Terraria Tips

Help, FAQs, and Gameplay Advice

Early Game - Normal Mode

Start Medium or Large - Medium is probably best for a totally new player, since Biomes will be a decent size and there's plenty to explore without it being overwhelmingly huge. You'll probably suck at building, and could go to a new world later and get creative. This leaves you free to not worry about Crimson/Corruption spread at all and just enjoy the game!

Wood & Slimes first - Wood is an important materials for crafting torches, the work bench, and many other items. Slimes drop Gel, which is used as fuel for Torches - necessary to light your way. Every gel will get you 3 torches.

Wood Armor is a Great Start - Getting a full set of Wood Armor will give you defense that reduces damage taken by a small amount - enough to help you afford a mistake or two. The Wooden Sword is also better than the Copper Short Sword you start with, both in terms of damage and, well, short swords suck due to their lack of an arc. Spears lack an arc, but make up for it with amazing knockback and decent aiming ability. In fact, a spear is one of the best early game weapons and they can be found in chests.

Torch Placement - Torches can be placed on background walls, the ground, the sides of trees, and on vertical walls. You can make a 'wall' in a tunnel by digging out one square up or down and placing the torch there. It's good to place torches as you go - you should slay slimes when you can early on - later you will have an abundance of gel and can sometimes ignore them.

Build a House Early
Setting up one house to craft, let the guide live in, and for protection should you get overwhelmed is a good idea on the first day. Build it entirely out of wood, while fighting off slimes. Making a workbench in the area you plan to build in will let you make a wooden sword to help you do battle. Here's a guide to housing. You can also go underground to avoid the increased spawns of zombies and floating eyes. Building homes in Terraria is important, for NPCs will move in and improve your character's life. Having many NPCs in an area also seems to reduce spawn rates of enemies, so it can eventually become a safe haven.

Use the Best Metal for Pickaxes, then Weapons - You need a good pickaxe to help you find more ore, and to be able to harvest higher tier ores. Platinum/Gold should be your goal but anything beats copper. Next, choose a weapon. Ranged is probably the easiest playstyle early game.

Use the Next Best for Armor - You want to get at least 10-12 Defense to protect you.

Always Carry - Wood, Torches, Gel, a Pickaxe and a Weapon - minimum. This lets you dig through things, and craft things on demand. You can make a work bench wherever you are, more torches if you run out, and wood platforms to help you cross chasms and climb upward.

Don't Dig Aimlessly - Once you've got armor and a weapon, start exploring the underground and avoid digging just to dig unless that's your thing. There is more to be found by following caverns and seeing where they lead. When you dig, try to find the next open area underground.

Don't Forget the Surface - Find where Biomes are located. You'll need them later. Additionally, you'll find Treasure Chests just sitting there, allowing you to get supplies, money, and accessories with minimal effort.

Hearts Make a Bigger Difference than Armor for Survivability - You can double your starting life with just 5 of them. This is the reason for the above. Armor is more important in Expert, but in normal mode you want to seek out hearts by exploring the Underground and Cavern layers.

You can avoid Eye of Cthulhu - by staying at 180 health, it will not spawn. This can help you to relax and enjoy the game more, without a surprise attack.

Do The Math - Look at the set bonus of your armor and the total provided by the set. You may do well to replace a piece of armor if the addition will increase total defense. Sometimes, it's the opposite - you are harming your total defense to 'break a set' and lose that bonus. Wait until you have more pieces of that set.

Make Exploration & Treasure Chests a Priority - Explore and find chests, so that you can get the Accessories that are inside. Later, you can reforge them to improve their secondary stats. It doesn't matter what accessory it is at first, so long as it increases your stats.

Save Seeds & Plants to Make Potions - You can make a garden using clay to make pots, then grow herbs. Use these as ingredients in potions which can buff you for boss battles. These are super important in Expert Mode Terraria.

Melee vs Ranged - Until you have Accessories that aid your movement, whether providing double jumps or increasing speed, Melee is harder to specialize in. Still, a good melee weapon with decent knockback can be super helpful against groups of monsters. There's no need to specialize until Hard Mode, after you've defeated the Wall of Flesh. Ranged can be tough against packs of monsters because it is single target without a fast firing rate and you'll lack the ability to hit more than one monster with each shot. Use Melee against weak monsters (in order to conserve ammo) and ranged against stronger monsters. You DO have room for many weapons and tools!

Frostburn Arrows are AMAZING - Frostburn Arrows apply a damage over time effect and have a good base damage. You can absolutely make these within the first 20 minutes of starting the game if you know how, and they're sufficient to take out Eye of Cthulhu and get yourself a better bow or sword.

Gel is an Ammo - you can put Gel in your Ammo slot to conserve space in your inventory.

It's Doubtful You'll Need 5,000 Dirt - Some blocks just aren't worth keeping. Remember that you can take your character to other worlds, and should indeed! Common things like dirt can be farmed in the thousands very easily once you've got a good pickaxe.

Late Normal Mode

Platinum/Gold Armor are Optional - With a good weapon, you can defeat the Eye of Cthulhu and the Crimson/Corruption Boss Brain of Cthulhu and Eater of Worlds without Gold/Platinum Armor and completely skip that tier of Armor. Shadow/Crimson Armor is better, as are the tools you can make. Silver/Tungsten is perfect for these bosses, but they're doable with Iron/Lead. Remember, your total health pool and potions will do more for early survivability than Defense from Armor. You can get more total defense from accessories early on.

Meteorites - These only drop if you break a crimson heart/shadow orb with a hammer. Every 3 will summon one of the specific bosses in the Crimson/Corruption. Mining Meteorite can be challenging but will give you the opportunity to make phaseblades (lightsaber, with a gem of your choice to determine color), also the meteorite set and space gun. The set bonus of the Meteor set will give you infinite use of the space gun, removing its mana cost!

Piggy Banks - Buy a piggy bank from the Merchant, now buy another piggy bank - 2 gold total. You can store money in there, but it's also a 'shared stash' meaning what's inside one piggy bank is inside all of them. This means you can place one on a work bench back home, and while adventuring stick another one on a wood platform (they can't be put on the ground). Now you can send items home so you don't have to trash them, increasing your yields while adventuring. Use your pickaxe to pick up your piggy bank and carry on, only with 80 inventory instead of just 40. You can organize them when you're back at your spawn.

Safes are Even Better - Purchasable after Skeletron is downed, these have their own shared stash that is portable just like Piggy Banks, only they do not need to be placed on a wood platform/table. With your inventory, piggy bank, and safe, you can have 117 slots of inventory space (-3 for the safe, piggy bank, and a platform for the piggy bank).

A Copper Saved is a Copper Earned - Putting money in Piggy Banks and safes are counted as 'savings'. You do not drop them when you die, and you can access them when speaking to any merchant - even reforging. Save up your money. I wish I knew this earlier!

Save Every Chest you Find - Chests are important in Terraria. You can expect to want up to 20-30 or more of them if you're a major hoarder. Lots more items drop in Hard Mode. The different colors may help you to organize. Once you've emptied a chest of items, you can take it with your Pickaxe.

Organize Items & Chests can be Renamed - You can save yourself a lot of time by dedicating chests to certain types of items - accessories, blocks, metals/gems. But know also that chests can be renamed so that when you mouse over them, the name is revealed to help you recall what's inside.

Sunflowers - Blocks with Sunflowers cannot be converted to Corruption/Crimson, but more importantly your character gets a Happy! Buff when near one. This increases movement speed, which is helpful for a boss fight arena, for increasing your maximum speed when traversing the map. You can buy them from the Dryad NPC for just a couple silver, then plant them on 2-wide grass blocks (you can also buy grass seeds from her). Plant these in strategic locations and you'll help cut down on travel times and simultaneously aid you in dodging. Placing them a few blocks above an asphalt road (for later game) can let you get the boost in speed without you hitting grass that slows you down. Do keep in mind that they also reduce enemy spawn rates, so don't put them everywhere!

Use Your Hook - Hooks are incredibly helpful for multiple reasons. Learning to use it can let you dodge attacks, reach high places in order to mine, and frankly just get around better without the time investment of building platforms and ropes you won't need once you have wings and can fly!

Explore the Dungeon - You can rush to Hellstone then the Wall of Flesh, but it's better to take out Skeletron and then explore the Dungeon. Monsters here drop helpful items, bones are worth saving up to later summon Skeletron Prime, and the money you'll receive helps with reforging your Accessories. You'll find Golden Keys that can open great chests there, and also a Shadow Key (you only need one) which will open ALL Shadow Chests, while Golden Chests take one key each.

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