I’m about to start playing Terraria, but I need some advice

M

majorminer

Terrarian
I’ve had it in mind to start playing Terraria since a long time ago, but I always put it off.

I don’t have any experience with games of this type as I usually play adventure games and puzzles. However, having seen a few Terraria gameplay videos I want to try playing it. I intend to try it on an iPad although I could use a laptop instead if that would be a better choice.

One important thing to note about me is that based on my (age and) experience I’m not good at playing platform and/or fighting games. I get flustered with the buttons and controls during the action stages! I hope that this is not a serious drawback with Terraria.

I’ve spent some time reading about Terraria on the wiki and I have a general idea about how to play the game. The information provided is very detailed but probably overwhelming. There are Guides for beginners and they are useful of course, but how does one actually start playing without becoming quickly frustrated, for example by being easily killed or not making good use of the large number of resources available to the player inside the game?

To summarize I would appreciate your comments and suggestions to the following.
  • How long did it take you to become familiar enough with the game in order to play it efficiently?
  • What general advice would you give to an absolute beginner?
  • Would it be a good decision to start playing it on an iPad (which for practical reasons would be the preferred option for me) instead of on a Linux laptop?
 
The biggest mistake Terraria makes is that it is not very beginner friendly, you're already taking the time to discover how to get good which is a great start!
For which platform to play on, it really does not matter. Since playing on an iPad is more practical for you just stick with it.

The harshest point of the game is the very beginning, which deters so many first time players due to how slow it goes along (it only gets better from there!). The key is to get a weapon, a good weapon which can easily stop zombies letting you freely travel around at night or in more dangerous biomes. If you can traverse the world easily it means you can get even more gear and grow even more powerful!
Following what I said about discovering how to get good I will throw in some recommendations:
Musket - A gun which you can only get if your world has the purple-grassed corruption biome in it. You will need some tools to find it though, in the depths of the corrupt caves you will find glowing purple shadow orbs, bring 5-10 bombs so you can break through the dense purple rock and shatter the orb using another bomb or a hammer. The first one you break will always drop the musket, a gun which can kill enemies very easily if you stay stocked up on bullets for the thing.
It can be hard to aim at faster moving, flying enemies but I believe the iPad version has an 'aim assist' feature

Enchanted Boomerang - This one might need some luck to get, but you can get it very fast. You can sometimes find wooden boomerangs in chests on the surface, under the grassy overhangs of land or inside hills. Once you do, find a fallen star at night time and combine it with your wooden boomerang to make an enchanted boomerang which deals more damage. This weapon also quickly kills zombies making night time a lot safer.

These are really not the only good weapons at the start of the game, but the best judge of if a weapon is good or not is "can I walk around at night safely?"
The way I got good at Terraria was through watching a playthrough on Youtube, I started by replicating their playstyles and weapon choices until I understood what made them fundamentally good. after that I started branching out and doing things my own way while keeping in mind those fundamentals and it all worked out! Repeating what someone else does isn't everyone's cup of tea but I will say it anyway.

And finally I will also just list off some quick things...
- Play Classic Mode, there is seriously no shame in playing classic mode. Expert mode and above really expect you to know what you are doing, and we all start from somewhere :)
- Play on a small or medium world, walking all the way back to where you were when you died is not fun. When you have the gear for it, make a bed and set your spawn to save the travel time!
- Be adventurous! You do not lose any items on death, only your money. The only way to get stronger is to take risks, go to places you have not been before and push yourself, it's the fastest way to get stronger.
- It's not all about skillful dodging, combat challenges in the game are '50% preparation and 50% actual battle', if you gear yourself up and are prepared for anything, you don't need to become Neo from The Matrix.
- Place a campfire at your house, it makes you regenerate health for free 1 per second.
- Do not use your bars on a sword. If you get enough silver, tungsten, gold or platinum to make something, create a pickaxe to mine faster, a bow to shoot down enemies from far away or save up to create some protective clothes.
- Class setups <- Guide:Class setups is your friend, if you are in doubt about if your things are good enough to move on, check the list!
- Make houses so town NPCs can move in, townspeople such as the merchant, nurse, arms dealer and demolitionist will make your rise to power so much smoother, a house needs to be a big enough box with background walls, a torch, a table and a chair as well as an exit, the housing query feature can help troubleshoot your house if it is not working.
- If you are unsure about something, look it up! If you are still lost you can ask for some help over at the Mobile Gameplay Help forum page.

That's enough of my rambling I think, good luck with the game. :D
 
CannedPotato said:
The biggest mistake Terraria makes is that it is not very beginner friendly, you're already taking the time to discover how to get good which is a great start!
For which platform to play on, it really does not matter. Since playing on an iPad is more practical for you just stick with it.

The harshest point of the game is the very beginning, which deters so many first time players due to how slow it goes along (it only gets better from there!). The key is to get a weapon, a good weapon which can easily stop zombies letting you freely travel around at night or in more dangerous biomes. If you can traverse the world easily it means you can get even more gear and grow even more powerful!
Following what I said about discovering how to get good I will throw in some recommendations:
Musket - A gun which you can only get if your world has the purple-grassed corruption biome in it. You will need some tools to find it though, in the depths of the corrupt caves you will find glowing purple shadow orbs, bring 5-10 bombs so you can break through the dense purple rock and shatter the orb using another bomb or a hammer. The first one you break will always drop the musket, a gun which can kill enemies very easily if you stay stocked up on bullets for the thing.
It can be hard to aim at faster moving, flying enemies but I believe the iPad version has an 'aim assist' feature

Enchanted Boomerang - This one might need some luck to get, but you can get it very fast. You can sometimes find wooden boomerangs in chests on the surface, under the grassy overhangs of land or inside hills. Once you do, find a fallen star at night time and combine it with your wooden boomerang to make an enchanted boomerang which deals more damage. This weapon also quickly kills zombies making night time a lot safer.

These are really not the only good weapons at the start of the game, but the best judge of if a weapon is good or not is "can I walk around at night safely?"
The way I got good at Terraria was through watching a playthrough on Youtube, I started by replicating their playstyles and weapon choices until I understood what made them fundamentally good. after that I started branching out and doing things my own way while keeping in mind those fundamentals and it all worked out! Repeating what someone else does isn't everyone's cup of tea but I will say it anyway.

And finally I will also just list off some quick things...
- Play Classic Mode, there is seriously no shame in playing classic mode. Expert mode and above really expect you to know what you are doing, and we all start from somewhere :)
- Play on a small or medium world, walking all the way back to where you were when you died is not fun. When you have the gear for it, make a bed and set your spawn to save the travel time!
- Be adventurous! You do not lose any items on death, only your money. The only way to get stronger is to take risks, go to places you have not been before and push yourself, it's the fastest way to get stronger.
- It's not all about skillful dodging, combat challenges in the game are '50% preparation and 50% actual battle', if you gear yourself up and are prepared for anything, you don't need to become Neo from The Matrix.
- Place a campfire at your house, it makes you regenerate health for free 1 per second.
- Do not use your bars on a sword. If you get enough silver, tungsten, gold or platinum to make something, create a pickaxe to mine faster, a bow to shoot down enemies from far away or save up to create some protective clothes.
- Class setups <- Guide:Class setups is your friend, if you are in doubt about if your things are good enough to move on, check the list!
- Make houses so town NPCs can move in, townspeople such as the merchant, nurse, arms dealer and demolitionist will make your rise to power so much smoother, a house needs to be a big enough box with background walls, a torch, a table and a chair as well as an exit, the housing query feature can help troubleshoot your house if it is not working.
- If you are unsure about something, look it up! If you are still lost you can ask for some help over at the Mobile Gameplay Help forum page.

That's enough of my rambling I think, good luck with the game. :D
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Thank you very much for your detailed and comprehensive reply. It’s encouraging me to go ahead and start playing the game. In parallel to that I’ll watch more gameplay videos and also read more from the wiki and other resources.

Your advice was very practical and I believe it has pointed me in the right direction.
 
No problem! I just really like talking about this game.
One more thing I forgot to mention, if you look up the wiki it is likely to give you the Fandom wiki first, for many many reasons the people in charge of maintaining the wiki have migrated to another site 'terraria.wiki.gg'. If you are not already, I recommend getting your information from the new one, and it lets Google or whatever search engine you use know that it is the one we want to keep around.
 
But for the first time for playing this game I recommend to playing with journey mode, because in journey mode you can duplicate your item what you get, but remember this just for the first time playing this game<3
 
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