Starter Guide

What is Terraria?

Terraria is an open-ended "sandbox"-style 2D platform game. It features customizable characters, randomly generated worlds, day/night cycles, deformable terrain, and a crafting system that allows the player to "live off the land": crafting items that are required for survival. The crafting system allows the player freedom to manipulate their environment by doing anything from digging mines to building towns; it is their prerogative.

The game also features online multiplayer.

Creating your character and world
The first thing you will want to do when booting up Terraria for the first time is creating a character, by clicking on the "Create Character" button (there is currently a bug that crashes the game if you go to the settings screen without a world/character). You're able to change the hairstyle and hair color, eye color, skin color and the color of your standard clothing. Once you are okay with your looks, click "Create". You will be prompted to enter a character name. When you're done, hit okay.

Now it's time to create a world. First, select your newly born character and click "Create World". You will be asked if you want to create a small, medium or large world. All options have different pros and cons, so just pick what you think sounds good. Give your world a catchy name, accept it and wait for the world to become fully generated. This might take a few minutes, but once it's done, get ready to explore the amazing world of Terraria!

Your first minutes in the game
When you enter your world for the first time, you will find yourself stranded in the middle of... well, nowhere. Next to you you'll hopefully see an NPC, the Guide. You're able to talk to him by right-clicking him, and he'll tell you loads of important information, as well as explaining the basics of the game. If you ever feel lost it's always a good idea to have a little chat with him.

You won't start off empty handed though. In your inventory hotbar, floating in the top left corner of the screen, you'll discover two basic tools, a Copper Pickaxe and a Copper Axe. By moving your mouse's scroll wheel up and down you'll be able to switch between the hotbar slots. You can also use the numbers 1 through 0 on your keyboad.

These are the most common tools in this game: The first thing you probably want to do is to chop down a couple of trees. To do so, walk near a tree with your axe equipped and just click it at it's base and hold until it breaks, spreading wood all over the place. By now, chances are that you will already get attacked by basic enemies; Slimes. To attack these slimes, face them and click anywhere. Keep attacking it until it dies and drops a couple of gels. These gels are used to make torches, which will become very useful later in the game.
 * Pickaxes - Used to remove almost all kinds of block. Everything from dirt and stone to iron and sand.
 * Axes - Pretty self explanatory; Allows you to chop down trees and remove wooden blocks.
 * Hammers - Used to remove background blocks like wooden and dirt walls. May also be used to remove furniture and smash certain rare items.

Once you feel that you've gathered enough pieces of wood it's time to make a workbench. To do so, press ESC, which will also reveal your inventory. In the bottom left corner, you'll see a list of items available for crafting. Select the workbench, click it's icon and place it in your hotbar. In order to place the workbench on the ground, equip it and click somewhere on the ground close to your character. From now on, if you open up your inventory close to the workbench, you will be given more options for crafting. One smart thing to do is to craft a wooden sword, so you'll at least have something to defend yourself against the monsters. It'll do a lot more damage than the tools you already have.

Now, what you probably want to do is to make a nice little shelter for you to hide in. In order to do so, you will need wood, doors and wooden walls that cover the background and prevents monsters from spawning in your house.

Start by finding a nice, flat area, and successively build the "outline" of a house using the wood. You might want to take away the lowermost parts of the walls of the house in order to fit in doors. After that, you want to fill this "outline" with the wooden walls, which basically are background objects. These background walls will stop monsters from appearing inside your house. Once everything is filled in, you're done. Congratulations! You've successfully built your first Terraria shelter!

Early exploration
Now that you have a nice, safe sanctuary, you'll probably want to go out exploring a little. Feel free to do so. Here's a list of good things to collect: Once the day ends and night time begins, either get back to your shelter and hide in safety, or get ready to slay some zombies and demon eyes. It is strongly suggested you look into making a bow and arrows, as they combine good damage and range.
 * Ores. There are various ores in this game, for example the brown copper or the gray iron. They can be refined using a furnace and crafted into weapons using an anvil.
 * Mushrooms. So far we've seen two kinds of mushrooms: Small, red mushrooms and tall, glowing blue mushrooms. They can be eaten to recover health or crafted into potions using bottles at an Alchemy Station. The latter is much more efficient.
 * Pots. These are found in caves and may contain everything from coins to potions and even bombs. Break them by hitting them with any weapon.
 * Chests. The better version of pots, often hiding rare accessories and loads of coins inside them.
 * Gems. They appear to be quite rare, so if you happen to see any of them, make sure to pick them up. Gems are an integral component of the powerful Phaseblade weapons.
 * Life Crystals. If you happen to come across one of these, you're really lucky. Hitting these with a hammer and "eating" them will give you one extra max heart. (+20 hp)

By now, it's up to you to discover the rest. Who knows what you will find in this mysterious world?

If you happen to have any questions, look them up in the FAQ below or on the Tips & Tricks page. If you have any remaining questions, feel free to ask them in this thread. Good ones can be added to the FAQ.

I noticed some vines in a cave, what are they good for?
The main purpose of the vines is to obstruct your sight down caves. You can cut them down by hitting them with any weapons, but they won't drop anything and will grow back in a day or two. The only way to permanently remove vines are by removing the "grass ceilings" and make sure no grass spreads there by blocking it's path.

I saw some purple grass, and as I got closer the sky turned yellow. What's that?
This is the Corruption. The Corruption is like a disease, and will infect regular grass upon contact. It's filled with dangerous monsters, but is also filled with loads of rare stuff. It's a risk/reward kind of thing. I'd suggest you to wait with exploring the Corruption until you have good armor and weapons.

You can purify corrupted areas by scattering purification powder (purchasable from the Dryad), and you can prevent the Corruption from spreading by planting sunflowers, which act like barriers.