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 different on a rerun of the game. It's true that much of the joy lies in exploring, but if that's your poison then you wouldn't be in this wiki now, would you?

Goal: List of short, to-the point tips & tricks.

NPCs

 * You'll be getting a lot of NPCs - arrange a building that you can keep expanding (upwards is best) from the get-go

Player/Items

 * Make a hook after getting your first 15 gemstones (10 when not on PC) of a kind - exploration of caves becomes much easier
 * Even after full health, hearts are good to craft into heart lanterns, which provide health regen and can give an edge against bosses. In general, prepare your boss-fighting arena with adequate lighting, bonfires and heart lanterns for health regen, and star lamps for mana regen if you use magic.
 * Stacks of items can be bought and crafted using the right mouse button
 * You'll be gathering a LOT of stuff, so best to separate your chests from the get-go - one for ores and bars, next to an anvil and furnace. One for potion materials, next to a placed bottle. One for potions, one for weapons, one for equipables next to a Tinkerer's Workshop, and one for crafting materials.
 * All Piggy banks and all Safes share the same space - so you can leave one at home, and take one with you, effectively tripling your carry-able items! Piggy banks require furniture to set on, so take a crafting table as well.

World

 * It's good to dig a shaft all the way down from your house down to hell, with an unbroken chain of rope/chain/spider rope, letting you ascend and descend really fast (after getting the lucky horseshoe, you can drop-jump all the way to hell). Also, enemies can't climb ropes... =) Divert fluids by first blocking off ONLY the area you need with sand/slush/silt, digging a path underneath the area you want to divert with 'steps' leading it to one side, dig a little nook right near the bottom of the fluid but to the side so the fluid doesn't get on you (careful with the lava, take another block as precaution), and then dig the final block - the fluid should go right past you and you can keep going.

Other

 * Clicking the Ctrl button changes your mining to auto-focus, which is extremely useful for strip mining
 * You can descend relatively fast by auto-focusing the mining and digging a 2-block-wide shaft
 * With the new banner system, be sure not to waste banners and place them around areas where the correlating monsters will spawn.
 * Spiky balls, dropped by goblins and sold by the goblin tinkerer, are extremely helpful in fighting the pre-hardmode bosses - a goblin invasion yields around 150 balls, each doing 15 damage, for over 2000 damage in all if set up beforehand! Deals with the entire first form of Cthulhu's Brain and both the hands of Skeletron if set up correctly.
 * Fight all mobs of Goblins and Pirates. It's worth it.
 * Set up your home with campfires and heart lanterns, placing banners around - that's where you'll be fighting a lot of mobs. I suggest also fighting the Hardmode bosses there, slightly to the side of the house, placing the Dryad close to you for the defense buff.
 * Every Crystal from the Hallow can be crafted to 100 darts, but unlike other darts, these ricochet and auto-aim, making clearing out mobs a piece of cake. Also, for worm-type creatures, the ricochet will hit all the segments on the way, making the job doubly simple. Effective against all enemies, and very gratifying.