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DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.


Let me just quote the OP from the games thread...

Terraria is a 2D building-adventure game by Andrew “Redigit” Spinks where you fight monsters, craft armor, tools, weaponry, and other goodies to build yourself a giant, phallic home to call your own. It was released on May 16th, 2011 and is currently :10bux: on Steam. Go get it, it’s loving awesome.

2D building-adventure game?

It's a 2D game where the world is comprised of individual tiles. Tiles that you can dig up and relocate, in order to build structures. There are also a lot of monsters to fight, and they have loot that you will probably want to grab and then use to kill more monsters. Imagine if Minecraft and a Castlevania game had a child, and you start to get the idea.

The game came out 6 years ago, and it has received three major updates since then, not to mention the numerous smaller updates. The last massive update was patch 1.3, which came out in June of 2015. The last small update came out on Sept 9th, 2016 - 17 days ago as of the time this OP was written.

Sounds great and all, but what kind of LP is this going to be?

This is going to be a tutorial LP, done in screenshot style. I've started up a new character on a new empty world just for the LP. The goal will be to show off the general progression of the game, and to cover as much content as is humanly possible. This game does have a very definite end point, and we will get there.

Spoilers?

Please none, if possible. There's a thread in games if you need to talk about something we haven't seen yet.

I also encourage people who both have and have not played before to create a character and play along with the LP! You do have the game, right?

If not you should click on a link and get it.

Updates:

Something I want to point out for future readers is that all of the update titles are song names. You can click on the little asterisk here in the table of contents to listen to the song. You can also click on the title itself in the update to hear it as well.

Normal Mode:

#1 - Small, Small World *
#2 - When the Sun Goes Down *
#3 - Brand New Day *
#4 - My Town *
#5 - Sixteen Tons *
#6 - Even Flow *
#7 - Walk Like an Egyptian *
#8 - On Top of the World *
#9 - Weapon of Choice *
#10 - Eyes on Me *
#11 - Crimson and Clover *
#11.5 - This is Halloween *
#12 - Foolish Pride *
#13 - Heartbreaker *
#14 - Through the Fire and Flames *
#14.5 - The Man Who Sold the World * *
#15 - Snake Eater *
#16 - Welcome to the Jungle *
#17 - Bat out of Hell *
#18 - Cold as Ice *
#19 - Love in an Elevator *
#20 - Earth Temple *
#21 - All Along the Watchtower *
#22 - Honey Bee *
#23 - Tribute *
#24 - Now That's What I Call Polka! *
#25 - Another Brick in the Wall *

Hard Mode:

#26 - Gone Guru *
#27 - Magic Dance *
#28 - Goblins! *
#29 - Werewolves of London *
#30 - Entry of the Gladiators *
#31 - Shiver my Timbers *
#32 - The Trooper *
#33 - Stones *
#34 - Jungle Boogie *
#35 - Tarzan Boy *
#36 - One Night in Bangkok *
#37 - The Big Boom *
#38 - Monster Mash *
#39 - Mars Forever *
#40 - The Night Santa Went Crazy *
#41 - Dangerous Raid *
#42 - I'm Your Moon *
#43 - Cult of Personality *
#44 - It's the End of the World *
#45 - Interstice of the Dimension *
#46 - Hopes and Dreams Save the World *

LogicalFallacy fights Expert Mode Eye of Cthulhu

DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jan 21, 2017

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DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
#1 - Small, Small, World

Welcome everyone to this Terraria tutorial LP. We're going to jump forward a bit at the start and skip character and world creation. There are very specific reasons for that, so just bear with me for now, alright?



So here we have three characters. First is a techno Madoka Kaname with a halo and sweet shades. Below her is a wizard wearing a trenchcoat. Finally below the wizard is our hero protagonist for this LP, Sam. As you can see, Sam is wearing a green Disneyland tee and faded jeans.

I've omitted the two previous character names because they're not relevant. Also because both have the same (lovely) name and I don't want my shame being known. The wizard doesn't have a playtime listed because she's my character from 2013 and was created before the game tracked individual playtimes. But trust me when I say she has probably a similar playtime to miss 76-and-a-quarter hours up top.

You might also notice that Sam has 80% less HP and 90% less MP than either character. That will change before too long, though. Finally, all three characters have the term "softcore" which means that dying incurs the least severe penalty. There are also mediumcore and hardcore "difficulty" modes.

Softcore characters drop a portion of their money on death. Mediumcore causes you to drop absolutely everything in your inventory, in addition to the portion of money. Finally hardcore just deletes the character when it dies. The mediumcore and hardcore "difficulties" are not fun, and in my opinion, anyone that argues otherwise is merely deluding themselves.



Here we have our selection of worlds. Refreshing and Opposites are my two old (and thoroughly endgame) worlds. Rivershire is the world that we will be using for the LP. The different colors on the trees mean different things, but that will be explained in the future. For now just take note that Rivershire is green and red, while the other two are green, purple, and yellow.

All three worlds are large. When you create a new world, you can select between three different sizes, small, medium, and large. For a good rule of thumb, large worlds are twice as wide and twice as deep as small ones, with medium sized fitting in between. Some people might claim that you should never play solo on a large world. These people hate fun.

Finally I want to stress something very important.

If you are new to the game, do not make an expert mode world!

Expert mode assumes you know how to play the game already, and adjusts the difficulty accordingly. Early game monsters will kill you in one hit. This LP will not be done in expert mode. gently caress expert mode.

So do you have all that? No? Don't worry too awful much about it. For now let's just hit play on Rivershire and jump into the game.

(click for big)

Terraria Music - Day

Normally I'm going to chop up every screenshot for visibility's sake, and to highlight what I'm specifically pointing out. But in this one case I have shrunk the scene to show you everything. This is our first glance at the world of Rivershire. If you haven't already, be sure to click on the picture above for a better look at it.

I can already point out seven things to talk about from that one image alone, so let's work our way down the list, shall we?



Sam is in the middle of the scene, surrounded on either side by trees. These aren't decorative, either. Before too long, we'll be engaging in that age old practice of deforestation in order to build our first hovel.



A little to the left of Sam and underground we can see a mineral deposit peeking out of the ground. This is copper ore, and it is the most basic ore in the game. We'll find quite a bit more as the game goes on, but it's nice to see some on the surface.



Over to the right of Sam is an NPC wandering around. This is our Guide, and his name is Garrett. The Guide basically functions as the tutorial, and he is incredibly handy to have around even into the very end of the game. He's also standing in front of some mushrooms, which are a common resource we will need to find periodically throughout the game. They grow at random, but just by randomly wandering around the surface we'll find more than we'll ever need.



Here's what our expanded inventory looks like. We've got 40 slots for storage, and an additional 10 for our hotbar up top. 50 slots fills up a lot faster than you might think it does. This will be one of our biggest woes throughout the LP. But for now, all we're interested in are the three items up at the top left.







In the upper left corner of the screen, in the hotbar, we have a sword, a pickaxe, and a regular axe. Our sword is apparently a legendary weapon, our pickaxe is a piece of garbage, and our regular axe has no special stats whatsoever.

It's worth noting that even though our pickaxe is "damaged," it's still perfectly usable as a tool. So if we wanted to excavate the copper ore, it would do a perfectly adequate, if slow, job.

Anyway, let's walk over and talk to Garrett and introduce ourself.



Clicking the "Help" button will display another tutorial prompt. While it's tempting to have Garrett do my job for me, we'll just move on.



He does have this tip that's worth showing off, however. Other than just randomly clicking around in your inventory, this is pretty much the only time the game will tell you how to do something. Terraria is one of those "play with the wiki open" type of games.

We're gonna leave Garrett standing around and start off by walking to the left first.





A short distance into the trip and we encounter our first enemy. This is a green slime, the first enemy you're likely to encounter in the game.



Our "legendary" shortsword is not a particularly good weapon. The reach is pathetic, and all it's good for is stabbing a short distance in front of you. We're gonna be replacing this thing ASAP. But otherwise, this is what combat is like in Terraria. We run up to an enemy and stab them to death, and if we're good enough, we can dodge their attacks in return.

It's also kind of difficult to see in the gif, but the slime dropped 2 coppers and 1 gel for us. Terraria uses the standard copper/silver/gold/platinum currency system. 100 copper makes 1 silver. 100 silver makes 1 gold, and so on and so forth. For the most part, money isn't really a concern in the game. There's a few points where we'll need some, but for the most part money woes are restricted to the super early game and possibly the super late game.

Anyway, the trees around here are nice and tall, so this is as good a place as any to start our deforestation campaign.



Chopping down a tree is as simple as selecting your axe on the hotbar and just holding down the left mouse button over the tree. This tall fellow gave us 25 pieces of wood and 2 acorns. You can probably guess what the wood is for, but acorns are used to replant trees that we've cut down. No reason to be greedy, after all. We're gonna be stuck on this world for a very long time to come, so may as well let the trees grow back.

Anyway, we spend the next few minutes chopping down trees. I finally stop when we have 256 pieces of wood.





Over to the left some more, we find some some very interesting things. First off, there are three pots sitting out on top of the ground. Pots are one-time goody bags, basically. They most often contain money, but can hold a large number of objects inside. The one in front of us held 1 silver and 42 copper coins.

More importantly, there is a supermassive tree right in our path, with a blatantly obvious tunnel leading down into the ground beneath it. Worlds will typically have one or two large trees on the surface, but a tree in this style is not common at all. The tunnel leading underground means that there are special items down below that you can only get from one of these trees. We'll grab those later.

It's also worth pointing out that these large trees can't be cut down by axes. These are actually a structure in the world, and as such, must be deconstructed by our pickaxe. So, we'll just make the tunnel nice and even and continue on to loot the two pots on the other side. One held some shurikens, and the other a Recall Potion.

Shurikens are our first throwing weapon, and are pretty powerful for the first part of the game. We'll hold onto those for a rainy day. The recall potion is a one-use item that will teleport us back to our spawn point. Once we have a base set up, an item like this is invaluable for getting back quickly. Using it right now would just teleport us back over to where Garrett is still pacing back and forth. So, like with the shurikens, I'll just hang onto it.



This small pond is just left of the giant tree, and it marks as far as I really want to explore this way for the moment. The sun is almost directly overhead, and we really want to have a shelter set up before night falls.



We're now just over to the right of where we started. This pot, by the way, contained some torches. These will be super invaluable in the very near future. I also think this is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate building. It's very simple. All you have to do is pick what building material you want to use, and then use the mouse pointer to pick where you want to lay it down, and go from there.



You can see just how easy it was to build a bridge from just 9 planks of wood. Now we won't have to worry about falling into that small pit anymore, which will make traversing the overworld that much easier in the future.



I find that most worlds tend to have some sunflowers somewhere near the spawn point. These things subtly glow in the dark and provide a small movement speed bonus when you're nearby. They also have another hidden feature that we won't get into right now.



This large-yet-small tree marks the end of our expedition to the right. The pot directly in front of us held some rope. I'll cover what that does later, but for now just keep in mind that it's absolutely invaluable through most of the game. Never leave home without a lot of rope in your inventory!



We stopped briefly to pick up a couple sunflowers for future use, but we're now back over to the left, on top of the hill where we fought that first slime. This is as good a spot as any to build our first house. But first, we need to do some landscaping.



The land is nice and flat now. Perfect for building a small hut.





It's not pretty, but it's serviceable enough.



Next we need to make a makeshift door.

Now, if you'll think back a bit, you may remember that Garrett mentioned something called a workbench. He told us something about a crafting menu and wood, but I think it's high time we learned how all that works.



Allow me to draw attention to Garrett's "Crafting" dialogue option. Selecting this opens up our inventory.



We're starting to get quite a lot of items taking up space. I also have no idea where I got the gold coin. I assume one of the many green slimes I've squashed dropped it.



Down at the bottom of our inventory screen is a scrolling list of items. There's also a box at the top with the label "Place a material here." What we want to do is drop our stack of wood on that box.



This changes the scrolling list at the bottom to display every recipe in the game that uses wood as an ingredient. This is Garrett's primary use throughout the game! If you pick up an item and don't know what it does? Toss it at your Guide and he'll tell you what to do.

Now, I don't know about you, but a scrolling list is pretty unwieldy. Wood is used in a metric shitton of recipes, so finding the one you want can be a pain in the neck. But the designers thought of that! Do you see that little hammer icon above the 337 pieces of wood? If you click on that, it changes the way the list is displayed.



This is still kind of unwieldy, but it at least lets you see all the objects at once. This is all 109 recipes in the game that use regular wood as an ingredient. You can mouse over each item and the game will tell you what they are, and when you find the one you want, you can then click on it and the game will show you what it takes to craft.



In this case, the basic workbench takes 10 regular wood to craft, and no special crafting station. We can cover that pretty comfortably, so let's build us a workbench. Crafting is just as simple as navigating the scrolling menu and picking what you want to build. You don't have to arrange the wood in a certain pattern or anything convoluted like that, you just have to have enough pieces and you can build it. The game is even nice enough to attach what you built to your mouse cursor for quick use.



Placing furniture is just as easy as building. We'll leave our workbench outside for aesthetic purposes.



The sun is beginning to set, so I've taken all 3 of the torches we got out of that pot earlier and placed them around to illuminate the area better.

Now, our house is nice and all, but it seems more like an empty shell than a house. What we need are some walls.



Terraria unfortunately requires us to craft our walls manually. We get 4 wall panels per piece of wood we spend, and we'll need a lot of wooden wall pieces for our house.



The game is kind enough to let us craft in bulk quickly. Just by holding the right mouse button down over top of a craftable, stackable item, we can quickly build as many as we want. In this case I make 168, which is a good starting point.



Now, we want to quickly and efficiently place these walls down. So it's time to introduce another neat feature the game has: the smart cursor. By pressing the left control button, the game turns on the smart cursor tool. It's easier to show what it does than it is to explain, so take a look.



We overshot our goal by a bit, but that's fine. Look at how quickly we just placed the walls in our house. It's looking a lot more sturdy now.

The smart cursor will also automatically dig holes in front of (or underneath) us if we hold the left mouse button down with the pickaxe selected. Just use the mouse cursor to direct what direction you want to dig and the game will do the rest. It's pretty handy, and I use the tool extensively while playing.





I quickly make a door (6 wood pieces) and place it in the convenient 3-high hole in the wall. With the door in place, our house is looking a lot better than it did not 20 seconds ago. But now we need to entice Garrett to move in to the house. But how?



Over on the right side of our inventory screen is this UI element. I'll cover what these all do later on, but for now we're concerned with what I'm pointing at with the mouse. This is the housing tool, and we will be using this extensively throughout the game.



The housing tool will show every NPC we've recruited, as well as the query tool. By the way, we can recruit NPCs to come live with us. Garrett is just the first of approximately 20 possible tenants. Clicking on an NPC's face will let you assign them a particular room. We're more concerned with the query tool right now, though.

Using it is as simple as clicking on our newly built house.



The bottom of the screen will then tell you what you need to make the structure livable. In this case, we need a seat and a table. It will also tell you if you don't have adequate lighting inside. Otherwise it will just say "This housing is not viable." without explaining why. The biggest candidates why it would say that are 1) you're using a naturally occurring backwall, or 2) the house is too small. A distant 3 would be that the housing is too large.

I find that the small rectangular room that I've built here is about the right size. Using this approximate size, I've never had a problem with housing.



A quick trip to the workbench and we now have a table (8 pcs. wood) and a chair. (4 pcs.) Garrett has also automatically taken notice of the house and will lazily make his way over to it.



Before we end the update for today, we have one last tool to cover. The hammer takes 8 pieces of wood to build, and is used to demolish backwalls.



I'm sure that was bothering some of you. I know it was bothering me!



I've taken the liberty of demolishing the dirt backwalls where the hill used to be. Now the land looks much nicer. As a bonus, Garrett has finally walked over to inspect his new house.



Stocking up on torches. We're going to need a lot of these over the course of the game. At least they're cheap enough to make! (1 gel + 1 wood = 3 torches) I built 54 of them, using up all the gel we've accumulated so far.



Finally, this will prove useful in the coming minutes.



I think that's a good place to leave off, don't you?

NEXT TIME: Terraria By Night

DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 8, 2016

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.
I have sunk so many hours into this game. I've always started fresh with a new character every time a big patch came out, just to get a fresh experience.

It is absolutely worth the :10bux:, though it tends to go on sale on Steam for $2.50, which is an absolute steal.

Araxxor fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Sep 28, 2016

Leave
Feb 7, 2012

Taking the term "Koopaling" to a whole new level since 2016.
Well, this oughta be something.

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015
I've heard good things about this game. Guess it's time to see what the fuss is about.

Quick questions about the stuff that's been covered so far: The workbench looks like a miniature table, so can you use it as a table for housing purposes? Also, what's the minimum size for a house to count as such? And how good is that "Legendary" modifier (that is a modifier, right?) compared to other modifiers?

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

CptWedgie posted:

I've heard good things about this game. Guess it's time to see what the fuss is about.

Quick questions about the stuff that's been covered so far: The workbench looks like a miniature table, so can you use it as a table for housing purposes? Also, what's the minimum size for a house to count as such? And how good is that "Legendary" modifier (that is a modifier, right?) compared to other modifiers?

To answer your questions in order...

1) Yes! You can totally use a workbench as a table for housing purposes. I like to condense all the crafting stations in a single place, though. Which is why I left it outside for now.

2) According to the wiki, the absolute smallest that a house can go is 60 tiles. That includes the outer shell and the interior stuff as well. Consequently, the absolute largest that a room can go before it's "too big" is 750 tiles.

3) Legendary is the best possible modifier that a melee weapon can roll. Unfortunately for us, a legendary shortsword is about as useful as a toothpick, and deals about that much damage. Until we're about a third of the way through the game, modifiers are mostly going to be a "well that's nice" sort of thing. It isn't until then that we'll actually gain the ability to modify weapons and tools ourselves.

Section Z
Oct 1, 2008

Wait, this is the Moon.
How did I even get here?

Pillbug
Every so often I dust this game off and stop short of going anywhere near the halfway point trigger and big side area.

As I'm considering doing that again, an LP appears. Looking forward to seeing more people who actually have the slightest idea what they are doing/have any building creativity show stuff off.

Section Z fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Sep 28, 2016

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

DoubleNegative posted:

1) Yes! You can totally use a workbench as a table for housing purposes. I like to condense all the crafting stations in a single place, though. Which is why I left it outside for now.

Cool. That seems like it might be useful if you've got a surplus of wood and a shortage of space (I'm assuming the workbench requires less space since its sprite is smaller when you place it). The "dedicated workshop" thing seems like a good idea too, though...

I'd ask about the other crafting stations, but that'd be spoilers, I bet. Sound about right?

DoubleNegative posted:

2) According to the wiki, the absolute smallest that a house can go is 60 tiles. That includes the outer shell and the interior stuff as well. Consequently, the absolute largest that a room can go before it's "too big" is 750 tiles.

60 tiles (including walls) seems... pretty cramped. As in "storage shed" cramped.

750, on the other hand... PURE OVERKILL.

DoubleNegative posted:

3) Legendary is the best possible modifier that a melee weapon can roll. Unfortunately for us, a legendary shortsword is about as useful as a toothpick, and deals about that much damage. Until we're about a third of the way through the game, modifiers are mostly going to be a "well that's nice" sort of thing. It isn't until then that we'll actually gain the ability to modify weapons and tools ourselves.

Thought it'd be pretty up there, considering how many bonuses it gives. Too bad it's stuck to a useless weapon, then. Hope you get something with an arc soon. Or a bow- that seems likely too (especially since I'm pretty sure I see one of the latter in the "wood-using recipes" image).

I'd ask about ranged modifiers, but I'm sure we'll see those later.

Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change
I tend to veer towards small homes for my NPCs, like around 4-5 tiles high and 10 wide, as well as making a large underground area to make all the stuff at. Along with holding ALL THE THINGS. I'm a fuckin hoarder. DON'T LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE!

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

CptWedgie posted:

I'd ask about the other crafting stations, but that'd be spoilers, I bet. Sound about right?

You can kinda intuit what some of the other crafting stations are. The big three certainly aren't spoilers to mention at all: workbench, forge, and anvil. With those three together, you can make the vast majority of items in the game. The rest of the crafting stations have incredibly specialized use cases, but the collector in me likes to have them all in one gigantic workshop.

Kemix posted:

I tend to veer towards small homes for my NPCs, like around 4-5 tiles high and 10 wide, as well as making a large underground area to make all the stuff at. Along with holding ALL THE THINGS. I'm a fuckin hoarder. DON'T LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE!

Hey, half the fun of collecting all the treasure and stuff you can find is hoarding it like a dragon.

LogicalFallacy
Nov 16, 2015

Wrecking hell's shit since 1993


This'll be fun. I need to find some folks to play this with, as multiplayer can be really fun.
I would like to point out for those unfamiliar with the game that, as DoubleNegative said, expert mode will wreck your poo poo if you're unprepared, but it changes all the drop tables in such a way that for the prepared player it is absolutely worth it.

CrashScreen
Nov 11, 2012

I somehow managed to rack up about 200 hours on this game with friends back before the last two major updates. Haven't been able to really organise that group for the new stuff, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the game has changed and where it goes. I'm looking forward to more of this LP. Bring on the night!

Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change
Fuckit. I'll be nice here. I have a copy of Terraria I bought about a year back that I WAS gonna give to a friend, but said friend turned out to be a complete and total rear end in a top hat...anyways, long story short, got a copy of Terraria I've had sitting in my Steam account for the last year or so and I'll fuckin steam gift it to whoever doesn't have it right now. I just need me a PM with a Steam Account name and I'll send it off to someone.

Edit: Someone's PMed me, sending it out to them.

Kemix fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Sep 28, 2016

John Lee
Mar 2, 2013

A time traveling adventure everyone can enjoy

I don't really think you need the wiki open to play the game. I've gotten to (I think 1.0) endgame with no wiki support, and the Guide even then would tell you hints on where to go and what to do if you're stagnating. The only bit it took me a while to find was the house stuff, the little clicky button that will tell you if a house is valid housing or not, and that was just a Very Useful Tool. I had plenty of people in my town before that (which happened because I built shelter for myself and had the Guide and a nurse move in).

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




John Lee posted:

I don't really think you need the wiki open to play the game. I've gotten to (I think 1.0) endgame with no wiki support, and the Guide even then would tell you hints on where to go and what to do if you're stagnating. The only bit it took me a while to find was the house stuff, the little clicky button that will tell you if a house is valid housing or not, and that was just a Very Useful Tool. I had plenty of people in my town before that (which happened because I built shelter for myself and had the Guide and a nurse move in).

It's more a thing when you're first starting out when things like 'How do I make wood place like blocks instead of walls' were problems. Since you can give the guide stuff now, it might not be so necessary.

LogicalFallacy
Nov 16, 2015

Wrecking hell's shit since 1993


A bunch of changes were made to the guide as the game's been developed in order to try and wean us off dependency on the wiki. The only reason I really use the wiki anymore is to reference drop tables, maximise dps, and find certain special npcs.

Jen X
Sep 29, 2014

To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.
The wiki is great for "how do I find object X", but the game does a good job never really making you need the wiki for anything other than min-maxing/hoarding. That said, minmaxing is sort of the entire endgame, but still.

Yapping Eevee
Nov 12, 2011

STAND TOGETHER.
FIGHT WITH HONOR.
RESTORE BALANCE.

Eevees play for free.
Dubs told me about this LP in advance, and suckered me back into playing Terraria. It scratches the same itch that I've been playing Fantasy Life for.

I can heartily recommend enabling pausing in the inventory so players can look at the wiki.

Lazy Bear
Feb 1, 2013

Never too lazy to dance with the angels
Without getting spoilery, how much emphasis is this LP going to place on... large landscaping/bridge-building projects? Those in the know might know what I mean here, but will the LP go into details about what strategies are best for a given preparation?

Lache
Dec 17, 2006
Why yes, your suffering does feed me

Lazy Bear posted:

Without getting spoilery, how much emphasis is this LP going to place on... large landscaping/bridge-building projects? Those in the know might know what I mean here, but will the LP go into details about what strategies are best for a given preparation?

Alternate thread title: You can never have enough scaffolding.

It's been over two years since I played, which I believe was before at least one of the major updates. That smart cursor thing blew my mind if that's any frame of reference, so it'll be neat to see what other quality of life tools are available now. Do you always start with a legendary short sword now?

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Lache posted:

Alternate thread title: You can never have enough scaffolding.

It's been over two years since I played, which I believe was before at least one of the major updates. That smart cursor thing blew my mind if that's any frame of reference, so it'll be neat to see what other quality of life tools are available now. Do you always start with a legendary short sword now?

Modifiers like that are random.

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.
Yeah, your items start with random modifiers, but starting with a copper short sword was added in a later patch.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Lazy Bear posted:

Without getting spoilery, how much emphasis is this LP going to place on... large landscaping/bridge-building projects? Those in the know might know what I mean here, but will the LP go into details about what strategies are best for a given preparation?

Let's just say that I'm a fan of having a flat surface to run across in case I felt like running from one end of the map to the other for whatever reason. I'm also a fan of massive vanity building projects for no other reason than because I can.

Anyway, regarding the wiki: I like to have it open as a reference for when I'm doing stuff. It's easier to do some quick napkin math on the wiki so you know that you'll need another 38 ingots of copper ore, versus running back to the base every time I need to check something.

Quick edit: Next update will be on Friday. I'm aiming for every three days.

Lazy Bear
Feb 1, 2013

Never too lazy to dance with the angels

Lache posted:

Alternate thread title: You can never have enough scaffolding.

Heh, I hear that. For me, Terraria gets the title 'All bridges, all the time'. I know the wiki has some good tips and tricks for getting past some of the trickier patches. It might be good to see them in action.

quote:

...it'll be neat to see what other quality of life tools are available now.

You're gonna love some of the new items. Kind of a pity you're not doing Expert. yeah, it's hard, but it's 1000% worth it. Not allowed to say why.

mercenarynuker
Sep 10, 2008

I enjoyed Minecraft, so when Terraria popped up on my Games with Gold on XB360, I thought sure, why not, looks ok. Turns out a controller is hot loving garbage at all the little quarter-block fine placement this game requires. I will enjoy the game instead vicariously through this thread

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Just got this game (thanks kemix!) and I was wondering how one demolishes normal walls.

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

CommissarMega posted:

Just got this game (thanks kemix!) and I was wondering how one demolishes normal walls.

Depends on what you mean by "normal walls." If you mean the background, use a hammer; if you mean blocks you walk on, a pickaxe should work. Both were mentioned in the update, and the hammer was even demonstrated.

Tunahead
Mar 26, 2010

Hey OP, is this tutorial gonna go mostly into mechanical progression, or will you also be giving tips on making cool houses? As a non-creative type, I struggle a lot with breaking the curse of the box fortress.

Tunahead fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Sep 29, 2016

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

Tunahead posted:

Hey OP, is this tutorial gonna go mostly into mechanical progression, or will you also be giving tips on making cool houses? I'm just wondering because as a non-creative type I struggle a lot with breaking the curse of the box fortress.

What's wrong with box fortresses? They're perfectly functional. Me, I'm more interested in home defense- it's already been demonstrated that hostile mobs are A Thing here.

Tunahead
Mar 26, 2010

Box fortresses don't so much feel like home as they do a place where me and my brethren can drink the poison before the feds manage to breach the perimeter.

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

Tunahead posted:

Box fortresses don't so much feel like home as they do a place where me and my brethren can drink the poison before the feds manage to breach the perimeter.

Personally, my priorities in this game would probably be the following, in order:

1) Build a base to house myself and whatever allied NPC characters exist.
2) Set up automated defenses of some sort so I don't have to run around shanking things all day for a bit of peace and quiet. If nothing else, a simple pit trap should cut down on intruders by at least 70%, if placed properly (operating on the assumption that enemies can open doors they're standing next to).
3) Furnish said base with as many crafting stations (and, if they exist, practical structures like the sunflowers' buffing aura) as I can get my hands on.
4) Customize the result for aesthetics. (This one's a distant fourth, and completely skippable if I'm feeling lazy.)

Speaking of aesthetics, though, when's the OP gonna redo the floor on his house? That dirt floor doesn't really go with the rest of it.

Lazy Bear
Feb 1, 2013

Never too lazy to dance with the angels

Tunahead posted:

Hey OP, is this tutorial gonna go mostly into mechanical progression, or will you also be giving tips on making cool houses? As a non-creative type, I struggle a lot with breaking the curse of the box fortress.

I got two words for you, just two words: Space station.

Qylvaran
Mar 28, 2010

CptWedgie posted:

Personally, my priorities in this game would probably be the following, in order:

1) Build a base to house myself and whatever allied NPC characters exist.
2) Set up automated defenses of some sort so I don't have to run around shanking things all day for a bit of peace and quiet. If nothing else, a simple pit trap should cut down on intruders by at least 70%, if placed properly (operating on the assumption that enemies can open doors they're standing next to).
3) Furnish said base with as many crafting stations (and, if they exist, practical structures like the sunflowers' buffing aura) as I can get my hands on.
4) Customize the result for aesthetics. (This one's a distant fourth, and completely skippable if I'm feeling lazy.)

Speaking of aesthetics, though, when's the OP gonna redo the floor on his house? That dirt floor doesn't really go with the rest of it.

You say this, but #2 probably wouldn't work out the way you planned. First, enemies will stop spawning near your base as you get a few NPCs housed there. The ones that do show up will probably be part of invasions, which include enemies that can get past your basic pit trap pretty easily.

If you check out the Games thread for Terraria, you'll find many examples of NPC slums that will meet your standards of ruthless efficiency.

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

Qylvaran posted:

You say this, but #2 probably wouldn't work out the way you planned. First, enemies will stop spawning near your base as you get a few NPCs housed there. The ones that do show up will probably be part of invasions, which include enemies that can get past your basic pit trap pretty easily.

If you check out the Games thread for Terraria, you'll find many examples of NPC slums that will meet your standards of ruthless efficiency.

Well, the spawning thing sounds convenient, but the pit trap was more "I need a way to keep enemies away from my door NOW, and I don't have anything to kill them except this pocket knife, so might as well dig a hole next to my door so they can't reach it" than anything. Obviously I'd upgrade if and when possible. I mean, the easiest upgrade to do would probably be something like "house on stilts" right?

I'd ask about that "invasions" thing, but I suspect that's a spoiler.

Anyway, my point is that the beginning of the game is obviously all about efficiency, since you don't have anything to waste. I don't have anything AGAINST fancy bases; I'd just prefer to get a WORKING one first, then upgrade it when I get the materials.

John Lee
Mar 2, 2013

A time traveling adventure everyone can enjoy

mercenarynuker posted:

I enjoyed Minecraft, so when Terraria popped up on my Games with Gold on XB360, I thought sure, why not, looks ok. Turns out a controller is hot loving garbage at all the little quarter-block fine placement this game requires. I will enjoy the game instead vicariously through this thread



I believe they implemented the Smart Block Placement feature for controllers? That could have solved your problem, or alternatively, created it!

Lazy Bear
Feb 1, 2013

Never too lazy to dance with the angels

mercenarynuker posted:

I enjoyed Minecraft, so when Terraria popped up on my Games with Gold on XB360, I thought sure, why not, looks ok. Turns out a controller is hot loving garbage at all the little quarter-block fine placement this game requires. I will enjoy the game instead vicariously through this thread

Yeah, it is most definitely a mouse-and-keyboard game. Also way more content on PC.

Qylvaran
Mar 28, 2010

CptWedgie posted:

Well, the spawning thing sounds convenient, but the pit trap was more "I need a way to keep enemies away from my door NOW, and I don't have anything to kill them except this pocket knife, so might as well dig a hole next to my door so they can't reach it" than anything. Obviously I'd upgrade if and when possible. I mean, the easiest upgrade to do would probably be something like "house on stilts" right?

I'd ask about that "invasions" thing, but I suspect that's a spoiler.

Anyway, my point is that the beginning of the game is obviously all about efficiency, since you don't have anything to waste. I don't have anything AGAINST fancy bases; I'd just prefer to get a WORKING one first, then upgrade it when I get the materials.

All I'm really saying is that the progression of your base would probably go pretty differently from your expectations. By the time you're collecting NPCs and crafting stations, you're already well past the point where a simple pit trap would make a difference one way or the other. The first night or two, you can just wall up the front door, and after that there's not that much to worry about except for special situations.

But yeah, "house on stilts" eventually becomes useful enough that it is probably worth starting with.

Anyways, Imma shut up and let the OP show things at his own pace. I could Well Actually all day, but nobody wants that.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Tunahead posted:

Hey OP, is this tutorial gonna go mostly into mechanical progression, or will you also be giving tips on making cool houses? As a non-creative type, I struggle a lot with breaking the curse of the box fortress.

I too struggle with breaking the curse of the box fortress. The Soviet efficiency apartments are so easy to construct that it's what I wind up going with most of the time.

CptWedgie posted:

Speaking of aesthetics, though, when's the OP gonna redo the floor on his house? That dirt floor doesn't really go with the rest of it.

Tomorrow's update is all about nighttime, combat, and self-defense. After that I'm gonna start abstracting things more. So expect changes regarding the actual base starting this coming Monday.

Finally, regarding home defense... this is kind of a spoiler for a couple updates from now, but this is what the home base looks like at the end of how far I have recorded.

If you don't want to click on that, I'm a firm believer in "if they can't get in, then there's no problem" school of defense. So the entrance to bases I make is always at least one floor up where random passerby zombies can't get in.

EDIT: If you're playing along, feel free to share your bases here. If there's NPCs or something we haven't seen yet, just hide it behind a link like I did. I like seeing what other people build in this game, it's why the "other people's houses" section of the games thread is so long. :D

DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Sep 29, 2016

Kibbles n Shits
Apr 8, 2006

burgerpug.png


Fun Shoe
Wooden floors? Look at these fat cats over here. My NPCs live in underground mud huts and are happy about it

vvv meant to use the one without entities, whoops.

Kibbles n Shits fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Sep 29, 2016

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Jen X
Sep 29, 2014

To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.
How did you manage to miss the explicit request to link the base image if it has spoilers

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