Stop sleeping, dig another grid! Talaria's Cute New Pioneering Report

As a pure and cute newcomer who has never been exposed to Terraria before, and even MC has only played it symbolically for more than twenty hours, before encountering the mobile version of Terraria, all my understanding of this game was: landscape, sandbox, and 8-bit.

In my impression, the combination of the horizontal layout and sandbox elements is a bit... not compatible, and in addition, the 8-bit design already has pearls and jade in front of it. And with its unique style and long-term content updates, "Terraria" has broken its own ground in this genre. Ten years after the game was released, new players continue to join, and Bilibili can now see many cute new pioneering videos. It is not surprising that so many people have paid attention to the launch of the Chinese mobile version this time.

As a cute new player who first came into contact with Terraria, I first had a very curious mentality. Where is the attraction of the 8-bit horizontal sandbox?

After more than 50 hours of digging, covering, chopping, and picking, I seem to have gained a little understanding of Terraria. Today, I will talk to you about my experience during this period.

Before reaching heaven and earth

Open Terraria, pinch a person, randomly generate a map with optional area, and then enter the game interface. At this moment, I was horrified to find that besides some unfamiliar items, there was only a sword, an axe, and a pickaxe in my backpack.

Oh, there's also an NPC hanging around next to me.

I wandered around for a while, and after being turned into a tombstone by various colored slimes, night arrived. Then I was horrified to find that the monsters at night were no longer slimes, but several powerful monsters that could turn me into tombstones at a touch, some of which could even fly.

So do I have to hide at night?

In short, after starting the game with almost no knowledge, it took me about two hours to finally find a way out. The key to getting rich in the early stages of the game can be summarized as: first, cut down trees, build houses, fight monsters, and dig tunnels.

Logging logging logging logging carpenters

As I just mentioned, the world of Terraria alternates between day and night, and monsters at night are very deadly for new characters. Regardless of the stage of the game, monsters at night are stronger than those during the day. This design makes every start a race against time - I have to go crazy logging during the first day, collect enough wood and other materials, build my first house before the first night, try to complete the basic workbench as much as possible, and then hide in the small building to form a whole, thinking about what to make while waiting for the sun to rise tomorrow.

, I always build "matchbox" style houses because the one panel on the mobile phone is too small, and the construction process is quite eye-catching

In the early stages of the game, in addition to logging, picking flowers (mainly collecting seeds), and digging soil and mines, during limited time and relatively safe daylight, I would seize the time to explore both sides of the map and quickly understand the structure of the world. There is a detail here. Regardless of the size chosen by the player when creating the map, a map will have terrain such as deserts, snow, rainforests, etc. Monsters in this special terrain are also much stronger than those near their birth point during the same period.

Before I received the weighing weapon, I would carry some wood and a workbench with me. Whenever the sun was setting, I would set up a small workshop in my current location and hide inside for the night. In this way, you can continue exploring from the original location the next morning, saving time and energy.

There is still a tombstone from the last time it was touched in the shelter

Later on, I found out that this method was a bit clumsy, but as a newcomer, my game style of using local materials and adapting to the situation can indeed meet the needs to some extent, allowing my character to avoid dangerous nights. I think this is also an example of how Talaria not only has extremely high degrees of freedom, but also fully mobilizes player autonomy.

Construction and construction work

The initial process of the game is to build a house, explore, and enter the dungeon (underground cave), which is the core of this game. Every time I discover an unexplored hole on a new map, it brings an inexplicable sense of excitement. Then, I go home to pack up various props, fully armed, and dive into the hole to see what color the deepest treasure chest is and what exactly is inside.

The dungeons in Terraria are completely different from the ground world in terms of combat difficulty and game atmosphere. The originally refreshing 8-bit art, when it comes to certain dungeons, often makes me suffer from deep-sea phobia. If the character is not wearing a miner's helmet (which emits light), or some type of weapon that emits light when swung, they can only hold a torch and walk slowly step by step. When encountering a monster, they must set up the torch (which cannot be used with both the torch and the weapon at the same time), and fight to the death with the faint light.

The walls of dungeon are covered with cute torches used to strengthen courage

After gaining something in the dungeon, return to your own studio and use the newly acquired minerals and props to create higher-level equipment, and then explore more dungeons.

However, the equipment in Terraria often needs to be manufactured next to specific tools, and as the game progresses, the player's room will be filled with workbenches, furnaces, refineries, and various boxes... At this time, in order to have a place to place the items they have searched for everywhere, the original "matchbox style" house must be expanded into a multi-layer matchbox. Players with spatial planning obsessions will spend a lot of time on building the house layout, which is the favorite part of many Terraria players. 8-bit seems to always be inseparable from the bizarre buildings designed by players, which always open people's eyes and make them feel that everyone is not playing the same game.

By the way, players can also assign NPCs with houses that meet the requirements (walls, lights, chairs, and doors) in the house options. The more houses have been built, the more NPCs will come to settle down. Different NPCs will provide different products and also bring clues to advance the story.

belongs to the late stage of obsessive-compulsive disorder

From simple to complex combat experience

After talking so much about chopping trees and building houses, some people may think it's a game of collecting and building, but the fun provided by Terraria goes far beyond that. As each game enters the mid to late stages, players will find that the originally monotonous battles suddenly become glamorous, or rather, a style that falls between nonsensical and imaginative.

As is well known, the core of the 8-bit style is to limit a basic volume unit (in this game it is an area unit) to "one grid" in the game, and build the entire game on this basis. So for players, everything in the game has clear dimensions. For example, if you want to dig a hole in place, you need at least 2 * 3 to allow the character to enter, and various weapons also have a fixed attack range. This characteristic is already familiar to veteran players who have been immersed in similar games for years, but for novice players, the initial battle process seems to be a "who is longer" battle, with the protagonist waving his weapon in a very ghostly posture, fighting against various jumping or flying monsters.

In the later stages of the game, there will be more types of weapons, and various mechanisms and transportation tools will appear, making the entire battle instantly more diverse. I still remember the first time I entered a multiplayer game when I was hunting for lumberjacks everywhere. A character dressed like an astronaut flew over from the sky. At first, I thought it was a monster, but later I realized it was a player

Of course, even if players can basically fly in the later stages of the game and skip most of the battles on the ground, they may still be attracted by powerful monsters all over the world, generating a desire to challenge. When it comes to powerful monsters, we cannot ignore the boss battles in Terraria.

The unique features of Terraria will correspond to different bosses. In the first game, I randomly went to the Scarlet Land, and the first boss I met was the Brain of Kesulu. After a long process of digging holes and exploding balls, Kesulu's brain finally appeared on the screen and gave me seconds

After carefully looking at the strategy, I realized that the boss war is not simple, and people's minds are divided into stages. When there is no equipment crushing, players need to carefully consider in order to successfully push down the boss. So it wasn't until I obtained a longer melee weapon and the Joker's Arrow that I summoned the boss for the second time, and it was a thrilling success.

may be the first boss of many cute new players - Skull King

According to the official wiki, "Terraria" has more than 30 bosses, many of whom are Cthulhu style monsters. Although dressed in a sandbox of 8 bits, the content related to boss battles may account for one-third or even more of the player's gaming experience per game. There are also some boss battles that require specific conditions (including facial recognition) to trigger, as well as pre events and storylines that RPG feels very strong, which can be said to be quite rich.

Does this equipment have an affix?

As mentioned earlier, the manufacturing system of Terraria relies on various tool platforms and follows the sequence of resource collection, processing (synthesis), and manufacturing, which is relatively easy to understand. Based on this system, Terraria provides a massive amount of equipment, ranging from snowballs to flying machines, and even very practical bonus equipment (various flags) in multiplayer games. But I never expected that the equipment of this game, even if I hammered it myself in a small room, could come with its own affixes.

Wait, affixes?

Yes, it's the kind of affix that we are very familiar with when it comes to brushing and exhausting games. For example, my first weapon with an affix, "Shameful Wooden Sword," comes with two buffs: reduce damage and reduce knockback. In addition, this wooden sword has a+10% buff, which can be said to have neither hardness nor impact besides its size. It is truly shameful.

, this weapon is simply called "unlucky"

Although Terraria is not a very traditional RPG, the fun mainly comes from collecting, building, and exploring dungeons, it still retains many traditional RPG elements, and equipment affixes are one of them, which can be said to be another hidden time killer. Although there are ways to combat powerful bosses in the middle and later stages without relying on brushing, such as building various mechanisms, for players who enjoy fighting, having a handy weapon can still provide a very different experience.

The Boundary Sense of Dungeons

As mentioned earlier, the dungeons in Terraria are randomly distributed holes on the map with a certain depth and breadth, containing monsters and treasure chests that are different from those on the ground. The atmosphere of the dungeon is different from that of the ground, and the game objectives are also different, leaning more towards combat rather than exploration itself. I summarize it into three aspects: sense of boundaries, sense of space, and attractiveness.

Let's first talk about the sense of boundaries. When entering the underground, there will be some monsters on the ground following in. But as it gradually deepens, there will no longer be monsters on the ground, and players will focus all their attention on exploring deeper areas. In my own impression, this boundary usually appears at the same time as the first fork in the road. Once crossing the border, the dungeon will bring players a strong sense of tension.

The border of is roughly the location of the red cross on this map, yes, it is the place where I died once

It is worth mentioning here that for me at least, this sense of tension does not come from stronger monsters, but from darkness and the unknown. When I hold a torch, or wear a miner's helmet, searching for treasure chests and life crystals in the perilous underground city, this sense of boundary between the ground and the underground is worth pondering.

By the way, as the exploration of the dungeon deepens, I, who used to keep an eye on the position of the sun on the ground, no longer consider whether it is day or night now - anyway, the difficulty of the dungeon will not change according to day and night.

How to expand the space of landscape games

On the ground, everything in Terraria is located in a 2D plane perpendicular to the ground, and my character can only pan left and right, jump up, and drill down. This is a very standard 2D side scrolling game, and this sense of verticality can undergo disruptive changes in some dungeons.

When I first discovered monsters that could climb walls in a dungeon, I didn't think much about it because this game already has a rich variety of monster types, and it's not uncommon to have things that can climb walls. But I quickly discovered that scenes where monsters that can climb walls appear densely often have the same sense of flatness as regular 2D games, where players can treat the entire game screen as a plane instead of a line that can only move left and right, and the sense of verticality becomes a sense of parallelism. For a more vivid example, it's like playing Contra the previous second, but the next second it feels like playing Red Fortress.

The source of this sense of parallelism, in my opinion, is partly due to the design of the dungeon itself - a "hole" perpendicular to the horizon, which unconsciously becomes a "road" parallel to the plane. On the other hand, it is a small artistic technique - for example, when a certain area appears to be a water body, walking past it reveals that it is actually the background, and the character appears to be moving by the water's edge, this feeling is very wonderful.

The scene like often makes me feel like I'm not digging a hole, but swimming

Why do you always want to dig another grid?

Not only dungeons, but the entire gameplay of Terraria is accompanied by a lot of temptations. The first thing to do was to dig a hole, and I even spent a considerable amount of time, centered around the birth point, digging a whole tunnel with a height of 3 grids under the ground covering one-third of the map length, and carefully designing exits on both sides. Although I can no longer remember why I had to dig at that time, I did feel very satisfied after the entire tunnel was completed.

The design of the underground city also makes people unable to resist continuing. Although there may be fog covering areas that the character has not explored, if there are mines or enclosed special areas nearby, you can often see hints such as flashes, or directly see the internal structure of the enclosed area. This semi concealed design is actually designed to ensure that players always maintain the motivation to dig another grid during the game process. Imagine if you dig another grid and open up the road, you will know what is hidden in the treasure chest over there. Who can resist the temptation of unknown treasures.

And even more importantly, as long as I am in the dungeon, every few steps I take, I can always see something that tempts me to dig another grid. It has to be said that Terraria has been very successful in mobilizing players to continue playing.

Of course, there are also risks involved in the excavation process. Occasionally, one may catch a glimpse of dangerous monsters, and whether or not to dig another space becomes a test.

About the mobile version experience

It has been ten years since its release, and there are many loyal players on various platforms. However, in China, the experience before the mobile version does not seem to be very good. It is reported that the main improvement of the Chinese server version launched this time is in multiplayer gaming, based on the latest version 1.4.

Video address

Perhaps also considering that the mobile version will attract many cute newcomers, the game is directly integrated into a Chinese wiki, eliminating the process of jumping out of the game to search for strategies. In addition, there are also some beginner guides, such as the NPC mentioned at the beginning who wanders back and forth near the birth point. He will randomly provide some game skills and can also query synthesis formulas. But to be honest, for players who have not been exposed to such games, the current guidance is still a bit weak, or the degree of freedom is too high. It is recommended that newcomers understand the gameplay in the early stages of the game in advance, otherwise they may take a few more hours of detours like I did at the beginning.

Additionally, the issue of the mobile version UI being too small during gameplay has been troubling me. After all, it's a pixel game, and even if you look at a normal "one grid" on a computer screen, it can become very eye testing on a mobile screen (tablets should be slightly better). Because it is a game based on squares, when moving, creating, and attacking, the position must be determined based on a grid, which greatly tests the accuracy of the phone's touch screen. Although the mobile version provides controller adaptation, not everyone has peripherals.

But on the other hand, after all, it is a game that has been continuously updated for ten years. With more and more content and features, it is inevitable that the UI will become more complex. Perhaps also considering these factors, the official later added customization of the operating interface. Players can edit virtual buttons, adjust the position of virtual joysticks, and even use the preset four button layouts if they are too lazy to do it themselves, which to some extent alleviates the inconvenience caused by too many elements.

Overall, as a newcomer to the world of Terraria, aside from the troubles brought by the mobile version UI adaptation, my first adventure experience was exciting and exciting. The game content was rich and fun enough, making it easy for people to enjoy it and maintain the motivation to "dig a new space". It would be fortunate for a new player like me to discover such a game today. For Terraria, an old game that has been around for ten years, it is equally gratifying to continue attracting new players and maintaining youthful vitality.