If you want to up the ante on your gameplay’s difficulty – choose expert mode. Along with exclusive items, stronger monsters and no-way back factor, this is one hell of an adventure.
To give you a proper guidance and assistance, we would first like to familiarize the player with the meat and bones of the expert mode. How and where it differs from the regular game.
Besides the obvious (harder difficulty – more health for the monsters, attack tendencies and etc.) there are a few noticeable differences. They range from – enemies collecting coins that you or other NPC’s drop, bigger drops in general, damage is upped by 150%, general respawn time becomes 15 seconds (30 for boss battles) and some specific changes for certain NPC’s/enemies. For example, skeletons can start throwing bones, zombies start carrying zombie arms and many more that we don’t have the time to note. They are some changes that you are going to notice, yet if properly prepared – these won’t bother you a bit. So without further ado, let’s get to the guide.
Make a shelter as quickly as possible, without it – you’re doomed. A campfire shouldn’t also be waited upon – it’s crucial to have health regeneration as early as possible. Since is way harder to survive in the expert mode’s early stages rather than later on. In the meantime, wait for the night to battle the zombies and get weapons. In regular gameplay, it’s a personal preference which stats and directions to go to, but in expert mode – stay defensive early on. It’s a hell-bent journey to overpower all of the enemies in sight, but if you can hold up against them with the help of armor upgrades, you’re pretty much set for a smoother ride. Prioritize some goals and set to carry them out, because you can’t stay stagnant for the whole time. Have some friends to tag along if you want a more fluid and fun experience rather than grinding on your own the whole time (IF you want to). Go underground for a quick raid early on, gather 35 and 39 (or more) of cobweb and lead/iron ore respectively so you can make a bed, an anvil and a fishing rod that is reinforced. These items will speed up the process of progressing. Get the Tungsten Pickaxe to harvest meteorite ore, but if tungsten isn’t anywhere to be seen, get the gold one. Get the meteorites and mine them and now you can fight the boss. Eye of Cthulu should be the first boss you encounter as he is quite easy to kill. Be careful, of course, and don’t think of yourself as a superhero that can blast pass anyone, be patient and intelligent to lose as little as possible while giving your enemies a beatdown. One by one, kill all of the other bosses and aim for Skeletron next. He’s a tough bastard, but he can be beat. Since this one appears only during nighttime, plan accordingly. Have speed and a large area to utilize range and any speed advantage you can get. Skeletron is very quick and seems like once he catches up it’s hard to get away, but get speed to run away from him at least for a while. Use range and beating him should be (well maybe not easy) but certainly doable. Set up campfires nearby and get potions. Next up is the wall of flesh, and from there – God knows what ;).
We don’t want to constrict you with some borders or certain patterns with this guide. Expert mode is very hard early on, but becomes very fun in the later stages. If you do the right steps at the beginning, you’re left with ton of options in the future. Think wisely!
