Beginner's "Guide" to Terraria (Created by a Beginner)

This is not really a guide - I know very little about the game. This is just a page that records what I know about the game that I believe is useful for someone who has never played before.

This was written specifically for Roy, who wanted to know more about the game and whose birthday was Wednesday 11 March.

This is a fantastic game. I will not spoil the spirit of adventure and exploration with revealing pictures. You should discover the game for yourself rather than rely on screenshots :)

Pictures are for instructive purposes only.


Game Concepts

0) You move with the WASD keys. W is up and so on. You can change this in the settings menu I believe.

You jump with the space bar.

1) Night time is always more dangerous - stay in your house or, even better, use this time to dig underground to make use of your time. More monsters appear at night on the surface.

2) Building a house normally requires:

- Table
- Chair
- Enclosed walls (not sure of minimum exact dimensions)
- Light source (a torch for example)
- Background walls made by the player (made out of wood, stone or dirt)
- Door

I have a feeling it is better to build your foundation on stone**, because I think, but am not sure, that Corrupted land can spread through dirt. What is corrupt land? You will find out yourself...

*UPDATE: For anyone who has played this game, this is clearly incorrect. Only wood is incorruptible. Stone is not!

3) To craft items, you need to use different equipment. This equipment can include workbenches, tables + chairs etc (they each make different things). Sometimes certain items can only be made if you combine two or more equipment (eg. to make a watch you need a table and a chair) (please see below)

4) To craft a torch, arguably one of the most valuable and useful objects in the game, you need wood and gel. (please see below)

Gel comes from killing slime creatures.

Wood comes from axing trees.


Item menu and commands

5) You start off with a sword, pickaxe and axe.

The sword is used to attack, and should be your strongest weapon. However you can also attack with the pickaxe and axe - sometimes it is actually better because the pickaxe, for example, sometimes swings faster.

The pickaxe is for mining.

The axe is for cutting trees.

6) To use an item or perform an action, left click your mouse. But you must select or choose the item first.

7) To choose an item, type the number in your keyboard. So if I wanted to use my torches, I would press 5 and then left-click to put the torch down.

8) If you want to put new items into your slots 1 to 0, press escape to open your inventory. Click on what you want and then click on where you want to move it to.

For example, in the above picture, I have clicked on the 10 copper bars and I am going to click on my 258 stone. This will mean that when I press 4 from now on, it will select the copper bars.

9) To give or drop an item, after selecting it with the number on your keyboard, right-click in the direction you want to drop it.

Equipping items and crafting

10) The escape menu opens up inventory, crafting menu and equipment menu all at the same time:

11) The crafting menu is on the bottom left. Click on the hammer to look at what you can craft. Click on what you want to craft and click it again on the left side as many times as you want to dictate the number of items you want.

What you can craft depends on the equipment (like table, chair or workbenches) you have. You must stand in front of the equipment for you to see the new items that can be made.

12) The bottom right side is the equipment menu. You can put items there on the right hand column. I believe the other columns change your appearance but I don't know yet - maybe the dye column changes the colour of your clothing :) [I don't know]

NPC and housing

13) NPCs visit when you achieve a certain goal. You need to keep them safe by building houses. (see above rule).

When you finish building the house, click on the house button above the equipment menu (above the word "equip"). Click on the ? and then the newly-built place to see if the housing is suitable. The game will tell you. You can assign NPCs to different houses.

Right click and then click on the house again to get back to the menu.

It is better I do not spoil the NPCs for you with pictures as it is fun if you discover it for yourself.

14) A house is not suitable, I think, if it is on corrupt or crimson land.

Mining

15) A huge part of the game involves mining. I won't spoil this for you by showing pictures - it is better you discover what it is for yourself.

16) The deeper you go, the harder the enemies get and the more valuable the items and minerals for crafting weapons or armour.

Bosses

17) There are many bosses in this game. I have yet to encounter any but hopefully we can beat them together. They can be triggered upon the fulfilment of certain conditions.

Manipulation

18) You can manipulate the environment before you fight the bosses (or enemies  in general). Many people build "arenas" specifically for fighting bosses so that the fight is to their advantage. And you can even build things to make certain places more accessible.

To build areas select stone or dirt blocks and click on where you want to lay them. They usually need to connect to something existing already.


This is all you need to know for the time being...you will discover everything else on your own.

Andre Lim