I’ve oftentimes thought of what it would be like to erase a game from my mind, to be able to relive the magic of experiencing a game for the first time without all of the baggage that dozens of hours adds onto your experience. The idea of being able to go back through the openings of Oblivion and Skyrim with a fresh mind is intriguing, but ultimately, it’s the accumulative experience of those games that makes them so awesome to me.
But then there’s Terraria.
Given the chance, I would erase everything to relive the magic of Terraria again – especially with how different the game is today from when I played the vanilla version at release. Even back then, the world was bursting at the seams with secrets and mysteries right there for you to find if you were so inclined to explore off the beaten path. There was always a game-changing piece of equipment, or an intense new biome, or a new random event, or a new NPC to find if you only dug a little deeper. Sadly, though, once my curiosity got the best of me, I went searching for answers, and I found them. All of them.
Once I knew of what all was possible and attainable in the game, the magic was gone – but that didn’t stop me from going on to put in over a hundred hours into Terraria after learning everything. Actually, it was a brand new game for me. Instead of being an explorer in a foreign world, I was a creator with a purpose. There was progression. There were bosses to fight, equipment to find, and weapons to forge. Since there is no story to speak of, I was driven by the want to become more than the piddly little explorer with a pickaxe who spawned on a boring pile of dirt – and right there is the true magic of Terraria.
You start with nothing on an empty planet, with the only other apparent sentient life being the ever-helpful and always-hated Guide. Then you start building shelter out of pure necessity to protect yourself from the barrage of zombies that come out at night, eventually building more to accommodate the NPCs that start moving into your structure(s). Eventually, you realize that this once faceless planet now has a landmark. Maybe it’s a castle or a city, but whatever you build – it’s now teeming with life. This is something that’s special about Terraria. Even in MineCraft and Starbound, sometimes your buildings and structures don’t seem to mean anything. It’s just an empty landmark in an empty land. But there’s something special about this “life” moving into your structures, even if it is some of the dumbest A.I. out there.
You’re not only progressing as a character, gaining new abilities (equipment), armor, and weapons, but your planet shows the signs of your progression as well. You can even head out into the world and try to clean up the Corruption, or even Corrupt or Hallow the entire world if you so choose. All it takes in the end is time and commitment.
Since there’s no narrative in the game, this is your story. I can load up an old world now and immediately be reminded “Oh, this is why I built this here” or “This is why this is destroyed.” You can find remnants of your past deeds sprinkled all over your world. Abandoned shelters that you used to escape the night. Tunnels digging downward to nowhere or staircases to to the islands in the sky. It’s not apparent for most of the time you’re playing, but eventually you step back to see the whole picture and realize you’ve left an entire story of your own in this world.
If this all sounds enthralling to you and you’ve somehow missed out on Terraria (or picked up the recent Vita release to have something to play,) then I’ve got a few tips for you. The first and most important is probably something you’ll never, ever see in a guide again, but it’s the biggest thing I can say to help you get the most out of the game: don’t read anything about it. At least not until you feel like you have to.
The rest of the “guide” below will follow this idea, in that I don’t want to spoil anything. Terraria is best played blind for as long as possible. Explore. Poke at the edges of the world and see what you find. Dive headfirst into that Dungeon and see what happens (you will die, but do it! See how!) Dig straight down through the ground until you fall into lava, and respawn to do it again a few feet to the left. Then, when you’ve feel like you’ve seen what there is to see, open up the book and blow your mind right out your earholes. That’s how I feel this game is meant to be played, and I would love to experience it again.
Onto the guide. Your first night in Terraria.
Author’s note: I understand why they wanted to update the PC version with such a massive and awesome update, but I really, really wish all versions were the same. The 360 and Vita versions are great, but the PC got such an awesome improvement. Just keep in mind that I’ve now played what feels like 5 different versions of this game so some of my advice may be weirdly inaccurate due to what you’re playing.
The Guide is a new player’s best friend. He’ll give you some cryptic and some not-too-cryptic advice on what to do and what’s possible, and more importantly he can tell you what any item you have can be crafted into. This is particularly ingenious because some early game stuff can be made into some insane endgame stuff that will make no sense whatsoever to you if you’re new, and will just fuel that curiosity.
After you’ve chatted up your only friend on the planet, your first order of business should be to gather supplies and build a shelter for the coming night. You’ll want to chop down as many trees as possible to gather wood, which can be used to make the essential crafting table. You’ll also want to kill any Slimes you see as their gels are combined with wood to make torches – and not too much later on are used in making health potions. Which trust me, you want torches and potions. It gets really dark at night, and even darker underground. Cobblestone is also an early priority so you can craft yourself a furnace to smelt ores down the line, and it can also be made into one of the most eye-pleasing building materials in the game. It’s also an important ingredient in crafting arrows.
Once you’ve made a crafting table, you’ll want a hammer to manipulate blocks (on PC,) break walls, and break chests, Life Crystals, and other miscellaneous items (on consoles.) You’ll need a bow and arrows to help keep the enemies at bay until you can get yourself a better melee weapon. Wooden armor is also an option if you’re feeling particularly squishy, but it’s not completely necessary.
When you’re stocked up, it’s time to build your first shelter. Since the NPCs move into your buildings in Terraria, it’s good to know the basics for getting them where you want them. There’s a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo with this you can dive into if you want to, but common sense will get you far enough. To get them to move in you need a big enough room (around 8×8,) a full wall placed by the player (meaning no dirt walls that are already there,) a chair (or other “comfort” item,) a table (or other flat surface,) and an entrance (probably a door.) You can always check if housing is suitable by using the housing icon on your inventory screen. Once your Guide has moved in, you can start building housing for other NPCs to move in – once you meet their requirements. Usually your first move in will be the Nurse after using a Life Crystal you find below ground or the Merchant when you accumulate more than 50 silver.
That’s the basics. Once dawn comes, you’ll want to head out and start searching for ore to upgrade your stuff. The early material progression is Copper/Tin – Iron/Lead – Silver/Tungsten – Gold/Platinum. Note that the second ore listed for each of those is an alternative (so your world has Copper or Tin, not both,) and only on the PC for now.
If you’re looking for an in-depth guide to Terraria, there are plenty of other folks like me who love this game and have laid out all the information possible out there, but I again urge you to use restraint for as long as possible. As for me, there’s this little game called Starbound that’s Terraria times 100, with one final character wipe coming before I feel comfortable spilling every bean from that can. Interestingly enough, probably thanks to my experience with Terraria, I don’t have any hang-ups about talking extensively about Starbound.
All I have for that game is obsession.
Tags: An Obsessive's Guide, Terraria
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