Part 1/3
Written by Blue (Developer of Terraria)

So, 1.0.6 is quickly becoming our most major game polishing patches yet. With all the GUI improvements, and all the balance being done, the game is feeling more complete, as to where it would have been if we had released a month later as we had planned, rather than early. While much of what I’m saying isn’t “new feature that hasn’t been revealed” information, it does go into more detail as to why we are making such changes.

When faced with the challenge of balancing a game, you always run the risks of upsetting players who are used to the way the game is currently played. Now that I'm on a developer team working on a game that ten's of thousands play daily, I understand why Blizzard got such a bad rap, but also now see they are just doing what needs to be done.

Terraria 1.0 to 1.0.5 has be seen by many as a BETA released game open to the public, and while we considered it to be full release with a few things we could add, we can see why they thought it was a beta. But 1.0.6 changes that. We've even discussed calling it 1.1 because its such a game changing update, but we want to save that distinction for our first large content update that will add more biomes, enemies and end game stuff. Like an MMO expansion would. So this patch remains named 1.0.6 for those reasons.

While the balance of the game in 1.0.5 does lend itself to seeming perfectly okay in the terms of 'playability', It does not take into account many of the new systems we plan to implement later. Things like PVP modes and more end game content, such as new harder areas and more bosses, require us to get many of the balance changes done now. It's best to get them out of the way, and set how the game should be played going forward, rather than changing it later on months down the line when the new things are added and see how they just don't work in the progression of the game as it is currently.

For those of you with high level characters, we suggest starting a completely new character on a completely new world as you will find your run through the game to be more satisfying with all the changes, especially the dungeon area and boss fights.

Game difficulty is also something we are focusing on this patch. The game itself is going to be about 150% more difficult than it is already. But this doesn't mean new players will find them self in a pickle from the get go. This simply means playing the game on soft-core mode will offer you more of a challenge than it previously did and you will need to play more strategically. Hardcore will seem, even more hardcore now as well with these changes.

The game-play mechanic in Terraria is gearing to be more RPG like every minute we spend working on it. As Re-digit stated in his blog, things like the healing system and magic system have had almost complete overhauls. In our current test build, you can't simply just spam heal yourself with potions anymore to win every battle. In fact, most boss battles will be nearly impossible to win without gearing yourself up fully, and planning out the battle beforehand. They are bosses after all, and shouldn't be complete pushovers that you can just spam heal and spam attack to win. No longer can you just fight the Eater of Worlds through death after death until he is defeated. Of course, theres always the chance we will end up not liking these changes and try to balance it a different way, as until a patch comes out nothing is set in stone.

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