Anyone who’s played Terraria will know the pain of being caught out by one of the many devious Terraria traps that lie in wait for you across and under the world of one of the best sandbox games on PC. As the development team at Re-Logic works on Terraria update 1.4.5, the game’s creator admits that even he struggles to make it through hardcore runs thanks to his own cruel creations.
Terraria is absolutely packed with traps. While there are plenty of ways to build your own dastardly death traps, the natural world generation spawns more than enough of them across the various cave networks and biomes, ready to catch any careless explorers off-guard. Exploring without a keen eye can more often than not mean a quick one-way ticket back to spawn, leaving your precious coins scattered on the floor where you fell.
Playing in hardcore mode, then – where death is permanent and means the end of your run – makes those traps even scarier. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to help spot them – you can craft Dangersense Terraria potions, which will illuminate them, or you can hold a mechanism-related item such as a pressure plate or wires to cause any nearby wires (usually employed in their construction) to appear on-screen. Then it’s just a case of carefully defusing them.
Dart traps that poison unsuspecting players, boulder traps that fall on your head from above, explosive traps that often sit near large ore deposits and detonate huge chunks if triggered, lava traps that pour hot, sticky lava all over the cavern below, and the overly-intricate ‘Dead Man’s Chests’ that combine multiple traps all wired to a tantalising golden promise of treasure… You name it, Terraria’s probably found a way to make it deadly.
Much of this nefarious construction is at the self-proclaimed behest of the game’s creator and Re-Logic president, Andrew ‘Redigit’ Spinks. Red, as he’s most commonly referred to by the community, has long been a big advocate for the unparalleled, maddeningly delightful schadenfreude of players falling victim to traps.
He frequently jokes with players about adding increasingly deadly trap combinations, rebutting any possible suggestions of making them less dangerous. Asked prior to the release of the most recent Terraria update about a potentially convenient upgrade, Red responds, “Me be kind? I’m adding more traps now just for the accusation.” He wasn’t kidding, as among the new secret seeds included in Terraria update 1.4.4 is ‘notraps’ – which, of course, simply generates a world with an incredibly high volume of traps.
That doesn’t mean Red is immune to his own creations of course – far from it. Posting on Twitter this week, he shares a screenshot of a hardcore death, commenting, “I was 12 hours into a hardcore run and a bat knocked me into an explosive trap” and adding a laughing emoji for good measure. Of course, fans were quick to respond: “All your tomfoolery in development is finally coming back to bite you,” one remarks.
This isn’t the only time it’s happened, either – asked whether he’s ever beaten hardcore mode, Red laughs, “No. I keep dying to traps,” though that doesn’t appear to have stopped him from building a deadly lava trap to ensnare enemy mobs inside his own home base. Red is adamant that he wouldn’t make it if he couldn’t take it, however; after all, in his own words, “The best traps to die to are the ones you place yourself.”
Make sure you’re not caught out with our guide to all the Terraria bosses, and a convenient explanation of how Terraria happiness affects your NPCs. Re-Logic reaffirms that it’s doing its best to make Terraria cross play happen, so hopefully you’ll be able to unleash your devious trickery across platforms soon. In the meantime, the best Terraria mods should keep you plenty busy.