Terraria Community Forums

You said it!

A lot of games do this, they offer the "option" to be a mage, but the first mage weapon is quite a bit into the game and it takes some serious effort to re-learn the game and its controls to accommodate the playstyle, that it ends up being a "why bother?" type thing.

IMO, Terraria could have had a system where in character gen, you could choose melee/ranged/magic, and you'd start off with either a copper sword, a wood bow + 100 arrows, or some sort of weak, low cost magic weapon.

But you don't have to stick to just magic or ranged or whatever. I always carry a sword around, just in case