Screenshot by Jack Fennimore
Exactly nine years after it first launched, Terraria receives its final major update.
The 1.4.0.1 update, Terraria Journey’s End, adds over 1,000 items, rebalanced mechanics, new bosses, new music, new graphics, new modes and more.
It’s truly massive, so here are 10 tips and tricks to help you navigate it all.
Note: The first four tips will focus on the new Journey Mode while the last six will focus on the update as a whole.
1. You’ll Never Have to Grind Again Thanks to Journey Mode
Screenshot by Jack Fennimore
The new Journey Mode adds a bunch of features to the base game that are useful for newcomers and seasoned players alike. To access the features from your newly created Journey Mode world, open the menu and click on the icon of a bunny wearing a mining hat to the left underneath your inventory.
One of these features is the Research and Duplication feature. When you collect an item, you can add it to the Research menu and if you add enough then you can grab full stacks of that item whenever you want for as many times as you want.
That means you can have infinite blocks, ores, weapons, accessories, ammo, gems and even coins. The only downside is that the weapons and accessories you get from the feature do not come with modifiers that change their stats, so you can’t “reroll” items to get the modifiers you want.
While there’s still an initial grind to get the items, you won’t be doing it for long. It’s great for players who want to keep up the pace of the game without having to pause to find and mine some ore. No more going back to the mines because it turns out you don’t have enough iron.
2. Use Research to Make More Room In Your Inventory
Inventory management is one of the trickiest things to do in Terraria. Luckily, in addition to providing you with infinite items, the Research function can help you manage inventory. If you don’t need an item right away, you can just give it away for research. Now this consumes the item, but it’s going toward eventually getting infinite amounts of that item.
3. Use the Enemy Spawn Slider to Farm
Screenshot by Jack Fennimore
Duplication is great, but you still need to find items and Research them. Thankfully, Journey Mode also gives you extra opportunities to farm for items, especially specific items from enemies.
Journey Mode also has a Difficulty Slider and an Enemy Spawn Rate Slider. At the bottom of the slider is the difficulty setting for Journey Mode. Moving up from there is x1 for Normal Mode, x2 for Expert Mode and x3 for Master Mode. According to the Terraria Wiki, moving the slider to Master Mode will give you an extra accessory slot.
You can also change the spawn rate of all enemies from x0 to x10 the normal rate. Naturally, the more enemies that spawn, the higher the chances of getting the item you want from them.
4. You Can Change How Time Flows & Experience More Blood Moons & Solar Eclipses
Journey Mode also lets you change the time in-game from dawn, noon, dusk and midnight anytime you want. You can also freeze time and alter the rate time passes from x1 to x20. The faster time passes, the more you experience the day/night cycle. This can potentially help you encounter more Blood Moon and Solar Eclipse events, giving you more opportunities to fight the exclusive enemies from those events and get their special items. Look out for Blood Zombies and Dripplers during the Blood Moon for a chance to get the incredibly useful Money Trough as well as The Groom and The Bride for their Vanity Items. During the Solar Eclipse, which only occurs during Hardmode, look out for Vampires for the Moon Stone accessory which you’ll need with the Sun Stone to craft the incredibly useful Celestial Stone. Once you trigger a Solar Eclipse after defeating all three Mechanical Bosses, Mothron can spawn. Defeating it will give you a chance to obtain the Broken Hero Sword, which you need to craft True Excalibur and True Night’s Edge which you can combine to create the Terra Blade.
You can also change the weather, including making it rain and windy. Special enemies spawn during rainy and windy days, so changing the weather constantly will help you farm the special items from those enemies.
5. You Need to Keep NPCs Happy
Screenshot by Jack Fennimore
Now for tips that will help you for the regular game as well, not just Journey Mode.
It’s now not enough to give NPCs a house and call it a day. They now have specific preferences on where they want to live and who they want to live next to. For example, the new Zoologist NPC prefers to have a house in the Forest biome and live next to the Stylist, according to the Wiki.
Keeping NPCs happy will let you buy Pylons, which will act as waypoints you can teleport between.
6. Never Worry About Inventory Management with the Void Valt
The new Void Vault will take away a lot of the stress that comes with Inventory Management. If you have full inventory, collecting items will automatically store them in the Void Vault. You can access the items in the Void Vault from wherever you place it or anywhere in the world with the Void Bag.
A Void Vault can be made by crafting 15 Bone (from skeleton enemies), 8 Jungle Spores (from the Jungle Biome) and 15 Shadow Scale (From the Eater of Worlds in a world with Corruption) or Tissue Sample (Brain of Cthulhu and Creeper in a world with Crimson) at a Demon/Crimson Altar. To craft the Void Bag, take 30 Bone, 15 Jungle Spores and 30 Shadow Scale/Tissue Sample to a Demon/Crimson Altar.
7. Start Golfing with the Golfer
Journey’s End also adds a brand new minigame: golf! To start golfing, find the Golfer NPC. He’s somewhere in the Underground Desert Biome, according to the Wiki.
The Golfer will sell you everything you need to set up games of golf, including the clubs, the flags, the Golf Ball, Golf Tee, Golf Whistle, Golf Cup, flags and more.
The Golfer also sells an item that is useful within and outside of golfing, the Lawn Mower. The Lawn Mower is a tool that mows normal and hallowed grass. According to the Wiki, mowed grass reduces enemy spawn chance in addition to preventing tall grass from growing and changing how golf balls move. So you could mow the grass in front of your base to reduce the amount of enemies that come by.
8. Fill Out the Bestiary for Rewards from the Zoologist
Journey’s End also adds a Bestiary. By defeating enemies, you can fill entries in your Bestiary. Defeating multiple of the same enemy will give you more info about that enemy, including how rare they spawn and what items you can get from it. It’s essentially a wiki that you don’t have to look up.
Filling out the Bestiary will also unlock the Zoologist. According to the wiki, you need to have an empty house and have filled out 10% (or 52 entries) of the Bestiary.
The Zoologist sells a variety of interesting and useful items. By default, you can buy the Guide To Critter Companionship which prevents you from harming Critters (useful when catching Critters needed to spawn certain bosses), the Squirrel Hook which is a grappling hook that lets you hook onto trees, and the Critter Shampoo which changes the color of your summoned allies. If you have 15% (80 entries) of the Bestiary filled out, you can buy the Leather Whip, a weapon that is especially useful for Summoner builds as it makes summoned allies target whatever is whipped. If you have 25% of the Bestiary filled out (130 entries), you can get the Mollusk Whistle. After you’ve defeated the Eye of Cthulhu, you can buy the Binoculars which expands your view distance when used.
9. Use the Seed 5162020 To Spawn a World with Both Corruption and Crimson
When you create a world in Terraria, you usually only get to choose between the Corruption or Crimson world to appear. But as user Salamantic discovered on the Terraria Subreddit, you can use the seed 5162020 to create a world with both Crimson and Corruption.
When creating a new world, just enter 5162020 in the “world seed” box. You’ll know it worked when the loading screen looks crazy.
We can confirm that this seed works. Not only will you have both Corruption and Crimson in the same world, but the Party Girl will appear right near the area you first spawn in.
10. Here’s How to Find the New Bosses (SPOILERS!)
Screenshot by Jack Fennimore
Journey’s End has two brand new bosses you can fight, but the way to find them is cryptic. Those two bosses are the Empress of Light and the Queen Slime.
According to the Wiki, you can spawn the Empress of Light by killing a Prismatic Lacewing, a rare butterfly Critter that spawns on the surface of the Hallow after you defeat Plantera.
A YouTube video by MTEN shows that you can catch the Prismatic Lacewing, drop it into your boss-fighting arena, and the kill it to spawn the boss there.
To summon the Queen Slime, you mist mine a Gelatin Crystal found in the Underground Hallow and then consume it according to the Wiki. You need to be in Hardmode to get the Gelatin Crystal as triggering Hardmode creates the Hallow Biome, but you don’t need to defeat Plantera first.
For more general tips about Terraria for new players, click here.
For tips on how to access and fight through Terraria Hardmode, click here.