Guide:Practical tips

There are many things in Terraria which are not evident from the get-go, and many other things that a player would definitely do differently on a rerun of the game. It is true that much of the joy lies in exploring, but sometimes you may feel some helpful advice is in order.

Items

 * If you can't find a or, craft . They have the same effect and have a quicker use time.
 * Make a after getting your first 15 Gems of the same kind. This makes exploration of caves much easier, and it does not require you to get a Hook, an uncommon drop from skeletons and piranhas.
 * Stacks of items can be bought and crafted quickly by holding the button.
 * You will be gathering a lot of stuff, so it is best to separate your chests. Chests containing crafting materials are best kept near the crafting station where they will be needed - one for ores and bars, next to an Anvil and Furnace. One for potion materials, next to a Placed Bottle or Alchemy Table. One for potions, one for weapons, one for equipables next to a Tinkerer's Workshop, and one or two for miscellaneous crafting materials.
 * All, , and  share the same space – you can leave one at home, and take one with you, effectively tripling  / quadrupling  / quintupling  your carry-able items! However, the Piggy Bank requires a flat furniture surface to set on, so take a Work Bench or some platforms as well. In the  versions, you can obtain the  during a Blood Moon. It is a floating Piggy Bank which renders a regular Piggy Bank obsolete. Also, in  versions, you can craft , which acts as a mobile Void Vault that can automatically collect items when the player's inventory is full.
 * Even with full health, Heart Crystals can still be used to craft, which provide health regeneration when placed.
 * Additionally, getting Heart Crystals on every opportunity allows for the to detect other, potentially more useful, items.
 * Do not keep a lot of money in your inventory. If you die, you will probably have trouble retrieving it. Consider placing it in a Piggy Bank or Safe periodically.
 * Place Banners around areas where their correlating monsters spawn for buffs against those monsters.
 * Fishing up a from the Ocean, while possibly being time-consuming, allows you to skip all the mandatory pre-Hardmode pickaxes – it has the same pickaxe power as the Molten Pickaxe and is faster.
 * Try not to fight above lava, otherwise they will drop the  into it, and the Wall of Flesh will spawn.

Mining

 * Always upgrade your pickaxe: try to upgrade to a better one as fast as you can because certain items can only be mined with better tools.
 * The same goes for pickaxes/drills in Hardmode. They are mandatory for progressing to the next ore tier. The order is: /,  / , and finally  /.
 * Do not jump down a large hole or cave without an extra jump, Umbrella, Featherfall Potion, or . If you do not have those, consider using and platforms to safely descend.
 * As a rule of thumb, you should not jump down terrain if you cannot see the glow of a torch or glowstick that you threw down without a way to stop falling.
 * Use or throw  if you're unable to find anything of value: they highlight any valuable treasure and ores that are on your screen.
 * and the increase mining speed directly.
 * The Light modifier (and any other modifiers that increase the speed of the pickaxe/drill) greatly increases the mining speed of tools.
 * When the Minimap is expanded, hovering over an ore pocket will display its name next to the cursor.
 * Using items that light through walls such as the Starfury will light up the map, allowing the player to locate and distinguish ores.
 * Pressing the (pressing down the right joystick on  Xbox) key changes your mining style to Smart Cursor, which is extremely useful for strip mining.
 * You can descend relatively fast by auto-focusing the mining and digging a 2-block-wide shaft.
 * Using Mining Armor is useful when mining. The helmet is especially useful as it mostly eliminates the need for torches.
 * For quick trips to the various layers of the world, a hellevator can be a very useful structure. Dig a vertical shaft from underneath your base down to The Underworld and consider placing or  platforms to conveniently ascend and descend (note that rope is faster).
 * Do not look for Hardmode ores in the Underground Corruption, Crimson, or Hallow when you first start Hardmode unless you are very confident in your skill. Instead, if you have dug one, a hellevator is a good place to start looking.
 * Hardmode ores cannot be found in all layers:
 * / can be found in all Underground layers;
 * / can be found in Cavern layers;
 * / can only be found in the lower Cavern layer (which is where Lava replaces Water).

Combat

 * Prepare your Boss-fighting arena with adequate lighting
 * Always carry around one stack of the highest-tier healing potion available . Relying only on natural Health Regeneration is not a good idea.
 * The same goes for, ,


 * Bosses are displayed on the Minimap: Follow the boss's icon to track it when you're struggling to find it. You can identify the boss icons by checking their respective wiki pages.


 * It may be useful to summon and kill the Eye of Cthulhu or King Slime before summoning any harder boss in order to spawn an extra one-use pool of Hearts. Note that this will prevent any Heart Statues from spawning new Hearts.

Travel

 * There are various items and accessories that can affect movement speed:
 * The most basic one that can decrease travel time is the, which allows the player to run at a faster speed.
 * Like Hermes Boots, allow the player to run faster, and give an extra speed boost while on sand blocks.
 * are very common, and can increase movement speed significantly. If you wear boots, it will allow you to reach the maximum speed more quickly. Make sure to refresh the potion as its effect lasts only for a limited amount of time.
 * The and  improve movement speed by 5% and 10%, respectively. Both stack with each other, and even with a Swiftness Potion.  Once you get the Tinkerer's Workshop both accessories can be combined into Lightning Boots.
 * If you can withstand screen flips, can be your best friend for vertical mobility. With precautions and practice, this can easily eliminate the need for an arena and can save you some resources to explore the Space biome.
 * A effectively extends flight time by causing players to fall slower; the effects are even more pronounced when holding the UP directional key. It will also eliminate all fall damage risk from using a Gravitation Potion. The  acts as a permanent Featherfall Potion when worn in the armor slot.
 * There are different variants of the :
 * , which jumps higher and gives a speed boost, which if used correctly can skip the speed buildup of the Boots;
 * , which is the fastest one;
 * , which has the highest jump height, while also having the best horizontal distance;
 * , which jumps slightly higher than the base Cloud.
 * It is possible to combine these items with a at the Tinkerer's Workshop for their . You can combine three of those variants to create a, a powerful pre-Hardmode Accessory.
 * A can be used to increase the player's speed by shooting it diagonally and then releasing it before reaching the point. This works best on flat open areas, and can allow Hermes Boots to get to full speed without having to build up beforehand.
 * The ascent speed of can be greatly increased by equipping a . Balloon accessories provide a similar, though less dramatic bonus.
 * The only require 2 NPCs in order to work and can be used to fast travel to the most frequently visited places.

Other

 * Always use Background Walls in your buildings, as they stop Enemies to spawn in those areas.
 * You will be getting a lot of NPCs – arrange a building that you can keep expanding; upwards is best, however Wyverns may cause problems on small worlds.
 * To avoid possible Corruption/Crimson contamination of NPC houses in the future, it can be helpful to dig a 4-5 block trench around them; allow yourself some extra space for tree farms.
 * You can right click with any Summon weapon on an enemy or boss to have your minions target it. You can tell an enemy is targeted when a purple circle appears over it and the enemy or boss starts trailing purple particles.
 * If your mouse has side-buttons you can rebind them to restore Health, use Buff items or to restore Mana.

fr:Guide:Conseils pratiques