Mining is an essential part of playing Terraria. It helps you find awesome loot, and it allows you to craft better weapons — especially in the early-game.
Unfortunately, mining in Terraria can be blighted by long spells of not finding anything valuable or getting pulverized by some particularly nasty enemies, making the game a lot duller and less fun to play.
Fortunately, though, there are some ways to stop this from happening and make mining a lot more lucrative. Here are seven ways to do just that.
7 Ways to Make Mining in Terraria Easier
1. Find a Natural Cave to the Underground
When you first enter a newly-created world, digging an easy way underground may be a challenge, because you will only have a shortsword, a pickaxe, and an axe. Digging with these tools is slow, and fighting the enemies you find is difficult.
Finding a natural way underground will let you simply get on with exploring the map, and it will often lead to finding a Life Heart early on. On top of that, rope, torches, lesser healing potions, and glowsticks are useful cave-exploration items. They are easily found in pots.
2. Use Rope to Your Advantage
Fall damage is a major cause of early-game deaths in Terraria.
Guard against a premature death by using rope to safely climb down. All you have to do is place your rope and hold the place button down where the rope starts. This will automatically unfurl the rope to the bottom of the cave or opening.
3. Forge a Grappling Hook
Sometimes, you find a cave full of great loot, but some of it is on a hill, and you can’t quite reach it. A great way to get around this problem in the early game is to craft a grappling hook, which will allow you to grapple surfaces and channel your inner Batman.
Of course, if you have already killed King Slime, he may have dropped a slime hook, which allows you to grapple up to three times in a row.
4. Illuminate Unknown Caverns Before You Enter Them
Having a way to illuminate caverns and see what’s inside before you blast in sword swinging is a great way to making sure you don’t fall down a deep cavern or run into a room full of enemies.
In the early game, chucking glowsticks down a cavern can help light it up, but it’s ultimately wasteful. You could better use glowsticks to see how deep an underground pool is.
A great way to light up caverns is to craft the space gun. Fire it into your newly-discovered cavern to light it up. Having a full set of meteorite armor will eliminate the space gun’s mana cost, leaving you with a fantastic early-game weapon.
A space gun can be crafted at an iron anvil from:
- 30 Meteorite Bar
- 2 Fallen Stars
Another great alternative to the space gun is the Starfury sword, which can be found in a Sky Chest. These are found on floating islands.
The Starfury is a great melee weapon, but it also fires a shooting star. This can be exploited to discover new chasms underground before you dig into them.
5. Take Spelunker Potions
The Spelunker potion is a fantastic brew that allows you to see all valuable underground treasures, including pots, chests, and Life Hearts.
This will dramatically increase your mining efficiency, since you can pinpoint where to dig to find the ore you need. This is particularly effective in early Hardmode.
Spelunker potions are found in chests underground, but they can also be crafted at a placed bottle or an alchemy table from:
- Bottled water x1
- Blinkroot x1
- Moonglow x1
- Gold Ore x1
- Or Platinum Ore x1
6. Dig a Hellevator
A Hellevator is a very effective way of discovering new chasms quickly. You can easily make one by digging a 2-block-wide tunnel straight down to the Underworld.
Doing so reveals many new areas open to exploration, which then raises the chances of finding more loot and ore. Make sure you take some rope so you make your way back up to the surface!
A Hellevator also gives you easy access to Hell, making farming for late early-game resources easier. You can also use it to find and fight the Wall of Flesh.
Find a Magic Mirror
The Magic Mirror is a wonderful item that teleports you to your last spawn point. It’s a great way to avoid death if you make the wrong jump or a Fire Imp is about to melt your face.
The Magic Mirror is part of the Cell Phone crafting recipe, which gives you a vast amount of real-time information about your world.
Magic Mirrors are commonly found in underground chests. The Ice Mirror is found at a similar depth as the regular mirror but in the Underground Ice biome.
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While mining can be a chore in Terraria, stick with it, and you will amass more loot than you’ll know what to do with! Be sure to check out our other Terraria guides if you need help. And let us know what Terraria topics we should cover by leaving a comment below!
