Terraria Will Never Be Finished

Terraria is already a never-ending game. The classic adventure crafting game now encompasses dozens of biomes, thousands of items, and years of refinement. The developers at Relogic have promised its sixth final update will be released in 2025, but who knows if this will even ring true in the end. What started out as a smaller patch to include a collaboration between Terraria and Dead Cells has now grown into a full-sized update with a bunch of new whips, sprite redesigns, and unique seeds.

Just to put Terraria’s never-ending development timeline into perspective, one of my first ever gigs writing about video games was covering the news of Terraria’s Journey’s End update way back in 2020. I’m older now and have a lot less hair than I did back then, but Terraria is still going strong.

Nothing Quite Like Terraria

First released in 2011, Terraria has a timeless quality to it. This is mostly due to its stylish graphics, iconic soundtrack, and a depth of content that leaves most newcomers scratching their heads, but in reality they don’t come around that often. Those playing Terraria have likely already been doing so for years. That being said, the game has managed to maintain an audience and attract new players through a mixture of excellent mod support and popular YouTubers.

Even though I’m not a newcomer, I have purchased Terraria over five times - sometimes for friends, sometimes as a gift to strangers. I’ll revisit the game periodically to get my fix for a few hours, and whenever there’s a new update I start a fresh run. It’s a game that I’ll likely play for the rest of my life.

Even if Re-Logic finally says enough is enough one day, and starts working on the fabled Terraria 2 or some other project it has in mind, Terraria will still never be a finished game. Its modding scene is enormous. We covered a story about a dedicated Terraria player who assembled a team of modders to compile all of the biggest mods into one single modpack called Bereft Souls. The sheer amount of work it must’ve been to figure out compatibility issues and redesign the progression path so all those mods fit together is just mind-boggling.

The Power Of Community

There are currently 30,000 players on Steam for Terraria’s mod-loader, the tModLoader. That’s five-thousand more than are currently playing the base game, and I’m not sure exactly how that works, but maybe there are just five-thousand people working on mods right now, or just have it left open in the background while they do other stuff. 30,000 players in a 14-year-old game is amazing.

This is mostly thanks to Terraria’s overhaul mods, like the famous Calamity Mod or the Thorium mod. Calamity adds dozens of new boss fights to the base game, over 200 new enemies, and hundreds of items to the base game. It’s a labour of love that has been worked on by many people over the years. New sprites, music, boss designs, biomes, NPCs, and items all added by hand by a team completely dedicated to their craft, with their only source of income their own Patreon.

If you think of the base game of Terraria as a 1,000-hour experience, which might even be underestimating it, then the mods add thousands more hours. I’ve only ever beaten the game on Master mode once and have barely touched the surface of the available mods. The biggest worries in the community about having actually too much content are now being solved by the modders themselves, who take the time to sift through bundles of content to make them accessible to everyone.

Terraria’s 1.4.5 update may be its final update (honestly, I doubt it at this point), but the modding scene will keep Terraria alive and changing for many years to come.

Terraria

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