Guide:Practical Tips

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This is a Guide page. This means the page will walk you through a specific task, strategy, or enemy/boss fight.

There are many things in Terraria which are not evident from the get-go, and many other things that a player would definitely do differently on a rerun of the game. It is true that much of the joy lies in exploring, but sometimes you may feel some helpful advice is in order.

NPCs

• You will be getting a lot of NPCs – arrange a building that you can keep expanding; upwards is best, however Wyverns may cause problems on small worlds. Also, to avoid possible Corruption/Crimson contamination in the future, it can be helpful to dig a 4-5 block trench around your house; allow yourself some extra space for tree farms.

Items

• Make a Hook after getting your first 15 Gems of any kind. This makes exploration of caves much easier, and does not require you to get a Hook.
• Stacks of items can be bought and crafted quickly by holding the ⚷ Open / Activate button.
• You will be gathering a lot of stuff, so it is best to separate your chests. Chests containing crafting materials are best kept near the crafting station where they will be needed - one for ores and bars, next to an Anvil and Furnace. One for potion materials, next to a Placed Bottle or Alchemy Table. One for potions, one for weapons, one for equipables next to a Tinkerer's Workshop, and one or two for miscellaneous crafting materials.
• All Piggy Banks, Safes and Defender's Forge share the same space – you can leave one at home, and take one with you, effectively tripling your carry-able items! However, the Piggy Bank requires a flat furniture surface to set on, so take a Work Bench or some platforms as well. In the  Desktop and  Console versions, you can obtain the Money Trough  during a Blood Moon. It is a floating Piggy Bank which renders a regular Piggy Bank obsolete.
• Even with full health, Heart Crystals can still be used to craft Heart Lanterns, which provide health regeneration when placed down.
• Do not keep a lot of money in your inventory. If you die, you will probably have trouble retrieving it. Consider placing it in a Piggy Bank or Safe periodically.
• Fishing up a Reaver Shark from the Ocean, while possibly being time-consuming, allows you to skip all the mandatory pre-Hardmode pickaxes – it has the same pickaxe power as the Molten Pickaxe and is faster.
• Try not to fight Voodoo Demons above lava, otherwise they will drop the Guide Voodoo Doll into it, and the Wall of Flesh will spawn.
• Do not be reckless when exploring areas with Hardmode enemies. Players usually enter Hardmode feeling confident that they can handle anything, but Hardmode enemies will quickly break this illusion. Additional dismay may ensue if you lose your money and be unable to retrieve them.

Mining

• Always upgrade your pickaxe: try to upgrade to a better one as fast as you can because certain items can only be mined with better ones.
  • The same goes for pickaxes/drills in Hardmode. They are mandatory for progressing to the next ore tier. The order is: Cobalt / Palladium, Mythril / Orichalcum, and finally Adamantite / Titanium.
• Do not jump down a large hole or cave without an extra jump or Lucky Horseshoe. If you do not have those, consider using Rope and platforms to safely descend.
  • As a rule of thumb, you should not jump down if you cannot see the glow of a torch or glowstick that you threw down.
• Use Spelunker Potions or throw Spelunker Glowsticks  if you're unable to find anything of value: they highlight any valuable treasure and ores that are on your screen.
• Mining Potions increase mining speed directly.
• The Light modifier greatly increases your melee swing speed, which in turn increases the mining speed.
•    When the Minimap is expanded, hovering over an ore pocket will display its name next to the cursor.
  • Using items that light through walls such as the Starfury will light up the map, allowing the player to locate and distinguish ores.
• Enabling the Smart Cursor can be very helpful.
• For quick trips to the various layers or the world, a hellevator can be a very useful structure. Dig a vertical shaft from underneath your base down to The Underworld and consider placing Ropes to conveniently ascend and descend.
• Do not look for Hardmode ores in the Underground Corruption, Crimson, or Hallow when you first start Hardmode unless you are very confident in your skill. Instead, if you have dug one, a hellevator is a good place to start looking.
• Hardmode ores cannot be found in all layers:
  • Cobalt / Palladium Ore can be found in all Underground layers;
  • Mythril / Orichalcum Ore can be found in Cavern layers;
  • Adamantite / Titanium Ore can only be found in lower Cavern layer (which is where Lava replaces Water).

Combat

• Starting the battle as soon as the sun sets (at 7:30 p.m.) will provide the maximum amount of time to defeat nocturnal bosses.
• Prepare your Boss-fighting arena with adequate lighting, Campfires and Heart Lanterns for health regeneration, and Stars in Bottles for mana regeneration if you use magic.
•   Sunflowers provide the Happy! buff to players within a 50-tile radius, which grants a +10% movement speed bonus and 17% reduction in enemy spawn rate.
• Always carry at least one stack of the highest-tier healing potion available (Lesser, Normal, Greater, or Super Healing Potions ). Relying only on natural Health Regeneration is not a good idea.
  • The same goes for Lesser, Normal, Greater, or Super Mana Potions   , if you use Magic.
• It is suggested to build houses for the Dryad and the Nurse NPCs in your arena. The former casts the Dryad's Blessing  buff, which increases your defense and provides you with a thorns-like effect, while the latter can heal and remove debuffs instantly, at the cost of some coins.
• Bosses are displayed on the Minimap: Follow the boss's icon to track it when you're struggling to find it. You can identify the boss icons by checking their respective wiki pages.
• Once you have freed the Mechanic in the Dungeon, you can use Wire to enhance your arena with Traps and helpful Heart and Star Statues. The former help to damage the enemies, though be careful to set them up correctly in order not to hurt yourself during the battle. The latter will spawn heart and star pickups, respectively. Connect these devices to timers.
• It may be useful to summon and kill the Eye of Cthulhu before summoning any harder boss in order to spawn an extra one-use pool of hearts.
• Remember to use the Sharpening Station , Ammo Box   , Crystal Ball, and Bewitching Table  before you go to explore or battle Bosses / Invasions. These will give class-specific boosts that are useful to take. They respectively give Sharpened , Ammo Box   , Clairvoyance, and Bewitched .

Travel

• There are various items and accessories that can affect movement speed:
  • The most basic one that can decrease travel time is the Hermes Boots, which allows the player to run at a faster speed.
  • Swiftness Potions are very common, and can increase movement speed significantly. If you wear boots, it will make you reach the maximum speed more quickly. Make sure to refresh the potion as its effect lasts only for a limited amount of time.
  • The Aglet and Anklet of the Wind improve movement speed by 5% and 10%, respectively. Both stack with each other, and even with a Swiftness Potion.
• If you can withstand screen flips, Gravitation Potions can be your best friend for vertical mobility. With precautions and practice, this can easily eliminate the need for an arena and can save you some resources to explore the Space biome.
• There are different variants of the Cloud in a Bottle:
  • Blizzard in a Bottle, which jumps higher and gives a speed boost, which if used correctly can skip the speed buildup of the Boots;
  • Fart in a Jar, which is the fastest one;
  • Sandstorm in a Bottle, which has the highest jump height, while also having the best horizontal distance;
  • Tsunami in a Bottle , which jumps slightly higher than the base Cloud.
  • It is possible to combine these items with a Shiny Red Balloon at the Tinkerer's Workshop for their Balloon variant. You can combine three of those variants to create a Bundle of Balloons.
• A Hook can be used to increase the player's speed by shooting it diagonally and then releasing it before reaching the point. This works best on flat open area, and can allow Boots to get to full speed without building up beforehand.
• The Wings' ascent speed can be greatly increased by equipping a Frog Leg.

Other

•   Pressing the Left Ctrl (Alt on Macs and pressing down the right joystick on Xbox) key changes your mining style to Smart Cursor, which is extremely useful for strip mining.
• You can descend relatively fast by auto-focusing the mining and digging a 2-block-wide shaft.
•   Don't place Banners around areas where their correlating monsters will not spawn.
• You can right click with any Summon weapon on an enemy or boss to have your minions target it. You can tell an enemy is targeted when a purple circle appears over it and the enemy or boss starts trailing purple particles.
• If your mouse has side-buttons you can rebind them to restore Health, use Buff items or to restore Mana.