Terraria / Tropes S to Z

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List continued at

• Tropes A to H
• Tropes I to R

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S

• Sadly Mythtaken:
  • In Norse Mythology, the Gungnir is said to be Odin's javelin that never misses when thrown. In Terraria, the Gungnir is a spear that the player character holds and jabs at enemies, and cannot be thrown as a weapon.
  • In the Matter of France, Durendal is said to be Roland's sword, capable of cutting through giant boulders of stone with a single strike, and was indestructible. In Terraria, it's not a sword, but a Whip Sword.
• Sand Is Water: Hardmode deserts have Sand Sharks, which will only appear during sandstorms. They are powerful foes that can swim through sand blocks and lunge at players. They also have Corruption, Crimson and Hallowed variants.
• Sand Worm:
  • The worms you find underground are no less than twice as long as you are tall.
  • Their corrupted brethren, the Devourers, are fatter, larger and meaner. Their boss version, the Eater of Worlds is even bigger, and will split into more worms if cut in half. These smaller worms get faster, but deal just as much damage if they hit you. Do it wrong and you'll have half a dozen crazy worms trying to eat you all at once^note With good armour, this becomes a viable strategy to kill it more quickly.
  • In the Underworld/Hell scape there are bone serpents.
  • Once Hardmode is unlocked, you now also have Diggers and World Feeders, essentially bigger and stronger versions of the Giant Worm and Devourer. And then you also have the Eater of World's bigger brother, The Destroyer.
  • In the Underground Desert, you can find Tomb Crawlers and, in Hardmode, Dune Splicers, the latter of which is a direct Shout-Out to Dune.
• Save Scumming: You can attempt this if you want to try for a good prefix when reforging by simply hitting Alt-F4 to avoid saving the game before quitting and losing all your money wasted on reforging. However, it can be time consuming.
• Scary Scorpions: Subverted by the normal scorpions, which are harmless critters that cannot attack you. In Hardmode, however, giant scorpions called Sand Poachers appear in the underground desert, and these can crawl on walls and inflict an Acid Venom status when they hit you.
• Scenery Porn: The overworld backgrounds added in 1.1 (later made even better in 1.2), are rather nice-looking, and change depending on which biome you happen to be in. 1.4 added added even more backgrounds and made some pre-existing ones look better.
• Schizo Tech:
  • In the same game that shows players running around in metal armor, swinging swords and fighting goblins, you also have firearms, mana-powered laser guns, lightsabers and the jet pack-like Rocket Boots.
  • Special mention goes to the Minishark and its upgrade the Megashark, which are fully automatic miniguns that shoot musket balls.
  • And also the wires and switches system, where it is possible to have a wall switch or timer that turns tiki torches on and off.
  • 1.2 gives you a Cyborg NPC that sells appropriately high-tech items like Rocket Launchers, and a Steampunk representative NPC that sells a Jetpack and a teleporter.
  • 1.3 introduces the Martian Madness event, filled with hi-tech aliens. You can get their alien technology from destroying their Martian Saucers.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • One of the possible title messages says: Press alt-f4. (Alt-f4 is used in Windows to close a window.)
  • While going underground you may encounter a Lost Girl which looks and acts as the characters you can rescue to invite them to your town...until you approach her and she turns into a Nymph which can rip you to shreds.
  • Occasionally while traveling underground, you can find a large ore vein with a Plunger Detonator which will set off Explosives that will mine all the surrounding ore... and also blow up anyone unknowing enough to have activated it.
  • If you find a random Gold Chest out in the middle of nowhere underground, pop a Dangersense Potion immediately - chances are it's a Dead Man's Chest that will set off half a dozen traps when opened, which is all but guaranteed to kill you several times over.
• The Scourge of God: The Wall of Flesh only appears when you chuck a voodoo doll of someone you know into a pit of lava.
• Scratch Damage: Every attack will do at least 1 damage. An important factor in most Dungeon Guardian killing strategies.
• Scratch Damage Enemy: The Dungeon Guardian has a ludicrous amount of defense (9999), so even hits with the game's Infinity +1 Sword will not inflict more than a single point of damage to him, save for crits, which will inflict 2 points of damage instead.
• Sdrawkcab Name: The console/mobile boss Ocram's name is "Marco" spelt backwards, the first name of Ocram's programmer.
• Segmented Serpent:
  • The Eater of Worlds and the Destroyer are the most dramatic of these, but there are others. All of the other worm enemies have multiple segments of varying size and HP, and to kill them, you have to destroy any one. This can prove difficult with Bone Serpents.
  • With the inclusion of debuffs, these enemies become very vulnerable to flamethrowers and cursed flames, as each segment burns individually, draining their HP very fast. Except the Destroyer, who is completely immune to all debuffs.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • There are and were numerous methods available to enter the Lihzahrd Temple before defeating Plantera. They're typically fixed in a future patch, but some remain, such as hammering three platforms upside-down in front of the door and pressing down while walking towards it. Entering the Lihzahrd Temple early can get you access to unique furniture items, but the Golem boss still can't be summoned unless you defeat Plantera first, and since 1.4, the advanced traps found there can't be mined without defeating Golem, so there's little point in doing so.
  • Copper tools can mine gold ore, which will make equipment (especially the pick) that becomes the first real improvement to your starting gear, making the other ores in-between entirely skippable.
  • With some skill, players can actually bypass the base mineral armor sets and simply kill the Eater of Worlds a couple of times to get the raw material to forge a set of Shadow Armor. It is also possible to do this with the Brain of Cthulhu and the Crimson Armor set.
  • In a Corruption world, players can also bypass mineral armor sets by slaughtering Eaters of Souls (which spawn frequently in Corruption) for the Ancient Shadow Armor they drop. The pieces have the same stats and are interchangeable with Shadow Armor crafted from Eater of Worlds-dropped material.
  • While Duke Fishron was intended to be an end game boss just before the Lunatic Cultist, it can still be summoned as soon as you get to Hardmode. As such, you can make it the first hardmode boss you face, and while extremely difficult to fight at that point, if you do manage to beat him, you can get some really powerful end game equipment before even fighting any of the mechanical bosses, which in turn makes the rest of the game a breeze up until the point you'd normally fight Fishron.
  • The Journey's End 1.4 patch aimed to reduce some of the more egregious sequence breaks, and patched out three of the biggest. Meteors can no longer fall until the Eater of Worlds or Brain of Cthulhu is dead^*previously, a brand-new characters could, with little difficulty, bomb their way through to a single shadow orb/crimson heart and then mine up the meteorite for an equipment set that remained viable until Hardmode, fishing has been nerfed by separating normal mode and hard mode crates^*crates used to only care about which biome their were caught in and their contents were decided when opened, so farming them in easy mode and opening them in hard mode would result in piles of hardmode ore without even populating them into the world; now getting hardmode crates requires being in hardmode with decent fishing gear and reducing the Reaver Shark's pickaxe power^*prior to 1.4, it could mine the first Hardmode ore, obviating tool progression for the entire first half of the game; now it's limited to mining Demonite/Crimtane, which is useless without boss drops anyway.
• Serial Escalation:
  • At first it was a relatively simple sandbox game similar to Minecraft (except 2D, don't forget that), with rather tame boss fights, the hardest of them arguably being Skeletron. Then came the 1.1 update, which felt more like an expansion pack than an update, with an entire slew of new content, most notably four new bosses, all of them significantly tougher than the original three. The focus also shifted more towards combat and farming for new equipment with the introduction of Hardmode, which not only introduces new enemies that are as common as regular zombies and hit harder than Skeletron, but also new weapons and armor that are much stronger than the pre-hardmode ones. THEN there was the 1.2 update, which brought a whole new mess of content like the 1.1 update, and added more monsters (some of them stronger than Skeletron Prime) and new equipment that completely outclassed all of the equipment found in the original release.
  • Pumpkin Moons caused players to rethink their boss fighting setups, especially after acquiring the new drops that exploit certain mechanics allowing them to easily cheese the last wave. Then came the Frost Moon where those same tactics became of limited effectiveness, compounded by harsher wave progression requirements and a higher number of waves. Then players started to reach the final wave solo, initially deemed nigh impossible without multiple players. Cue the previous Pumpkin Moon event becoming a joke to players possessing Frost Moon equipment.
  • The 1.3 Big Update took it to a new level with Cultists and Martian invasions, as well as a new boss that spawns after a special invasion event. There are also new enemies added to several pre-existing Invasion events to make them more interesting, and about 800 new items added, as well as a significant upgrade to the Inventory subscreen.
• Series Fauxnale: The game's final update was Journey's End, in 2020. Despite this, there have been multiple updates since, even discounting bugfix updates — adding new content to the games, such as with the 1.4.3 update bringing a Crossover with Don't Starve Together.
• Set Bonus: Most sets of armor (generally those made out of the same material or gathered from a similar source) feature these. Some of them just boost your defense, but others speed up your attacks/movement, reduce mana usage, or emit light. End-game builds, however, do not always favor the very-much-unique set bonus, in favor of mixing and matching different parts from different tiers to stack certain mods, sometimes leading to a case of Crippling Overspecialization.
• Shamu Fu: The 1.2.4 update added a number of fish weapons/tools with the introduction of the Fishing mechanic, including a Clubberfish to... club with, the obvious Swordfish and its Obsidian variant (which despite the name are used as spears), a Saw-tooth Shark that makes a perfect chainsaw (it even makes motor sounds), a Reaver Shark that is used as a pickaxe, and a Rockfish you can use as a hammer. They're surprisingly effective, the Reaver Shark being the one of the best pickaxes available before Hardmode, and useful for Sequence Breaking until it was nerfed in 1.4.
• Shaped Like Itself: The Santa Claus NPC could — before a fix — spawn with the text 'Santa Claus the Santa Claus has arrived'. The map still shows him as "Santa Claus the Santa Claus".
• Shear Menace: If threatened, the Stylist NPC will defend herself with a pair of scissors.
• Shifting Sand Land: There are occasional deserts strewn throughout the map. The 1.3 update added an Underground Desert to the mix, and 1.3.3 made possible sandstorms.
• Ship Tease:
  • The Goblin Tinkerer and the Mechanic are always asking about each other. The 1.2 Big Update adds paintings, one of which is titled "Terraria Gothic" and features these two 'lovebirds' posing together in the fashion of the American Gothic painting.
  • In a similar vein, the Nurse and Arms Dealer, along with the Steampunker and Cyborg, are implied to like each other; they are the happiest when their houses are close to each other, and the Arms Dealer mentions dating the Nurse frequently.
• Shockwave Clap: Before the Journey's End 1.4 update, the Stardust Guardian that comes as a set bonus from the Stardust armor had the ability to cause explosions that cause minor damage, and he would draw enemies towards him and away from you by clapping his hands.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Ogre boss in the Old One's Army can damage ground-bound players by hitting the ground with its club.
• Shop Fodder: Of all the items in the game, only two items (both of which are fish) exist solely for selling for money: The common Neon Tetra, which sells for a rather low 15 silver, and the rare Golden Carp, which sells for a huge 10 gold.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon:
  • Mostly averted, but the Jester arrows tend to explode into a harmless cloud of flashing lights a few feet after they are shot.
  • The Celebration, bought from the Party Girl after defeating the Golem, fires two fireworks that explode after a short distance, placing it squarely in Awesome, but Impractical territory.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Played straight with the Shotgun line of firearms. You won't hit stuff much farther than a few inches from your character, but since it uses 1 round to make multiple damaging pellets (much more so with Crystal or Cursed bullets), it's a beast at (close to) point blank range. The Quad-barreled Shotgun plays this trope to the hilt - it is much more damaging than its fellow pre-hardmode shotgun, the Boomstick, but has an even bigger spread. The Tactical Shotgun is not immune either, but when they're loaded with chlorophyte bullets, their range drastically improves.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Played totally straight. Shotguns are among the best weapons in the game, ranged or otherwise. Pre-hardmode, the Boomstick and Quad-Barreled Shotgun can eviscerate nearly anything in one or two shots, even in Master Mode; they also feature enough knockback to bring most regular enemies to a screeching halt. Post-Hardmode, the offerings only get progressively more lethal, starting with the Shotgun, moving along to the Onyx Blaster, and eventually peaking with the Tactical Shotgun, which gives the Mega-Shark a run for its' money in terms of sheer carnage.
• Shout-Out: They have their own section here.
• Signature Roar: Most bosses use the same roar sound effect when transforming into their second form. Whenever you hear this, you know something bad is about to happen.
• Silicon-Based Life:
  • The Meteor Heads. They are flying Mooks that spawn at meteorites and attack en masse.
  • Version 1.3 introduced Granite Cave sub-biomes, which feature Granite Elementals and Granite Golems.
  • The Journey's End 1.4 update added crystal bunnies that correspond to one of the seven in-game gem types, as well as gem trees which can be grown from gemcorns (gem acorns). It also added Rock Golems, an even tougher version of Granite Golems that can be found in any cavern, not just the Granite ones.
• Silly Reason for War: You may frequently find yourself stuck in the middle of a goblin invasion, which only ends after the player has killed dozens of goblins (hundreds or even thousands in multiplayer). According to the pacifist Goblin Tinkerer, the goblins are waging war over cloth (which is also a reference to the fact that you can summon an invasion with the Goblin Battle Standard).
• Silliness Switch: Hardmode can be this for the most part, as it introduces far more fantastical and goofy enemies into the world than it does visibly threatening ones (even if they're no less dangerous). Special mention goes to the Solar Eclipse, which is not unlike a blood moon, but instead of blood-covered zombies and floating eyeballs, you fight classic horror movie monsters.
• Silver Bullet: You can buy or craft Silver Bullets, which not only is a more powerful upgrade to Musket Balls, but just like Stakes which deal a whopping 1000% damage bonus against Vampires, since 1.4.4, Silver Bullets deal 3x extra damage against Werewolves.
• Simple Rescue Mechanic: Throughout the game and depending on whatever you've killed, NPCs might start showing up while you're exploring, either bound, asleep, unconscious, or in one case playing golf with himself. Simply interacting with any of these once will "free" them and allow them to move into any available housing you have- as in, literally move into their designated home via Offscreen Teleportation once night falls, no matter where they were beforehand.
• Sistine Steal: The painting "The Creation of the Guide" is a copy of Michelangelo Buonarroti's famous "The Creation of Adam", but with the Guide instead.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Necro Armor is made of bones and cobwebs. The Fossil Armor, which appears to be a dinosaur skeleton, is made from Sturdy Fossils.
• Skeleton Key: The rare "Shadow Key" found in the Dungeon's locked chests. Once you have just one, it'll be all you need to unlock every Shadow Chest in the game.
• Skippable Boss:
  • King Slime, Queen Bee, Queen Slime, the Empress of Light, and Duke Fishron do not need to be fought for any reason related to the main plot. They hold no items that you require to progress, and summoning them has no effect on the world.
  • Eye of Cthulhu can be skipped if it refuses to spawn naturally, as its drops can just as easily be obtained from the Eater of Worlds/Brain of Cthulhu. However, once conditions are met, the Eye spawns reliably enough that this is easier said than done.
  • Skeletron, guardian of the Dungeon, used to be this. Though the Dungeon has some nice equipment and you do have to beat Skeletron to get to it, it doesn't relate to game progression in any way. The 1.2 update added several pieces of endgame content to the Dungeon and its mobs, and currently Skeletron must be defeated if you want to reach the True Final Boss.
• Sky Pirate: The Pirates might be this, as their flagship is a flying pirate ship called the Flying Dutchman.
• Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: The game's a borderline 5 or 6. You spawn with some basic tools and a Guide who tells you what you can build with any materials you have on hand and gives you tips on how to survive in the long term. Otherwise, it's up to you. While you are free to explore (mostly) wherever you want, the game has clear-cut boundaries on where you can, and how far you can go. A lot of the game's focus tends to be on Boss-Hunting, especially after the addition of stronger versions of previous bosses in the 1.1 update. Many people got bored of the game after defeating all the bosses, simply because the game was set up as a sandbox game; so there was no plot or Sidequests to follow afterwards. The 1.2 update added new biomes (area types) and bosses to go with them. Oddly enough, this actually made it a little more rather than less structured, since you can only reach certain bosses after defeating others (you can't get to Golem until you've defeated Plantera at least once, because you need the Temple Key Plantera drops to enter the area where Golem spawns).
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Snow biome. The 'slippy' part was expanded on in 1.2 with the addition of ice caverns and ice blocks.
• Snake Charmer: The Snake Charmer's Flute is an item obtainable from Underground Desert chests. When used, it spawns a magical snake (with the pot!) that will rise and extend to a certain height or until it hits a block. The snake can then be climbed upon like a rope, and it will disappear after half a minute.
• Snake People: The Lamia appears in the Underground Desert as a Hardmode enemy. You can also become one yourself; they have a small chance of dropping any piece from a full set of vanity items, which include a mask, some wraps, and a tail.
• Snowlems: Using the Snow Globe you get from Presents during Hardmode will summon the Frost Legion, which is an entire army of these. While they're a lot harder than the Goblin Army, there isn't much reason to fight them other than unlocking Santa Claus and a few paintings from the Travelling Merchant.
• Soft Water:
  • You can fall for a whole minute and survive if you land in water one and half a blocks deep. Yes, falling from the surface to the Underworld (about 1 mile all told) into a puddle half as deep as your character is tall lets him/her survive completely unscathed.
  • This also works with lava, but if the person doesn't catch on quick enough they can easily burn to death instead.
  • Honey works fine for this as well, with the added bonus that you'll get a regeneration buff once you dip in the honey landing pool.
• Solar and Lunar: The sun and the moon play an important role in the game's background, especially the latter. During the game you'll experience eclipses as random events, both lunar (also known as blood moons) and solar. The end game has you fighting against two groups of enemies, each worshipping a cosmic object: the Lihzards worship the sun (their temple is filled with tablets able to summon solar eclipses, and the boss there is able to drop the Sun Stone) while the Cultist worship the moon (their leader is called the Lunatic Cultist, and killing him triggers a series of events that ends up summoning the Moon Lord). The moon has more effects on the game, such as moon phases affecting what NPCs sell and the spawning of some enemies, and two special events involving a particular moon.
• So Last Season: Before the 1.3 update, one could get through the majority of Hardmode with the Vampire Knives or Spectre Armor, thanks to their Life Drain abilities. Then the 1.3 update came, and these weapons/equipment hit a brick wall against the Moon Lord, who gives the player a debuff that makes all Life Drain effects useless against it. Although there are a few ways to avoid its tentacle which blocks your Life Drain abilities if it touches you, so it isn't completely useless.
• Solid Clouds: Floating Islands are made out of Cloud Blocks, which you can walk on and even mine to make a castle out of clouds.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • The Hallow's music can sound fitting at first, while you're delighted by the shiny colors, but soon you'll be fighting deadly unicorns with that music on...
  • The Frost Moon plays a happy, Christmas-like melody while it's active. Therefore, you'll have to fight haunted Christmas trees, giant Santa robots, flying ice demons and many other abominations in what's currently the hardest event in the game while you're hearing that song.
• Space Zone: If you go high enough up in the sky you will eventually reach space where gravity is much weaker.
• Spam Attack:
  • Some magic weapons can be used this way, if you have enough mana.
  • 1.2 and its subsequent updates introduced many melee weapons that have ranged and/or area-of-effect capabilities. Needless to say, spamming those attacks are a given since melee weapons cost ZERO mana. Taken even further if said melee weapon has auto-swing capabilities.
• Speedy Snail: Giant Shellies, Giant Tortoises and Ice Tortoises are for the most part, slow, but when they attack they start spinning and immediately do a very fast spinning tackle at the player, which in the case of the Tortoises, it hurts a lot if they connect.
• Spike Balls of Doom: The game has these as a throwable weapon, as well as perpetually rotating ball-n-chain's spawning in the Dungeon.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff:
  • Averted with Skeletron, whose defense drops to zero while spinning. Played straight with Skeletron Prime, whose defense doubles while spinning.
  • The Selenians accompanying the Solar Pillar can reflect projectiles when doing their spin-jump attack, as well as the Dreadnautilus that appears when fishing under a Blood Moon.
• Spread Shot: Quite a few spells are of the Spray Burst variety. Some other weapons, including the Shotgun, Venom Staff, and Vampire Knives are the Initial Burst type.
• Sprint Shoes: Several accessories allow you to run faster. Also, wearing a full set of Shadow Armor gives a speed boost. Most Set Bonuses from higher-end armors include a movement speed buff. It's especially prevalent in melee-oriented armor, but plenty of ranged or magical armor will grant small speed increases.
• Squishy Wizard:
  • The Goblin Sorcerers have the least hit points and defense in the Goblin Army, but they shoot projectiles that can travel through walls, making them the most dangerous enemies during a Goblin invasion. At least until you get to the goblin warlocks in hardmode.
  • Also applies to the player — magic-oriented Set Bonuses tend to have good boosts to magic, like extra mana or mana cost reduction, but are generally rather flimsy for defense.
  • Inverted with the highest tier armours in 1.3. The magic-oriented Nebula armour grants a stackable buff to health regeneration, among other things, that puts it in a close second for most durable armour in the game.
• Stalked by the Bell: Taking too long to kill some bosses either causes them to leave or, in the case of Skeletron, Skeletron Prime and the Empress of Light, become practically invincible and able to kill you in one hit.
• Status Effects:
  • Poison: Poisoned and Acid Venom, the difference being that Acid Venom takes more life per second and can't be prevented by wearing a bezoar (as Poisoned can). Since 1.3, there's also Electrified, which takes much more life while moving than standing still.
  • Burn: Burning (caused by coming in contact with hot blocks; it's the only one that can be prevented, by using an obsidian skull), On Fire, Frostburn (and their Hardmode equivalents, Hellfire and Frostbite), Cursed Inferno, Shadowflame, and Daybroken (the latter two can only be inflicted by players, though). All of them do damage over time, the main differences among them being the source, how much life they take (with Daybroken being the most painful at 25 damage a tick), and whether they can be extinguished by entering water. Daybroken also has the added bonus of spreading to other enemies if the affected enemy dies.
  • Paralyzed: Webbed, which prevents the player from moving (but not from using items).
  • Silenced: Silenced, which prevents the player from using items that require mana.
  • Blindness: Three variants which reduce the field of vision, Blindness, Blackout and Obstructed, the difference being that the two latter are more intense and can't be prevented by wearing a blindfold (as Blindness can).
  • Berserk: Tipsy, caused by drinking ale, which reduces defense but enhances physical stats (and fishing power, as a bonus). Despite being considered a negative status, the defense drop is barely noticeable in later stages of the game, while the physical buffs are quite important.
  • Frozen: Frozen, which prevent the player from moving or using items.
  • Petrified: Stoned, which not only prevents the player from moving and using items, but increases fall damage, which means a fall while affected by this debuff will likely be lethal. It also negates fall damage protection, like the Lucky Horseshoe.
  • Slow: Chilled, Slow and Oozed, which reduce movement speed, the latter being more intense than the first.
  • Fear: Distorted, which causes the player to constantly rise and fall in midair. In addition, when applied to enemies, Confused makes the enemies to run away.
  • Meta-Effect: Confusion, which actually works by reversing the player controls, when applied to the player.
  • Cursed:
    • Cursed, which prevents the player from using items.
    • Weak, which reduces all physical stats, and Withered Weapon, which halves all damage.
    • Ichor, Broken Armor and Withered Armor, which reduce defense by 20 (the first) and to half its value (the other two). There's a variant of Ichor called Betsy's Curse, more powerful (40 instead of 20) and available only to players.
  • Decover: Bleeding and Moon Bite, which prevent the player from regenerating health (the former passively, the latter through life steal).
  • Other: Feral Bite, which increases the player's offense but lowers regeneration... as well as periodically giving them other random Status Effects.
• Star Power: The Stardust Pillar is able to summon a constellation of "stars", which spawn alien mooks to attack the player. The mooks that accompany it are also star-themed.
• Stat Sticks: It's common for players early on to equip accessories not for the ability they provide but because they can give bonus damage or defense via their modifier. White Strings are one of the most common examples, since the materials and crafting station for it can easily be found underground.
• Status Buff: Done via equipment that fits into slots and potions the player creates out of various ingredients.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The Randomly Generated Levels and random drops mean that seeking a particular item is often a Luck-Based Mission. Appropriately, the game's items include hearts, fallen stars, and horseshoes, the Blue Moon, some Rainbows (in the forms of a magical rod and a flamethrower-like gun,) and a shiny red balloon. No clovers, though.
  • There is a potion that allows you to conserve ammo, thus enabling More Dakka. The ingredients for such potion include a cod.
  • The Queen Bee trophy is a piece of her knee mounted on a rack. Yep.
  • Occasionally, shaking a tree (by hitting it with an axe but not cutting it down) will cause coins to drop out. Presumably, the money grew up there.
• Sticky Bomb: Sticky bombs and grenades are created by combining slime gel with normal bombs and grenades. Bomb Fish obtained from fishing also stick to terrain. Sadly, they only stick to terrain and not monsters.
• Stock Beehive: The game has giant hives deep underground in the jungle that resembles Wasp Nests, with honeycomb walls and honey, as well as a Queen Bee Optional Boss. There are also normal-sized beehives that release bees and sometimes hornets when destroyed.
• Stripperiffic:
  • The Dryad, as well as the Dryad-themed vanity/social costume.
  • The Empress of Light also has a quite suggestive outfit.
• Strong Enemies, Low Rewards: The Dungeon Guardian has the highest defense and attack of any enemy in the game, meaning it can kill an endgame level player in 1-2 hits, and even the Zenith will only deal one damage per hit. Killing it is nearly impossible without extensive preparation. Until Version 1.2, it dropped absolutely nothing. As of the most recent version, it drops only the Bone Key, which is a simple cosmetic for Bragging purposes. The minimal drops and extreme difficulty is intentional as the point of the Dungeon Guardian is to prevent Sequence Breaking.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • You get quite a lot of explosives from pots and chests, and the Demolitionist is mad about explosives. One of his quotes is "Why purify the world when you can just blow it up?" Funnily enough, using explosives is a perfectly valid method of removing the corruption.
  • Rocket Launchers, Grenade Launchers, and Proximity Mine Launchers all share several types of rocket ammo, some of which can destroy terrain.
• Stun Lock: Possible with many weapons, especially the Vilethorn and Nettle Burst. If it can be stunlocked, the Vilethorn/Nettle Burst will stop it. Newer weapons like the Razorpine attack so fast that catching certain bullet-sponge enemies in your hail of projectiles is almost always safe enough to just stand in front of it while you wait for it to die. Melee specialists can eventually find/craft an accessory that improves their weapon attack speed and knockback, allowing them this as well.
• Sturdy and Steady Turtles:
  • Giant Tortoises in the Underground Jungle and Ice Tortoises in Underground Snow. They have lots of health and armor and are pretty slow, but they utilize a fast spinning attack to move around and deal heavy damage.
  • You can collect Turtle Shells from the Giant Tortoises to craft the Turtle Armor, which boasts extremely high defense and a Set Bonus of reflecting damage back to physical attackers.
• Sunny Sunflower Disposition: Being near a sunflower makes Player Characters happy enough to increase their movement speed. They are also apparently so much of an icon of happiness that they stop the Corruption, Crimson and Hallow from advancing further while lowering enemy spawn rates.
• Superboss:
  • The Dungeon Guardians were never intended to be killable, but players have still found ways to do it. This has been acknowledged with a unique (though purely cosmetic) item that only they drop.
  • The Empress of Light is already a hard opponent, but if you summon her during the day, her attack pattern gets far more aggressive and a single projectile can kill you instantly; however, she drops the Terraprisma, by far the best summoner weapon in the game.
• Super-Speed: The Hermes Boots, which let you run super-fast, but interestingly don't give you super-acceleration; you'll need a long run-up to get up to speed, though you can get around this by grappling towards the ground while in midair and releasing the hook before it attaches you to the ground.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The player's first night, most likely. Sure, it's a cheerful sandbox game that takes place in a cutesy Sugar Bowl world, but then night falls and the zombies and flying disembodied eyeballs show up...
• Survival Sandbox: Permadeath mode turns it into one.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: The Drax is some kind of strange artifact that can be used as a drill and chainsaw, and also works reasonably well as a weapon (in earlier versions, it was called the Hamdrax and could act as a hammer, too). Ditto for the Picksaw (half pickaxe, half axe) and hamaxes like The Axe (half hammer, half axe).
• Sword Beam: Several new swords introduced in 1.2 are given these capabilities. The lowest of which is the Ice Sword that can only fire an ice shard every few seconds to the Terra Blade that can fire beams that penetrate multiple enemies until dissipating. Being a sword, each benefits from melee bonuses, giving melee players a ranged attack of sorts.
• Swordfish Sabre: One can catch swordfishes and Sawtooth sharks that can be used as spears and chainsaws respectively.

T-V

• Taken for Granite: The Medusa mobs in the Marble mini-biome can petrify you with their unique attack. Also, if you lure Gnomes out from underground and into the sunlight, they will petrify and become garden gnome ornaments.
• Take Your Time: Invasion events (Goblin, Frost Legion, Pirate, Martian) can be triggered or occur regardless of your location on the map. However, the event won't actually start until you've reached your spawn point, so you're under no pressure to abandon your current task and deal with the problem.
• Technicolor Fire:
  • Cursed Flames and related items/debuffs are an insidious green, and cannot be extinguished by diving into water.
  • Wearing the Frost armor will add a Frostburn effect to your melee and ranged weapons, making them covered with blue Cold Flames.
  • The Goblin Summoner drops Shadowflame weapons, which have purple fire.
  • Peace Candles have pink flames, and Water Candles have blue flames.
  • You can also craft torches of many different colors using gems or one of a handful of other ingredients.
• Teleportation Misfire: The Teleportation Potion teleports you to a random location. It is advised to prepare oneself before using a Teleportation Potion, as it may teleport you into a hazard, on top of a trap trigger, or something else dangerous.
• Teleportation Sickness: The Rod of Discord allows the players to teleport anywhere on the screen but also give you a Chaos State debuff that lasts for 6 seconds and teleporting before it wears off results in massive, unblockable damage. Its Shimmer upgrade, the Rod of Harmony, has no such issue.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: Usually due to leading to a set destination:
  • The Magic Mirror, Ice Mirror, and Cell Phone (which has one of the previous two as a component) teleports the player to their spawn point. Recall Potions do this much faster, at the cost of being consumable rather than infinite use.
  • The Steampunker sells teleportation pads which can be wired together to teleport the player between the two. Using wiring tricks, it's possible to wire up multiple destination pads depending on which circuit is active.
  • The Rod of Discord item, which allows the player to blink to wherever the mouse cursor is. Just don't use it in rapid succession, or it will kill you. In the postgame, it is possible to upgrade this to the Rod of Harmony, which can be used infinitely without draining health.
  • The Pylon systems allow you to fast travel between any two pylons easily, without setting up teleporters that would require huge amounts of expensive wire. The catch is that Pylons can only be bought from NPCs that are happy enough (i.e. they live in their preferred biome and/or with their preferred neighbors), only one Pylon of each biome type can be placed in a world, and most Pylons^note the Universal Pylon lacks this particular restriction, but is also post Moon-Lord content only only work if they're both in their designated biome and have at least two NPCs living nearby.
  • Teleportation Potions can teleport a player almost anywhere, but do so randomly and they are consumed on use.
• Teleporter Accident: The game plays this straight with the Rod of Discord, which is used to teleport over distances. If the item is re-used during its cooldown period, it will cause heavy damage to the user. The game lampshades this if the teleport damage is fatal, mentioning that the player failed to rematerialize or now has feet where their head used to be.
• Teleport Spam:
  • Wizard-style enemies teleport to a random spot and pitch magic attacks at the player before teleporting again to repeat the cycle. Pre-hardmode, this includes the Fire Imp, Dark Caster, Goblin Sorcerer and Tim. Hardmode adds the Rune Wizard, Desert Spirit and Ragged Caster. Their magic bolts pass through walls, but can be destroyed instantly by a hit from any weapon.
  • Chaos Elementals teleport constantly and charge the player to cause Collision Damage.
  • Two hardmode dungeon enemies, the Necromancer and the Diabolist, teleport every time they are injured. Not only are their spells annoying, but they teleport away after getting hit or after having been in one spot long enough.
  • Similar to Necromancer and Diabolist, the Nebula Floaters fought near the Nebula Pillar teleport every time they are injured. To make things worse, they can also fly and phase through solid blocks.
  • There is a rare drop from the Chaos Elemental, the Rod of Discord, that lets you teleport as they do. A patch nerfed it so the player has to Cast from Hit Points if they want to spam, as the player's potentially absurd power combined with the Chaos Elemental's rapid teleportation, without so much as a mana cost, was not exactly well balanced. Later patches refined the Teleportation debuff of the staff, tuning it to be more or less powerful.
  • An elaborate system of teleporters can become this with clever manipulation of wires, switches, and timers.
  • The Brain of Cthulhu frequently teleports, forcing you to fend off attacks from different angles. It teleports even more frequently after it Turns Red.
  • In Expert mode only, when Duke Fishron is very low on health, he enters a third attack phase where he starts teleporting and charging at you from different angles, much like the Brain of Cthulhu's second phase.
• Terraform:
  • The player can engage in this by spreading biome seeds or moving large numbers of blocks wholesale. Doing so with a mushroom biome on the surface is necessary to get the Truffle NPC.
  • The Clentaminator can create or destroy most types of biomes with the right Solution used as ammo.
• Terrain Sculpting: In addition to allowing free modification of terrain, the game lets you dig up entire biomes and place them somewhere else for easier farming of crafting materials.
• Theme Naming: In Hardmode, some monsters and bosses drop Souls of Flight, Light, Night, Might, Sight, or Fright. The console versions add Souls of Blight that are dropped by Ocram.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • Some players try to slaughter bosses or armies of event monsters in as little time as possible, leading to such ridiculousness as killing Duke Fishron in a fraction of a second with a giant wall of firework launchers.
  • Bringing Hardmode gear, especially late-game weapons, into a pre-Hardmode world generally qualifies. There's nothing quite like using the Nebula Blaze to vaporize slimes or reducing the Eye of Cthulhu to Swiss cheese nigh-instantly with the Vortex Beater.
• Think of the Children!: Meta example; the original seed for the "Everything" world was "Broke Ass Game Ass," but Redigit decided to change it to "Get Fixed Boi" near the end of 1.4.4's development as they didn't want to encourage kids into saying ass.
• This Is a Drill: When you get access to Cobalt/Palladium, Mythril/Orichalcum and Adamantite/Titanium, you can make drills. They smash through stone like pickaxes, and they do so very, very fast. You can also use them as a weapon, of course, and they don't do too badly against small foes. Chlorophyte also has a drill, although working range bonus aside, it is redundant as it is no more powerful than the tools required to mine chlorophyte, one of which is Drax, a pickaxe-axe combination.
• This Is Gonna Suck: The message displayed when The Twins are about to spawn is "This is going to be a terrible night..."
• Threatening Shark:
  • Sharks only show up in the edge-of-the-map oceans unlike the smaller aquatic enemies. They are powerful enough to be a serious problem for a character with midgame equipment.
  • The 1.3.3 update adds sand sharks and their corrupted, crimson or hallowed variants, which only appear in hardmode deserts during a sandstorm. These are a huge threat as they are hard to hit when they swim through the sand, move extremely fast, hit hard, and sport lots of health.
• Thriving Ghost Town: A world can have a maximum of 25 friendly NPCs (26 during the Christmas season). Although Terraria requires each of these NPCs to have a home to live in (and thus would constitute a small Thriving Ghost Town if a player built an actual house for each NPC), a "home" can be as simple as a room in a much larger structure, so it's more commonplace for players to construct a base or fortress instead of a town. Which makes it either mystifying or disturbing when you wonder where all these zombies are coming from...
• Thunderbolt Iron: Meteorite Ore, which can be mined from meteors that fall after breaking a Shadow Orb/Crimson Heart. It can be forged into bars and used in the construction of various space-themed items. Notable examples include Phaseblades, the Space Gun, and a set of armor that reduces the mana cost of the Space Gun to zero.
• Timber!: The name of one of the achievements, which you get upon cutting down a tree for the first time.
• Time-Limit Boss:
  • Many bosses have to be defeated before sunrise, or they will run away. Skeletron, Skeletron Prime and the Empress of Light will try to instantly kill you instead. The Wall of Flesh will travel from one end of the map to the other as you fight it, and will instantly kill you if it reaches the other side, which has the side effect of the "time limit" being different depending on the size of your world.
  • The Pumpkin and Frost Moon events have the major boss-level enemies fleeing extremely quickly at 4:30AM, while it is possible to catch lesser mobs remaining as they do not flee as quickly.
• Toilet Humor: There are several items that exhibit this.
  • Amongst the furniture in the game, you can craft and place iron/lead bathtubs and water-closets. As of the Big 1.2 Update and the introduction of the Pirate Invasion event, you can also get a golden toilet as a rare drop from pirates. For the purposes of NPC housing, toilets count as chairlike surfaces. It is possible to create a village with all the NPCs having 'thrones' instead of normal chairs to sit on. It's been taken to its logical conclusion in 1.4, wherein they introduce a new crafting recipe for the Broken Hero Sword, famously used to forge the Terra Blade. You can now use it to make... the Terra Toilet. 1.4 also added the ability to wire toilets to switches. When activated, the toilet will spray poop everywhere.
  • The Golden Shower Hardmode weapon.
  • You can get a Whoopee Cushion, which can be combined with a Cloud in a Bottle to get a Fart in a Bottle, and then combine that with the Shiny Red Balloon to get a Fart in a Balloon as of version 1.2.1.1.
  • Players can build oversized pixel art of toilet humor-related things if they want to.
  • Poo can be collected in block form by sitting on a toilet while having a food buff as of 1.4.4.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • The Star Cannon. Shot for shot, it's the most powerful pre-hardmode weapon in the game, and it can be crafted fairly early. The catch is that it uses Fallen Stars as ammo. Fallen Stars are dropped at a very low rate at night (you'll get maybe 20 a night if you have a skybridge and scour the world), and are used in many other crafting recipes (including the essential Mana Crystals). Furthermore, the Star Cannon has a ludicrously high rate of fire, so even with armor that reduces your ammo consumption, you'll end up burning through your star stockpile at a fairly quick speed. Its upgrade, the Super Star Shooter, suffers the same problem.
  • The Golden Delight, which is considered the most powerful food item in the game, providing a major buff to all stats for 48 minutes. The catch is that it has to be crafted out of golden critters, which are notoriously elusive. It's possible that you won't find even a single one of them in your entire run, meaning that if you do get lucky then the Delight will likely stay in your inventory up until Celestial Pillars.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • When night falls and monsters begin assaulting your home, NPCs stop wandering around and hide in their rooms. They don't, however, necessarily close the doors behind them.
  • During the Goblin Army event, in which hordes of goblin warriors and wizards attack your town, the NPCs continue to walk around outside. Because it's daytime. It's always safe in the daytime, right? Then between the 1.2 and 1.2.2 updates, they would run around in a Solar Eclipse and easily get murdered by vampires and swamp monsters (thankfully, the 1.2.2 update fixed that).
  • If you don't have a shelter that can support your guide (it requires a table, chair, and light source), he will constantly wander near you. This means constantly opening the doors to let zombies in.
  • In general, friendly NPC behavior is relatively simple. They can easily get themselves trapped out in the open and be unable to find their way back unless you literally wall their path every step of the way. They're honestly better off if you just wall them inside your house. Houses need at least one entrance to be considered suitable. There's no rule saying the NPC has to be able to reach it.
• Took a Level in Badass: The advent of the 1.3 update saw a total revamp of the NPCs. Now, among other things, they help defend houses against the monsters:
  • The Guide shoots arrows (flaming arrows in hardmode).
  • The Merchant throws knives.
  • The Nurse throws poisoned syringes.
  • The Demolitionist throws grenades.
  • The Dye Trader wields a scimitar.
  • The Angler throws Frost Daggerfish.
  • The Zoologist attack with her claws.
  • The Dryad uses her nature magic to cast a defensive buff on players and NPCs close to her.
  • The Painter shoots enemies with a paintball gun.
  • The Golfer throws golf balls.
  • The Arms Dealer uses a gun (a pistol first, the Minishark in hardmode).
  • The Tavernkeep throws ale.
  • The Stylist uses her sharp scissors as an improvised weapon.
  • The Goblin Tinkerer throws Spiky Balls.
  • The Witch Doctor uses a blowgun.
  • The Clothier attacks with a spell similar to the Book of Skulls, using a unique Shadowflame variant.
  • The Mechanic swings a huge wrench.
  • The Party Girl uses confetti-filled Happy Grenades to keep monsters at bay.
  • The Wizard launches bouncing fireballs.
  • The Tax Collector swings his cane.
  • The Truffle releases clouds of spores.
  • The Pirate fires a chain gun/cannon combo.
  • The Steampunker uses a Clockwork Assault Rifle.
  • The Cyborg launches rockets, proximity mines and grenades from an Arm Cannon.
  • The Princess uses a Resonance Scepter.
  • Santa Claus throws Christmas ornaments.
  • The Traveling Merchant fires a revolver first, and a Pulse Bow during hardmode.
  • The Skeleton Merchant throws bones.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: Since the 1.2 update, things get really hectic in the world of Terraria during a solar eclipse. The easy-to-deal-with slimes are replaced with highly aggressive, durable and surprisingly speedy beasties out for the player's blood until the sun sets.
• Translation Train Wreck: Prior to 1.3.5, the Spanish version had a bad translation regarding the NPC quotes, but it got particularly bad with the NPC arrival message. Apparently the translators just copypasted the Goblin Army warning, and completely failed at it (yes, they couldn't even copy and paste right), because the NPC arrival message read as "(name of NPC) de duendes," which literally means "(name of NPC) of goblins". Fortunately, with the overhaul of translations with the 1.3.5, nowadays it's much better, with only some examples of "Blind Idiot" Translation here and there — most complaints are currently from Latin American who see themselves Separated by a Common Language (as the translation uses European Spanish).
• Trauma Inn: Averted. Beds are only good for setting your spawn point, and speeding up time to get to certain time-based events faster. However, that doesn't stop players from building these by putting a bed in the Nurse's house, letting them teleport over with a Recall Potion or Magic Mirror and instantly heal up.
• Trick Arrow: The game allows you to be quite a good archer, providing you with automatic crossbows and arrows ranging from flaming to firework ones.
• Trick Bullet: There are a wide variety of special bullets, from silver, homing, ricocheting, penetrating, and homing bullets to weirder ammunition such as cursed bullets, nano bullets, and party bullets
• Tripod Terror: The Martians bring tough-as-nails tripod walkers during Martian Madness.
• Triumphant Reprise: The Hallow theme is a nice remix of the normal Forest biome theme. The Underground Hallow theme is a remix of most of the biome themes in the game. But don't let it fool you — Hallowed biomes are just as dangerous as their Evil Counterparts.
• Tsundere: The Nurse can come off as this: Some of her quotes suggest a Team Mom mentality, others that she only sticks around because you pay her.
• Tunnel King: You're required to become one if you want to get much accomplished.
• Turns Red:
  • Many of the game's bosses work this way:
    • At half health (65% in Expert mode), the Eye of Cthulhu breaks open into a giant mouth. It stops spawning minions and begins charging the player much more aggressively.
    • At first the Brain of Cthulhu floats around semi-invisibly as its numerous floating eyes attack you. When the eyes are dead the Brain opens up to reveal a heart and begins attacking you directly.
    • In the console version, Ocram's body changes at half health. Its eyes fall out and a third eye opens on its forehead, it gains more damaging lasers and demon scythe projectiles, and charges constantly.
    • Queen Slime's behavior is generally similar to her pre-Hardmode counterpart, but once her health drops below half, she grows wings and flies around, sometimes doing an aerial drop on the player.
    • The Twins follow the example of their predecessor the Eye of Cthulhu by also changing at half health. Retinazer gains a large laser cannon and his occasional shots become Beam Spam. Spazmatism gains a mouth and loses his fireballs in favor of a near constant Hellfire Flamethrower.
    • Plantera's bud opens up halfway into the fight. It becomes faster and more aggressive with its attacks, as well as gaining numerous Combat Tentacles and it begins launching damaging spores into the air as it attacks.
    • After the player reduces the health bar of the Golem's Head to zero the head lifts off into the air. It flies around the area and continues launching lasers and fireballs while you have to fight the body, which begins leaping toward you constantly.
    • Duke Fishron's eyes glow yellow at half health. He now charges the player less times but is much faster and painful, his bubble attack has him do a loop-the-loop resulting in a huge spray, and he now fires only one Typhoon that homes in and summons an even bigger Sharknado that hurts like crazy and summons even more sharks. In Expert mode, he gains a second rage mode when almost dead, in which he turns the screen a dark blue and starts teleporting frequently, making him hard to hit and even harder to dodge.
  • Some enemies such as the Wandering Eye, Lihzahrds, and Eyezor behave this way as well. The Wandering Eye is like a mini Eye of Cthulhu, the Lihzahrd go down on all fours, become immune to knockback and charge the player quickly, the Eyezor goes from slow laser shots to shooting out Beam Spam.
  • The Big 1.3 Update added Expert Mode, which expands mob AI and gives a number of the bosses new Desperation Attacks when they are badly damaged.
• Turn Your Head and Cough: One of the Nurse's lines upon talking to her.
• Underground Level: Everything between the overworld, which is a Green Hill Zone, and the bottom of the map, which is a Lethal Lava Land, is this, except for the Underground Jungle and the Dungeon.
• Underground Monkey: Slimes. At first there are only Palette Swaps green slimes, blue slimes, red slimes, etc. As you venture further out though a unique slime can be found for each environment, ice slimes, jungle slimes, desert slimes, etc.
• Unicorn:
  • The Hallow biome spawns unicorns. They are your traditional horse-with-a-horn variety and are invariably hostile. Killing them for their horns is the only purpose they seem to have.
  • Using the Blessed Apple (rarely dropped by Unicorns, and other Hallow enemies prior to 1.4) will allow you to ride one as a Mount. It can double jump and accelerates if not obstructed, allowing you to move very fast.
• Universal Ammunition: The game has a very small selection of ammunition types, but said ammunition feeds a rather diverse variety of guns. For instance, standard Musket Ball ammunition will fire from muskets just fine, but it will also feed BB guns, revolvers, Uzis, shotguns, sniper rifles, and a half-minigun half-shark monstrosity.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: The game added three "Vanity Items" slots just to facilitate this. The slots replace the sprite (but not effect) or headgear, armor, and pants, just to show off all the clothes you've bought and/or made yourself while still being a walking Magitek tank.
• Unobtainium:
  • You have Demonite and Crimtane, which are dropped by boss monsters and found in extremely rare small clusters that are usually only enough for a single bar or so.
  • Meteorite, which comes from meteors that only appear after you destroy a Shadow Orb/Demon Heart.
  • Hellstone, which you can only find in the underworld.
  • Cobalt/Palladium, Mythril/Orichalcum, and Adamantite/Titanium are only available after defeating the Wall of Flesh and are used for endgame equipment. You'll only be able to get one of each pair in a given world, however. Destroying Altars summons more ore.
  • Hallowed metal, which can only be found as a drop from the three robotic bosses; there's not even a hallowed ore!
  • Chlorophyte, which begins growing in the Underground Jungle during hardmode, and has an effect that prevents the spread of Corruption and Crimson around its surroundings. It can become somewhat common as it grows by replacing nearby mud and jungle grass, but gathering it can still be a bit tricky thanks to the dangerous hardmode jungle enemies like Giant Tortoises and Moss Hornets. Fortunately, Chlorophyte ore spreads regardless of the biome, so you can make a farm of it in a safer biome just by digging to the right depth and placing mud blocks with an ore seed to create more.
  • Shroomite and Spectre bars, which can only be made by taking Chlorophyte bars (which are already fairly hard to acquire, as mentioned above) and combining them with large numbers of Glowing Mushrooms and Ectoplasm, respectively.
  • Luminite, which literally cannot be found or made on the planet and is only dropped by the Moon Lord, the game's final boss in the 1.3 Big Update.
• Unsound Effect: The Journey's End 1.4 update introduces the three new town pet NPCs: the cat, dog and the bunny. Interacting with the cat and the dog will have them meow and bark, respectively, but since English has no onomatopoeia for bunny sounds, interacting with the bunny just gives you the humorous dialogue of "*Bunny noises*" and "*Rabbit noises*".
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Status effects are mostly not very effective. In the time it takes for the slow damage over time of the On Fire! or Poisoned debuffs to kill an enemy you could have already killed the enemy a hundred times over using regular weapon attacks. Averted in the case of the bosses though, as the extra damage status effects allow you to deal will definitely help, and some of the debuffs available in Hardmode are much stronger.
  • The Dark Artist armor has an unlisted effect of increasing the area of effect from the Phantom Phoenix's special projectile. While this sounds great in paper, the Dark Artist armor is designed for mage/summoner hybrids, while the Phantom Phoenix is a ranged weapon (and thus, suboptimal for use with the Dark Artist armor). Besides, the Phantom Phoenix is a weapon from the Mechanical Boss tier, while the Dark Artist armor is an armor from the post-Golem tier, which means the Phantom Phoenix is a weapon that is quite obsolete by the time the Dark Artist armor is available.
• Variable Terminal Velocity: The Slime mount has the property of doubling your falling speed, which immediately returns to normal if you unsummon it. The Portal Gun, when equipped, gives a 3.5x multiplier to your fall speed. When using both at the same time, the Slime mount's fall speed cancels out the Portal Gun's.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: As the game developed, these have popped up. First, it was the Underworld, then the entire world became this after the release of Hardmode. Later, it was the Lihzahrd Temple, which can only be unlocked by a key dropped by Plantera. So far, the hardest dungeon in the game is the post-Plantera Dungeon, which is chock-full of extremely dangerous skeletal enemies.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Most of the equipment that bosses like Duke Fishron and the Empress of Light drop on defeat are based on their abilities.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • There are critters like bunnies, birds, or bugs all over the world, and they are generally harmless. You can capture most of them via a bug net, but you can also choose to slaughter them with your powerful weapons solely for cruel fun. You can even kill cute dolphins in the ocean!
  • The Guide Voodoo Doll will allow you to harm the guide. However, he respawns after you kill him.
  • The only way to get one of the hats is to kill off the Clothier. The Clothier Voodoo Doll (that can summon Skeletron for a rematch) is added in the 1.2 patch, as if that wasn't already enough encouragement.
  • The Goodie Bags in the Halloween Update can yield Rotten Eggs, a kind of consumable throwing weapon that can damage the NPCs if you aim at them (normally such friendly fire is impossible with regular weapons). In Hardmode, the Demolitionist also sells Land Mines that can be triggered by town NPCs and deal damage to them.
  • Two words: Bunny Cannon. To elaborate, the Bunny Cannon specifically fires Explosive Bunnies, which have to be crafted by catching the cute little critters and then strapping dynamite to them. 1.4 even lets you release the explosive bunnies and detonate them manually by smacking them.
    Loading screen tip: Killing bunnies is just plain cruel. Period.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: The game is usually very tolerant of your evil ways, allowing you to slice bunnies and birds in half left and right. There's even a voodoo doll that lets you kill one of the NPCs at your will! Throw that voodoo doll into lava, however, and you get attacked by the massive Wall Of Flesh. It will rip newer players apart, and there is literally no escape — you HAVE to kill it or it'll kill you. And if you do succeed in defeating it, the game rewards you by unleashing dramatically harder enemies into your world.
• Video Game Dashing: Several armor sets and accessories allow you to dash. The Solar Flare armor set and the Shield of Cthulhu even turn it into a dash attack that deals damage to enemies.
• Videogame Flamethrowers Suck: Used to be played straight, then 1.4.4 largely averted this. The flamethrower has a very good range, deals a lot of damage (though a single flame doesn't hurt that much, it fires a lot of them per unit of ammo), sets enemies ablaze for even more damage, and its ammo is ridiculously easy to find and hoard. An even more potent flamethrower in the form of the Elf Melter is obtainable by the Christmas themed Frost Moon event available late in the game which inflicts Frostbite, a stronger variant of Frostburn.
• Video Game Tools: The main tools you get are pickaxes (which let you mine blocks), axes (which can chop down trees and other plants, like cactus), and hammers (which can shape blocks and mine background objects like walls and demon altars). You can pick up other tools as well, like the Rod of Discord, which teleports you to your mouse cursor, or the Clentaminator, a device that can purge (or spread) certain biomes like the Corruption, but only the pickaxes are required for progression.
• Vile Vulture: Vultures appear as enemies in the Desert biome. When the player comes nearby, they immediately fly up and start hovering above him before swooping down for attack, and continue pursuing the player to death.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: The first round of bosses are a real challenge, particularly the Wall of Flesh. Once you reach Hardmode and acquire its dramatically more powerful gear, they'll come off like pushovers. For comparison, the final normal boss has 8000 hit points. The most fragile Hardmode boss has 18000 as of 1.4.2.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: You can use certain accessories to turn into a werewolf at night, or a merman when you're submerged in water.
• Voodoo Doll:
  • The Guide Voodoo Doll, which will allow you to harm the guide. However, he respawns after you kill him. If you throw it in lava while in the Underworld, it causes Wall Of Flesh to spawn in addition to killing the guide normally, which turns on hardmode for your world if defeated.
  • There's also the Clothier Voodoo Doll, which lets you kill the Clothier, which summons Skeletron when done at night.
• Voodoo Shark:
  • A Cloud in a Bottle allows you to Double Jump. How? By creating a cloud as a platform to jump from. How that supports you is another question.
  • The biome keys don't work until Plantera has been defeated - the explanation given is that Plantera cursed them. Neither what Plantera has to do with them, nor how Plantera accomplished this despite being a non-sentient plant that isn't even present in the world until after the mechanical trio has been defeated, are elaborated upon.
  • Redigit opened up on Discord surrounding the lore around the Moon Lord and mechanical bosses. As most of the comments in the thread point out though, this just raises *further* question and confusion.^note How the Moon Lord lacks an eye, brain, and spine despite still having them in his sprite, why the Mechanic doesn't make mechanical bots for the player to use if she was forced to make the mech bosses for the cultist, why Skeletron Prime exists when Skeletron still existed at the time the Mechanic would have the time to make it, and so on.

W-Z

• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Skeletron will teach you the meaning of pain if you've gotten cocky tearing through the Eater of Worlds and the Eye of Cthulhu. The Wall of Flesh is another big step up, and then you get another big wake up call the first time you attempt any of the hardmode bosses.
  • 1.2 added another boss like this: Plantera. While Plantera's 30,000 HP isn't particularly terrifying, it packs a major punch with its attacks. Most importantly, Plantera cannot be summoned like other bosses. Plantera instead spawns whenever you break one of the purple bulbs in the Underground Jungle, which spawn randomly. And don't even think of trying to lure it to the surface. That said, there's no rule stating you can't build an arena around where the bulbs are, provided you have the patience to build one, and Plantera is slow enough that you can just run to the arena with little trouble.
  • With the addition of 1.3's Expert Mode worlds, even the Eye of Cthulhu itself becomes one, if only for being a taste of just how much more difficult the new AI is. That's not even getting into the aforementioned Hardmode bosses, a couple of whom can reliably One-Hit Kill you if you're still using your old non-Hardmode gear.
• Walk, Don't Swim:
  • Without special accessories or equipment the character is limited to walking and jumping underwater.
  • The NPCs are limited to this behaviour in water.
  • Many of the monsters and other enemies who normally walk on land will behave this way in water.
  • Subverted for the players with certain accessories or potions. You can walk on water with a Water Walking potion or with certain boots. Combine those boots with Obsidian and a Lava Charm and you can also walk on lava, in addition to being able to be immersed on lava without penalty for 7 seconds! A must for those tackling the Wall of Flesh.
• Walk on Water: The Water Walking Potion temporarily grants this ability, and the Water Walking Boots grants it as long as they're equipped. The Lava Waders (crafted from the Water Walking Boots) will allow a player to safely walk on lava.
• Warmup Boss:
  • The Eye of Cthulhu is usually the first boss the player will face (because it can spawn automatically when the player is strong enough) and fairly simple to beat with a good ranged weapon. Its attacks aren't all that strong, either, and dodging it is simple enough with a few levels of wood platforms. However, this is thoroughly averted on Expert Mode, where it becomes far faster, tougher, hits considerably harder, and will be using its' charging attack non-stop by the time you're close to killing it; it's no stretch to say that the Eater of Worlds and the Brain of Cthulhu are easier fights than it is.
  • King Slime is even more of a pushover. He doesn't hit particularly hard, requires only moderate equipment to bring down, has a predictable and easily-exploited attack pattern, and can be juked into trapping himself in small spaces due to his teleportation ability. To top it all off, unlike nearly every other boss in the game, he doesn't get any new abilities or tactics on Expert Mode; he's simply accompanied by slightly-tougher mooks. Even the official Wiki notes that many consider him more of a mini-boss than anything else.
• The War Sequence: The Goblin Army, a hundred-strong army of goblins with varying professions. The number increases for every person playing when one strikes. To solidify the point that this is going to take a while, they drop weapons that actually help you in taking them down easily.
• Waterfall into the Abyss: Water normally adheres to gravity and will drain given an opening, but small holes create a cosmetic water effect that will gradually fade if it doesn't reach a hole first. Seen particularly with water on floating islands, and one of the forest backgrounds that show floating islands.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • The Martian Saucer boss of the Martian Madness event has a giant laser it can fire downward. This laser is capable of taking huge chunks of health out of even the tankiest characters. When its cannons are destroyed, it does nothing but spam this laser until it's destroyed.
  • Enemies during the Martian Madness event can drop the Charged Blaster Cannon. It fires smaller, Mega Buster-like shots with a short charge, but if charged continuously for about three seconds, the cannon will fire a highly-damaging, infinitely piercing energy ray.
  • The Moon Lord fires one from its middle eye that sweeps in an angular motion and is incredibly painful. When its eyes are detached, they all can randomly use a smaller and slightly less painful version.
  • Players can get their own in the form of the Last Prism, which fires six wide-angled beams that eventually converge into a large rainbow death laser. Its high power and attack rate make it one of the strongest magic weapons in the game.
• Weaponized Offspring:
  • The Eye of Cthulhu shoots out mini-eyes to attack the player as a sort of ranged attack.
  • The Brain of Cthulhu shoots out flying eyeballs that serve as its first life bar.
  • The Wall of Flesh shoots out burrowing worms that attack the player as well as the feeders that extend on cords to attack the player.
  • Plantera sprouts vine attached attack mouths like the Wall of Flesh has in its second stage.
• We Buy Anything: Merchants will gladly take anything you give them. Keep in mind however, some items have no value, so wouldn't even be worth keeping, such as excessive dirt blocks. While you can get rid of unwanted items this way, you can also simply dump the items if you come across something more valuable along your adventuring.
• We Can Rebuild Him: The Eye of Cthulhu, the Eater of Worlds and Skeletron are 'rebuilt' into deadlier, cybernetic versions of themselves (the Twins, the Destroyer and Skeletron Prime respectively) so that they can get their vengeance on you when you reach Hardmode.
• Weird Moon: The Pumpkin Moon and Frost Moons give the moon both a face of a carved pumpkin and a snowman respectively. The old versions of Terraria had a moon that has a Jupiter-esque ring around it. And as of 1.4, the moon has several variants of it decided randomly for a world seed upon creation including the old moon with a ring around it. One of these also being three moons.
• What the Heck Is an Aglet?: An Aglet is one of the available equippable items, providing a small speed boost when equipped. It's also an essential component for the Frostspark Boots.
• What the Hell, Player?: The Voodoo Dolls of the Clothier and the Guide have the description "You are a terrible person."
• When Trees Attack: The Splinterling and Mourning Wood enemies during the Pumpkin Moon (the latter of which spits flaming branches at you) and the Everscream during the Frost Moon (who shoots spikes instead of flaming branches).
• Whip of Dominance: The Journey's End 1.4 update introduced whips as a weapon for Summoners, allowing the player to better control their summoned creatures. Whipped enemies are afflicted with a debuff that makes them take extra damage from summons, and the summons will focus their attacks on the last enemy you whipped.
• Whip Sword: One of these aforementioned whips is the Durendal, that looks like a sword (and is named after a sword of legend), but is used like a whip. When used, its blade extends into segments, each connected by some sort of red wire, to strike enemies.
• Whoopee Cushion: A whoopee cushion can be found as a joke item. It makes funny fart noises, and can be crafted into a Fart in a Jar, which in turn can be crafted into balloons and other items, similar to the Cloud in a Bottle and its variants.
• Wicked Wasps: Hornets really, but there are dozens of the bloody things in the underground jungle.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: In a similar vein to Minecraft, the game throws you in at the surface of a pristine wilderness and sends you off to do your thing.
• Wight in a Wedding Dress: Survive long enough through a Blood Moon and eventually, you might encounter the Bride and the Groom, a pair of zombies in wedding attire. Defeating them allows you to take their attire for yourself.
• Will They or Won't They?: The Goblin Tinkerer and the Mechanic are constantly asking about each other, the Nurse is after the Arms Dealer, and the Arms Dealer is... well.... But nothing seems to come from any of it, except maybe the Nurse and the Arms Dealer who may or may not have gone out on a date.
• Winged Humanoid: Harpies. You can become one yourself by crafting and equipping wings.
• With My Dying Breath, I Summon You: The Lunatic Cultist summons the four Celestial Towers when defeated.
• Womb Level: Implied by the art style and presence of flesh-themed items and enemies in the Crimson Biome. The "pots" in the crimson look like strange growths and the various surface plants look like growths with eyeballs. And the boss of the Crimson is a giant brain Eldritch Abomination summoned either by smashing three beating hearts or using a bloody spine item crafted at bloody altar using individual vertebrae dropped by enemies in the biome. The entire biome is very red themed in general. Can be taken further if you get your mitts on a rare drop in the Crimson and convert the Crimstone blocks into flesh blocks, which can be used to craft furniture made of flesh.
• Wooden Stake: The stake launcher fires these. As one might expect, it has a huge damage bonus against vampires (1000%, to be exact).
• Word Salad Title: If you can't decide on a name for your world, the game can give you a randomly generated one, which are often flavored like this.
• Wormsign: Giant worms and other burrowing enemies leave a trail of little bits of dirt flying around as they're digging. They also have a very characteristic sound which can be somewhat unnerving if you can't easily defeat them yet. It does give a good indication of what side they'll be coming from next, though.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Zig-zagged; gold ore and bars are valuable, but their monetary and crafting value is quickly surpassed by other materials, most of which are fantastical things like "Demonite." Gold bricks are completely worthless (shopkeepers won't pay for any type of bricks). More generally, the lengthy tier system (and the game progression in general) regularly turns prizes and materials that the player first paid for in "blood, sweat, and tears", into obsolete junk that might be worth a few coins.
• Wrench Wench: The Mechanic. A female character in a yellow mechanics jumpsuit with a large wrench on her back. She sells the player the various items used for using the wiring system in the game.
• Wutai: Furniture and buildings built out of the Dynasty Wood that the travelling merchant sells will have an Asian theme, allowing you to build your own Wutai base.
• The X of Y: Enough to warrant a page.
• X-Ray Sparks: Happens to the Steampunker during the 1.4 credits in a scene where she is working on the Cyborg.
• Yin-Yang Bomb:
  • You can explore the blighted, dark lands of the Corruption (or the Eldritch-style flesh covered lands of the Crimson) and the joyful, light-aligned Hallow and find respectively Dark and Light Souls, which are used to make or upgrade dark or light-themed equipment. Fuse them with two particular (and rather rare) items and you obtain the Dao of Pow, an Epic Flail which is essentially a huge spiked Yin-Yang on a chain capable of massive damage and confusing any enemy it touches.
  • As of 1.2, combining the True Night's Edge and the True Excalibur will cause the power of The Corruption and the The Hallow to cancel out and produce the Terra Blade.
  • 1.4 introduces the Terraspark Boots, which are the combination of the icy Frostspark Boots and the fiery Lava Waders. The result is some of the best boots in the game that give the players advantage over basically all terrain.
• You and What Army?: One of the achievements in-game is titled this, which requires you to have nine minions at once.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: In Hardmode, souls start dropping from enemies near hallow or corrupt areas, as do the hardmode bosses. You need souls to craft the best stuff.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Attempt to run away from the Wall of Flesh, and it'll give you a debuff called "The Tongue," which basically means it reels you back in for heavy contact damage. If a player attempts to warp back to spawn, the Wall of Flesh instakills them instead, accompanied by a special death message.
• Zerg Rush:
  • A player can (sort of) create one by using a Battle Potion and Water Candle together during a Blood Moon. All three increase spawn rate and raise the limit of on-screen enemies.
  • The Goblin Army event causes more than 100 goblins to spawn on both sides of you and all come after you. Have fun killing warriors from right and left while pelted with arrows and magic from afar. The Pirate Invasion and Martian Madness events are similar, except with gun-toting pirates and ray gun-wielding aliens respectively.
  • In the alpha, the slimes had a high spawn rate and would swarm players while they tried to work, making it difficult getting a shelter built. While the slime spawn rate has been toned down, this can still happen on blood moons with the zombies and demon eyes.
  • In Hardmode, especially before you get decent equipment, a Blood Moon can become tougher than the normal mode bosses ever were, while the Solar Eclipse can feel like a horde of Boss in Mook Clothing enemies.
  • Snowmen too when you use the Snowglobe item.
  • At the lower levels of the caves at the current version, it is nearly impossible to get a respite from the hordes of Skeletons, Giant Worms, and Mother Slimes.
  • Then in the Underground Jungle you have Hornets which can spawn in swarms of up to 6. At one point the hornets had their health and attack damage balanced out but they remain dangerous en masse.
  • Also have fun in the Underworld where Imps never stop spawning, throwing fireballs through walls at you while teleporting all over the place. Then come the bone serpents. The spawn rate was mercifully toned down in a patch, but can still be tough at times, although you will no longer regularly have to deal with three simultaneous bone serpents.
  • The Underworld includes flaming bats and demons, which will constantly swarm you if you're traveling the "safer" route by grappling along the ceiling.
  • You can incite this by placing a water candle (held instead prior to 1.2.3) which can be found in great quantities in the dungeon. Though it only has a modest effect, it is still useful for attracting monsters to traps to farm their drops. A similar effect can be induced by consume a Battle Potion. For the record, both of these items' effects stack, so try to use both for maximum efficiency.
  • Eaters of Souls and their variants in the Corruption spawn in massive numbers, sometimes up to a dozen at once, and charge the player relentlessly. Any low-level player wandering into that area is unlikely to get back out alive.
  • The enemies in the dungeon never stop coming. Wizards attack you from random directions, skeleton warriors charge in more than six at a time, and flying skulls can shut off your ability to attack briefly. If that wasn't bad enough, their spawn rate increases as you reach lower and lower depths and if even THAT wasn't enough for you, they all have upgraded versions that appear after defeating Plantera along with OTHER new, unique hardmode dungeon enemies such as the VERY bulky Paladin and the extremely fast Bone Lee. You can tone this down a bit by stealing every water candle in sight, but the spawn rate is still higher than normal.