User:Spinfx

= Greetings =

Hello all, Spinfx here.

Terraria is a wonderful game, I haven't played any world building/exploring games previously (Minecraft?) so this is a novel experience for me. I can say it's easily one of the best purchases I've made ever, right along with the Exile/Avernum shareware series. I like indie games like those, commercial boxed games are all well and good but far too many of them nowadays are shallow and more glitter than substance.

2015-10-02: Things are getting unwieldy on this page, I'm splitting off the old content (/Old_Guide). Also, how the hell do you link to a UserWiki page (i.e. like this one)? Typing it out literally doesn't work: UserWiki:Spinfx. This is stupid - the only way of reaching this page would then be via the actual User page, like so: User:Spinfx. (I mean, it's not a link there, because obviously we are already on this page, but it does work on other pages - yes, I've tested.)

Anyway, it's time for a new guide. I'll try to keep it briefer than previously, I'm aware I tend to ramble (but this verbosity really helps me when I explore my old notes on other games). You may want to skim my old guide anyway, the game's fundamentals haven't changed that much especially when starting out with a fresh character on a fresh world. Note that I will be referring to the PC version of the game, and am using information current as of build 1.3.0.8.

One last thing, this page will be full of spoilers. I repeat, THIS IS A GUIDE. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. No last chance warnings, you're already on a freaking wiki, what are you doing reading this if you don't like spoilers. I won't go out of my way to reveal everything explicitly in excruciating detail, but neither will I bother to conceal anything.

= Guide =

As a preface, note down the link to the various existing Guides. They'll come in handy especially since I won't repeat every detail. First make sure to skim the ones listed under the first category, Basics. Yes I know everyone is in a hurry, but at the very least look through the Getting Started guide. Now consider that your character doesn't have that many stats, so your progression in this game is item-based. This means you will spend the bulk of your time collecting material for crafting, even if it seems to involve whacking a lot of enemies.

Before we start, I'd like to recommend a map viewer - I used to use MoreTerra but the recent updates were a little slow in coming, so I switched to TerraMap. As a bonus, you can more easily search the resulting map image as well as filter for specific block types to highlight, which is great.

Yes, I admit this does take something out of the exploration aspect of the game. However, this only really remains novel for the first couple weeks - after several restarts with different worlds it got tiring just randomly digging hoping to find things. It's not like you need to use all of the viewer's features - I use it almost solely just for general world information e.g. finding where a lake in biome X is. You don't have to go pixel hunting for specific items if that feels too cheaty for your tastes.

Game phases
While not formal phases per se, the game can loosely be divded into 2 phases, Hardmode and Pre-Hardmode. Killing the pre-hardmode boss Wall of Flesh will permanently transition your world into Hardmode. The main feature of Hardmode is the accelerated spread of The Corruption (or The Crimson) and The Hallow, as well as the availability of new bosses.

Many bosses function as checkpoints in the sense that defeating them either gives you drops you can't obtain elsewhere (and which are required to expand your crafting capabilities), or access to a different area - for example, you cannot enter the Dungeon without beating Skeletron.

Initial phase
When first starting out, you have access to wood-based and early ore equipment. Since this whole thing is my opinion, I'm recommending you use Yoyos: even though they are technically a ranged weapon, they are classified as melee weapons - there is no ammunition or mana usage cost, the "projectile" persists for several seconds, and it is largely controllable. There is a bounce effect that makes using a yoyo slightly unwieldy at first, but this is easy to compensate for. This effect shines against groups, where the yoyo will bounce between each enemy rapidly, inflicting damage all the while. All you need is a somewhat steady hand and some experience using this weapon.

As for armor and accessories, anything goes. It is preferable that you get up to gold/platinum Armor but in the meantime you will be doing a lot of exploration in this arc of the game. Highly suggest you begin the initial hellevator excavation - I recommend you build your base right around your start spawn, and your hellevator right underneath it. Makes going down easier when you don't have to trek across the world every time. You don't need to explore the Underworld just yet though, especially with your current crappy gear and likely inability to mine Hellstone (which you'll need at least a Nightmare Pickaxe for, which requires crafting involving Shadow Scale, only dropped by a boss (Eater of Worlds)).

Along the way purchase the Piggy Bank and Safe, they really help for hauling loot back to base. (Ideally you'll loot a Money Trough to replace the Piggy Bank, not having to lay down platforms to place it is very convenient.) This additional storage is especially useful for hauling along things that you need but don't use all the time, like for example fishing gear, or money for when you encounter the Skeleton Merchant (since you only drop money in your main inventory interface when you die).

Side trip: Dungeon
Beating Skeletron is mandatory for entering the Dungeon. While it doesn't contain any progression-lock material, there are several NPCs who you can only initially encounter here (the Mechanic is especially valuable). Make sure you have adequate free housing for them to move into, take care of this before hitting up Skeletron.

Pre-hardmode
With most of the pre-hardmode bosses under your belt, you should have the best kit you can obtain for now: for mining this means the Molten Pickaxe, and if you've been sticking to yoyos you should have obtained a Cascade - although personally I was running around ok with a weaker Amazon. The beautiful thing about yoyos is the accessories which you can get for it that effectively split it into 2 (and then later 4) - look up the Yoyo Bag, which you'll be crafting once you finish obtaining the component accessories for it. As you can see, you'll require a crafting station bought from an NPC rescued from the dungeon, so while it's not a mandatory trip I'd really strongly suggest against skipping the Dungeon.

Depending on whether you took the time out to craft them, you may also now have your first Summon weapon, likely either the Hornet Staff or the Imp Staff. The cool thing is the summons are permanent, until you either dispel them or die, which means you can cast them then store away the staff back into a storage item like the Money Trough. Since they have zero maintenance costs it's good to have a minion out with you all the time. Summoning is pretty much the first thing I do whenever I log into the game now.

Quarantine preparations
Before you proceed to activate hardmode, you may want to do some preparation. Specifically, in Hardmode there will be 2 biomes that aggressively expand and overwhelm existing biomes - technically 3, but a world can only contain The Corruption or The Crimson exclusively; the other biome is The Hallow. In earlier versions of the game this wasn't much of a problem other than aesthetics, but now with the introduction of the Angler and the quests he gives out, you will want to preserve certain biomes by either quarantining specific sections of the world, or simply creating artificial biomes in sections you've already walled out. This ensures that even if the naturally created biome is overrun, you will still have access to the section you saved or artificially created elsewhere.

The sections need to be large enough to hold a sizeable lake, as well as a buffer area. See, if you build the lake right up to the edges of the quarantine wall/space, you may be counted as fishing in the adjoining biome. It defeats the purpose if you built a small lake surrounded by a different biome, and when you fish it gets counted as the outside biome instead of the one you're building for the lake. Ideally you have a fishing platform just above the water level over the middle of the lake, and the biome extends past the side of your screen on all 4 sides. I tend to generously build them 1.5 screens wide and about 2 screens high - yes, that's a lot of blocks to transplant if you're creating an artificial biome but it's certainly better to overestimate rather than underestimate.

There are quite a few you need to prepare for:

- sky lake

- surface: default, jungle, snow, mushroom, ocean, hallow, corrupt

- cavern: default, jungle, snow, mushroom, hallow, corrupt, lava

NOTE: On the Fishing article itself see the "Mechanics" section where it explains how biome overlap order can cause confusion. This is why I recommend to build biomes wider/taller than a single screen with your lake at the middle, so that when you stand there fishing you are definitely not within range of bordering biomes. Also note the discussion there mentioning the biome size in number of blocks - 100, 200. That's damn tiny. Yes, it's a pain in the ass to build large biomes, but it's not like it takes too long (emptying out the area beforehand certainly takes longer in my experience, but you could just use explosives rather than dig). It's not like you fill the entire screen with blocks either; that's inefficient and a waste. Generally I build several flat strips of land - this also allows me to use the biome for harvesting things for example in the case of an artificial underground jungle: each strip of jungle means an additional source of things like Jungle Spores. Plus having a huge lake benefits your fishing chances.

Sky lakes are now generated automatically in place of certain sky islands, so you should be covered there. As for the surface, the area around your base should serve as the default forest especially if you've been gardening nearby, so it's easy to build a lake right next to your base. However, the other biomes usually need to be quarantined unless you create an artificial transplant nearer to your base. The corrupt/crimson biome usually already has a pre-hardmode location or two, and they're literally one of the problems so you can ignore them. The other biome is hallow, and although you'd think it'd have no issues surfacing, it can occasionally surface in snow, which is annoying for both biomes. So you will want to quarantine surface snow away, and help seed hallow elsewhere. The jungle biome in particular is at risk of being overrun by corruption, because corrupt blocks can turn mud into dirt, which the hallow can't. For this reason it's a good idea to sandwich a hallow biome between the jungle and any corruption. Finally, the ocean presents a special problem: if you've used the map viewer, you may haven noticed that your character in the game can mine right up to the "edge" or the world on either side east and west, but the map viewer shows that the data actually extends beyond that by a good 10-20 blocks! This means you can lose your oceans, as sand is especially quick to be converted by either hallow or corruption, and they can inch up from the sides via the blocks you can't reach.

So what you need to do is create a huge wall about 3 blocks wide at the very edge of your ocean, reaching all the way down to the sea floor. Then at the bottom there you need to tunnel underneath and dig out a quarantine gap all the way inland then back up to the surface. Since this massive ocean wall will be touching the ocean floor at some point, you need to ensure that you use player-crafted blocks there to guarantee that there is no way any corruption or hallow can spread. I use a 6-block wide plug because I'm paranoid although technically speaking the gap only needs to be 3 blocks wide.

Same goes for underground down in the cavern layer, except instead of the ocean you will want to cordon off a section containing a lake of lava. It's usually not too hard to move existing water around to create areas for the default cavern and underground mushroom biomes, though you'll usually have to put in much more work for the underground jungle and underground snow unless you section them off separately where they occur naturally. I prefer to have my artificial biomes all nearby, makes travelling easier, so i had to move a ton of mud and snow around. Again, the hallow and corruption will usually naturally take over existing areas where you can carve out a lake with little effort.

(WIP)

- Spinfx (talk) 02:47, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

- Spinfx (talk) 11:42, 5 October 2015 (UTC)