I have done a handful of Hardcore Master mode terraria runs, including a For the worthy Master Mode Hardcore run (painful), right off the bat some things should be clear:

While some tips and tricks are said in the guide, It will not teach you how to play the game, nor how to progress.

• The game is harder when you have to take into consideration your every step. As obvious as it may sound, some friends have tried it without thinking a little bit and ended up never getting far
  
• A good amount of game knowledge is recommended, if you know enough about the game to not have to check the wiki to progress then that's a huge plus for you.
  
• Don't be scared to start off in easier modes. I first started on Normal Hardcore and slowly built up to it.
  
• Memorizing the attack pattern of bosses isn't required, but heavily recommended if you don't have fast enough reflexes to dodge the attacks just fine.
  
• Generally it isn't recommended to fight every single boss, unless they give you something really useful. Deerclops generally is a skip for me since the drops aren't worth the risk of dying, considering how hard the fight is for some people. Unless I run summoner, queen slime and empress is also another skip.

Beating it on hardcore master mode was one of my most rewarding milestones in this amazing game and recommend anyone to give it a shot, even if on Normal, it is still nice to take a fresh route and have to think outside the box to make sure you never die.

This generally IS the Make-Or-Break of a run in my opinion. Depending on the difficulty and your skill level, you're better of setting up everything you can to make your fights any easier

Just like your normal run, it is recommended that you don't focus on any class this early, get the best damaging weapon you can and roll with it.


First thing you should do is build a house that you can call your safe zone no matter what. Generally a house only you can access is the best to prevent NPCs from opening the door and killing you. In my runs I usually just build up a few tiles and make 3 valid houses there for the NPCs, but housing is your choice.

Early on, a good weapon is a evil biome wood bow, even if it's tricky, a recall potion and decent reflexes should give you enough wood to make an armor and a bow. Meele is really not a good idea in Hardcore unless you're comfortable with it. If you don't want to get that, you can get any wooden bow or a metal bow if you end up liking it.

Health will be your most important resource early on. Getting a huge amount of Life Crystals are a dealbreaker, if you think you have enough health then you most definitely don't have enough. When you fight with permadeath any extra health matters. It shouldn't take long to get to 400 health anyways.

If you have the best gear you can get, like gold/platinum armor and bows, or some other weapon you are good at / is very good and you have at least a hermes boots, then you can skip to the Arena topic. Otherwise, get those items as well as making some 100 HP health pots, they are relatively cheap.

The reason i recommend bows is that it's a cheap weapon to maintain, and mage accessories aren't too meaningful early on when using gem staffs.

A good rule of thumb is to make it wide (obviously). Don't slack too much on it, after all you can reuse it for other bosses, here are a few recommendations:

• At least 500 tiles wide.
  
• Full campfire and heartlamp coverage, stars in a bottle if you are using mage weapons
  
• As much coverage you can get with bast statues if any found. Don't risk going for them at this stage.
  
• Pink Candles, they surprisingly help a lot by reducing normal enemies spawn which can end many runs during a boss fight. They however need pink gel.
  
• If mobility is an issue for you, platform pillars will help a lot when combined with the grappling hook

By far the easiest boss to fight. The only thing needed to fight him is a big rope pillar and a lot of projectiles.

Killing him is very easy doing the following:
Build a rope pillar until the ground is at the bottom of your screen or, if a big enough monitor, as tall as king slime jumps + 10 tiles. After that, build up another 25 tiles of rope.

When fighting the boss, stay tall enough for him to stay visible and his jumps being unable to reach you. You mostly stay in the same spot 99% of the fight, until he teleports. When you see him start to teleport, you start climbing up non stop until he teleports either to the ground or to you. Going up a rope is fast enough for you to dodge without getting hit, though timing is not tight, you will get hit if you don't pay attention

You don't have to fight him if you don't want to. I generally do because his mount can be very useful for dodging attacks, as well as having a somewhat decent armor set.

There isn't much secret, it is your standard eye fight with the same standard requirements.

Hermes boots are a must to make sure you don't get hit enough to kill you. Grappling hook is also very useful if you have reflexes fast enough to grapple out of the way.

The arena set up is listed in the Pre-Bosses section.

From this point onward the progression is very standard as one of the key moments of the playthrough have passed, potions are heavily recommended and very easy to get thanks to the dryad.

Buy at least 100 daybloom planter boxes (realistically the main one you'll need) and plant any daybloom seeds you may have.

• Eater of Worlds / Brain of Cthullu.
  
• Molten Armor.
  
• Skeletron.

While the best axe in the game for me, if is not required. It will certainly help you with your harvests but not necessary.
If you are comfortable with going into the jungle, then realistically you should go for it. Make sure you use recalls instead of the mirror however, due to the instant teleporting that the potion has, compared to the 1-2 second delay with the mirror.

Depending on the difficulty, breaking chunks of it will drop the scales to make the pickaxe. You can simply kill enough of them to make the pickaxe and then leave the biome with a recall potion to get the pickaxe easily.

It's another one of those things that aren't necessary but recommended.
Being able to see wires can save you from traps constantly when mining. Skeletron generally is an easy fight so I suggest going for it after molten armor.

Surprisingly, banner farming has helped me a ton.
Using statues to get banners, including Imp Banners which are very, VERY, useful for beating the wall of flesh and even more important when playing on For The Worthy seed / Legendary mode will save you from getting sniped in hell.

Below is a banner farm design that I always build


Putting as many enemy statues as you can will also improve it

When playing, I found pre-hardmode to be the hardest stage since you have very little utility to support you.

From here, you should play as you normally would, as mentioned this isn't a how to play the game guide, and generally just tips and tricks on how to beat hardcore.

From here, beat the wall of flesh, make a grinder for a rod of discord or manually grind for it, and thrive.

The progression is just standard terraria now.

For those who think they are worthy of doing Hardcore For the Worthy / getfixedboi. I applaud you, here goes some things that helped me a lot on my playthrough

• Queen bee can be EASILY killed using mimic statues. All you need is to stack as many statue mimics as you can in one spot, make sure there is at least one enemy on screen and make the queen bee dive bomb into the mimics, this should be basically an instant and free win for her, considering her bow is extremelly powerful
  
• Since lava is very easy to get early on, making traps on your house when first starting can give you easy early cash while you probably afk to not die, since on your first nights zombies and just slap you into oblivion. This however won't work on getfixedboi since enemies don't take damage from lava.
  
• Red Potions are really powerful and your best friend. When fighting the wall of flesh, I used enough of them to get all the buffs since a few potions are very annoying to get early on.
  
• Potions overall are a must. I know a lot of people like to play without them, even on Legendary difficulty, but personally I'd rather just have a whole lot of dayblooms to at least have the basic Regeneration, Swiftness and Iron Skin potions than losing because I was too lazy to make them.
  
• Learn the changes that For The Worthy does to the bosses. Get an all item world and just practice fighting the bosses if you don't know the attack patterns in case you struggle with any of them. Personally I really enjoy fighting the bosses so it was actually pretty fun to learn the patterns and attacks.