Lighting mode



The lighting mode determines the way light from all sources renders in the World. It is set from Terraria's settings menu, in the "video" sub-menu. There are four different lighting modes available, which can also be cycled during gameplay with the F9 key.

The chosen lighting mode will have an effect on the performance of some computers. Refer to the table below for each mode's performance requirements (lower means better performance on worse computers).

Mode details
Color mode is the default. It determines light levels using pixel clusters that are smaller than tiles, which means that light transitions more smoothly. White mode does the same, but all light is white, regardless of the color of the source.

Retro mode renders light levels per-tile, producing a more "blocky" or "pixelated" look, and also renders all light as white-colored. This mode reproduces Terraria's look from before its 1.1 update. Trippy mode does the same, however allows colored light, whose colors are similarly determined per-tile.