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
Activating hardmode is an irreversible process that pits you in a race against time versus the spread of 2 biomes which aggressively expand and overwhelm other bioms: The Hallow, and one of either The Corruption or The Crimson. Ignoring these and letting them consume other biomes means you'll be cut off from the drops of monsters native to them (which will cripple your crafting options), as well as the inability to complete the Angler's quests. In short, you will need to preserve the existing biomes or create artificial transplants of them in more opportune locations (e.g. closer to your base), and create a lake in the middle of them.

Ideally when you stand in the middle above a lake to fish, the biome should extend beyond the screen, preventing biome overlap - it would suck to spend hours creating a biome only to discover you can't fish from it because the lake takes on the properties of a neighbouring biome. Mini-biomes are fine for certain purposes (like housing, since several NPCs have additional items for sale when housed in certain biomes) but for fishing purposes you need something large enough to accommodate a big lake (remember: the smaller the lake, the lower your fishing success).

Recommended biomes to save
- space: sky lake

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

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

Sky lakes are now generated automatically in place of certain sky islands, so you should be covered there. For surface forests, the area around your base should be fine especially if you've been gardening nearby. The other biomes usually need artificial transplants created since the natural ones tend to spawn far away and isolated from each other, making visiting them a pain. The corrupt/crimson biome usually already has a pre-hardmode location or two, so just let them spread and surround an existing lake naturally. The hallow tends to surface in snow, which prevents it from spreading, so you may need to manually spread hallow elsewhere (using Holy Water) and let it take over a lake.

The jungle is at risk of being overrun by corruption but not the hallow - hallow will be stopped by mud (which jungle grass grows on), while corruption will convert mud into dirt. For this reason you can slow down the corruption's spread by manually spreading hallow around the jungle, if you don't intend to build an artificial jungle elsewhere. More urgently is the underground jungle, because it's where you can fight one of the hardmode bosses, so if you don't plan to save the natural underground jungle you should create a particularly large artificial one capable of fitting a lake for fishing and an arena for the boss. (You could fight over the lake to save room, but water hampers mobility and you really don't want to worry about drowning while a boss is trying to kill you.)

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" of the world on either side, but the map viewer shows that the world data actually extends beyond that by a good 10+ 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. (Losing your oceans also means you will lose access to one of the hardmode bosses.) Since oceans can't be transplanted - and building an artificial ocean at a higher elevation is a huge pain in the ass - you'll need a "border wall" built right at the edge of the ocean down to the sea floor. Then at the bottom there you need to tunnel underneath the wall and dig out a quarantine gap all the way inland then back up to the surface. Since your quarantine gap will meet with the border wall at the sea floor you need to ensure that hallow or corruption can't spread across the wall. This means the base of the wall that touches the sea floor should be composed of player-crafted bricks. Don't forget that the wall itself needs to be thick enough to resist biome spread, which means it should be at least 3 blocks wide - just because hallow/corruption can't spread over player-crafted blocks, they can "jump over" a wall if it's only 1 or 2 blocks thick.

Finally, for the underground lava, you will find it convenient to just section off an area to the side of your hellevator just before reaching the underworld below.

While you're busy creating your artificial biomes, it's also a good time to set up a Minecart Track that spans the world, i.e. from your base to either ocean. Use the map viewer to determine how high above the ground it needs to be, because you don't want it to be too low that you're preventing trees from growing or being hassled by monsters (especially near the corruption). This rail will greatly speed up navigating your world's surface, especially if you opted to quarantine naturally occuring biomes rather than build artificial ones near your base, plus you'll need to revisit the dungeon and ocean anyway. There are also certain occasions when you need to be at the outer edges of your world for events to occur.

(WIP)

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

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

- Spinfx (talk) 00:55, 16 October 2015 (UTC)