Hi, I'm still very new to Terraria but I love it so much!
So to my question, I have gold armor and a gold pickaxe, but what would be the next logical step to take? I want to upgrade my pickaxe so I can mine faster. There are so many different items, does it ever become overwhelming to know about everything in the game?
Thanks for any help, I have been reading the wiki a lot and its been a lot of fun learning about the many possibilities of things to do.
The route one usually takes looks something like this:
Starting Gold/Platinum Pickaxe, you could either...
1). Get a Reaver Shark (fish in the ocean, spend a night getting a bunch of fireflies!) -or- get a pickaxe off of the 2nd boss's drops (Eater of Worlds or Brain of Cthulhu).
2). If you didn't get a Reaver Shark, you could now go down to the Underworld and get a Molten Pickaxe. Even if you did get a Reaver Shark, the MP might be useful as it lights up nearby blocks while you tunnel (or, you could equip a magma stone to cause the same effect).
3). Once in Hardmode, you would either fish up crates or use the Pwnhammer to break altars to bless your world with ores.
4). You'd start by using your Reaver Shark or Molten Pickaxe to mine Cobalt or Palladium (whichever your world received).
5). Then you need Mythril or Orichalcum Ore to make an Anvil of this material. Once the anvil is made, make the pickaxe.
6). I usually skip Adamantite/Titanium Pickaxes unless I'm fishing (then I make a Titanium Pickaxe and Adamantite Armor)
7). You need 30 Adamantite/Titanium Ore + Hellforge to make a new furnace
8). Kill all 3 mech bosses to get a Drax or Pickaxe Axe (highly recommend the latter; it can hold enemies off while you swing and you can put +Speed on the pickaxe to make it mine faster).
9). The Picksaw is the next natural progression, but sometimes Golem doesn't want to drop it so you might have to skip it.
10). The Shroomite Claw is faster than the Picksaw, but has a lot less Range.
11). I wouldn't bother with the Spectral Pickaxe; Luminite is better.
12). Laser Drill is not all that great, though it does have extreme range.
13). The last pickaxe you'd get is one made of Luminite (I chose Solar myself). This pickaxe can mine Lihzarhd Bricks and has +4 Range (better than Spectral).
The Luminite Pickaxes might have 5% less than the Laser Drill, but they mine much faster. The only reason to use a Laser Drill is for the range, but then that usually is not necessary anyways, +4 and the Gizmo Pack gives you, what, a 13 block range already? lol.
There are also Luminite Hamaxes which are by far the best tool for the Hammer/Axe group too. They, too, have +4 Range and can pretty much annihilate large sections of background wall very quickly.
So that pretty much covers the whole Pickaxe Progression.
As for Hammer/Axe, well....
I usually start with the Molten Hamaxe, and use that all the way up until the Pickaxe Axe, swapping it out for the Pwnhammer. If you actually get The Axe to drop from Plantera (I've never seen one yet), you could use that instead. Otherwise, it's pretty much the Pwnhammer clear up to Luminite.
One could use the Meteorite Hamaxe before the Molten, but I usually just skip Meteorite altogether; I'm normally digging my Hellevator before fighting the 2nd boss anyways (especially if I fished a Reaver Shark).