Terraria – Startup guide for first-time players

Gameplay Basics

So you’ve just opened the game for the first time and you are greeted with the menu screen. Before you even begin playing I will recommend to go to your settings and tweak them to your liking. Especially controls. 
 
So now you have done that, you can now go to make a character. I strongly recommend you play singleplayer for your first playthrough. In the character creation menu, you can play with a plethora of customization settings. Make sure your character is set to Classic. 
 
Now in the world creation menu there isn’t much i can recommend other than to create it on Classic setting. Expert and Master are much more difficult and the only reason you would ever want to play these first time is to learn extremely quickly. 
What is the Corruption or Crimson? These are the so-called “World Evils”, harder, dangerous biomes that you should keep away from for the first while. I recommend setting it to random, however the Corruption is slightly easier to deal with/weaker. 
 
Now you are in the game, and if you reviewed controls, you should know how to do things, but maybe not what they do. I will list them here. 
Grapple – Once you have equipped some kind of grapple hook, this will allow you to use it with a hotkey. 
Mount – Deploys a mount. Mounts are very powerful things that can increase your mobility at slight sacrifices to other abilities. If you want a more in-depth guide on that, please look for a mount guide. 
Quick Heal/Mana/Buff – These three hotkeys are what you can tap to heal yourself; say you are hurt and have a healing potion available, fill your mana, say you are low and have a potion available, and add buff effects from potions in your inventory. 
 
 
 

Inventory – What’s all these menus?

 
The image above gives a rough guide on inventory layouts. 
– Storage inventory – Items you pick up will be stored here. The top bar is what appears when you have your inventory closed. The bin icon at the bottom is where you put items you don’t need or want. The Coins bar is where coins you pick up from enemies will stay. These can be used to buy items from NPCs and drop when you die (if playing Classic). The Ammo bar is where the ammunition for your ranged weapons can be placed, as to not take up extra space. 
– Crafting menu – This is the menu where you can craft things using ingredients in your inventory or an open chest. Ask the Guide NPC for recipes. 
– Health – Run out of this, you die. Max amount can be increased from 100 to 500. 
– Mana – Run out of this, you can’t use mana-powered weapons anymore until it recharges. 
– Minimap – Is a smaller version of the full map (open/close with M) that shows the area around you, players, NPCs and bosses. 
– Photo mode – Take pictures of things, without opening snipping tool or going through the steam screenshot menu! Quick open with F1. 
-Housing menu – Can be used to check how many NPCs you have, if a house is valid and can be used to move NPCs around. 
– Extended equipment – Holds your Pet, Light Pet, Minecart, Mount and Grapple so you don’t have to. 
– Armour – What you put here will protect you and even give passive bonuses! 
– Standard Equipment – Gives passive bonuses, increases abilities, is generally important. 
 
 
 

Basis of playing

Right from the start, a few things will happen that you need to be aware of. 

• The Guide will appear with you, to act like an assistant should you be stuck, He tells you a lot of important information. 
• Time is a factor, and spend too long without making a house, night will come, and you will suffer.

The guide will tell you pretty much everything to continue, so i hope this could have helped you here. Good luck, and safe games! 
 
 
 
 

Credits / Possible misses in guide

I wrote this guide mainly on my own, but i would still like to thank those who eased me into this game, all that time ago. 
 
I may have missed some stuff, but please, the terraria wiki and the guide npc are brilliant for this. 
 

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