Progression guides are nice, it helps you proceed in the game while not having to scout wiki’s or searching endlessly on your own if you’re stuck. Although, as a lot of other sandbox games out there, Terraria is ridiculously open ended and the player can do whatever they want. This makes a lot of the progression non-linear. All this guide is explaining is the most common, most logical and/or most easy path to take. Don’t see this as a complete guide to everything either. There’s plenty of guides on individual items on both Youtube and the Official Forums. Seeing as I won’t be able to make a better quality video about all these things, I’ll keep it solely to the progression path. Keep this in mind and play the game however you feel like.
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Pre-Hard Mode
Wood
Gather wood
Slimes
Kill slimes at day while collecting wood to get your first few gel. These are crucial to make torches to make both your house and mining expeditions a lot easier to navigate, not to mention quite a bit safer.
House
Build a house, include 4 rooms for NPC’s. You can go as far with this as you’d like, but 4 housings for NPC’s should be good enough for the time being.
Ores & gems
Dig into the earth, aiming for ores like Copper (Tin), Iron (Lead), Silver (Tungsten), Gold (Platinum) or any of the gems (Diamond, Amber, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, Topaz, Amethyst).
NOTE: While mining, keep a look out for heart crystals. These increase max life by 20 each, and you want to get 400 life (max life before hardmode) as soon as possible.
Furnace
Ores can be smelted using the furnace (20 stone block, 4 wood, 3 torch) into bars to make tools and armor with them.
Armor & Tools
Upgrade to higher tiers of armor and tools using these, and as soon as you get 15 of a single gem, make a grappling hook with them. Aim for full golden armor and full golden tools, but if you’re comfortable with the game already, lower tiers of armor and only a golden pickaxe (or even skipping mining altogether) will do.
Arena
Build yourself an arena using wooden platforms and get ready to buy a bunch of shurikens (~250 will do) from the merchant (this is where those 4 NPC houses come in). Keep these on you at all times just in case.
Npc houses
If your NPC housings are all occupied already, build more NPC housings. 4 more will do for now, but if you want to be more future proof, build a bunch of them until you’re satisfied. There’s about 18 different NPC’s in the game, so that’s the total amount of housings you’ll be aiming for in the end.
EoC prep
Once you did that, check your inventory and see what your total defense and total health is at. If you have atleast 200 health, 10 defense and have 3 NPC’s in your house, the first boss, the Eye of Cthulhu, has a 1 in 3 chance of spawning every night. If you don’t have those requirements, go out and bump yourself up to that level, and be prepared to go to your arena as soon as there’s a notice popping up at the beginning of the night.
Lenses
An alternative to this is hunting demon eyes until you have gathered 6 lenses. You can make the Suspicious looking Eye with these 6 lenses at a demon altar, which are normally found in the corruption or crimson. There’s a good chance it’s difficult to find one though, as the mobs in both areas aren’t exactly pushovers.
EoC fight
Once you’ve done either of these methods, it’s time to fight the eye of chtulhu. Use your wooden platforms to dodge attacks and keep witling down his HP with your shurikens. After a fairly long fight, claim your trophy in the form of Demonite Ore or Crimson Ore.
Demonite
Go ahead and smelt that demonite/crimson ore into bars and make the available tools for yourself. The tools that you can make with just the ore are only limited to the sword, axe and bow. You can now either kill the Eye of Cthulhu some more times to get all the tools available using the Suspicious looking Eyes, or you can call it a day for now.
Dryad
The dryad should be moving into your home now if you have a suitable house. This is what we fought the eye for. She sells Purification powder. Go ahead and buy around a 100 of it. Now it’s time to move over to the corruption/crimson.
Arena2
Build an arena just above ground level if you have Corruption, or an arena inside the ‘cave’ if you have Crimson.
Orbs
Depending on wether your world has Crimson or Corruption in it, you are going to hunt either Beating Hearts or Shadow Orbs. Sometimes they are behind walls made of stones you can’t break. This is where you use your purification powder. The unmineable blocks will turn into stone and you can get to your shadow orb/beating heart. Use your hammer to destroy them and get the goodies from it. Just keep in mind that breaking the third will spawn the boss corresponding to the biome. So only break 2 for now until you think you’re fully prepared.
EoW
For corruption, buy grenades from the demolition merchant if available, otherwise buy shurikens once again. Any piercing weapon will do, like the Ball ‘O Hurt or the Vilethorn if you got it from your shadow orbs. Although grenades really are the best, they devastate the boss like nothing else. Go ahead and break the third orb. Go to your arena and enjoy the fight.
BoC
A lot of items are good for this boss. Either a bow with jester/unholy/flaming arrows will do, or even a gun which you have a chance of getting from the beating hearts. Just make sure you have ammo for any of them. Point is, ranged works the best because the main damage you’ll receive is from the little orbs that fly around him and the brain himself. Break the third heart once you’re ready, head to your arena and enjoy the fight.
Boss after math
Depending on what biome you got, go ahead and make your Nightmare pickaxe or Deathbringer pickaxe now. After that, continue smashing orbs or hearts, or use the corresponding summoning items (Suspicious looking Worm or Bloody Spine) to fight the boss a few more times until you get atleast full Crimson or Shadow armor.
An accessory farm
After you rightfully obtained the new set of armor and tools, making you a force to be reckoned with, it’s time to head into either the dungeon or the underground jungle and hunt for more accessories. The underground jungle doesn’t need any preparing, your new set will carry you. The goal here is to loot golden chests, heart crystals and possible farm the Stingers (drop from hornets) and Jungle Spores (light emitting plants) to get the Blade of Grass. There’s a bunch of accessories that can be found in the golden chests in the underground jungle, but these are the ones I would try and get before continueing: Hermes Boots (run faster), Cloud in a bottle (double jump) and the Magic Mirror (instantly takes you back to your spawnpoint). All these items can be found in any golden chest underground, but it seems like the chests are more common in the underground jungle.
The dungeon, however, needs you to take on Skeletron by talking to the Old Man in front of it at night and defeating him. Make a long arena, use your best single target weapon (guns work well) and take him down. Afterwards, go into the dungeon and kill the skeletons and slimes to gather golden keys. Normal chests within the dungeon can contain golden keys as well. With those, open golden chests and collect your loot (things like the cobalt shield are nearly essential for later, while the Muramasa, Blue Moon, Handgun and Shadow Key are just really nice to have).
If you’re hungry for more awesome accessories, consider finding floating islands or pyramids. These both have some pretty awesome items regarding mostly movement, like the Shiny red balloon or the Sandstorm in a bottle. It really is up to yo how far you want to go in farming accessories though.
Hell
After obtaining the accessories/items you wanted from both the jungle and the dungeon, it’s time to dig straight down to the underworld. Your goal is to get to the bottom layer of the world, filled with baddies and lots of lava. There’s a very important thing you need to do here. Farm Hellstone and obsidian to make Hellstone bars at a Hellforge and make yourself atleast a Molten Pickaxe. You can continue mining Hellstone for the Molten Armor and the rest of the tool/weaponset as well if you’d like to, but only the Molten Pickaxe is absolutely required. (show hellstone mining for a bit to show a relatively safe way)
WoF prep
Once you collected all the goodness you wanted from Hellstone, it’s time to make a really long platform made out of any block you want in the underworld. This can be difficult with mobs constantly harassing you, but this is essential to make life easier while fighting the boss called the Wall of Flesh, the only thing standing between you and Hardmode. After you did this, make sure you did EVERYTHING you wanted to do in the world currently, including farming all items you wanted and making your home just like you wanted it to be. All of this is going to be a lot harder after the Wall of Flesh.
WoF
Once you’re ready, head up to your demolitions expert once again and get a bunch of grenades. These are going to be your primary weapon against the Wall of Flesh. Collect a Guide Vodoo Doll from one of the flying demons and go to the far left or right from your long platform you built before. Throw the doll into lava and get ready to run to the other side while throwing grenades at the WoF. After defeat, collect your Pwnhammer and get ready to plunge into Hardmode.
Entering Hardmode
Start in go off
Hardmode overwhelms a lot of the players that have just defeated the wall of flesh. Almost every enemy is replaced by a much harder variant, and more often than not the player is used to be able to breeze through enemies, only to find out enemies actually kill the player in 1 or 2 hits all of sudden. Don’t be afraid of this, you get used to it fairly quickly. There’s a bunch of new items that you can get once you entered hardmode, and I am definitely NOT going to list all of them. What I will do though, is again, explain one of the paths that I found the most logical to follow to get those awesome items you see everyone wearing.
Pwn hammer
Remember that big hammer that the Wall of Flesh dropped after you murdered him? Good, we’re going to use it now. Head over to either the corruption or your crimson biome and search for as many Demon Altars or the crimson variant, and start destroying them with your pwnhammer. Leave the altar that is the easiest accessible though, as you might need it for creating some of the normal mode boss summon items would you ever want to do so. You’ll see messages popping up each time you destroy one of these altars. Every destroyed altar will cycle through one of the three messages, which correspond to one of the ores of each tier. Tier 1: Cobalt/Paladium. Tier 2: Mythril/Orichalcum. Tier 3: Adamantite/Titanium. The more altars you destroy, the more of each ore will generate in your world. Keep in mind though, altars have diminishing returns, meaning the first three altars you’ll destroy will generate far more ore than altars you destroy afterwards. It’s still a good idea to destroy as many as possible. The more ores = less time looking for them.
Wings
Wings are so essential for surviving, I decided to touch on them really early. There is a method to getting them pretty much straight after going into hardmode, although it might require a bit of time. Buy grenades! These are once again super powerful for what we’re about to do. Also, any ranged weapon you’re comfortable with. If you didn’t already, the minishark is a great investment and will work really well for this part. Get a good amount of rope and start making your trip up. Once you reach the height where Harpies start to spawn, start making an arena like area made of wooden platforms, several lines of them above each other, but don’t make a casing for said arena this time around. This’ll be really annoying in the beginning and there is a possibility you’ll fall. Try and get back to the original rope if this happens so you won’t fall to death.
Now, the goal is to kill as many Wyverns and Harpies as you can. The platform was built to dodge wyvern attacks as best as you can. Use your ranged weapon (again, minishark rocks) to shoot down the Harpies, while you switch to grenades to burn down Wyverns. Collect all the Souls of Flight that drop. Now, continue shooting Harpies and Wyverns until one of the Harpies will drop a Huge Harpy Feather. The dropchance is only 0,5% per harpy, so it can take a while. Alternative is to shoot for any of the other feathers, but I found this one is the easiest to get at this stage, and the wings will help tremendously.
(This is going to be a LOT more clear when I actually show this in a video, but I felt like explaining it here so I don’t forget anything)
General Tips
- The guide is all but useless. If you need help with certain items and don’t know how to make it, stick random items in the crafting guide the guide provides. Got a new type of item but you don’t know what you can craft with it? The guide will be your guide.
- Don’t be afraid to make multiple worlds for your farming needs. The more items you get for moving around, the easier it gets to make use of a new ‘farm’ world. Most of the time small worlds are most fitted for this.
- Do not underestimate the power of accesoiries. There’s been too many times I’ve seen people only focusing on tools and armor, while ignoring relatively simple to get stuff like a grappling hook or a Cloud in a Bottle. These are essential to move around better, thus making it far easier to dodge incoming attacks. Underground (golden) chests are your best friends, and definitely go out of your way to loot them once you find them.
- ust like golden chests, heart crystals and fallen stars are essential for building your character. Heart crystals raise your maximum amount of health and hugely increase your survivability. These hearts are commonly found in the underground jungle or the dungeon. If you don’t have enough crystals from your dungeon, don’t be scared to generate a new world and head over to the dungeon/underground jungle in the new world. Fallen stars can be combined to make mana crystals (and 1.2 made them cost only 5 stars instead of 10!) which raise your maximum amount of mana, crucial for any caster/mage character.
