Terraria

Delicious exploration in an easy to digest 2D package!

Terraria is a land of adventure! A land of mystery! A land that's yours to shape, to defend and to enjoy. Your options in Terraria are limitless, are you an action gamer with an itchy trigger finger? A master builder? A collector? An explorer? There's something for everyone here.

Terraria (pronounced similar to "Terrarium") is a very detailed 2D Wide Open Sandbox indie game, created by Andrew "Redigit" Spinks and Jeremy "Blue" Guerrette. It was made available on Steam on May 16, 2011. As of 02/21/2012 Redigit had ceased development of the game (which fortunately only turned out to be a long hiatus), and version 1.1 came out on the 1st of December, 2011, making the game at least thrice as complex at it previously was.

Terraria focuses on exploring the gorgeous randomly generated world you're stranded in, to find resources to build a cozy home, equip yourself with armor and potions, befriend merchants, and defend your town from monsters. You start from scratch with little more than a pickaxe and some trees -- and end up crafting epic-level equipment to fight massive demons, dig cave systems throughout the land, and build a fortress that can withstand full-on goblin army invasions. You can share every world you create with your friends in single-player and multiplayer, and freely visit any map with any character.

Sounds a bit familiar? Absolutely! Terraria is meant as a wonderful item-based RPG variation on some of the most popular randomly generated exploration games, particularly Minecraft. It's different in many ways, though: true to classic Metroidvanias, a strong focus is on finding upgrades to help you move around in the world better (such as accessories to let you breathe underwater) and increase your life and Mana pools. You can also end up with multiple helpful NPCs living in your homes that will sell things to you, heal you, and otherwise enhance your base through their services. Terraria features boss monsters that will challenge players who dare to summon them, and murder those who aren't ready. Finally, Terraria features a streamlined crafting system as well as many, many decorations so that you can truly make your home your own.

The player has the option of entering Hard Mode after clearing the first few basic quests. Hard Mode is triggered by challenging the boss of the Underworld, and spawns many new monsters, items, materials, bosses and a new, spreading biome into the world.

Version 1.3 of the game, released in June 30, 2015, was the last version made with designer Andrew Spinks's involvement (although it received several additional updates after that). Most of the development team has moved on to work on Starbound, which can be best described as Terraria In Space.

Tropes used in Terraria include:
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: The Wall of Flesh in the Underworld.
    • You could argue that most bosses are this, in a sense. They chase you around the map.
  • Airborne Mook: The Demonic Eyes, Cursed Skulls (once were known as Burning Skulls), Hornets, Eaters of Souls, Meteor Heads, all kinds of Bats, Demons, Vulture and Harpies.
    • And hard mode gives us the Wraith, the Corruptor, Wandering Eye plus the Hallow's Whisps and Gastropods
      • Actually, the wiki shows that the Wraith, Pixie and Grastro pod hover a certain distance over blocks and act similar to a walking enemy, hence why they're confusable.
  • Alchemy: As described on the Functional Magic page being magical chemistry. This is used to create a variety of potions out of a variety of ingredients.
  • All Deserts Have Cacti: They're components in potions, too.
  • All Love Is Unrequited: The Goblin Tinkerer and the Mechanic are constantly asking about each other, the Nurse is after the Arms Dealer, and the Arms Dealer is... well, but nothing seems to come from any of it.
  • All Your Powers Combined: One of the best mid-game blades, the Night's Edge, is crafted by combining four swords at a Demon Altar.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite
  • An Axe to Grind: Considered a tool, but can be used to defend yourself in a pinch. Higher-level axes are actually viable weapons that just happen to retain their uses as tools.
  • Animal Mecha: One of the hardmode bosses, the Destroyer, is a giant mechanical worm.
  • An Interior Designer Is You: The metric ton of furniture added in 1.0.6. Despite the side-scrolling nature, there have been some pretty [dead link] impressive things built in Terraria.
  • Arms Dealer: The Arms Dealer NPC, which sells you guns and ammo once you have found a gun.
  • Artificial Gill: You can get an accessory that allows you to swim and two that make drowning less likely.
    • There's also a potion that allows you to breathe underwater for 2 minutes, in exchange for drowning when you try to breathe normal air.
    • As of 1.1, there's a magical shell that turns you into a merman when you enter water, making drowning impossible and granting normal movement underwater.
  • Asteroids Monster:
    • Mother Slimes, a giant slime which breaks into three Baby Slimes when killed.
    • The Eater of Worlds, a boss monster that will split in two every time one of its segments is destroyed, unless one would be shorter than 2 segments. It has fifty segments, and each new Eater of Worlds obeys the same rules. It is entirely possible to have several Eater of Worlds at once.
    • New to 1.1 is the Corrupt Slime, which acts much like a stronger Mother Slime and splits into several Slimelings upon defeat.
  • Awesome but Impractical:
    • The Breaker Blade is a massive sword, but it doesn't deal that much damage by Hardmode standards. It'll fall out of use pretty quickly, despite how impressive it looks.
    • The Star Cannon is one of the highest-damaging weapon in the game. It fires Fallen Stars, which drop at a low rate every night, and are NOT reusable when fired. If a player can collect enough stars to make and use it, it can completely slaughter just about anything with ease.
    • It's likely at some point in the game that you'll gain the ability to summon an orb of pure light to follow you and help light the way... behind you. It has the acceleration and top speed of a unicycle being ridden by a drunken blind man with an inner ear infection, meaning if you move faster than base walking speed by any means, you'll be getting a nice view of wherever you were two seconds ago. It is also the least bright light source in the game.
    • The Rocket Boots used to run on mana, but ever since one of the updates, they run on a short timer instead, which makes them quite underwhelming.
    • In the words of the Demolition Expert: "Why purify the world when you can blow it up!", Dynamite and Bombs are the best ways to clear the Corruption, but you need so many of them that you'll quickly run out of money.
  • Awesome Yet Practical
    • The Starfury is a very useful weapon for exploring caves, and is quite potent in battle.
    • The Enchanted Boomerang found occasionally in chests. It has a very fast attack speed, lights up wherever it goes, making it easier to fight in the dark, and has decent damage. With enough practice you can juggle enemies and send jumping enemies flying. It can effectively replace any weapons until the mid-high tiers, especially considering that toward the higher end you can upgrade it to bring it back up to par. Also, because of how its light particles behave, it has a great Mundane Utility as an early-game prospecting tool.
    • The Minishark received a buff has a one-in-three chance of not using ammo for a shot, meaning if you have enough ammo, it becomes your bestest friend.
    • Its upgrade, the Megashark, gets a 50% chance of not consuming ammo. And it deals a lot more damage, too.
    • Angel Wings and Devil Wings, new accessories as of 1.1, gives the ability of flight, similar to Rocket Boots. Only with longer flight time. Not to mention, their flight time can be extended even longer, as they stack with Rocket Boots and Spectre Boots. They also have the ability to negate all fall damage, similar to Lucky Horseshoe, AND have the ability to feather fall (fall slower). Making them three accessories in one! Not to mention...they're wings. Visible wings. Need we say more?
    • The Magical Harp has the seemingly mundane ability to fire damaging musical notes at different speeds based on how close the cursor is to your character. Doesn't sound all that impressive at first. However, the notes pierce enemies and rebound off walls, which makes them perfect against worm enemies. Buffed correctly, it can bring down the Destroyer in 15 seconds.
    • The Flamethrower is a fun weapon to use, and it runs on Gel, a very common resource.
    • The Snowball Cannon is a fairly powerful pre-hardmode weapon, and its ammunition is ridiculously easy to craft.
  • Badass: The player character, who's basically a One Man Army (unless you're playing with friends, but even then, each and every one of you end up being powerful)
  • Badass Santa: The Christmas event occurs yearly and allows the player to buy a Santa suit for about 45 gold.
    • Furthermore, the Frost Moon event includes a ridiculously powerful Santa mech as an enemy.
  • Battle Boomerang: There are several boomerang items in the game. They deal decent damage, have excellent knockback, and can be thrown as fast as they return to you. And if you miss, you're better off switching to a melee weapon until it comes back.
    • With Hellstone you can make the Enchanted Boomerang into a Flamarang. Also the Thorn Chakram, which behaves similarly to the boomerangs. The Light Disk is also like the Thorn Chakram, but can be stacked to have FIVE OF THEM FLYING AT ONCE. Macross Missile Massacre in boomerang form, indeed.
    • Also, boomerangs benefit from melee bonuses. This means that they can be combined with a melee knockback accessory to keep waves of monsters at bay.
  • Beating a Dead Player: All monsters hover around the point where you died until you respawn.
  • Beef Gate: You can enter the Dungeon at the edge of the map anytime you like. You can only safely enter the dungeon after you've taken out Skeletron. If you enter before killing Skeletron, you will be facing a Dungeon Guardian that has 9999 hit points and hits you for 9000 points of damage.
    • The Dungeon Guardian was introduced because players learned how to kill the Skeletron heads that, previously, guarded the dungeon before you killed Skeletron. But guess what...players have learned how to kill the Dungeon Guardian.
    • A lot of special biomes contain initially overpowered enemies, motivating you to at least come equipped with decent gear before you tackle them. It's possible to explore those areas as a new character, but it's extremely risky; even the basic enemies inside these biomes can kill you in a few hits and your items are probably too weak to fight back. It's risk vs reward however, as these biomes are likely to contain really good items, which'll help you get stronger quick.
  • Berserk Board Barricade: You might find yourself doing this when the Blood Moon rises and zombies gain the ability to open doors. In hard mode you also have to worry about a number of new hostile enemies including were wolves trying to batter down your doors.
  • BFS: Several, including the Blade of Grass and the Phaseblades, which are double your height and still maybe a little bit longer. The Fiery Greatsword is slightly larger, and made of fire. The Night's Edge, which is made of (among other things) the Blade of Grass and the Fiery Greatsword, as well. Muramasa is comparatively smaller, but still around the height of the player. The 1.1 update introduces the Breaker Blade, which is one monstrosity of a sword that dwarfs them all in size.
  • Bigger Is Better: The best melee weapon modifier, Legendary, comes with a size bonus.
  • Blade on a Stick: Comes in seven different flavours as of 1.1.
  • Bonus Dungeon: Either the Underground Jungle or the actual Dungeon could qualify for this, the latter because, well, it's a dungeon, and the former because the monsters there are so much more powerful than anywhere else in the game. However, once Hard Mode kicks in, pretty much the entire world becomes this. Including aboveground.
    • In a strange reversal, after unlocking hard mode, no new monsters appear in the Dungeon, and the player is likely to have much more than adequate equipment, making it so the dungeon is one of the SAFEST places in the hard mode world! ...At least, until you defeat some of the later hardmode bosses, at which point it once again becomes very dangerous, with plenty of new enemies.
  • Boring but Practical: The Mining Helmet, while not as bright as a torch and somewhat expensive in the first dozen hours of play, will make your life in Terraria so much easier when you get it.
    • Unfortunately, it comes with the tradeoff that you have to wear it in your armor slot rather than social slot, which breaks armor set bonuses and drastically lower your potential Defense score.
    • Picks also qualify. Did you just find a new, awesome ore to craft with? You really ought to craft a pick with it so you can dig faster.
    • The Cross Necklace doubles your Mercy Invincibility. That's all it does, but it's extremely useful against enemies that can hit you in very quick succession like the Destroyer, the Hardmode worm boss. Some boss strategies also abuse this doubled Mercy Invincibility, since meteorite ore that you stand on does very little damage compared to the bosses. Just standing on meteorite ore while fighting a boss (especially the Destroyer) is an absolutely viable strategy. (sadly this trick no longer works now that meteorite blocks do damage-per-tick)
  • Boss Battle: Terraria's got many boss fights. Usually in order to really progress, you'll need to fight a certain boss. You can skip some of the bosses, but it's natural to fight them in the intended order, as defeating each boss usually provides you with the gear to make you powerful enough to stand a good chance against the next one.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Wyverns. Thousands of HP, constantly home on you, high attack power, and won't stop pursuing you even if you teleport away.
    • A lot of hardmode enemies in general count as this, including the chest mimics. Especially if you've only entered Hardmode recently and you're still comparatively weak.
  • Booze-Based Buff: A new update introduced a brewery, where you can make ale. It lowers your defense and increases offense.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: When you craft the highest tiers of armor, so that everybody can see you've defeated the final boss (unless you cheated to obtain them).
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: In two versions. On the surface you can find a wide, muddy jungle biome that spawns strong slimes and bats. You can also find it underground, where it's filled with nasty bees and carnivorous plants.
  • Chainsaw Good: When you have access to Mythril, Cobalt and Adamantite, you can make chainsaws. Like most axes in the game, they make good weapons.
  • Chest Monster: Mimics show up in Hard Mode.
  • Christmas Mode: During the holidays the snow biome will generate in all new maps (normally 1/3 chance) and all monsters have a chance to drop presents. When the presents are opened in the players inventory, they give the player candy cane themed building material. If on a hard mode map there is a chance of the presents dropping a snow globe.
    • To elaborate, if you use the snow globe, you call forth the snowman army, an EXTREMELY hard wave of living snowmen who wield Tommy guns and break down your house. Very difficult to beat, but if you do so you get Santa!
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Played with. While water will instantly evaporate upon contact with the Underworld, the player can survive in a full suit of heavy armor (Some of which can be made of molten lava) just fine...until he hits hellstone or lava[1].
    • You can carry lava around in iron buckets. And lava doesn't damage wooden blocks or walls, just wooden platforms. In fact, if you're making an obsidian generator, it's a really good idea to make it out of wood or glass so you don't accidentally mine a hole in the bottom of it with your pickaxe.
  • Cool Shades: Demon Eyes have a very low chance to drop a dark lens, which can be used to craft these. If you wear them, the sun gets a pair too!
  • Co-Op Multiplayer: Built from the ground up to support it. Although you can play the game solo, it's definitely a lot harder.
  • The Corruption: Each world contains a terrain type called "the Corruption" with a dimmed sun, hostile terrain and monsters with names like "Eater of Souls". It spreads to infect surrounding areas, especially after beating a particular boss.
    • And then there's the Hallow, which is the polar opposite of the Corruption but infects its surroundings nevertheless. Also, if you unlock Hard mode, there is almost nothing that can stop either biome to spread across the entire world.
  • Crapsack/CrapsaccharineWorld: Unless you install elaborate quarantine measures before defeating the Wall of Flesh, your entire world is doomed to become a mixture of the two in hardmode.
  • Creator Backlash: In the fallout of the cancellation announcement, Regit has outright admitted that he never saw Terraria as anything more than "a testing ground" and that his heart was never truly into it.
  • Critical Hit: Since version 1.0.6, you can cause them with both melee and magic damage. With these, it's actually possible to hit an enemy for triple-digit damage if done right. Randomly generated bonuses on weapons can make these more likely.
  • Cute Monster Girl: The Harpies. Despite their appearances, though, they are otherwise the hateful creatures you would expect them to be...
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Intentional steps seem to have been taken to avert this for immigrating Minecraft players; the WASD controls map intuitively and the discard button is even in the same place.
    • There is the fact that destroying items and placing them are the same button but it depends on the item/tool held.
    • ESC brings up the inventory and the option to quit or change teams, while the E key brings up the inventory in Minecraft, although fortunately, there's a control config, so you can map map the inventory to F, E, or whatever you want.
    • Since 1.1, the control for throwing a held item (not in inventory) has been changed, while the previous one now uses it.
  • Damage Sponge Boss: All the bosses count, but the hardmode bosses take the cake, having 10 times the HP of their predecessors.
  • Death From Above: The Starfury, Star Cloak and Holy Arrows are gear that can summon falling stars to ravage the battlefield.
    • Also, at night stars will randomly fall through the land, instantly killing any monster on the way and, with some luck, severely damaging bosses.
    • When mining straight down, it's not uncommon for monsters to spawn out of sight above you and dive down the mineshaft.
    • As well as triggering a trap that drops a boulder upon you and cannot be survived without decent gear, making it literal Death from Above.
  • Death Is Cheap: As long as you play below Hardcore, played straight with you. Subtly subverted with the NPCs - they respawn, but it's a different NPC with a different name that just happens to look the same and do the same job.
  • Dem Bones: The list of skeletal enemies in the game goes as follows: the Skeleton, the much tougher Angry Bones, the Dark Caster, Tim, the Dead Miner, the flying Cursed Skull, the burrowing Bone Serpent, the Armored Skeleton, the tougher Heavy Skeleton, the Skeleton Archer, Skeletron, formerly the game's toughest boss, and his mecha-version, Skeletron Prime. There's even more than that. You spend a lot of time battling skeletons in this game.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Due to the way item reforging works, you can end up with a Demonic Demon Scythe.
  • Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: While better ranged weapons gives more damage, so does better ammunition. As you fight stronger enemies, soon wooden arrows or plain musket balls won't be enough. Soon you'll be after Jester's Arrow and Silver Bullets. Once you hit hard mode, you'll soon be using Cursed Flame Rounds, or even crystal shards to make fragmentation rounds. Yes, it is as cool as it sounds.
  • Destructible Projectiles: The Dark Caster, Fire Imp, Goblin Sorcerer, and Tim create wall-penetrating projectiles that are coded as One Hit Point Wonders.
  • Difficult but Awesome: Flails can be incredibly fiddly to use and awkward to aim, but once you master them, especially the Dao of Pow, you can become almost unstoppable. They pierce foes, rebound, AND deal lingering damage around the ball head, making them incredibly deadly against larger and/or segmented foes.
  • Directionally Solid Platforms: Wooden platforms which can be crafted. Players can jump up through them like it's nothing, and walk across them fine, or choose to drop through by pressing down.
  • Disc One Final Boss: Skeletron is the strongest boss until you visit the Underworld. The Wall of Flesh is the strongest boss until you realize that killing it is going to turn the surface into a mixture of Crapsack and Crap Saccharine World roamed by twisted, powerful creatures... Basically the whole game is "this must be the final boss! Oh wait, no it isn't."
  • Disc One Nuke
    • Shuriken can be bought very early in the game - as soon as the Merchant shows up, who is usually the first NPC to appear in the player's house. Shuriken are inexpensive, do decent damage, have high attack speed, high range, go through any enemy they hit, hitting large enemies twice or three times in the process, and have a chance to be able to be recovered and used again. As it pierces through enemies, shurikens are well suited for taking on the game's early bosses; all of them are made easier if you have a piercing attack of some kind.
    • If you happen to discover a floating island, you could find a Lucky Horseshoe (negating one of the game's main hazards early on; namely, fall damage) or the hideously powerful Starfury.
    • A common speedrunning tactic, in addition to shurikens & locating floating islands as mentioned above, is to find the dungeon and look for a Water Bolt among one of the books on the shelf (without going too deep into the dungeon, lest you face the Dungeon Guardian). This item doesn't use a lot of mana and is quite powerful pre-hardmode; it's even a viable weapon against the early bosses. You do need to be lucky in order to find it early, but if you do find it, it certainly qualifies as a Disc One Nuke.
    • If you're into fishing, this can help you really get ahead early on. Try fishing in the ocean; there's a chance of catching a Reaver Shark, an item which resembles a hammerhead shark in design, and functions as a pickaxe. This item can mine ANY pre-hardmode blocks and is arguably as good, if not better than the Molten Pickaxe, which is the best pre-hardmode pickaxe there is. It's a huge Sequence Break. Although the item is rare, it's usually not that difficult to obtain, since Terraria's fishing mechanic is quite generous; You likely won't need to carry that much bait along.
    • The Snowball Cannon is randomly found in ice chests; it uses snowballs for ammunition, which are very easy to craft. For a new character, this item is not only highly practical, it's also quite strong (it can reliably deal with most pre-hardmode enemies), so you're off to a good start if you stumble upon this weapon early on.
  • Drop the Hammer: Much like axes, hammers are not particularly strong as they are intended as tools, but can be used as weapons if necessary.
    • Hamaxes, items that combine the functionality of hammers and axes, are more effective weapons and can be used to defend yourself while breaking spikes or chopping down wood.
  • Dual Boss: The Twins. One of them, Retinazer, shoots Frickin' Laser Beams while the other, Spazmatism, pursues you and breathes hellfire at you.
  • Dug Too Deep: The Underworld.
  • Dungeon Crawling: The Dungeon is located on the far left or right side of the map, and you must defeat a boss to enter it with out being One Hit KOed by a flying skull. The Dungeon holds many rare items that can't be found in other places, and is also swarming with tough enemies.
  • Double Jump: The Cloud in a Bottle allows you to double jump. Doing so will also negate fall damage if done near the bottom of a long fall.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: You can, of course, build one. The Dungeon itself also qualifies.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Eye of Cthulhu & Brain of Cthulhu, the Eater of Worlds, the Wall of Flesh, and many of the other bosses as well.
  • Elemental Crafting: You start out with Copper, then move up through Iron, Silver, and Gold to Demonite, Meteoric Iron, Hellstone, Cobalt, Mythril, Adamantite, and so on.
  • Epic Flail: There are several large morning star style weapons in the game.
  • Escape Rope: The magic mirror, which sends you back to your spawn instantly.
    • Also, the King and Queen statues can be used to rescue stuck/endangered NPCs.
  • Event Flag:
    • Destroying a Shadow Orb with a hammer gives a chance of causing a meteor to fall in your world and is one of the necessary conditions for Goblin Armies to begin appearing. Shattering three of them summons a boss monster called The Eater of Worlds. After it is defeated or you die you have to smash another three to do this, or just use an easily crafted item to summon him at will.
    • Getting 200 health without fighting The Eye of Cthulhu can trigger an event where the Eye can summon itself. If you force summon him after you get the event flag but before he shows up, two Eyes can show up.
    • Defeating the Wall of Flesh activates Hard Mode, where more powerful enemies spawn, and old bosses return with a vengeance, as well as making new ores available.
  • Everything's Better with Sparkles: Most types of magic sparkle, some weapons sparkle when swung (others leave fire trails), and the Mythril armor (and the Hallowed armor it is crafted into) is special in that it generates sparkles in response to light. This includes its own sparkles, so the armor turns into a torch if you stand still.
  • Lava Adds Awesome: Make obsidian! Mine hellstone! Slaughter your enemies! Suffer a messy death! A thousand and one uses!
  • Everything's Worse with Bees: Hornets really, but there's dozens of the bloody things in the underground jungle.
  • Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: Thankfully they only show up in the edge-of-the-map oceans unlike the smaller aquatic enemies. They are powerful enough to be a serious problem for a character with midgame equipment.
  • Excuse Plot: The "story" to Terraria is vague, at best. It's just your stock, generic RPG plot.
  • Expecting Someone Taller: Lampshaded by the Tinkerer:

Tinkerer: I thought you'd be taller.

  • Expy / Palette Swap: The character sprites in alpha were rather blatantly based off of Final Fantasy V combat sprites, but they were thankfully changed for its release on Steam to avoid a lawsuit from Square Enix.
  • Eye Beams: Retinazer and, to a lesser extent, Spazmatism. Also, the eyes of the Wall of Flesh.
  • Eye Scream: A common enemy at night is the Demon Eye; the Eye of Cthulhu also applies tenfold, considering its second form replaces its pupil with a large mouth. Don't forget, when these enemies are defeated, they explode into 2-3 grisly eye bits. The same goes for the Wandering Eyes in Hard Mode, and it only gets worse with The Twins...
  • Fake Difficulty: Multiplayer servers with lag can end up having this in spades, as you bear witness to anomalies like enemies teleporting right in front of your face and hitting you right after you damage them, or staying alive for a few seconds when they should have already died. It can become particularly exasperating if the enemies in question are hard hitters or give you a debuff that leaves you specially vulnerable. For this reason, you're better off keeping your distance on laggy servers and rely on ranged attacks instead; melee becomes far too unpredictable.
  • Feather Flechettes: The Harpies attack this way, and can be difficult to deal with without a ranged form of attack back at them.
  • Featureless Protagonist: The game sports a numerous amount of customizations for your character, meaning that you can add your own personal touch to the character so it looks the way you want it to.
    • And it's played straight in all of the NPC dialogue.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Not per se, as all characters have the same base abilities. However, endgame armor comes with three helmet variations that give you bonuses to respective weapons. There are also fighter, mage and thief (called ranger in game) emblem accessories that boost matching damage and critical hit chance even further.
    • The Wall of Flesh has a chance of dropping (including the aforementioned emblems) a mana powered Laser Rifle (Mage), the Breaker Blade (Fighter) or the Clockwork Assault Rifle (Thief/Ranger).
  • Final Death: In Hardcore mode, you will not be able to continue after your character dies.
    • But unlike the Minecraft example, dying doesn't force you to delete the world, only the character, this means you can start another character to attempt to continue the game.
  • Flaming Sword: The Fiery Greatsword. Sunfury is a flail version.
  • Floating Island: A type of biome consisting of small islands floating a few hundred feet above the ground. These islands are rich with ore, but each also features a small house built of exotic materials and containing a rare item in the chest inside.
  • Floating Platforms: Played straight as well as justified in turns. Justified that underground you can place platforms attached to the (destructible) background wall. Played straight when the background wall is the sky.
    • With the new Ice Rod weapon, you can make very temporary ones. However, you can use them as a wall to attach your not-so-temporary platforms to.
  • Functional Magic: See Alchemy entry for more information.
  • Fungus Humongous: There are mushroom forests underground. You can even chop down the mushrooms and use them in a Healing Potion.
    • There's an NPC who's literally a mushroom. Amusingly, he's called "Truffle".
  • Garden of Evil: The Corruption blights the landscape, turning the sky a sickly yellow, causing plant life to become twisted and thorny, spawning nasty monsters called Eaters of Souls, and turning the nearly harmless Giant Worms into the deadly Devourer (and a much deadlier King Mook called the Eater of Worlds).
    • And for a version that disguises its true nature, we have its equal and opposite number, the Hallow. Pretty, calm, has a giant rainbow in the background...and spawns warring Pixies that shred your hearts like a hot knife through butter, and Unicorns that are eager to impale you.
    • The Crimson biome is an alternative to the Corruption, and it's arguably even more twisted.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: One of the possible responses if you're at full Hit Points and ask the Nurse for healing is "I don't give happy endings."
    • The moon cycles through phases and on Blood Moons two of the female NPCs, the Nurse and the Mechanic, become aggressive and irritable. The Dryad doesn't get as hostile, but does get snippy and sarcastic.

Nurse:"Why are you even here? If you aren't bleeding, you don't need to be here. Get out."

    • The Arms Dealer in particular seems to be the embodiment of the trope.

"Keep your hands off my gun, buddy!"
Mechanic: "[Arms dealer's name] keeps talking about pressing my pressure plate. I told him it was for stepping on."

  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Pretty much every boss, minus Skeletron, who guards the Dungeon. Special mention to the Wyvern, who doesn't even need to be summoned.
  • Grappling Hook Pistol: You can craft a grappling hook as soon as you reach the stone level underground if you get lucky with drops. It is even taken Up to Eleven with the Ivy Whip, an item that gives you three grappling hooks at once from the underground jungle. A new Dual Hook is introduced in 1.1.
  • Green Hill Zone: The regular overworld. It's usually called "forest biome" by players.
  • Grid Inventory: Similar to the one in Minecraft. However, it also has 4 slots that you can use to store money, and 4 to store ammunition.
  • Hand Cannon: The Phoenix Blaster, especially when armed with Meteor Shot or the much more underrated Silver Bullets. Some people swear by this weapon, even choosing it over the Minishark.
  • Healing Factor: Don't get hit for a while, and your health regenerates faster and faster. Goes even quicker with the Band of Regeneration.
    • Hacking huge amounts of HP results in said HP regenerating stupidly fast, Band or no.
  • Healing Potion: Three varieties that you can brew yourself at a alchemy station. You can also buy the lesser healing potion or find it in chests and the dungeon, but you have to craft higher end healing potions. They're also dropped by the hard mode bosses in large quantities. You also can craft mana potions or find them in the dungeon. The highest tier of mana potion has to be bought though.
    • Furthermore, you can combine the lesser or standard kinds to make a restoration potion, which restore both life and mana at once.
  • Heart Container: The heart crystals, which when broken by a hammer, give you a gem that increases your life by one heart.
    • The same system is used for mana with mana crystals you can craft out of 10 fallen stars.
  • Hellfire: Cursed flames, apart from the name, fit this trope quite well: Water won't put them out, and they hurt a lot more than regular fire.
  • Hello, Nurse!!: The Nurse, just like her namesake.
    • It has been confirmed that the Nurse is dating the Arms Dealer.
  • Here There Be Dragons: 1.1 finally gave us dragons, in the form of the Wyvern, a long, slender white dragon that roams the higher parts of the map while in Hard Mode. It has the highest HP of any non-boss enemy so far (4000!).
  • Hit the Ground Harder: Falls are annoyingly lethal without fall damage preventors. But, you can use a grappling hook to avoid damage by speeding into it quicker.
  • I Fell for Hours: The fastest way to get to the Underworld is to dig a two-block wide tunnel from the surface straight down. Maybe trap some water just above Underworld level for a cushion. The result is a fall that takes nearly a minute to complete.
  • Improvised Armor: You can wear an empty bucket as a helmet.
    • You can also use a Fishbowl as a helmet. Except for the fact that it shows your breath meter while you wear it, and you will eventually drown if you don't take it off.
    • This, combined with a Gills Potion, means you can breathe in the Fishbowl. Never again must you worry about drowning, whether it be above or below land!
    • In later versions, you're able to craft armor out of wood.
  • Improvised Weapon: Hammers and axes are not intended as weapons for the most part, but higher end ones can still be effective. In previous versions, the The Staff of Regrowth, usually meant to be a tool for making grass grow quicker, was one, as it used to do more damage than the Muramasa, making it a very viable weapon to bash things to death with, and far easier to get if luck is on your side.
    • Buckets of lava can be used in this manner by dumping them on enemies below you, as can columns of sand held up by a destructible block, or blocks of sand dropped from above. Sand in the Alpha did even more damage to things hit by it. There's a reason Re-Logics tagline is: "Sand is overpowered".
  • Infinity+1 Sword: The Blade of Grass was originally hinted at being this by the developers in their Let's Play. Since 1.1, it, along with Muramasa, the Fiery Greatsword, Night's Edge, and the Phaseblades are all Infinity Minus One Swords (but still capable of dealing extreme damage), with the Adamantite Sword and Excalibur becoming the new Infinity Plus One Swords... At least for a while; ever since they've all been outclassed by the new top tier swords.
    • There was an absolutely broken gun that is unobtainable in the game, the Zapinator, which could shoot very rapidly and did an insane amount of damage. It is likely that the creators used this while making the game so they would not have to worry about enemies.
    • The Flamarang before 1.1 was an Infinity Plus One Throwing Item. Hits almost as hard as the FAR slower-swinging Fiery Greatsword so it has huge DPS, particularly when close, and, unsurprisingly, has a far higher range, combined with being a ranged weapon which does not depend on ammunition. Now, the Light Disk is the preferred choice, since it has almost all the Flamarang had to offer, plus ricocheting and, if you have made more than one, the ability to spam up to five of them.
    • Of the spears in the game, Gungnir is one of the best, although even more powerful spears have been introduced since.
    • The Drax used to be the infinity plus one tool, capable of mining anything instantly, and also delivering a reasonably hard barrage of blows to any enemy that gets close enough.
    • The bricks and walls that make up the dungeon are something of an infinity plus one material: they're one of the only non-ore building material that is immune to explosions.
  • Instrument of Murder: The Magical Harp
  • Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Present and accounted for in the Dungeon. Dungeon Slimes and pots have a chance of dropping keys when killed/broken and keys may occasionally spawn in dungeon chests, and they can unlock Locked Golden Chests in the dungeon and Floating Islands once and are then destroyed. Shadow Keys avert this, where you will only need one key for every single shadow chest.
  • In-Universe Game Clock: The game counts one second as one minute and the day/night cycle is generally 24 minutes. There are also moon phases and watch items that tell you the time. Some bosses can only be summoned at night.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: You can only carry 41 items at a time (by using the trash as a slot), and those items are divided into stacks of varying size (99 for torches, for example). This means you have to manage your inventory carefully if you plan to go digging for treasure, and you'll have to backtrack often to unload items once you invariably run out of room. On the plus side, there are a great many chests scattered around the world, enough that you won't have to throw anything worthwhile away (and in the unlikely event you don't have enough, you can always craft more with some wood and iron). The vendors can also be used to offload some of the loot, while many players carry a piggy bank around with them to use as storage, bag of holding style. The much more expensive safe can add even more space.
  • Invulnerable Civilians: Averted. At one point, there was a near-invincible civilian in the form of the Guide (who could still be killed by lava, but would quickly respawn), but an update changed this to allow him to die like the other NPCs. NPCs still can't be killed by the player under normal circumstances, although it is possible to with magma.
    • Killing him by throwing his voodoo doll into a lava pit summons the Wall of Flesh.
  • Item Crafting: When the game is all about exploration through digging, finding and using ore only makes sense thematically, in the early game, and for specific items.
  • Joke Item: The angel statues. The tooltip even says "It doesn't do anything."
    • Eventually this was patched so that it became a literal statue, which could be placed. However, it still doesn't do anything other than being a fancy statue.
    • Also the "Whoopie Cushion" which is very rare and produces a farting noise when used.
    • Subverted with the Snowball Cannon. It seems like an inefficient concept, launching snowballs at your enemies... But it's actually a good weapon, surprisingly.
  • Jungle Japes: Available in both surface and subterranean variants.
  • Killer Rabbit: Since they're entirely harmless, you might not even mind if bunnies hop right into your house. And then the Blood Moon rises, and they turn into terrifying Corrupt Bunnies, and they're already inside...
  • Kill It with Fire: Pretty much everything you can craft out of Hellstone involves flames. The Molten Fury bow will cause wooden arrows to catch fire when you fire them. Also, the Flamelash lets you cast fireballs. And now, as of 1.1, there are flamethrowers. Crispy fun for the whole family!
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: You. See that room underground guarding that pretty gold chest? Go ahead, take what's inside. Better yet, take the entire chest. Even better, take the entire room. There is literally nothing you can't uproot with the right tools.
  • King Mook: The Eye of Cthulhu is a giant Demon Eye. The Eater of Worlds is a giant Devourer worm that can break into smaller segments. The King Slime is... well, you get the idea.
  • Knife Nut: Throwing Knives are a pretty reliable weapon early in the game. Their most powerful version has unlimited ammunition (but consumes mana).
  • Knockback: Core mechanic. Preventable with a shield item, if you can find it. Problematic without it.
  • Laser Blade: The Phaseblade is unabashedly a lightsaber, complete with the classic "vwomm" sound effect. Happily, the gems you use in its construction affect the color of the blade, allowing for white, red, yellow, blue, green, and purple Phaseblades.
    • Through Crafting the Phaseblade with Crystal Shards, you can make the Phasesaber (41 base attack and Light Knockback).
  • Lethal Lava Land: There is a Lethal Lava Land at the bottom of every map. On the large maps you need to dig around 2700 feet below sea level to get to it. It has ore so hot that you can't touch (but can mine) without a special item.
  • Let's Play: A few were made pre-release, including one by PaperbatVG (Pbat), one by the Yogscast, and one by the creators themselves.
    • Tobygames made one, too.
    • Unsurprisingly, YouTube was overloaded with LPs upon the official release, and no small number of these were prominent Minecraft LPers.
  • Light Is Not Good: In fact, it is almost as nasty as the dark. God, those pixies hurt!
  • Lord British Postulate: This used to exist in full force with the Guide. A common hobby of people was bringing lava to him and trapping him in a pit with the stuff, watching him burn to death. Now, however, he's just as mortal as the other NPCs, especially if you have a Guide voodoo doll, which lets you attack and kill him. It even kills him if destroyed by other means. And doing so summons a boss.
    • The other NPCs can't be harmed by the player directly, but they can be killed by monsters or lava; one of the newer ones even drops a special hat when killed, as if players weren't murdering NPCs enough already.
    • Also, the supposed-to-be-undefeatable Dungeon Guardian has been killed many, many times.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Due to being Made of Plasticine (see below), blood moons and goblin invasions usually end with bloody chunks scattered all over the place.
  • Made of Plasticine: Whenever you die, no matter if it's from being digested by a Mother Slime, devoured by the Eater of Worlds, or even just drowning, you will always explode into a pile of bloody chunks.
    • Applies in general--everything, from monsters to NPCs to players, is reduced to vaguely identifiable component bits upon death.
    • Bunnies are particularly susceptible to this. One hit from any kind of enemy and not only are they reduced to tiny pieces, but those tiny pieces go flying.
    • Amusingly, monsters (and players) also explode if they die from poison or being on fire.
  • Magic Points: You start off with no mana, and must collect falling stars in order to forge crystal stars which let you increase your mana meter.
  • Magitek: The Space Gun and Rocket Boots.
  • Meaningful Name: Retinazer is an eye that shoots lazers. Skeletron Prime is a robot version of Skeletron. The Minishark is a shark-shaped minigun. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
  • Metal Slime: "Pinky" is a bright pink slime that randomly spawns during the day. It has 10 times the HP of the basic Green Slime (14 vs. 150) and suffers double from knockback (hit it with an axe and watch it fly), but is basically the same, except for the color and the fact that Pinky drops gold coins upon death. To put that in perspective, you need 100 copper coins for one silver coin, and 100 silver coins for one gold. Green slimes drop about 20-50 copper coins. Pinky drops the equivalent of 10,000 copper coins.
  • Meteoric Iron: When you cause a Meteor to fall from breaking a shadow orb, you can mine it and make an armor set that regenerates your mana at a faster pace.
    • In newer versions, the Meteor Suit instead provides a power boost to magic weapons and reduces the mana cost of the Space Gun to zero.
  • Metroidvania: While the exploration in the game is not necessarily the most important thing, you can find several valuable upgrades by spelunking underground.
  • Mercy Invincibility: You get this for about half a second after being hit. A new accessory in 1.1 makes the duration of this a little longer.
  • Money Spider: All enemies drop coins (among other things) when killed.
  • Monsters Everywhere: The Goblin invasion formula to determine how many will attack? 100 + (50*number of players with more than 200 health). For a single player over 200 HP, that's 150 goblins ranging from merely annoying to tough, with the max of 255 players in a server, there can be 12,850 goblins in an army.
  • Mook Maker: Besides some bosses summoning flunkies, there are several statues that will produce monsters when set up correctly.You can abuse them to produce items en masse through feeding the monsters to a death trap.
    • Monsters spawned from the statues do not drop coins or their unique drops though. For example, slimes still drop their regular gel but no money, and the Mimic will not drop its highly useful rare drops at all.
  • More Dakka: The Minishark, which upgrades into the equally rapid-firing Star Cannon or Megashark.
  • Mundane Utility: Magic Missile is useful for many, many things. For starters, the missile tracks your cursor and lasts as long as you hold the mouse button down, making it easy to hit agile mooks. The missile is decently powerful, can slip through small spaces that you might not be able to attack through, generates quite a lot of light, and doesn't expire when cutting through plants. Jungle thorns blocking your way at an inconvenient angle? Trim them with a magic missile! Flamelash is the same but brighter and more powerful, and update 1.1 introduces the Rainbow Rod, which is even stronger and all rainbow-y.
    • Gungnir is not only a fast, hard-hitting long-reaching sacred spear...but it also allows you to see through walls.
    • Phaseblades and Phasesabers as well as any weapon on fire such as the Firey Greatsword or Molten Hamaxe can be used to light up dark caves while exploring. Combined with the Mithril armor which shines for several seconds AFTER a light source is cast on it lets you ditch the otherwise necessary illumination tools while mining.
  • Muzzle Flashlight: While trying it with guns would probably not be efficient, it's very possible to pull this off with certain magic spells or glowing weapons. See Mundane Utility.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Wall of Flesh. Somewhat inverted, actually, because you can't run away from this thing. If you try to or attempt to get behind it, it will drag you back in front of it. And don't think that Magic Mirror will save you either...
  • Nerf: Each new patch seems to do this to at least one item. So far, the Aqua Scepter, Molten Armor, Phoenix Blaster, Muramasa, Rocket Boots, and Star Cannon have all been brought down to size. A few of these proved so unpopular they were subsequently reversed or replaced - the Star Cannon had its high fire rate restored, while the new Demon and Angel Wings, when worn along with the Rocket Boots, allow for much higher vertical flight combined with negation of fall damage.
    • The Shadow Orb used to emit a nice amount of light, but it got nerfed repeatedly to the point it moves very slow and is quite dim. It's barely worth even using anymore.
  • New Game+: Not the traditional sense, as when you start a new world map you take along any items in your inventory if you choose to play with the same character. The piggy bank item creates a storage space that is linked in all the worlds and tied specifically to you making it handy for transferring materials rapidly between worlds.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Congratulations on making it to the underworld and slaying the abomination that dwells there! You're told that "The ancient spirits of light and dark have been released." What does that mean? A variety of much tougher enemies all over the world, and the Corruption spreads much more aggressively.
  • Nocturnal Mooks: Both the Zombies and the Demon Eyes only come out at night and quickly run away when dawn comes. In addition, two of the bosses (the Eye of Cthulhu and Skeletron) and all the hardmode bosses can only be summoned at night. Inverted, however, with aboveground slimes, who will no longer spawn at dusk.
  • No Periods, Period: Averted. Female NPCs are more irritable during the Blood Moon event.
  • No Sense of Direction: The goblins tied up the tinkerer for pointing this out to them. Also the players, because no one knows for sure whether the sun is to the South (and East/West to the left/right) or to the North (and he planet revovling counter-clockwise). The wiki itself is incredibly inconsistent about it.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You: You can stop fall damage with certain accessories (Lucky Horseshoe, Obsidian Horseshoe, Angel/Demon Wings), using a grappling hook to hook onto a wall before you land, using the Rocket Boots to slow your fall, double-jumping before landing, or landing in water or cobwebs. If you do take fall damage, it can be severe.
  • One-Hit Kill: Besides being crushed by the Wall of Flesh or running out of time against Skeletron, Explosive blocks are this.
    • More specifically, Explosive blocks deal 250 base damage, but all damage dealt from other players or to oneself (which includes explosions) is doubled, resulting in a whopping 500 damage.The maximum HP a player can have is 400, and the best protective gear and buffs can prevent at most 40-50 damage, meaning that a trip mine will instantly kill anyone within range. Trip mines are randomly scattered underground.
    • Trying to enter the dungeon before killing Skeletron will cause the Dungeon Guardian to appear who does over 9000 damage.
  • Optional Boss: A lot of the bosses are optional, but the one that stands out is Queen Bee. She drops potentially great loot, but she doesn't fall into the "chronological" order of the bosses.
    • King Slime is a randomly encountered boss, so obviously this trope applies.
    • Duke Fishron, later on. It's basically the hardmode equivalent of Queen Bee.
  • Ordinary Drowning Skills: Initially, your character sinks like a rock in water and will drown if you can't reach air. Special items like flippers and the breathing reed turn you into snorkel diver instead of a drowning rock, while the Diving Helmet significantly increases your air capacity. Neptune's Shell turns your character into an aquatic creature when equipped and in water, allowing you to remain underwater indefinitely, move underwater at the same speed as on land, and incorporating the effect of the flippers.
  • Organ Drops: Slimes drop slime gel, Soul Eaters drop rotten chunks of meat and Demon Eyes drop lenses.
  • Our Goblins Are Wickeder: Every once in a while you'll be warned that a Goblin Army is approaching. You'd be forgiven for dismissing this message as a non-threat, but in fact Goblins can be a serious threat to your life, your NPC inhabitants, and your clicking finger. Unless, of course, you have advanced equipment and increased max life.
  • Overly Long Gag: The Goblin Army invasions can feel like this at higher levels. Spending an entire in-game day killing 150 (or more, depending on how many players are in your server; the maximum is potentially over 10,000) Goblins of varying types comes off as more of a nuisance than an Oh Crap moment when they barely do much damage, even more so if your house is rather large, which can end up confusing the goblins since they try to target you first.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: There's plenty of great items in this game, but certain ones stick out above the rest, to the point it makes a lot of the others, while not being bad weapons, quite weak by comparison.
    • Especially true for gold/platinum armor. It'll probably take a lot of spelunking before you gather enough of these rare ores to craft a full set. While it offers decent protection, it's inferior to most armor sets obtained through exploring the special biomes, such as the jungle. Patiently mining until you can craft gold/platinum armor is probably a waste of time, since you'll likely obtain a blatantly superior armor set not long after, once you tackle any of the unique biomes.
    • Light's Bane, the Demonite sword, has high DPS but its range is underwhelming. Compare this to the Crimson equivalent, the Blood Butcherer, which is both larger and does more damage. It swings slower, but that's highly negligible in practice.
    • Luckily this is balanced out in Expert Mode, where a Corruption world gets a boon over Crimson ones: The Eater of Worlds' treasure bag always includes the Worm Scarf, an incredible item which grants damage resistance based on percentage; it remains useful throughout the entire game. What does Brain of Cthulhu's treasure bag get you instead? Brain of Confusion, which is a decent accessory at best, giving you a chance to confuse enemies when struck.
  • Oxygen Meter: Clearly visible in the game and health begins to drain after you run out of air. It is possible to keep yourself alive with health items and having a large health meter for lengthy periods of time.
  • Palette Swap: There are seven different versions of the basic Slime monster.
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang: Represented in the game by the Enchanted Boomerang, Flamarang, and Thorn Chakram which supposedly have limited seeking ability for enemies. They are also capable of returning to the player through solid walls.
  • Planet Heck: Dig too far down and you'll end up in the Underworld, filled with lava that will more than likely kill you instantly, powerful monsters, and ore you can't even touch without hurting yourself unless you have a special accessory.
  • Player Versus Player: A game type available in Multiplayer.
  • Random Event: Meteors can fall without breaking a shadow orb, The Eye of Cthulhu can show up anytime you have +10 hearts and haven't fought him once yet, Blood Moons cause a mass of zombies and Demon Eyes to spawn and seek you out while allowing zombies to open doors, and the Goblin invasion.
  • Randomly Drops: Some items can only be found as rare drops. Happy hunting!
  • Randomly Generated Levels: In the modern pseudo-Roguelike vein of having an entire world randomly generated.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: The Dryad. She hints at this during a random conversation. "I wish that gun seller would stop talking to me, doesn't he realise I'm 500 years old?"
  • Regenerating Health: Health slowly regenerates, with the rate slowly increasing, and resetting when taking damage. The Band of Regeneration provides a significant increase in the rate.
  • Rule of Cool: The Minishark and Megashark. Half shark, half gun, all awesome.
  • Sand Worm: The worms you find underground are no less than twice as long as you are tall.
    • Their corrupted brethren, the Devourers, are fatter, larger and meaner. Their boss version, the Eater of Worlds is even bigger, and will split into more worms if cut in half. These smaller worms get faster, but deal just as much damage if they hit you. Do it wrong and you'll have half a dozen crazy worms trying to eat you all at once[2].
    • In the Underworld/Hell scape there are bone serpents.
    • Once Hard Mode is unlocked, you now also have Diggers and World Feeders, essentially bigger and stronger versions of the Giant Worm and Devourer. And then you also have the Eater of World's bigger brother, The Destroyer.
    • Later on, literal sand worms were added.
  • Scenery Porn: The overworld backgrounds added in 1.1 are rather nice-looking, and change depending on which biome you happen to be in.
  • Schizo-Tech: In the same game that shows players running around in metal armor, swinging swords and fighting goblins, you also have firearms, mana-powered laser guns and the jet pack-like Rocket Boots.
    • Special mention goes to the Minishark and its upgrade the Megashark, which are fully automatic miniguns that shoot musket balls.
    • And also the wires and switches system, where it is possible to have a wall switch or timer that turns tiki torches on and off.
  • Schmuck Bait: Go on, step into the dungeon, even though the old man NPC in front of it is telling you not to.
  • Scratch Damage: Everything will do at least 1 damage.
  • Segmented Serpent: The Eater of Worlds is the most dramatic of these, but there are others. All of the other worm enemies have multiple segments of varying size and HP, and to kill them, you have to destroy any one. This can prove difficult with Bone Serpents.
    • With the inclusion of debuffs, these enemies become very vulnerable to flamethrowers and cursed flames, as each segment burns individually, draining their HP very fast.
  • Sequence Break: There's plenty of ways to get far ahead in the game quickly.
    • You don't need to fight all the bosses. It's possible to go fight Skeletron on the very first night and win, though it is very challenging. Items found in the dungeon should be sufficient enough to prepare you against the Wall of Flesh boss fight. If you're confident in your abilities, you could skip the other areas for the time being and make a beeline for the dungeon, right at the start (although you do NEED to fight Skeletron before entering).
    • Don't feel like spelunking for ores in order to craft armor? Head for the jungle instead. If you can handle the onslaught, then even a meagre amount of jungle items (the majority of them are dropped by enemies) allows you to craft Jungle gear, including the Ivy Whip (an incredibly useful grappling hook), the Blade of Grass, jungle armor (which has fairly respectable defense) and so on.
    • Fishing can get you quite useful things:
      • Fishing on the ocean can get you a pickaxe that is one of the best before hardmode.(See Disc One Nuke)
      • Crates can give you ores or their respective bars. One strategy is withholding crates until you reach hardmode, when every crate, even those fished before, have a chance to drop hardmode ores.
  • Set Bonus: Each type of armor material has one of these. Some of them just boost your defense, but others speed up your attacks/movement, reduce mana usage, or emit light.
  • Ship Tease: The goblin tinker and the mechanic are always asking about each other.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Played straight with the hardmode firearm, the Shotgun. You won't hit stuff much farther than a few inches from your character, but since it uses 1 round to make 4 damaging pellets (much more so with crystal or cursed flame mods), it's a beast at (close to) point blank range.
  • Shout-Out: As of the Steam release, one of the title bar text variants says "Shut Up And Dig Gaiden"
  • Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Necro Armor is made of bones and cobwebs.
  • Skeleton Key: The Shadow Key is this. It's rare - It can only be found in the near engame Dungeon, but once you have just one, it'll be all you need to unlock every Shadow Chest in the game. Golden Keys, on the other hand...
  • Slimes: The basic and first monster you run into in the game. Has reached meme status on the fan forums.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: There are Snow biomes, which can overlap with corruption etc, but no actual ice.
  • Snowlems: Using the snow globe you get from gifts will pit you against the Frost Legion, which is an entire army of these. They're a lot harder than the goblins.
  • Soft Water: You can fall for a whole minute and survive if you land in water one and half a blocks deep. Yes, falling from the surface to the Underworld (about 1 mile all told) into a puddle half as deep as your character is tall lets him/her survive completely unscathed.
    • This also works with lava, but if the person doesn't catch on quick enough they can easily burn to death instead.
  • Sprint Shoes: Several accessories allow you to run faster. Also, wearing a full set of Shadow Armor gives a speed boost.
  • Status Buff: Done via equipment that fits into slots and potions the player creates out of various ingredients.
    • Equally, there are status debuffs, including potion-drinking cooldowns, being on fire, darkness (reduced light vision), and cursed (unable to use items).
  • Stealth Pun: The Randomly Generated Levels and random drops mean that seeking a particular item is often a Luck-Based Mission. Appropriately, the game's items include a horseshoe, fallen stars, the Blue Moon, a shiny red balloon, and hearts. No clovers, though.
  • Sticky Bomb: Can be created by combining slime gel with bombs. The bombs, sadly, only stick to terrain and not monsters.
  • Stop Helping Me!: The guide NPC who functions as a newbie hint guide. Unfortunately, he likes to path around the players and can enter their normally safe houses, bringing the monsters howling at the doors inside with him. NPCs running from monsters who have gotten into their homes can also run to your house and open the door that kept them out.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: You get quite a lot of explosives from pots and chest, and the Demolitionist is mad about explosives. One of his quotes is "Why purify the world when you can blow it up?" Funnily enough, using explosives is a perfectly valid method of removing the corruption.
  • Spam Attack: Some magic weapons can be used this way, if you have enough mana.
  • Swiss Army Weapon: The Hamdrax is some kind of strange artifact that can be used as a drill, chainsaw and hammer. It also works reasonably well as a weapon.
  • Teasing Creator: Redigit loves posting teasers of bigger updates, it seems.
  • Teleport Spam: What the magic based enemies do right now. The Imps and magic skeletons aren't too bad about it, but the Goblin Mages take it Up to Eleven.And can even appear in front of constructed walls, which otherwise prevent monsters from spawning.And their attacks pass through walls as well.That's right, even housing your allies in the thickest garrison or the most secure base can still get them killed from a randomly-teleporting goblin.
    • Chaos Elementals do this FAR worse than the Goblins - they run at you and teleport all over the place to confuse you. The other enemies in The Hallow can do this to a lesser extent too.
  • Time Limit Boss: Most bosses have to be defeated before sunrise, or they will run away. Skeletron and Skeletron Prime will instantly kill you instead. The Wall of Flesh will travel from one end of the map to the other as you fight it, and will instantly kill you if it reaches the other side.
  • This Is a Drill: When you get access to cobalt, mythril and adamantite, you can make drills. They smash through stone like pickaxes, and they do so very, very fast. You can also use them as a weapon, of course, and they don't do too badly against small foes.
  • Too Dumb to Live: When night falls and monsters begin assaulting your home, NPCs stop wandering around and hide in their rooms. They don't, however, necessarily close the doors behind them.
    • During the Goblin Army event, in which hordes of goblin warriors and wizards attack your town, the NPCs continue to walk around outside. Because it's daytime. It's always safe in the daytime, right?
    • If you don't have a shelter that can support your guide (it requires a table, chair, and light source), he will constantly wander near you. This means constantly opening the doors to let zombies in.
    • In general, friendly NPC behavior is relatively simple. They can easily get themselves trapped out in the open and be unable to find their way back unless you literally wall their path every step of the way. They're honestly better off if you just wall them inside your house. Houses need at least one entrance to be considered suitable. There's no rule saying the NPC has to be able to reach it.
  • Tsundere: The Nurse can come off as this: Some of her quotes suggest a Team Mom mentality, others that she only sticks around because you pay her.
  • Tunnel King: You're required to become one if you want to get much accomplished.
  • Turn Your Head and Cough: One of the Nurse's lines upon talking to her.
  • Triumphant Reprise: The Hallow theme is a nice remix of the normal Forest biome theme. The Underground Hallow theme is a remix of most of the biome themes in the game. The Underground Corruption theme is a trippy, sinister remix of the Corruption theme.
  • Underground Level: Everything between the overworld, which is a Green Hill Zone, and the bottom of the map, which is a Lethal Lava Land, is this, except for the Underground Jungle and dungeon.
  • Unobtainium: Now in six distinct flavors, you have Demonite which is dropped by boss monsters and found in extremely rare small clusters that are usually only enough for a single bar or so, Meteorite which only appears after you destroy a Shadow Orb, and Hellstone, which you can only find in the underworld. Mythril, Cobalt, and Adamantite are only available after defeating the Wall of Flesh and are used for endgame equipment.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted with the flamethrower here. Not only does it pack a punch and causes damage over time due to setting enemies on fire, its range is quite nice and its ammo is hilariously easy to get. Those slimes hopping around? All that gel that is cramming your pockets and your chests? Yeah, that's what you use to fuel it.
  • Viral Marketing: The developers pay yes-men to patrol internet forums and praise the game to ridiculous levels. Less wholesomely, they have strong-armed YouTube staff into deleting negative reviews of the game.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: You can use certain accessories to turn into a werewolf during a full moon, or a merman to swim better.
  • "Wake-Up Call" Boss: Skeletron will teach you the meaning of pain if you've gotten cocky tearing through the Eater of Worlds and the Eye of Cthulhu.
  • Walk, Don't Swim: Without special accessories or equipment the character is limited to walking and jumping underwater.
  • Warmup Boss: The Eye of Cthulhu is usually the first boss the player will face (because it can spawn automatically when you're strong enough) and fairly simple to beat with a good ranged weapon. Its attacks aren't all that strong, either, and dodging it is simple enough with a few levels of wood platforms.
    • Averted in Expert Mode where every boss is a huge pain in the ass, even the early ones.
  • We Can Rebuild Them: The Eye of Cthulhu, the Eater of Worlds and Skeletron are 'rebuilt' into deadlier, cybernetic versions of themselves (the Twins, the Destroyer, and Skeletron Prime respectively) so that they can get their vengeance on you when you reach Hard Mode.
  • What the Hell, Player?: The Guide Voodoo Doll has the description "You are a terrible person."
  • Wide Open Sandbox: In a similar vein to Minecraft, the game throws you in at the surface of a pristine wilderness and sends you off to do your thing.
  • The Wiki Rule: This way. You'll probably end up here due to the nature of this game.
  • Winged Humanoid: Harpies. You can become one yourself by crafting and equipping wings.
  • Wrench Wench: The Mechanic.
  • X Meets Y: Minecraft meets Metroidvanias.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The game allows your character to have hair of almost any color.
  • Zerg Rush:
    • The goblin army event causes more than 100 goblins to spawn on both sides of you and all come after you. Have fun killing warriors from both directions while pelted with arrows and magic from afar.
    • In the alpha, the slimes had a high spawn rate and would swarm players while they tried to work making it difficult get your shelter built. While the slime spawn rate has been toned down, this can still happen on blood moons with the zombies and demonic eyes.
    • Same applies to the hordes of Skeletons, Giant Worms, and Mother Slimes in the earliest versions of the game. Their spawn rate has been reduced since, thankfully.
    • Then in the Underground Jungle you have Hornets which can spawn in swarms of up to 6. Did we mention they have 100 health and can deal 40 damage per (ranged) hit? If you go into the Underground Jungle on multiplayer, expect that spawn rate to go much higher.
    • Hornets have been nerfed in later updates -- they only have 50 or so HP and their ranged attacks are much weaker (though they can still inflict poison). They're still annoying en masse, though.
    • Also have fun in the Underworld where Imps never stop spawning, throwing fireballs through walls at you while teleporting all over the place. Then come the bone serpents. The spawn rate was mercifully toned down in a patch, but can still be tough at times, although you will no longer regularly have to deal with three simultaneous bone serpents.
    • The Underworld also includes flaming bats and demons, which will constantly swarm you if you're traveling the "safer" route by grappling along the ceiling.
    • Eater of Souls and their variants in the Corruption spawn in massive numbers, sometimes up to a dozen at once, and charge the player relentlessly. Any low-level player wandering into that area is unlikely to get back out alive.
    • In the Crimson biome, you're bound to get rushed by spiders if you enter the chasms.
    • In hard mode, especially before you get decent hard mode equipment, blood moon can become tougher than the normal mode bosses ever were.
    • Snowmen too when you use the Snowglobe item.
    • You can incite this with a water candle, though it only has a modest effect and needs to be in your hand in lieu of a weapon, making it normally only useful for attracting monsters to traps. A similar effect can happen when you consume a Battle Potion. For the record, both of these items stack so try to use both for maximum effect.
    • The enemies in the dungeon never stop coming. Wizards attack you from random directions, skeleton warriors charge in more than six at a time, and flying skulls can shut off your ability to attack briefly.
  1. ↑ Unless they have an Obsidian Skull or are under the effects of an Obsidian Skin Potion, respectively, in which case they are immune to those damage sources, playing it perfectly straight again
  2. ↑ With good armour, this becomes a viable strategy to kill it more quickly
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