Terraria Beginner’s Guide: 8 Tips and Tricks for New Players

Terraria offers big adventures that can satisfy your hunger for old-school 16-bit graphics in video games, so it's always a good game to pick up, and you're never behind on getting your first start. And while starting a new game may seem intimidating, here we’ll give you important tips and tricks in our Terraria beginner’s guide to help you start on the right foot.

Terraria Beginner's Guide

Don’t know where to start in your new journey in Terraria? This section will give you helpful tips and tricks to make the most out of your in-game experience.

1. Pick The Right Game Mode For You

Like many RPGs, Terraria lets new players choose game modes before starting a new game. But Terraria sets itself apart by allowing you to create various worlds with different modes and difficulty levels. After designing and naming your character, choose among the following modes for your new game:

• Journey: Grants the player the “Creative Mode,” along with a cheat menu with incentives like Godmode and the ability to duplicate items.
• Classic: Also known as the “Normal Mode.” Cheats are inaccessible, and characters drop coins upon death.
• Mediumcore: A mode that’s slightly more difficult than Classic. Aside from coins dropping, characters will also drop all carried items upon death.
• Hardcore: A mode for those that want a true challenge. Permadeath is enabled, which means you only have one life, and the save file disappears upon death.

If you want a casual experience, or perhaps you want to dip your feet in Terraria before going for the difficult modes, you can start with Journey. Then, you can work your way up to Classic, Mediumcore, or even Hardcore.

2. Create Your Ideal World

After creating your first Terraria character, it’s time to generate a new world. Like making a new character in Terraria, some options exist for you to choose from as you go through the world creation menu. Some selections are self-explanatory, such as the size of the world you want. In Terraria, you choose to make small, medium, or large worlds. Next, choose the difficulty of the world that aligns with your preferences. These difficulty levels are:

• Journey: Only accessible for Journey Mode characters
• Classic: The “Normal” Terraria world difficulty level
• Expert: More difficult than Classic but provides better loot as well
• Master: More difficult than Expert, but it has lesser loot for players that want an extra challenge

Note: Don’t confuse world difficulty with character difficulty. You can also choose the type of evil that lurks in the world you develop. These evils are the Crimson and the Corruption. Aside from their names, these evils typically only differ with the types of monsters and loot you see. Products from crafting recipes using loot from these evil biomes are still fairly similar.

3. Build Your First House Early

A house does more than provide your character with shelter. Building residences or rooms in Terraria signals NPCs to come to your upcoming village. The first house you build will give the Guide a new home. But the second house or room built will invite the Merchant into your small village. This new NPC sells you items like an Iron Anvil, Rope, and Lesser Healing and Mana Potions. So, equip your Wooden Axe and cut the trees around your spawn point. You should be able to gather some wood for houses. Alternatively, equip your pickaxe and gather dirt from around the area. Use the materials you gather to create the abodes. Note: A house won’t become a “home” unless it has a wall, a door, a chair, a table, and some lighting. An NPC won’t move into the new home unless you meet these requirements.

4. Choose A Fighting Build And Stick To It

Do you want to hit enemies up close? Perhaps you want to shoot opponents from afar. Alternatively, are you a fan of casting spells or summoning minions? Ask these questions as you start progressing through your created world in Terraria. Each build in Terraria offers unique pros and cons. These character classes are Melee, Ranged, Magic, and Summoner. For instance, Melee classes typically have the strongest base damage in the game. But, oftentimes, you need to get close to enemies, which may deplete your health fast if you’re not careful. On the other hand, the Ranged class can help you hit enemies from afar. That way, you can generally survive longer than a new Melee character. However, Ranged classes are often quite expensive to maintain since you need ammunition to fire ranged weapons. As for the Magic build, you consume mana to deal elemental damage to opponents. But you also need to maintain your mana pool. Otherwise, you’re leaving your character open to enemy attacks. Last but not least is the Summoner build. As its name implies, you summon beings called Minions to help you fight enemies. But most summoning weapons are quite difficult to find, making it a challenging character build to start with in Terraria.

5. Craft Or Find the Grappling Hook

As much as it’s fun to descend into the deepest depths of your world in Terraria, you don’t want your character to have difficulty returning to the surface. So, you should craft a Grappling Hook as fast as you can. At this point, you have two options to obtain that tool: crafting or hunting enemies. If you choose the former, you can craft a basic grappling hook by making a chain from iron bars. Take note you can also create iron bars from iron ores, which should be fairly easy to find underground. But if you want to hunt for a grappling hook, some zombie-type enemies have low chances of dropping hooks. Tip: Use items like Recall Potions to return to your spawn point quickly. But take note these items are consumable, and you may run out of stock if you’re not careful.

6. Open Chests and Keep Them

Perhaps you played other RPGs wherein you open chests and leave the case where you found it. However, treasure chests also play another important role in Terraria – storing your items. Remember, inventory management is a huge mechanic in this game. You’ll find yourself running out of storage space fast frequently. But you can store excess items in treasure chests. If you find a chest during your underground excursions, equip your pickaxe and strike the case after looting its treasure. Use your pickaxe on the chest, and you should be able to pick it up. Place the chest in your house or town. That way, it becomes an extra storage space for your extra items. Alternatively, you can craft chests using workbenches. However, the game has a surplus of these chests, and you might want to use those resources to craft other items.

7. Hunt Down a Strong Armor Set

Wearing nothing but the clothes on your character’s back will only get you so far in Terraria. Eventually, you’ll run into enemies that deal significant damage. Wearing armor can help mitigate health loss if you get hit by your opponents. You can start with perhaps the most basic armor you can craft in the game – the Wood Armor. You can craft each piece of this armor set with a sufficient amount of wood. As you traverse the world’s underground realms, you’ll soon discover that wearing the Wood Armor is no longer effective. You’ll know when the time to upgrade your armor arrives if you’re having difficulty surviving from only a few enemy attacks. So, as a new player, you can upgrade from the Wood Armor with the Gold or Platinum Armor. The latter can be a good choice if you don’t want to spend Gold.

8. Fight Bosses Early

The way to progress in Terraria is to fight bosses, with many bosses gatekeeping new content along your journies. This bossing is the only way for you to eventually challenge the Lunatic Cultist, which, in turn, allows you to fight the Moon Lord. Defeating the Moon Lord will give you access to Hardmode. In Hardmode, the enemies in your world deal more damage than before. However, you can also gain better loot from your opponents than before you challenged this boss. Here’s a list of bosses that you should fight in Terraria, starting with the relatively weakest of the bunch:

• King Slime
• The Eye of Cthulhu
• Brain of Cthulhu or Eater of Worlds
• Skeletron
• Queen Bee
• Wall of Flesh
• The Twins
• The Destroyer
• Skeletron Prime
• Plantera
• Golem
• Empress of Light
• Lunatic Cultist
• Moon Lord

Bear in mind that you can challenge some bosses without defeating the enemies before them. For example, you can fight and kill The Eye of Cthulhu before you defeat King Slime. Nonetheless, prepare yourself for each battle regardless of the boss you fight.

Survive to Thrive

The last tip we recommend for any new Terraria players is to get comfortable with the journey. You'll spend hours digging and exploring your world in this game, and it doesn't all have to be too fast or too slow. You control what you get from your Terraria experience, and if you want to get started, you can kick if off with the help of our dedicated servers here!