Progression Path in Terraria

To-Do List of Goals to Advance the Game

This Guide to Progression in Terraria discusses the various barriers you must overcome and how you can advance the world toward Hard Mode by defeating the Wall of Flesh and on to Plantera and the end-game. I'll look at each of the bosses that are necessary to advance and describe goals you should set for yourself before fighting them. Linked are guides to the bosses, how you can engage them, and some strategy suggestions to defeat them. Here are some of the major markers of progress in Terraria and what you can do to prepare your character for them.

My Walkthrough, basically a beginner's guide, has two pages which include loads of tips for getting started in Terraria. Read this if you're fresh, then you can come back here to learn more about making it further in the game. I've also got a guide to earn yourself some Money, either early or later game.

It is worth noting that most of the things in this list are necessary to be successful in Expert in 1.3. You need every advantage you can get, so the optionals become more important to complete before progressing to harder things.

To-Do in Normal Mode - Before Wall of Flesh

Required - Just have fun! This is a reference so that you might learn what you can do next. Overall, explore and find new things. Build up a number of chests and organize things, make a village for people to live in and try to get all the NPCs as they will help in various ways. Critical ones are listed here. Overall do not feel rushed, and try your hand at building a respectable place to be your base. If you've having fun, that's all that matters.
Spend your first few hours of gameplay exploring and mining. Wood or Cactus armor is a good start. Gear up to a full set of armor that is at least equivalent to Iron, but Silver/Tungsten is better. You want at minimum 10-12 Defense. Use your best ores to get the best weapon and Pickaxe you can (Gold/Plat bow or melee, your choice). Explore while acquiring accessories and life crystals to get to 200 life. It's required for some events. Don't use a life crystal at 180 unless you're ready for the first boss. Save every accessory you find, so that you can later combine them with the Tinkerer's Workshop. What doesn't seem important to you may be important for a better accessory later.
Defeat Eye of Cthulu, either by summoning it or waiting for it to attack.
After the first boss is defeated, The Dryad should be in your town in order to sell purification powder. This lets you break blocks in the Corruption/Crimson by turning them normal. This will get you to the next step. If you don't want to buy powder, you can use bombs that destroy tiles. Consider making them sticky bombs by combining with gel so they work better.
Explore the Corruption (purple evil area)/Crimson (red evil area) and destroy at least two Shadow Orbs/Crimson Hearts in order to get items and trigger Meteors. You will need the purification powder from the dryad to mine through to these. Breaking a third will summon a boss. Choose between taking the boss out first or pursuing the Meteor. I choose killing the boss, because it makes farming the Meteorite easier due to the attacking Meteor Heads and the better armor you can craft.
Every 3 hearts/orbs destroyed, one of the two bosses will spawn - Brain of Cthulhu (Crimson) or Eater of Worlds (Corruption). Plan the third near an area suitable for the boss fight, with room to maneuver. Once they're dead, get the materials to make one of the best armor sets available in normal mode. Only hellstone stuff is substantially better. Consider fighting the boss a second time by smashing more orbs. Further farming requires you to make a Summoning item.
While there, note the location of Demon/Crimson Altars. They are used for crafting, and you can even make Night's Edge, and a Terra Blade later. Later, you can break those in Hard Mode to bless your world with ores.
The Goblin Army will invade one day, so you can unlock reforging for gear and the ability to combine accessories with the Tinkerer's Workshop (10g). Find the Goblin Tinkerer, exploring the vast Cavern layer and acquiring better armor and accessories.
Optional - Meteors should fall after destroying orbs/hearts - eventually. You will be notified, then have to find it somewhere on the surface. Continue your exploration and ensure you've got some Meteorite and the Goblin Tinkerer in your village. The meteor Hamaxe can be a great help, and the Meteor Set will let you fire a space gun with no mana cost. You can also craft a Phaseblade with Meteor Bars and gems.
Optional - Defeat the Queen Bee in the Jungle, summoning her by breaking the larva inside a bee hive. She may drop a weapon worthy of use, but the main thing here is her defeat allows the Witch Doctor to move in, which lets you make Flasks. You can farm her if you want one of the four bee-themed weapons she drops. There are normally multiple Hives in the Jungle, and it's worth mapping it out so that later in the game you have an easier time finding Chlorophyte ore deposits on the minimap, Plantera Bulbs, and the Jungle Temple for Golem.
Optional - Head to the far east or west of your map, where you'll find the dungeon and talk to the Old Man at night. Defeat Skeletron so you can gain entry to the Dungeon.
Optional - Farm in the Dungeon to get the Cobalt Shield via gold lockboxes. Always kill the big slimes, as they have a 100% chance to drop a key while other monsters' chance is very low. There are many cool things to find inside those chests. While there, you should find the Mechanic NPC. She will be bound, simply talk to her and she'll move in with housing available. Keep an eye out for an Alchemy Table, which you can hit with a pickaxe to take home and make better use of potion ingredients (Alchemy Table is PC Only). PC players may also find the Bewitching Table here, which is later available for purchase from the Witch Doctor if you have a Wizard in town.
Optional - If you got a Cobalt shield, craft an Obsidian Skull with 20 obsidian, obtained from dropping/routing water on lava and mining it. See this guide. Combine these two accessories with the tinkerer's workshop to get the Obsidian Shield, removing knockback and burn damage from meteorite and hellstone contact. If you're lucky, you can find a lava charm. Regardless, the linked guide will teach you to make Obsidian Skin Potions.
Optional - With money you earn adventuring in the Dungeon, use the Goblin Tinkerer to reforge some of your gear to Warding - +4 Defense. Crit and +Damage are more useful later, but that is debateable. You can go that route, but the point is to make a build by focusing hard on something. Defense is the safe route. This makes a huge difference in your survivability when down in the Underworld.
Required for Hardmode - Get enough Hellstone from the Underworld (60 ore, 20 obsidian and a hellfore) to make a Molten Pickaxe. You need it for hardmode ores. Getting more Hellstone is recommended, as it will help you to beat Wall of Flesh if you have the full armor set. PC players can fish up a Reaver Shark from the ocean and avoid this step.
Required Head to the Underworld. Kill the Voodoo Demon and ensure the Guide Voodoo Doll lands in lava to initiate the final normal mode boss fight. Defeat the Wall of Flesh after having acquired the best of what normal mode has to offer. This will make the transition to Hard Mode much easier.

Hard Mode Progression

Read up on Hard Mode it features more enemies and corruption/crimson spreads faster. There is a new biome, the Hallow, which also spreads. Don't worry about this at all. It slows to 1/3 after you defeat Plantera, but there's still no need to rush. Enjoy the game, explore and use the Terraria wiki to learn about accessories you can combine together. You can easily handle the spread later by purchasing a Clentaminator, which purifies the world. Someday you might want to make a world where these are contained by mining around them and preventing spread, but it's up to you.
Required: Bless your World - Use the PwnHammer you got from the Wall of Flesh and break some Demon/Crimson Altars. Taking Potions with you will help substantially against the new enemies you find the these biomes. The more you smash, the better. Try to get at least 9. Though this is dangerous, because you're going into the Crimson/Corruption in hard mode, it is what gives your world the new metals. It is worth noting with Fishing in the PC version, you can save up the crates you find in normal mode and open them in Hard. Open enough of them, and you do not need to break these altars in order to get gear from hardmode ores.
Required - Pickaxe Progression - Pickaxes follow a progression route again - you'll need your Hellstone Pickaxe to get to Cobalt/Palladium, and a Pickaxe from those in order to get the next. You want at least a full set of Mythril or Orichalcum Armor and associated tools. Read my Guide to Hard Mode for more information, this may also be useful for actually finding the ore (mining). Getting the ore you need means careful exploration of the deeper areas of the game, because ores only spawn in quantity deep down.
Optional: Get Wings - I have a guide to Getting Wings when you enter Hard Mode that may be helpful. Otherwise, you can make Spectre boots with boots you've found, and the rocket boots purchased from the Goblin Tinkerer. You can also buy wings for 1 Platinum if you put the Witch Doctor's home in a Jungle Biome. You can make a little one outside your town using Jungle Grass seeds and mud.
Required: Bosses - Building up your accessories and armor will let you prepare for the three Mechanical Bosses. It may take some time to down all three. You can tackle them in any order you want, but the easiest is likely the Destroyer (Eater of Worlds, but worse!) - this will let you begin production of a Hallowed set of Armor. This is important, but you can get a Megashark by buying a Minishark from the Arms Dealer and use this to help with The Twins and Skeletron Prime.
With all three Mechanical Bosses down, you can take to the Jungle and farm Chlorophyte Ore for even better gear, though it requires a Pickaxe Axe or Drax made from Hallowed Bars and souls.
Defeating the three of them will now allow you to work up to fighting Plantera, which in turn unlocks the Jungle Temple and Golem. Players on console can take on Ocram after finishing the three Mechanical Bosses, who allows for gear that is similar to Chlorophyte in power, though Chlorophyte is much more attainable.
Kill Final Bosses and Farm Events when You're Ready! - While other bosses were left out on the console/mobile editions, this is where paths largely diverge. Owners of both can take on the Frost Moon and Pumpkin Moon events - the ultimate challenge for console owners. Players with the PC 1.3 can take on several new things - Martian Madness, and Duke Fishron, the Lunatic Cultist, Lunar Events, and Moon Lord. You can learn about these things on my Bosses Guide.

- Share your Terraria Gameplay Tips and Strategies below!

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Anthony says...

I'm not sure if you've mentioned this in another article, but you can farm some SERIOUS coins and loot by making an arena. My friend and I hooked up some lihzahrd traps in a giant pit and anything that spawned during moons and such slowly died. This gave us time to focus our firepower on more serious targets like the Pumpking. Just a suggestion, I think you could help out a lot of people by making another awesome guide for an arena.