Video Gamers Podcast - Terraria Hysteria (Terraria) - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are digging deep into this week's highly requested episode. You asked for it, and we played it. Now we’re here to talk all about our experiences with Terraria. One of the most sold video games in gaming history, we talk about what it’s like to come into this video game as a newb, then discover why this is truly one of the juggernauts in gaming. It’s the Terraria episode you’ve been waiting for! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Josh here. I just wanted to take a second and let you know about this amazing new product called MultiplayerSquad.com. It's the greatest new addition to gaming. Well, I mean practically life. It's sure to fill you with glee, help you make new friends, and expose you to all sorts of awesome memes. It's got the best community of gamers around, and more than that, it's the best way to help support the show and let us keep providing awesome content. What? I gotta read this disclaimer for legal reasons. Warning. MultiplayerSquad.com can cause feelings of joy, happiness, companionship, ownage, and all around sense of being awesome.

If you notice yourself acting more like Josh, please discontinue use immediately and seek professional help. Hey, who put that in there? Paul! Hello, squadmates, and welcome to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Today we are going to be digging into the world of Terraria. And digging, and digging, and digging. Guys, there's so much digging in this game,

it's almost unbelievable. But before we hone our pickaxes and start our descent, we need some introductions. I am your host, Paul, and I am joined by my co-host, the father of the world's leading expert in Terraria, Josh. Oh man, she's going to be so happy. We have never had to rely on a preteen as much as we did this week. No, she is 18. She is 18 now. Yes. What Paul is referencing is my daughter is one of the biggest Terraria fans, I think, in the world. Like, honestly, she has asked me to play this game with her a ton. I have watched her play it. I have heard her screaming as

she almost kills a boss and then dies with, like, five hit points left. I have shared her just elation as she finally killed, you know, some boss that she's been trying to kill. And I'm not ashamed to admit that we...

We leaned on her a lot, man. Our personal guide and mentor. Yes. Shout out to Corinne. Yes. Huge help this week. And before we jump in here to Terraria, Josh, I think you have a couple of reviews that we're going to read to the people.

I do. And I just, man, I'm going to start up by saying, hey, it's Terraria Night, baby. You guys, so many of our listeners have been, have written in, emailed, messaged us, hey, can you guys do a Terraria review? Please review Terraria. You know, I'll love you guys forever if you do a Terraria review. And we're not above, like, you know, being bribed, man, not at all.

Absolutely not. So you know what? You guys have asked for it. I mean, I don't think Paul and I ever would have played Terraria on our own if it wasn't for our listeners. So we are either going to thank you at the end of the show, or we are going to blame you at the end of the show. or we are going to blame you at the end of the show.

One of those two. You'll have to wait and find out. Yes, exactly. But we have a couple reviews to read. We are pushing closer. Man, you guys have been helping us out. You've been listening. You've been leaving us the reviews. We are getting closer and closer to 200, which is awesome.

I think as of now, we're at like 180-ish. So we're getting real close, man. Very nice. So leave us a review. Chances are, at some point, we will read it on the show. But I like these. I got two. So one is short and sweet.

The other one is apropos to our show today. Okay. So the first one is titled, I'm Stuck. And this one comes in from Amy Claire one, two, three. And Amy says, I don't know if I should sell my kidneys for Patreon because your podcast is that good. Amy, you'll be glad to know that Patreon is not that expensive. It is five bucks a month and you can cancel at any time. So if you join in, you're like, hey, there's $5. And then you're like, these guys are terrible.

What have I done? You're only out five bucks. It's not like you're not committed. You don't have to sign up for a year. It's easy peasy. But thank you for your review, Amy. Don't sell your kidneys. We're happy to have you. Please hang on to those kidneys. Or if you do sell them, then at least sign up for our highest tier, and that'll probably fund it for a couple years. I'm pretty sure one of the rewards at the highest tier is Paul or myself or Todd will give you a kidney if you need one. So you're covered.

We will pay it back. Yeah, you're covered either way. And I mean, you have two, right? Yeah, between you, me, and Todd, we got three extra kidneys. So, yeah. We got you covered. So sell the one. Come join us on Discord.

It's fun. All right, the second one is titled Amazing and Entertaining. And this one comes in from Ace of Shame. Ace of Shame says, Great show with honest reviews and fantastic comedy. I look forward to listening to this while I work overnight. Keep up the good work. If you review Terraria, I will 100% join your Patreon for at least a year.

Well, the Piper's coming to collect. Ace of Shame, I'm calling you out, because guess what we're doing tonight? We'll see you. Oh, Ace of Shame. We'll see you soon, Ace of Shame. Your word is your bond. Yes. So we will be waiting.

Well, thank you so much. What a great review. Yeah, when you join and then you hop into the Discord, just make sure you say, Hey, guys, it's Ace of Shame, and then we will welcome you with lots of fanfare. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much for the reviews, guys. We definitely appreciate it. It definitely helps the show get showcased a little bit more, especially on Apple Podcasts. So if you haven't already left us a review, please do so. And then also, we made mention here of our Discord server. So if you'd

like to be a supporter of the show, please visit MultiplayerSquad.com. You can sign up and be a supporter. Join us on Discord. You can game with me, Josh, and Todd. You can ask questions. You can see all the various posts we make during the week. It's not just about gaming. We also have an off-topic channel. And I haven't posted any cooking lately. I'm going to have to jump back into that and start posting some stuff in the off-topic channel. But come find us at MultiplayerSquad.com. All right, I think we're ready. Let's go ahead and hit that intro and start our deep dive into Terraria. You should have called it a deep dig paul a deep dig let's start our deep dig oh man how many countless hours digging in this game thank goodness we finally upgraded our pickaxes after

like the first three hours of playing all right so let's kick things off with a description terraria is an action adventure sandbox game developed by Relogic. The game was first released for Windows on May 16, 2011 and has since been ported to several other platforms. The game features exploration, crafting, building, painting, and combat with a variety of creatures in a procedurally generated 2D world. Terraria received generally positive reviews with praise given to its sandbox elements. By April 2020, this game had sold over 30 million copies. Josh, 30 million copies makes this one of the best-selling games of all time. I knew it was popular, but did you know that Terraria was this popular? I knew it was popular, but did you know that Terraria was this popular?

I knew it was popular. I know there is a lot of people that love this game. I had no clue that 30 million people loved this game. This is absolutely wild. I had to look up the best-selling games of all time to see where that put Terraria, and I think it was number 18. So Terraria has sold more copies than Skyrim, GTA 4. See, I was going to say GTA had to be up there. Yeah, it's above San Andreas and GTA 4. It has sold more copies than Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64.

Oh my goodness. Terraria has outpaced all of those. That is, that's like the Hall of Fame, man. If you're up there with those games, you're in the video game Hall of Fame at that point. Oh, absolutely. What is the number one most selling game? I believe it's Minecraft or Tetris. I was going to say, it's got to be, I mean, maybe Tetris, man.

Tetris was huge back in the day. Yeah, I think it might be one of those I don't know if Fortnite counts but Fortnite I'm sure is up there although that one's free so yeah I don't know all right now one of my favorite facts about this game is that it is 10 years old and it is still the only game that has been developed and released by Relogic so talk about hitting a home run on your first swing, and they're still just pumping out content for Terraria. Dude, it's like a band. If you can get a song that everybody in the world wants to listen to, you know, that's all you need to do. At that point, you just go,

hey, well, that was easy, guys. We're going to retire now. Yeah, you just need that one-hit wonder. It'll carry you. So I honestly have no idea where to start with Terraria. This is one of the most complicated, expansive games that we have covered on the show. I feel like we could do an entire series on Terraria and probably still not do it justice. I can already hear myself listening to this pod later saying, how on earth did we not talk about X, Y, and Z? We didn't even touch on it. I feel like we're only going to scratch the surface on Terraria. So, you know, I don't know. First question, Josh, how did you first hear about Terraria? My children, straight up. Yeah. I don't know where

my daughter heard about this game. Somebody had mentioned it to her, and she got it, she started playing. It clicked with her right away. And funny piece of trivia, this is the only game in the world where my kid bought this to be able to play it on the PS4 and on PC. Oh, there you go. That's how much she loves this game. So that is where I heard it. I'll say this too. You and I are both coming into Terraria completely blind. We have seen our kids play it. But honestly, I even joked around when she was trying to talk me into playing this game i was like

this is eyeball pixel like particle overload man there is so much going on on the screen at once that like my old man brain and eyes like can't process this i was like that game looks terrible i don't want to play it there's so many great, amazing games out there. Come play games with me. And she was like, no, no, play Terraria with me. And I was like, I can't. My head's going to explode. But yeah, you and I, no playtime, absolutely at all, until we started playing for this podcast. Yeah. So we only have a couple weeks experience here in Terraria. And I don't know what it was i always had a little bit of a mental block of just not wanting to play it i know we both kind

of had that i know that crin also convinced my son james to buy it so i did not have to pick this up my son had bought it on my steam account which was a nice bonus to not have to pay for this one um but they had played together, and I never sat and watched James play. I would only see it in passing. And I had very much a similar impression that you did. Just very colorful. The 2D thing did not really speak to me. And in passing, I never saw anything that really grabbed my attention. So this was really nowhere on my radar until we covered it for the show. Now, I read a little bit of a description earlier that doesn't really go into any kind of details.

If you were going to give someone a brief 30 to 45 second description, how would you describe Terraria? 2D Minecraft? That's honestly oversimplifying Terraria. But I mean, that's what I thought Terraria was, in all honesty, before we started playing it. That would have been my way to explain it to somebody. But having played it now, it is a sandbox RPG. It's not really survival, but combat, exploration. It's a little bit of everything, man. That's what's hard to describe to somebody with Terraria, is this game does a lot of stuff. I mean, you kind of touched on that, but I'm with you. There's going to be people that write in to us and they're like, you guys didn't talk about, you know, mods or, you know, calamity mods and stuff like that. And it's going to be like, dude, like there's we played this game a good bit, but there is a lot of this game to cover.

So we're going to do our best to touch on most of it. You know, definitely our thoughts and some of that stuff. But, yeah, we we know that's what we're saying is we know we're not going to be able to cover everything Terraria in the next 45 minutes. Yeah, absolutely. So I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about first impressions. Now, I'll go ahead and I'll tackle this one first, because when I installed Terraria, my only knowledge was my son, I think, was like eight years old when he bought it. So how complicated could this game be that my eight-year-old played it for weeks on end? I don't need to read a thing about Terraria.

I'm not going to look at any guides. I did not ask any questions. My son James even said, I don't want to give you any hints. I just want to know how you like the game. And I started playing and I died and died and died. I was hating this game so much that I went on a little bit of a rant on Discord to you, Josh. I had to go back and I found all of my messages to you. And I want to read them because these were my impressions.

Oh, behind the scenes look. Behind the scenes look. This was the first, I want to say probably... Two hours? Maybe the first one or two hours. I was going to, it was pretty early. Yeah, so here's what I posted to Josh. These were like obsessively sent back-to-back sentences

while Josh only occasionally threw in an LOL or an I don't know. So all I'm going to read are my rants. I don't know that i can play five more seconds of terraria i don't understand a single thing about this game it's boring and dumb all i do is fight stuff in darkness at night until i die or it's day and then i just run around what am i supposed to do i find places in this procedurally generated world where i can't go anywhere and i mine super long tunnels. I have one terrible spear so I get overrun every eight minutes and die. I'm 100% sure I'm missing something. Can I craft

weapons? Do I build a base? Why is there no tutorial? If I stopped right now, I would say it's the worst game I've ever played. I know I'm missing a huge chunk. Imagine joining Rust at night, spawning eight times, and all you do is run in darkness and suddenly die. All right. So first of all, that was super whiny of me. I laughed at you. That's why I think I responded just LOL because I was legit in real life laughing at your dismay to this game. Yeah.

So that's a little whiny, maybe a little over the top, but I stand by the frustration of this game, not teaching you a single thing. They drop you in this world. They give you no direction for what to do. They don't teach you how to craft. I was being serious. I did not know that you build bases in Terraria. I just start running left and right. I don't really know to dig right. I don't really know to dig down. I don't really know that I can use my axe to cut down trees. When it's a 2D world like that, some of those things don't come natural. Like, I'm used to playing Mario platformers, so if you give me a 2D world, I'm just going to run left and right and jump on stuff and fight

monsters. I legitimately did not know what else to do. I just kept running through biomes without building anything, and then I would die. And that's just kind of how the game left me. And all I can think, Josh, is that this must be how you felt jumping into RimWorld. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. I did not like RimWorld in the beginning at all. I literally was like, why does Paul make such a big deal about this game, man? This game sucks. But then I didn't realize that you guys were like, oh, yeah, you play it on four times speed, because otherwise nothing happens. You were like, you have to build rooms for your people

and all that. I had no idea. And the game doesn't tell you. Refrigerator rooms? They don't teach you that in the game. You have to watch tutorials. Yes. I was starving all the time. I couldn't have food. Yeah, exactly. So it was just funny because I'm with you, man. Even though my daughter is a professional Terraria player, I did not want to have her coach us in the beginning. I wanted to just, hey, this is new. We're going to jump into this. Let's see what's happening. And you had started playing a little bit before me.

I think you were like maybe 30 minutes in before I was able to hop on. And already, that's when you had started writing this stuff. Oh, yeah. And I was with you, man. I was like, you spawned into this world. There's some NPC guy walking around. But you're like, who's that idiot? I don I don't need to talk to that guy. You know, I've been gaming for 40 years, man. What do I need to talk to that guy for?

And we didn't know what to do. And then it was like, well, I know you can dig in this game, so maybe we should dig down some. And then we're like digging and we're not finding anything. And it's like, I don't like, what are we supposed to do? Oh, yeah. And it's so funny, because this is kind of the epitome of a game that you have to do hours and hours of research, and then you learn how the game works. And then it becomes an entirely different game. So I don't want anyone to think that my first impressions stuck. That was just the first hour or two of playing. Now, your daughter, Corinne, I looked her up on Steam because she's in my friend list. She has 900 hours in Terraria. Wow, go Corinne. Yeah, go Corinne. And after the first, I would say,

two hours that you and I played Terraria, here's the rest of the game. Are you ready? Yeah. Hey, Corinne, what items do I need to build a sword? Hey, Crenn, Paul says he can craft a living loom. Is that different from our other loom? Hey, Crenn, what were the things in the Crimson area that we're looking for? It just became every question we were hitting Crenn with, or I was Google searching to figure out what to do. We relied so much on Crenn, it's not even funny. It is hilarious to me because that is 100% accurate in that we would not know what to do and I would just shout to my kid, you know,

and be like, how does this, like, what are we supposed to do? Like, how does this work? How do we make a base? And she would just shout back down, like, just use wooden blocks. No, you don't need to craft them. Just use wood and build a wall. But it was awesome to have though, too. Even just that one thing,

like put the wood in your hotbar, pull it out, and now you can just build a wall or a bridge. I did not know any of that. So I kept collecting all of these blocks. I didn't know what to do with any of them. And I just remember you started saying, oh yeah, let's just build a bridge over this cavern. And that just blew my mind in and of itself. I was like, I had no idea you could do that. So the game doesn't really operate with like real world physics. It's just a pixelated screen. You can plop down items basically wherever you want. Feel free to build a wall five feet in the air and then 17 miles across, you can run around the whole thing. It doesn't need any supports holding it up. And then it kind of

unlocked the idea of all of this exploration and building that did not come natural in the beginning. So I feel like Kryn kind of told us, well, here's 20 things that you could do. And you and I did not really know what to focus on. That was the biggest problem. After the sharp, sharp learning curve of the first hour or two of this game, it was like, okay, we're both starting to understand the basics. Like, okay, I get that I can build a base. And yes, like, oh, we're both starting to understand the basics. Okay, I get that I can build a base and yes, like, oh, don't go out at night. There's lots of zombies out at night. And that's why you were dying so much. And it was like, okay, so we're starting to get this foundation of, okay, here's how we survive and don't die instantly. But then it's like you said,

we were just aimless. I remember we dug down and we were like, hey, we're supposed to find some ore. And then we dug a whole bunch and then we died. And it was like, we didn't find any ore. I have 900 dirt blocks, but what do I do with those? And then we were like- We didn't even know how to do wood platforms. Right, yeah. And then it was like-

We didn't even know that you could jump back out of these mines. So we're going down at angles. That way, we can always jump back out. How many times did we die from falling down our own mine shaft? Oh, yeah, yeah. All the time. and laughed. But then again, same thing. We get into some biome where there's super tough creatures that just splat us. And then we're like, okay, well, let's go the other way. And then people would kill us over there. And that was the frustration I had. I don't mind dying in a video game, but I like to at least have a general idea of what we're supposed to be doing.

Yes. And I know I didn't have a clue. Even when we kind of figured out how not to die instantly, I still didn't know what, like, I was with you. Like, my initial impressions of this game were like, I don't get it. Like, I don't, what are we supposed to be doing? I don't want to just dig in the ground. Like, that seems kind of dumb. Like, there's got to be more to this game than just digging underground. Like, yeah, what are we supposed to do? So then we kind of learn, okay, so you can build

these rooms, plop down a table and a chair, and then random NPCs will start moving in and living in your base. So you and I are like, okay, let's build a whole bunch of rooms. And we start doing multiple levels. And now merchants are coming in and we're building chests and we're building anvils and work benches and all of these things. And we're building chests and we're building anvils and work benches and all of these things and we're building more and better things. And you and I just kind of complained to Kryn that we were dying from fall damage. And Kryn's like, oh, well, just go build into the sky, find some sky islands, and then you can find some items where you can not die from fall damage. And that was, to me, the first time that I was like, you're telling me I have to build into the sky and we're going to find sky islands?

Never in a million years would I have thought to just start building up. What's goofy, man, is we were so focused on digging and trying to find things underground that I genuinely wonder, like, how many dozens and dozens of hours would we have put into this game before one of us went, I wonder what happens if I just keep building up? And that's like, there's all this stuff up there. Well, and even if you build straight up, if you didn't see anything, maybe you would think to give up. But since Kryn gave us the pointer that there are islands floating up there, we started building a bridge that was literally in space. In this game, you can build your way into space where when you jump, there is so low gravity that you just go flying in the air.

And so you and I, how many hours did we spend fighting the harpies? Oh, I was going to say, I'm wondering if the harpies in Terraria are going to make like another Rage Quit episode for you. I think we started fighting them just a little too early, because we did not even have range weapons when we started this. And we fought those harpies, I would say, maybe three hours. They just never stopped coming, man. And that was the thing, is it was like one, two harpies, we could, like, we're like, okay, we killed them, we're okay.

And then four more would come swooping in. And then we would run. And then they would swoop, like, they don't give up, man. Those are some dedicated harpies. Like, they're good at their job because they would just chase us and kill us and then we would die. We would even joke where I would tell you, Josh, because we would build in different directions. So we build a giant tower into the air. Josh starts building to the west. I start building to the east. And we would even say things like, oh, they all came after me. So go, Josh, go, build. Build as far as you can while you have time. And the funniest thing is that Terraria has an awful lot of knockback, whether it's your items doing knockback on enemies or them doing knockbacks on you. But these harpies would just

throw out feathers, and the feather would hit you, and your character would go flying 30 feet because we're on the edge of space, and then you would inevitably fall off your giant ledge, splat on the ground, have to wait and respawn, climb up the tower, start building more. But I will say, eventually, I did get a shiny red balloon that gave me an increase to jump speed, and I found wings, which allowed flight and slow fall. And to me, that was a major turning point in the game. Unfortunately, you did not get a balloon or

wings at the same time I did. Actually, this is a perfect segue, Paul. I have a pop quiz for you. Oh, okay. It's pop quiz time, Paul. Pop quiz, hot shot. Pop quiz. Here we go. All Alright, it's only four questions. Alright. Okay. Okay, so you just mentioned one. I was going to see how well your memory was. Who got the jump balloon? Okay, that would be me. That was you.

Okay. Uh-huh. Who got the wings? That would also be me. Alright, correct. I have a feeling I know where this quiz is going who who got the speed boots we both had speed boots the the hermes boots who got the speed boots first did i have them first but you know what the funny thing is i had them first but they were in my vanity you did because i didn't know the difference. Which was hilarious. Yeah, I told Josh,

I said, I have these boots that are like Hermes boots, but I'm not moving any faster. And you kept running past me. And then you were the one who said, no, no, no, don't put them in that column of equipment. That's your vanity slot.

Put them in the other. And who knew? There's nothing in the game that tells you put the boots in the green slot, not the blue slot. Yeah. How would you figure this

out and i would you know i would equip the shoes i can see the shoes on my guy but i'm not running any faster and i was like i i don't know what i'm doing wrong yeah all right and then last question who had 200 health while the other guy only had 140 okay now i played solo before you started your server. I did build up some of that HP. Yes, I may have had more HP and better gear than you. Who got the sword that shot the star down from the sky and then felt so guilty he gave it to me so that he didn't feel bad that yes i gave that sword to you because i had the wings and i was flying between the sky islands and then the very first good piece of gear i found was that sword and i gave it to you i'm not gonna lie paul if you came back wielding that sword and didn't say anything. I would have just quit, man. Yeah. I am a team player.

I don't know how I ended up with so much health compared to you. I can't explain that. I know when we were digging underground, I would go out of my way as soon as I learned, okay, you can find these items and they permanently increase your mana or your health. And I would always beeline to those items. And so maybe I just figured that out before you did. okay you can find these items and they permanently increase your mana or your health and i would always be beeline to those items and so maybe i just figured that out before you did to your

to your credit you did a lot more digging than i did i was looking around and building bases and stuff like that while you were actually digging underground trying to find stuff so that's probably why you had so much extra health but i'm not gonna i was jealous you got them wings man i didn't say anything i saved it for the show but when you got them wings, man. I didn't say anything. I saved it for the show. But when you got them wings, especially because Crenn was like, oh, if you guys go up to the Sky Island, you'll find wings and then you don't have to worry about falling. And I was like, oh, sweet. And then you got them. And then I remember asking, I was like, I even asked her, I was like, is there like more than one set? And then she was like, oh,

I mean, probably not. And that's when I was like, dang it. Give me them wings, Paul. And even when we were fighting various bosses, it was always funny because you would complain about trying to kite these bosses on the ground. I could just fly over their head and start going the other direction. So it really does make a very big difference in gameplay. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. Having those first really did take a big turn once we started getting some of that better equipment and realizing that I think that

was the first point that we realized, like, there's some pretty cool items in this game, too. Like, it's not just pickaxes and like copper armor. Like, you can find some really neat stuff that's going to drastically change the actual gameplay. Yeah, that was absolutely the turning point for me. So I get the balloon, I get the wings. Now I have my Hermes boots that are actually working. And I remember one of the things that really helped is that I got a staff that summoned a slime that would fight on our side. That slime was baller too, man. I forgot about the slime stuff. Wait, question number six, Paul.

Who had the slime stuff? Who had the slime? My pet slime was awesome because we would be digging these tunnels, and as the monsters would come in, the monster has nowhere to go, my slime has nowhere to go but to attack the mob. And so my slime was doing major work in our tunnels. Now I've got some better items. And then all of a sudden, the game really, really took off because it was just impossible to play without any help in the beginning. And then all of a sudden, it became

great. I remember specifically the moment for me that it really clicked was when you and I were joking around about draining the lakes inside the underground caverns. Because if you fall into water, you can very quickly drown. And I just thought, well, what would happen if I dig a hole underneath this lake? And then the water would drain down and flow down to the next level. And then we started running into lava. And I said out loud, oh, there's no way this game is going to do something, but let's drain this water into the lava and see what happens. And they combined to make obsidian blocks. And that was to me when I was like, oh, this game is actually very thoughtful in how all these things interact. I was very surprised. So I think that was before we started fighting harpies up in the air. That to me was like, oh, this game is actually I actually really started to like this game.

Like I remember there being, it wasn't like a light bulb moment, but there was the, I realized, you know, like, man, I hope Paul can play Terraria this afternoon. Like I hope we can kind of carve out some time to make sure we hop in and play. And that's when I was like, wait a minute, like I'm actually having fun in this game. And that's when I was like, wait a minute. I'm actually having fun in this game. And of course, I don't know if your kids were, but my kids were like, Daddy, how are you liking Terraria? How are you liking Terraria?

And I was like, well, we're still learning it, this and that. And then I remember we played, and then I kind of went to a kid. I was like, I think I like Terraria. And she was like, really? And I was like, yeah, it's starting to click, man. I don't know what it is, but I'm having fun. I'm actually looking forward to playing. Yeah, I expected such a shallow game, just in the fact that it's 2D, that I was very surprised at how complicated it was. And then once we fought a couple of bosses,

then I kind of started to understand, okay, so you go, you unlock these bigger and better bosses. We even started running into bosses naturally in the world. So we found a bunch of honeycombs. We start bashing all these honeycombs and they're dripping honey. And then all of a sudden, there's this queen bee that pops out. And do you remember what happened to you? Didn't I fall in? Oh, I drowned in the honey, didn't I? You drowned in the honey. Hey, if you're going to go, man, there's worse ways to go than drowning in honey. Yeah. So we're smashing all these honeycomb and you see all this honey kind of like flowing downhill and then you just

fell off a ledge into all of this honey and i i just could not stop laughing because you were just yelling that you were drowning in honey i did not expect either of us to ever start yelling that during a video game uh but this is the kind of stuff you just run into in terraria this is very much the sandbox experience. They give you the experiences and the random encounters and the things to run across that make it a good experience. And I think that is definitely amplified doing it multiplayer. I think single player, the game is still great. But I think for you and me, as we tend to say in all of these games, it really just

amps it up when when we were playing together uh like other neat items like you run around with a torch to see but then if you go underwater it extinguishes your torch but then i started finding glow sticks and you could chuck glow sticks and then those work underwater and so these are just the kinds of items you start running into in the game. Were there any other items in particular that you were a fan of? No, I mean, not necessarily. I just, you know, you kind of mentioned that there was a point where we started exploring the world.

We started surviving more. We were kind of digging and understanding why we were digging and what we were looking for. We found like a mine, like a mine cart rail underground, so that was kind of cool. We realized, oh, hey, there was a very large part where discovery actually took on a life of its own and was really neat to me. I remember we ran all the way on our world. It was to the left, and we found a castle with some guy that was you know, once my curse is lifted, I'll let you in. And then we were like, well, this guy let us into the castle because we started jumping down like some dungeon type stuff. And there was books everywhere.

And then out of the freaking blue, a gigantic skull comes flying onto the screen and just one shots both of us. And we were like, what was that? And then I'm like, what's the giant skull in the castle? And she's like, oh, you can't kill that guy. He's super hard. And then she's like,

well, you can, but, and that's the cool thing about this. Yeah. It's like, this game goes on and on and on. There's so much to it,

man. There is like, I still feel like as much as we played, I feel like we were, we're still like complete and total noobs to it. Oh yeah. You know? Absolutely. And that was the thing, like she was telling me, she's like, you know, that skull thing, she's like, that's the dungeon guardian. She's like, he's super, super hard. You're not really supposed to kill him, but you can kill

him even though you're not really supposed to, you have to like craft asphalt because it's the fastest material in the game. You have to run it from it's the fastest material in the game. You have to run it from one end of the world to the other so that as you're running along it, you're just cruising at like 90 miles an hour and you actually run faster than the Dungeon Guardian can fly.

And then you have to use a ranged weapon to shoot behind you as he's chasing you from one end of the world to the other. So it's like, but that's what's cool about this, man, is even though as you're exploring, you're like, oh, obviously that guy's like, he's a one-shot guy. I'm supposed to maybe help this guy with the curse or something. The game makes it to where it's like, dude, if you're creative and you're dedicated, fine, you can actually figure out a way to kill this guy and i love that aspect like i the more that we played the more i started realizing like why people like

this game so much and i mean i was looking at steam reviews and there's people with thousands and thousands of hours into this game and it's like i kind of see why now yeah this definitely only gets better the more you play it because you start to understand what you can do. I remember just like laughing and joking because I was up in these sky islands and I'm hitting the blocks and I'm adding cloud blocks into my inventory. And I'm like, I have no idea what this is going to do, but I'm afraid to just ditch it. And so you and I just have all of these cluttered chests because you have so many, I mean, I don't know how many items are in this game. I'm assuming thousands. And I was just afraid to throw anything away. Now I will say a major gripe of mine is the

crafting system. It is not intuitive at all in this game. In other games like Rust, you can bring up a craft screen and you can just see what you can craft and it's divided into categories. So I can click on furniture, chair. Okay, here's the mats that I need. But in Terraria, there are no lists of recipes. There is no real system other than it gives you a quick craft based on what is in your inventory, and it shows you what you can build. But if you're not holding a certain item, then you don't necessarily know that you could go build this great sword or a better pickaxe, because in the beginning, you don't know those recipes. And so you have to either find out from someone else or you have to start searching online. And I was probably spending half of my time on Google just searching Terraria pickaxe. Okay, how can I make a better

pickaxe? Because in the beginning, the mining was so incredibly slow. But then once I built like a gold pickaxe, now I'm going a lot quicker. But those are things that the game does not teach you whatsoever. Yeah, honestly, one of my biggest complaints, and I remember before we actually started playing, I remember watching my daughter play and seeing the inventory screen on this game, and I hated it. It is, I mean, honestly, it's like you pop up your inventory and 800 tiny little squares pop up on your screen. You've got your main inventory in the top left.

Then you have a whole, I didn't even know what it was on the right side of the screen. Apparently that's your equipped items and your vanity items and your cosmetic items and all that stuff. So there's, I don't know, there's 18 freaking squares on that side.

And then you've got your hot bar inventory and then it's just like the screen was so cluttered oh and the crafting then you have your scrollable crafting inventory on the left side it was just terrible like honestly to this day it's still terrible I don't know why

like why have that much stuff in your face and it's like you said, the crafting, there's no recipes. It's like you can stand near the forgeuitive inventory system in a game in a while. And especially in a game that's got like 20,000 different items in it. I just, I really wish there was a better way or a way to streamline it even. Like, give me clickable tabs. You know what I mean? So that I can click between like armor and weapons or whatever and that kind of stuff.

I mean, they did have a sort button, which was nice. But I don't, it's one of my bigger complaints about Terraria, to be honest with you. Yeah, it was also tough because some items you have to craft in front of the workbench or the anvil or whatever else. And we built all those things split and spread apart. So we would grab a bunch of items, stand in front of the anvil. Okay, if I'm going to make a weapon, it's probably the anvil, but now no weapons are popping up and you would just have to kind of figure it all out. And then as far as more of the late end game content, just like one or two minutes here, do you want to tell the people a little bit about kind of where this game goes the longer it goes on?

Yeah. So one of the things that we did also figure out was that there are bosses in this game. And I think honestly, the boss fights are a huge portion of Terraria. I mean, there's a lot of exploration and kind of discovery in that stuff, but it's the boss fights are really where it's at if you're into the combat portion of it. And we fought a few bosses, but there I mean, there is so many bosses in this game. And then apparently, once you beat the wall of flesh is where the game actually really takes off at that point. It's not like where the game ends. It's actually where the game starts because the bosses before that guy are really just kind of piddly mini bosses almost. But it's like you beat the wall of flesh, but then you get into the mechanical bosses and, you know,

ultimately like the moon Lord is the final boss. And those are some serious boss fights, man. These are not easy. Like this game, I always, I'm with you. I always assumed that this was a very simplistic game that was like made for kids. And it is not that at all. Like, I'm like, honestly, like, I'm sorry. I thought that, you know, because it is

not like these boss fights are tough. They require a ton of prep, a ton of questing. You have to go in like farm materials so that you can summon these bosses. Like, you know, you gotta, you gotta kill a specific creature to get a specific item, and then you have to go throw that item down into lava, which means obviously you have to dig way down in the ground, and then that will summon the boss. So it's like there's all this stuff going on that's complicated just to be able to summon a boss. And then if you lose, guess what? You got to go farm all that stuff again. There's a lot to it, man. There really is.

But I mean, ultimately, the final boss of the game is the Moon Lord. There's a lot to it, man. There really is. But I mean, ultimately, the final boss of the game is the Moon Lord. It's a cool fight. He's super tough. And then you can get into the mods. There's not enough time in the day to talk about all of the different mods that you can get. And then when you get mods, it's nuts man like i you know i i told my daughter kran i said look you know show me show me what's like the end game on this and it's it's insanity she's got weapons that like do 32 000 damage or like she fires them and they bounce all over the screen and you can't see a thing and it like one shots like the wall of flesh which is super hard when you fight them the first time and all that and then it's just like this is nuts

and then not to go on a rant but it's like i love some of the items in this game like the game has a sense of humor where she showed me she's got a dolphin machine gun and it's literally a dolphin that spits out bullets so when you pull it out like you've got a dolphin that spits out bullets. So when you pull it out, you've got a dolphin under your arm. You're just like shooting stuff. You've got a weapon that shoots out rainbow Nyan cats. Oh, yeah. It's hilarious to me that this stuff exists in this game.

And it shows me why people love it so much. I get to all all the people that said hey you guys got to talk about tray like i get it now and i didn't before and i love that fact that it's like okay like i just thought you guys like this dumb game that had horrible graphics you know or something like that and it's like wow okay, this is super great. Like, I see why it sold 30 million copies now. Yeah, it was kind of one of those hidden gems in plain sight that we knew about but didn't want to try. And I'm glad we got dragged into it. Yeah. So, yeah, it ended up being quite a bit of fun. One thing that did make me laugh when I was watching some YouTube videos, once I realized you really just had to search for Terraria tips, you can dig so far down that you go

into the underworld or hell. Yeah. And so one guy was talking about his hell-evator, which really made me laugh, which was just his straight shaft down into the underworld, and he would just fall. And it's so deep in this game that it was like two and a half minutes of just falling for him to reach the bottom levels of Terraria. So the game, even though it is 2D, it is still very expansive where you're exploring up in the air, you're exploring all the way down to the underground. There is a lot to do in this game. It's quite frankly a little bit overwhelming when you first jump in.

So, you know, that kind of ties up a little bit about our initial impressions playing Terraria. Josh, I know you pulled some community reviews. You want to share for us what some users on Steam thought about Terraria? I did. It's funny because there's a lot of good reviews and there's a lot of negative reviews, surprisingly. But yeah, I got quite a few here. So some of these are short, so I kind of picked out some extra ones. The first one's a positive review, and it's just very simple. 2D Minecraft is better than Minecraft. And that's what I thought. thought this was 2d minecraft at first i like legitimately i did and i mean i i get why people say it even though i don't think it's actually accurate at that point but i like that one because it's like hey 2d is better than actual minecraft

how funny yeah this next one is a negative review and it says me get game from friend me like friend me play game Me like game more than friend. Me play for 400 hours. Me earn every achievement. Me see game added more achievements. Me sad. That was an overarching theme that I saw from a lot of people was like, hey, I love this game.

I finally beat it. I did everything there was to do in this game. Oh, they just released a DLC and now I have another 400 hours that I need to put into this game to do it all. Darn those free content updates that ReLogic keeps giving.

This one actually made me laugh out loud because I know that you and I are both going to relate to this one. It's a positive review. It says, I think I'll let that bunny live. No Terraria player ever. No, I slice up anything that moves in this game. I don't even care. I actually picked on you one time because there was a squirrel or a bunny. Oh, you killed that owl. I killed the owl. You sucker, man. I still can't believe you killed that owl. I forgot about

that. That's what I got mad at you for. Because I get the squirrels, like, okay, they're on the ground and they're annoying, but we had an owl come and perch on our door on our base. You just opened the door and slaughtered that owl. Mercilessly. I think we still had a one-story base, and it just was sitting on our roof for a solid three minutes, and we were going to leave. And I kind of jokingly just said, I'm going to kill that owl. I thought the owl was probably going to fly away. No, I just sliced it up. So yeah, all the squirrels on the ground, the bunnies, I just can't help it. If I'm running around, I'm going to hit anything that moves. That one made me laugh though, because I was like, okay. And I mean, we were just killing a lot, but I liked that owl,

Paul. They're not to be trusted. Next one is positive. It says, every time you go mining, a bat will knock you into lava. Every time you build a house, a bat will knock you into lava. Every time you try to do anything productive, the bleeping bats will knock you into the bleeping lava it's it's very true and also i experienced that with the underground boy i don't remember what the enemies are called the ones that like the worms that just fly yeah they come out of the underground and they hit you blocks i swear they always came right when I was on the edge of lava, and they would knock me into lava. Alright.

Next one is a negative review. It says, I'm sorry, but I think you clicked in the wrong place. The add to cart button is that way. What are you waiting for? Alright, and then last one, because this one hits home for both of us as well.

Positive review. First hours of playing Terraria. What the heck is that? What the heck does this do? What the heck did I just do? Wait, why did that happen? Who is this guy? How do I insert something here?

How did I do that? Times a thousand. You just say all those things a thousand times yeah so that was another one i was like man this was a hundred percent us in the beginning hours of this game so um and then all right one last one because this one was funny too uh all right this was a negative review the guide first. First, you should build a house. Me. Okay, done. The Guide. Now you should craft some gear. Me. Took a while. Now what? The Guide. Start digging.

Me. Um, alright. Me. I found and used some heart crystal thingy. The Guide. Good for you. Now start digging. Me. I've been digging for like three hours now and collected a lot of ore. Now what? The guide.

I said bleeping dig, boy! Dig until you uninstall! Me. Alright, I can take a hint. That's so funny that you picked that review given my intro, because I was like, how am I going to introduce Terraria? And I just thought, there's so much digging. I have to just pull out some kind of joke about all the digging in this game. Yeah. That's great. So that one was funny too.

All right. So then as we always do, we like to kind of guess what we think the overall rating for a game is. And taking a page out of your book, Paul, I wrote down my guess and then I looked up what the actual answer is. So what do you think the percent positive or negative reviews like? Where do you think it falls?

All right. So this one I'm cheating slightly only because I have looked at this game up in the past, like when James bought it, and I couldn't help but notice the rating. I know it at least used to be incredibly high as of a few years ago. I'm going to go super high on this one. I'm going to say 97%. Okay, my guess was 94%. I also thought that it was going to be highly reviewed. So you are the winner, winner, chicken dinner, buddy, because it is 97% on the money.

97, huh? Now here's the thing. I don't think I've ever guessed one on the dot. Here's the thing. I looked through a ton, I mean a ton of negative reviews because there's not a lot of them. And do you know what legitimately like 99% of the negative reviews are? No tutorial?

Nope. It is, why are you looking at negative reviews are? No tutorial? Nope. It is, why are you looking at negative reviews? Go buy this game. Oh, that's funny. Honestly, this might be. I mean, it's a 97% with like 10,000 negative reviews. And 90% of those negative reviews are, stop looking at negative reviews.

This game is amazing. Go buy the game. Quit looking at negative reviews. Oh, that's funny Go buy the game. Quit looking at negative reviews. Oh, that's funny. Like, legitimately, this might be the best reviewed game I've ever seen. How funny. All right. Well, a winner is me.

That is true. You hit it on the head, man. Don't you win like a special prize, like a dollar or something? Yeah, it's double the winning prize that we normally get. So, all right. So, 97 cents. And then, yeah, okay, gotcha. I'll put it on your tab. All right, let's hit that music and introduce the next segment.

Hey, baby. If you were a Transformer, you'd be Optimus Fine. Welcome to Make Love, Marry Murder. This is a segment on the show where we take a look at the game we're covering this week and we rate it. Is this a game that you are going to just make love and then ditch it? Are you going to marry or are you going to murder this game? So, Josh, how about you go first? What are you going to do with Terraria?

This was a tale of two games for me. Initially, I was with you in the first two, maybe three hours of this game. I would have murdered it. Like I was not having fun with it at all. I thought people are crazy for wanting us to play this, but I'll be honest, man, this game, there's, there's so much to do. There's so much to do there's so much to like there i have some complaints about it but it's a mary there's so much you can do in this game like i'll be honest i'll say this like in all genuineness i don't know that we will play a lot more terraria just because of the podcast and we're trying to you know we try to play new games. And we will find games that click with our entire friend group. No spoilers. But maybe we are playing one right now. You know what I mean? I don't know that I will ever sink 400 or 500 hours into Terraria.

But hands down, I can 100% appreciate this game now. It's a Mary. Anybody that is out there that hasn't played it, I think, is going to enjoy this game. Now, it's a Mary. Anybody that is out there that hasn't played it, I think is going to enjoy this game. I thought I was going to hate this game, and I wound up really, really liking it. So I don't see any way to give it less than that in my mind. Yeah, I'm with you 100%. It is a Mary. If you're looking for bang for your buck, look no further than this one. It's so easy to sink hundreds of hours into this game. Like you said, just go look at the reviews and see how many of them have a thousand hours or more into it. And I would definitely say it's a

Mary. The game is only 10 bucks full price. You can buy a four pack for 30 so if you had a couple friends and you all want to split it it's even cheaper and it's definitely well worth the price i don't see how you could possibly ever spend ten dollars to go to the movies and then turn around and say terraria is not worth 10 bucks i mean it is well worth that price you will absolutely get your money's worth it's a m Mary all the way. Yeah. Well, let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up.

All right, Josh, I'm taking a look at our leaderboard for those who are joining us for the first time. The leaderboard is where we take a look at all of the games that those who are joining us for the first time, the leaderboard is where we take a look at all of the games that we have previously covered on the show. We try to rank them in order. Right now we have a list of 1 to 36. Our highest rated game is Overwatch, and then it goes all the way down to our lowest rated game, Overcooked 2. And then even though these games are in very different genres, they are very different prices, we still try to rank them all against each other.

All right. So taking a look at the list here, Josh, I know we both gave it a Mary, but I feel like it's maybe a little bit lower on the Mary scale of what we normally look at. So we have Black Ops Cold War at 10. We have Far Cry 5 at 13. We have Star Wars Squadrons at 15. Are you thinking somewhere in this range? Are you thinking higher, lower?

I'm looking at the game that stands out to me that I think is very close to this, even though they're vastly different games, is like Deep Rock Galactic is kind of that, like, I feel like that's like the bar that it needs to be close to. Raft is another one. Like, honestly, like I could see, you know, it being in that level of Raft. I don't know. Like, what do you think? Because I'm kind of in that 14 to maybe 16 range, somewhere around there. Yeah, I think you're very close. I would maybe just bump it slightly higher. I would rather play No Man's Sky than Terraria, personally. That's just a personal preference thing. I like the animation, and I like the sci-fi aspect of No Man's Sky. I would still rather play Far Cry 5

than Terraria, but then I would pop Terraria right below that. I would put Terraria above Raft, Squadrons, and D-Brock. I kind of feel like those are all kind of in that same range. I'm with you, man. I think Raft was a lot of fun. We had a really good time playing Raft, but I feel like Terraria is going to be more long-term fun i feel like terraria is gonna give you more stories to like laugh about with your friends you know what i mean like that kind of stuff um i i could see putting it above far cry five i think that's just a matter of preference to be honest like whether people like games that involve shooters and stuff like that but i think 14 14 is perfect, to be honest with you. With the caveat that if a shooter is not necessarily your genre, then Terraria is probably even higher than that. But for us, I think 14 is right on the money.

Oh, yeah. That was my initial instinct. So it's interesting how you and I thought so similarly on this. So even though that might sound a little bit low, being number 14 out of now 37 games, I think that's because we have just favored covering very good games or games that are suggested to us. So on the whole, I think most of the games we cover, we do at least enjoy. There's very few on the list that we dislike. So Terraria, absolutely worth checking out. Just know you're going to have to do your homework. You're going to have to watch those YouTube tutorials. You're going to have to read some guides. You're going to have to look up recipes, but I think it is well worth the effort.

Sometimes I poke fun at games and say, why should you have to put in work before it gets good? But I think this one is enough of a gem that it's worth the effort. Yeah, 100%. And something too is a lot of times Trary goes on sale and you can actually pick it up for like $5. They've probably figured they've made their money at this point. But 100%, if you're one of the few people out there that hasn't played it, it's actually worth checking out. Don't let the graphics fool you, because I did. That was my main hang-up in the beginning, was I was like, I don't want to play that 8-bit cheesy-looking game. There's so many better games out there. And happily surprised. So the listeners, hey, man, you guys did a good job.

Appreciate that. Yeah, great suggestion. I'm glad that we played it. And I think that's all that we have here for this episode today on Terraria. So we hope you guys enjoyed the show. Please come check us out on social media. Come say hi. Come let us know what other games to cover. There's probably some gems that we aren't really considering, and we definitely weigh the opinion of our listeners.

So come message us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, at MultiplayerPod. And you can also find us on Patreon if you'd like to come support the show, starting at $5 a month. You can find us at MultiplayerSquad.com. And also check us out on YouTube. We are starting to release video content there. So come subscribe and you will find out as Todd continues to release videos there. The name of our YouTube channel is MultiplayerPodcast.

And then we will be back with another show on Thursday. And then the following Monday will be a bonus round. So we will see you guys on Thursday. Can I get those wings now, Paul? Now that I'm done with Terraria. Can you give me the wings, man? You can have the wings. You can have all of it. I just want the wings, man. All right.

See you, everybody.