I’ve attempted to explain what is just so utterly appealing to me about this game – but I have yet to succeed. What was supposed to be a quick hour in-game to qualify for a Raptr reward (it’s their AMD promotion) ended up being most of my Saturday afternoon (and evening).
Warning: SPOILER alert – if you’re looking to progress in Terraria without knowing the ‘how to’ you may want to skip this part.
I started my play session by complaining that I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or how to progress my character. I was wearing meteorite armor and a ranged gun that allowed me to shoot without consuming mana (set bonus). Sure, I could set up my house all neat but what was the point. What I didn’t know is just how involved the world of Terraria is, and how much there is to do.
After collecting some more health we decided it was time to go to hell. Exactly where you would expect it to be too, straight down. Ogur bombed a tunnel all the way down while Xartan and I hung back and provided defense and jumped out of the way of wayward bombs. Eventually we came to lava.
Hell is mean. Rougher than the dungeon we explored, and meaner than the jungle we waded through. Creatures constantly respawn, and they’re not nice. After a few hours of exploring, we decided to prepare to defeat the boss of Hell, which would put our server into hardmode. Hardmode? Weren’t things already difficult?
Nope.
The boss of hell is the Wall of Flesh, and in order to defeat this boss we had to prepare an arena. The Wall of Flesh moves from East to West across the screen, constantly moving. What we had to do was create a long bridge with no obstacles so that we could run ahead of the wall and shoot behind us as we ran. It took about 1000 planks but we completed the bridge, and then it was time to spawn the wall.
The fight was rough but we all lived which was a first for us. He felt easier than previous bosses because we had prepared ahead of time. With the boss dead, the server was plunged into hardmode, which means a few things.
Upon defeating the boss, we received a “Pwnhammer” – and this item is used to destroy demon altars and crimson altars. When we destroy those, it triggers the creation of ore in the world. Right now we’re harvesting palladium, and we’ve gotten enough to find a few bits of mythril. Not enough to do anything useful with, but enough palladium that I made myself a new suit of armor. I went from 21 defense to 38, which is a huge jump. I’m quite proud of my first set of hardmode gear.
The other thing that came with hardmode aside from all this awesome new gear material is new bosses and mob encounters. Things are HARD. We had to board up the doors to the houses for the first time ever, because our NPC kept getting slaughtered. The Blood Moon showed up 6 nights in a row, which allows mobs to open doors. Thankfully a brick outside each door stops that. So instead of breezing through mobs and encounters the entire game is a challenge. If you get easily frustrated by that, you may want to keep away from hardmode, but since when my character dies I lose nothing but coin I don’t have any issues with the difficulty.
Am I having fun? That would be an understatement. I am having an incredibly glorious time exploring the world, mining, crafting, and creating my own dungeons so to speak. Of course it does help that I’m playing multiplayer since things are always better with friends, but even alone the game is hours of fun.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.
I’m loving Terraria at the moment as well. There is just so much to do and so many ways that it rewards varying play styles.
Hard Mode makes it really interesting, lots of new mobs and bosses but also consumables, cosmetics and new harder events. I’ve been on and off exploring it with others for a couple weeks now and still finding things to do.
Also, watch out for the corruption as it now begins to spread insanely fast and not just along the ground