Overview
Just a basic “Getting Started” Guide to calamity. Doesn’t go in depth on what to do after you get started tho.
Introduction
So you want to play calamity, but you’re lost on what you need to download for it to work? Or maybe you don’t understand how to get started? Perhaps you even just want to know the basics of how calamity progresses? Hopefully this guide will help you out!
I’m TrainerRobo, and I’m somewhat qualified to write this guide because I’ve done a good handful of playthroughs as every class (except for mage, so I can’t help you there), some in Revengeance, Some in Death mode (more info on that later)
You may be asking, however, what even is Calamity, and why should I play it?
Calamity is a complete expansion of base Terraria, including a plethora of new bosses, amazing music, a whole new class, and a whole new section of the game: Post Moon-Lord. If you enjoy the combat of Terraria, but wish it was more difficult and fulfilling with more variety, you’ll love Calamity. If you’re a baby gamer who wants to play Terraria like it’s Minecraft, this may not be the mod for you. Calamity bosses have much more of an emphasis on successfully dodging attacks rather than being able to facetank them, so it requires you to learn the attack patterns and learn how to dodge them
Anyways, with all of that out of the way sit back, relax, and enjoy the guide!
Mods to Download
So the first thing you want to do if you want to play Calamity is download the mod itself. Calamity is split into TWO different mods. One of them has the game, the other includes the music. You COULD just download calamity, but the music is a huge part of the experience. Up to you. Required mods are obviously the ones required to play calamity, but I will also list some optional mods you can also install. They’re listed in order of importance, and I’ll give a brief explanation as to what they do. Some are QOL, some add NPCs, but most exist to help ease the grind of Terraria to get you into the fun part of Calamity
Calamity Mod (No Calamity Music):
The bread, butter, and entree of calamity. Can’t play without it.
Calamity Mod Music:
The dessert with a cherry on top. There’s no point in playing without Dokuro’s astounding soundtrack, so I’m listing it under required.
Magic Storage:
Magic storage makes storage in Terraria a breeze. Gone are the days of chest upon chests upon chests to store all of your crap. It adds searchable storage and a searchable crafting interface where you can put all of your crafting stations into it. No more room for crafting, and all of your stuff is stored in one easy to access place. All in all, one of the most essential QOL mods in my opinion, I never play without it.
Boss Checklist:
It’s a checklist… for bosses. It shows you the intended boss progression of the mod, along with telling you how to spawn each boss. You can also keep track of your death count against said bosses. Very important to have, but not required.
Recipe Browser:
Lets you search up recipes… Yup.
AlchemistNPC Lite:
Adds a bunch of super super helpful NPCs into the game, including one you can buy treasure bags from, one to buy building blocks, a few you can buy potions from, and most importantly, the COMBINATION BUFF SELLER. Another one I never play without, but it’s listed lower because it’s not exactly essential, just super nice to have.
Luiafk:
Lui adds a bunch of QOL changes to really help ease the grind, chock full of configurable setting to adjust it to how you want to play. Some key features include craftable arena platform and skybridge builders, unlimited buffs (stack 30 buffs in your inventory for them to never go away), unlimited ammunition, and much more. Unlimited recall potion is super super useful!
Cheat Sheet:
Cheat sheet is exactly what it sounds like; a tool designed for cheating. However, it does have uses outside of that! One of the most boring parts of Calamity is extensive arena building in the late game (Fabsol, please make an existing arena spawn in the dungeon I am begging you), and Cheat sheet has this amazing Paint tool to help make that MUCH easier. You can also use it to give yourself items if you cant be bothered to grind for them, or to give yourself infinite money if you don’t feel like farming bosses for hours for 100 platinum. No judgement here.
Fargo’s Mutant Mod:
NPC mod that adds a few different NPC’s to help you out, focused on boss spawners, event starters, and miniboss spawners. Also adds a few recipes to help eliminate some grind.
VeinMiner:
Lets you set a hotkey to mine veins of ore instantly. Doesn’t add anything else, so there’s no point in not having it.
AutoReforge:
Sets up a system to automatically reforge an item into a selected modifier. It’s not instant and still costs money for each reforge, but makes it a lot faster and impossible to accidentally skip over it.
Calamity Mod Extra Music:
Just some extra music for Calamity that replaces vanilla themes that were unchanged. I’m not a huge fan of a lot of it, but that snowstorm theme and skeletron theme make sure it’s never taken out of my mods list.
Reduced Mining:
Adds a chance for ores to double when mining. Another one to help reduce the grind.
Which Mod Is This From? (WMITF):
Shows you what mod an item is from. Simple as that.
unless you want to experience broken progression. Fargo’s soul with calamity DLC should be fine, but I’ve never tried it so i can’t vouch for it. Stick to just calamity for the best experience.
Set Up Your Hotkeys
Simple enough. Once you have your mods downloaded, go into your controls and add some hotkeys.
Some recommendations are…
Rage and Adrenaline (Calamity) Set up to side mouse buttons if you have them, if not set them on very easy to reach keys
Normality Relocator (Calalmity) Set up to a fairly easy to reach key, as this is used a lot Post-Moon Lord.
Armor set bonus (Calamity) Set up to a fairly easy to reach key (Mine is set up to Y)
Optional mod hotkeys are also important!
Boss checklist should be set up on a harder to reach key (I have mine set on P)
Recipe browser should also be set up on a hard to reach key (Mine is on [ )
Veinminer should be set up to a somewhat easy to reach key, such as ~
Veinminer Whitelist and Blacklist should be on hard to reach keys (Mine are on Page up and Page Down respectively)
LuiAFK menu should be set up on, yet again, a hard to reach key (mine is on ] )
Do take a more in depth look at your hotkeys and set them up. In calamity, if anything needs a specific hotkey, it will tell you in the item’s description.
Making your world
You have all your mods installed, and you’re ready to rock. Awesome! Let’s cover a few basic things about making your world, then we’ll jump into getting started.
Don’t pick small. Stuff might generate weirdly. The best experience is on a large world, but I usually just play on medium, so it’s your preference.
World evil is a pretty important choice. Despite the fact some of the optional mods include ways to get materials from the world evil you don’t choose, there’s 2 new bosses intended to be fought after EoW/BoC that are exclusive to your world choice. Crimson has a worm fight with a floating hive, and corruption has a sort of BoC-esque boss. The choice is yours on which one sounds more interesting, but I will say, I do prefer crimson. However, my one suggestion…
If you’re intending to play Melee, go Crimson. The drop from the new crimson boss is super helpful for melee.
Calamity features two new difficulty settings:
Revengeance mode (Shortened to Rev in future parts of this guide for brevity) and Death mode
These aren’t listed on the difficulty selection of your world. They are accessed in game as soon as you start your world. However, they require you to select expert as your difficulty to be available, so these will be discussed here.
I highly recommend playing your first playthrough on Rev mode. Rev mode adds exclusive drops, and adjusts the AI of vanilla bosses to be much more enjoyable and different from the normal experience. Most importantly, it adds two new mechanics: Rage and Adrenaline
Rage builds up when taking damage, and can be used via hotkey to deal extra damage, alongside having the chance to give you a buff that boosts your max health called absolute rage. Adrenaline builds up when a boss is alive and you don’t take damage. Using it via hotkey makes you deal more damage (more than rage mode) and is key to successful boss fights. Both of these mechanics add depth to the gameplay.
All in all, I consider Rev to be the definitive way to play Calamity.
Death Mode features even harder bosses, crazy blood moons, and stronger regular enemies. It’s harder than Rev, but I find it more enjoyable. You probably shouldn’t play on this mode if it’s your first playthrough, but I can’t stop you if you decide to.
Choosing a Class
Your world is made and you’re finally in the world! You’re almost ready to start, but there’s just one more pressing matter…
It’s time to decide your class.
Unlike vanilla Terraria, in Calamity it’s much more important to pick your class from the get-go. This is because there’s a leveling system that improves your stats as a certain class the more you use the weapons in it. I’ll go over the 5 options briefly, and be aware that these inlcude my opinions on the class that I’ve developed through my playthroughs.
The most basic class in terraria, but a very fun one, especially for your first playthrough of Calamity. High defense from your armor and extremely fun and iconic weapons lead to this being a very good beginner class. Melee is fairly strong throughout the game, but I find it struggles specifically during one boss fight almost at the very end of the game, so be prepared for a tough fight there. Late game, your weapons will wind up feeling like you’re playing mage without mana, so all in all very fun, and a solid choice.
Ranger is a long ranged class focusing on bows, guns, rocket launchers, and flame throwers. Slightly weaker defense from armor leads to being slightly more squishy, but this is made up for simply for the fact you won’t be as close to bosses as you would be for melee. Ranger is probably the most consistent class, being fairly strong throughout the entire run. This is personally one of my favorite classes, so I would definitely give it a try if it sounds interesting!
I’ll be real, I don’t know anything about calmity mage, so im gonna copy it straight from the wiki…
“The magic class is fragile but highly varied in attack style, often utilizing special mechanics such as homing and area-of-effect damage. It is held back by reliance on mana, which regenerates very slowly unless the Mana Regeneration buff is in effect. Mages must craft or purchase mana potions if they wish to use high-mana cost weapons for extended periods of time.”
if that sounds interesting to you, be my guest.
Summoner is quite a strange one. If you’re coming in from 1.4, you’re gonna notice things were quite different before whips, tag damage, and semi-consistent summon damage. Summoners are a low defense class that utilizes summoned minions to deal damage to enemies. Unlike vanilla, there is a wide variety of summon weapons to choose from, and a lot of them are very fun to use. However, summoner tends to be the most inconsistent class in calamity, as many summon weapons can’t keep up with the fast pace of some bosses. That doesn’t mean its a bad class by any means, but keep in mind it can tend to be more difficult. Very useful for learning to dodge well, and yet again another one of my favorite classes.
Ah yes, the new class. Thrower has been fully fleshed out into the Rogue class. Rogue is somewhat similar to melee, but it focuses on thrown weapons. Rogues have a unique mechanic called “stealth”, which can be charged by not moving. When fully charged, many Rogue weapons will have unique and powerful effects, but these are hard to pull off sometimes. Rogue feels slightly weaker than melee in pre-hardmode, but picks back up in hardmode and winds up being a super enjoyable class. However, at a certain point post-Moon Lord, Rogue falls off quite hard and becomes a very challenging class. Overall though, very fun and enjoyable until that point.
Getting Started in Your World
Finally, time to play!
The first thing you’re going to want to do is pull up a wiki page or two. One is incredibly helpful for giving you an idea on some of the weapons, accessories, and armor available to you at any given point in the game. The other tells you the intended progression of the mod in more depth than just “Fight boss A, then B”, such as how to farm for certain drops essential to the early game.
Class Setup Page
[link]
Progression Page
[link]
Once you have those open, take a peep at your inventory. You should have your basic tools, an item called a “Starter Bag”, an item called “Iron Heart”, and an item called “Revengeance”
Iron Heart disables healing during bosses and is intended for a more challenging run. I wouldn’t enable it the first time you play.
Pop open the starter bag, and (hopefully) activate Revengeace. Inside your starter bag is a basic weapon for each class to get you started, along with items called “Death” and “Defiled Rune”.
Death activates Death Mode, the difficulty higher than Rev.
Defiled Rune makes it so enemies can critically hit you and disables wing flight, with the advantage of rare drops from enemies becoming slightly more common and makes enemies drop more money when killed. Can be used when farming a rare drop from an enemy, farming for early gold, or alternatively could be used during a challenge run (Death Defiled summoner was my hardest run yet. Pain, torture even). Note that this does NOT increase treasure bag drops iirc.
Optionally, at a demon/crimson altar, you can build an item called “Armageddon” for free
Armageddon makes it so bosses one shot you no matter what, but if they’re killed they drop 10 treasure bags. Useful later on for farming treasure bags from bosses, but considerably increases the difficulty (obviously). Can be toggled on and off. I wouldn’t kjeep it on all the time, but it does have some usefulness later on in the run so I would build it and only grab it when you need it.
Thanks for asking, me. Once you’ve done that, familiarize yourself with your starting weapon. Melee should start with a copper broadsword, ranger gets a copper bow, mage gets an early game staff, summoner gets the squirrel spire staff, and rogue gets a stack of Throwing bricks. First things first, just like vanilla, you’re going to build some basic housing. Get a work bench and furnace, and a couple of houses thrown down and you should be golden. Night time can be scary on Rev or death, so try to stay in your house (If you’re on death, zombies can break into your home at night even when it’s not a blood moon, so keep that in mind). Once you have your houses finished and it’s not nighttime, go get some iron/lead to make an anvil, and try to find a few life crystals underground as well.
Priority now should be getting your first armor set and getting a new weapon. You can do these in either order, but I prefer getting the armor so I’ll talk about that first. Your first armor set will be Wulfrum Armor. You may have noticed the silver and green robots wandering the world during the day, and you’ve probably killed one by now and gotten Wulfrum Scraps. You use those and another ingredient from certain wulfrum drones to craft the armor, but you can also build weapons out of them that are better than the copper counterparts you started with, especially for summoner. The other ingredient is an Energy Core which spawn from certain Wulfrum drones that tend to show up on the outer thirds of the map. They’re a small wulfrum cone on the ground with a wavy antenna, and when you get near them they create an electrical aura around themselves and you. Kill those for the cores, collect enough scraps, and build the armor for your class (the only difference between class pieces is the helmet)
Now, you should make an attempt at getting a better weapon. Pull up the class guide page and check out some of the weapons and sort of pick one of them or make a few to see what you like the best. My recommendations for each class (aside from mage, as again i have never played mage) are as follows
Melee: Go to the underground jungle to get the Amazon, then use the amazon to farm for the Cnidarian or Seashell Boomerang (More info on how to do that in the next section). I prefer the Cnidarian, but the seashell boomerang is also fun. Just make sure you craft the melee variant of the boomerang if you go for that
Ranger: All of the listed weapons are solid choices and I change which one i start with frequently. Opal striker is a neat little gun, and the seabow is all around a good early game bow (look at the next section for how to farm materials for the seabow). Minishark is the Minishark, so you already know what that’s like, hopefully.
Summoner: Make the Wulfrum Controller, and use that to farm for the Beladonna Spirit Staff and Frost Blossom Staff. Slime Staff is a viable option and it should be craftable in calamity, so you could also go for that.
Rogue: Make the Golden Dagger/Gleaming Dagger to help you when you’re trying to get the materials for the Crystalline. The Crystalline is by far the best early game rogue weapon.
You use that armor set and weapon to farm for a better armor set (and in some cases a better weapon!)
In the Underground desert, there’s an enemy called a Cnidrion. These are large, dried up looking seahorses that spit water on you. They can be a bit hard to find sometimes, but killing them drops Seashells, starfish, coral, and Victory Shards. You use all 4 of those to craft something called Victide Bars. Victide bars are used to craft the next armor set, unsurprisingly called Victide Armor. It will take a few Cnidrion kills, but with the weapons and armor I told you about, those should be fairly easy to get!
Make sure to set up all of your hotkeys for your mods, especially Boss Checklist and Recipe Browser. If you decided to play with Magic Storage, getting that set up should also be one of your first priorities. It can be confusing at first, but it’s worth it. Basically, make a Storage Heart first, then a storage crafting interface, then finally some storage units. Storage units can be upgraded further down the line. Keep in mind these require gems (The storage heart requires Diamonds!) so it may take a while. One thing to keep in mind, is early bosses will all drop something called a “Shadow Diamond”, which can be used in replacement of diamonds for magic storage purposes. However, if you’re also using AlchemistNPC lite, I’ve found a bit of cheese to help you get those gems (and an infinite supply of early money) much more easily…
The Architect NPC should be one of the first NPCs to move in from AlchNPCs, and he’s the key to our cheese. Step one of the cheese will be to get an extractinator. Some mods add a recipe for the extractinator, including some of the ones I listen under optional mods. Once you have your extractinator, go talk to your Architect NPC. He sells… Silt. Not only is it silt, but it’s silt at a price where using it in your extractinator will 9 times out of 10 wind up giving you more money from selling the gems and ores. This can also be used to get the gems for your magic storage and get you a good supply of all the pre-hardmode ores available. Very worthwile to do just for getting magic storage set up easily.
Fighting your first bosses
This is the last real section of the guide, and It’s finally time for the best part of the mod. Boss fights!
This won’t go too far in depth about the bosses, but I’ll give you a general arena guide and tell you about important drops from the bosses.
One important thing to note, for the bosses I’m about to discuss, it’s highly recommended you get Hermes Boots and a Cloud in a bottle. If you haven’t found any in your time underground, they are both made craftable, so use recipe browser to find the recipes or look them up on the wiki.
Without further adieu, It’s time to fight your first boss.
While optional, you may as well fight the King to test your weapons and armor!
For arena, I recommend a long platform across the start of your world, about 15 blocks tall and about as long as your starting forest biome. Just run across your mini skybridge and attack King Slime as he chases you. in Rev+, he has a new attack, where the jewel on his crown comes out and shoots at you. As long as you’re moving away from king slime, the projectiles from the crown jewel shouldn’t ever hurt you. This is a very straightforward fight. When he’s slain, he drops his treasure bag and has the usual drops, along with a new one in Rev+: the Crown Jewel. It boosts life regen, and when being damaged from a damaging debuff, it increases your defense by 10 and will increase your life regen by an addition 2. It’s a solid accessory, but not useful unless you’re fighting a boss witha damaging debuff.
To make the spawner for the desert scourge you will need Sand, Cactus, Antlion Mandibles, and Stormlion Mandibles at a demon altar. If you farmed for Victide, you should already have a bit of all of these.
Arena should be one platform above the desert, as high as you can go without leaving the desert when standing on top of it, as it will despawn if you’re out of the desert for too long. Spawn him on the ground, then get on top of your arena platform, and attack him from above. The only way the scourge or any of his spawns can get to you when your arena is that high is when he does his upwards charge attack, which is indicated by a roar. It may take a few tries, but you should be able to kill him using this arena setup fairly easily. From his treasure bag, he drops a couple of okay weapons, but there is a rare Rogue weapon called the Dune Hopper that you should farm for if you’re playing Rogue, and the regular Rogue drop (Scourge of the Desert) from the Desert Scourge can help you do that. You’ll also find a drop in Expert+ called the Ocean Crest, which gives you water breathing, which is a huge help for a new biome you will be visiting soon.
For the Eye, you’ll use the same arena you used for King Slime, and follow the same idea. It can’t hurt you at all when you’re running on the arena platform. The eye has a new attack once it enters it’s second phase, where it’ll line up with you and then charge straight at you from the side. This can be dodged easily with a well timed jump, but having Cloud in a Bottle makes this attack trivial. Once the Eye is slain, you’ll notice a new Drop from his Treasure bag on Rev+: the Counter Scarf. The Counter Scarf is an alternative dash to the Shield of Cthulhu, which boosts certain stats when successfully dodging attacks. You can choose to use either one, but you need to at least use one of them.
You’ve killed your first 3 bosses! Now, you can go explore a new biome added in Calamity, the Sunken Sea. This is located underneath the underground desert, and your Victide armor and Ocean Crest from the Desert Scourge will help you to explore. There’s a miniboss down here to kill and some materials you might want to grab. But, this is where the guide ends. From here, Keep an eye on the wiki pages and Boss Checklist to know what to do next 🙂
Outro
There you have it! That’s the beginners guide to Calamity. I’m sorry this doesn’t go further on into the playthrough, but my intention with this guide is solely to help those who are considering playing get started. I hope you enjoyed reading, and be sure to comment if theres anything you disagree with or anything that I put incorrectly.