I already own Terraria, didn't play tons of hours on it but I like it and dev support is very good. However I'm unfamiliar with Starbound, I know it had quite some trouble and changes during development, how is it (post 1.0) feature-wise compared to Terraria and can I host my own server?

I'm really on the edge of buying it but first I'd like to know how it is feature wise compared to Terraria.


EDIT: Should have marked this as a question and named it "Starbound or Terraria?"

Starbound during Alpha/Beta beat Terraria, except in Quality of Life.

Starbound now loses to Terraria. In the crunch to 1.0, Starbound lost most of the qualities that made it worthwhile and with the added insult of kiddification. The developers "claim" they'll be adding many of the elements back in, but that likely won't be happening since the better writer left along with some of the artists and programmers.

That's my opinion; you can read more on my review of Starbound on the game page.

Of note, "In Starbound, you create your own story - there’s no wrong way to play! You may choose to save the universe from the forces that destroyed your home, uncovering greater galactic mysteries in the process, or you may wish to forego a heroic journey entirely in favor of colonizing uncharted planets."

This is now an absolute lie. The game now has a story, and it sucks. You are part of a generic federation, even if you are the cannibalistic Florans. (As mentioned in my review.)

Terraria.

Yeah, I would agree. Part of the original premise was that each race would have its own origins, raison d'etre for being stranded, along with their unique ships/weapons/armors/etc. Now, it kinda feels like they threw the baby out with the bathwater. I'll be brutally honest. When Starbound at "launch" was a better game. They had bosses, systems in place, the galaxies felt mysterious, your reasons for being stranded felt mysterious. They really didn't have a lot of work to do. Just add quests for crew members, reasons for different colonies you discover, add some quests, add a unique backstory for each race's beginnings, etc. Instead, it now feels like every other "Precursors effed up, now save the galaxy from the unspeakable big-bads or else" generic sci-fi story.

I still enjoy Starbound for what it is, but it's not Terraria, nor do I see Chucklefish releasing a bunch of free content like Red has.

Starbound is a sandbox game, much more in the venue of Minecraft than Terraria. Keep in mind that most of the extremely negative feedback comes from players having too high expectations prior to the release. Additionally, Starbound has just left early access, while Terraria has received multiple updates over the years after its release.

Since it's a sandbox game, you basically get a pile of stuff and you're left alone to do whatever you want with it. Exploration, collecting stuff, base building, farming, npcs and colonies, fighting, story and lore, survival. What pains me to admit is that most of them are not very complex or wear thin pretty quickly. The thing is they sill click together rather nicely and provide lots of fun. And it's worth mentioning that SB is extremely easy to mod.

Terraria is focused on fighting bosses and gearing up for next boss battle. It's strictlly tiered in that regard, and you spend lots of time completing equipment so you have a fighting chance. Starbound is different, while there are bosses to fight, its focus is on exploration, jumping from planet to planet, finding things and building.

And yes, you can launch your own dedicated server and play with friends.