Home

A Home is a safe haven for players and NPCs where they can spend their nights without fear of attack (under most conditions). If a Blood Moon or Goblin Invasion is occurring, in which Zombies or Goblins respectively can open doors, the home is no longer a guaranteed safe zone.

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Once your house has been set up, the first NPC you meet - the Guide - will move in. For additional NPCs, you will be required to either make multiple claimable levels using platforms as access to each, add a door and make a new room, or make a new house. Each additional NPC will require one room or level. Once this is complete, other NPCs will slowly join you depending on certain additional criteria, such as how much money you have, if you have defeated a boss, etc.

Requirements
By definition, a house (home) in Terraria: One of the two previous points is not up to date, for world created (or run) in 1.0.4. Beside is a house with extentions in which NPCs live in. Before these extentions, the rooms were not considered habitable.
 * Has closed walls as well as background walls. Dirt or Dungeon Bricks for either substance is not valid. For background walls, a small section of it may be removed for asthetic reasons. For instance, creating a window, but only so much of the back wall can be removed, depending on the size of the room. As of 1.0.4, dungeon materials are not valid for constructing a home but will be useful to make away-from-home houses which the NPCs won't occupy. Dirt may be used as the bottom if you are on the bottom floor.
 * Less than 50% (4 blocks in home going by the shortest possible) of the floor can be made of Wooden Platforms, but no more.
 * Has a table or Workbench and chair.
 * Has a door (each NPC demands own door; shared doors don't count).
 * Has a light source - e.g. a torch or a candle.
 * A minimum height and width of 10 blocks wide by 6 blocks high, which means the room will have 8x4 blocks of free space.
 * If houses are stacked on each other, it needs to be 7 blocks high, 8X5 blocks of free spacHouse.jpg.

Safe NPCs
NPCs are sometimes hated because of their wandering and opening of doors which allows enemies to enter into your home. This is a problem that is easily fixedl build a multi-tier home instead of a long spread out home.

If you use platforms to separate the tiers you will be fine. NPCs can and will drop down platforms, but will refuse to if the drop is more than 3 blocks high. This is important if you want to "pit" your Guide. If they spawn on the wrong tier, the only way to lead them to the correct room, unfortunately, is to build a literal staircase out of blocks that go 1x1 until they finally go to the right tier, destroying the staircase afterwards. If they spawn on the roof, destroy the tiles underneath the NPC and they will drop into your home.

If you had planned out the rooms before hand without any NPCs moving in (which is suggested, by building a blueprint with dirt), when they eventually move in, they will claim a room and stand in the middle of it every night. If you want to really go in depth, you may personalize the rooms to tailor the NPC in it (signs, decorations, etc),.

Defense
Constant threats will terrorize your home including:


 * Blood Moon: Zombies and Demon Eyes will relentlessly attack your base until day breaks (regardless of how many NPC you have to keep enemies from spawning near your base) and they can open your door.


 * Goblin Invasion: Not as common as a Blood Moon, but worse. 100 Goblins, plus an additional 50 per user with 200+ hp, will spawn and attack your base. The biggest annoyance being the Sorcerer who will teleport all over (including inside your home) and can shoot through walls.

Early-Game Tricks
Placing a platform behind a door will prevent it being opened from the outside, yet still allow passage through it. Opening the door from the other side by players is simply done by facing away from the door then using it. This won't stop Goblins breaking down the door but will prevent Zombies opening it.

Placing sand on the opposite side of your door so that it will fall by gravity will damage every monster it lands on and lock down the door. Repeating the process of placing the sand then mining it back is a very safe way of dealing with monsters knocking on your doors.

A current glitch in version 1.0.4 with all the thrown weapons (Boomerang, Shuriken, Ball O' Hurt, etc) allows you to throw them through the door as long as you aim at the handle of the door or lower. This doesn't work with melee, gun, or bow type weapons. The only exception being the Star Cannon, which can shoot through 1 block wide walls. This is due to the distance between the player and the projectiles' spawn area.

A simple defense would be to dig a ditch underground that is too deep to jump out of, yet retains a way for a player to escape. A simple ditch would be dug out more than six blocks down, four blocks wide, with a ceiling of no more than four blocks high, while leaving a small area on the side of the pit opposite of your door so a player can jump up. If this is built properly, the only monsters capable of entering your house are the Sorcerer and the Demon Eye (most Goblins cannot enter because nobody can jump far enough with such a low ceiling). To remedy the Demon Eye problem, simply put a door on the other side of the ditch, as demonstrated on the right. Furthermore, if you dig a little farther until the Zombies can walk off screen, they will automatically "unspawn" after enough time of being off screen, so you don't have to worry about risking your life to kill a horde of Zombies.

Building your house in the air prevents any sort of land monster to enter your house regardless of their ability to knock down doors. Flying creatures can still be a problem but are easily nullified with platform traps and doors. Building a house like this is completely inpenetrable except by Sorcerer, Worms, or bosses. As seen in the screenshot on the right, only one Zombie is allowed to spawn despite Blood Moon due to how many Demon Eyes are trapped. In addition, the player can fight on the ground with melee or from the central "airlock" of the house with ranged weapons. The only issue with this type of house is it can be detrimental to one's sense of reality.

To add to this concept if you suspend your door above a flat area of land by just one tile Zombies will be unable to open it. Goblins will be able to break it down however. Using this stratagy also alows NPCs to use the door with ease.

Additionally, one can build a sort of tower using a platform entrance and a central tower. Lava moats next to the central tower can provide a good amount of coins, especially during Blood Moon. The Lava can only be 1 block thick otherwise it will destroy all items that fall in it.

A simple idea is to place a block of any kind on the side of the door thats facing outside this will stop Blood Moon zombies and Goblins from opening/busting your doors down, in exception to the Goblin Sorcerer.

Advanced Approach
There are ways to keep your base locked down tighter than a prison. Make only two entrances to your base (via door) on either side of the base. Depending on whether or not you make towers, you can leave these doors open.

In the first screenshot you can see the doors and how everything is completely symmetrical. Have a simple layout and add aesthetic appeal later when the functionality aspect is finished. The major defense against basically all enemies is to have some type of block that stands out from all the others, and put it above your door, then put at least three blocks of sand above it. You can now leave the door open almost 95% of time. Make sure that the door is opposite of where the sand is, otherwise the sand will just land on the door and sit there.

Now this is good if you want to just sit there and wait for the event to end, but most people find that boring. So, if you have time, construct towers (this is the one thing that should be copied to the tee) that look similar to the picture above. Make sure to add the sand method (below) to this as well. Flatten the land outside the tower (measured mine to 20 blocks out, make sure its lit) and then just follow the picture. If done correctly, the only enemy able to get in would be Demon Eyes, and thats only occasional. You should be able to move around a bit in almost complete safety and hit all enemies with ranged weapons (In the picture im using the Ball O' Hurt, originally I designed this for Arrows and the Boomerang). Any ranged weapon will do but something that is quick and does not consume ammo is the best bet, as well as good penetration so that it will pass through many enemies at once. With this technique, the only thing that should be able to kill your NPCs are bosses, and it will also look super awesome.

If you have managed to get to the Dungeon, you can actually mine the Spikes with a Hammer to put on your base. The spikes themselves do not hurt monsters yet still hurt yourself. Your house looks far cooler, though.



Sand Shell Method
A much more effective Blood Moon/Goblin Night defense system is shown here where the player breaks a torch and sand falls on the entire home, blocking off all entrances. A major drawback is that it is very, very hard to clean up. You can make the sand as tall as necessary depending on how many entrances you have. However, setting up the system is comparitively tedious.

Tower Method of Self Defense
Utilizing a similiar method to the floating base however it is connected to the ground when it is locked down using two sand traps to block the bottom of the tower. The tower uses two platform traps to allow harvesting of Demon Eyes. The traps can be made into any prefered size. The advanced versions of the tower can use a secondary sand blocking system.

Double-Door Pit Trap
This is a rather simple trap, but protects very well against Zombies and melee-based Goblins during Blood Moons and Goblin Army Invasions.

As the name implies, this trap consists of two doors with a two block wide space between them; this space is occupied by a pit that is too deep to jump out of without assistance. Due to this, it would not be wise to attempt this trap without a Grappling Hook, Cloud in a Bottle, or a pair of Rocket Boots. The concept of the trap is that enemies will be able to enter through the first door, but will find themselves falling into a hole when they attempt to break down the second. The player can jump over the pit by opening both doors at once and jumping straight through; this is not an easy task with a low ceiling, so make sure that you own one of the previously mentioned items.

With a properly constructed trap, the only enemy you should have to worry about is the Goblin Sorcerer.