Is Terraria Too Hard for New Players?

A lot of people seem to think that Minecraft is easier than Terraria but as someone who has played Terraria for many years and only recently got into Minecraft I found this rather perplexing. So lets see if we can figure out why people think Minecraft I easier and see if it really is.
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#terraria #gaming #minecraft #videoessay

[@Supermadboi]

i would prefer dying over and over in random ways than having lost 12 hours worth of grinding in a game

[@Throarbin]

Same here

[@Aquarobenson]

I agree like bro when you trying to get your item back you gonna die over and over anyway so it's just the same but terraria you don't have to waste anytime to get your item

[@hotpotato9558]

especially whenit gets burned in lava or something

[@thebutler4471]

Exactly

[@semydev]

Only play Minecraft with keep Inventory

[@FierceCinnamon]

as someone who has grown up with both, I just cant compare them. Terraria has more action and keeps you more on your toes while MC is more relaxing and enjoying the process. They have a huge difference in the emotion tied to them. To me the only real similarity is that they both use blocks.

[@Fractal170]

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying to my friends. MC was introduced to me as a game you play with friends and people you just wanna chill with, while Terraria was always the game I just had some much fun exploring and learning everything about on my own. But overall everyone’s personal experiences shape the way we see each of these games and our goals/ideas while playing them

[@RandomDuck-]

@@Fractal170 I feel like Terraria is better with friends

[@jesterplays983]

@@RandomDuck- stop comparing the games

[@jesterplays983]

​@@RandomDuck-both games are fun with friends ....i can't compare them cuz i also grew up playing both with my friends

[@RandomDuck-]

@@jesterplays983 I was just saying Terraria was more fun with friends, i never said something about Minecraft, but it is boring TO ME tho

[@mercermenace7465]

I remember someone comparing Dark Souls to Celeste. Celeste is harder, but Dark Souls is more punishing. Same can be said about Terraria and Minecraft. Terraria is harder, Minecraft is more punishing.

[@devilking5033]

That's was me

[@devilking5033]

For the Celeste and dark souls

[@Throarbin]

I can respect that

[@plasmocity]

I cant lie i thought celeste was pretty easy for a platformer, besides farewell GB Idk i might just be a sweat + celeste and DS cant rlly be compared in difficulty due to how different the 2 are

[@eyeofcthulhu88]

CELEST? 2 EZ

[@realm0720]

I personally feel that the "walk of shame" back to your dropped items in minecraft is more frustrating than dying in caves in terraria. Having to go hundreds or thousands of blocks away with no accessible map/guide to get me there feels boring and frustrating, especially at the thought of not getting the loot back at all and having to rebuild from scratch. terraria however lets you keep your items and it feels more fun, being able to constantly go back into caves and explore more, and even providing a map with our exact location of death so we can go back easily. It feels a lot less punishing when you die, making exploring more fun without the risk of losing all your progress.

[@creeperkinght1144]

I find it funny that I noticed some people in the MC community, not all, gateway the concept of not letting people having the KeepInventory command turned on in their worlds, since apparently that makes them chicken or a bad player, when Terraria happily accepts this without any reason with it being a popular difficulty for both average and dedicated players (Plus for me personally, I find it annoying to just keep walking back to the same spot where you died, which could be used to explore or fight). I keep it on since it helps me do more adventures and objectives in both games, especially since I'm a psychopath who loves building ridiculously large structures or landscapes, plus it doesn't cause me more stress when I want to go get late- game loot.

[@redking36]

@@creeperkinght1144 Keep inventory also just makes co-op more fun. It’s a bit easier to avoid picking up your friend’s stuff in Minecraft since there’s 3 dimensions, but it still happens sometimes. In Terraria, it would be absolutely run-ending if you’re fighting a boss and everyone’s on mediumcore.

[@thisusernameiscurrentlytak7877]

Unless you’re in expert mode lol

[@julianjolts5050]

Bed

[@redchris7352]

Mediumcore?

[@steampunkWizardStudios]

Recall potions and increased mobility options make Terraria VERY different. In Minecraft, you have to travel long distances to find new things and teleportation is limited at best. There are also no practically viable mobility upgrades other than an Elytra, which is literally endgame.

[@ripscort1896]

*post game, which worsens a bit the Minecraft movement options

[@Soupy8.]

yeah, I suppose. The elytra can only be found after the dragon but people still manage to get it in 20 minuits.

[@YuYuYuna_]

To be fair though Terraria has very good reasons for there to be easily accessible transportation in it compared to Minecraft. Terraria you have biomes that offer unique resources and mobs that drop unique items so you have to be able to farm them and get access to them in a reasonable amount of time. Minecraft, while it does have biomes, none of them actually serve any real gameplay purpose other than farming blocks to make your base look better. If I go to a desert I will still encounter creepers, skeletons and zombies. If I go into a cave, same thing. Into a forest with different trees? An open field? Same enemies no matter where I go. Not a bad thing though. Both games aim for different audiences. Terraria aims to challenge you and encourage you to explore and progress. Minecraft doesn't have any inherent goals put in front of you. Your goals in Minecraft are whatever you want to do. Terraria your goals are to explore the world, find resources, increase your health and find better gear, get more npcs, fight bosses, rinse and repeat.

[@ryokuhasu9699]

I recently went to massive LAN party and played terraria with a whole group of people that never played it before. The host set it to expert mode so everyone would get some loot. I have 3.5K hours in the game and have beat legendary GFB mode so the mode was an absolute breeze for me. However everyone else, including the host, was dying constantly. The entire spawn area was a mass of gravestone after an hour of play. It seems everyone was dying for what seemed live very minor mechanical mistakes like not moving backwards when meleeing a zombie, or trying to get around a zombie and running into their jump mechanic. Things that seem extremely minor and easy to an experienced player I realized were insanely hard for a fresh player. Nearly no one got anything past wood or pumpkin armor and next to no exploration took place. Seeing what actually happens when you take a bunch of experienced adults at a LAN and introduce them into terraria really reminded me of just how skewed my perception of difficulty was after having beat the hardest game secret game mode it has.

[@ValtenBG]

I need to try GFB some day. I first need to finish my Calamity playthrough

[@AlicjaDee]

I see this with Dead Cells a lot. Got almost 700h in the game and beat it at highest difficulty multiple times. Watching youtubers play it for the first time or even watching my younger brother play it at very hard (don't let the name fool you, it's the third easiest out of six difficulty levels) reminds me of how often I died when I first started playing.

[@VeryRGOTI]

wow a LAN party sounds so fun

[@adrianosiciliano]

They should ve played on normal

[@BallSniffer413]

Don't understand why some terraria players introduce newbies on harder difficulty. The first experience is everything when youre starting a game. So if you set it as expert mode for a bunch of people who don't even know how to fight basic mobs yet all they will remember is dying a lot. My boyfriend hates Terraria because he remembers dying a lot. Everyone associates dying with failure, so a game like terraria on expert difficulty is not the way to go if you want someone to genuinely be interested in the game as well as the community.

[@Noordledoordle]

As someone who was an adult when the Minecraft beta dropped, no one thought of it as a kids' game. Everyone in the office played it! We had our own office worlds and everything. I think KZbin probably helped the kiddos get into it and change its public perception, but it was meant to be all-ages sandbox fun. I frankly was surprised when an end boss got added, lol.

[@s7z7gy]

What a legend

[@legendaerycraft2226]

​@@bobertbopala Yeah, and it still is, if you look at modding, redstone, map building, etc. YOu will find people of the age of 7 to 50

[@Unkle_Genny]

I agree completely!

[@evercreepy]

I agree, I was maybe 23? 24? back when Beta happened. Learned to play by reading wiki and watching paulsoaresjr. Switched to Etho and Bdubs later on. Everyone considered Minecraft a creative sandbox back then, with a dash of SMP fun. I dipped out of the community at some point, for a few years, and was quite surprised to come back and find Minecraft now considered to be a "kids game", because it was ”simple”. I honestly always thought Minecraft’s main attraction wasn’t simplicity or complexity, but the creative freedom and slight creepiness of lonely single player worlds. Which either attracts you or it doesn’t, regardless of your age.

[@VeryRGOTI]

That's very wholesome, man

[@ninjanikki1238]

Your first experience definitely makes a huge difference here. My first experience with Terraria was with 2 of my friends in an expert world. They didn't want to put it on a lower difficulty because they already knew the game super well. I spent the entire playthrough receiving their hand-me-downs and "helping" with bosses by dying repeatedly. Only now am I really making an effort to learn more about the game since I'm playing it alone and at my own pace. This experience alone makes me like Minecraft more, but these same friends only ever play modded because the game is "too easy." I've learned to love both games over time, but my god has it taken a while.

[@ghosttiger38]

I can't imagine teaching someone how to play a game and just giving them hand-me-downs. Like they're never going to enjoy that lmao

[@benito1620]

@ghosttiger38 I always hear these stories of people trying to get their friends to play their favorite game and they always do it terribly (forcing the new player to play a harder difficulty, just dragging them around without explaining anything, or even worse they do the opposite where they force them into doing hyper optimized strategies from day 1 instead of organically learning the game). Imagine you start playing terraria and your friend hands you a Zenith and a bunch of endgame gear when you are in pre hardmode.

[@silkmoth288]

my first experience is when my brother bought it on xbox 360 and it was one of the best games i ever played. me and my brother played and left at the pumpkin moon event so a year later i came back and completed the game

[@dazc9965]

@@benito1620 gosh, yeah. it wasn't terraria for me but stardew valley, which is obviously a very different game, but the principle rings true the same way. my friend led me through it the first time with a mindset of a super experienced player speedrunning their nth world, making a huge doc listing everything we needed to do on which days, time limits, etc, completely optimizing everything we did with not much room for error. it turned a supposedly relaxing game into a surprisingly stressful experience, and it makes the new player feel more like a hindrance than anything. I get wanting to share something you really like with a person close to you in the way that you personally enjoy it, and I appreciate all the effort my friend put into our playthrough, but sometimes it is just better letting a friend explore a game on their own and simply guide them through that natural progression (which CAN make the experience a lot more pleasant!) chances are they'll learn to have fun with it their own way, even if it's not the same as yours

[@juicyjuustar121]

I just wish Terraria had a mode that dropped separate loot for each player like the Treasure Bags. Having to fight a boss half a dozen times in Classic mode because we're doing multi-player REALLY sucks

[@FilmBucket]

Terraria's difficulty really hit hard for 8 year old me, but that made the moments like beating the Wall of Flesh for the first time and getting my first Night's Edge (back when the meta weapons weren't really of concern in the community) such crowning achievements that I'll remember forever.

[@notmetagaming]

Exactly! The difficulty makes it actually rewarding and makes real memories

[@TheTolnoc]

An interesting parallel to this video, is that there are many people getting into Terraria recently, who are making the mistake of jumping in on Expert, or Hardcore, or Hardcore Expert, and yet, are still loving the game because of the difficulty rather than in spite of it. One channel I know of did both games at roughly the same time, and is currently about 40 deaths into Hardcore Expert Terraria, and made it to Hard Mode about 10 deaths ago with a totally fresh world each time.

[@krimson8317]

Honestly I think Expert makes for a better experience overall because of the easy access to loot, more indepth enemies and bosses, and giving each player on multiplayer a loot bag each. But hardcore is just a silly idea for a new player because losing your entire world can make you stop playing the game entirely

[@notmetagaming]

​@@krimson8317part of the fun of hardcore is seeing if you can last longer/progress further than your last character/world you died and deleted. I don't mind dying in hardcore

[@TurretBot]

@@krimson8317Hardcore in Terraria is just bad regardless of your skill level because traps exist. (I say this as someone who only plays hardcore...)

[@rudeboycthulhu]

@@TurretBot you should play on the "notraps" seed if traps are causing issues, with the seed being: notraps trust me, i'm a very honest person

[@extra_ram_noodles]

Perhaps the player enjoys roguelikes, in which case playing hardcore from the get go makes total sense!

[@frostbite5607]

The only reason I love Terraria so much is because my brother, around the same age as me, really got into watching Terraria videos, and eventually he started playing the game. When my brother would play, he would also let me play, knowing I was too young to know how to mess anything up. As we would play, he would look things up and make progress in the game for us, so all I had to do was explore and fight enemies. I had a blast experiencing the parts of the game that I wanted, and as I grew up and played by myself, I learned to enjoy the game in its entirety.

[@skullchimes]

that's awesome

[@TheRealChickenblock]

W Brother

[@wyattthebest1017]

This is literally the story of me and my younger sister! 😂

[@RazzNt]

funny thing is that beat terraria first before Minecraft Minecraft's big and open 3d world really stress me out as theres too much to explore, and knowing that i can get netherite before beating ender dragon really stress me out even more because i like to min max as much as possible but in terraria because the game is splitted into different parts like pre boss, pre wof, pre mech, etc etc, its easier to just play the game knowing i won't be able to get the most op weapon before the first boss, and instead seek out my favorite weapons from that part specifically and just use that to finish that part. so yeah, thats why i like terraria more, i guess also another funny thing is that i found Minecraft and know about Minecraft more than Terraria, so its just funny that i beaten a game i found out much more recently(earlier this year) than a game that i found years ago(before the 1.13 update)

[@Throarbin]

Yeah, I found Minecraft's openness a bit daunting, I was frozen by having too many choices.

[@kalebbeaumont]

I grew up playing minecraft and got into terraria later in life, I think minecraft has a more simple entry level but also a higher complexity end, leading to a game that can grow with you. terraria feels more like a distinct line you can get better at running but thats about it

[@Throarbin]

Hm, that's an interesting way to look at it, I like it!

[@kribyy7784]

the only way minecraft grows with you is with mods, the base game just isnt that complex

[@kalebbeaumont]

@kribyy7784 incorrect. theres a tonnnn you can do. also even if that is the case MC has a way bigger modding community so not a bad thing to explore and honestly another step for people to grow and experiment with making mods

[@kribyy7784]

you're always able to do all of it though, doesnt grow with player skill@@kalebbeaumont

[@chicken_person]

​​@@kribyy7784I disagree. Minecraft definitely has skill to it, whether that's based on game knowledge, confidence in dealing with monsters, or understanding how to react to different situations. Also, there's an unbelievable amount of complexity once you start making automated mob farms, farms for all sorts of useful items, using Redstone, making villager trading halls, learning potion brewing, and so on and so forth. Maybe a hot take, but I would even argue that base Minecraft has more complexity, especially once the base game is completed, than Terraria does. For example, you work to get perfect gear by enchanting them and books, then combining different pieces of gear and enchanted books in an anvil, while you just throw money at the Goblin Tinkerer in Terraria. And I'm not saying that Minecraft is better. I love both games. But saying Minecraft lacks complexity and lacks skill is mind-boggling to me.

[@ethanhess8230]

Terraria is wiki-dependent enough that the devs put a link to the wiki directly into their game. I think it does a great job at naturally bringing you into the progression by randomly throwing a boss at you a couple nights in and allowing you to find loot that shows you there’s a class system, but on a first playthrough I think you can only get so far without the wiki. There is gear you have to grind to get and you often need to look up how to get it. Even now as someone who has been playing terraria pretty much since release I look up crafting recipes and things like the ankh shield checklist. I absolutely understand how new players are often overwhelmed by how complex the game is. I also understand how someone starting out may feel aimless at first since you aren’t necessarily introduced to progression elements before you could get bored.

[@BigCheeZeMan]

Technically there's an in-game wiki give the guide an item and he'll tell you what and where you need in order to craft it.

[@ripscort1896]

@@BigCheeZeMan but at the same time,.the increased pool of enemies, the rare drops from some environments, and the inability to check wherever you are the recipes would.make checking recipes for new items to a new player more difficult than in Minecraft

[@miniwhiffy3465]

it isn't wiki dependent if you have a basic level of intelligence, clearly you lack that if you think the game is wiki dependent

[@jackjones7620]

@@miniwhiffy3465The game is wiki dependent if you have a life outside of a basement.

[@Keeganator42]

You are meant to die in Terraria because you keep your items. Also makes the game more adventurous than Minecraft.

[@pumpkinpie3701]

minecraft is so much more simple in my opinion, as the progression is very simple, just upgrading a type of ore for weapons. The swords, pickaxes and armour all act the same, only with different stats. Terraria on the other hand requires you to have knowledge on hundreds of different weapons to know what you should use to fight each boss, as well as accessories and armour that are essential for playing (such as wings) that the game literally doesn't tell you about, many players would just never know to go up into the sky again after hard mode starts, to try to kill wyverns.

[@Throarbin]

Well, the thing with Terraria is you don't actually need to know anything about the best weapons or accessories. You'll gradually learn more. I know over many years I've slowly optimized my load outs. And funny you mention wyverns since I went to the skies on a whim the first time I went to hardmode and was like "what the heck is this thing!?"

[@teldrynsero6791]

Exactly this! There are 6 armour sets in minecraft, 3 of which you're likely to completely skip. Same said with tools. But terraria has dozens of armour sets available before you even fight a boss which is considered the very earliest stage of the game. All of which have different stats and behave slightly differently. Like pumpkin giving added damage and cactus giving a thorns effect. Edit: Not to mention hardmode having a wide variety of armours that mainly seperate into the 4 classes, yet still vary stat wise from each other. (Not hardmode armours but kinda like how obsidion and bee armour are both summoner sets, but the bee armour focuses on minion damage while obsidion focuses on whips.)

[@Thomatos200]

Yes, i agree, and it doesn’t detriment the game with less used armor sets or weapons, because they are such a small part of the game in terraria, but instead allow for more discovery, intrigue, and intricacy

[@Azninjazn]

Didn't have to know exactly armor sets or weapons on a first play through, just standard gaming convention (higher number means more defense/damage) and iirc the guide gave tips for different stages of the world and can tell you crafting recipes

[@greywolf9783]

@@Throarbin the losing tools bit btw is why I always play with tinkers construct, or tetra they both just stop working

[@lonewolf9255]

I grew up playing Minecraft and relatively quickly picked up Terraria too. I know exactly why I didn't bounce off of Terraria. Modded minecraft. I always preferred Modded to the base version, and there are no acurate wikis for almost anything, KZbin tutorials or trial and error are the things you need to do to learn. Nowadays most mods have in-game documentation in minecraft, but that used to be excitingly rare. I was used to not knowing what is going on and still am when i pick up a new game. i rarely abandon games before i at least understand the basics, exeptions are games that are obviously poorly made, or i REALLY dislike the gameplay i have experienced.

[@Nekoszowa]

I feel like a simple guide book and craft book you can sort and search through would do wonders to Terraria. JEI-like thing is simply a must to me since the day I stepped into modded Minecraft. If a game that relies on crafting and progression does not have it I will not touch it.

[@gamerrooboh3202]

I always find it interesting to see people talk about this because i grew up playing both games at the same time learning them both so i never had a problem later on with either

[@gauss2870]

That is exactly how i am. Just sitting here while everyone argues over which is better and what not, and I’m just like “they are both good.”

[@xcenex479]

Same here! I consider Minecraft to be better for multiplayer, but only Terraria can make me play for hours on end without getting bored. I choose depending on what I want to do on a given day. Besides, there is a reason why Minecraft says “Also try Terraria” and Terraria says “Also try Minecraft”. We should just be appreciating both games :)

[@MrBreast-gc4zi]

i first started playing minecraft in like 2017 or 2018 and then started playing terraria in late 2020(didnt really play it that much until i was bored with minecraft)

[@MrBreast-gc4zi]

@@gauss2870fr i think they both are good

[@deadmangaming0]

same here

[@KaiTheMemeKing]

As someone who has played both for years, Minecraft has a much more forgiving learning curve. I wasn't able to progress past prehardmode until I started watching other playthroughs and scouring the wiki. I started Minecraft a lot younger, and my mother had to look up a guide to get me started, but there isn't a linear progression in Minecraft like there is in Terraria. I feel like with Minecraft you also have a lot of control over the difficulty. You can explore a dangerous cave or visit the nether, or you can deforest an entire taiga for several days and make a huge wooden bunker. Terraria always has another boss ahead, whereas Minecraft doesn't. Sure, the ender dragon exists, but a game like Minecraft isn't supposed to have an end.

[@Dinamik79]

I don’t think terraria is supposed to have an end either there are so many variations in the game harder or easier and don’t even get me started on the mods. but I also feel Minecraft is the exacts same way

[@KaiTheMemeKing]

@@Dinamik79 Personally I think a Terraria world ends whenever you let it. The Moon Lord is the final boss, but nothing is pressuring you to fight it. I know that the game doesn't end after that fight, but a lot of players (myself included) find it difficult to keep playing with the same level of enjoyment after the big baddie of the world is defeated. That's why whenever I play Terraria I take the slow way. I'll fight a boss every few hours. In between that, I'll explore, do events, power up, gather resources I know I'll never use because it's fun. And then mods basically just allow you to tailor your experience to you. Whatever you want from your Terraria world, you've god a mod for it. Not disagreeing or hating, just sharing my own opinion :)

[@trevory9959]

I grew up in the golden Era of these games. I got into minecraft two days before they added wolves and certainly before hunger. Middleschool was perfect age and it was so elementary at this point. I got into Terraria at my buddies house when skeletron was the final boss. It's easy to grow with a game, than be thrown into it. Just takes patience. Love your perspectives. Keep at it.

[@treelandcar7844]

As a person who's played both and both modded i can say, it more likely because Minecraft has a more casual feel to it. And also rlcraft i believe has some inspiration from terraria and rlcraft is considered one of the hardest Minecraft mod pack

[@Throarbin]

Yeah, Minecraft is definitely quite a bit more casual

[@b0ne_r3aper78]

@@Throarbin i'd say that minecraft's end porpose isn't nessacearly to kill the ender dragon and see the credits, it's just 1 of the things you CAN do while playing, while Terraria has a clear intended path to follow, and if you don't manage to grasp that path, it would feel off, since you just don't get the progression and the feeling of getting better with the gear you get along that path, which i think is the biggest draw for me at least in terraria. but Minecraft doesn't really have a way to make you miss something or go off path and make you lost, so even a person with a bit of experiance in the game won't feel as lost if they go off course as a player with a similar amount of experiance in terraria could. if we compare a new player who just beat terraria with minimal experimentation just going through the games bosses and major common events, to a player that beat the ender dragon, and did most major things like got at least full diamond gear, built a lot and possibly went through some of the structures that generate in the world, than i'd say that you'd feel like terraria has way less to offer you in terms of value for a replay than minecraft, even if you didn't even kill most of the 18 bosses in terraria, since if you only really follow the general progression that the guide and world gives you, than it's likely that you'd miss at least 8 or so of them, and most likely didn't do even half of the possible events, but since the player got to the FINAL BOSS it would feel that the game is done, but minecraft as a more creative orianted game would still feel like it would offer you even more if you just play a bit more, especially since a minecraft world doesn't end at the ender dragon, but terraria honestly has little reason to keep playing on the same world after killing Moonlord. this is all coming from a person that absolutely prefers terraria, very apparent by my 11000 hours in terraria and a couple hundred hours in minecraft back in 1.8.4, and never after that.

[@petrikhorr]

it's also one of the worst modpacks, for lycanites style reasons

[@shinycharizard9221]

Man I love rlcraft it's so fun

[@Havens.trashpit]

@@b0ne_r3aper78 only problem about minecrafts freedom for me is, I get bored. I have ADHD so I struggle to get into games and whenever I play Minecraft, my only goal is to kill the wither and the ender dragon. I grew up on both Minecraft and terraria, my brother showed me both of them so I had him to tell me what to do in both. I found terraria easier because it had so many options and things to do, so many game modes, so many weapons and 4 whole play through types at my finger tips. Where as Minecraft you get wood, stone, iron, diamond and that was it. There’s not much to do. Less trial and error. And when you die, you loose EVERYTHING

[@lampdevil]

A great analysis! I think both Minecraft and Terraria have a certain degree of unapproachability for people who are entirely unfamiliar with them. I remember waaaaay back in the day someone making a very basic "here's what you do when first starting in Minecraft! Punch a tree! Make a place to hide!" guide to entice their friends to start in with it.... and god knows that I needed a friend to do a bit of the same for me to get me into Terraria. Terraria has the added complication of... being just plain complicated! What are all these things to craft??? What do I do with all this stuff??? What is even the goal??? Thing is once you figure these games out, all that complexity is ENTICING, not repelling. I think it's that Terraria's complexity is even MORE complex and overwhelming, and it takes a particular sort of gamer to really really click with it. Meanwhile Minecraft, you can just bum around and do whatever much more easily.

[@pyxelgamer]

I started Terraria at 10. I had played a little bit of Minecraft before that, but only creative building. I remember being so hopeless at the game. Then, I realized I had to learn how the game worked. So I literally went on the wiki and read every single page. Then I watched numerous videos. It helped. And even now I still have trouble beating master mode in under 300 deaths. On the other hand, I know pretty much everything there is to know about the game.

[@Throarbin]

I feel like there's a ceiling for everyone's skill in Terraria. I've played it for 10 years myself and I feel like my skill level has hardly increased over the years, lol

[@Thomatos200]

Its not all about skill really, its about the journey imo

[@landonwong3643]

Man I also started terraria at ten and played a bit of minecraft too (coincidence?)

[@redking36]

@@Throarbin Luckily, Terraria becomes easier every time with the weapons they add. Yo-yos for example are absolutely insane for melee. I remember playing at the time when the fiery greatsword was the best-in-class item in the whole game (or maybe Night’s Edge, if it existed at the time, but it lacks the flame debuff). The Thorn Chakram was also considered very good, and now I’d bet almost nobody knows what it is. The magic boomerang is also craftable now, while you could only find it in chests before. The Beenade strategy for Wall of Flesh also didn’t exist since Queen Bee didn’t exist. Terraria has changed a lot over the years, and even though most changes historically have been to end-game or near-end-game content, the early game has changed considerably over the years and best-in-class weapons have become mediocre or even forgotten in a lot of cases.

[@cooliomccloopio1642]

i disagree with the premise. Minecraft's greater popularity in comparison to Terraria has little to do with the individual's experience or the difficulty of the environment/bosses/progression. i believe it can be attributed to broader concepts of accessibility for connection and competition. in Minecraft, a good chunk of the player-base is exclusively multiplayer servers with custom plugins that completely override the whole nature of the "sandbox." things like Hypixel Bedwars for example are a major experience for any player. while in Terraria, those kinds of things simply do not exist in any sense of the style. while hundreds if not thousands of strangers connect and form friendships and compete in minecraft throughout every session, my experience with Terraria has just been playing with the same 10 friends in new challenges. this isn't a critique of the entertainment potential, as i do love Terraria, i'm just saying i think it's pretty obvious why Minecraft is bigger.

[@littlemoth4956]

That's not really a good explanation for popularity but for longevity. Why would new players flock to a game because of it's wide variety of gamemodes? They wouldn't need that variety, they'd join for the initial concept regardless of how wide the content pool was.

[@PlasmaXs2]

@@littlemoth4956 yea in my opinion minecraft doesnt have enough content for me to enjoy unlike other games such as ark or terraria so i only play minecraft for the pvp, which is what i enjoy so im happy

[@Calospissito]

Terraria: Not So Popular, Better, Good, Lot Of Things To Do Minecraft: Popular, Normal, A Little Boring, Only Thing You Can Do Is Build, Let A Creeper Explode Your House, Mine And Kill The Ender Dragon

[@sunpwince6273]

I find this interesting, when I started playing terraria as a kid I heavily relied on the wiki more than I ever do now (I'm in my 20s now) Edit: To add onto this, as a kid I would use guides online constantly because I would get confused

[@Throarbin]

Yeah, that sounds like how it's been for me to

[@akion37]

​@@Throarbin*too🤓

[@AsterWi]

i also constantly usetons of guides when playing any game

[@jakekirkman9934]

As a kid, I never actually used the wiki, I started on xbox and beat the game on my own after a friend told me about the game. The only thing I ever needed to look up on my first playthrough was if there was another boss after Golem (at the time there was not). Honestly I feel like if you play the game long enough you can figure anything out, and the more you keep playing the more you learn, which is what got me hooked on the game in the first place. With minecraft I felt as though you learned what crafting was and learned that there was one boss and that was it. I could have fun playing minecraft with friends for sure, but never in single player, whereas with terraria both are super fun. I like Terraria more because there are countless ways to play the game. It can be as hard as you want or very easy, you can do endless challenge runs, mods, or play with friends. There are a lot of minecraft minigames you can play as well, but those aren't really the base game so idk if that counts. Plus minecraft minigames are most fun with friends for me not alone.

[@VansAlt]

I grew up playing Minecraft but found terraria through KZbin so I went into the game with a little more knowledge than a completely new player. I’ve grown more towards Terraria as I find it to be more fun.

[@slcraft6047]

Same. I started playing minecraft at like 7, but I never beated the game since I always lost my items and made a new world. Discovered terraria at 12, with videos, and I find it more fun that ores are easier to find and you don't lose all of your items, but bosses harder. Great balance.

[@ayugames2783]

Terraria has a really REALLY oppressive difficulty when you're a beginner. I discovered the game recently with friends and it took me a long time (post wall of flesh at least) to actually enjoy it. Several things make the game not so appealing when you don't know it well. You get A LOT (a lot more than in minecraft exploration) of differents items while exploring and you absolutely don't know what is useful and what isn't. So sometimes you'll stop a few seconds to have a closer look at what you got...worst error, you got killed by a bat who pushed you into a zombie who just spawned seconds after you cleaned the area. Ok no problems you'll return to where you died and store your items in a chest before going...but you've no idea how to make a chest and that's because they're a lot more complicated to craft than minecraft chests. Nevermind you keep your items because you cannot put them anywhere. While coming back to your exploration, you find a hidden chest somewhere in a cave. OH NICE !! let's open it to see what's in there...and then explode while trying to open it making you die once again. So yep I think terraria is a lot better and more interesting than survival minecraft but I completely understand why the majority stops playing before even seeing a boss. Playing minecraft is chill most of the time. Playing terraria isn't at all.

[@sonicunleshed]

Growing up I playing Minecraft but picked up Terraria around 3 years ago. It quickly grew to be one of my favorite games of all time where I have hundreds of hours over regular and modded in both games. Minecraft offers a very simplistic approach and doesn't provide much of a challenge since all the mechanics are relatively simple. Combat in Minecraft involves swinging a sword, using a bow, and using a shield (excluding PvP) and thats all you need to beat the game. In Terraria every weapon has a unique attack or ability which provides variability to your playstyle throughout the game. Additionally the class system in Terraria may be a lot more complicated to the average player than simply getting the tankiest armor like in Minecraft. Overall both are great games but Minecraft is relatively easier to get into and doesn't challenge the player as much as Terraria does.

[@flintdoggo9897]

The first time i started playing terraria was when a friend got it for my birthday way back, i have never played such a game before and i wouldve been completely lost if not the fact we played it together, i dont even remember learning the game i just see the countless hours i have sunk into it now and i just.. know things, and then i introduced my girlfriend to it and she was just as lost about the game, but we played together so she caught on very quickly. I think this is a valuable point in any sort of game like this, its hard to learn alone, but its much easier with someone along the way.

[@Throarbin]

Yeah, playing with a friend can be really helpful for a first time experience.

[@GetFriedShorts]

Most of the complaints about Minecraft is “I’m incompetent so the game is too hard” even though terraria is way more complex and requires a wiki you cannot play for the first time and beat the game in a reasonable amount of time without the wiki Minecraft is self explanatory and even tells you everything you need to do with achievements that you can check at anytime Edit: The complaints I’m talking about are regarding the comments mostly not the video

[@GetFriedShorts]

Also I’ve played both games for the past 10+ years and love them both and I don’t even think you should be comparing them in the first place because they are vastly diffrent experiences

[@phailupe2941]

Terraria players when they have to use the guide instead of the wiki 😱😱😱😱😱

[@Throarbin]

Right? lol

[@vinxersnf9374]

Me

[@Love_Strucken]

I don't usually use the wiki. Not after I massed used it to figure out how to build a farm, in which it somehow took me to the moonlord battle. What I can say is that I have figured out new and faster ways of beating the game, which brings satfication with me. However bc I don't own a computer and I play on mobile I feel limited to the content I can use. I would really love to play calamity or thorium, as they seem like a skill above me. I just wish ii owned a computer, so I can enjoy a lot more content. This is also my biggest pet peeve in minecraft. I grew up with the game, but I couldn't play from 2016 to 2020 so when I finally got the game again I was astonished by the new content, but with only 2(3 if you count the warden) it's quite frankly boring.

[@teldrynsero6791]

@@Love_Struckenconsole player here and boy do i wish i could play calamity and thorium. I played like 15 minutes of calamity on my friends laptop and the sheer amount of brand new content made me feel like i was playing for the first time again. Since then all the quality of life and texture pack mods i've seem have only made me more and more hungry for modded terraria.

[@green_crow-b9v]

The guide is useless and horrible

[@testaklese]

Terraria is harder, but that's not why there's such a difference in sales. They're barely even comparable games

[@OversizedPringleToe]

You can’t just play on an end-game Minecraft server and declare that being the beginner experience.

[@BlazingTomato]

personally, I've had a whole week of constant progress (full netherite enchanted gear, enchanted apple, and totem of undying), and lost it all to a warden which made me demotivated for a few days, so that was a nightmare. However with terraria at least even if I die 100 times over an hour, I know I will make it in the end and that it will be just an hour lost rather than a whole week

[@teeveegaming1238]

the point that you're bringing up just says that minecraft is more grindy, not more difficult.

[@BlazingTomato]

@@teeveegaming1238 well I find terraria to be more difficult, but it can also be more grindy, however the grind in terraria is more down to choice, like you could spend many hours just to grind for 1 item, however I think having to completely restart progress was just not very enjoyable and I had to take a very short break, I think what was even worse was that I was playing on an SMP and was running an empire while against another empire, but I ended up losing everything, making me instantly go from strongest player to weakest player, and it would've completely messed with my plans as I was making a series from it, and suddenly had to change what would've been in the next video

[@littlemoth4956]

@@teeveegaming1238 They literally never said either of those things.

[@bigchungu7698]

Terraria and Minecraft both hold a special place in my heart. I grew up playing neither, but watching both. I got minecraft first, and terraria later, but I can't say that one is more fun or easier than the other. Only that the difficulty is different. In terraria, if you die, most of the time its to a boss you weren't good enough to beat, an event you didn't prepare for, or maybe even a trap. Its not a large set-back, and most of the time you lose maybe 3 gold coins total. Its easy to die, but those deaths come and very little consequence. When respawning, the first thought really is to try again and and dive back into what you were just doing, but making sure to not die again. In minecraft, you'll find it much harder to die. Its easy to go weeks of playing without dying. The prolific hardcore community is more than a testament of that. The issue comes with when you do die. The walk of shame to get your items is sometimes the least of your worries. Enemies could pick up your armor and weapons and use them against you, or getting your items back is a lot of work. All in all, its different areas of difficulty. Terraria kills you a lot, but each death is at worst a few hours of grinding. Minecraft barely kills you, if ever, but when it does you'll lose days of work. It all boils down to personal preference. Terraria is certainly harder in my experience, but that's also cause I'm a grindy bastard who would rather live in absolute safety than challenge god and nuke a cosmos, hence my preference to minecraft.

[@0x0404]

I think Terraria has a pretty strong tonal shift from when you start the game to a few hours later when you start getting into the good stuff that makes Terraria Terraria. I bet a fair amount of people lose interest before getting to the good stuff.

[@Calthecool]

Dying in Terraria is a minor setback, while dying in Minecraft can lose you hours of gear and experience. You were spitting facts up until this point, but I have to disagree with you here. I've had friends quit the server after dying and losing a few items in Minecraft, but never in Terraria.

[@personofthepersons9533]

When I was 7, I got a ps4 and Minecraft for my birthday. And I've been playing that one and off since now. Then, when I was 9, one of my long lost cousins showed me the beauty of Terraria. I played Terraria for a bit, got scared by the dungeon guardian, and quit for about a year and a half. During that time, I found a video about Terraria that interested me. That one video brought me into the deep, DEEP iceberg of Terraria, now I am a complete nerd when it comes to anything 1.3.5 and below in Terraria and pre 1.16 in Minecraft. Both of these games are my "go back to" games.

[@karmine3640]

The game gives you everything you need to beat it without using the wiki, using the guide really helps a lot actually. You just need to go exploring and interacting with anything that looks interesting which is what most people do anyways, there is a learning curve to the game though.

[@maynardburger]

The 1.4 update adding goals in the UI helps new players a lot. Without prior knowledge, understanding what you should be doing next is very difficult to grasp. People who think the Guide alone is enough are speaking with prior experience of the game. It's important to remember what it was like before knowing *anything* and people are bad at putting their heads in that kind of mindset. It's like trying to explain how to ride a bike to somebody who doesn't know how. It seems so obscenely obvious once you've got it down and it's very hard to remember what it was like to NOT know how to do it.

[@karmine3640]

@@maynardburger I guess you’re right, I remember the first time I played back on console edition I didn’t know what to do after Skeletron but I blamed it on me being a kid lol, I guess with over 1000 hours everything is just so second nature that it’s hard to think people can just get stuck in progression not knowing what to do.

[@verdanterra2064]

@@maynardburger The Guide npc was enough for me when I got into it at 13-14. I didn't use the wiki at all back then, it wasn't even a concept in my mind. That said, that was prior to even the WoF existing and Hard Mode, so I do at least partially agree more direction would be good for most people's enjoyment of it.

[@s7z7gy]

Minecraft has a guide guys…

[@Nekoszowa]

@@s7z7gy Not really The advencments screen doesn't tell you a lot outside of what to do, the crafting book also didn't exist at first, and in the end you can do what you want for as long as you want to in Minecraft, compared to Terraria where you are forced to progress

[@AMinnesotan]

Yeah, I got Terraria back when I was like 8, got confused what to do once I beat EoC and gave up, now I enjoy it and I decided to see if my dad would like it as well and I completely think having a guiding hand probably helps as he was clueless but eventually he got into it and I fully believe he is better than me now just because I guided him through the first steps

[@hyxlo_]

I started playing both Terraria and Minecraft when I was 7 and I made a lot of fun memories with both of them. But I found Terraria a lot more confusing and I didn't really want to learn everything about it because my tiny, underdeveloped brain was already stuffed with Minecraft information so I kind of just forgot Terraria for like 8 years until I started playing again recently

[@giantmutantbug]

I played terraria for the first time about a year ago when my friend (who is very experienced with the game) wanted me to play the game with him. At first, the game felt overwhelming and not very fun. My friend had all this really good gear and all I had was a copper sword. I told my friend that I was gonna go on a "training arc" and get a full understanding of the game and it's mechanics. Now, I'm not good at the game yet. I've only just beaten the wall of flesh and I'm really struggling with the mechanical bosses. But for some reason, after some point between beating the eye of cthulhu and the eater of worlds, the game became so much more fun. I started playing it more because I wanted to and less because I felt like I had to. I do only have 40 hours in the game, but 30 of those are from the last two weeks! I have no idea what changed though. If any really experienced terraria player has any idea please let me know

[@240kph]

being someone whos grown up with both games it was way harder to get interested in terraria, and imo its way harder. but to me its because before i started playing minecraft, i found it easy from the start due to just how much content i'd watched. it was hard to find engaging content for terraria and i never got locked in until last year.

[@arisu78]

I played my first run with friends in Expert, I had a bad time since everyone was good at the game I legit sucked and ended up being a drag. It wasnt fun until you reach end game loot and I instantly wanted to try master on my own lol.

[@GlitchedVision]

Think about the death problem from this perspective, if you're getting punched in the face repeatedly it's much easier to become enraged and lose focus than it would be if your opponent simply smacked you once then picked you up and threw you a mile away without your stuff... most of the time that punk will be gone by the time you get back to collect everything, if you remember where it was at all. In this case the challenge and chill comes from different aspects of both games. Terraria's challenge comes from it's constant danger and combat while minecraft's challenge comes in the form of creativity and finding things to do with that infinite expanse of an empty world. Gamers in general tend to stick to game styles that are comfortable and familiar, while Terraria and Minecraft are both survival crafting games, the differing focus attracts players who like different styles of game. To nail my point home I'll just simply name drop one more survival crafting game along with its prime focus, Ark: survival Evolved focuses entirely on the creatures, both hostile and passive. You can tame them all and all of them require different facilities to take care of and most of the building systems either support your own character progression or your ability to tame and care for your dinos. This style of game lends itself to a completely different type of player who may find both minecraft and terraria to be boring kids games.

[@Throarbin]

That whole punching in the face analogy is awesome XD

[@brick0001]

For me I started with Minecraft as everyone was playing it, and then as one of my friends started playing Terraria, I played with them, going over to their house each weekend to play together. Terraria just stuck with me more even though I didn’t know anything, I was always looking of ways to get us better gear, and in the process is when the random spawns of Eye of Cthulhu happened. We found the eater of worlds by exploring the corruption, and found a new goal. We were completely in our own bubble but it worked just because we saw so much more we could do in Terraria compared to Minecraft. Minecraft felt stale after 10 - 20 minutes as we just sat in a loop of getting resources and then using them to build. TLDR: Terraria’s versatility and expanse of what you can do is why it sticks to me more than Minecraft.

[@TheTolnoc]

There's a distinction between "Casual Gamer" and "Non-Gamer". A Casual player still plays games regularly and has an understanding of them, whereas Grandma might not understand how you turn Fallen Stars into Mana Crystals with your bare hands.

[@noctusdoesthings]

I played minecraft since the early beta versions and the one thing I loved was how easily moddable the game is, conceptualy speaking. Compared to Terraria's finite world size with required structures and standardized progression, minecraft's infinite world with barely any progression and next to zero required structures means there's a massive amount of open space to be used. Additionally the gsme is both simple in mechanics and concepts allowing for higher complexity to be added in easily. Tinker's Construct, Thermal Expansion, Ars Magica, Create, Mekanism, ICBM, and so on do this by adding in subsystems and new crafting systems. Mods like Divine RPG, Twilight Forest, and Betweenlands take advantage of native dimension support to create entirely new experiences. TerraFirmaCraft, Spider Queen, and Tree Spirit modify the very gameplay itself from the ground up. Astral Sorcery, Ars Magica, Witchery, and Botania all add in drastically different magic systems becausr the only magic in the game is located in weird items, potions, and enchanting. Mekanism, Create, Ender IO, and IC2 all add in technology, wires, power systems, and the like that ate completely lacking since the closest thing in vanilla would be hoppers, minecarts, and redstone. The game being so conceptually basic allows for a greater degree of freedom for mod creators.

[@personal6211]

I grew up playing both Minecraft and Terraria and when I play Minecraft I feel a sense of adventure, yet in Terraria when I first fought the wall of flesh I started crying and died like 50 times not even lying.

[@Max-zo6rv]

skill issue

[@FlorizDev]

I think i played it back when i was 6 years old or something, it was still really fun to play, only boss i knew about was the eye boss, but i was just building stuff

[@Greatcelestialkaligo]

DO IT, do the lab rat thing with one of your friend'sand record and make a video on it and if it ok with them i think its be cool to see their reactions to the bosses as they mean them and raging at diying.

[@COOLCUBlX]

I still remember my first playthrough of terraria. I remember building a fort to protect me from enemies and had no idea about the valid housing system. I also recall asking my friend how to prepare for the EoC and he said to make an arena...I made a gladiator arena type build out of wood -.- I abandoned my first playthrough's validity after entering an item giver world and played around a bit. Eventually I got terraria on my switch, my phone and lastly on steam I would proceed to complete my first ever playthrough on switch version 1.3 and beat moon lord before labor of love update making all major platforms of terraria equal I remember being so happy that I could combine lava waders and frostspark boots together and had another accessory slot free due to this change And excitedly fighting queen slime, empress of light and Deerclops as they all appeared as new foes in my finished world And of course the best addition made in 1.4, the ZENITH By then I tried to get as many achievements as possible but felt crushed after 1.4 added new ones After I had only roughly 5 achievements left I decided to end the playthrough as I finally got bored I then proceeded to instantly fall in love with modded terraria and have tried many of the major mods like calamity, Fargo's soul and thorium! I do still have my "first playthrough" and don't consider the actual first playthrough as legitimate. I've come a long way and still play terraria to this day! (I started playing terraria when I was also 13 (2022) and have been playing it for over two years now!) (Minecraft I tried on other people's devices since my parents never let me get it because they said it was addicting lmao and I only ended up getting it last year on my switch for the first time) I guess since I grew up more with terraria I found it more fun but mainly because I like the gameplay and boss fights and the vast variety and rewards of each biome and steps in progression such as hardmode. This took quite a while to write but I just wanted to get my thoughts out because this video is perfect for it! I hope you all have a great time playing Minecraft and Terraria! Good luck! :D

[@aleksanderjanas2140]

I grew up playing minecraft all the time, but i changed games for terraria because I was kind of bored (I do that sometimes cause i can't play one game all the time). And now I love both of these games. They're completly different. The only thing that they have on common is that this is sandbock with blocks. But terraria is for explorarion and fighting and minecraft is for creating some stuff. So as I said I love both games, and I will forever, because I like sandboxes.

[@nonreligionist]

Creepers are fantastic game design. The jumpscares are still wonderful even with 12 years of Minecraft under my belt. I can't count the amount of times a creeper blew up my house, forcing me to rebuild and inspiring new designs improving said builds. Even random creeper holes have led me to build ideas. They also inspire an appreciation for impermanence and coming to terms with the build -> tear down -> rebuild -> tear down aspect that comes with Block Game mechanics

[@freecookiez3333]

I couldn't disagree more. The mechanic of creepers not dropping all the blocks it destroyed is frustrating and maybe you see it as ability to expand your creativity, for me and I assume most people it's just an annoying aspect. Being forced to find blocks in your chest then get back to the hole just for another creeper coming from behind making another hole that you have to rebuild again is just tedious and shitty design. It's also why basically no one fixes these holes and that's just unsatisfying. And it's not like creepers will explode exactly in places that can be exploited. Most of the time they explode while you are exploring or building killing you just because you didn't turn on in-game volume. It's fine if you see something nice in these little devils, but I just had to disagree.

[@nonreligionist]

@@freecookiez3333 Creepers not dropping all the blocks? Because dirt is super difficult to get. I get it. And even then, The Block Game involves running back and forth in many other scenarios as well. Guess Block Game bad... And who patches creeper holes while exploring? Why is random holes you'll almost never see again bothering you? But the last bit about the sound... yeah, you're just posting your L's, mah dude...

[@freecookiez3333]

@@nonreligionist Sorry. I must've put my words poorly. I meant that when you explore and creeper explodes on you from behind it usually kills you (at least in early-mid game) forcing you to go on a "walk of shame" making exploring experiences rather miserable. I didn't mean that it made a hole, because as you said why would you patch a creeper hole while exploring? But also creepers a lot of the times like to sneak up on and blow up parts of buildings and trying to rebuild that is horrible, AND because they don't drop all the blocks you have to go on a hunt to get what you need just to waste 5 minutes of your life because of these stupid walking pickles.

[@uncroppedsoop]

@@nonreligionist whether or not you intend to, you're coming off, to me at the least, as very defensive and spiteful over someone else's experiences and opinion derived from said experiences not lining up with your own, with at least a small handful of non-sequiturs in your response

[@idiottrust9290]

@@freecookiez3333 you can turn off mob griefing if you dont like creeper explosions

[@maynardburger]

Terraria actually was too hard for me when I first played it back when it launched. The jump from my starting capabilities to being able to kill Eye of Cthulhu felt super dramatic to me. There weren't all these guides and whatnot online telling me what I need, this was the wild west where I kind of felt I had to figure it out on my own. And I simply was NOT used to the sort of things Terraria ultimately asks of players. 'Build an arena'? A totally alien concept to me, and one that most Terraria players nowadays probably take for granted. No other games asks that of you. So you might not think of that on your own unless you're very smart(I'm not). Or the requirement of equipment and things like Hermes boots and all. The whole notion of 'explore and scavenge until you have the right kind of equipment' was similarly alien to me. I was used to games having very clear progression paths I could follow rather than having to seek stuff out on my own and 'figure it out'.

[@steampunkWizardStudios]

I think some people just get frustrated about the idea of dying even if it doesn't do as much as it would in other games. I saw a review for Celeste (a precision platformer taken one screen at a time) and they complained about dying too much even though it just meant having to try the screen again. The animation is less than a second and they do it pretty smart but some people just don't like the idea of "dying" in a video game.

[@jacksonreasoner1408]

I have a Minecraft world with my girlfriend. I asked her if she would play terraria and she insists she sucks at it, and that she “died at the first boss, that stupid skeleton in the dungeon” and was flabbergasted when I explained it’s a one shot and you aren’t expected to kill the guardian Edit: she also didn’t know you could talk to npcs or that the guide existed

[@pemanilnoob]

Every time I try to play terraria, I die, can’t figure out the hell im supposed to do, and quit out of boredom When I play Minecraft, I walk around, think about a nice house design, fail to make it nice, mine, get bored, quit Terraria is impossible to me, no objectives at all

[@dwight3555]

That's because Terraria fails as a sandbox where Minecraft succeeds. MC is intuitive and gives you ample time to learn the basic controls, whereas Terraria is convoluted and harasses you with slimes every 15 seconds. Terraria is also a mess because let's be honest, it's the video game equivalent of a whore on display. It tries to attract you by faking being so many genres, it fakes being a boss rush (it's not, there is no gameplay or skill, only the gear counts), it fakes being a survival game (there is no survival element), and it fails at being an exploration or adventure game because there is no direction, incentive or reward to exploring.

[@jama-fx8]

@@dwight3555this is an insane take to me because i absolutely think that terraria can be a rewarding, adventurous, and survival-like experience. im curious to how much youve actually played terraria. its system of progression literally forces you to be adventurous, giving rewards as a result

[@dwight3555]

@@jama-fx8 I didn't play it too much because I don't tolerate that the game disrespects the player so much. A friend of mine who played it a lot before analyzed the game again and found it to be a grindfest that was only tolerable because everyone had the one friend giving them OP stuff to bypass everything. Terraria lacks any identity in a game-design sense, and it has gone the bloat route for many years now, adding countless useless things that only require very basic pixel art. It's not a survival game, not a boss rush game, barely a creative game, a bad and purposeless exploration game, and a wiki-required game. Don't Starve does everything Terraria wish it did. Terraria is only held up by nostalgia, no one who is objective and plays this game solo to judge it on its own merits instead of "i like my friends and watching paint dry would be fun with them" would like it. It's an objectively bad game, just because it reminds you of high-school doesn't make it good.

[@jama-fx8]

@@dwight3555 i definitely understand the difficulty for new players - however the game certainly does not require a wiki to beat. of course if you wish thoroughly delve into the game or 100% it, then yes you’ll need one (terraria has an obscene number of items and achievements). But I don’t think a game should be deducted points simply because its complex. the core game can be beaten granted you talk to npcs, making use of the guide, and explore (the general activities you would do in any other rpg). all the information on crafting recipes and monster drops can literally be found in the game. this seems to be the biggest hurdle for new players. id be willing to bet a majority of those players have never opened the bestiary, nor used the guide for any helps towards crafting. as for terraria being grindy, its really only grindy if you want it to be. sure, there are extremely rare items that can take hours upon hours of grinding to obtain, but of course you dont need them to progress. the game isnt completely absent of grind by any means, but saying its an absolute grindfest simply isnt true. terraria not being a creative game just sounds like hatred. the game features 30+ bosses, hundreds of weapons and accessories, hundreds of vanity items - theres way too many things to list. if you want to talk about building, terraria offers hundreds of different furniture items, walls, lighting options, paintings, and more - all while being a 2d game. its building capabilities rival even minecraft. i always find these terraria vs minecraft videos to be disheartening. they seem to act as a vessel to paint one of the games in a bad light. people flame terraria for not being as easy or user friendly as minecraft, then people flame minecraft for not being as complex. the two of them are just totally different games.

[@Bexploserpro]

​@@dwight3555 your opinion. But i started Terraria only 2 years ago, and i like the action it has. Saying people play Terraria only because of Nostalgia is a shit take.

[@eugeneslife]

yes

[@ezranexcalibur]

as a minecraft kid, i spent so long reading the wiki (and this was back in the beta phase- far before minecraft became as complicated as it is now). i loaded into terraria maybe once and got confused and logged out- i was also overwhelmed by expanded content minecraft mods, so this makes sense. i’ve gotten into terraria over the last couple weeks now as an adult and am loving it for a lot of the same reasons i like modern minecraft less. imo minecraft was at its best as an empty open world with interesting areas few and far between. i liked that it was just a big sandbox with no direction. however i think terraria does progression really well. they’re such different games that i also think comparing them hurts them- if you log into one expecting the other, of course you’re gonna be disappointed. also think there’s something worth mentioning about how for those of us got into these games as children, the games were simpler back then. we grew up with the games slowly getting more and more complicated and are more desensitised to how complex they’ve truly gotten for newer players. (minecraft has helped this a little with additions like the crafting menu, but there’s still an insane amount going on)

[@kuledud5853]

I have played both games for years and I think the difference is concept, although both are similar they have distinct differences. The progression for most people in minecraft is gear up with the ore found in the main world and defeat the ender dragon(some players may need to be taught or look up how to access the end) and the game is overall simpler and self explanatory, you may need to search up crafting recipes but they arent as complex as terraria's, theres only a couple of armor sets, and there are only a couple enchants that are useful. It also requires you to grind for the same thing over and over whether it be ores for armor(this is most prevalent in netherite) or killing mobs for exp(for enchants). The progression in terraria is a bit more difficult with more steps and honestly i wouldnt have figured it out if i played alone, the crafting recipes for accesories and more complex items are ridiculous but some items can simply be crafted by have an x quantity of an item. The amount of armor, weapons, builds, and accessories may intimidate some people because there is quite a lot. The grind varies as you could be grinding for ore, or grinding a mob for its drops, or grinding for coins, or even grinding boss drops which to some can be tedious(although i prefer this to minecraft).

[@GParents]

I started playing Minecraft around 8 years old but when I discovered Terraria I fell in love with the game the bosses and the fact that you are not mining for every single resource is nice The game can be more completed but with the guide and achievements telling you what to do next It becomes a little easier.

[@Throarbin]

I just love your profile picture

[@kingunubu4156]

Aight ima change your mind about creepers : Creepers are certainly annoying but it's just such a random and surprising thing that it's also kinda funny It's a bit like boulders in Terraria, you rage the heck out when you get killed but it's kinda funny when it's with a friend. Creepers are a funny and unexpected way to to die. Did I change your mind ?

[@gigakox8839]

When i was in the middle school i played terraria from 1.2.4 1 to 1.3 for like 300 hours and now I'm adult and just played it and it's really hard even for someone who played it a lot in the past

[@armhattakitkosol4181]

I think the main difference between the experience you're after if you play terraria or Minecraft is whether you're intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. It's an oversimplification, but it's what I've also noticed

[@armhattakitkosol4181]

Update now that I actually finished the whole thing. I agree with a lot of your points. But I think you missed what makes Minecraft a true sandbox, which is the ability for a player to do anything they want, even outside of survival. Though survival is marketed as the "main" mode of play, there is a whole new experience hopping into a creative world to build really cool and huge things, experiment with redstone, or do cool stuff with plugins and make maps. There's also is/was a huge variety of gamemodes in multiplayer, some popular ones being factions, mini games, hunger games, and lots more. There will always be something for both the extrinsically and intrinsically motivated in Minecraft. You can either reach top rank on a Skyblock server or you can set a goal for yourself in a hardcore world. terraria I feel tackles giving the player an overwhelming number of goals, which really fuels the extrinsically motivated to conquer all. Terraria has a significant level of depth in its gameplay loop, where Minecraft really has quite a shallow vanilla base game in comparison yet gives the player many more tools to forge the game to however they wish compared to terraria. I think it's fair to compare minecrafts survival mode with terraria, but I think Minecraft as a whole is a lot bigger in scope to terraria.

[@MetallicPetals]

You talk about creepers being bag game design? Remember when the clowns could blow up tiles? I still have nightmares about it

[@Throarbin]

Same here, that was absolutely awful. Genuinely most terrifying enemy to ever exist in Terraria 😂

[@Perstob]

It a learning curve I grew up and love both Terraria and Minecraft, Its about how much you are willing to learn.

[@KikiCatMeow]

My biggest issue with terraria is that there’s no way to know about rare drops without googling or getting lucky. The bestiary COULD have solved that, but since you only get the drops filled in after killing enough of the enemy to get a banner, it’s kinda worthless. The drops and their rates should get filled in immediately and it’s a horrible idea to have it the way it is now

[@guythatdosethingssometimes2651]

As a kid, i played minecraft and only touched Terraria rarely cause some of my friends were also playing it at the time. For me, I always preferred minecraft as i just enjoyed the process of playing that game more. Im the kind of person who likes ticking away at task and making consistent small incremental progress towards something. I find mining relaxing, building fufiling, and I feel minecraft has a lot more room for personal expression and freedom in that way. I remember spending way more time trying to make my house looknice in terraria, and then i did fighting bosses. And if i wanted to build, i was usually better off sticking to minecraft. Honestly, I didn't find the combat particularly fun or skillful either so that wasnt keeping me staying. When playing by myself, it just really didn't do much for me. It wasn't really about challenge at all. The games are just totally different experiences, and it just so happened that minecraft was the one that appealed to me.

[@garret4974]

The problem here is that we are comparing 2 completely different games a sandbox and a progression we’re in terraria u have a mission and in Minecraft u get your gear and that’s max out your world with builds

[@Homie0_0]

Somehow the second time I played terraria, I was able to get into hard mode and even kill a mechanical boss. I barely had any knowledge and just wanted to try things to see what happened

[@Nekoszowa]

I had the urge to play Terraria after some long, long drop of it recently And personally I'm not a fan of the forced progression, corrupted biomes spreading and insane difficulty that requires me to strategize... It's not a bad game, but I'd like it a lot more if all those things were configurable and I could progress in my own pace instead of being forced to die every second night once Eye of Cthulu/any other boss spawn rate increases. Or die just because a bat with hard to keep up with movement constantly snipes me away from one side of the screen. The constantly spawning enemies regardless of light level in Terraria also piss me tf out, at least once I'd like to build a starter house without having to deal with slimes. The lack of cheats, the lack of time, the bs bullet hell, the constant spawning of enemies, the fact I can die over and over again while JUST exploring or looking for resources is what breaks my enjoyment of Terraria for the long run. Even with my recently created new large world I went on my way to grab the drill unit from a builder's world so I could avoid dealing with Corruption at least until Hardmode. Basically: Minecraft is relaxing, I can do what I want to do in it for as long as I wish, it is also highly moddable and allows me to do even more things I actually want to do. While Terraria is like a second job that forces me to grind, grind, grind and grind for better and better gear, while blocking me out of the cool stuff until mid-late game and dealing with annoying rush-focused game machanic that is Corruption/Crimson and in the end it won't matter anyway because I will die repeatably again and again just because I dared to leave my house to gather stuff.

[@BigJuice234]

tried to get my friend to play with me after he showed interest, and he couldnt get past the "die alot early" phase of the game and quit before we even did the first boss

[@LevtoChannel]

The thing about minecraft and children (age group 5-8 or 12 like you said) is, children don't play survival mode, they play creative mode instead. That's why they think minecraft is easy, just pick and place blocks everywhere, make cities, whatever. I have younger sisters who even play pretend house in minecraft, while I was busy with Terraria at that time (I was mid schooler and they're still grade). I also played minecraft, both creative and survival. I enjoyed the time I was building Rollercoaster tracks all around in creative mode, and buildings, but yeah that was it. I tried killing ender dragon in creative mode, but then when I checked the wiki on how to do that in survival mode, I was completely discouraged to do that. It was just too much of a hassle. And the fact that you lose (basically drop but most of the time I couldn't recover them) all your items when you die, added that I was bad with direction and got lost so many times, I saw no way of me killing ender dragon. I still haven't done that till today, and won't do it. While in Terraria the progression feels much achievable. From one boss to another, it just feels connected well. And also for me who often got lost in minecraft, magic mirror is such a blessing. I instantly thought of Terraria as a better game, and "Why can't minecraft has this thing?". I initially played terraria in 1.1, got to the three mech bosses. I have to admit I also read the wiki, and yeah I was also around the same age as you (mid school) when I started Terraria. But still even before checking out the wiki I still quite enjoyed the game as I explored it

[@omarzwvc]

I grown up with minecraft, but the better game for me rn is terraria. Now I can say that minecraft can be easier to understand, seeing that all you need to do is go to caves, get diamonds, head to neither, and then go to the end (along side with some side quests like building and exploring), but you can get bored pretty quickly. What I'm trying to say is that I got bored of minecraft, discovered terraria after that, and then got obsessed with it.

[@banned2911]

Back in the day like before 2016 you absolutely needed a wiki to play minecraft cuz there was no recipe book but even know you still need it for a lot of things The only reason a lot or people say you wouldnt need a wiki is because so many people have watched a lot of Minecraft content back in the day Although Minecraft definitely has put some effort into making it easier for players you still need a wiki to discover stuff such as the nether and end

[@Laurinda15]

I somehow always end up playing Pokemon in Minecraft. Collect all farm animals, breed all horses, find all rabbits, make every colour sheep, get all the cats... I haven't played since they added dog/wolf breeds though.

[@gojji.1]

It's probably too difficult for new players that don't like checking the wiki for every little thing. They might get easily frustrated with how lost they are in terraria and how they should go about progressing the game.

[@TheTolnoc]

Creepers exist to teach kids that trolling and griefing isn't fun for the other person.

[@fallenultraez]

I grew up with minecraft. All my favourite youtubers when i was a kid were minecraft youtubers. After a while, i got bored of the new update that were barely changing the game. And recently i found terraria. At first i thought it was just a minecraft copy, but oh boy the game has WAY more content than minecraft. After my first playthrough i played again, and again, with different classes. Im currently on my summoner playthrough, and i just wondered why minecraft is so much popular while terraria is superior.

[@butterman59]

See i love your take on this because as someone who had encyclopedic knowledge about Minecraft up until 2016, then picked up terraria hardcore and play it religiously now, i tried going back to Minecraft after it came back into popularity and it felt almost alien to me and it took me ages to finally get back into it, with some friends help. Its so interesting how that can affect our perception and preferences

[@majamystic256]

I actually think Terraria is easier than Minecraft in someways for a few reasons - The movement in terraria is much faster and smoother so I find easier to dodge, the game performs much better so that helps too - Terraria being a 2D sidescroller instead of 3d first person means that you can see attacks coming from more angles and react faster - I think attacks in terraria are telegraphed and animated much better - there aren't really any enemies that can explode your base like creepers and ghasts (I think there to used to be but not anymore) - stack sizes are bigger and inventory management is much easier in terraria - lack of durability and hunger system kinda makes things easier overall - you can mine other worlds for resources and bring them back to your main one, good for if you don't want to mess up your landscape, and it kinda makes resource infinite in terraria - It much easier to get arround the world in Terraria, theres recall potions, teleport shells, pylons, mounts, grapping hooks, wings, and more - The default setting for characters is Classic which is basically Keep Inventory except for money - there in general a lot more upgrades and avenues to explore for getting more powerful in terraria theres probably more, i really need to play terraria again sometime

[@shinyhunter04]

I understand to an extent why people compare the 2 so much but I just feel like they are 2 games that are just so different and in my opinion it's not really fair to compare the 2. As someone who grew up with both and has poured way to many hours into both, I think they excel in completely different ways and I love and play both games for different reasons.

[@ruben7420]

I started playing terraria way later than I started Minecraft. I started playing when hard mode was just added to the game. My brother and I completely played through the entire game including the mech bosses (those where the final bosses at the time) without using a wiki or anything. And if I am honest those were the best times I had with a game ever. Yes Terraria is more difficult then Minecraft but it also offers more rewards for winning than minecraft. Minecraft is fundamentally a different game and has a different goal so comparing them is not really fair..

[@TGAcobalt]

I played terraria for the first time when I was eight and I had already been playing Minecraft since I was 6, I enjoyed terraria a lot more I'm 18 now

[@SuddenReal]

I've always considered Minecraft a sandbox game with RPG elements, while Terraria is a RPG game with sandbox elements. While the basis seems the same, the outcome is very different.

[@Rafa2233.]

Minecraft is much more survival, regather your gear and weapons when you die in late game is like and adventure

[@jamminsilver]

in terms of durability in minecraft vs breath of the wild, I dont mind it as much in minecraft because i still have ways to do things if my tools break. if my sword or shovel breaks, i can use my fists. in BOTW, if all my swords break, im out of luck until i can find another sword or club or something on the ground. because of that, i wouldnt always fight every enemy i saw given that my good weapons could break if i wasnt careful. regardless, that's just my thoughts on the matter. the video overall has been quite interesting, but i just wanted to put this out here before i forget

[@JahmazeJahmaze]

one thing i really like about terraria is the fact that the difficulties mean something. the jump from normal to expert and expert to master, and hell, maybe even master to legendary, is large, so that means players will have to find new items and ways to play so they don't die as easily, but in minecraft it doesn't really matter as the difficulties don't add too much challenge. this is a much better way to introduce people to new mechanics and strategies than the way minecraft does it. though i just started playing terraria again after 4 years so this is just after half a playthrough.

[@MrMicMin]

I have a situation like this happening right now. For a bit of time, I wanted to get my dad into Terraria as I thought it was perfect for the games he had played. So, for Christmas I gifted him Terraria and had him play it alone. he dropped it in three days. A couple months later I tried a different approach and tried playing it with him. I am currently doing this, but so far, he has gone farther in the progression than he previously had and wants to play it more. So, this answered this question for me. The game is very complex and for a new person it can be scary and also pretty difficult. This can scare people away. With the wiki and/or another more seasoned person having to help them out. So, this makes me believe the difficulty and complexity is what turns off many new players.

[@impracticaI]

in Minecraft you really don't need to progress to do anything and yes, bosses randomly spawn but I've seen many new players get confused on as to what to do as they make their first ore armor. sure, the eye might spawn and yes, the king slime but they don't know how to get better weapons or get to the bosses like the brain or worm and they can easily miss key gear steps in progression as it is not mandatory. even when using the wiki it's extremely difficult to know what to do as in Minecraft you just hear about ores and can kinda just get it. all the building stuff they can do without the need of a wiki or any sort of loop.

[@ivan0912]

As a new player who just started playing terraria, it felt daunting at first, but as I died and got used to the enemies, the game got much more manageable and there's so much variety that there's basically no end to what you can do.

[@MooseManReal]

as a new player, no, it is not hard. (the only thing I had to look up was how to get a good weapon cause I never found one in any of the chests I found)

[@Fishy346]

I feel like minecraft is a lot more of make your own main story type of game, while terraria is a more set in stone story.

[@ULTRAKILLV3]

I'm an anomaly then. I started minecraft when I was about eight and as I became older I was 14 and tried terraria and almost instantly fell in love soooooo... 😐

[@MaxDawedeit-ww5zp]

As an person who grew up with both I love minecraft and terraria

[@necrodoppler]

Something i haven't seen mentioned all that much but i think matters is that for most of us, the versions of both games we may have played at a young age were earlier versions with less content. As we grew up and kept playing, the games also grew up and added more content and systems. This is great for continuing players but can be daunting and make each game more unapproachable to newcomers. Having played both when i was younger i ended up liking terraria more and didn't keep up with minecraft as much. What i found was when i tried minecraft again, new features i didn't know about had been added and world generation eules had changed as well, which just caused a lot of confusion. I think it's important that, regardless of which one you like more, both games grew up with us instead of us just growing up playing them.

[@SumDonkuss]

This man’s understanding of Minecraft’s core gameplay is abysmal. Made an in depth video essay on an incredibly bad take 😭

[@chiefcader884]

When I first played Minecraft I never knew there was a different dimension for 5 years but when I played terraria for the first time I spent 200 hours before even realising how much I played with one world