Because a lot people can't comprehend someone wanting to start in expert mode, my friend DIDN'T WANT the easy difficulty. He plays Dark Souls, the guy is used to far worse. Also, check out of the first video! th-cam.com/video/zwct87MVTPk/w-d-xo.html
expert also gives loot bags to each player instead of dropping loot on the ground forcing players to divide it, i think it's better for coop in that way
This series is absolutely cracking me up. "How does a noob progress in Terraria?" Offscreen: Kill bosses, mine ores, craft gear, generally kick ass Onscreen: Mine dirt for 3 hours
So, fun fact. The game actually tries to tell you that the intended way to get through corrupted stone is to use purification powder on it. Of course, explosives are faster and it’s not explained too terribly well, so that’s what most players end up landing on.
When I first started playing, I discovered the biome bosses (corruption in my case) by just reading the achievements. One achievement said to break an orb with a hammer and I did just that. When I saw the messages, I just kept breaking orbs until I was brutally scared to death by a certain worm.
i've got 4.5k hours in vanilla and i always, ALWAYS build my house and hellivator right on the world spawn so that if i die i will be safe and can immediately drop down my hellivator if i want to
Yeah the npcs really helped me a lot in figuring out the game, tho it won’t help much if you never talked to the guide and he dies before you figure out how to build a house for him, they should add some failsafe tutorial if the guide is dead and you have no home for him
Yeah, but if you get the guide killed, how can he tell you about housing, or for a noob to learn about it?, sadly, games have progressed past the point of letting you learn some things on your own, and instead spoon feed you a entire tutorial on the basics off the jump, and more tutorials when more stuff you haven't used before are acquired... Personally, I learned (almost 4 decades ago) to stop to read everything on screen and to read new items when I got them, so I never had trouble learning how to play terraria when it first came out (yeah, I've been playing since day one)
@@MrEli768phone Terrira had a tutorial for the basics of the basics, housing and how to craft, and that was it. I think that should have been added as an option for all versions.
No matter if you're just mainly playing Minecraft or a souls game, looting chests is high to top priority as soon as you see them. There is literally no excuse to ignore chests, no matter what game you played before. This is unlike other stuff, like trying to mine in Terraria, which is the habit of a typical Minecraft player
I think he was deliberately playing poorly at some points just to harass his useless friend holding the camera. His friend should have stepped in and told him everything the Guide does, especially with the guide gone. The NPC probably survived in his singleplayer world and he just read the tips. The Guide will tell you what to do all the way to hardmode, with the other NPCs telling you the surrounding details. It's no wonder is friend made all of his progression in singleplayer.
@Firesgone well this challenge is about how far someone with no outside knowlegde can get. The Guide dying is part of the game. Respawning him is part of the game. If you dont help by telling him how to respawn the Guide, then thats just part of the challenge. Helping him with this outside knowlegde actually goes against this challenge. And this doesn't excuse his behaviour of ignoring chests. Like no guide in any game should have to tell you to loot chests. Maybe only how to do it of there locked.
FromSoft would be proud of this man, Dark Souls has taught him so well. Encounters guardian: "It can be killed." chain deep-dives trying to steal loot it's protecting. Encounters Skeletron: ignores gear level, starts grinding and innovating. *Inadvertently makes guardian killer track circle for it.* The absolute Legend.
Perhaps if you have another opportunity like this, make it clear you want to document their experience so they don’t go off and progress off camera? But yes, that is a good sign on enjoying himself
"When you first played Terraria, where did you make your base?" Bold of you to assume I remember that far back. Terraria was the first game I bought on Steam in 2011.
Yup the 2nd one was definitely me. Didn't have that much motivation to play the game and I put about 100 hours into it, split across many different playthroughs which didn't really go anywhere, don't think I even defeated king slime or eye of cthulhu. But now that I have gotten the motivation to play terraria it has become one of my favourite games and I have put an extra 300 or so hours split through two playthroughs/characters.
Yeah, I'd love to bring another person along who'd be committed to not playing solo so I can observe them the whole way. And yeah, different people interact differently with the game.
@@Throarbin My friend brought me to the game and I dug tunnels under the service. My thought at the time was that it would keep me safe from all the creatures. The player with me at the time was letting me do what I want, with minimal guidance. I had no idea how to build buildings / crafting system, friend needed to help me with that. Also found out that creatures would spawn in the tunnel I made, so it wasn't that effective. Was placing walls after was shown how, doing them one by one, later being told how to jump around with walls auto placing. I sent your first video to my friend with a 'I so feel this' type comment.
@@Throarbin A good point I saw in a different comment is that maybe expert mode is too difficult for newbies to start with. Your friend made giga progress once he started playing in his own world because the hp bars and enemy damage aren't as high compared to expert mode
@@Throarbin Expert mode is meant for experts, in easier modes Guide can defend himself quite easily And instead of standing beside nooby friends to record them doing stuff, they should screen share or just straight up record and send their POV to you If my friend want me to play his favorite game, but do nothing to help me while STANDING there, I'll be fuming and bored cause you ARE there, when I asked about something, answering me "figure it out" will only lead me to wiki So if I'm your friend, picking expert mode, standing there acting like I'm missing so many stuff but you refuse to tell me what did I do wrong, watching me dying again and again for "The Experience" I'm sooooo going to open up a easier new world on my own, play with 10 tabs of wiki open, and find a 20 mins Terraria tutorial on TH-cam Or, hear me out... I'll just quit the game. Since that I feel like you are trying to go for a take two (by looking at all your comment replies), I hope all these constructive criticism in the comments (not only mine but all of them) can help you make even better videos :)
My first base was in a living tree. I hollowed out the trunk and cut rooms into the leaves, eventually expanding it into a massive sprawling tree house that had a floating island tied to it by a chain. Still my favourite base I ever made 😊
My mind the last two videos every time you ask how a new player is supposed to know something: “There’s a tip for that.” “Talk to the guide.” “The guide speaks on that.”
15:46 your achievements give you hints to your progression when you play for the first time. There are prompts telling you to try breaking the orbs when you haven't done it before
@@volcanic_sloth the achievement list is always in the top right of the inventory and does actually give the player the order of things to do in the game, you dont even need to open the full list of achievements, as long as you look at the current achievement visible in the inventory screen, you have your next objective.
@@volcanic_slothit’s what I did. I always take a glance at achievements when I play a new game. And the Minecraft devs (as an example) specifically designed their achievements as a way of teaching new players how to play the game. It’s not as uncommon as you think it is.
But he doesn't tell you about the voodoo doll. He just says something about a "burning sacrifice". This was the first thing I had to look up. Who in their right mind would end up with the idea of casting the doll into the hellfire? This was extremely unintuitive and frustrating. Unless it is somewhere better hinted at that I didn't see. But this is basically forcing people to look it up which I find rather poor game design.
@@NikiDrozdowski I do not think it's is that extreme, granted the bestiary helps imply at it a bit more, but I think the fact that slaying a voodoo demon in the underworld has a risk of falling into lava, thus summoning the WoF
@@NikiDrozdowskii learned when I was just fighting demons and one dropped a voodoo doll right into the lava, I feel like this happens to most players eventually
destroying the orbs in corruption seems very plausible to me, i can easily imagine a decent chunk of people seeing them and making note of them so that when they find a pick that can mine ebonstone or somehow discover bombs one would atleast try to interact with them
demolitionist will actually tell you to use bombs to destroy ebonstone. the issue is that you need to build a house first, guide can help you with that but the guide is dead so they can only discover this feature accidentally
@@matthewloscar2893 the first time i played terraria was in Console edition NPC housing, Mining Ores, Moving, Platforms were teach by the tutorial. Other than that, i had my own freedom to do what i wanted to. I think NPC happiness should be changed to have no downside and only upside tho. Hard mechanic to learn, and currently the Payoff is not big enough.
@@matthewloscar2893 i think if somebody figured the bombs break ebonstone might naturally throw a bomb at orbs as well when nothing else works and bombs drop pretty commonly
9:28 I’ve always found the fact that dirt walls can’t be mined easily very unintuitive. I’d make them mineable with hammers by default and I can’t think of a good reason why not to do that
I agree, it should be mined wherever, without access to the surface, the exploits they want to avoid by not allowing that is so miniscule compared to the benefits
9:47 it took me months of playing before I found the "housing query" I also used to never go fishing, since "food isn't mandatory, what is the point of catching fish?" Thousands of hours across multiple platforms later, fishing and building NPC houses are some of my favorite things to do when I'm not actively progressing.
Oh yeah, your friend was me in Stardew Valley. I played with friends for the first time on that game, and then started playing alone and proceeded to play, like, 70 hours in the week before we could play together again. A few sessions in and I had more time on the game than our veteran player 😂 This video seems very accurate to me for a new player, and I'm glad your friend discovered a new game that he enjoys. I can definitely see myself in this, but that's probably because I only recently started playing (still waiting on Skeletron Prime to spawn, sadly. Dude will not spawn for anything)
You can always make the summoning item for him. You should be able to find the recipe by putting souls or bones in the guides crafting interface. I always make the summoning item when the RNG won't let me fight the mechanical bosses.
@pilotmender043 Update: Skeletron decided to attack me basically immediately upon entering the world, so that problem is solved. I did make a destroyer summon because I had used most of his souls to make a megashark. Question for any terraria experts; can you fight Planterra (?) On the surface? What I assume is her spawner is extremely close to the surface
@ You can but Plantera will become enraged so you really should fight it in the underground. It’s annoying with the frequency of enemy spawns but you should make an underground arena. That will maximize your chance of winning since enraged bosses are no joke
I remember when Terraria used to have a built-in tutorial that would walk you through crafting and building valid housing. Also there was that one nymph guarding a grappling hook under the tutorial island. Those were the days.. The first base I ever built was on a natural chunk of floating blocks since that's where I spawned, and it eventually turned into an apartment complex going up into space. I later planted some crimson seeds in the dirt and corrupted the bottom few layers of housing. This was back when Ocram was still around for anyone curious
@@Perthro77 oh, PC didn't have it? I started out on mobile so I wasn't aware of this, I just know that it pretty much disappeared after 1.3 was released on console and mobile
Not talking to the guide seems to be quite common. My brother recently started playing Terraria, and he walked right past the guide and never spoke to him until right before Moon Lord.
Could you ask your brother what was his reasoning for not talking to the guide ? (at least at the start) I find it hard to believe that people wouldn't consider trying to interact with the only things that seems out of place when starting a new game.
@@siphons5737 I asked, turns out, he did, but got nothing useful out of him. Basically, he clicked on the guide, saw the crafting function, figured out he can craft on his own without being near the guide (Didn't even notice that he can place materials in the empty slot), and completely glossed over the "help" button, we don't know why.
22:22 People don't think to read off the "special" items because they don't know they're special. When you first see it, you pretty much know what a bomb, torch, rope, and painting are, but you don't really know what's the importance of some horseshoe or balloon.
Me as a Terraria noob: Ooh weird orb, let's hit it. Ooh, chest, what's in it? Ooh weird item, what's the tooltip? Ooh, curse, what's that d-- MADE A MISTAKE. Ooh, Guide. What's he got to say? Ooh UI, let's explore it and see what all the buttons do. All the other noobs this guy has met, apparently: Dig in a straight horizontal line forever. Never look at new things. Never interact with anything ever. I refuse to believe I'm the strange one here...
augh, it's such a shame they did all that progression by themselves, like, it's great they aparrently enjoyed themselves enough to play it on their own iniative but as a result we miss all their thought process and reactions, do you think you'll attempt this with another 'noob'? because it's certainly a interesting premise. edit: my home bases tend to be at spawn but i construct them floating a bit above ground level
Tbh Joel coming back geared up and defeating a boss was so cool to see, shows he - at least seemed to - enjoy his time and wanted to explore on his own. Sure its missed footage but I think thats even cooler
My theory for why your noobs didn't look in the top left slot of chests, and start reading the contents from right to left is: - You already know that the most important item is going to be in that slot. A noob would not until they consciously discovered that trend (or they looked it up, which is besides the point) - The right side of the chest gui is closer to the center of the screen than the left side of the chest gui.
Plus for the most part, lotsa players who never touched terraria before but played something like dark souls, or another rpg, or even minecraft, are gonna focus on the potions because most games make a bigger deal out of the potions and not the random balloon or a pair of green shoes.
@@simplysmiley4670 hahaha yeah that too, 'how is a blue magnet or a shoelace protector gonna help me'. Good point! Contrarily, though, I feel that if players eventually get desensitized to the useless junk that can appear in * every * chest, that can be a path to them focusing on the one slot that is hopefully the most unique.
@@oneilmw If they find that many random chests, and if those chests contain duplicate potions, _and if the player realises they can make potions pretty easily en-masse._
Eater of Worlds is also harder for a new player to notice because the orbs are at the bottom of long vertical chasms in a very hazardous biome, it asks a lot of you to even find them compared to the dungeon and Skeletron, you may even find Skeletron as your first boss depending on how stuff goes.
Gotta be honest. I know you keep on the whole "friend didn't want an easy difficulty, wanted expert mode" but he himself started to play solo and played on a new world on normal difficulty and clearly got a lot further and more engaged in the game through it. I understand he "wanted a hard difficulty" but, to be honest, I don't think you should trust a new player to decide to play on a hard difficulty before they know the game and how it functions. I know whenever I struggle in a sandbox game like this i'll just get bored and quit or do what we've seen here, dig around aimlessly and not explore because exploration or going deeper means harder and more dangerous enemies so i'd naturally assume i'm missing an armor tier or weapon tier. If you do repeat this in the future, I highly think not starting on Expert mode, even if they want to, would be smart.
I could be completely wrong, but I'm tempted to think he is perfectly aware of how Terraria works and is actively trolling you into thinking he's oblivious.
Ya know, I think Joel going to the Wiki to look stuff up and do things off-screen is actually very representative of the new player experience. As a youngling myself, when I first started, I had the Wiki open constantly. I mean, have you seen the crafting trees in this game!!
I love Terraria, been playing for a long time. I remember when I first started playing, it was because I saw a TH-cam video of someone else playing it. Less than 5 minutes into the video, I bought it. As someone who has been gaming for 25+ years, it was fairly natural for me to discover the crafting mechanic and how to use the Guide NPC to check what items can be used for what recipies. Yes, I did learn a lot from also reading the wiki, but by the time I needed to rely on the wiki, I already had the basics down like building a base with walls, NPC housing, etc. It's honestly kind of painful watching these guys struggle so much; it's like they don't normally play video games that rely on crafting mechanics.
Yep me too, i started playing terraria way back in 2013 and the hardest thing werent the mechanics but rather how to play multiplayer (steam didnt support terraria yet back then) and how to download mods
Honestly the crafting in terraria is still maybe the least intuitive in any game I’ve ever played, and that’s simply because it isn’t its own interaction or window. Even Minecraft, the only other game I can think of where crafting is natively part of your inventory, the crafting part is WAY bigger than in terraria. It’s incredibly easy to miss, which I did when I started ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@redtaileddolphin1875 I agree with you, the crafting isn't the most intuitive, but it's there to figure out for people if they spend the time. I don't know if this video is necessarily 'rigged', but I think knowing that they are being recorded for a 'new player plays Terraria blind', it affects their ability to be inquisitive and poke around. I'd also argue that games like Terraria are not meant to be played blind.
@@LordAnubis85 yeah terraria is def a wikigame like binding of isaac where eventually you kinda just have to have fun looking through the wiki and discovering new stuff that way, and I say this as a compliment lol
@@TheFrenchNarrator Yes, you seem like you may have my meaning backwards. Friend plays off camera on the same character and gets major advancements. By the time that they fight Wall of Flesh on screen, friend probably has Moon Lord gear is what I'm saying.
15:35, I remember when I first started playing, I didn't know ebonstone COULD be blown up with bombs, so the only way I knew how to destroy it was: -killing a boss (eye usually) -getting the Dryad NPC -buying the Purification Powder -throwing said powder at the ebonstone to purify it into regular stone -and then mine it only to be met with a floating orb that I did not know how to destroy because my pickaxe would do nothing lol
1:25 as someone who plays MC a lot, it's not 100% blind, it's usually a lot of cave exploration to find ore the easiest; HOWEVER, In Minecraft the deeper you go the better ores you find, the more ores you find, and the higher frequency you find them at, so even in MC the solution to "I do not have enough iron" can be "Dig deeper" (or make an iron farm, but that's another thing.) EDIT: I see that right after this you mentioned cave exploration, my B.
Coincidentally, my very first terraria world is FULL of surface-level rabbit tunnels, I was apparently obsessed with making perfectly even tunnels in every direction like it was the cave level of a platformer game. I haven't played minecraft. My first base: about four blocks underground, long with chests and crafting stations, and rabbit tunnels going in every direction, because I was too scared to go on the surface lol (I didn't find out what beds were until like two months in of playing, and even then it took me a while to find out 1; how to make it, and 2; how to use it properly)
9:00 on my first world, I made my base about 100 blocks to the right of spawn and dug massive chasms with bombs eventually. Second world was a biiiiig tower I called a hotel that had plenty of rooms and went up to world limit, no chasms, right on spawn. Third world it was 20ish blocks to the right with no chasms and every world after was on spawn with dug out pits beside to start off, expanding up and down and trapping the pits.
Continue this. I want to see the insanity that ensues in early hardmode with a new player. Random mech boss spawns, random boss summon drops whispering to your friend, etc. It’d be great.
Seeing him rejoin with different gear was just "I've succeeded, but at what cost?" Damnit, you borked our video, but you enjoyed the game enough to play off-camera!!! How can we get mad at that?
so back when i first tried out playing Terraria, I joined a friends world, They already had a decent amount of progress, Gemstone farms, and where even preparing for an alien invasion, All of that overwhelmed me to the point i was just standing around dumbfounded and didn't really do anything, Never really joined them again, Instead i persuaded one of them to start a new world with me, Fresh and assist me with learning, I was mostly left to my own devices, (I actually did the same thing as your friend and went straight to mining) unless i had a question, This of course usually meant i was asking for a hint, or about a particular block (Example, I had no idea how to unlock the forge, or be able to craft it back then) I played minecraft a year before i started playing terraria, but at the same time, I also used minecraft logic for a decent while, before realizing "yeah. that's a major difference, let's rethink how to approach that" in terms of mob spawning and what not. Overall, I about made it to the wall of flesh with that friend at that time, but didn't continue there after, as He was heading back to school since summer break was over and we never really tried to play it together again, That was 8 years ago, Granted! we are still friends, He's gotten married and has a kid on the way lol so its not like we couldn't, its just that we never thought to play it again. I did however continue to "try" and play it on-off over the years since then, mostly getting bored just before or after fighting the Eye, unless i worked on and played a world with a friend, I barely ever make progress Passed the Eye, Usually spent 90% of my time building houses & structures, till i get bored which i won't deny, is unfortunate. I do basically the same with minecraft actually, it's Probably just something to do with sandbox games for me, But i can't seem to actually progress in the game without a friend around during the progress.
So the funny thing is that the Guide will tell you how to craft a suspicious looking eye, worm food, bloody spine, and even tell you to smash shadow orbs/crimson hearts and basically anything you possibly need to learn about how to progress. He'll tell you how to make potions without an alchemy station, give you hints about town NPCs and how to get them, HELL, HE WILL EVEN TELL YOU TO PUT DESERT FOSSIL INTO AN EXTRACTINATOR. The Guide is a genuinely amazing resource but nobody uses him because at a first glance he looks pretty useless and experienced players never interact with him (outside of murder) because they don't need help or use the wiki instead. That grenade was funny AF LMAO he didn't even use the item at first he just dropped it
But he doesn't tell you about the voodoo doll. He just says something about a "burning sacrifice". This was the first thing I had to look up. Who in their right mind would end up with the idea of casting the doll into the hellfire? This was extremely unintuitive and frustrating. Unless it is somewhere better hinted at that I didn't see. But this is basically forcing people to look it up which I find rather poor game design.
@@NikiDrozdowski The hints they have in place for that are a little more spread out. "When you are ready to challenge the keeper of the underworld, you will have to make a living sacrifice. Everything you need for it can be found in the underworld." - Guide is the obvious one that most players trying to avoid the wiki probably see. "I heard there is a doll that looks very similar to somewhere in the underworld. I'd like to put a few rounds in it." - Arms Dealer is the one that reveals to you that there's a doll, which should be assumed to be important. "I need to have a serious talk with . How many times a week can you come in with severe lava burns?" - Nurse is the one that hints at you that the doll should be tossed in lava, as the Guide coming up with a bunch of burns implies that his voodoo doll is being burnt. The game expects you to read NPC dialogue, which is not a question of design quality and instead reveals that players don't read what they perceive as optional dialogue (especially so these days), even if they realize that dialogue can be be important, which is what the Guide is supposed to tell you. Both of those NPC interactions can show up when the Guide is present, and in the case of the Arms Dealer, if Skeletron is defeated but not the Wall of Flesh. The information is available but nobody looks in the places where it's found because the experienced players never mention it and they never assume/realize that Terraria is the kind of game that has these kinds of hints.
He also dies pretty easily and the housing system is unintuitive to anyone who hasn't used it before, so he doesn't respawn. I think my first wiki run was to learn about housing. Specifically, walls and why they're important.
I wrote this on a steam review for terraria a while back but ill say it here: - I had a friend who would REFUSE to play terraria because it was just 2d minecraft (according to him, so why play terraria if i have minecraft with mods too). I implored him to at least give the game a try with some other friends who were also new, and after a bit of playing he grew to like it a bit... I shit you not, he got so addicted to the game, he managed to clock in about 110 hours in the FIRST week of playing. AND started playing in his own worlds too. Same as with your friend, he wanted to do master mode or none at all. He used the wiki every now and then when learning but for the most part he went completely blind.
At least he didnt use cheats, i find that most new terraria players that come from minecraft that have that exact mentality will go straight to use godmode the moment they dont understand how to bring down a boss after the 5th try... Its either godmode or cheating items in usually, and then they leave the game rotting for years because "it was too easy"
the demolitionist actually has a voiceline about using bombs to break ebonstone! That's how I first figured it out. He specifically mentions bombing the orbs, so... Yeah I didn't last long
For the question at 9:00 I remember doing the tutorial first before starting a world and I set up shop next to one of those overhanging plateaus walling it off and adding to it and on top of it.
I made my first base over spawn. I dug out a like, 60 block wide (or wider, haven't measured it in a long time at this point) channel from the surface all the way to the underworld, and dealt with the walls bit by bit as I gained a greater understanding of the game. I was planning on making a sky to underworld castle.
16:25 You can get to know when you get Demolitionist, he can tell you sometimes this quote: In a Corrupt world: "Trying to get past that Ebonstone, eh? Why not introduce it to one of these explosives!" In a Crimson world: "Trying to get past that Crimstone, eh? Why not introduce it to one of these explosives!"
"He plays darks souls, so he just wants to kill the boss now" I wouldn't say that is the case, rather, he sees the boss, yet either isn't aware that he needs to be more powerful, or if he does know, he doesn't know how to get more powerful. People who played the souls games (at least those I know) when they were first starting out, would take the time to farm souls to level up to be stronger to beat the boss. But with terraria, no system like that exist, it's just find the items on tier, build an arena, fight boss. If he hasn't played many games like terraria, I could see this being a problem of trying to figure out progression.
When he said "anything can be beaten" he was referencing time we spent together playing Dark Souls. In Dark Souls people are constantly killing bosses with anything so he wanted to try and accomplish this.
@Throarbin ah I see, I mistook what you meant by that, I thought he was actually stuck and didn't understand that could be more powerful, and was instead just being stubborn and fighting with what he had, that makes more sense
i remember some of my early terraria progress from ye olden days: i found a suspicious eye, killed the eye, got the dryad who sells purification powder which i used for the corrupt stone to fight the worm. didnt know bombs broke ebonstone for a long time
About mining down, pickaxes have mining power, so after possibly noticing this, people might unconsciously think that they needed better picks to go deeper, because many 2d games in particular have a similar progression system that punishes you for exploring a new tier without unlocking the previous one
My first experience with terraria was with a friend as, for the most part, it's not really a game I can enjoy by myself. That said, our first house was at World Spawnbuilt a ways off the ground with rope to get up. It was just a massive NPC hotel that we expanded as needed
We missed an important question! How did he make progress in his own game? Was it still trial and error? Did he find the wiki? Did the other knowledgeable players give him hints? No judgement, this is all still interesting, just wondering what his pathway to progress ended up being!
I love how this idea was a bust on the youtube department, but a win in literally every other way: your friend learned how to play terraria on their own, had (presumably) fun and intrinsic motivation for doing so as he continued playing on his own, and even did so without much help from a guide. this, as far as the original question (and just gaining someone who enjoys the same game as you) goes, is a raging success. is it sad that this won't be super tightly documented in a series? maybe? But I feel like this is actually the ideal outcome to have, when introducing a game to a friend. well done.
I really believe this friend of yours is an outlier 'cause this was a hilarious mess of a playthrough 💀💀 would really like to have someone else who wouldn't play solo after so we can measure more accurately how well a new player performs
I have always put my house in spawn. Then I make 2 giant pillars of villager housing on either side of said house. Then after I explore the world a bit I actually spread the villagers out and into their favorite biomes. (Also the only reason I know about villager housing is TH-cam. I tried playing Terraria many years ago on my PS4. Hated it. And never played it until I decided to get it on me and my brother’s laptops after watching videos to get into it. The EXACT SAME THING also happened with Don’t Starve Together.)
yay series #2! does joel knows about the wiki? joels attempt to kill voodoo doll was epic! 😆 @Throarbin, do you remember what you did when you first played terraria?
That "thrown" grenade bit with the doll in the hole is one of the best things a new player has done. I'm sure it was probably embarrassing, especially while being recorded, but it still has to be the funniest thing to have someone do.
My biggest obstacle while I’m trying to play is that I have no clue what do to not be wasting time. I can get on the game for like an hour and then not make any real progress. It’s kinda hard to get started in terraria
9:01 I built a house on the surface, and slowly branched it out underground. Though… it took me way too long to figure out that different types of walls existed, the unsafe vs safe walls, so I got barely any NPC’s in my underground mansion until I realized I needed different walls. Not because I looked it up, but because I discovered planked walls and thought they looked better, replaced the dirt with that, and NPC’s started pouring in. 17:23 I DID THIS IN MY FIRST WORLD!! I went into the dungeon and kept dying because of the guardian, and I kept running in over and over, looting more and more over time, until I got enough gear to beat Skeletron. I thought it was basically a looting minigame. I beat it with a mace, and I discovered the joy of maces. 22:40 I think I have an inkling: people tend to loot from right to left, cause if you’re right handed, you work from right to left. English speakers tend to READ left to right, though. Plus, horseshoes are usually associated with decoration nowadays, not something with abilities. That’s my hypothesis, anyway. 25:45 yep, sounds like a Dark Souls player, lol. When it comes to backstabbing, it usually occurs up close.
23:42 I highly recommend teaching your friend about grinding T1 Old One armies, good source for coins while being easy to train with. Surprisingly not well-documented as a farm strat on the wikis, so it gives a good opportunity to gather more data as you progress!
8:51 Funny thing. I actually tried to find a sky island for my first base, but then I saw harpies being harpies, and moved to a "treehouse" type thing.
8:50 Mostly at or near spawn. With more experience, basing near the Corruption was preferable for getting early EoW kills before Expert Mode became a thing. Now I just build an island base about 100-150 tiles above the spawn. Way easier to control spawns and build a proper OOA+boss arena+other things. I did try making underground bases and ran into the natural wall problem just as well though. Turned me off to making underground bases without explosives.
I made my first house in Terraria on the surface out of wood, then added a "basement". About 10 or so hours into the game I looked up guides and wikis to see if I could learn anything... Needless to say I was blown away by the amount of information on this game.
6:35 is really interesting. I remember pre-1.2 you needed a hammer to mine furniture,platforms,life crystals and of course walls. So the logic I guess was that you mined solid objects with the pickaxe and things you can pass through with the hammer. It was changed for convenience maybe but might be less intuitive.
Ok so, a couple things, - Why would you play on expert for their first time? - Once you got to the underworld, you really started holding their hand too much. Using a grav potion, getting the hellforge, getting him to throw the doll...
In my first playthrough of terraria, that was with friends, well i had played before a lil on a phone of a friend, and we weren't been able to kill Wyvern for a LOOONG time,i started making a base on surface, i was making a "Watch tower" , because i wanted to make walls to stop Zombies, and then when Eyes appeared, i just made a roof. Worked pretty well, but while i was doing it, my friends created a house at the spawn , digged hole, mined all of the ore in like, i dont know, 1000 blocks to each side from spawn, and started we already beated Eye of ctulhu and Slime . In that playthrough i was seeking to get gold all the way past hard mode, and i wasn't even using armor and trinkets in active slots, so i was full empty at Skeletron, and i think it was all the way till skeletron prime.
I remember my time as a new player still; I had the approach of seeing how deep I can go... so I found lots of loot/ores along the way to carry me and found the summoning item for eye (I don't even remember if it could spawn naturally back then). I also remember my method for the orbs was I found the purification powder from the dryad after eventually figuring out how houses worked and used that to mine inside the corruption biome... I don't remember why I never used bombs... I tried all my tools to get the orb because it was shiny and I wanted it... then it gave me loot and I wanted more. I found Skeletron before breaking orbs... but everything really came down to carrying myself by my insistence to look for hidden treasure; I thought the corruption was dangerous and would've had better chests. Good on your friend using the bed though... I don't think I ever crafted a bed until Fishron came out as a new boss... I played Terraria before Minecraft and it really didn't occur to me that it was for anything other than decoration.
9:00, I always build my base at the spawn. I like having convenient access to everything, if I die and have no bed, and it's a good point to set up transit, etc., through a map, if I need say Ebonwood, just hop on rails from spawn and go to that farm, if the Hivemind boss is there then I can kill it real quick before harvesting the wood.
Because a lot people can't comprehend someone wanting to start in expert mode, my friend DIDN'T WANT the easy difficulty. He plays Dark Souls, the guy is used to far worse. Also, check out of the first video! th-cam.com/video/zwct87MVTPk/w-d-xo.html
My first world was classic, and I played for about 1 hour. I barely got my house made. Then I created an expert world and never looked back!
My first world was expert mode because it had unique items. Then I made a classic world and it was so much better for me.
My first world was in expert because i wanted to be good at the game
Starting out more difficult sounds reasonable to me
This was my thought in watching the first video, and I went to type this, and saw your pinned comment, so this makes sense.
expert also gives loot bags to each player instead of dropping loot on the ground forcing players to divide it, i think it's better for coop in that way
“I can’t believe he thought the FISHING BOWL zombies were afros” THROAR THOSE ARE SLIMES
They even drop gel, when normal zombies don't.
Such a silly accident, but it does say in the bestiary that they have a slime stuck on their head
why would they have fishing bowls in the first place! what??
@@kawaiiqueee Cause fish bowls can be equiped by players and it is easy to make that mistake when you look at it without thinking.
@@kawaiiqueee well how do you think the zombies died in the first place?
This series is absolutely cracking me up. "How does a noob progress in Terraria?"
Offscreen: Kill bosses, mine ores, craft gear, generally kick ass
Onscreen: Mine dirt for 3 hours
Bro must be camera shy
He probably spent several days looting kicking ass and mining more dirt! 😂
wonder if he found a dirtiest block
"I did some off camera mining"
Dark Souls vet doesn't automatically loot a chest? I'm shocked. Shocked.
Eventually his instincts would pay off though
Well maybe he is traumatized from mimics
@@findot777 hardmode will wake up his DS instinct
I was going to make this comment. You beat me to it lol
So, fun fact. The game actually tries to tell you that the intended way to get through corrupted stone is to use purification powder on it. Of course, explosives are faster and it’s not explained too terribly well, so that’s what most players end up landing on.
"Why purify the world when you can just blow it up!"
- Demolitionist
Lowkey despite having played thousands of hours I never tried that before 😭
"Having trouble getting past that ebonstone eh? Why not introduce it to one of these explosives! -Demolitionist
I figured that out on my own when I was a kid, but this was back before the wall of flesh. Explosives did not work on ebonstone quite yet.
My first time ever breaking a shadow orb i used powder. I thought i was a genius for figuring out how to mine through corruption. This was 8 years ago
When I first started playing, I discovered the biome bosses (corruption in my case) by just reading the achievements. One achievement said to break an orb with a hammer and I did just that. When I saw the messages, I just kept breaking orbs until I was brutally scared to death by a certain worm.
The voodoo doll into a pit into dropping the hand grenade from his inventory is probably the purest series of events I've ever seen in terraria
to answer your question about 9min into the video, i instinctively thought to make my base at world spawn, since every time i died i ended up there.
I feel like this is a fairly normal thing to do. Even just loading into the world is safe to do if there's a base at world spawn.
Most people do cause it's just the sensible thing to do
i've got 4.5k hours in vanilla and i always, ALWAYS build my house and hellivator right on the world spawn so that if i die i will be safe and can immediately drop down my hellivator if i want to
I didn’t even know you could set your spawn for a long ass time
@@derekstryder2281 if you set your spawn in your base you will be at your bed when you load the world
Both the Dryad and the Demolitionist both have dialog lines instructing the player to try using their method of getting through ebonstone!
Yeah the npcs really helped me a lot in figuring out the game, tho it won’t help much if you never talked to the guide and he dies before you figure out how to build a house for him, they should add some failsafe tutorial if the guide is dead and you have no home for him
@@DrPsychoticI feel like the guide should just respawn without housing
The tutorial dying is really the worst part of this
RIP to a real homie. The tutorial was a great time
Yeah, but if you get the guide killed, how can he tell you about housing, or for a noob to learn about it?, sadly, games have progressed past the point of letting you learn some things on your own, and instead spoon feed you a entire tutorial on the basics off the jump, and more tutorials when more stuff you haven't used before are acquired...
Personally, I learned (almost 4 decades ago) to stop to read everything on screen and to read new items when I got them, so I never had trouble learning how to play terraria when it first came out (yeah, I've been playing since day one)
@@MrEli768phone Terrira had a tutorial for the basics of the basics, housing and how to craft, and that was it. I think that should have been added as an option for all versions.
No matter if you're just mainly playing Minecraft or a souls game, looting chests is high to top priority as soon as you see them.
There is literally no excuse to ignore chests, no matter what game you played before.
This is unlike other stuff, like trying to mine in Terraria, which is the habit of a typical Minecraft player
I think he was deliberately playing poorly at some points just to harass his useless friend holding the camera.
His friend should have stepped in and told him everything the Guide does, especially with the guide gone. The NPC probably survived in his singleplayer world and he just read the tips.
The Guide will tell you what to do all the way to hardmode, with the other NPCs telling you the surrounding details.
It's no wonder is friend made all of his progression in singleplayer.
@Firesgone well this challenge is about how far someone with no outside knowlegde can get.
The Guide dying is part of the game. Respawning him is part of the game.
If you dont help by telling him how to respawn the Guide, then thats just part of the challenge.
Helping him with this outside knowlegde actually goes against this challenge.
And this doesn't excuse his behaviour of ignoring chests.
Like no guide in any game should have to tell you to loot chests. Maybe only how to do it of there locked.
Honestly as a noob as well, I didnt even realize these were chests
chests are background, not very intuitive
FromSoft would be proud of this man, Dark Souls has taught him so well.
Encounters guardian: "It can be killed." chain deep-dives trying to steal loot it's protecting.
Encounters Skeletron: ignores gear level, starts grinding and innovating. *Inadvertently makes guardian killer track circle for it.* The absolute Legend.
Cant belive 2 people couldnt figure out it was a slime in the zombie's head 😭😭😭
Afrozombie for life.
I regret nothing about giving it the name
it was slime? i thought it was a space suit or something
@@fjildeth yeah, these zombies are the only one to drop gel
It reminded me of mysterio. Then i read the beastary for the first time
Perhaps if you have another opportunity like this, make it clear you want to document their experience so they don’t go off and progress off camera? But yes, that is a good sign on enjoying himself
"When you first played Terraria, where did you make your base?"
Bold of you to assume I remember that far back. Terraria was the first game I bought on Steam in 2011.
4:40 FISHING BOWLS? It's a slime lmao
Yeah, that part is hilarious, although...
Zombies with fishing bowls on their head... and maybe other vanity items could be cool touch!
BUT IT LOOKS LIKE A FISH BOWL....my life is a lie
@@Throarbin "Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion." I'm sorry...
@@Throarbinthey drop gel, friend…
Tbf, I've heard a lot of other people say they thought it was a fish bowl
There are 2 types of new players in terraria:
The ones who use wiki
The ones who quit after a few days
3. The ones who started with friends
4. The ones that dont let the Guide die and ask him the basics, learn how to use the menu and dont need the wiki unless its for extremely rare drops
Yup the 2nd one was definitely me. Didn't have that much motivation to play the game and I put about 100 hours into it, split across many different playthroughs which didn't really go anywhere, don't think I even defeated king slime or eye of cthulhu. But now that I have gotten the motivation to play terraria it has become one of my favourite games and I have put an extra 300 or so hours split through two playthroughs/characters.
@@bobber_mann thats me and now i am quite good at the game and have nearly 1000 hours
I got into terraria with the 3ds version, since it had a tutorial
Hope you restart this series with a new friend. Was enjoying it, and it will give someone to compare with to see if there are patterns
Yeah, I'd love to bring another person along who'd be committed to not playing solo so I can observe them the whole way. And yeah, different people interact differently with the game.
@@Throarbin My friend brought me to the game and I dug tunnels under the service. My thought at the time was that it would keep me safe from all the creatures. The player with me at the time was letting me do what I want, with minimal guidance. I had no idea how to build buildings / crafting system, friend needed to help me with that. Also found out that creatures would spawn in the tunnel I made, so it wasn't that effective. Was placing walls after was shown how, doing them one by one, later being told how to jump around with walls auto placing.
I sent your first video to my friend with a 'I so feel this' type comment.
@@Throarbin A good point I saw in a different comment is that maybe expert mode is too difficult for newbies to start with. Your friend made giga progress once he started playing in his own world because the hp bars and enemy damage aren't as high compared to expert mode
@@Throarbin Expert mode is meant for experts, in easier modes Guide can defend himself quite easily
And instead of standing beside nooby friends to record them doing stuff, they should screen share or just straight up record and send their POV to you
If my friend want me to play his favorite game, but do nothing to help me while STANDING there, I'll be fuming and bored cause you ARE there, when I asked about something, answering me "figure it out" will only lead me to wiki
So if I'm your friend, picking expert mode, standing there acting like I'm missing so many stuff but you refuse to tell me what did I do wrong, watching me dying again and again for "The Experience"
I'm sooooo going to open up a easier new world on my own, play with 10 tabs of wiki open, and find a 20 mins Terraria tutorial on TH-cam
Or, hear me out... I'll just quit the game.
Since that I feel like you are trying to go for a take two (by looking at all your comment replies), I hope all these constructive criticism in the comments (not only mine but all of them) can help you make even better videos :)
i said this in the last video... but i feel like this is less about "new players to terraria" and more "my friends are idiots"
My first base was in a living tree. I hollowed out the trunk and cut rooms into the leaves, eventually expanding it into a massive sprawling tree house that had a floating island tied to it by a chain. Still my favourite base I ever made 😊
Do you still have the world?
Living wood tree was my first base too! they even have little houses undergrown. It was so neat, I miss it
Same actually, mostly because there was a crimson altar halfway down and I thought it would be useful for more recipes than it is
14:00 It can't be just me who is shocked to see an ALCHEMY TABLE so high up that it's accessable pre-skel
literallyyyy just saw that and came to comments
My mind the last two videos every time you ask how a new player is supposed to know something: “There’s a tip for that.” “Talk to the guide.” “The guide speaks on that.”
And you touch on that lmaoooo! Shows me for commenting while watching
Ye, every time he asks "How is a new player supposed to know that?" the answer is "Guide."
only issue is...the Guide died and he didn't know how to get him back
15:46 your achievements give you hints to your progression when you play for the first time. There are prompts telling you to try breaking the orbs when you haven't done it before
who is going to read what achievements say to progress?
@@volcanic_slothi did on my first playthrough
@@volcanic_sloth the achievement list is always in the top right of the inventory and does actually give the player the order of things to do in the game, you dont even need to open the full list of achievements, as long as you look at the current achievement visible in the inventory screen, you have your next objective.
@@xcorr77 it doesn't matter where the achievement list is, no one in their mind is going to read achievements to figure out where to go
@@volcanic_slothit’s what I did. I always take a glance at achievements when I play a new game. And the Minecraft devs (as an example) specifically designed their achievements as a way of teaching new players how to play the game. It’s not as uncommon as you think it is.
the problem with this Is 99% of the useful information can be learned from the Guide. He tells you EVERYTHING you would need to know.
and then he dies to a zombie on your first night
Gamers really be like a stubborn dad who refuses to get directions or use google maps.
But he doesn't tell you about the voodoo doll. He just says something about a "burning sacrifice". This was the first thing I had to look up. Who in their right mind would end up with the idea of casting the doll into the hellfire? This was extremely unintuitive and frustrating. Unless it is somewhere better hinted at that I didn't see. But this is basically forcing people to look it up which I find rather poor game design.
@@NikiDrozdowski I do not think it's is that extreme, granted the bestiary helps imply at it a bit more, but I think the fact that slaying a voodoo demon in the underworld has a risk of falling into lava, thus summoning the WoF
@@NikiDrozdowskii learned when I was just fighting demons and one dropped a voodoo doll right into the lava, I feel like this happens to most players eventually
4:46 hey Batman, you know their slime zombies batman? They have slimes on their heads batman, read the tool tip Batman.
Now the question is, is afro or fish bowl closer to the real answer
@@zapduckcake5354afro is probably closer cause you see the slime jiggle, fish bowls can't jiggle
@@exceptionallyriso what if the fish bowl was made of jiggly glass
@@Solutra please tell me if you managed to create jiggly glass in real life
You guys are so mean lol
destroying the orbs in corruption seems very plausible to me, i can easily imagine a decent chunk of people seeing them and making note of them so that when they find a pick that can mine ebonstone or somehow discover bombs one would atleast try to interact with them
Or if ya figure out NPC housing, kill the eye eventually, and the dryad will sell ya the powder
demolitionist will actually tell you to use bombs to destroy ebonstone.
the issue is that you need to build a house first, guide can help you with that but the guide is dead so they can only discover this feature accidentally
you're not using your brain then, nobody would ever think to use a hammer or bomb on an orb
@@matthewloscar2893 the first time i played terraria was in Console edition
NPC housing, Mining Ores, Moving, Platforms were teach by the tutorial. Other than that, i had my own freedom to do what i wanted to. I think NPC happiness should be changed to have no downside and only upside tho.
Hard mechanic to learn, and currently the Payoff is not big enough.
@@matthewloscar2893 i think if somebody figured the bombs break ebonstone might naturally throw a bomb at orbs as well when nothing else works and bombs drop pretty commonly
9:28 I’ve always found the fact that dirt walls can’t be mined easily very unintuitive. I’d make them mineable with hammers by default and I can’t think of a good reason why not to do that
Or at least make natural dirt walls count as housing. To fix the problem of Npcs moving in make natural furniture not count unless replaced.
I agree, it should be mined wherever, without access to the surface, the exploits they want to avoid by not allowing that is so miniscule compared to the benefits
@@PowBolim what exploits?
9:47 it took me months of playing before I found the "housing query"
I also used to never go fishing, since "food isn't mandatory, what is the point of catching fish?"
Thousands of hours across multiple platforms later, fishing and building NPC houses are some of my favorite things to do when I'm not actively progressing.
Oh yeah, your friend was me in Stardew Valley.
I played with friends for the first time on that game, and then started playing alone and proceeded to play, like, 70 hours in the week before we could play together again. A few sessions in and I had more time on the game than our veteran player 😂
This video seems very accurate to me for a new player, and I'm glad your friend discovered a new game that he enjoys.
I can definitely see myself in this, but that's probably because I only recently started playing (still waiting on Skeletron Prime to spawn, sadly. Dude will not spawn for anything)
You can always make the summoning item for him. You should be able to find the recipe by putting souls or bones in the guides crafting interface. I always make the summoning item when the RNG won't let me fight the mechanical bosses.
@pilotmender043 Update: Skeletron decided to attack me basically immediately upon entering the world, so that problem is solved. I did make a destroyer summon because I had used most of his souls to make a megashark.
Question for any terraria experts; can you fight Planterra (?) On the surface? What I assume is her spawner is extremely close to the surface
@ You can but Plantera will become enraged so you really should fight it in the underground. It’s annoying with the frequency of enemy spawns but you should make an underground arena. That will maximize your chance of winning since enraged bosses are no joke
@pilotmender043 Gotcha, do not fight on the surface. I'll probably try to fight her once I feel suitably well prepared
lmao thats gotta be a flex to your vet friend.
I remember when Terraria used to have a built-in tutorial that would walk you through crafting and building valid housing. Also there was that one nymph guarding a grappling hook under the tutorial island. Those were the days..
The first base I ever built was on a natural chunk of floating blocks since that's where I spawned, and it eventually turned into an apartment complex going up into space. I later planted some crimson seeds in the dirt and corrupted the bottom few layers of housing. This was back when Ocram was still around for anyone curious
That was only on X box, im not sure even the PS version had the tutorial.
I know for a fact the PC didnt have it
@@Perthro77 even the Switch version has a tutorial. i'm baffled that the PC version still doesn't have one
@@Perthro77 oh, PC didn't have it? I started out on mobile so I wasn't aware of this, I just know that it pretty much disappeared after 1.3 was released on console and mobile
@@leg4756 the tutorial was just legacy mobile i'm pretty sure
Not talking to the guide seems to be quite common.
My brother recently started playing Terraria, and he walked right past the guide and never spoke to him until right before Moon Lord.
Could you ask your brother what was his reasoning for not talking to the guide ? (at least at the start) I find it hard to believe that people wouldn't consider trying to interact with the only things that seems out of place when starting a new game.
@@siphons5737 I asked, turns out, he did, but got nothing useful out of him. Basically, he clicked on the guide, saw the crafting function, figured out he can craft on his own without being near the guide (Didn't even notice that he can place materials in the empty slot), and completely glossed over the "help" button, we don't know why.
@@killwind maybe he assumed the help was *for crafting* in particular, and he already figured out how to do so
22:22 People don't think to read off the "special" items because they don't know they're special. When you first see it, you pretty much know what a bomb, torch, rope, and painting are, but you don't really know what's the importance of some horseshoe or balloon.
Me as a Terraria noob: Ooh weird orb, let's hit it. Ooh, chest, what's in it? Ooh weird item, what's the tooltip? Ooh, curse, what's that d-- MADE A MISTAKE. Ooh, Guide. What's he got to say? Ooh UI, let's explore it and see what all the buttons do.
All the other noobs this guy has met, apparently: Dig in a straight horizontal line forever. Never look at new things. Never interact with anything ever.
I refuse to believe I'm the strange one here...
Same, I talked to the guide constantly whenever I was confused that something didn't work like minecraft like I'd been told XD
When i first started playing i was terrified of everything and was obsessed with the sims 4 so i made elaborate housing without a chair and table
“Joel help we are trapped in a basement please help”
I'm new to this channel but it's one of the most entertaining Terraria channels out there
augh, it's such a shame they did all that progression by themselves, like, it's great they aparrently enjoyed themselves enough to play it on their own iniative but as a result we miss all their thought process and reactions, do you think you'll attempt this with another 'noob'? because it's certainly a interesting premise.
edit: my home bases tend to be at spawn but i construct them floating a bit above ground level
Yeah, with the amount of progress they made as well it kinda seems like they used the wiki
@@CobaltTSI choose to trust their word
@@dccdislame I really don't, they made next to zero progress with him and tons without
Tbh Joel coming back geared up and defeating a boss was so cool to see, shows he - at least seemed to - enjoy his time and wanted to explore on his own. Sure its missed footage but I think thats even cooler
My theory for why your noobs didn't look in the top left slot of chests, and start reading the contents from right to left is:
- You already know that the most important item is going to be in that slot. A noob would not until they consciously discovered that trend (or they looked it up, which is besides the point)
- The right side of the chest gui is closer to the center of the screen than the left side of the chest gui.
Plus for the most part, lotsa players who never touched terraria before but played something like dark souls, or another rpg, or even minecraft, are gonna focus on the potions because most games make a bigger deal out of the potions and not the random balloon or a pair of green shoes.
@@simplysmiley4670 hahaha yeah that too, 'how is a blue magnet or a shoelace protector gonna help me'. Good point!
Contrarily, though, I feel that if players eventually get desensitized to the useless junk that can appear in * every * chest, that can be a path to them focusing on the one slot that is hopefully the most unique.
@@simplysmiley4670thats a super good point, especially because usually clothes in video games like skyrim are either fashion effects or vendor trash
@@oneilmw If they find that many random chests, and if those chests contain duplicate potions, _and if the player realises they can make potions pretty easily en-masse._
I think like 99% of these things are told to you by the Guide, so I think maybe it would be good to try and get that NPC to spawn kinda asap
I thought the guide starts already alive in the world? In fact I actually remembered him respawning even without a house.
@@Moss_Dude The world does generate with the Guide already alive, but if he dies he needs a house to respawn.
Eater of Worlds is also harder for a new player to notice because the orbs are at the bottom of long vertical chasms in a very hazardous biome, it asks a lot of you to even find them compared to the dungeon and Skeletron, you may even find Skeletron as your first boss depending on how stuff goes.
Gotta be honest. I know you keep on the whole "friend didn't want an easy difficulty, wanted expert mode" but he himself started to play solo and played on a new world on normal difficulty and clearly got a lot further and more engaged in the game through it. I understand he "wanted a hard difficulty" but, to be honest, I don't think you should trust a new player to decide to play on a hard difficulty before they know the game and how it functions. I know whenever I struggle in a sandbox game like this i'll just get bored and quit or do what we've seen here, dig around aimlessly and not explore because exploration or going deeper means harder and more dangerous enemies so i'd naturally assume i'm missing an armor tier or weapon tier. If you do repeat this in the future, I highly think not starting on Expert mode, even if they want to, would be smart.
I don't think I've ever played terraria on anything easier than expert.
I could be completely wrong, but I'm tempted to think he is perfectly aware of how Terraria works and is actively trolling you into thinking he's oblivious.
Ya know, I think Joel going to the Wiki to look stuff up and do things off-screen is actually very representative of the new player experience. As a youngling myself, when I first started, I had the Wiki open constantly. I mean, have you seen the crafting trees in this game!!
I love Terraria, been playing for a long time. I remember when I first started playing, it was because I saw a TH-cam video of someone else playing it. Less than 5 minutes into the video, I bought it. As someone who has been gaming for 25+ years, it was fairly natural for me to discover the crafting mechanic and how to use the Guide NPC to check what items can be used for what recipies. Yes, I did learn a lot from also reading the wiki, but by the time I needed to rely on the wiki, I already had the basics down like building a base with walls, NPC housing, etc. It's honestly kind of painful watching these guys struggle so much; it's like they don't normally play video games that rely on crafting mechanics.
Yep me too, i started playing terraria way back in 2013 and the hardest thing werent the mechanics but rather how to play multiplayer (steam didnt support terraria yet back then) and how to download mods
Honestly the crafting in terraria is still maybe the least intuitive in any game I’ve ever played, and that’s simply because it isn’t its own interaction or window. Even Minecraft, the only other game I can think of where crafting is natively part of your inventory, the crafting part is WAY bigger than in terraria. It’s incredibly easy to miss, which I did when I started ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@redtaileddolphin1875 I agree with you, the crafting isn't the most intuitive, but it's there to figure out for people if they spend the time. I don't know if this video is necessarily 'rigged', but I think knowing that they are being recorded for a 'new player plays Terraria blind', it affects their ability to be inquisitive and poke around. I'd also argue that games like Terraria are not meant to be played blind.
@@LordAnubis85 yeah terraria is def a wikigame like binding of isaac where eventually you kinda just have to have fun looking through the wiki and discovering new stuff that way, and I say this as a compliment lol
Now we're waiting for the new player hardmode experience 💀💀
by the time they get there, friend will probably have moonlord gear...
what purpose does the skull emoji serve here?
@@DisKorruptd he mentioned in the first episode he wouldnt backseat his friends and will only get the same level loot and tools they have
@@TheFrenchNarrator Yes, you seem like you may have my meaning backwards. Friend plays off camera on the same character and gets major advancements. By the time that they fight Wall of Flesh on screen, friend probably has Moon Lord gear is what I'm saying.
@@DisKorruptd My bad i entirely misinterpreted your message lmaoo thanks for clarifying
Amazing how he might slowly be developing his addiction to the game
HELP
15:35,
I remember when I first started playing, I didn't know ebonstone COULD be blown up with bombs, so the only way I knew how to destroy it was:
-killing a boss (eye usually)
-getting the Dryad NPC
-buying the Purification Powder
-throwing said powder at the ebonstone to purify it into regular stone
-and then mine it
only to be met with a floating orb that I did not know how to destroy because my pickaxe would do nothing lol
1:25 as someone who plays MC a lot, it's not 100% blind, it's usually a lot of cave exploration to find ore the easiest; HOWEVER, In Minecraft the deeper you go the better ores you find, the more ores you find, and the higher frequency you find them at, so even in MC the solution to "I do not have enough iron" can be "Dig deeper" (or make an iron farm, but that's another thing.)
EDIT: I see that right after this you mentioned cave exploration, my B.
Coincidentally, my very first terraria world is FULL of surface-level rabbit tunnels, I was apparently obsessed with making perfectly even tunnels in every direction like it was the cave level of a platformer game. I haven't played minecraft.
My first base: about four blocks underground, long with chests and crafting stations, and rabbit tunnels going in every direction, because I was too scared to go on the surface lol (I didn't find out what beds were until like two months in of playing, and even then it took me a while to find out 1; how to make it, and 2; how to use it properly)
9:00 on my first world, I made my base about 100 blocks to the right of spawn and dug massive chasms with bombs eventually.
Second world was a biiiiig tower I called a hotel that had plenty of rooms and went up to world limit, no chasms, right on spawn.
Third world it was 20ish blocks to the right with no chasms and every world after was on spawn with dug out pits beside to start off, expanding up and down and trapping the pits.
Continue this. I want to see the insanity that ensues in early hardmode with a new player. Random mech boss spawns, random boss summon drops whispering to your friend, etc. It’d be great.
Seeing him rejoin with different gear was just "I've succeeded, but at what cost?"
Damnit, you borked our video, but you enjoyed the game enough to play off-camera!!! How can we get mad at that?
so back when i first tried out playing Terraria, I joined a friends world, They already had a decent amount of progress, Gemstone farms, and where even preparing for an alien invasion, All of that overwhelmed me to the point i was just standing around dumbfounded and didn't really do anything, Never really joined them again, Instead i persuaded one of them to start a new world with me, Fresh and assist me with learning, I was mostly left to my own devices, (I actually did the same thing as your friend and went straight to mining) unless i had a question, This of course usually meant i was asking for a hint, or about a particular block (Example, I had no idea how to unlock the forge, or be able to craft it back then) I played minecraft a year before i started playing terraria,
but at the same time, I also used minecraft logic for a decent while, before realizing "yeah. that's a major difference, let's rethink how to approach that" in terms of mob spawning and what not.
Overall, I about made it to the wall of flesh with that friend at that time, but didn't continue there after, as He was heading back to school since summer break was over and we never really tried to play it together again, That was 8 years ago, Granted! we are still friends, He's gotten married and has a kid on the way lol so its not like we couldn't, its just that we never thought to play it again.
I did however continue to "try" and play it on-off over the years since then, mostly getting bored just before or after fighting the Eye, unless i worked on and played a world with a friend, I barely ever make progress Passed the Eye, Usually spent 90% of my time building houses & structures, till i get bored which i won't deny, is unfortunate.
I do basically the same with minecraft actually, it's Probably just something to do with sandbox games for me, But i can't seem to actually progress in the game without a friend around during the progress.
So the funny thing is that the Guide will tell you how to craft a suspicious looking eye, worm food, bloody spine, and even tell you to smash shadow orbs/crimson hearts and basically anything you possibly need to learn about how to progress. He'll tell you how to make potions without an alchemy station, give you hints about town NPCs and how to get them, HELL, HE WILL EVEN TELL YOU TO PUT DESERT FOSSIL INTO AN EXTRACTINATOR. The Guide is a genuinely amazing resource but nobody uses him because at a first glance he looks pretty useless and experienced players never interact with him (outside of murder) because they don't need help or use the wiki instead.
That grenade was funny AF LMAO he didn't even use the item at first he just dropped it
But he doesn't tell you about the voodoo doll. He just says something about a "burning sacrifice". This was the first thing I had to look up. Who in their right mind would end up with the idea of casting the doll into the hellfire? This was extremely unintuitive and frustrating. Unless it is somewhere better hinted at that I didn't see. But this is basically forcing people to look it up which I find rather poor game design.
@@NikiDrozdowski The hints they have in place for that are a little more spread out.
"When you are ready to challenge the keeper of the underworld, you will have to make a living sacrifice. Everything you need for it can be found in the underworld." - Guide is the obvious one that most players trying to avoid the wiki probably see.
"I heard there is a doll that looks very similar to somewhere in the underworld. I'd like to put a few rounds in it." - Arms Dealer is the one that reveals to you that there's a doll, which should be assumed to be important.
"I need to have a serious talk with . How many times a week can you come in with severe lava burns?" - Nurse is the one that hints at you that the doll should be tossed in lava, as the Guide coming up with a bunch of burns implies that his voodoo doll is being burnt.
The game expects you to read NPC dialogue, which is not a question of design quality and instead reveals that players don't read what they perceive as optional dialogue (especially so these days), even if they realize that dialogue can be be important, which is what the Guide is supposed to tell you. Both of those NPC interactions can show up when the Guide is present, and in the case of the Arms Dealer, if Skeletron is defeated but not the Wall of Flesh.
The information is available but nobody looks in the places where it's found because the experienced players never mention it and they never assume/realize that Terraria is the kind of game that has these kinds of hints.
He also dies pretty easily and the housing system is unintuitive to anyone who hasn't used it before, so he doesn't respawn. I think my first wiki run was to learn about housing. Specifically, walls and why they're important.
I wrote this on a steam review for terraria a while back but ill say it here:
- I had a friend who would REFUSE to play terraria because it was just 2d minecraft (according to him, so why play terraria if i have minecraft with mods too). I implored him to at least give the game a try with some other friends who were also new, and after a bit of playing he grew to like it a bit...
I shit you not, he got so addicted to the game, he managed to clock in about 110 hours in the FIRST week of playing. AND started playing in his own worlds too. Same as with your friend, he wanted to do master mode or none at all. He used the wiki every now and then when learning but for the most part he went completely blind.
At least he didnt use cheats, i find that most new terraria players that come from minecraft that have that exact mentality will go straight to use godmode the moment they dont understand how to bring down a boss after the 5th try...
Its either godmode or cheating items in usually, and then they leave the game rotting for years because "it was too easy"
I will say, it makes sense that someone with background of Souls-like and Minecraft would enjoy Terraria
the demolitionist actually has a voiceline about using bombs to break ebonstone! That's how I first figured it out. He specifically mentions bombing the orbs, so...
Yeah I didn't last long
For the question at 9:00 I remember doing the tutorial first before starting a world and I set up shop next to one of those overhanging plateaus walling it off and adding to it and on top of it.
24:41 TAKE COVER GRENADE OUT!, your friend sure is something.
I am doing this to my younger brother too. Is fun to just silently watch him flail around like im one of my cats.
I made my first base over spawn. I dug out a like, 60 block wide (or wider, haven't measured it in a long time at this point) channel from the surface all the way to the underworld, and dealt with the walls bit by bit as I gained a greater understanding of the game. I was planning on making a sky to underworld castle.
16:25 You can get to know when you get Demolitionist, he can tell you sometimes this quote:
In a Corrupt world:
"Trying to get past that Ebonstone, eh? Why not introduce it to one of these explosives!"
In a Crimson world:
"Trying to get past that Crimstone, eh? Why not introduce it to one of these explosives!"
"He plays darks souls, so he just wants to kill the boss now"
I wouldn't say that is the case, rather, he sees the boss, yet either isn't aware that he needs to be more powerful, or if he does know, he doesn't know how to get more powerful. People who played the souls games (at least those I know) when they were first starting out, would take the time to farm souls to level up to be stronger to beat the boss. But with terraria, no system like that exist, it's just find the items on tier, build an arena, fight boss. If he hasn't played many games like terraria, I could see this being a problem of trying to figure out progression.
When he said "anything can be beaten" he was referencing time we spent together playing Dark Souls. In Dark Souls people are constantly killing bosses with anything so he wanted to try and accomplish this.
@Throarbin ah I see, I mistook what you meant by that, I thought he was actually stuck and didn't understand that could be more powerful, and was instead just being stubborn and fighting with what he had, that makes more sense
i remember some of my early terraria progress from ye olden days: i found a suspicious eye, killed the eye, got the dryad who sells purification powder which i used for the corrupt stone to fight the worm. didnt know bombs broke ebonstone for a long time
At spawn. I talked to the guide a lot. It was a hotel before happiness was a thing.
21:51, and he just snapped right there)
About mining down, pickaxes have mining power, so after possibly noticing this, people might unconsciously think that they needed better picks to go deeper, because many 2d games in particular have a similar progression system that punishes you for exploring a new tier without unlocking the previous one
My first experience with terraria was with a friend as, for the most part, it's not really a game I can enjoy by myself. That said, our first house was at World Spawnbuilt a ways off the ground with rope to get up. It was just a massive NPC hotel that we expanded as needed
You should create a hardcore character and die so you can be a ghost and follow them around passively.
We missed an important question! How did he make progress in his own game? Was it still trial and error? Did he find the wiki? Did the other knowledgeable players give him hints?
No judgement, this is all still interesting, just wondering what his pathway to progress ended up being!
OK i wont lie im so sad he did all that progress on his own i was really looking forward to seeing him do all that.
oh my god he did it twice im crying
Yeah, I was sad about it as well. Trying to see if I can find someone else who'd be dedicated to sticking it out and not doing their own thing.
I love how this idea was a bust on the youtube department, but a win in literally every other way:
your friend learned how to play terraria on their own, had (presumably) fun and intrinsic motivation for doing so as he continued playing on his own, and even did so without much help from a guide.
this, as far as the original question (and just gaining someone who enjoys the same game as you) goes, is a raging success.
is it sad that this won't be super tightly documented in a series? maybe? But I feel like this is actually the ideal outcome to have, when introducing a game to a friend. well done.
When i first started playing, i passed 30 hours playing to know the existence of DEMONITE ore.
I really believe this friend of yours is an outlier 'cause this was a hilarious mess of a playthrough 💀💀 would really like to have someone else who wouldn't play solo after so we can measure more accurately how well a new player performs
I have always put my house in spawn. Then I make 2 giant pillars of villager housing on either side of said house. Then after I explore the world a bit I actually spread the villagers out and into their favorite biomes. (Also the only reason I know about villager housing is TH-cam. I tried playing Terraria many years ago on my PS4. Hated it. And never played it until I decided to get it on me and my brother’s laptops after watching videos to get into it. The EXACT SAME THING also happened with Don’t Starve Together.)
yay series #2!
does joel knows about the wiki?
joels attempt to kill voodoo doll was epic! 😆
@Throarbin, do you remember what you did when you first played terraria?
Yes...and I tell him to avoid it
That "thrown" grenade bit with the doll in the hole is one of the best things a new player has done. I'm sure it was probably embarrassing, especially while being recorded, but it still has to be the funniest thing to have someone do.
Crafting as a begginer in:
Minecraft: crafitng recepies pretty easy :D
Terraria: crafting trees WTH IS THAT SO LONG ?! :[
My biggest obstacle while I’m trying to play is that I have no clue what do to not be wasting time. I can get on the game for like an hour and then not make any real progress. It’s kinda hard to get started in terraria
9:01 I built a house on the surface, and slowly branched it out underground. Though… it took me way too long to figure out that different types of walls existed, the unsafe vs safe walls, so I got barely any NPC’s in my underground mansion until I realized I needed different walls. Not because I looked it up, but because I discovered planked walls and thought they looked better, replaced the dirt with that, and NPC’s started pouring in.
17:23 I DID THIS IN MY FIRST WORLD!! I went into the dungeon and kept dying because of the guardian, and I kept running in over and over, looting more and more over time, until I got enough gear to beat Skeletron. I thought it was basically a looting minigame. I beat it with a mace, and I discovered the joy of maces.
22:40 I think I have an inkling: people tend to loot from right to left, cause if you’re right handed, you work from right to left. English speakers tend to READ left to right, though. Plus, horseshoes are usually associated with decoration nowadays, not something with abilities. That’s my hypothesis, anyway.
25:45 yep, sounds like a Dark Souls player, lol. When it comes to backstabbing, it usually occurs up close.
Ah yeah, the hardest boss in the game:
NPC housing
18:30 well....I think he'll be a master at terraria in a few weeks 😂☕
15:32 THE GUIDE! he's been leading me through the game fairly well even though he misses some pretty god damn crucial information
22:30 Maybe he quick stacked the item when he looted the chest, then lost it in his inventory.
I kinda like his low key reactions to big stuff
This is a certified terraria momento
This is may favorite one of your series so far
23:42 I highly recommend teaching your friend about grinding T1 Old One armies, good source for coins while being easy to train with. Surprisingly not well-documented as a farm strat on the wikis, so it gives a good opportunity to gather more data as you progress!
8:51 Funny thing. I actually tried to find a sky island for my first base, but then I saw harpies being harpies, and moved to a "treehouse" type thing.
I built my first base at spawn, and I figured out a lot of things from my friend who I played terraria with
8:50 Mostly at or near spawn. With more experience, basing near the Corruption was preferable for getting early EoW kills before Expert Mode became a thing.
Now I just build an island base about 100-150 tiles above the spawn. Way easier to control spawns and build a proper OOA+boss arena+other things.
I did try making underground bases and ran into the natural wall problem just as well though. Turned me off to making underground bases without explosives.
17:00 i feel robbed XD dang it!!! (im glad hes having fun but still)
I made my first house in Terraria on the surface out of wood, then added a "basement". About 10 or so hours into the game I looked up guides and wikis to see if I could learn anything... Needless to say I was blown away by the amount of information on this game.
"He decided to see what was...inside...the dungeon."
And they say, that every terraria vet's grin grew sizes that day.
6:35 is really interesting. I remember pre-1.2 you needed a hammer to mine furniture,platforms,life crystals and of course walls. So the logic I guess was that you mined solid objects with the pickaxe and things you can pass through with the hammer. It was changed for convenience maybe but might be less intuitive.
Ok so, a couple things,
- Why would you play on expert for their first time?
- Once you got to the underworld, you really started holding their hand too much. Using a grav potion, getting the hellforge, getting him to throw the doll...
In my first playthrough of terraria, that was with friends, well i had played before a lil on a phone of a friend, and we weren't been able to kill Wyvern for a LOOONG time,i started making a base on surface, i was making a "Watch tower" , because i wanted to make walls to stop Zombies, and then when Eyes appeared, i just made a roof. Worked pretty well, but while i was doing it, my friends created a house at the spawn , digged hole, mined all of the ore in like, i dont know, 1000 blocks to each side from spawn, and started we already beated Eye of ctulhu and Slime . In that playthrough i was seeking to get gold all the way past hard mode, and i wasn't even using armor and trinkets in active slots, so i was full empty at Skeletron, and i think it was all the way till skeletron prime.
24:42 never let them know your next move
I remember my time as a new player still; I had the approach of seeing how deep I can go... so I found lots of loot/ores along the way to carry me and found the summoning item for eye (I don't even remember if it could spawn naturally back then).
I also remember my method for the orbs was I found the purification powder from the dryad after eventually figuring out how houses worked and used that to mine inside the corruption biome... I don't remember why I never used bombs... I tried all my tools to get the orb because it was shiny and I wanted it... then it gave me loot and I wanted more.
I found Skeletron before breaking orbs... but everything really came down to carrying myself by my insistence to look for hidden treasure; I thought the corruption was dangerous and would've had better chests.
Good on your friend using the bed though... I don't think I ever crafted a bed until Fishron came out as a new boss... I played Terraria before Minecraft and it really didn't occur to me that it was for anything other than decoration.
9:00, I always build my base at the spawn.
I like having convenient access to everything, if I die and have no bed, and it's a good point to set up transit, etc., through a map, if I need say Ebonwood, just hop on rails from spawn and go to that farm, if the Hivemind boss is there then I can kill it real quick before harvesting the wood.