Terraria Beginner’s Guide

If you are confused about what to do in the early hours of Terraria, this beginners guide is the perfect starting point for you

Terraria is pretty hard to understand if you don’t have any experience of similar games. There is no starting guide or an intro so you just spawn into the world. Our Terraria Beginner’s guide will help you to get started with the game and learn all the basics.

Terraria Beginner’s Guide

When you’re spawned in the world, you have a copper pickaxe and a copper axe in your inventory. You can equip any of your items by just clicking on them or pressing the slot number (1, 2). Your first attacking weapon is the copper pickaxe – Left click on an enemy to attack it.

The game has the standard time rotation by which everything works. The day and the night changes and the atmosphere of the game – the difficulty is quite hard at night in Terraria. The enemies which spawn are more difficult. The 24 hours in game are 24 minutes in your real life (each minute equals to an hour in the game).

There are different NPCs (guides) which will help you through-out the game. One of them will spawn right at the start of your career. These NPCs are just helping sources; you can use their help if you want to.

Shelter

To build a shelter you’ll first need the raw materials. You can use stone or dirt blocks to make it. If you are in a dirt area then select your pickaxe and hold left click on the floor (dirt). You will notice that a dirt block will be removed from the ground and it will move to your inventory.

You can mine the stone blocks in the same way. Try to collect the blocks in a mannered way and not from the same place again and again. You will need like thirty of these blocks to make a proper shelter. Enemies may spawn in the process. Just attack them with your pickaxe; these are not very hard to kill.

Now you will have to gather a lot of wood. You can simply cut the trees to take the wood. Keep on hitting a tree with your axe until the tree is fully perished. You will have to cut about 8 trees to get 100+ wood. They will also drop some seeds which you can use to grow trees later.

Once you have collected enough blocks and woodthen it’s time to make the shelter. Select the stone or dirt blocks from your inventory and make a square (cage) around yourself and block yourself in-between.

Don’t worry as you can get out by just removing the blocks. Use your pickaxe to collect the blocks again if you want to move your shelter or to get out.

Crafting

The name explains it – Combine different items to make more useful items. To do that first of all you will have to create a Work Bench.
Go to your inventory and select Crafting. There are two columns in the crafting menu.

The items on the left side are the items which can be crafted and the items on the right side are those which are required to craft the item on the left side. Click on the workbench – it requires 10 wood to be crafted but we have a lot more than that.

Once it is crafted it will come directly to your mouse (pointer) simply drop it to your items menu on the top. You can then place the workbench by simply selecting it from the menu and placing it anywhere in your shelter.

A workbench lets you to craft more items. Go near to the workbench and open the crafting menu – you will notice more available items which can be crafted now such as the wooden sword, hammer, chair, door etc. In the same way the other crafting helpers work too.

If you go near to them and open the menu then you’ll have more choices. You can also create torches by combining the gel obtained by killing the slimes with the wood. As you’re in the start try to craft every available item at the moment.

Crafting Essentials

Life does not end at the Work Bench and you are going to want to go ahead and build the Furnace and an Iron Anvil to better gear yourself up to fight the dangers of the world of Terraria.

For this, you are going to want to start gathering Stone and Iron Ore. So let us dig right in. Dig 20 blocks down diagonally and start strip mining horizontally and try to explore any caves you find and mine anything that glows.

Make sure to avoid monsters or kill them if they give you too much trouble. Make sure to place torches down so you can follow your way back home. If you find yourself overwhelmed by a number of enemies, use your master building skills to put up a wall between you and the enemy and think of your next move.

Once you have 20 stone, go back to your hideout and build a furnace which will allow you to purify your ores in order to make bars which can be used to make armor for the respective type of bar; using the furnace, make enough iron bars for your anvil so you can fancy yourself some new armor.

Crafting Weapons

Use the ores you find to make bars, and in turn use them to make the armor and weapons for yourself. Help yourself avoid the frustration from flying enemies and make yourself the best bow you can make so you can shoot those annoying little things down from the sky should they mock you too much.

Sword, armor, and a bow will help you for the most starting part of the game. As you move on into the game you will find better ores and better resources to develop even better armor to fight formidable enemies

Houses

Now that you have made a shelter it’s time to give it a proper shape. To make a proper house you MUST have the following things in it.

  • Door
  • Chair & Table
  • 4 blocks height
  • Seven blocks wide
  • Torch (Light Source)
  • Background Walls

The walls of a house can either be of stone or wood and NOT dirt. So if your shelter is made of dirt blocks then you’ll have to find and collect the wooden or stone blocks and make it all again.

Now remove three of the blocks to fit in the door which you have already crafted. You can simply select the door from the inventory and place it in this space.

The door can be opened for you to go out/in and it should be closed again so the enemies can’t come inside your shelter. Place the chair and the table anywhere in your shelter.

Now we need a source for providing the light – You can craft a torch for this and place it anywhere. Now you will have to create the background walls. Simply go to your workbench and create wooden or stone walls. Once you have created enough of these you can place it on the background – make sure you don’t leave any empty space.

Once you have done all the steps correctly your guide (NPC) will claim this house. You can share this house with him but you will have to create your own too. You can create your house just next to his but the walls should not be joined with each other.

Fighting Bosses

Now that you have yourself a good base, some good armor and some fellow mates resting in your house providing you with ample resources. You are now going to have to step out of your comfort zone and make your way to the outside world to fight the terror that lies within the depths and the skies of Terraria.

The first and the most famous boss known to every player; The Eye of Cthulu. Before you go ahead and fight this beast though, it is worth just exploring Terraria’s depths for chests, the underground jungles and the Kingdom of Hades.

There are so many different ways to gather so many new interesting items. Some of these areas admittedly might be too dangerous for a new adventurer such as yourself, which is why it is best to get a gist of things before you move up.

At this point in the game, you should have an eye that can be used to summon the Eye of Cthulu at specifically 7:30 in the game (Night-time). Defeating him will give you demonite ore which you can use to craft some pretty cool stuff.

There is not a lot to strategy regarding the Eye of Ctuhulu but you should make sure you have Flaming Arrows accompanying your bow so you can shoot it down from range, and switch to your sword when it gets too close. Make sure to always be at a spot that will allow you to dodge its onslaught with minimal movement so you can continue on attacking.

After Cthulu you are going to have to kill the world special boss for which you will have to break 3 shadow orbs and pulsating heats to summon them, and they too will drop some demonite ore and shadow scales/tissue samples which you can use to further pimp yourselves out.

After this you are going to want to kill the Queen Be in the underground jungle, in hives, to face her simply break the larve using an Abeemination. Afterwards kill Skeletron at the dungeon during night time by using the old man there using ’Curse’.

These are all the initial bosses you will be facing for your beginning in the game.

Beware of Invasions

These are events that happen in the game randomly or by the use of specific items. There are currently 5 invasions that might attack your HQ time to time.

  • Goblin Army
  • Martian Madnes
  • Frost Legion
  • Solar Eclipse
  • Pirate Invasion

The Goblin Army can be summoned by letting a goblin scout live after you meet one, or simply use a tattered cloth to make a Goblin Battle Standard.

The Pirate Invasion can be sumoned randomly or you can use a pirate map dropped by enemies in the ocean biome.

Frost Legion can be summoned using a snow globe which can be found in presents.

Solar Eclipse is called upon randomly after WoF and at least one mechanical boss defeated. You can alternatively use a solar tablet found in LIhzahrd chests, or crafted from 8 solar tablet fragments droped from Lihzahrds and Flying Snakes.

The Martian Madness event can be summoned if you encounter and not kill a probe which will randomly spawn in your world once you defeat Golem

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Ali is a passionate RPG gamer. He believes that western RPGs still have a lot to learn from JRPGs. He is editor-in-chief at SegmentNext.com but that doesn't stop him from writing about his favorite video ...