Why Terraria Progression is a Flawed Masterpiece

I feel like a lot of stuff is kind of just a means to an end when playing Terraria. Like, I get that it is, but a game like Minecraft that makes good use of basically every resource all throughout the entire game feels so much more interconnected and polished. Like what am I using Lenses or Vertebrae for? Nothing past the early game. All my old weapons are just memorabilia and are worthless now.

The game is hella fun and maybe I just need to embrace hopping from one thing to the next, but a lot of stuff in Terraria feels either hacked together or rushed. Many drops are so random and unknown that I have to reference the wiki every 12 seconds, and even mechanics such as combining Accessories.

Easily Top 10 game of all time but it’s a tad ridiculous at times

Benny?

I do think empress of light should be a mandatory boss after golem. I would also like some non-progresion stuff like more summoner gear (weapons, armor, accessories) and also shadow and light keys should only cost 10 souls

bro got 8M hours on record and confused hallowed mask with the ranger class (thumbnail)

The simple fact that doing cultist and pillars pre duke/empress is arguably more reliable than the opposite just says a lot about the flawed progression. But you’re absolutely right, it only stands out because the rest of the progression is perfect. Terraria is a beautiful game so I have no right to make any complaints.

It would be cool if they added more progression via empress of light by making an alternate ending or something, or a new set of armor for summons because she gives the terraprisma and they can make her drop more stuff with like a lower or even rare chance to get, again for summons like the armor or an equipable for expert/ master mode that increases amount of summons by a large margin. But the should definitely make you fight the empress before moonlord or give you the chance to not have to fight her for the normal ending. And if so until after the Moonlord with the chance to drop all the stuff of course, but no alternate ending because it wasn’t before Moonlord. because once you kill him it’s much easier to get op, and shred empress of lights health and just get what you want from her enraged or daytime empress or whatever. Only reason I say all this is because she is not a necessity to progress and she is a good difficult boss that would fit perfectly for post-lunatic cultists or post-golem because golem is not hard and Lunatic cultists is a perfect difficulty to test your strength so I believe empress would be a great one to test your skill. Just lots of things but other than empress and Duke Fishron not being required for progression I think they should because they give you great items to help with Moonlord but not too op to where you can’t lose unless you are decently skilled. Should also update Moonlord.

honestly i'd love to see if they could find a way to combine the vanilla game and the calamity mod to find a way that would benefit both sides

I really am disappointed when the first time I was introduced to terraria by my friends instead of getting me to play my own playthrough and see it all in one game, they instead spoiled everything, started giving me the endgame armor and made me fight all the bosses one by one. I never got to feel what it is like to play the game blindly..

Your hair is truly magnificent

WHAT THE FUCK HE IS LITERALLY TORU FROM JJBA

why ranger after warrior

you look like the bill clinton kid

Not enough content. I beat classic after arounf 36 hours, around a week later I started my expert more fun and beat it after 25 hours then I have just finished master more after 36 hours. After playing i t 3 times what I have noticed is that classic is more of a tutorial thing then an actual hard game, then there is also expert which is sort of a difficult yet not too hard and master mode is just amazing! What it is is that different difficulties make the progression more spaced out adding more content of mange making you change an entire weapon for a boss of a different strategy from expert to hardmode. Terraria is an absolute amazing game and I wish it had even more content! I wish I could get big in the head and forget playing the game. Something else is for me I wanted to play the game as fast as possible and not really just enjoying it. I am doing it right now on expert. I wish they would add even more content it's amazing! Gonna download calamity and play even more

I think the post-cultist gear should be a sidegrade to the best stuff previously available, ot at least just a slight upgrade

The only “problem” is that that jump from starting hard mode to getting the ores you just get stomped by the hard-mode mobs

i like seeing terraria progression from a new persons point of view, ive literally played this game since so long ago that i cant remember the first time i played or how i even learned the progression, i just know it was on the xbox 360 as a kid

if I could change 1 thing about terraria's progression is 2 words End Game

me and i believe many people think Terraria really starts peaking after moon lord but when moon lord is gone the game ends this is why people usually gravitate to mods because it adds better end game content more ores to farm or bosses to grind even an ultimate challenge where the game sends a million bosses at your face

honestly I wish I could keep some of my early builds into late game similar to dark souls, like the obsidian armor build or the tetraflame build, but alas these builds get replaced

I absolutely LOVE Terraria, ever since I first played it when it originally released. What makes it so lovable is its replayability, but locking my favorite class and overall main into 5 armor sets, 1 dedicated accessory, and less than 10 official weapons is painful to see.
(Red if you’re seeing this update summoner please)

I personally have two big more problems with progression, being early hardmode and endgame. For specific builds, melee mainly, overcoming the first mechanical boss seems either impossible without insane luck, or a chore due to how much grinding you have to do. This is especially true on the harder difficulties. Then there's endgame, specifically the moonlord fight. The fact that moonlord drops a whole new teir of items, without there being anything to use them on, is insanely disappointing.

This video is great but i feel like i need to put my clothes on with how you look at me 😂😂😂

are you a metrosxual vampire

0 stars rolling cactus. And bats.

Dropping a nuke in CoD takes more skill than beating an entire souls game.🤷

I wish the gaps between Plantera and Golem and Golem and the Lunatic Cultist were bigger.
It could just be a thing of needing to collect items from both Pumpking and Ice Queen to charge the power cells for the Golem...
...and needing to collect items from Golem, Duke Fishron, Empress of Light, and the Martian Saucer (maybe even Betsy) to get the cultists to start their ritual, but I'm not sure it's quite enough.
Someone suggested moving the pillar fragment weapons to post-Moon Lord, and, honestly, I feel like that could certainly help in making the post-Golem gear go a little farther.
...Sure, it would make the pillar weapons essentially pointless like every other piece of post-ML gear, but, y'know... I suppose starting a new, more difficult world with your end-game character and blitzing through a makeshift New Game+ is an option. *shrug*

Edit: Upon further investigation, I think I see a different reason why I feel iffy about the structure of hardmode. It's not that too much is ignorable.
In Pre-Hardmode, there are no bottlenecks in terms of bosses. You can face the 6/7 pre-WoF bosses in any order you want... or ignore all of them.
Sure, you need to defeat Skeletron to unlock the Dungeon and the Clothier (and the Mechanic, generally); you need to defeat a world evil boss to unlock the Tavernkeep and to get Hellstone gear pre-Hardmode; you need to defeat the Queen Bee to unlock the Witch Doctor, and you need to defeat the Eye of Cthulhu, a world evil boss, or Skeletron to unlock the Dryad, and, in terms of events, you only need to end a goblin invasion to unlock the Goblin Tinkerer.
...but you don't need to do any of those things.
It's recommended that you fight all of the bosses you can in preparation for the Wall of Flesh and Hardmode, but, as far as I know, there's nothing stopping you from summoning the Wall of Flesh when all you have is 100 max HP, a copper pickaxe, and a dream. You'ld get torn to bloody shreds, but it's possible.
Now, let's look at Hardmode.
You must defeat one mech to unlock Tier 2 Old One's Army, natural Solar Eclipses, Life Fruit, and a number of item drops, and you must defeat all of the mechs to unlock Chlorophyte gear and Plantera. You must defeat Plantera to unlock the Moon invasions, Empress of Light, the upgraded Dungeon and its biome chest weapons, the upgraded Solar Eclipse, launcher weapons, the Lihzahrd Temple, and Golem. You must defeat Golem to unlock Tier 3 Old One's Army, Martian Madness, and the Cultist: the catalyst to the end of the game.
Pre-Hardmode locked the Dungeon behind Skeletron and locked the Old One's Army (plus half of the Demonite/Crimtane gear and thus also Hellstone (pre-HM, anyway)) behind either world evil boss. If you're a loot collector, want all town NPCs, or just want to fight all of the bosses, pretty much only boss drops and NPCs are locked behind the other pre-HM bosses-- and even Skeletron and the world evil bosses are optional if your only goal is to beat the game.
Pre-Hardmode has content locked behind bosses, but, if you just want to beat the game, your only bottleneck before Hardmode is the Wall of Flesh.
In Hardmode, you are bottlenecked at various points by The Twins, The Destroyer, Skeletron Prime, Plantera, and Golem... (plus, of course, the Lunatic Cultist, the Pillars, and Steve Moon Lord, but that was taken as read).
The result is that Pre-Hardmode feels open while Hardmode feels restrictive.
What you get is (instead of two segments) Pre-Hardmode, Pre-Mech, Mid-Mech, Post-Mech, Post-Plantera, Post-Golem, Post-Cultist, and Post-Moon Lord as points in progression in terms of what unlocks.
I have to wonder... What if Hardmode were more open? There's already Duke Fishron and Empress of Light as optional bosses that can be fought earlier than their loot tier implies you should, and Queen Slime and almost all events are optional. What if more of Hardmode were like that?
What if Plantera, Life Fruit, the Post-Plantera Dungeon enemies, the Moon invasions, natural Solar Eclipses, the Empress of Light, Tier 2 OOA, Martian Madness (with some limit to how long it can last and/or the ability to despawn the event on world exit if it's triggered early), and a few other things like Lava Bats and certain Strange Plant Dyes were unlocked as soon as the spirits of light and dark are released?
You still have to fight Plantera to enter the Temple, and you still have to fight Golem for the Cultist to appear, and the core Hardmode bosses still have some stuff locked behind them, but you can have some more flexibility with the order you do things in, even if it can be... foolhardy in some permutations.
Sure, being able to get the Picksaw pre-Mech means you can skip Hallowed gear and go straight to Chlorophyte-- scratch that, straight to Spectre/Shroomite, but, y'know, you can conceivably upgrade from copper straight to titanium if you rush Hardmode and fish up titanium crates and hardmode biome crates; why stop there?
Instead of doubling down on requirements for progression, like I suggested previously, why not shave off requirements, instead?
The obvious question is "If you can fight these bosses and enemies early, wouldn't that mean you can sequence break progression and render a lot of loot worthless by doing so?"
... *points at Duke Fishron*
...I wouldn't call it an unfamiliar concept for the game.
Oh! Maybe, if you defeat Plantera before the mechs, some of the effects of defeating one or all mechs still take effect, like Yelets, Code 2, Bee Wings, Butterfly Wings, and the Pulse Bow (and maybe even the Mushroom Spear and Hammush) becoming obtainable and Red Devils and Reapers to start spawning... assuming none of those get unrestricted to begin with? I dunno.
I think that's about it...
So yeah; that's my new stance: Minimize what's locked behind bosses in Hardmode.
Would it work? Would it be a good change in practice? Big shrug!

Cut the hair off bro 💀

It's total bullshit! Game was way easier when endgame was skeletron and molten armor 😂😂 Love this game, best 20$ish I ever spent

slop

Lol “older brother minecraft” look up the release dates and you’ll see it’s the other way around

I feel like terraria progression takes a lot of inspiration from games like monster hunter especially early game

If i could change anything i would make it that the rod of discord has a 99999999999/100 chance to drop

omg, he’s hot.. 😂

I remember when i first played i was 7 i think i went to hell my heart was already having a heart attack killed a demon with a the doll abive lava and when the wall spwaned the scream was blood curdeling

My main issue with Terraria is that none of the bosses are properly connected. They're connected fine in terms of gameplay and progression, but their Designs are so disconnected, like they're from completely different stories. The fact that one moment you're fighting a tribe of lizards with a giant machine idol, then the next you're fighting some Moon Lord just doesn't make sense to me, and I wish there was more Connection

i did not expect him to look like that at all wtf

add more mandatory bosses before moonlord

No offense really, but you look like the asshole rich kid who has a character arc about learning to be humble

I have an idea, make the lunar pillar weapons buffed and post moon lord, then make it so you can craft a permanent upgrade to a certain damage type to make other weapon’s moon lord worthy

My thoughts on progression? It all ends pretty quick. How many bosses are mandatory in pre-hardmode? On paper, only Skeletron and WoF. You could go directly to hell and summon and kill WoF... if you had the gear for it, of course. And Skeletron is mandatory only so that the cultists can spawn. I know technically is not possible because WoF is extremely hard without proper gear, so most likely you will defeat a few other bosses prior to this (like world eater/brain of cthulhu), but if you can find a way to bypass them they aren't mandatory. Then on hardmode, the progression is mechanical bosses, plantera, golem, and then cultists/pillars/moonlord. And by the time you beat Moonlord and you get the best gear in the game... there isn't anything else to use it. Like, I crafted a Zenith in a master mode world, and all for what? I've already killed all the other bosses and there is nothing that is strong enough to resist it or pose a challenge. When I played through vanilla master mode, I felt like I spent more time building arenas and fishing or harvesting plants for the potions, or farming for items, than doing any actual progression. And that's probably why mods like Calamity are so popular. Not only they add a lot of content to the game, specially post-moonlord, but also makes the game absurdly more challenging (which in my opinion is a bit excessive, master mode in vanilla is challenging enough for me, but I understand if some people likes that).

What about combining fragments with existing weapons so you can still use your favorite gear? Upgraded weapons.

I beat Plantera first try 💀

And still, there are some seven years old kids who only play minecraft and know nothing about terraria and say terraria is copying minecraft.

what tends to kill game enjoyment for me is when something i need requires excessive farming or good chest rng, this is only amplified when trying to play a multiplayer world because getting lava charms and ice skates to get everyone terraspark for example seems to almost require extra worlds to get those items from

Bro seems like some sort of a mage

I really hope Relogic widens the progression gap between golem and moon lord, because for me it’s usually just: kill golem, kill lunatic cultist, do pillars and then moon lord, it always seems like a little last boss rush to finish off the game. I don’t really know what they could do to extend the late game but I’m sure there’s something. (And yes I am aware that there is quite a few things you can do post golem but you aren’t obliged to do any of them and I never usually feel the need to because by the time you’ve killed golem you essentially already have the equipment needed for moon lord if you’re decent at the game)

I always felt that hardmode progression was really quick. Mechs, Plantera, Golem and you're at the end. Lunatic Cultist and all the pillars and Moonlord feels like one "boss" to me. Even taking my sweet time playing through the game every playrhrough I do.. entering hardmode, no matter how slow I am it feels fast. And not to mention I start with Queen Slime and Duke right away so it's not like I am rushing the main bosses.

The only game that I really wish I could play again for the first time

I love this game. it took 3 or 4 tries to actually get into it (not going to lie, without knowing there was a goal past the eye of cthulu I wasnt too interested) but now it is on my top 10 list.
They need some content between golem and the cultists, after plantera it just feels like a boss rush.

Minecraft has literally no progression. On a set sees the game has been beaten in less than one minute by breaking like three blocks having a mob kill a skeleton to give you a bow and arrow than one shorting the dragon based on momentum.