A Terraria 1.4.4 change might have just put your wonderful Terraria NPCs in a lot more danger than you realise. The Terraria 1.4.4 update, Labor of Love, introduces a wealth of quality of life improvements to one of the best sandbox games on PC, along with a whole range of new items, creatures, and even a magical new Terraria biome. However, one particular tweak to the Guide Voodoo Doll opens up the potential for accidental chaos.
One of the most useful changes made in the Labor of Love update is an increase in your inventory stack limit, allowing almost every item to be stacked up to 9,999 times in a single box. This is a huge improvement for most items, which could previously only hold 999 per space, but it’s even more notable for certain things that couldn’t previously be stacked, such as the Guide Voodoo Doll.
For those not in the know, it’s perhaps worth a quick detour to explain what the Guide Voodoo Doll does in Terraria. It’s a small doll dropped by some flying demons that bears close resemblance to the Guide, a helpful figure who shows up upon creation of a new world and, as their name suggests, guides you through your journey with useful pointers and crafting tips. Carrying the doll allows you to harm the Guide, if you’re feeling particularly malicious, but you’ll need to go one step further to summon one of the key Terraria bosses and progress into the game’s hardmode.
By casting the doll into the fires of hell (this is not an exaggeration), you cause the Guide to explode in rather messy fashion (neither is this), summoning a boss rather evocatively called the Wall of Flesh (nor that). Defeating the Wall of Flesh is the key step to activating Terraria hardmode, the latter half of the game’s core progression. It’s perhaps a little mean, but needs must.
The ability to stack Guide Voodoo Dolls, however, creates a rather dangerous possibility. Should you drop more than one doll into the lava, it will continue killing other NPCs that are currently in your world at random up to the total number of dolls dropped. This includes town pets and town slimes, meaning that an inadvertent slip-up can see your entire population wiped out in one fell swoop, as happened to one unfortunate player.
Fortunately, it seems that this process doesn’t summon multiple Walls of Flesh. The other good news is that, providing you still meet the criteria for a given NPC type to show up, another should soon arrive in their place. Just don’t let them know what happened to their predecessor – and give the walls a good wipe down first. Eesh.
Rather than sacrificing your NPCs in arcane rituals, why not consult our Terraria happiness guide to ensure that they’re kept happy and offer you the cheapest shop prices possible? We’ve also got the best Terraria mods to mix up your game with a range of interesting modding options.