Terraria Progression guide

The recording notes

Disclaimer

To be used in all videos!

Progression guides are nice, it helps you proceed in the game while not having to scout
wikis or searching endlessly on your own if youre 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. Dont see
this as a complete guide to everything either. Theres plenty of guides on individual
items on both Youtube and the Official Forums. Seeing as I wont be able to make a
better quality video about all these things, Ill keep it solely to the progression path.
Keep this in mind and play the game however you feel like.

Pre-Hardmode

- (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 NPCs. You can go as far with this as
youd like, but 4 housings for NPCs 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 youre 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 youre satisfied. Theres about 18 different NPCs in the
game, so thats the total amount of housings youll 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 NPCs in your house, the first boss, the Eye of Cthulhu, has a 1 in 3
chance of spawning every night. If you dont have those requirements, go out
and bump yourself up to that level, and be prepared to go to your arena as soon
as theres 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. Theres a
good chance its difficult to find one though, as the mobs in both areas arent
exactly pushovers.

- (EoC fight) Once youve done either of these methods, its 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 its 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 cant 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 youre 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 youll receive is from the little orbs that
fly around him and the brain himself. Break the third heart once youre ready,
head to your arena and enjoy the fight.

- (bossaftermath) 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.

- (accessoryfarm) After you rightfully obtained the new set of armor and tools,
making you a force to be reckoned with, its time to head into either the dungeon
or the underground jungle and hunt for more accessories. The underground
jungle doesnt 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.
Theres 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 youre 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, its 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. Theres 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 youd like to, but only the Molten Pickaxe is absolutely
required. (show hellstone mining for a bit to show a relatively safe way)

- (WoFprep) Once you collected all the goodness you wanted from Hellstone, its
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 youre 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

- (startingoff) 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. Dont be afraid of this, you
get used to it fairly quickly. Theres 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.

- (pwnhammer) Remember that big hammer that the Wall of Flesh dropped after you
murdered him? Good, were 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. Youll 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 youll destroy will
generate far more ore than altars you destroy afterwards. Its 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 were about to do. Also, any ranged weapon youre comfortable with.
If you didnt 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 dont make a casing for said
arena this time around. Thisll be really annoying in the beginning and there is a
possibility youll fall. Try and get back to the original rope if this happens so you wont
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 dont forget anything)

- (miningv2)

General Tips

- The guide is all but useless. If you need help with certain items and dont know how
to make it, stick random items in the crafting guide the guide provides. Got a new
type of item but you dont know what you can craft with it? The guide will be your
guide.
- Dont 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. Theres been too many times Ive
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.
- Just 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 dont have enough crystals from your dungeon,
dont 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.