Terraria

Terraria looks like 2D Minecraft for about twenty minutes. Then a giant eyeball shows up at night and you understand what it actually is: an action game with a strict boss ladder, wearing a sandbox as a delivery mechanism.

You dig for materials, you build a house for NPCs who move in and sell you things, and you fight roughly twenty bosses in a fixed order. Each boss drops the materials for the gear you need for the next one. It is one of the most content-dense games ever made and almost none of it is signposted.

• Four classes: melee (tanky, close), ranged (ammo, safe), magic (mana, high damage), summoner (minions fight for you).
• World evil is chosen at world creation: Corruption or Crimson. It changes two bosses and several materials.
• Difficulty tiers: Journey (creative and forgiving), Classic, Expert, Master. Expert and Master change boss behaviour, not just numbers.
• Everything is craftable, and the guide NPC will tell you what a material makes if you show it to him.

1. 1

   Chop, mine, build one room

   Wood into a workbench, a house for the Guide. A valid house needs walls, a door, a light source, a table and a chair. NPCs will not move in without all of it.

2. 2

   Get a better pickaxe

   Copper or tin, then iron or lead, then gold or platinum. Ore tiers alternate randomly per world and are equivalent, so do not hunt for the "right" one.

3. 3

   Explore the surface chests and caves

   Early accessory finds decide your run: a grappling hook, boots that make you fast, a shiny red balloon. Every chest is worth opening.

4. 4

   Build a long flat arena

   Wooden platforms in rows, a campfire and heart lantern under them. Almost every boss is easier if you can run sideways forever and jump between platforms.

5. 5

   Raise your health

   Life Crystals (the red hearts underground) raise your max health up to 400. Find them before you fight anything.

6. 6

   Fight the Eye of Cthulhu

   It comes on its own once you have 200 health and three NPCs, or summon it with a Suspicious Looking Eye. This is the game's real tutorial boss.

This is the recommended order. King Slime and Deerclops are optional detours, the rest are the main line.

• King Slime. Optional, easy, drops a useful movement accessory.
• Eye of Cthulhu. The gate-opener. Drops demonite or crimtane ore.
• Eater of Worlds (Corruption worlds) or Brain of Cthulhu (Crimson worlds). Fought in your world evil biome, drops the ore for your first real armour set.
• Queen Bee. In the jungle, in a larva-marked hive. Drops the best pre-Hardmode summoner and ranged gear.
• Skeletron. Talk to the Old Man at the dungeon entrance at night. Beating him opens the dungeon, which holds critical items.
• Deerclops. Optional, appears in the snow biome in a blizzard. Good drops, no gating.
• Wall of Flesh. In the Underworld, summoned by dropping a Guide Voodoo Doll in lava. THIS is the point of no return.

Hardmode is a second game. Your old gear is suddenly inadequate, new ores (cobalt or palladium, mythril or orichalcum, adamantite or titanium) appear in the world, and a new boss ladder opens.

1. 1

   Mechanical bosses

   The Destroyer, The Twins, Skeletron Prime, in any order. They gate the crafting stations and gear you need for everything after.

2. 2

   Plantera

   Deep in the jungle, summoned by breaking a pink bulb after all three mechs are dead. Beating her makes the dungeon dangerous and rewarding again.

3. 3

   Golem

   In the jungle temple, which needs a key from Plantera's reward. Straightforward once you can reach it.

4. 4

   Empress of Light and Duke Fishron

   Optional, brutal, and the best gear in the game outside the endgame. Fight them when you are bored of winning.

5. 5

   Lunatic Cultist and the Lunar Events

   Kill the cultists outside the dungeon after Golem. Four pillars appear across the world, each themed to a class.

6. 6

   Moon Lord

   The final boss, summoned by clearing the pillars. Big, mean, and the credits of Terraria.

NPCs move into valid houses and sell you things. Which NPCs you have, and where they live, is a real system rather than decoration.

• Every NPC has preferred biomes and preferred neighbours. Happy NPCs sell cheaper and unlock pylons.
• Pylons are the fast travel network: place one in a happy town and you can teleport between biomes.
• Do not cram everyone into one apartment block. Small towns of two or three, spread across biomes, is both cheaper and faster to travel.
• The Nurse heals for coins, which is effectively a second health bar during a boss fight if you build her house next to your arena.

Terraria never sits you down. Its story is in item text, in the dungeon, and in what the world does after you win. Something ancient was sealed here, and everything you kill is a piece of it waking up.

• The Corruption and the Crimson are not weather. They spread, they eat biomes, and Hardmode accelerates them on purpose.
• The Dungeon holds Skeletron, a curse, and an old man who asks you to end it. The lore items inside are the closest thing to a written history.
• The Lunar Cultists worship what is behind the moon, and the Lunar Pillars are an invasion with a schedule.
• The Moon Lord is Cthulhu-adjacent by design: the Eye, the Brain, the Eater. You have been fighting his parts the whole game.

The Journey's End update named itself for this arc. Beat the Moon Lord and the world keeps going, now with everything unlocked, which is exactly the ending this game deserves.

• Pick one class and commit for a run. Mixed gear gets no set bonuses and falls behind fast.
• Movement accessories beat damage accessories in almost every boss fight. Wings, boots, and a horseshoe first.
• Build a long platform arena with campfires, heart lanterns and a honey pool before every boss.
• Mine a hellevator (one straight shaft to the Underworld) early. It is the fastest travel in pre-Hardmode.
• Keep a spare set of chests sorted by type. Terraria inventory management is the real final boss.
• Use the Ecto Mist and the wiki-known farms only if you enjoy them. The game is beatable without a single farm.
• Play on Classic for your first world. Expert is better once you know the fights, and worse while you are learning them.

• The Terraria Wiki is one of the best game wikis in existence: full crafting trees, boss AI notes and progression checklists.
• The in-game Guide for recipes, and the Bestiary for what drops what.
• Ask in our Discord if you are stuck on a boss. Nine times out of ten the answer is a longer arena.