There are over 30 bosses, ten biomes, and 20 different types of ore in Terraria. It's going to be hard trying to figure out where to start first if you've only now gotten your hands on the second most famous pixel-block crafting game to date.
You can wander aimlessly and accidentally summon the Eye Of Cthulhu and find some expert armor, but if you're someone who likes order or finds themselves lost at the beginning of the game, there are some key things you should be doing. There's a specific route you need to take in order to progress your world into hard mode and have new bosses and ore spawn.
10 Build An Ugly House At Spawn
The first thing you should always do, maybe in any survival game, is build an ugly house where you are. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's temporary and to keep you and your Guide safe. Or maybe just you.
By building a little shack on top of your world's natural spawn area, whenever you die, you'll spawn inside a safe shelter. This is a good temporary solution until you've crafted yourself a bed, which allows you to manually set a spawn point where ever you place the bed, so long as you sleep on it first.
9 Take Every Chest You See
When you go out exploring you'll run into pots and chests full of loot. They will have shurikens, torches, accessories, and more. The pots immediately break and disappear when you smash them, but the chests will stay in their place forever. Unless you pick it up. Take any chest you find, along with everything inside it. Bring it back to your little shack.
You'll need storage for your items and it's cheaper and faster to take the chests you find instead of attempting to craft one. Later in the game, the basic loot in these chests won't matter, but right now, they do. They will contain materials you can use for crafting and accessories to help you survive and traverse through caves.
8 Mine Every Resource
Again, later in Terraria, the most basic resources will not be a problem. But during your first hour, you need everything you can get your hands on. There's no point wondering which block is more important because you'll need them all to craft all your basic necessities. Stone can be used at a furnace to craft grey bricks, create furniture, and transform other blocks into bricks.
Dirt blocks are the most useful for creating bridges and safety nets when traveling anywhere dangerous. If you come across a hole, use your 405 pieces of dirt to build a bridge instead of using other, more useful blocks or trying to jump the gap.
Other basic types of ore are needed to craft not armor but things like empty buckets and chains. These become very important the further you get into the game. Buckets can be used to carry water and pour out lava or to create your own pond. Chains are combined with other things to create chandeliers and grappling hooks.
7 Aim For Gold Everything
What you want to aim for when you start playing is becoming strong enough to take on all the first bosses so that your world can go into hardmode. Being strong enough means getting the strongest beginning-game tools and armor, one of these being a gold pickaxe. Pickaxes have different percentages of pickaxe power. This translates to the types of blocks it's capable of breaking. The higher the percentage of pickaxe power, the more they are able to break stronger and stronger blocks. Strong blocks include hellstone, chlorophyte, and dungeon walls.
You will want the highest pickaxe power you can get at the beginning, so that you can progress and mine things you otherwise couldn't. This would be the gold or platinum pickaxe. You can also go for gold armor, which may be hard to achieve since gold ore is hard to find. There are other armor sets you can go for that will be just as good.
TIP: Different types of ore and biomes will spawn in your world by RNG, so your world may get platinum instead of gold. Both are good here.
6 Always Bring A Campfire
Setting down a campfire and making sure it's lit will allow it to passively heal you, so long as you're within its radius. When you're in the Terraria caves mining your heart out, you're bound to get injured and have a near-death experience.
Health potions or health foods like mushrooms cannot be spammed for use. After using one single dose, you have to wait around 30 seconds to be able to drink or eat more. This sucks if what you consumed barely healed you at all. If you're in danger and far from home, block yourself off with dirt and place a campfire with you. Drink a potion and then wait for the campfire to heal you the rest of the way before you continue on.
5 Kill The King Slime
The easiest boss in Terraria is the King Slime. He's an optional boss that spawns during a random event that can happen before hardmode is enabled (hardmode is enabled once you defeat the last boss, Wall of Flesh). This event is when slimes start falling from the sky. After killing a certain amount of the slime invasion, the King Slime will spawn. He won't be super-duper easy since you just started the game, but make it a goal to warm up by defeating this guy. He also drops some pretty cool things, like a slime mount which allows you to leap into the air.
4 Put Chairs And Tables Everywhere
The more you progress in Terraria, the more you'll meet NPC's in caves or have the correct requirements for an NPC to spawn. The trick is that they won't spawn unless you have proper housing for them. Proper housing just means any square with walls, a door, a light source, chair, and table.
You can start by making a hotel-like situation. Many NPC's will start hating living with multiple people and they have a happiness meter, but for now, you can just make sure they all spawn and are at your base. They all sell unique items for cosmetic purposes, decorating, or surviving. You can worry about their happiness later. By placing a bunch of rooms with wooden tables and chairs everywhere, NPC's will start spawning like crazy.
3 Explore Every Surface-Level Biome
It's important to know where everything is. The map is empty when you first log into your Terraria world until you start exploring and the map reveals itself. You'll want to know where the dungeon is, your snow biome, your forest biome, desert biome, and corruption or crimson biome. Each biome has specific enemies and cave systems that go with their theme. If you need mahogany wood, you'll know how to get to the forest. Most importantly, the evil biome and dungeon are your priorities.
With world RNG comes the evil biomes. You'll either get the purple corruption or the pink crimson. These biomes will start spreading and may take over your world, which isn't fun for anyone. If a crimson biome is in the way of exploring more of the map, you gotta prepare. These biomes are hard and their cave walls can't be mined with basic tools.
The dungeon holds one of the later bosses you'll have to defeat, after dealing with the Eye Of Cthulhu and being prepared. You can't enter the dungeon until this boss is defeated. Dungeons are located on either the left or right end of the map on the surface.
2 Buy A Piggy Bank
Invest in the pig. Piggy banks can be purchased from the Merchant NPC, who looks like an old man with a white beard. Every time you die in Terraria, you lose your money. Not every last drop, but an important chunk. Especially if you have gold coins. Any chance you get to stash all your money in the piggy bank, do it. That way gold coins can stack up and you have the money to buy useful items your NPC's will sell. NPC's shop inventory will increase the more bosses you kill and the farther you progress in the game, so you'll want your money to stay high.
TIP: If another player uses your piggy bank, they will only see their money, not yours. Anyone can use it as their own personal storage without interfering with other people's stash.
1 Explore The Jungle Caves
The jungle has the best stuff for game progression. Jungles spawn more gold ore, which you'll want for your pickaxe and armor since it's the highest you can achieve at the moment. You can also farm stingers and jungle spores to craft jungle armor and jungle weapons. These weapons and armor are very strong and worthwhile for your beginning phase in Terraria.
Once you get your world into hardmode by defeating all the bosses, the jungle still has even more for you to farm and craft with. The jungle is a hard place, though. There will be enemies everywhere at all times, with steep drops and enemy plants that go through walls. The struggle is worth it because it will make you stronger and you'll come out with some good items.