My kids were in love with Minecraft. I bought them Terraria for Wii U because it’s sort of similar. After months of playing they finally got to hard mode (beating the wall of Flesh) but it was immediately way too hard for them and due to loss of data from unknown bugs… we gave up on that. But I decided to try the Nintendo Switch version. After about 6 months, we finally defeated the Moon Lord (final boss) this week.
My thoughts. It’s a very creative game. You can build your houses any way you want. Paint blocks different colors. Make your avatar look a 1000 different ways. Dye your armor different colors. Just endless customizations.
Gameplay is very fun, but hard. Many of the events are just 100s of enemies spawning endlessly. I did not like that. In other games there are a few well designed enemies that you have to learn their AI to defeat. This game is just “lets dump 100 pirates on you randomly”. And I mean randomly. Any random day could trigger these events. There is no way to trigger them or avoid them. The randomness is a bit frustrating.
Also frustrating is that there are always too many enemies on screen… all the time. You will be trying to build a sky bridge or dig for ore, and you can’t go 5 seconds without some thing annoying you. No matter how many harpies you kill.. you try to go back to building the bridge and 5 seconds later the screen is filled with damn harpies again.
Music. Decent. Sets the mood. Never annoying. I would call the regular BG music relaxing and peaceful.
Graphics. A bit underwhelming. They intentionally went with pixelated look, but some things look like too simple, and it comes across as mediocre.
Would I recommend the game? Yes if you have lots of time and like sandbox style building crafting games. Not recommended for kids under 10. It’s very hard at times. And there is teenage level humor. There is a fishing item called Master Bait. There is a magic book called the Golden Shower, that literally looks like a yellow stream of liquid. This is a game that will require lots of reading of wiki and watching YouTube tutorials to complete.
Game Tips
When the kids played on the Wii U, they had a hard time because they didn’t do any fishing, didn’t craft any potions, and didn’t build very good arenas. Boss fights are enormously easier if you do lots of preparations beforehand. You should always have regeneration potions, which you craft from mushrooms, daybloom, and bottled water. All easily obtainable at the start of the game, and can be crafted with a placed bottle (just an empty bottle placed on a table or platform). Also easy to make is ironskin potion…iron ore, daybloom, and bottled water.
Before every boss fight, take those potions, and eat some food (buy from traveling merchant) to get a well fed buff. Build an arena (big flat area with some platforms going accross) filled with campfires and heart lanterns and sunflowers and maybe a pool of honey. All for regeneration and sunflowers for speed boost. Also, have a stack of the best healing potions you can find.
Try to build the arena near the nurse. You can even build a little house next to the arena just for the nurse. She can heal you to full. But I’m getting ahead of myself…start over.
First priorities are to build the basic crafting stuff, and build some rooms to get NPCs to move in. Anvil. Workbench. Furnace. Wood and stone houses are easy to make. Then dig for hearts during the day and mana stars at night. While you are digging around get ores, make weapons, armor, etc. Tungsten and Silver is probably fine now. Then, once you have full hearts, start building a tower up to look for sky islands. You should have found a ton of rope (in chests) while looking for hearts, just build a big rope tower every 1/8th of the world and find the island with the Starfury sword. That will take you 90% through easy mode.
Go to the dungeon at night, fight the Skeletron (build an arena right there, and a house for the nurse). Now you can go in the dungeon, but it’s going to be hard. There are really good items in the chests here.
Go to the corruption / crimson and break 2 orbs (or hearts) and get the meteorite to fall. You can craft excellent easy mode armor with metorite, and a space gun.
The eye of Cthulhu will probably randomly show up some night. If not, you can find Suspicious Eyes in underground chests to spawn him (at night). Have an arena set up near your base for that.
You should fight the Eater of Worlds (easy) or Brain of Cthulhu (a bit hard) by breaking a 3rd orb / heart. The ore it drops and make a good pickax.
Immediately make a hellivator straight down the middle of the world, and dig for hellstone and obsidian and grab a hell forge. Make the best pre-hardmode weapons / armor / and pickax. If you found an Enchanted Boomerang, you can make a Flamarang with hellstone bars, which is nice. Or just a Flaming Greatsword is good.
Now sit back and build a nice house, go fishing, explore at a leisurely pace. The King Slime might show up, optional and easy boss. Goblins might attack, no problem. If you defeat them the Goblin Tinkerer will show up and you can buy Rocket Boots from him and the Tinkerer’s Workshop. When you get bored of Easy Mode, you can kill the Wall of Flesh to trigger hardmode to start. The Wall of Flesh shows up if a guide voodoo doll drops in the lava.
To defeat the Wall of Flesh, get 100+ beenades from fighting queen bees in the Jungle. You will probably have to make abeenimations to spawn queen bees and maybe do that 8-10 times. Also make a huge (half the world wide) platform all the way across the underworld. You will spend the entire fight running away from the wall of flesh.
Hardmode
The wall of flesh drops a Pwnhammer. Go to the Crimson / corruption and break as many altars as you can (12 or more). This will spawn hardmode ores. If you killed a nymph, you should have a metal detector to help you find them. Spend a lot of time getting hardmode ores. Build more houses for NPCs. Go fishing for hardmode ores in crates. You need to make full titanium armor and weapons (or adamantium). Craft a hardmode anvil. Make a Titanium Forge from a Hell Forge and Titanium Ore.
Now fight Wyverns and harpies forever until you can craft wings.
Pirates will show up some day, if you have full hearts. They are a pain in the ass. I like the Cutlass sword that the Captain drops, but it’s not useful against bosses (too short).
Now, the hardmode bosses are just insanely hard. Get a Daedalus Stormbow (Hallowed Mimics) and craft a ton of Holy Arrows 1000+. The Destroyer is the easiest. Key to that is to make a tall arena with several screens tall of platforms and have campfires and heart lanterns and sunflowers. Take a bunch of debuff potions and eat Pho before boss fights. Stay just out of range and shoot arrows. No problem.
The Twins and Skeletron Prime are very hard. Same arena and same weapon, Daedalus Stormbow, just move up and down and shoot arrows, and heal up, keep moving to avoid getting hit. Skeletron Prime… just avoid that spinning head of spikes. The Twins, kill the laser eye first. Try to avoid getting hit with the green vomit from the other eye.
Now Plantera bulbs will start to form. Make an arena in the jungle and a house for the nurse. Keep moving in circles and be aggressive. Once Plantera is killed, Cholophyte will start growing a lot more. Collect a ton of it and make armor. If you are lucky, you can get turtle shells from Giant Tortoises and make turtle armor, later converted to beetle armor (you get beetle shells dropped from the Golem). Also grab heart fruit to get max health.
Plantera should drop a temple key. Go in the Golem Temple and defeat Golem (probably the easiest hardmode boss fight). This triggers the Lunatic Cultists to spawn at the dungeon entrance. This is a much harder fight. You need a really good arena with a house for the nurse. The Golem Temple had solar tablet fragments in chests, you should trigger several solar eclipse events and get Death Sickles from Reapers which I think is excellent against the Lunatic Cultists. You can get Broken Hero Swords from Mothrons too, and craft a Terra Blade. There is a very complicated crafting tree for the Terra Blade, so you could skip this altogether.
Make sure you reforge these weapons from the Goblin Tinkerer. Solar Eclipse events are great for getting gold to do that.
Fight the Cultists and win. They drop the ancient manipulator crafting station (very important). Defeating the Cultists spawns 4 celestial pillars in the world. Go for the solar one (red). Kill 100 solar enemies and the pillar, and get the solar fragments. You can now make the weapon you need to defeat the Moon Lord, the Solar Eruption. Save up the rest of the pillar drops to make super healing potions. Also make a Stardust Dragon Staff with the stardust fragments. This summons an excellent minion that helps fight the Moon Lord.
Once the 4th pillar is defeated, the Moon Lord will spawn in 1 minute. Wait until you have everything you can imagine set up before defeating this last pillar. I had a very small arena with a pool of honey, and with 2 heart statues (I found them in the dungeon) set up with timers. Heart lantern and campfire. Took a bunch of potions – regeneration, ironskin, wrath, etc. Ate some Pho to get well fed buff. In the end, I just stood still and wacked away with the Solar Eruption (Demonic modifier) and healed (I had the Charm of Myths to reduce potion sickness time). Moon Lord is dead.
I guess I never fought Duke Fishron. I don’t really want to. You can also summon special Halloween and Christmas events (optional) and the Old Ones Army event (also optional). It’s just more “dump 100 enemies on you at once” things. Not my thing.
I probably forgot a whole bunch of things. This post was off the top of my head and not planned out.
Anyway, since I am an amateur game designer, I was planning on making a game inspired by Terraria. But, 2020 has been insane, so maybe in 2021 or 2022 I will get started on that. One thing’s for sure, my version will have less random enemies bothering you. That pirate attack is just awful. Don’t get me started.
Other great weapons… Star Cannon. Minishark and Megashark. Anything from the Celestial Pillars and Moon Lord Fight are great. Oh, I did forget the Alien Invasion (Martian Madness) event. It can happen if you defeated the Golem, and get scanned by an alien ship. That drops some great items, like a Spaceship mount (Cosmic Car Key). I don’t know. Maybe I should do the Halloween and Christmas events and see if they drop anything cool.