Pre-Steps
-Creating your character
The first thing you have to do in order to play Terraria is creating a character. The character system in Terraria works differently than it does in other Indie games, so let me explain it to you:
You can have up to 999 different characters, each one with their individual stats and items. You can play with any character in any world.

Example: I create a character named Bob. I play with him on World 1 for one hour. Then I create another character, Joe, and another world (World 2). Now I can:
-Join World 1 with Bob
-Join World 1 with Joe
-Join World 2 with Bob
-Join World 2 with Joe

Bob and Joe each have their own stats like Health and Mana, and each carry their own different items.

-Creating your world
The second thing you need to play is, unsurprisingly, a world. You have three choices of size:
-Small
-Medium
-Large

I do not need to explain that, do I?

There's also two different types of worlds: Crimson worlds and Corrupt worlds.

Both feature an unique biome, unique enemies, bosses and items.

The last setting available for your world is expert mode. I certainly don't recommend it for your first playthrough - what it does is basically giving foes more health and damage, but they will also drop more loot.

Freshly Spawned

So, you created your character and entered a world. Congratulations!

But what will I do now?

Now you will get started. I'll explain you how.

You will probably stand in an area with lots of trees and dirt - the forest. The easiest biome in the game.












This is kinda what your starting area should look like.

The first thing you wanna do is gather wood. You will need to build a house, because at night, evil things will come and try to kill you.

Also you will need some basic tools. Gather some wood and make a workbench through the crafting menu. Three basic tools made only froom wood are:
-Wooden Sword: You need this. Your crappy standard Starter sword does not swing but stab and has low damage.

-Wooden Hammer: Used to remove background walls.

-Wooden Bow: Probably your first ranged weapon. It uses up Arrows from your inventory to fire.
The first Ammo you will be able to make are Wooden arrows:

1 Stone...
...and 1 Wood
yield you 25 Arrows!

You might also have noticed another person walking around your world. This person is the guide. He will give you useful hints throughout the game and show you crafting recipes. You should build a house for him to survive the night.

There are tons of NPCs like the guide in Terraria, and all of them need a house.
The minimum requirements for a house are:

-At least 5 Blocks tall
-At least 7 Blocks wide
-Some kind of table
-A chair of some sort
-A lightning source
-A player made and completed set of background walls

If the house meets these requirements, any NPC can move in.








The smallest working NPC House.

-Surviving your first night

You can tell it's nighttime when the music changes - that's the time you want to be inside your house because bad things happen outside. Like, yknow, monsters and stuff.

The ones you will primarily run into at night are Zombies and Demon Eyes.

Zombies will knock on your door, however, don't panic because they can only open the door at certain events. Yet still stay away from them, you won't be able to kill many of them. If you get attacked and can't find shelter, run off firing your bow.

Demon Eyes however are different - they fly. It's too risky now to try and kill them, but they will bounce of walls and bounce away when hit, so try to keep them away with your arrows.

If everything else fails, hide in a dirt box.

That's it for your first steps in this giant world. The next chapter will cover:
-Mining and finding resources
-Luring the first NPC's in your base

Congratulations, you made it! You survived your first night!

As the sun sets, you will notice demon eyes and zombies are running off, no longer being a threat to you. Now, what are you gonna do with a full, 15-Minute day?

Well, you have two options:
-Explore
-Go Mining

Exploring

Exploring is a necessity in Terraria, and also one of the things that make it so fun! As of now, the game has 22 Biomes and 23 Mini-Biomes, leaving you with a vast amount of them to discover. During exploring, you will find chests and other valuable, not-craftable treasures. You might even stumble upon a few certain NPCs...

Mining

Mining in Terraria effectively means exploring - just in caves, as opposed to the overworld. Many of the ores you can mine here make for great pre-EoC gear, and some stuff can even be viable after EoC, for exploring biomes like the Corruption, or, if you're skilled, the Jungle. Be especially on the lookout for Gold/Platinum and Silver/Tungsten, if you can manage to get Silver/Tungsten Armor and a set of Gold/Platinum tools, you're set for EoC.


After you've put some days into exploring the over- and underworld, nights won't be a threat to you anymore, and you might find yourself setting out to more dangerous biomes you are now able to master with your gear. This is a sign that you're ready to move on - the Eye of Cthulhu is already lurking in the shadows.

After you spent some time exploring the world of Terraria, you feel that you are ready for the Eye of Cthulhu. It's time for your first boss fight!

Some useful NPCs to help you out

Nurse: She can heal you in exchange for money when you're hurt badly and can't drink a potion. Place her a bit off from the arena, so the Eye won't kíll her.

Merchant: Supplies you with a lot of useful stuff to fight the eye, like health potions, and shurikens.

Equipment

By now you have probably figured out that there are three main Classes in Terraria: Melee, Ranged, and Mage. There's also the summoner, but he doesn't come into play so early in the game, and is a subclass to Mage anyway.
So, heres what to bring:

Melee: Meleeing the EoC is hard. I recommend Health Potions [100HP heal], and a really good melee weapon. If you have a spear, trident or any other piercing weapon, use it. It does great against the eye. A sword like the ice blade that shoots projectiles is also helpful.
For Defense, I reckon you need about 200HP so you can take some damage without dying, especially in his second phase. For Armor, anything Silver or above will suffice.

Ranged: In my opinion ranged is the way to go for the Eoc. A good bow (Gold or better) with Frostburn arrows will quickly dispatch him with its DoT - but the key to beating the eye is piercing damage, so shurikens are really effective against the eye. A big plus for them is that they take out the minions in the process.
Defense: Standard HP and no armor is fine - you'll need some movement accessoires to dodge his attacks though. Hermes boots + Cloud in a bottle is a good setup.

Magic: Well, Magic is basically ranged with mana, so it works just as well. A Ruby or Diamond staff will deal great damage to him. If you can take a waterbolt from the dungeon entrance, enclose your arena in solid blocks and have the eye shredded to pieces.
Defense: Standard HP, go with a robe for Armor. Movement accessoires help, 100+ Mana is a must.

If you don't know how to build an arena for this fight, refer to the Eoc Arena chapter in this Guide

After beating the Eoc, the dryad will move in. You will receive some loot in the form of demonite ore and some other stuff. Craft the ore into an item you're interested in.

Congratulations, you are now ready for the corruption.

NPC's are necessary for progress in the Game!
There are some prerequisites for each NPC that an NPC is deciding to live in your City
Each NPC need a Personal housing or a flat to live There are 22 NPC who can live in your town and 3 other who can't! 1 of them don't sell anything
Those 22 NPC's need a housing like that

The 3 other NPC's are diffrent!
You are finding randomly at spawn or in the Dungeon!

The Guide, Terrarias most loved and most hated NPC.

The Guide is an NPC that is generated straight away with the world - as soon as you enter it, you will see him walking around somewhere. The Guide serves different purposes in the game, which are:

-Help Button: Gives you a vague hint of what to do next
-Crafting Button: Upon klicking it, you will be presented a "crafting cube" to place an item in. The Guide then will tell you what you can craft with that certain item.

!SPOILER INCOMING!

The Guide also needs to be alive to summon the Wall of Flesh, as he dies as the Voodoo Doll is thrown in lava. For further information about the Wall of Flesh, see the Chapter "Wall of Flesh"
in the bosses section.

The Merchant is an NPC that moves into your town very early - he appears as soon as you got 50 silver coins and a house available for him.
What does he sell?:

The Nurse is one of the most simple NPC's. The Nurse is a healer. She'll heal your HP and any debuff without any cooldown.
For 10HP she wants 8 Copper Coins

For any debuff you have on you, she will charge you 7 Silver 50 Copper.

The Nurse can be a great help when kept around boss arenas, because she can heal you fully even if you have potion sickness. Be wary to not have her in the arena though, as bosses will easily shred her.

The painter moves into your town if you've already got three NPCs living there. He sells useful tools and wallpapers, which you can decorate your city with. But the main point of the Painter is, well, paint. Using the Paintbrush and the paint roller you can paint every block and prop in your world, essentially making every item available in a lot of different versions. This can be a huge help when you want to differentiate a building in your town for others, or just paint some furniture shiny. Paint is just - ugh, I can't even begin to tell you how much I love the paint system in Terraria.

Depending on current Moon phase (and some other conditions), the painter will also sell some Paintings to hang on your base wall, some of which look really cool.

Bossfights are necessary for progress in this game
Every Boss will be summoned by a summon-item this is explained in each own part from the bosses

The first thing you should do befor you start any bossfight is Building a boss arena
- read through the Tutorial "How do i build a Boss-Arena"

There are 2 kinds of Bosses:
- Pre-Hardmode Bosses
- Hardmode Bosses

The Pre-Hardmode Bosses
-Eye of cthulhu
-Eater of Worlds / Brain of cthulhu (it depends on your world! Curruption: Eater / Crimson: Brain
-Queen Bee
-Skeletron
-Wall of Flesh (when you defeat this Boss you world will transfer to a Hardmode world, so be prepared!)

The Hardmode Bosses

-The 3 Mechenical Bosses
-The Twins
-The Destroyer
-Skeletron Prime
-Planterra
-Golem
-Duke Fishron
-Moon Lord (Final Boss)

The eye of cthulhu
The eye of cthulhu is the very first boss in this game
Its easy to summon! You need an "suspicious looking eye"

All you need for crafting the are 6 lens which are dropped by the demoneye flying in the night
To craft this you need to find a demonic altar or an crimson altar

On the craftingaltar: 6 lens = 1 suspicious looking eye

How do you kill this Boss easily?

Just throwing shuriken into it! It should hit it 2 times!
Make sure is transfores itself in the air and not in the ground! (It transfores itself when it has only half of its HP
DONT HIT IT WITH SWORDS (you dont make enough damage for this)

Here we got the "Eater of Worlds"
The Eater is the next strongest Boss after the Eye of Cthulhu
So as you can see the "Eater" is a Giant Worm. So the worm has 3 diffrent parts!

• the head (less defense, high attack-damage!
  
• the "body" (medium defence, medium attack-damage
  
• the tail (high defence, less attack.damage

How do i summon this Boss?
So there are 2 diffrent ways to summon this!

• Destroying shadow orbs!
  the easyiest way to summon this beast is to destroy exactly 3 shadow orbs with any hammer
  So, you get the Shadow orbs in the corruption! But your pickaxe hasn't got enough power to destroy this "jail of "currupted stone" where the shadow orb is inside! So if you havent got enought Bombs to blow that away go to the dryad and buy some "Purfication Powder"!
  then throw the powder in the "currupted stone"! The "currupted stone" will turn into normal!
  Now dig to the Shadoworb and destoy it with you hammer. Something special text will be in the text chat and the shadow orb will drop something! The firstone is everytimes a Musket with some musket balls there is also a possibility to drop a "Orb of Light", "Vilethorn" (great to defeat the destroyer), a "Ball 'O Hurt" (also a great item to fight again the Eater) and a "Band of Starpower"
  if you repeat this 3 times times the Eater will awake!
  this is way more easy that the second way, you cannot repeat it infinitely!
  
  
• Second way to summon this is crafting a "Worm Food" and comsume it!
  this needs 30 "Vile powder" and 15 "Rotten Chunk""Vile powder" is a bit difficult to get! you need 1 Vine-Mushroom from the Curruption for 1 "Vile powder" you need to craft the "Vile powder" in a normla worktable with a bottle in it!

Whats the best way to defeat it?

I think you've defeated the "eye" before! So craft with its loot a "Lights Bane"! with this blade its easy to kill it!
it has a very fast Speed so when the Worm is comming straight to you just swing your blade and it will lose many many parts of it!

Another great way to defeat the Eater, if you got lucky from some shadow orbs is the vilethorn. Its basically just a giant magic spike thats goes through everything and if fired multiple times alongside the eater, it will obliterate its parts.

In Terraria there are many many items and you will find out really quickly getting in trouble because you need a storage system
On the Picture you can see that I have 20 storage units with item frames above them
Its the clearest view over the chests when you build 5 chests per floor
The main chests should be in the first floor. Your Money could be stored into a piggybank or an other
The 5 main chests in the first floor should be
- Mining
- Potions
- Flowers (to make Potions, not oblitarory)
- Building Blocks
- Backwalls

Other important Headlines for your storageunits should be
- Accessoires
- Furniture
- Explosives / Mechanical Stuff
- Old Weapons

With the new Inventory tool "quick stack to neably chests" from the Terraria 1.3 Update it's very easy to fill in you chests easily and fast

This is an wonderful Bossarena isn't it?

Of course its an very big one and only for players with Wings or and Jump boost, but this is just like the standart Bossarena.

By building the smaller standart Bossarena you need to do the same as in this big one.
You only have to place the wooden platforms that you can jump on it without any grappling hook
The important thing is, that you have to place campfires and optional some Hearts in a Bottle, if you already have 400HP! These 2 Things give you a regeneration boost. Sometimes that's important in Bossfights!
You Also have to make some Tikitorches because these are the only Torches you can place on a platform.
If you are a bit advanced in this game build anywhere on the platforms some Heal and Mana Statues with a Timer, sothat there are spawning litte hearts and Mana Stars to heal/increase you Mana!

Here we are in the Character-Creator! Here you can't play a little bit with the colors and so on...
There are:

• Hair
  
• Eyes
  
• Skin
  
• Clothes
  
• Sex
  
• difficulty of your character
  
  
  
  
  First you have to know if you didn't read the Walkthrough is that you can take Items from world to world. This is a big difference to Minecraft, because in Minecraft you had an empty inventory when you startet a new world. In Terraria the have an empty inventory (instead of the Start-Items) when you createt a new character! This is why you shouldn't play on an online multiplayer server! because everyone there has overpowered endgame stuff!
  So this all is why your character has an own difficulty! The world could have since the new update v1.3 also its own difficulty!
  
  So there we go...
  there are 3 difficulties:
  
• Softcore
  
• Mediumcore
  
• Hardcore
  
  Its easy to understand:
  A Softcore character droppes half of the Money you have (so keep you money at home)
  A Mediumcore character droppes all the stuff you have! (so watch out for lava)
  A Hardcore character dies! YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR STUFF AND YOU CHARACTER WILL BE DELETET!!! (not recommended)
  
  I think its the best thing to play on an softcore character, because in Mediumcore you could lose all your stuff if you fall into lava! And it isn't really easy too get your stuff back, when your into a cave, because your inventory is really empty!
  
  Something thats new is a new button (called: Style ) with which one you can change your style just like the name says. But thats just by the way
  
  Here we are, after we clicked "create"! You can give your character a Name! There are 20 letters possible!
  So here we are back in the Player Selector here you can Pick the one you want to play!
  So here you see all the characters HealPoints and ManaPoints!
  Then you can see tha difficulty off all your cararcters! (Softcore is best, because you are dieing so often in this game, because dogeing is very hard in a 2D game!)
  And then you can see how long you've played thy character since the update v1.3!
  Below the picture of your character you can see 3 other buttons!
  The first one is just "Play", (i dont need to describe that i think) the second one is "Favorite, this is useful, because you favorite characters are on top of this list! And the last one is "move to cloud! Just to play characters with an other computer if you activated that!
  So then just pick your character, pick your world and go for it!

Official Terraria-homepage: http://store.steampowered.com
From there you get anywhere you want! So if you have Questions to the Items, Gameplay-Mechanics, Biomes, Enemies or NPC's click down here!

• Items: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Items
  
• Gameplay-Mechanics: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Game_mechanics
  
• Biomes: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Biome
  
• Enemies: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Enemies
  
• NPC's: http://terraria.gamepedia.com/NPC

This guide is only for the Steam PC-version of Terraria

this is not the final version of this guide. progression is on a halt for now