I downloaded the game during Steam’s summer sale, not sure if I’d enjoy it at all. Holy crap, this game is the biggest timesink of a game I’ve played in years! The graphics are very simple (although they’re too complicated to run on my old laptop; I think the lighting effects and some of the physics might be too much for it), and the controls are likewise super-simple. But the gameplay is amazingly addictive.
If you’ve not played it, it’s a side-scroller sandbox game: there’s a day and night cycle, with easy monsters during daytime and slightly tougher monsters at night. You start with a pickax, an axe, and a sword, and nearly everything in the environment is both destructible and collectible; from these beginnings you can dig mines, build structures, recruit NPCs, learn magic, etc. There’s no storyline, but the world is huge, and the thrill of finding a new little treasure (randomly placed) scratches my gaming itch perfectly.
Are other Dopers playing it? Has anyone tried out its multiplayer elements?
I’ve played it for … umm, 67 hours, mostly single-player - two different characters from zero to post-Dungeon in two different worlds. Did try the multiplayer thing with a RL friend for a bit and it was amusing enough.
The official trailers and such don’t really do the game justice IMO, it’s hard to see from somebody else’s playing how the actual constant puzzling of how to proceed forward in a cave feels and plays like. The controls and such all just feel very right, and playing with the liquid physics and construction/de-construction of the enviroment to get forward (or downward or upward) has a very satisfying, almost tactile feel to it. It also makes it very easy to just build stuff out of sheer joy of building stuff, like Legos or a sandbox. Another constant source of enjoyment is simple exploring - the game’s random world generator creates all sorts of interesting places, slightly restricted by the game’s lack of third dimension of course.
There’s a big patch coming soon (1.0.6) that seems to alter a lot of the basic gameplay stuff. Not sure if that’s enough to get me come back, but eventually they have added enough new stuff that I’ll do a third playthrough I’m sure.
All in all, I’d recommend it even for people who usually don’t really care for such action-packed real-time combat, since that’s not really the main point of it. Fun game, very much worth 10 bucks.
I’ve hit a bit of a wall, myself. I can’t get anyone to move into the lovely house I built (to specifications listed on the wiki), and though I’m wearing all gold armor, using an enchanted boomerang, and slowly upgrading the rest of my weapons to gold, I’ve gotten my ass handed to me pretty fast any time I tried to go into the more challenging environments (blighted land or deep underworld-type place). I did find a bunch of crystal hearts recently; maybe I should try again and see if all the extra hit points work to my advantage.
The other turn-off for me in the game is how long it takes to walk back down/across to the endpoint of unexplored areas.
That said, it’s well worth the ten bucks for the full-price game.
It’s a fun game, if a bit TOO easy once you get past the wall Tom Scud is describing.
Tom, I got past it by deliberately building an arena just above the corruption (walled to keep out little Eaters, but with multiple levels for dodging) and then summoning Eater of Worlds repeatedly to get full Shadow armor and demonite tools/sword. Once you have that, you can start raiding the underground jungle to get a Blade of Grass and Thorn Chakram. As for getting NPCs to move in, I overbuilt my rooms and they seem to like it–can you put up a screenshot of your house for us? Also, regarding exploration–I take a bed and enough materials to build a rudimentary house with me and use it as a mobile spawn point.
I’ve taken a single character through everything in one world, I’m gearing up to play a second time in a larger world to see if that helps.
I found myself vaguely disappointed in how easy the underground is to navigate once you get a grappling hook and even one jumping boost (balloon, cloud, or boots). The lucky horseshoe is just gravy on top of that.
I went from Gold armor/sword to the underground jungle for the Blade of Grass. Hornets were easy enough if I played smart with the terrain. From there, I did Eater of Worlds and Eye of Cthulu for shadow armor and so forth.
I beat dungeon boss guy the other night and am feeling about “done” until the update. Got more than my $2.50 worth out of it though since I got it during the summer sale with the pricing error.
It wouldn’t be a proper Terraria thread without screen shots. While my home isn’t the most inspiring you’ll find, I’m fond of it.
In my very first game, I was having a devil of a time finding any silver so, when I started a new world and immediately stumbled across a clump of silver sticking out of a hilltop, I took it as an omen and built there. The silver was turned into the foundation for the original building with the NPC homes being built outwards (and upwards) over time.
To help Tom Scud out, here’s a tiny home I built as a waypoint when I was exploring. I was amused that the Dryad immediately moved in with me the second I was finished so you know it’s to NPC spec. The chandelier obviously isn’t required (nor is the chest; just table, chair, door and light source)
Is there an onguide guide for what the hell you’re supposed to do, maybe just to get started?
I can move the dude around and pick stuff up by mining and kill green slimes and watch the bunnies go by. But how do I MAKE stuff? What do I do about the “guide” who’s standing there?
The guide gives you tips (I honestly don’t remember if you left-click or right-click when you’re near enough he shows a speech bubble). More importantly, he has a box when you talk to him that you can drag items to and he’ll tell you what you can turn them into if you click on “crafting” once you talk to him.
I suggest chopping down a few trees, replanting the acorns (make sure to leave a clear level dirt square on either side of the sapling), and building a workbench (hit escape, and below your inventory should be a crafting interface).
Place the workbench (and maybe a few torches, if you have gel and wood to make them) and you’re off to the races. For an NPC to move into a house, it needs to have interior dimensions of 8x5 (IIRC) or better and a table, chair, and light source. You also need to use the crafting table to build “walls” which are built “behind” the playing surface, as well as doors, so the house is enclosed.
The guide will also give you hints, if you talk to him enough, about how to get other NPCs to move in with you.
IMHO the next thing you should do is look for a cave entrance and start looking to get some metal ores and stone (the latter to build a furnace, so you can smelt metals).
Having typed all that, there’s also a starter guide on here: Terraria Wiki I wouldn’t browse too much if you want to explore for yourself and find out about the other biomes without spoilers, though.
I’d read this guide. You can read up to Section 3 without any real spoilers.
The biggest issue I had when starting was not realizing how to place items versus “throwing/discarding” them. So I kept throwing my workbench and getting mad that I couldn’t get near it to craft since I’d automatically pick it back up.
-Use wood or stone to build your first house. Dirt doesn’t work (at least for the background walls). I wasted a lot of time building adobe before I figured that out.
-Before you enter the game world, go to “Settings” on the intro menu and set auto-pause to “On.” I have no idea why this is turned off by default. If you turn it on, the game pauses while you’re talking to NPCs or crafting.
-“Escape” enters the crafting/inventory screen.
-To use an item OR A MATERIAL, put it in one of the 10 quick-slots across the top. Do this even with a table you want to set down, for example. Then leave the crafting/inventory screen, select the quickslot, and left-click.
-Don’t worry too much about placing something incorrectly: you can craft a hammer that can knock things free.
-Terraform using stuff you’ve dug up!
Someday I should attempt to turn my entire surface world into a lush sylvan forest/grassland and eliminate all those Corruptions, jungles and deserts. Lots of dirt, grass seeds, daybloom seeds and acorns.
I’ll never spend the time doing it but I like the idea in theory.
This is excellent late-game stuff to do–very cool! It’s also possible (and advisable) to do some terraforming right away. All that dirt you dig up can be put in a quick slot and used to level out some ground to put houses on. You can stack dirt under yourself while you jump to create a ladder. You can dig tunnels at the bottom of pools to drain them, or even create airlocks or air bubbles at the bottom of water to enable yourself to breathe. Dirt and stone placed in water destroys the water in those spaces; you can destroy an entire pool this way, if you need to. Or simply go up high in the air and make yourself a superhighway above the land, with ladders going down at significant points, to ease travel.
This is great way to travel (and to collect stars at night), and something that makes bypassing Corruption a lot less painful, but it does mean that any meteorites that fall may hit the skybridge and produce a minimal amount of meteorite as a result. If you don’t really want any meteorite it’s not a problem and currently it’s not that great material, but it might be useful after a patch or two. And of course if you like guns it makes nifty ammo.
Also remember you need at LEAST enough meteorite to make a hamaxe or you can’t do hellstone-tier items.
Do not be stupid like me and have to repeatedly force-spawn meteors after taking your shiny new Meteor Armor and Space Gun down to the underworld and trying to pull up a hellforge with the demonite hammer.
Upon reflection, if you were trying to smash a hellforge with a hammer or hamaxe, you were doing it wrong. You want to break out the floor under them with a pickaxe (Demonite works fine) and the forge will be “liftable”.
