Terraria – Guide to Melee

A guide to the fundamentals of hitting things with a sharpened stick really hard.

Other Terraria Guides:

• How to Beat The Destroyer.
• How to Obtain the Slime Staff.
• Skipping Stones.

Intro

All credit goes to Squirtkipfan!

So your satisfied with mage huh? Or maybe its not your thing? Well here is my new guide on what to know about melee. As always, some good armor and weapon choices pre and post hardmode. Okie dokie, you do just like kip ok?

Things to Know Playing as Melee

Before you sharpen you swords, keep these things in mind.

• Tank: Most melee armors offer the best in defence, allowing you to take some hits. Dont throw caution out the door though.
• Close and personal: Most of you weapons are only effective at close range. Time to get friendly!
• Flexible: Many accessories can be applied to your play style. Mobility, healing, debuff immunity, loads are at your fingertips!
• Hocus pokus: Be sure to use various potions to help you out. Things such as thorns and rage, although minor, can really add the damage.
• Potion power: Since you will be gettin close to enemies you are bound to take damage. Always make sure you have plenty of healing potions on hand.

Starting Out

As a meleer starting out, you have plenty of options but your first priority after deciding a base is to find an immidate better weapon. The copper shortsword can barely handle slimes let alone the dangers that lie ahead(you wont last the night outside with it for starters). Scouring the surface can easily allow for a better weapon in 4 forms. A spear which can be found in surface chests is slow but can pierce. The cactus sword which is larger, swung in a arc, and cheap to make as well as cactus armor. A boomerang which can be fired quickly if you can land your shots. Finally the wooden yoyo which is easy to make, but only slightly better than your shortsword. If its halloween your in luck as pumpkin armor is decent starting armor with its bonus attack boost set bonus too. After being properly equiped, searching underground can be a breeze, with the goal of 2nd tiered(silver/tungston) armor at the least or 3rd(gold/platinum) tiered at the best for your first boss.

Pre Hardmode Weapons

Melee weapons are the most common type you can find pre hardmode and in the entirety of the game too. Be sure to keep an eye out for these top picks of mine.

Sword Shrines: These shrines can be found near the surface. A sign of one nearby is a little 2×2 tunnel in the ground, which will lead to a jelly bean shaped room. In the middle is a background piece which has a 2/3rd chance of being fake. The other 1/3 can result in two VERY good swords to start out with. The enchated sword auto swings, fires a beam, and is basicly good up until wof(with queen bee BEEING its earliest time to replace). The arkhlis is unique, as rather than a swing its a continous slash attack. Very fast but lacking in range.

Rally: A yoyo dropped by giant shellys, crawdads, and salamanders and is a decent upgrade to surface bound weapons.

Bone sword: Dropped by skeletons and is a decent sword to use up until skeletron.

Falcon blade: Can be fished up in iron crates and is another weapon worth your time. Its strong and allows continuous swinging. Its short range makes it difficult to use for bosses though…

Lights bane/blood butcher, murmasa, blade of grass, fiery greatsword: These four weapons are all unique in a way. The evil sword can be gotten early, the blade of grass can poison, the murmasa is fast, and the greatsword is powerful. But all four have a better use…

Nights edge: Besides looking really cool, this weapon is time consuming to make. It requires the above swords combined at an evil altar. But its strong, large, and the defacto weapon going into hardmode!

These are just some melee weapons listed. There are TONS of weapon choices but these are some i personally recommend.

Pre Hardmode Armor

Using a sword requires getting close to your opposition(with some exeptions). Likewise you may end up more liable to injury. Case and point you’ll need some armor and here are your options.

Pumpkin armor: requiring 75 pumpkins this armors bonus is pretty good starting out with a 10% damage boost. Pumpkins grow naturally during halloween but can be aquired via the dryad otherwise. But by then its not very useful.

Cactus armor: Has the same positives as pumpkin but its set bonus is an extra point of defense and the armor can be gotten whenever. A full set requires 75 cactus.

2nd (silver or tungsten) or 3rd (gold or platinum) tiered armor: This should be your first grab of armor before fighting the eye of cuthulu. The set bonus gives extra defence.

Evil armor(shadow or crimson): Your next craft, aside from a new pickaxe, is evil armor. Both have unique bonuses. Shadow armors bonus provides 15% movement speed while crimson provides improved life regen. Crimsons bonus is better, but shadow always looked cooler to me…

Molten: Crafted from the helliest of hellstone in the underworld, molten armor requires 45 bars. Its bonus 17% melee damage is a must for hardmode, but with consideration you can ignore this and just use crimson.(i dont reccomend doing so if you have shadow).

Post Hardmode Armor

After tense battle and some released spirits, Its hardmode! ♥♥♥gets real as enemies get tougher and the evil in the world begins to spread… but f0ck that! There new goodies to grab so get to those altars and smash away!

Hardmode tiered ores: The altar ores, hallow bars, and chlorophyte make great armors, but as you know provide 3 head pieces for 3 classes. Make sure you go for the melee oriented one always.

Frost armor: Requiring frost cores and 46 3rd(titanium/adamantite) tiered bars get frost armor which is AMAZING. Provides 16% to melee and ranged damage, 11% to melee and ranged crit chance, 8% movement speed, and 7% melee speed! Its set bonus also inflicts frostburn, which is another form of on fire! and can be quite handy.

Turtle armor: As soon as you acquire the drax you are able to acquire chlorophyte, which is needed to make various 2nd end game equipment. One of them is turtle armor, using turtle shells from well turtles! Combine 3 shells with 54 bars of chlorophyte gets you the full set. The set bonus is a permanent thorns potion, inflicted the enemies damage value before putting damage reduction into effect. You also get a 6% melee damage and movement and melee speed. Enemies are more likely to attack you though, which really only means something in multiplayer…

Beetle Armor: Scientists are still bafiled why an ancient monument of lizhardian origin drops beetle husks on death. But who cares? It makes wonderful melee armor! A full set requires 18 husks and full turtle armor,but there are two versions of the body. The scale gives 8% melee damage and crit chance as well as 6% movement and melee speed. The bonus gives bonuses to melee and speed in increments of 10% up to 30. The shell gives 5% melee and crit chance, but its set bonus gives defense in increments starting at 15% up to 45%.

Solar armor: The end game melee armor. 22% melee damage, 17% melee crit chance, 15% movement and melee speed, and enemies are more likely to attack you. The set bonus generates a solar shield over time that can be used to dash and harm enemies. The cuthulu shield if you would.

Post Hardmode Weapons

Despite me saying the nights edge is a great hardmode weapon, it only barely qualifies. When used against the hardmode enemies it can feel like using the copper shortsword at times. Fortunatly weapons lie around every turn in hardmode.

Beam sword: These are dropped by armored skeletons underground and are an amazing find! Its basically an upgraded enchated sword, but better in almost everyway. The bad news? Its a .67% drop rate, so consider yourself lucky if you get it.

Hel-Fire / Amarok: These are two yoyos that are gotten in the same way. Hel-Fire is dropped by underworld enemies, while amarok is dropped in a snow biome. Both are pretty good as they have high damage and inflict the On Fire!/frostburn debuff respectivly!

Bananarang: A boomerang dropped by clowns during a hardmode blood moon. They can be stacked up to ten and thrown rapidly. Getting these early can set you up for hardmodes future challanges, especially considering clowns are fairly common during blood moons.

Death scicle: A scythe that shoots a rotating beam scythe that can go through walls. The fact alone makes it immidiatly useful as it can cheese some bosses, particularly plantera in the cramped underground jungle…

Vampire knives: A unique weapon located in the crimson biome chest in the dungeon. While there damage is low compared to most others, its main appeal is its life drain. Enemies you hit will heal you, allowing you to deal the pain and heal the bruises.

True Excalibur / True nights edge: Requiring a broken hero sword and the blade in question gets you a pretty solid weapon. True excalibur is the faster of the two and fires a fast moving beam. True nights edge is stronger and fires a slower beam. Which is better is a matter of preference. Though neither can be gotten til plantera is beaten which allows mothrons to spawn during solar eclipses…

Meowmare: Shoots rainbow cats about and can be continously swung.

Terra Blade: A continous swinging, beam shooting, 95 powered sword forged of the finest blade of light(Excalibur) and dark(nights edge). Need i say more?

As always there are an INSANE amount of other weapons not mentioned here. This of course gives you insentive to find them and see if they’re worth your time!

Accessorize to Maximize

Melee players can benifit from many a accessory. Mainly being the various playstyles you can invest into. Do you want to be immune to most debuffs? Do you want faster healing? How bout increased damage? These are things to keep in mind when browsing this pick of accessories.

Cobalt shield / obsidian shield: The cobalt shield is found in the dungeon and is a must get. Equiping it makes you immune to knockback! Combing some obsidian with it also makes you immune to the burning debuff caused by meteor and hellstone.

Ahkn Shield: This is a H3LL of an upgrade! Its the obsidian shield, but now your immune to most debuffs. Making it requires getting alot of other debuff immunity accessories and combining them with the obsidian shield. Though with work it can be gotten quite early into hardmode.

Emblems: These are dropped by the WOF and theres one for each class. Be sure to grab the one for you archtype. If you get them all you can make the avenger emblem, increasing damage by 12% overall. But it really is only needed if your using other styles along with melee(something like a mage knight).

Charm of Myths: Combining a band of regeneration and the philosipher stone gets you this. Increased health regen and reduced cool down for potions from 60 seconds to 45. Pretty good if you havent anything specific.

Celestial stone: Combining the sun and moon stone wont make it a bellosom or a clefable, but it will give a nice increase to your stats. If you wanna go the next step further, you can add an moon shell to turn into a werewolf at night and a mermfolk in water(making you able to breath underwater).

Destroyer emblem: This gives a bonus 10% to attack and a 8% crit chance. It requires combining the avenger emblem and the eye of golem and is overall a pretty good choice. All damage is good damage as they say!

Plenty of other accessories are abound to use. Take the time to look through each you get to see if it’ll aid you!