Terraria Walkthrough

Exploring and Mining the Underground

While you can begin digging under the ground right away, some preparation is helpful so this walkthrough has a part 1. In this continuation, I will discuss going underground for the first time, whether you've built some wood gear or not, and provide some tips on exploration, finding ores, and navigating cave systems. If you are new you may also like my Guide to Mining (with ore distribution and tips to finding it faster). If you are past the early stages of the game, you can read the Progression Guide for a Checklist of Things to Do.

One key question I've seen people ask is what type of pattern to run while mining. The answer is, there isn't a best way to do it but I can share my way. I prefer to find rooms and not tear up the world with many unnecessary tunnels now that I've made my mistakes. First, you can go deeper - the Underground layer (more later) can be fairly safe even with newbie armor and weapons, and you're going to find more and larger ore deposits without digging through tons of dirt with a bad pickaxe. Our goal is to improve gear and explore, not carve out grids in the terrain. If that's your thing, go for it, but you will find that a lot of the world is actually already carved out by naturally-occuring cave systems that are often linked.

Look for these cave systems as you explore, and bring plenty of torches. Lighting the areas you've explored is helpful for returning later, but more importantly you can see a couple of blocks 'into' a rock face and see if there is ore just behind it. I notice larger patches of better ores the further down I go, and I think this is hard-coded into the game now that it's been polished extensively.

Ore generation for pre-Hardmode world is as follows. You will get ONE of each of the following pairings in your world, in order to make it unique. The slightly better of the two is listed second:

• Copper or Tin
• Iron or Lead
• Silver or Tungsten
• Gold or Platinum
• Demonite (Corrupt World) or Crimtane (Crimson World)

Don't be discouraged if you end up with the lesser of each pairing, because the best ores in the game are available to all players in Hardmode and the difference is usually just a couple of defense points or damage lost for each set. A Gold Pickaxe can mine the same ore that a Platinum one can, so just use what is available to you and don't worry about it. Aside from specific recipes for weapons and armor sets, many things that take metals are interchangeable, for example iron/lead anvils function the same. I primarily included this because sometimes people will wonder why they are missing iron or gold and do not seem to find it anywhere.

With your starting pickaxe, you can mine up to Gold and Platinum Ores, which is great! You're more likely to find that the deeper you go, but should at least aim for an armor set between Iron to Tungsten before you ever go all the way to the Cavern layer where they are found more often. Your goal on your first mining trip should be to hit the Underground. For one, it's safer than being on the surface, being attacked by demon eyes and zombies, and instead occasionally have to fight off a worm or slime while you explore and find treasure chests. It's safer at night, period.

When you first go down, you're technically still in the surface layer. If there is a dirt wall background, you're still in the surface and not technically in the underground. I've provided the picture above to show you the point where it transitioned in my world. The dirt wall goes, and we're now in the underground where ores will spawn a bit more frequently and better items can be found. This is a generalization, because certain biomes have different items, are more dangerous (like Jungle), and they may even be found closer to the surface - we're just talking about our first ores and the occasional treasure chest.

While exploring, look for opportunities to use crafting to your advantage. You should have wood and gel with you, so you can make wood platforms and torches on demand. Rope, you have to find for now, but it is commonly found in pots. You can take 10 rope and turn them into a coil that can be thrown and will let you reach the top of caves to get to good ores or continue exploring a cave area. You can recover everything that you place in this game, so you can actually cut some of the rope down and reuse it when you're done if need be.

Diggers are perhaps the worst enemies to meet down there when you're new to the game. You can hear them tunneling, and the sound gets closer as they approach. It's best to use a sword or spear weapon that can hit multiple times in a single pass - as it will swipe through multiple segments of their body and cause more damage. The weaker reddish-brown worms are called giant worms and are not nearly as dangerous, though it's hard to tell which is coming. Don't hestitate to use any healing potions you've found. At the least, you can eat a mushroom in between its attacks. Try to situate yourself on a spot that is a bit of a mound, so that there is open area on both sides of you. That way, you can turn and attack it from either direction and have the opportunity to get a couple more swipes in with your sword.

Another thing to watch out for are traps. It is often hard to see the pressure plates before it's too late, but they do make a clicking sound when stepped on. If you see one ahead of time (try to hold a torch when you're not mining) you can hit it with a pickaxe to extract it. In the picture above, there is a dart trap that does solid damage to a weak character and can cause their demise if they don't figure out where it's coming from. Those, too, can be spotted and removed with a pickaxe. You can even use them later to your own advantage, but I'll cover that in another guide.

You will encounter pools of water, and sometimes may even fall into a deep one which you cannot jump out of with your poor leap height. Something that has saved me many times when I see the dreaded breath meter, is to carve directly left or right for the removal of about a 12-15 blocks and move that direction. Then dig directly up. You'll make a pocket of air for yourself, which when jumped into can save your life. You can even put a torch there to see, and just might stumble onto some great ore.

Do not bother with the long trek home unless your inventory is completely full. You want to explore the caves and get a good haul before returning home. An iron/lead anvil is a high priority at this stage of the game, as is a better set of armor than wood. Your ultimate goal is the collection of loot and hopefully running across a treasure room like the one pictured above. I got a blizzard in a bottle, which was very handy, along with a recall potion that could send me straight back to town. Early-game, always take the treasure chest by using your pickaxe after emptying it - it saves you materials, and some like these are easy to tell apart from others so you can organize those materials later. That find was a good point to head home. When you spot treasure rooms, always look for crafting stations you can extract with your pickaxe. I found a Loom, but it very well could have been the Anvil I needed or something even better.

When you get back to town, either by using a recall potion/mirror, hoofing it, or just exiting/reloading the game, make a furnace (to smelt metal ore into bars) and anvil (to make them into usable items). Turn all your ore into bars and see what you can make. Use the best ore available to craft a pickaxe if you can. You spend a lot of time mining and that speeds up the process. You'll also find a good pickaxe hits better than a wood sword, of course. Next on the priority list is a suit of armor - a full suit if possible. Look at the amount of bars it will take to do the whole set along with the defense values. IF the pieces you can make are higher than what you're wearing including the set bonus, then make it even if you 'break' the set. Like, it would not be worth it to lose a +3 defense set bonus to put on a helmet that raises your defense by +1. You're losing defense. Set bonuses are important.

On my first big run, I'd explored the whole area above and got 300+ ore and my first accessory. I'm definitely ready for another trip, and will go through the path I'd already taken in order to continue the journey from there. I could go off in another direction, but I have a feeling about that one. At this point, I'll dispense with walkthroughs and try to give general advice via guides. I hope this was helpful to some newer players or answered a question you had about Terraria.

Next, consider reading the Progression Checklist and the Guide to Starting Hard Mode

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