Early Hardmode: Picking A Class

Discover the four main classes in Terraria's early Hardmode: Melee, Ranged, Magic, and Summoning. Learn their strengths, weaknesses, and difficulty to pick the best one for you.

Now that you're in Hardmode, you need to pick a class to play. The reason is that all armor and accessories in Hardmode will be giving damage bonuses to a specific type of damage. This means that you'll benefit greatly from sticking to a singular damage type. You don't need to do this, as some people enjoy dual-classing. But it will make things considerably easier and ask you to farm less. Four classes exist:

1. Melee. Melee is based around the use of swords that also shoot projectiles and the use of the yo-yo weapon type which will be paired with the yo-yo bag.
2. Ranged. Ranged is based around the use of bows and guns with arrows and bullets respectively. It also features some throwing weaponry (though rarely used). It's a very safe class.
3. Magic. Magic is based around magic weapons that do many types of things. Shoot projectiles, create pillars that damage enemies, so many things to list. Lots of fun combinations. They use mana for everything.
4. Summoning. Summoning involves the use of whips and summoning staffs. Whips deal summon damage and tell your summons to attack a target. Summoning staffs will summon invincible creatures that attack enemies for you.

The difficulty chain, from easiest to hardest, is:

Ranged > Summoning > Magic > Melee.

Ranged is easiest because it deals a lot of damage and you have total control over what is targeted. You can also lower enemy defense with Ichor Bullets/Arrows, which will further increase your damage (though you can do this without being ranged by just having a ranged weapon and Ichor ammunition).

Summoning is the second easiest because at this point, you have the ability to increase your summoning slots. You only have one summon slot naturally, but you can increase it with the Bewitching Table buff station and through the use of accessories and armor. The summons are invincible and deal constant damage. Whips will increase your summon damage and make the summon AI better.

Magic is the second hardest because of the nature of weapons and the use of mana. To use magic weapons properly, you need accessories that reduce mana usage and you need mana potions to keep up high damage output. You also need to get the magic weapons that are good to use and you'll need 2-3 different weapons that do different things.

Melee is the hardest because of how it works. Melee weapons that shoot projectiles are cool, but the projectiles are limited in range and in firing frequency. They also may or may not pierce enemies. This puts you into danger very often. Yo-yos offer a ranged alternative, but they're harder to use and require the yo-yo bag accessory.

Now that you've picked a class, we can continue onto progressing through early Hardmode.