Anti Frustration Features / Terraria

• The Guide offers an option to view items that are craftable with the materials you have, and what those recipes would require. Furthermore, the gameplay tips he offers for newbies are contextual; he won't try to tell anyone what a Heart Crystal does if they have already used one, and he'll only explain what a Blood Moon is when the information would be immediately relevant.
• A good number of recipes that call for Corruption-based components will work perfectly fine with their Crimson counterparts, and vice versa. For example, Night's Edge can be forged using the Blood Butcherer in place of the Light's Bane, and the Battle Potion can use Vertebrae or Rotten Chunks as ingredients and still work. The main exception is potions: the Wrath Potion can only be crafted using ingredients from Corrupted worlds and the Rage Potion can only be crafted with components from the Crimson, though both are functionally similar. The only other notable exception besides potions is the Zenith, which requires a Copper Shortsword rather than a Tin one for its crafting recipe, but all new players start out with a Copper Shortsword even if first loaded in a world with tin anyway.
• If for any reason you're adamant about your world either having Corruption or Crimson, a later update added an option when generating a new world so you can choose which evil you'd like. For those who liked the previous 50/50 chance, a random option is available so it can still be a surprise.
  • The same update also made it so the "generating world" bar is coloured purple or red depending on which evil you get, so if you get the one you don't want you can cancel out immediately.
• Every metal has a counterpart that works just as well. Recipes that call for a specific ore will work with the counterpart ore. For example, the Slime Crown used to summon the Slime King can be made with either a Platinum Crown or a Gold Crown, depending on which one your world generated. There are some slight differences (e.g. a Tungsten pickaxe can mine Meteorite while its counterpart, a Silver Pickaxe, cannot), but for the most part, it's all the same.
• The Extractinator and the Crates acquired via fishing can provide you with the alternate metals that were not generated in your current world, reducing the need to world hop for crafting ingredients. Now with a little patience, you can fish for Titanium in hardmode if your world generated with Adamantite instead.
• It used to be a little troublesome to retrieve the drops of the Hardmode boss, the Destroyer, as they used to spawn where the head was on death, even if it was deep underground. Version 1.2.3 on the PC fixed this by making the drops spawn at the player's location instead, saving you the trouble of having to scour the ground to recover the Souls of Might and Hallowed Bars.
• The 1.3 Update adds a UI hot button to the Inventory subscreen so you can now Quick Stack items from your inventory into all adjacent storage chests with a single click. No more need to manually open each chest just to hit the Quick Stack for each one now.
• In previous versions of Terraria, some players had serious concerns that the spreading Corruption or Crimson could overwhelm and completely engulf the Jungle Biome (unlike other biomes, there is no "evil" Jungle or associated blocks). This became a bigger concern in 1.2, as the Jungle was expanded to add new bosses and unique Hardmode loot. As of the 1.3 Update, Chlorophyte can now influence the spread of Mud blocks and prevent/limit the spread of Crimson and Corruption, allowing the Jungle to better protect itself from being overwhelmed by the Corruption or Crimson.
  • Further mitigated by the addition of corrupt and crimson jungle grass in 1.4.4. Previously, if Corruption or Crimson spread into the Jungle, it would convert the mud into dirt. As there was no in-situ way to turn dirt back into mud, this necessitated destroying the corrupt or crimson grass with a Clentaminator, digging out all the dirt blocks, crafting them into mud blocks, replacing them and then waiting for jungle grass to spread over them. Now, if the corrupt or crimson jungle grass is sprayed with the Clentaminator, it will revert back to jungle grass.
• A number of players have commented on the rarity of Solar Eclipses in 1.2. 1.3 solved this by adding a Summon Item in the vein of the Frost and Pumpkin Medallions that causes the Solar Eclipse on demand, although you will need to harvest the components for it from the Jungle/Lihzahrd Temple. Likewise, 1.3.0.5 adds a Summon Item to trigger a fight with The Moon Lord without having to go through an entire Invasion Event to make them spawn. 1.4 added an option to summon Blood Moons on demand as well, to help with gathering their new loot.
• In all previous versions of Terraria, worlds generated with what players dubbed "land mine traps," Explosives Blocks cunningly buried inside the ground with a barely-visible pressure plate wired to them, causing many a Hardcore player some real grief. Version 1.3 overhauled this by adding a different encounter with the Explosives Block above ground wired to a giant plunger to activate it and atop a massive pile of ore. The original trap still exists, but is significantly rarer than before.
• In Expert Mode, any player who fights a boss will get his/her own bag that is filled with boss drops. Outside of Expert Mode, it's a mad grab to try and get boss items, leaving co-operating players always left short of an item, and leaving people who are with more antagonistic or greedy players to hope that they don't get the short end of the stick by someone managing to steal all the boss drops. On Expert, each bag is filled with the full range of boss drops, so every player that fought it will get at least one unique boss item when opening a bag. To keep this from being exploited, Bosses gain more HP based on the number of players participating in the fight.
• Players can "uncraft" a few items such as platforms and walls, so they don't have to worry about leftovers while constructing settlements.
• Prior to 1.3, the Avenger Emblem could only be crafted with a Sorcerer Emblem, Warrior Emblem, and Ranger Emblem together. Since those items all drop from the same boss, the boss' summoning item is uncommon, and there is a variable delay before the boss can be resummoned, it could take hours before one could craft the Avenger Emblem, which is itself an ingredient in many endgame accessories. In the current version, the Avenger Emblem can be crafted from any single Emblem plus Souls from all three Mechanical Bosses.
• The 1.3.1 update added a "sort inventory" button that reorders the items in the player's inventory based on type, and the 1.3.2 update made it possible to sort container contents.
• Your reward for catching fish is selected from money, potions, decor, and a few very, very desired tools and accessories, but completely random. However, every fiftieth quest completed, the chance of getting a non-potion, non-decor item increases; for instance, the Tackle Box has a 1/40 base chance, but after the 100th quest it's 1/6. The 1.4 update made fishing rewards even less tedious by making it so that the player cannot get a copy of a Cell Phone component when one is already in their inventory, unless the Cell Phone is already completed.
• The Wall Of Flesh's drops are encased in a box made from either Crimson or Corruption blocks the moment it is defeated. This is to prevent the items from possibly dropping into the lava of where the Wall spawns, which would not destroy them (as items above a certain rarity don't burn in lava) but would make them a pain to pick up.
• Two items were patched in basically to help with early games lacking some convenience items players are dependent on later in the game.
  • The Magic Mirror has a consumable variant called the "Recall Potion" that has the exact same effect, but is a far more common drop from chests and pots, allowing players to return to their spawn quickly at any point in the game. The reusable Magic Mirror is somewhat rare, and it's entirely possible you won't find one before hardmode. The potions are practically useless after you get the mirror, but the simple luxury of returning to spawn from any point of the map without dying to quitting is useful any time in the game. They also make a good backup if you died and need to grab your stuff (mirror included) and make a hasty retreat. Compared to the Magic and Ice Mirrors, Recall potions have a much shorter delay before teleporting you back to your spawn point, which makes them a little more convenient for retreating from a hectic battle. Version 1.4 makes Recall potions useful as a precursor to the more powerful Return Potion (requiring you to strengthen the potion with an obsidian fish via alchemy), that opens a portal back to where you used the potion at your spawn point in a manner similar to the Scrolls of Town Portal seen in Diablo, allowing you to quickly retreat to base to heal up and sort your inventory before teleporting back without missing a beat.
  • Rope and its variants were added as a supplement to early game exploration. Ropes are extremely common, found in pots, chests, and craftable from vines (using an item) and cobwebs/silk. Like blocks, rope can be anchored to a single block on the ground and then built straight up or down. Unlike blocks, ropes are not solid, allowing players and objects like meteors to pass through them. All rope has a built-in climbing mechanism that allows you to travel up and down it at full speed. Finally, it has an inherent +3 to range, allowing you to build ahead of yourself much easier than with blocks, and if that isn't enough it can be crafted into rope coils to place rope from a distance. This can make falls that would impede players without items to prevent fall damage, such as double jump or a grappling hook, doable well before these items could be found or crafted.
• With the advent of the multi-tools in the Multicolour Wrench and the Grand Design, a minor UI tweak was made to make them more convenient to use: Their 'make the ruler and wires visible' UI toggles were tucked away beside the player's hotbar, and you right-click to open the toggles for changing the tools between wire placement and removal.
• The Graveyard mini-biome is created when dead players drop tombstones. Since Hardcore characters die permanently if killed, and thus can't drop tombstones without being deleted, the game makes it so that worlds containing Hardcore characters will have the NPCs drop tombstones instead when killed.
• The Empress of Light is spawned from killing a Prismatic Lacewing and her attacks become lethal if the fight carries on in to the day. Likely because of this, Prismatic Lacewings stop spawning after midnight, rather than at the beginning of day (4:30 AM) like most nocturnal enemies, preventing any accidental summons close to day and giving inexperienced players enough time to beat her before that happens.
• Journey Mode, introduced in 1.4, adds multiple accessibility and convenience features:
  • The game effectively kickstarts your adventure by giving all new Journey characters iron weapons and tools (instead of weaker copper ones), 100 torches, 100 rope, a Finch staff, a grappling hook, and a Magic Mirror (noted above to be pesky to obtain), allowing players to get into the meat of the game faster.
  • The duplication feature allows one to skip past the bulk amount of grinding needed to obtain some items, like finding ores and life fruits. It also allows one to obtain otherwise-event exclusive items at any time of year, like presents. Being able to spawn necessary items on the spot also has the side effect of removing the need to set up cumbersome storage systems in one's base, and the need to retrieve items from there.
  • Need it to be a specific time of day or for there to be a certain weather, and the Enchanted Sundial is on cooldown? Journey Mode adds powers to control the speed of time and the weather.
  • There's also a power to control enemy spawn rates, offering the player some peace and quiet if they need to take a breather and build. Conversely, enemy spawn rates can be increased to expedite finding rare items.
  • At any time, the world's difficulty can be changed from the default Journey difficulty, all the way up to Master Mode's difficulty.
• 1.4 added an item sold by the Zoologist that, by simply having it anywhere in a player's inventory, makes it impossible to kill critters. Video Game Caring Potential aside, this also means that players with it cannot accidentally kill gold critters and lose a potential ten gold from selling them, kill a ladybug and temporarily reduce their luck stat, or accidentally kill a Prismatic Lacewing and summon the Empress of Light unprepared.
• 1.4 also added the ability to craft a number of items at the new Graveyard biome that couldn’t otherwise be obtained in earlier versions. The Dryad (while housed in a Graveyard) sells seeds of the world evil that didn’t spawn in the world naturally, letting you obtain most of the other evil’s exclusive drops if you place them in the right area (without having to import materials from another world.)
• 1.4.0.1 added a luck mechanic, with one way to influence it being to use torches that match the current biome while underground (with luck penalties for using the wrong one). Aside from a subsequent update making it so that torch luck can never net penalize your overall luck, 1.4.0.5 added the Torch God, an encounter that (once completed) gives you an option to automatically convert regular torches you place into biome-appropriate counterparts.
• In Journey mode, items you still need to research have a pink notice at the end of their description to let you know. The notice will even tell you how many more you need to research said item.
• Shimmer, added in the 1.4.4 update, can be used to transform certain items in to other items. Among other things, this makes getting material for items such as the Ankh Shield much easier, as duplicate accessories could be transmutated to any missing ones. It can also be used on Spider Nest, Temple, Dungeon, and Underground Desert walls to turn them in to their "naturally-generated counterparts" that allows for their enemies to spawn, allowing to make an artificial biome of those types when that was previously not an option.
• Completing the Bestiary is designed to always be possible in all worlds and have nothing permamently missable. Enemies that stop spawning after a certain point, such as the Dungeon Guardian after beating Skeletron or the Tortured Soul after purifying him, are automatically added to the Bestiary when the criteria is met. While a world will only have two out of Salamanders, Crawdads, and Giant Shellies, the Bestiary entry of the "missing" one is updated based on the other two. The 1.4.4 update tweaked how "Not the Bees" and "For the Worthy" worlds generated just so that the whole Bestiary was possible to complete, as previously they had some quirk that made some entries impossible.
• In Expert mode and higher, enemies can pick up coins — a feature you will primarily see after you die and drop the majority of your coins on hand on top of whatever just killed you. To prevent your coins from being lost entirely, enemies that despawn while holding coins will respawn, still holding the coins, when you approach the place they despawned, which is marked on the minimap with a coin icon.^note This has led to a common misconception that they don't despawn, which isn't quite accurate, but is close enough to work as long as you're not trying to do anything super precise like build an AFK money farm. And if you mouse over the coin icon, you can see just how much money there is to retrieve, letting you decide whether it's even worth it to try.
• The Enchanted Sundial and Enchanted Moondial's cooldowns instantly reset if a Blood Moon or Solar Eclipse occurs, ensuring that they can always be used to skip these events.
• 1.4.1 added gemcorns, which could be planted to grow gem trees that could be cut down for stone and gems. This made it much easier to acquire gems for crafting the gem hooks, the gem staves and of course, decoration.