion		Attack while the marker is over the highlighted area.		Steel Drum
				Xylophone
				The Set
String		Attack in three-round bursts as the marker passes over each of the highlighted area.		Grand Piano
				Scholar's Harp
Wind		Alternate between the left- and right-click buttons while the marker is over the left and right sides respectively.		Song of Ice & Fire
				Bagpipe

While a big instrument is held out for the first time, a mouse icon will appear in order to provide a guide on each timer's function.

Tips, Tricks, and Strategies

Empowerment Focus

An example of class focused empowerments.

While most empowerment effects are helpful for all classes, some benefit from specific boosts more than others. When playing in multiplayer, be sure to check what classes your teammates are focusing. For instance, if you have a friend that's predominately focusing tank or melee builds, keeping string instruments on you would help them greatly as the defensive empowerments they provide would be invaluable to them. Likewise, if you have a healer or mage in your group, they would benefit from wind instruments and their resource conserving boosts. It's important to be mindful of your allies and the empowerments they might benefit the most from.

Item Specialties

A variety of items had a specialty purpose in mind when they were added to the game. On the off chance some are lost to players, this list aims to inform the player on why you may want to use a handful of items in particular, given some of their questionable attributes.

Drum Mallet: The Drum Mallet is an early game swung weapon that acts much like a melee sword. It's speciality lies in its right click ability, which places a bouncy drum on the ground for players to use. Use it to reach higher areas while exploring around, without the need to place blocks or ropes. It can also be used to prevent fall damage.

Steam Flute: The Steam Flute is a post-Mech wind instrument with reasonable damage output and a special right click ability. When used, it generates a cloud of smoke that grants players that touch it reduced aggro range. Use it on allies with worse defensive stats to try and shake bosses and swarming enemies off of them.

Fishbone: The Fishbone is a post-Plantera string instrument that deals additional damage to enemies under the effect of Crowd Control effects. Use it with it's right click ability to rapidly apply Oozed to enemies or with allies that also apply crowd control effects onto enemies for maximum potential.

Terrarium Autoharp: The Terrarium Autoharp is unique in it's ability to apply empowerments from multiple different instrument types. It pairs nicely with the Ornate armor and Auto Tuner where despite only granting tier 1 of it's empowerments, they may increase in level, granting a large boost in empowerment effectiveness.

Music Note Statue: The Music Note Statue functions similarly to the Heart Statue and Star Statue, offering a wired way to recover Inspiration. It should be noted that it spawns Inspiration Note (cyan) which doesn't recover as much inspiration as the common dropped form.

Final Comments

All in all, the Bard is a lot closer to the feel of the original 4 classes, compared to the Healer. With the exception of the empowerment mechanic and inspiration, bards can comfortably focus on dealing damage to enemies without having to worry about anything out of the ordinary. It's also important to remember that just because the bard provides bonuses to allies in a multiplayer setting, they function quite well when alone. So please feel encouraged to give the class a try even in single player! Good luck to all you bards out there, play a symphony and lead your team to victory!