How to manage inventory and storage

[truddyfrash]

I'm quite new to Terraria and I get overwhelmed by the amount of items there are, what items are important and worth carrying around? And how do I manage my storage system, things like types of items, number of chests needed etc.

[Finnfinity]

Most essential things to carry around are:
Weapons, pickaxe, axe, potions (at least healing potions), torches, mirror or potion that teleports you home, some blocks
If you want to collect walls or build, hammer is also good.
And explosives can be good for underground.
Idk if you noticed already but armor and vanity items have to be placed into certain inventory spots on the right. You can also put grappling hooks into a special inventory spot on the right so it doesn't take up space.

For storing stuff its definitely useful to have multiple chests for different categories of things, like one chest for ore, one chest for potions, one chest for vanity items etc. Later, you might even need multiple ones per category.

[wcc]

- Many items aren't required in the hotbar, like pickaxe, axe, torches (and alike), standard potions. Instead, if you hold shift and hover with you cursor over a close-by tree, the axe from your inv will be auto-selected, and similar for the pickaxe stone/dirt/etc. With shift and your cursor farer away, a torch will be auto-selected. Check the hotkeys to see how you can drink Health Pots, Mana Pots, Buffs.
- You can auto-stash items to nearby chests with a button in the inventory menu. Shift+Click an item in your inventory to favorize it if you don't want to auto-stash it.
- You can name chests. In the beginning I would have one for ores, one for materials, one for construction stuff, one for potions, one for gear, one for plants, one for fishing etc. Later you'll want to split things up, e.g. have combat potions in another chest than utility potions, or a gear chest for every class etc.
- What you always want to carry with you: One or multiple weapons, pickaxe, torches, mb. a saw and a hammer, Recall Potion/Magic Mirror (once you find one), HP/Mana Potions, Money Trough (once found), Void Bag (once available). In the beginning, ropes and plattforms help as well.

And always good to mention, even if not related to your question: You have two different digging/placing modes you can toggle between with CTRL.

[SLISKI JOHNNY]

Things that are pretty much necessary on you:
- pickaxe
- melee weapon
- ranged weapon (or magic, but long range)
- torches (and optionally glowsticks)
- healing potions
- recall potions or magic mirror (not a must but damn useful)
- axe and hammer
- platforms (especially at the beginning)
As of storage, I like to divide my stuff into
-accessories
-weapons
-potions and herbs/ingredients
-blocks
-bars and rare materials
-all the other items that dont belong to aforementioned categories

[truddyfrash]

Thanks for the help guys! I have silver armour, sandstorm in a bottle, magic mirror and some other stuff

[wcc]

The Sandstorm is quite a lucky find! Note that some items have the "material" flag on them, hinting those are part of a crafting recipe. So even if you might not need that weapon or accessory right know, keep it if it's an material.

[DaHedgehog27]

Chest storage, label everything and put ya mats near an alch lab and your bars etc.. near your anvils etc..

Then make sure you buy 2 safes, one for base, one for invent. A void bag for overflow and an extra invent and then a piggy bank for another portable invent.

[Smetrix]

My storage goes like this;

Chests for ores and bars

Chest for materials

Chest for potion materials (always keep some spare iron/lead and gold/platinum for spelunker and iron skin potions in this chest)

Chest for seeds

Chest for building blocks (I break these up into different categories, like soft blocks, stones, woods, bricks, furnitures, etc.)

Chest for accessories (you’ll accumulate a bunch that can be used later and combined with other accessories)

Then a piggy bank where I put useful stuff that I’ll probably use throughout my adventures, but don’t want taking up space in my invintory at the time.