Terraria

So recently I have actually been playing something other than World of Warcraft at times—namely Terraria. It has been a surprising amount of fun really, I mean I’ve played Terraria before and gotten to the start of hardmode¹ but not really much farther than that. This time I and a guildie actually played through the game on expert² managing to kill all of the bosses though I believe there are still a few events we haven’t seen but doing those would be mostly for completionisms sake as we don’t really need the rewards provided anymore.

So what is Terraria?

Basically 2D Minecraft with bosses to kill and RPG elements in the form of loot, gear and spells and a tiny bit of one might say leveling. Now let’s break that down a bit.

Why do I say 2D Minecraft? Well, the most recongisable feature of Minecraft is being able to mine and gather things and use those things for crafting and this is a central feature of Terraria as well, but Terraria is a 2D game where Minecraft is 3D. This is the central progression system in Terraria, as getting better materials feeds into the RPG element of loot, gear and power progression. The better the gear, the more one survives and the more damage one deals.

However, these materials are not only found through mining or the like, it also requires killing mobs and bosses—especially bosses for the more powerful things. Sometimes the bosses drop straight out equipment, other times crafting materials which are used to craft the more powerful equipment.

So in essence, the goal of the game is to mine some ore, smelt some bars, get a decent set of starter armour and weapons and take down some bosses in order to get better equipment to take down the harder bosses or maybe just harder monsters out in the world. Or just being able to mine the better ores, there’s also a progression of pickaxes enabling one to mine better ore.

Why is this game actually really awesome?

It combines the whole creation aspect of crafting not only gear but structures into the RPG mechanics really well, to the point where for most of the bosses one actually creates custom built arenas in order to have a better chance of defeating them. Sometimes these arenas are really simple, take for example the Wall of Flesh—a big wall of flesh that moves from one side of the map towards the other and one does not want to get stuck inside of it. So the arena is really simple, just a long straight path along one can run and shoot at the boss as the terrain in Hell where the boss resides is usually dangerous—due to lava—or simply otherwise hard to navigate due to housing.

Other bosses, like the Moon Lord or the Destroyer are better defeated by building a small cage barely big enough to fit the player where one sits and shoots at the boss from, giving protection from some of the bosses attacks but far from all as they tend to go through walls.

And lastly, there are the simple big cages with platforms³ allowing one to better dodge the bosses abilities, especially useful against something like Skeletron. These usually have solid walls to allow player spells to bounce around inside the arena so that they may hit the boss several times.

This ability to mould the world along with the wide selection of weapons and spells makes the game really diverse when going from start to finish. One is also forced to keep changing weapons and spells as one progresses, meaning one has to adapt to a slightly altered playstyle. This is most evident with spells, since spells usually have very different effects meaning one really gets to change how one casts as the game goes on.

As the game progresses one also gets nice utility items like grappling hooks which allow one to much more easily move around the caverns of the world and wings improving one’s mobility even more. Both are also rather essential to kill many bosses, since dodging without these accessories becomes difficult if not impossible.

Closing words

All in all, the game is a really enjoyable experience with lots of diverse weapons and I’m kind of sad that it’s over. Now I suppose I need to find something else to do along mythic+ and raids, especially since we’ll probably slowly be raiding less with progress being over. Right, that’s a thing, Argus is down! Not for me, but for the guild, I’m looking forward to taking my own poke at the boss when the time comes.