A guide for Modded Terraria for the /r/Terraria SubReddit and other people
created by /u/Daakuryu(please don’t stalk me… I’m really boring)
How exactly do I start modding Terraria?
Mod list; There’s so much room for activities!
So you’re either new to Terraria, having just purchased it recently and you want to get “the most” out of your experience or you are a Vanilla Veteran and want to spruce up the old marriage with some kinky stuff.
If you are the former I would suggest at least doing a regular Vanilla run first, there is a lot of content there already and having some experience can help you decide what mods you will go for in further playthroughs’
The purpose of this guide is to give a reference for how and what as these are very frequently asked questions in the /r/Terraria subreddit.
Before we get into the meat of the subject I do want to address some other questions as well as some considerations to keep in mind;
For the lazy, Mod list starts at page 7.
I am playing Terraria on iOS/Android/PS4/A Tamagotchi I found in the back alley of a Tim Hortons/3DS/Xbox/Switch(eventually) Can I play Modded?
No you cannot, to play Modded requires using a modified version of the Terraria executable which these system do not support. The only ones who can play Modded are Windows, Mac and Linux versions.
I’ve followed your guide but now I get errors. What gives?
Could be a bad install, could be you have the wrong version of Terraria because you didn’t update, could be you are missing a file or necessary install(other mod or 3rd party program) or a mod causing issues. Post your error to either the subreddit or the mod forum and someone will generally try to help you.
HELP MY WORLD/PLAYER DISAPPEARED, I HATE YOU!
First of all hate is a pretty strong word there buddy and second, no it did not; Vanilla and Modded files are kept separate in case you feel like switching back and forth. More details on that later.
Terraria keeps crashing/lagging.
You may be a victim of toomanymoditis, fortunately some topical ointments and a more careful selection of mods can help alleviate symptoms. Again I will touch on this in a moment.
Why haven’t you put my favorite mod/the mod I made in your list?
Mostly because I hate you, yes YOU specifically…
Truthfully there are literally hundreds of mods and there are YouTube channels that dedicate a fair portion of their time to showcasing many of them. I can’t play all of them, I can’t know all of them and therefore I can only make recommendations based on my own experiences as well as collected information from other people on the /r/Terraria Subreddit.
Your Mileage May Vary.
Just because everyone is clamoring about this mod or that one does not mean it’s necessarily for you and that is perfectly fine. The beauty of modding is that you can customize your experience to suit your tastes.
Soylent green is people!
Mods are made by humans, with all those icky human feelings, ideas and blood and guts. More importantly Mods are made by many different people with normal lives outside of Modding rather than a team whose job it is to make a thing. That means at any point in time you can expect.
In the same vein if a Terraria update occurs it is entirely possible the tool used to allow mods to run will stop working for a while and it’s also entirely possible that once it catches up to the update some mods will never work again due to the mod author no longer updating because he’s got 3 kids and 5 jobs to deal with.
PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER! itty bitty living space.
Terraria is old, and therefore was built with old computer architecture for old computers. It has since gone through several major updates that have added content, features and how the game plays/performs with some fairly major rewrites involved especially in 1.3.5 but what it has not done is changed its basic architecture; THAT would require a 100% rewrite. So it’s still living in the same tiny house with the same limitations it had before but now with more stuff packed in.
To get technical Terraria is a 32bit game built in C# on the XNA framework so it has all the limitations of 32bit applications, chiefly memory limitations as well as any limitations from the XNA Framework itself. For instance while the modloader has patched around some of the memory limitations of being a 32bit application the devs have stated they have tried numerous times to make a 64bit version and have failed each time due to Terraria itself being 32 bit and more specifically because of XNA limitations.
Add Modding to that and you are basically stuffing a group of fattened turkeys into and already fattened turkey.
This brings us to;
Less is more
Because of what was stated above, too many mods can cause the game to crash, lag and perform poorly. This can also be compounded by how much of a potato your computer is.
There’s other reasons however why this statement is true. Especially when it you are talking about what would be considered Major Mods.
Terraria at its base has 348 enemies, each with their own percentage based loot table. It also has roughly 3900 items that can be obtained through various means. Some of the major Mods almost double that amount of enemies and add thousands more items.
If I were to tell you I will give you $500 if you guess what number I am thinking of which number would you prefer my selection be on?
Well it’s the same thing with Terraria. If you add 400 monsters and 1000 items to the game from one mod, the game now has 748 Enemies to choose from and 4900 items that can drop.
So what happens if you are looking for that Bezoar for your Ankh shield? It’s going to be less likely the creature that drops it spawns because there is so much more possibilities.
Now add a second Major mod, and a third then throw in a few medium sized mods for flavor and you have yourself a farming nightmare.
Then you have the fact that major mods and to some extent medium sized mods tend to center around themselves + Vanilla and apart from a select few they will not take into consideration the existence of other mods and what you get is a lot of overlap in terms of weapons, accessories, armor and progression, with some mods clearly overpowering the rest and making the others look useless by comparison.
That doesn’t mean you can’t go crazy and add all the big mods your system can handle. In the end it’s up to you and I’ve personally done a Calamity/Thorium/Tremor run. Just don’t expect every item to be as meaningful.
So personally I feel less is more, Terraria and modding offer a lot of replayability so it’s perfectly fine if you focus on one Major mod and a few Medium ones then start a new play through later with a different set of Major/Medium ones.
It’s your game after all.
There’s no place like 127.0.0.1
While the Terraria subreddit has a lot of people with varying amounts of experience and skills, it cannot always help when you are having issues with mods. Sometimes the best place to ask for help is on the forum of the mod you are having issues with. If you aren’t sure where that is, a quick google search of Nameofmod tmodloader should bring it up as one of the first few links. This doesn’t mean don’t ask in /r/Terraria it just means we might point you there because we don’t know.
It’s your fault.
If something happens that you need help fixing, always, always, ALWAYS start with the assumption that YOU, did something wrong. As unfair as that might sound, if there’s thousands of people playing a mod and only 3 people having the same issue you are having it’s more than likely it’s something you did or didn’t do.
That’s not to say there aren’t bugs in the mods or the base game for that matter. It’s just that it’s a lot better to start with the concept of it being your fault and accepting any help that will come and from that help could rise the possibility of a brand new code bug being discovered showing it wasn’t your fault after all rather than starting by blaming the mod author and thus pissing off the fanbase right off the bat.
Some assembly required.
While most mods should work right out of the tin, others may have some sort of requirement. Either another mod, in which case in the browser there should be a yellow exclamation mark next to the mods name that says what its required mod is, or in some cases it may need a bit of external help because it is doing something fancy.
A good example of this is Terraria Overhaul which requires that Microsoft’s .Net Framework be at least version 4.6, without it some things will break. It also unfortunately means Overhaul may not be compatible with MacOs and Linux, since they use a 3rd party software to bring in some of .NET’s functionality though at this time I have not had any confirmation on whether or not that is the case.
But enough talk, have at you…
This part of the guide is going to focus specifically on the Windows 7 version and by extension the Steam version specifically; the reason for this is I have no experience with MacOs or Linux versions and I bought my copy of Terraria on Steam, the Windows 10 Steam version should be close enough that you can follow along as well. However there should be some guides for other versions as well on the forum which I will link in this guide.
If you are on Windows XP just toss the computer in the trash please.
The first thing you need to do is identify a few key folders as these will be important.
The Terraria game folder is located wherever your steam install is, by default this is C:\Program Files, so it would be in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Terraria. Some users may need to look inside C:\Program Files (x86) instead of C:\Program Files.
This will hereby be referred to as the Terraria Folder.
If you aren’t 100% sure where your steam folder is for some reason because you didn’t use the default settings but forgot where it is exactly you can always go to your library, right click Terraria, click properties, click local files and then click browse local files.
The second important folder is the save folder. You can reach this by clicking the Windows Start button, then Documents then going to the \My Games\Terraria folder. Or more directly by typing C:\Users\<the username you use on your computer>\My Documents\My Games\Terraria.
This is where your worlds, players and config reside and the same will apply to the modloader.
This will be referred to as the Save Folder.
With that out of the way it’s time to get tModLoader; Developed by blushiemagic and Co this is what will allow you to install and run the actual mods. You can find it here.
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/1-3-tmodloader-a-modding-api.23726/
The main page will always have the most up to date versions in its download section as well as installation instructions, changelogs and all manner of information.
Download the version that matches what you are trying to install for. In my case the Steam Windows version.
This will give you a compressed file containing a number of other files inside.
Go into your Terraria Folder and rename Terraria.exe to TerrariaVanilla.exe should you wish to play vanilla at any point you can use this exe, you can even make a shortcut to it on your desktop for ease of access.
Next open up that compressed file you downloaded, select all the files inside and drag them directly in your Terraria Folder
Now open up Steam, go to the Terraria page in your library and click play. If everything was done right Terraria will open and you will see the Menu will now have a few extra options. Specifically Mods and Mod Browser(beta)
Congratulations you have installed tModLoader and are ready to start your journey into the wacky world of Mods.
That said; Alt-Tab out of the game for a moment and go have a look at your Save Folder. You will notice that inside it, alongside the Players and Worlds folders there is now a Folder called tModLoader and inside IT. There will be another Players and Worlds folder.
This is what I was talking about when I said Mods saves are separate when you so angrily stated you hate me.
Now while I suggest starting fresh since a few mods out there affect world generation and new players with free items. if one were to absolutely want to bring their old world and players along for the ride you could simply copy the Players and Worlds folders from the Save Folder, into the tModLoader folder. I suggest copy rather than move simply so you have a vanilla backup.
With that out of the way you are now free to start installing mods.
Go back into the game and click the Mod Browser.
Or, OK that is a LOT of mods, so what do you suggest?
This Section is going to be split into different types.
Credit for some of this list goes to user u/godisdeadm8 on Reddit.
Unless specified, all the mods in this list can be downloaded through the tModLoader Mod Browser, the forum links provided here are simply for the sake of providing the possibility of manual download as well as a quick method of accessing more information on the mod or getting support for it.
These are mods that add a metric ass ton of content, enemies, bosses, weapons, accessories etc.
Like their Major counterparts they add a lot of content but not as excessively as Majors and often they act as a complement to the Majors as well.
Quality of Life mods remove or change certain aspects of the game to make things less tedious or just plain more awesome.
Mods that aim to adjust the game in one direction or another or just give you more options when it comes to building that replica of Minas Tirith you’ve always wanted to make.
The latter two require a manual download and install and the main version may not be in the mod browser at all either.