The portrait minimap.
The minimap is a scale-size live overview of the world around your character. By default, it is displayed in a square frame in the upper-right corner of the screen.
As the world is explored, areas appear on the minimap with the greatest brightness with which the character has ever seen them. Even if the tiles return to darkness, they will remain visible on the minimap. The rate that the minimap logs new data on is dependent on the current video quality - the higher it is, the faster it will be.
Areas explored without a light source will not be mapped. If a location's appearance is updated (e.g. Meteor landing somewhere), the map will not change until the player visits that area.
In addition, Players, Friendly NPCs (except Skeleton Merchant and the Old Man), and Bosses appear on the minimap as icons of their heads, which show their character name when the cursor moves over them. This makes it easy to find NPCs, keep track of other players in multiplayer, and aids in fighting Bosses. In PvP, only players on the same team can see each other on the minimap.
Minimap data is saved with your character data, not the world data. This means that if one character explores the world, other characters do not automatically see it on their maps. Minimap data is saved to a subfolder of the My Documents\My Games\Terraria\Players
The minimap can be disabled from the Settings screen.
Modes
The inventory screen buttons.
The overlay map.
The fullscreen map.
The minimap has four modes: portrait, overlay, hidden, and full screen. By default, the Toggle Map Style key toggles the minimap between the first three modes, with full-screen mode available by pressing the Toggle Full Map key. Modes can also be changed by using buttons displayed in the top-right while the Inventory screen is open.
- Portrait Mode: The minimap appears in the top right corner of the screen, as shown in the screenshot. The + and – buttons on the frame allow the map to be zoomed in and out; the = button returns it to the default scale.
- Overlay Mode: The minimap appears as a transparent overlay over the entire game screen. In this mode, it can actually be zoomed in to a 1:1 scale, which can help visibility at night or in caves, or out far enough to see the entire world.
- Hidden Mode: The minimap display is disabled. Areas you explore with the minimap hidden are still mapped, and will be shown if you turn the minimap back on.
- Full-Screen Mode: An opaque map covers the entire game screen. This mode allows you to move the map around without actually moving your character, making the entire current map available for research. This can be zoomed in and out with the keyboard just as the minimap can, or with the mouse wheel, and it can be scrolled using the directional keys or by dragging it with the mouse. The full-screen map can be dismissed by clicking the icon at the bottom left corner, by pressing M, or by pressing the inventory key again. There are unique backgrounds behind the map depending on which Biome you are currently in.
Controls
In the portrait, overlay, and full-screen modes, the keyboard can be used to control the minimap. All controls listed here are defaults, and can be changed in the options menu.
The + and – keys on the numeric keypad zoom the minimap in and out. There is no key to restore the default scale, but the = button on the portrait frame does this.
The Page Up and Page Down keys make the minimap more or less transparent. This cannot be done in full-screen mode. In portrait mode, this only affects the map, not its frame.
The Toggle Map Style key toggles the map between portrait, overlay and hidden mode. The Toggle Full Map key brings up the full screen map.
The minimap appears when you press Back (Xbox) or Select (PlayStation).
The minimap appears when you pinch your fingers on the screen.
Mobile Minimap
In Singleplayer, If you pinch your fingers together, but keep touching the screen, the game doesn't auto-pause and the enemies still move. You can watch how they act with the surrounding terrain and identify what AI type they are.
Yourself, other players and all NPCs will appear as that person's head, with the exception of the Old Man which will appear as a "enemy circle".
Bosses appear as a large skull icon, except for the Eater of Worlds which appears as lots of monster circles. The Destroyer is a lot of enemy circles with a skull for the head.
Worm-type monsters appear as lots of medium "enemy circles" in a line, due to each body segment being classified as a new enemy.
Tapping on a player/NPC's head icon will display their name.
If you or someone else is attacked with the minimap open, the unmapped spots on the screen will flash red.
Notes
- When used with worlds generated prior to release 1.2, it only shows areas visited while playing under 1.2 or later.
- If Autopause is enabled, it will unpause when viewing the full screen map.
- Paint shows up on the map, allowing you to mark sections of the map (assuming you use enough paint of a distinctive enough color).
- If the player enables the full screen map and zooms out the maximum amount, the map will appear as a handheld map and a background corresponding to the players current biome will be shown.
- On the Mobile Version, the blocks on the minimap may fail to update properly according to which world the player is on.
- When character is moved to cloud, minimap files can be deleted.
- In the old console version, the minimap is already lit, revealing things very far away to you.
Tips
- If you don't have any light sources, you can use the zoomed in Overlay Mode to see where you are going, you can't see your enemies though.
Full-Screen map backgrounds
History
- Desktop 1.3.0.4: Fixed issue that caused maps to go black along with a handful of related issues.
- Desktop 1.3.0.1: Now displays boss icons.
- Desktop 1.2.4:
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Minimap to crash the game.
- Fixed a bug where buff tooltips were staying visible on the map screen.
- Desktop 1.2.3.1:
- Fixed bug that was causing maps from older versions to erase.
- Fixed issue where maps were not saving on some worlds.
- Fixed bug where painted tiles did not draw on the map properly.
- Desktop 1.2.3:
- Dark tiles on the map no longer tell you what they are when moused over.
- Map drawing changed to work over time rather than lock the machine up while it happens.
- Maps draw much faster and their save files are 60% smaller.
- You can no longer interact with stuff when fullscreen map is open.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the Map to draw over already drawn areas.
- Desktop 1.2.1.2: You can no longer see enemy players on the map during PvP.
- Desktop 1.2.1: Minimap now draws over enemy health bars.
- Desktop 1.2.0.2: Slightly reduced how much memory the map requires on large worlds.
- Desktop 1.2: Introduced.
- Console 1.02: Introduced.
- Mobile 1.2.6508: Introduced.
- 3DS-Release: Introduced.