Is day-one DLC (like Mass Effect 3's "From Ashes") a crime against gamer-manity, or simply an unoffensive, optional bonus? When are developers "allowed" to stop updating a game like Terraria and step away? Evan, Tyler, Logan, Josh and Gavin tackle these topics on this week's episode. In beta talk, Josh and Gavin also give a generous account of what they did and didn't like about the Guild Wars 2 beta; Evan and Logan reflect on the multiplayer and single-player Mass Effect 3 beta.

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The developers at Re-Logic have decided wrap up their work on Terraria and move onto other projects. Developer, Redigit broke the news to fans on the Terraria blog, saying that he wants to spend his time off "recharging and bettering myself as both a programmer and game designer."

"I have learned a lot from working on Terraria and plan on using what I've learned, building upon it, and moving forward with another, even better project," he says. He's also about to have a baby, which tends to get in the way of coding. And sleep. The other member of Re-Logic, Finn "Tiy" Brice has already moved elsewhere to work on Starbound.

Sad news for Terraria fans, but it's had a great run. Terraria was promising on release, but grew enormously with major updates after launch. One patch made it 150% more difficult, another one at Christmas added evil snowmen and many more added new monsters, biomes and spectacular weapons. At £6 / $10, it's probably one of the best value games on Steam right now. If you like the idea of exploring the tunnels of a huge, randomly generated world, finding "megashark" machine guns and taking on giant evil eyeballs, you should check it out.

It's Christmas on Sunday! That means we can expect lots of Christmas events to start appearing in our favourite games. Terraria proves that you don't need the third dimension to get into the Xmas spirit. From now until December 25 newly generated worlds will contain new snow biomes. You'll be able to make houses out of candy, add festive Christmas lights and engage in the traditional Yuletide pastime of smashing a snow globe to summon an army of evil snowmen wielding Tommy guns. What, what?

The snowman army works a bit like the goblin army. They will attack from the East or the West once you've smashed the snow globe. Snow Balla types will throw snowballs, Snowman Gangstas will bring Tommy guns and Mister Stabby jump towards you with a shiv. If you defeat the snowman army, there's a chance that Santa Claus will move into your house. Christmas is weird in Terraria.

The update also makes some bug fixes and performance improvements, and fixes overly sadistic clowns. Check out the patch notes below for an overview, originally posted by Re-Logic on the Terraria Forums.

Bug Fixes / Performance

Reduced the amount of RAM needed to run Terraria.
Added an option to turn backgrounds off.
Improved the automatic game quality adjuster.
Lighting update won’t skip as much on lower quality levels.
Items dropped on death for hardcore and mediumcore characters will retain their conditions.
Space Gun now has a value.
Water Bolt can now have conditions.
Diving Helmet now works correctly.
Walls now correctly show behind Glass Blocks.
You can now untie bound NPC’s with Autopause enabled.
Mediumcore and hardcore players will drop their cursor item on death.
Coins held on the cursor will correctly be dropped on death.
Dryad’s Corruption and Hallow status numbers are correct.
Wyverns are less common and will be less likely to spawn near the ground.
Mana Flower's price has been increased.
Fixed the shadow glitch of trippy lighting.
Music Boxes no longer dupe when placed on platforms.
Fixed an issue that caused stacked coins to go missing from chests during multiplayer.
Cursed Torch item now emits light in water.
Harpoon can now be reforged.
Lighting will now be set to Retro instead of crashing if Terraria is unable to switch to the new lighting mode.
Keybindings will no longer sometimes be set to "None" automatically.
Bombs thrown by clowns will now show that the wall has been destroyed in multiplayer.
Crystal Shards now give off light in retro and white color mode.
Hallowed Armor only has graphical effects with the helmet.
Players now have hair under their hats.
Statues no longer turn into Armor Statues when they are smashed from the top.
Clowns only throw bombs when their target is alive.

 
Items

Added Candy Cane Blocks & Walls.
Added Green Candy Cane Blocks & Walls.
Added Snow Blocks.
Added Snow Bricks & Walls.
Added Red, Green, and Blue Lights.
Added Presents that are dropped by monsters during the holiday season.
Added Snow Globe.
Added Santa’s Outfit.

 
NPC’s

Added Snowman Gangsta.
Added Mister Stabby.
Added Snow Balla.
Added Santa Claus.

 
World

Snow biomes will always be created during world gen during the holiday season. There is a 1 in 3 chance for snow biomes to be created during world gen during the rest of the year.

 

The picture above is an image from Steamgraph showing the player stats for Modern Warfare 3 and Terraria. Terraria is shown in yellow, Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer is in blue and Modern Warfare 3 singleplayer is in red. As you can see, it's been neck and neck since December 1. That's when the huge Terraria 1.1 update landed, adding new items, monsters, bosses and biomes.

The stats were helped along by a Terraria sale last week, but it's heartening to see a fantastic indie game matching the multimillion dollar shooter. Terraria and Call have Duty have been trading places in the top five most played Steam games over the last week. Skyrim remains firmly at the top, with 148,921 players at peak times today.

If you're interested in picking up Terraria , check out our Terraria review, and the many improvements made since then in the 1.1 update. If you've just bought it, check out our Terraria beginner's guide for some early pointers, like how to survive the night without getting killed by a flying evil eyeball.

Terraria is really, really cheap on Steam for another few hours, which is good news because Terraria's great. Check out our Terraria review to find out why. It just received a huge 1.1 update adding new monsters, weapons, accessories and a hard mode. It's available on Steam for just £1.50 / $2.50, a quarter of its normal price. Before you get started, check out our Terraria Beginner's Guide. It'll give you a few useful pointers to help you survive your first few hours, including instructions on how to build your first home.

Terraria's also part of Steam's new Daily Wishlist Giveaway. If you have a set of ten games in your wishlist you'll be entered into a draw to win them just by clicking on the Steam Terraria page, so make sure you're logged into Steam while checking out the deal.

http://youtu.be/Azq5IOrFtEI

Terraria 1.1 will be released on December 1, according to a post from the developers on the Terraria forums. The huge update will add 39 new monsters, four new bosses (including a hideous Wall of Flesh), three NPCs, 222 items, four armour sets and 21 accessories.

Re-logic haven't revealed too much information, preferring to let players discover the new items and bosses for themselves when the update hits. They do say that there's a new hard mode activated by "taking revenge" on The Guide NPC in hell. You'll then have to "destroy a giant creature made out of left over body parts that pukes up worms and shoot lasers out of it's eyes" to unlock the new challenges and harder enemies. "You will probably die. A lot" warns Redigit on the Terraria forums.

The patch will also improve the world generation tech, improve the lighting system and, judging from the trailer, add great big rainbows to the backgrounds. A useful NPC interface will let you see what items you need to keep your village's inhabitants happy, and there will even be pumps that will let you move liquid about. We're already planning lava moats for the PC Gamer castle.

Randomised bonus effects will be added to weapons and accessories (these can be changed by getting a new NPC to reforge the item) and you'll be able to customise your homestead with banners and windows. There will be some new unique items as well, including something called the "Unreal Megashark," which looks like a machine gun hidden inside the body of a shark. Terraria may have gone a bit mad.

Once 1.1 has landed, Terraria players will then be able to look forward to a Christmas update on December 15. Terraria's come a long way since it was released back in May. We'll definitely be jumping back in when the update hits.

We've already reported on how Notch is planning on evolving Minecraft by including XP, levelling, and permadeath-style features. But there's more...

Notch has also been talking to PC Gamer about how Minecraft has been inspired by roguelikes and other indies, describing Terraria as "really, really good." We liked the Minecraft-inspired dig 'em up too, saying it "offers dozens and dozens of hours of rewarding exploration."

Read on for the details.

"I tend to get influenced by lots of things," admitted Notch. "The way they handle the boss fights is very interesting. Where you kind of cause the boss to appear so you can kind of battle the boss on your own terms.

"That might end up somehow in Minecraft I guess. Perhaps not the same kind of ritual or whatever, but I really like that idea."

Notch also appreciates the different way that Re-Logic have dealt with variation in Terraria's landscape: "I like the more separate areas of terrain, instead of our biomes that kind-of blend into each other. I think it works very well. Because mentally you know where the boundaries are. I haven’t even thought about it this clearly but yeah, I think I got inspired by Terraria. I get inspired by all the games I play."

I asked Notch if there were other ways that Minecraft has been inspired by specific genres. The developer is passionate about the trappings of roguelikes such as Nethack, or Dwarf Fortress.

"The random level generation of course. And, to some extent, the lack of a goal. In most roguelikes you never win the game because it's too difficult. But that's not why you play. You have the goal – you know it's winnable as a driving motivator," says Notch.

"I think Minecraft is lacking that, which is why I want to add some kind of way to win. But I don't expect people to actually win the game when they play. It's going to be some kind of guiding purpose."

Terraria developers Re-Logic are working on a huge update for Terraria. Patch 1.06 plans to rebalance combat and make bosses like The Eater of Worlds even more dangerous. Health potions will be less effective and have longer cooldowns, so you'll no longer be able to chug them down as you wade through Terraria's toughest enemies. Developer Blue writes on the Terraria forums that when 1.06 lands, "most boss battles will be nearly impossible to win without gearing yourself up fully, and planning out the battle beforehand." You find more details and preliminary patch notes below.

The new patch will be the Terraria's biggest yet. "We've even discussed calling it 1.1 because its such a game changing update" writes Blue. "For those of you with high level characters, we suggest starting a completely new character on a completely new world as you will find your run through the game to be more satisfying with all the changes, especially the dungeon area and boss fights."

"Things like the healing system and magic system have had almost complete overhauls. In our current test build, you can't simply just spam heal yourself with potions anymore to win every battle. In fact, most boss battles will be nearly impossible to win without gearing yourself up fully, and planning out the battle beforehand."

"They are bosses after all, and shouldn't be complete pushovers that you can just spam heal and spam attack to win. No longer can you just fight the Eater of Worlds through death after death until he is defeated."

While bosses will be tougher and health potions less useful, regenerating health outside of combat will make exploration more forgiving. Currently, you can only regenerate your health by equipping items or chomping on mushrooms and healing potions. The extra help outside of fights mean you won't have to head all the way back to the surface to recover if you take too much damage.

The Terraria wiki has been keeping track of all the changes patch 1.06 will make and Blue recently tweeted to verify its accuracy. You'll find the list below. There's no release date for the patch just yet. For more on Terraria, check out our favourite in-game creations.

New Additions and Changes
 
Inventory/GUI improvements:

Colored inventory boxes.
Loot All and Quick Stack Chest functions.
Trash Can which allows you to retrieve the last item thrown away.
Items picked up will be placed in the bottom right corner of the inventory first.
Lock button which prevents the hotbar from being altered.
Four new inventory slots for ammo.
Exact health value will be shown above the health bar.
All mana items will be blue instead of purple.
Health gain text will be green.
Right-clicking equippable items will equip them.
Shift-clicking items will vendor them (if trading with an NPC) or will otherwise trash them.
Ammo consuming weapons placed in the hotbar will now display how much ammo there is remaining.
The seven most recently connected servers will now be displayed in the Multiplayer menu.
It is no longer possible to drop items through the spaces between boxes in the inventory.
Grapple hotkey added.
New sounds on some currently quiet enemies/events.
Magic and mana system overhauled.

The rate of mana regeneration is based on a percentage of your maximum mana.
Regeneration rate further varies depending on your current mana (less = slower).
Mana regeneration bonuses have been converted to maximum mana bonuses.

Healing potion effectiveness reduced and cooldown increased (Potion Sickness debuff which lasts 60 seconds).
Life now regenerates automatically. The longer it's been since you've been hit, the faster it regenerates.
Damage given and received has a 15% variance. There is also a 4% chance of a critical hit which deals 100% extra damage (player to enemy only).
New hairstyles.
New dungeon content:

Spinning spike-ball trap.
Locked Chests which require Keys to open.
Increased Spike spawn during world generation.

New Night's Edge and Dark Lance sprites.
Items sold to NPCs can be bought back for the selling price.
Addition and removal of background tiles have now been sped up, as well as 1 tile hole being automatically filled up.
New status ailments which provide negative effects to both the player and NPCs:

Poisoned
On Fire!
Cursed
Darkness

Jungle Armor stats altered:

Increases maximum mana
increases magic critical strike chance
Set bonus: 16% mana usage

Necro Armor stats altered:

Increases ranged damage
Set bonus: 20% chance not to consume ammo

Improved flail mechanics.
Different weapons will have different damage types. Eventually in later updates, certain damage types may be more/less effective against certain enemies.
Cacti no longer cause knock-back.
Thorny Bushes will now be destroyed after touching them.
The Band of Starpower now adds 20 maximum mana instead of speeding up mana regeneration.
Lava Slimes will no longer burst into a pool of lava when killed.

 
Bug Fixes:

Eater of Worlds will be listed as "flees" when the player exits The Corruption instead of being listed as "defeated".
Night Owl Potion will gain its intended purpose.
Rejuvenation potions will work with the Quick Heal and Quick Mana functions.
Dungeons will no longer spawn in the ocean.
NPCs who are far from home will no longer "flip out".

 

Terraria has been building quite a fanbase over the past few weeks and the community is really starting to come into their own with some really awesome building projects that rival even Minecraft's greatest creations.

Click through for epic accommodation, pixel art and more.

Be sure to click to enlarge and get the full impact of the image.
1. Stately Terraria Manor



My Terraria house is a functional tower of brick built mainly to keep the guide from letting zombies in at night, but Epionx has gone just a little bit further. This elaborate castle includes a dining room, a library and a huge bridge leading up to the entrance. Swanky.

2. 'Mage Tower'


What I like about Hyp_kitsune's 'Mage Tower' is the simplicity. There are more impressive constructions, but this one didn't require mining the dungeons of three worlds and beating the game several times over. He used simple, widely available materials and still makes something that looks great. It just goes to show that anyone can create cool stuff in Terraria, not just the hardcore fans.

3. Mario vs Bowser



One of the great strengths of Terraria's 2D, blocky construction is that it lends itself to a kind of pixel art Jorrd ran with concept and created a retro game scene. This one depicts someone called 'Mario' who, as loyal PC gamers, we have obviously never heard of.

4. Kingdom Hearts



Lantistos is a true master at building things to an epic scale. This Kingdom Hearts sculpture is not only truly massive in scope, but also impeccable in detail. The use of rear and side walls to simulate shading is fantastically clever. Click through for the full thing.

5. Biodome



TauQuebb's Biodome is a masterpiece of Terraria house design. The glass dome encloses an internal forest, while a lava moat below ground keeps the earthworms at bay. The best part though is that each each NPC has a personalised room. The Dryad's sports a plant filled lair while the Nurse's infirmary is filled with bottles and beds for patients. That's real attention to detail.

6. Stop Motion Snake



I've always known that there are some people out there who can do amazing things with a bit of video editing and a creative game. This video has to be one of the coolest I've ever seen come out of Terraria. It brings back fond memories of playing around with my old Nokia 3210 in High School and spending more time playing Snake than listening to what the teachers had to say in class.

7. Biome Castle



Sometimes you just have to respect the sheer size of a building project, and Evilrazzberi09's Biome Castle is truly exceptional in scale. The castle is constructed to encompass as many of Terraria's different Biomes as possible. If you look closely you can see green, pink and blue dungeon bricks have been used in it's construction, meaning Evilrazzberi09 has made it to the end dungeon of three different worlds in order to build this project, a truly dedicated builder.

8. The Vault



The Vault, created by Meal Ticket is absolutely the last word in Terraria storage. This mammoth construction contains clearly designated storage space for every commodity found in the game, along with mushroom and plant farms and even an obsidian generator. It's a brilliant piece of work, and what's more you can download it yourself and use it as a storage space for your own characters.

9. Terraria City



While most people build one giant house for their NPCs, Rho decided to go a in a different direction entirely. He's built a small town of individual red brick houses, with bedrooms, dining rooms, balconies and cobweb strewn attics. Others house the NPCs above the ground floor so that they stay put, but Rho has created a place where NPCs happily wander to and fro, popping into each others houses whenever they feel like it. After all the huge intricate towers, there's something charming about this quaint little village.

10. Protoman



Update - It's Protoman, of course. Sorry guys.

While some embrace the blocky nature of Terraria art Kurobei went a different route. Minimising the effect by making his statue of Protoman utterly massive. How big is it? It's so big the sun only comes up to his shoulder. It's so big you'll need to click the image to see the full thing, but trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Find more fantastic creations at Reddit Terraria or The Terraria Forums.

If you're new to the game, why not check out our beginner's guide and for those of you who want to experiment a bit more, check out our list of top mods and tweaks. Or see if you can do something similar on our Terraria servers.

What about you readers? What have you made? Or have you spotted anything else worthy of inclusion?

One of the best selling deals in the Summer Steam Sale knocked 75% off the 2D explore-a-thon, Terraria. After the sale went live, the discount was suddenly changed to 50% off. Many saw this as a greedy move from the developers. In a post on the Terraria forums, spotted on Reddit by Doomed, Re-Logic say that the discount was supposed to be 50% off from the start.

"We did not intend the sale price to be 75% off at any time," writes developer, Blue. "When the situation was noticed, it was corrected. Hence why it so quickly changed to 50% and caused so many so much grief. We’ve received many angry emails for people blaming us personally, and calling us greedy, but that is simply not the case here."

"We do not handle distribution. It would be like blaming a food-product maker for a mistake a grocery store made in pricing. They just made the product, and besides telling the store what price they should use, they don’t control how it’s implemented by the sticker gun in the random stock persons hand.

"We don’t feel Steam should get a bad rap for it either, as all it takes is a simple slip in human error to have a bad situation arise. And no one can be said to lead a mistake-less life. We appreciate our friends over at Valve and could not have brought the game to the world so readily without their help. So if you enjoy the game, and yet this situation has ‘upset you’. I would just have to say, please take it in stride and don’t let it put a sour taste in your mouth toward Re-Logic, or Steam."

Re-Logic are planning the next update for Terraria, which will make the game "150% more difficult," adding more complicated dungeons and more challenging bosses. If you recently picked up Terraria in the Steam sale, check out our beginner's guide to get started.