How To Pre-Hardmode Terraria [1.2-1.3]

IMPORTANT NOTE: Not entirely Updated to 1.3, although most bits of 1.2 will still apply
A rather indepth guide on how to Terraria pre-hardmode, i was going to make it the entire game but then i realised that this guide is already really long.

The Pre-Guide Bit

What this guide is about
Basically, its a really long guide about how to not fail miserably at Terraria, it'll go quite slow, you don't have to follow all the steps, but for newer players it can be quite handy to have a basic infrastruture of what to do.

Why i made this
Boredom, i have like over 700 hours in this game, so i thought i'd share some knowledge of my experiences.

Things to Presume
I Presume you understand basic gameplay mechanics, such as how to craft, and how to play games in general, also i presume you have the initiative not to just do what the guide tells you to, but instead use it as a base to help you play rather than a direct copy cheat sheet (Which if you do, you'll have a bad time).

Terraria 'Hobbies'
These are side things to do in terraria, that don't further progress, but allow you to essentially measure it.
- Collecting Statues: if you see statues, collect them, and display them for +1 Satisfaction.
- Collecting Chests: Always collect chests you find, even if you don't need the storage, just keep lots of chests because its a good counter of how much you've found.
- Fishing: Upon finding the angler, you can get fishing quests, i'd suggest not bothering with them for a while, until you can aquire sonar potions and a half decent fishing rod, the angler has nice fishing related rewards, keep any crates you fish up for when you enter hardmode, as you get hardmode ores from them.
- Previously useful item displaying: Something i like to do, in my worlds, keep items that were really useful at some point and display them, just as a memorial. (I'm so sad)

The Pre-Game Bit

Making A character
Character is up to you, although for a first time, and, to be honest most times, choose Softcore for your character type as it means you'll only loose money when you die, instead of all your stuff, or the entire character.

Making A World
Generally Medium will allow you to explore everything at a reasonable pace, small can make things a bit cluttered and large makes certain later ideas and plans much harder to implement.

Expert Mode
Enabling this feature will make the world much much harder, enemies will have much more health (with bosses having increased health per player) and do much more damage, On the plus side, rare loot is more common, and bosses will drop treasure bags containing powerful unique expert only items, and also they have a very small chance to drop developer vanity items. Some Bosses however have new tricks for you...

The Initial Game Bit

A Brand Spanking new world (To ruin)
Select your character, select your world, enter game.
Observe immediate surroundings, if the spawn is flat, or mostly flat, then thats a good spawn. Cut down several nearby trees and make yourself a crafting bench and wooden sword, the copper shortsword is rubbish, so upgrading to something that swings properly is a high priority.

Make sure you still have spare wood to cross any gaps you come across, then explore what is around you, if you have killed some slimes, make torches with your excess wood and go a little way into caves, chests have nice things in them, such as an umbrella, a true life saver early game, as well as potions and cash.

If you notice oddly coloured grass, especially if its purple or red, Move fastly in the opposite direction to that so you don't get murdered. When the day starts darkening to night return to base, flatten the area If your able too,( if not either find somewhere flat or make an underground base/Floating base)

Starting Small
build a small house, you don't need to build big yet, just a small square/rectangle, with doors, lighting and a table and chair and back walls to count as a house. Build the house preferably out of wood or stone, and make a wooden hammer to remove any misplaced back walls.

Dark Night
If you were fast enough you should just be settling down in the house as night approaches, night contains horrors dangerous to the new, although a wood sword, (And a spear if you found one in a chest), will keep most at bay in small numbers, you don't really need to fight them for now, prioritise instead in making a little shaft, 2 wide, downwards and collect stone for a furnace, make sure to bring wooden steps or (Preferably) rope from pots so you don't get stuck. Make sure to mine up any ores you see, they're pretty obvious.

The 'Getting Stuff' Bit

Mine/Craft
Keep digging down in the shaft, explore caves if you find them, but for now don't go right deep down, collect all ores, and also silt, as it will be exceptionally valuable later. Loot all chests and pick them up for free extra storage, when night ends return to the surface, smelt any ores in the furnace, and craft new gear, prioritise pick and sword over anything else, early game armour makes little difference to the damage you take. In the early game, continue exploring around you, going down into caves for free loot, finding heart crystals and using them, although for now make sure to not go above 200, if your that lucky to find that many.
Expand(and exterminate)
Add new sections to your house, either as floors or just new houses entirely, Keeping your NPC's in one place saves time, also more NPC's means less mobs spawn around you, the Merchant, Nurse, Painter and Dye Merchant should appear when you have housing, after a while by you naturally playing the game.

Repeat this process, slowly going deeper into caves and getting better stuff. Crafting Armour becomes useful for Iron and above, as there actually becomes a good difference in damage taken. make sure to get full sets of armour for the set bonuses.

The 'Getting Balsy' Bit

Babby's First fight to the death
Around the time you have silver armour, with golden weapons and tools, and a decent amount of health, you'll be more than ready to fight the eye of cthulu, Suggested weapons include a Golden, or silver bow, and firey arrows, for extra damages.

An arena of sorts helps fighting, simply have some wooden steps lining a small area, enclosed, with some campfires for additonal regen. If you have some excess combat potions, such as ironskin and swiftness, you may want to use them, make the base a reasonable distance from your Npc's to avoid them getting murdered, you may if you want make a little house and set the nurse to live there, for quick panic heals.

To summon him you'll need a suspicious looking eye, this can sometimes be found in golden chests underground, or crafted with 6 lenses (Dropped from demon eyes) and crafted at a demon altar, found commonly in the corruption/crimson, although also found on their own sometimes (hope for that)

Fighting The eye
At the start of night, summon him, save low damage fast firing weapons for the second phase, primiarily use the bow.
PHASE 1:
In this phase, the eye moves quite slowly, has low attack damage, but also quite reletivley high defence, having a multilayered arena helps here as you can jump over his charges, he will also spawn little minions, who you should squish easily with a sword. keep wailing on him with your bow/other ranged weapons until he gets to half health.



PHASE 2:
Now it gets a bit more fun. His damage becomes more of an issue, as does his speed, however his defense is now zero, meaning more damages, this is where shurikans and throwing knives become much more effective, he will only charge now, but it will be much faster, make sure to time jumps, if you have a cloud in a bottle from loot this will be much much easier to dodge.


KILLED IT:
If you kill him, then you will have loot, either Crimtane or Demonite depending on your world, as well as some seeds (Don't plant them), potions and money, additonally a dryad can now spawn if you have the house available.

Expert Mode:
In expert mode the eye has more health and does more damage, it also has a third stage that is hit when it would ususally be killed in normal mode:

The Third Stage: In this stage the eye will now charge significantly faster, like, a lot faster, as well as making a much more distorted sound, the frequency of the charges increases as the eye takes more damage, at very low health the eye will charge constantly, at this point grenades and other high damage weapons are very helpful, as it is essentially a DPS race.

If you kill it, you will gain a treasure bag, containing the Shield of Cthulu, an accessory which allows for a high damage charge at enemies.

The Pre-Corruption/Crimson Bit

Things that are useful to have
A grappelling hook: Allows for easy traversing of areas, pretty cheap to make with either gems, or chains and a hook (dropped by skeletons and pirahnas).
A lucky horseshoe: Negates fall damage, essential for delving into the corruption, due to its deep chasms, found in sky islands.
The Demonlistionist NPC: At this point in the game ebonstone/crimstone will be unbreakable with your pickaxe, bombs and dynamite make short work of it, purification powder from the dryad also works, if your boring.
Over 200 life: Enemies in these biomes can hit hard, so good damage soaking is nice to have.
Magic Mirror: Allows teleporting to spawn, invaluble in nasty or inconvienient situations.
Other things
The Extractinator: This is literally one of the most amazing things pre-hardmode. Turns all the silt and slush into useful materials, such as ore, gems and money, lets you afford and make cool stuff. Rare Gold Chest Loot.
Cloud in a bottle: Allows double jump, makes general terrain movement easier.
Demonite/Crimsonite Weapons: Made from the eye of cthulu, these items are very good early game, for corruption, i'd suggest the war axe of the night over the lights bane.
Katana: This item is sold by the travelling merchant, who may appear every now and then, it is a sufficient replacement for the Demonite/Crimsonite weapons.

Places to go
By now your more than well enough equipped to explore all of the underground (just don't go into hell just yet unless you want a lava filled death)

The Ice biome has unique loot, and isn't too much harder than the underground.

Additionally, The Mini Biomes, Marble and Granite, should be more bareable.

Marble is probably the more dangerous one, Hoplite Skeltons and Medusa's are exceptionally dangerous, Medusas WILL turn you to stone so turn your character to face away from them during this attack in order to avoid the effect. They occasionally drop the Medusa head item is possibly one of the most powerful Magic Weapons early game, allowing Massive AoE damage when you charge it up (hold click until it fires itself, firing before results in less range and damage)


Granite Should be quite safe, The Graphite Golems can make themselves invulnerable, however this shouldn't be too hard to deal with, and Granite elementals are capable of going through walls, watch out for them when mining, and use a spear weapon or a large sword in order to prevent them doing damage.



Surface Corruption and Crimson is safer than underground, if you can traverse it to locate the ends of the map, as well as the jungle/Dungeon, which are at opposite side of the map. Whatever you do. do not go deep into the dungeon, pick up books at the surface level, you may find a water bolt, another brilliant early game magic weapon.

The Corrupted Bit (IF your world is corrupt, PURPLE grass)

Having your soul eaten
The corruption is a very spiky place, with dirty great big chasms, make sure to take care decending them either with rope, or grappelling hook.
Not all chasms lead to useful places, your priority will be to find shadow orbs. you'll know what they are when you see them, they are most common in the horizontal caverns at the bottom of the deepest chasms, explore chasms until you find them.

Additionally search the area for Demonite and chests, there tends to be some in these places. When you find shadow orbs use bombs or purification powder to get to them and break them with a hammer, you will recieve a musket for the first time you do this, allowing the gun merchant to spawn, it is suggested to only smash one more, as the Eater of Worlds spawns upon smashing a third. There's several items you can get:

Musket - Slow firing, good damage Ranged weapon, always dropped from the first shadow orb you destroy.
Band of Starpower - Minor Accessory for more mana, keep for useful later combinations.
Shadow Orb - Light Source that follows you around, useful early game.
Vilethorn - Magic weapon that goes through walls, Super effective against the eater of worlds.
Ball O' Hurt - Flail weapon, has useful properties, but not super amazing damage.

The Boss, The Eater of Worlds
Luckily for you, the Eater of worlds is easier than the Crimson Equivilent (IMO).
He has only one stage, Upon breaking the third shadow orb (or summoning him with worm food), he will appear as a giant worm, made of lots of pieces, unlike normal worms killing a middle part makes the boss split into two worms, you can see what this can lead to.

The easiest way to kill it, is to arm yourself with a war axe of the night, a vilethorn (With a reasonable amount of mana), and if you can drink an Ironskin potion, wearing full silver or gold armour, the damage you'll take is very little, although keep health potions to hand just in case.

Essentially just let it spawn, be in a reasonably large space and for a while just hold down click with the war axe, using vilethorn to do damage and break it, killing parts often give hearts, so killing at fast enough speed means you'll heal faster than it can damage you.

Its drops are lots of demonite, as well as shadow scales, used to craft the shadow pickaxe and armour, make sure to craft the pickaxe first, due to it being really really useful. you may also (Very rarely) recieve a pet eater, which is adorable.

Shadow Armours Bonus is increased attack speed and movement speed, useful for making you much more agile.

Expert Mode:
In Expert Mode the sections of the Eater of worlds will shoot projectiles at you, these can be destroyed by hitting them, but will do a lot of damage.

If killed it will drop a Treasure bag containing the Worm Scarf, an Accessory which will reduce damage taken from all sources, invaluble when fighting high damage enemies.

The Crimson Bit (IF your world has Crimson, RED Grass)

A Bloody Awful Time
The Crimson is the blood themed equivilent to the Corruption, bad news: it's harder, Good news: the loot is more powerful. The Chasms in the Crimson are mostly horizontal, leading to large chambers, with Crimon Hearts in them, your main priority. Check for Hearts and Chests, as there is usually a few.
Using Bombs or purification powder breaking into a chamber and destroy the heart with a hammer, to gain The UnderTaker, it allows the Gun Merchant NPC to spawn. Other loot you can get from crimson hearts after that include:

The Undertaker - A ranged weapon, with okay damage and speed.
Crimson Rod - an exceptionally useful magic weapon that spawns clouds to do damage to enemies under them.
Panic Necklace - A useful early accessory to get out of sticky situations
Rotted Fork - An upgraded spear weapon, with reasonable damage.

The Boss - The Brain of Cthulhu
This one is a pain.. Here's the breakdown.
PHASE 1:
Initially the Brain is invulnerable, instead it will teleport around every few seconds, not really trying to attack you, it is however swarmed by little Creeper enemies, that will try and chase you before returning to the brain to teleport. This is where the crimson rod works wonders in denying them, They will attempt to return upon being damaged and will then be destroyed by the cloud. provide additonal covering fire with a Crimson Bow or sword. Once they've all died, Phase Two begins.


PHASE 2:
The Brain can now be damaged, however its a bit irritated about that, teleporting frequency and speed is now much faster, and it will go for you, generally you will have time for about 3 bow shots per teleport, the brain is effected by knockback, so keep it at a distance with your bow.

DEAD:
It's Main Loot is Lots of Crimtane ore, and Tissue Samples, these allow you to make Crimtane armour and the DeathBringer pickaxe, with allows you to mine Crimstone, and later Hellstone, make that first. then repeat the boss to get the armour.

Crimtane armour has a fast regen ability which is really useful in many situations.

Expert Mode:
In Expert mode the Brain does more damage, and has more health, Creepers in the first stage can apply debuffs onto you and additionally in his second stage, he will spawn spectral copies of himself around you, which will make it harder to see when he is attacking.

He will drop a Treasure bag, containing an accesory called the Brain of Confusion which will confuse nearby enemies when they are hit, confused enemies will run away from you, making it useful to control crowds.

The Mid Game Bit

Stuff happens
Around now you should be approaching or be at max life which for now is 400. Keep collecting heart crystals as they sell for a good amount.

Due to you breaking the Shadow Orbs/Crimson Hearts, Meteors can now fall to the ground, they have useful stuff, although you really need an obsidian skull, crafted from 20 obsidian, this will stop you burning.

A Goblin invasion may also occur, in this event make sure to move a little way from your base if you are living at spawn, when they arrive, if you can hear the battle music then your can deal with them without fear of having your NPC's die, (if they do, they'll come back after a bit), the invasion can be hard for the unprepared, however with full shadowscale/Crimson armour, and weapons, they should die pretty fast. A small arena to cover from the fire of bowmen, and bottleneck them will make it easier.
Defeating the Goblin army will mean the Goblin Tinkerer can spawn, this NPC can reforge your items to change the prefix, and sells the Tinker table where certain accessories can be combined, and also rocket boots. which are amazing. As to what accesories can be combined, as always refer to the Guide NPC's Crafting button.

At this point theres two places to go, The Dungeon and The Jungle, i personally do the Dungeon first, its up to you what order you do them in.
- The Dungeon is easier, and has more interesting loot, but requires killing a boss to get in, and has lots of annoying traps.
- The Jungle has Painful enemies, and the loot is a bit more natural to collect, instead of chest hunting. (Although there still is chest loot)

The Dungeoneering Bit:

Killing the Gatekeeper
Before you can even enter the dungeon you must kill skeletron, trying to enter it before hand will mean you get killed by a dungeon guardian.
Skeletron
A pretty simple boss, with only a few attack patterns, but quite high damage.
The Setup: Build a house near, or at the dungeon. and a arena on top of the dungeon, with a few layers as usual. To activate the boss, Curse the old man at the start of night. if he's saying you're good enough to beat skeletron, you probably are.

THE FIGHT: He's only got one phase, but he's also got several bits to him.
The Hands: these are what will damage you most of the time, they havn't got too much life, and taking them out makes the fight a lot easier, however you don't need to prioritise them as killing them doesn't count towards beating him.
The Head: Killing this is all thats required to beat him, its generally not hard to avoid its attack, during his spinning his defense drops to zero, making a good time to position a crimson cloud, or spam him with a bow/guns.

Once dead you are free to enter the dungeon, he has no super important loot, although he can dropped a cursed skull book, which is a half decent magic weapon, killing him also lets the Clothier spawn.

Expert Mode: In Expert Mode his Ai is improved, and he will move faster, as well as having higher damage, additionally he has very high defense until his hands are killed.

If killed he will drop a treasure bag containing a weapon called the Bone Glove, which uses bones as ammo

Dark and full of terrors
The Dungeon is full of nasty traps to damage you, and also mobs which can make your life a pain if they over run you.

Make sure to break any blue candle you see, these increase mob spawn, keep them on you as they are useful if you decide to farm stuff later.

Your priority is locked golden chests, these contain the dungeon items, keys are dropped by mobs, and also found in wooden chests. Here's the items you could find:
Pistol: Fast firing ranged weapon, really good upgrade and gets more useful later.
Muramasa: Fast attacking weapon, good for dealing with weaker mobs, keep for more use later.
Blue Moon: Upgraded flail weapon
Cobalt Shield: Prevents knockback, useful in hell.
Aqua Scepter: Good Magic Ranged weapon, penetrates enemies.
Shadow Key: Unlocks Shadow Chests in hell, which have powerful items in them.

You may also see odd coloured chests in the dungeon, don't bother doing anything with them, you won't be able to open them for a long while into hardmode.

You may also find the mechanic NPC in the dungeon, who sells useful wire-related items.

The Jungling Bit

Bees! Not the Bees!
The Jungle has lots of spiky creepies in it, who can do some pretty decent damage to you.
While here you will be wanting to collect several things:
Jungle Shrines: these small rooms have useful jungle-related items in them.
Jungle Spores: Glowing spores you will find around the jungle, used in many recipes.
Stingers and Vines: Dropped by Hornets and Man eaters respectivley, used in lots of crafting.
Your Shadow/DeathBringer Pickaxe should make short work of getting around in the jungle, but watch out for the mobs, Hornets have dangerous ranged attacks, and Man Eaters can appear out of no-where from walls.

Hives
These large structures give an extra chance for loot in the jungle, Entering them and killing the Abeemation inside lets you fight a mini-boss, the Queen Bee, she's not to be messed with lightly.
ATTACKS:
She will charge through walls, hunter potions allow you to judge her location and avoid it easier
She will hover above you and spawn bees, these bees are fooled by platforms, so a combination of platforms above you and a fast weapon make short work of them, use this time to get some damage on her.
She will also over above you and shoot stingers, these can deal good damage, so make sure your armours up to scratch.

Fire works wonders against her, not only making her visible at all times but also keeping a good DPS on her.

On death she will drop various useful items, some of the loot can be made into a bee armour and staff, allowing you to spawn minions to fight for you, the bee staff would be a suggested item, as it lets you spawn a single minion, the armour lets you spawn more.

Expert Mode: In Expert Mode her attack patterns increase in frequency and speed as health decreases.

If you kill her she will drop a treasure bag containing an Accessory called the Hive Pack, which increases Damage of bees you spawn, from any source, such as the Bee gun.

Spoils of war
From the jungle loot, you can make a blade of grass, which is suggested, even if you don't want to use it, a thorn chakram which is a bouncy boomerang style weapon, as well as jungle armour and an ivy whip, an upgraded grappel that allows for multiple attachments.

Many Jungle Weapons apply poison to their targets, for extra damage over time.

The Preperation Bit

Go to Hell! (Literally)
Hell is now the only place left, a highly suggested item would be a lava anklet, found as golden chest loot underground, as well as water walking potions.
Firstly you'll want to collect fire blossom, a red looking flower in hell, these allow you to make obsidian skin potions, when combined with waterleaf and obsidian and an alchemy table (A bottle on a workbench). and also an obsidian skull if you haven't already made one.

These potions allow you to easily collect hellstone, which spawns lava when mined, you'll want quite a lot in order to make everything (500 or so should cover everything), getting too much is fine as Hellstone Bars sell for a good amount. Additionally make sure to collect a hellforge, as a normal furnace doesn't smelt hellstone.

Combine 4 Hellstone with an obsidian to make bars, these make a whole range of useful stuff, make all of it, its all really good.

Molten Armour gives bonuses to melee attack damage, as well as having the highest armour pre-hardmode.

Some molten weapons also do extra fire damage over time.

If you have the following:
A Lights bane/Blood Butcherer
A Muramasa
A Blade of Grass
A Firey Greatsword

Go to a demon altar and create The Nights Edge, the best pre-hardmode sword in the game. Addtionally search out hell, bridge over lava properly as it will serve useful for later. Open shadow chests and kill demons, attempt to aquire a demon scythe a really good magic weapon, and a guide voodoo doll (DO NOT let it fall into lava).

Other things you'll probably want:
A Minishark from the gun merchant, with meteor bullets.
Max Mana and Life.
Sufficient Supplies of everything.

The Final Bit

Preparation has passed...
The Wall of Flesh, the last pre-hardmode boss, have fun...
BREAKDOWN:
To summon him, throw a guide voodoo doll into lava, make sure you have a really long bridge in the opposite direction to fight from, having it be flat is best.
Potions such as ironskin, Mana Power and regen help, as well as endurance potions from armoured cavefish in the caverns (Fishing stuffs).

HOW TO MURDER HIM:
Upon summoning, the guide will die, and he will spawn, he's basically a giant wall (of flesh), with many hungry enemies attached to him, shoot out the hungry first, as they get tougher as the wall takes more damage, when 'killed' the fly off to attack you, they drop hearts which will be useful.

once they are mostly dealt with attack his eyes or mouth, they share a life pool. The Wall will increase in speed and attack frequency until it dies (or you die).

If you defeat him, a small box will appear with loot in it, most importantly the PwnHammer, which lets you break demon altars for Hardmode ore.

Expert Mode: in Expert Mode the Hungry of the wall of flesh will respawn over time, making it essential to keep them in check (Killing them can give health, which makes it useful), additionally at very low (~500) HP the Wall gets a huge speed boost, beware of this as it can take you by suprise.

If you Defeat him he will drop the Demon Heart, which perminently grants an extra accessory slot, this unfortunatly won't carry over into non-expert worlds, however in expert ones it grants a huge bonus to combat potential.

Your world is now in hardmode, you've played...about 1/3 of the game. Its up to you...for now...

if you have questions about stuff, ask and i'll answer when i see them.
-ManiaxIsThatGuy

[Slim Shady]

Helped with the Jungle, was stuck on what to do before fighting the Abeemination, seeing as how I don't want to craft an item to summon her after I die the first time.

[Scorpiot]

Actually 5

[Scorpiot]

I only have about 7 achievments left

[Scorpiot]

also most of my time probaly about 500 hours has been when i was in school and i leave it on

[MehnixIsThatGuy]

@wcrandall That's quite impressive, my play time is spread across several different games. Total game play time is a little over 7000 hours. Either way, what's your opinion on the guide? Designed it as a general, less detailed thing for newer players, that's why there's barely any statistics or specifics, as new players don't need to know that stuff.

[Scorpiot]

I've played 3000 hours of Terraria

[Probably a Burger]

There's ANOTHER Eater of Words typo in the corrupted bit!

[DragomirKingsman]

By the way, i sent you a friend request. I have a sweeet idea for how to put together a hardmode guide. It's driving me NUTS not being able to put it down, because my writing skills are nonexistent.

[MehnixIsThatGuy]

@SheldyGuy Fixed Now :P

[DragomirKingsman]

Speaking of typos, the eater of WORLDS is not The Eater Of Words. fix that. its in the corrupted bit section.