A long time ago, back in the late days of 1.1.2 (Many months before 1.2 released). I used TConfig to play with Mods. The main reason being it felt like the game needed a little more in 1.1.2. I used a ton of Mods at the time to give Extra Health/Accessories, and add a ton of new content. The main ones I used being a combination of Omnir's Nostalgia Pack, DivermanSam's Thorium, as well as many of Shockah's small quality enhancement mods. That's what kept me very excited about Terraria back in the 1.1 days. It easily extended my playtime from 100 to 250 hours I believe.
With the later official vanilla releases of 1.2 and then 1.3. It really felt that Terraria had become a "complete game" through these updates and because I am satisfied with the amount of content 1.2 and 1.3 brought, I no longer felt the need to use mods at all, and have only played Vanilla since the release of 1.3.