Well, I expect there are some people who never played the game here are few tips:

- Building a house is your first priority so chop some wood ASAP

- Use more wood to make platforms and torches (also requires "gel" from killed slimes). so you can dig some useful vertical shafts, get out of it and do a lot exploring. They're your daily bread and butter unless you find some useful artefacts.

- BTW replant those tree seeds, otherwise you'll get stuck with no wood near your home.

- Do some suicide recons on the surface: run and avoid all the beasts by going left or right so you can discover which biomes are next to yours and suicide recon missions in general helps to discover potential secrets.

- As the game is procedurally random, it can be good idea to generate at least 3 different worlds because the early loot from chests can really sucks sometimes.

-Later, make dedicated rooms in your (big) house with chests and signs so you can easily classify and get all the stuff you gathered/crafted.

If you want more informations like conditions required for getting bosses,etc. there are two wikis:
http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Terraria_Wiki
http://terraria.wikia.com/wiki/Terraria_Wiki

Thanks for the tips and resources! I think I'll be giving this one another go very soon, and this will be quite handy. :)

Just re-familiarizing myself with the game now.
Your surface shack should be just that rough stone and a slime gel torch in the corner to keep you safe from the monsters.
Then collect fuck tons of wood and gel both very easy to do for platforms and torches.

My standard method of digging down is a double block wide shaft that i dig down (2widex5deep) with an extra dig on the right hand side to keep you propped up while you lay the platform; followed by digging out the other section so you can pass through it and i dig a hole for a torch inside the wall so water can't rush down the shaft and knock out every single light.
If you encounter water place and repeat a 4widex2deep layer and drain to the side by channeling a block in from the shaft wall (should be able to create a 3 wide micro shaft you can drain into).

Your first goal is sufficient iron for the crafting of equipment primarily an anvil and a chain (used for the sawmill and will get you then the weaver or whatever it's called), the next goal is enough web to manufacture i think it's 10 bolts of silk (used for a bed and the ability to set your spawn somewhere other than the surface).

Then you need to make your way lower until you strike gold (you need it for a pickaxe so you can dig meteorite and crimson as it is effectively the end of tier 1 equipment enabling you access to tier 2).
Once you're inside gold level this is the best place to dig around to find a suitably large space to build you actual home.
People may debate this but it's important for several reasons the first of which is efficiency.
The shorter the trip to your storage and back to the significant ores the better as it allows more efficient ore gathering and with rares like gold the trip all the way to the frickin surface is a pain in the ass.
Secondly I don't think I've suffered a goblin invasion yet that can get through solid stone (albiet their easily dispatched mages).
Thirdly from past memory things don't get to spawn near occupied rooms so aside from the odd vine (jungle biome only) or earthworm (piss easy to kill and will annoy you unless your in the sky (which is usually more of a hassle because people tend not to put walls on the sky ladder) it's a secure a location as any.

Lastly collect gems, don't overlook silt as there's some degrinchinator doohicky that pulps it into useful items (like the normally unavailable ore alternative platinum/gold, silve/titanium and it's the only way to get amber) and once you have meteorite and crimson scales take a nightmare pickaxe whatever the crimson equiv is and an obsidian skull/ potion of fire resistance down into hell to collect hellstone & hellstone forges etc.

The gems have two main functions a possibly better version of the grappling hook (chain + hook) as the generally extend reach; secondly they can be used for awesome magic staves and once you have a good one of those go to the surface and collect falling stars like a bitch trust me totally worth it.

other things you should try to get are a jet pack and I believe spear/tridents are the best melee style weapon because of their working through walls and persistence through effect damage on things like the devourer of worlds.

Essentially once you get your grappling hook a bed and a gold pickaxe; set up a fort with as many grey brick rooms with grey brick walls that have an internal space of 8widex4deep with a table, chair & torch and your set to fuck around gathering whatever takes your fancy, fighting bosses and crafting the coolest looking shit you can wiki.

Anyone else think this thread should be stickied? Those are some good pointers in the OP post and I think beginners will indeed find this information helpful.

Anyways, thanks for the thread catpower1980. +1

A little progression help maybe.

I've killed Eye of C several times and near as I can tell the next viable boss is the skeleton dude but he's still kicking my ass and I think it's due to my sub par equipment. I have good Platinum armor but I'm at a loss for how to get better weapons and I'm running out of places to dig. Any ideas?

Try breaking a few orbs in the corruption and you'll get a surprise apart from the loot they give. Use dynamites or bombs to break the blocks to reach them. Make room for the bomb seller in your house if he hasn't come yet.

Also, at this point, a meteorite should have landed somewhere (you get a message when it does) so look for it and get those meteorite blocks even if you have to die several times, you can craft some good stuff out of them ;)

And try making a railroad in your spare time, that's really useful to travel faster and it's funny, I just love it ^o^ It's a little bit cheating but maybe use Tedit so you don't have to care about resources and time to make it. With Tedit and for railroad on the surface, it's efficienter to put blocks under your desired railroad line and put the railtracks (999 max) in a chest because they don't "join" in Tedit. For underground railroads, don't spoil yourself and dig your line "manually" in the game so you can still discover places and chests by yourself.

Is farming and crafting now the only way to get a Frozen Key?

To the best of my knowledge, yes, you have to craft it.

On topic, don't overlook the meteorite armor and space gun. Free auto-spamming of 19 or better piercing magic damage at very fast speed, plus the set bonus of 21% bonus magic damage is AWESOME. Eater of Worlds, fear me!

(Run away from him on a long, flat set of platforms. Once he's in a long, straight line, and his head pops above the platform, fire. You'll know you did it right when all the demonite, scale, and regens end up in one big pile. Far and away the easiest of the early bosses.)

Harvest three marigolds as soon as you can. The first will let you get the dye trader, who will give you 20 SP for each. Which is enough to get the merchant. As soon as you get 1 GP, buy the piggy bank, and double your carrying capacity. Which gives you easily 10 times the amount of time away from base.

Speaking of bases, don't worry too much about them for a while. Maybe a long while. All you really need to do in the early game is dig a hole 2 wide, 4 deep, and put 2 blocks over your head and wait for morning. Do some digging if you like but don't leave too much empty space behind you. Close it off into rooms every couple dozen tiles or so.

Get proficient at building makeshift barricades in a hurry. Doesn't matter if they aren't perfect. All you are trying to accomplish is to place a few blocks to keep the skeletons from eating your face off. At your leisure, poke a hole in an appropriate spot, then grab your blowpipe and give 'em what for. On the chance you were very unlucky in your surface cave chests, you might have to build a bow.

Experiment with building killing fields for farming enemies. Simple pits with a hole in the side work great for zombies. Dig under it so you can harvest their drops, then go back and shoot undead to your heart's content. A Murderous Zombie Arm will hold you until you craft Light's Bane. A Warding Shackle is almost as good as your full set of wood armor. You will have to do something a little different to farm slimes, though...

Bite the bullet and carry your workbench, anvil and furnace. You can craft pretty much anything you could possibly want, including the occasional potion, in the field, as you find materials.

Buckets are your friend. Yes, they are expensive, but are a one-time investment which will serve you well throughout the game. It's often easier to bucket out water or even lava than try to figure out where to drain them. I generally start building them immediately after crafting chain for the hook, and keep going until I have 99.

Speaking of which, build a grappling hook ASAP. Yes, gems if you have to, but you only have to kill a dozen skeletons or so before you have even odds of getting a hook. Then get out that anvil you are carrying around and enjoy.

Feels like the noobiest of noob questions, but I can't figure it out myself... how do I consume something? Those life crystals aren't doing much good sitting in my bag, just like the rest of my potion collection.

Left-click on the item in your inventory to pick it up, then move the cursor outside of the inventory and left-click again to activate the item you're holding. Of course, if the item is in the top row of your inventory, a.k.a. the hotbar, all you need to do is use the scroll wheel (with inventory closed) or press the corresponding number key to select it, then left-click to use.

guess autopause was screwing me over again... works now, thanks.

I've never been able to stand having the autopause option turned on for very long -- the annoyance always seems to outweigh any benefit. I really wish Terreria had a proper pause function like a normal game. =)

I though it was better to post in this thread than start another as this is exactly what I had in mind.

Always keep a chest on you so that if you find out you have a little too much gold you throw out the chest then the money (and perhaps some items you want in that place) and you won't have go back to your house and you won't lose your gold. Particularly useful in Expert mode due to increased gold loss (75%).

Another one: When you find a new place of interest like an entire area, build a small wooden house with a bed so you can set your spawn point there to cut down on unnecessary traveling. When you find an item that you can use to transport you "home", you will be transported to the newly set bed which is also useful.

Should a new player really be playing on Expert Mode? My impression is that that mode was intended for people who were already familiar with the game amd wanted a new challenge.

I certainly don't intend to start on Expert Mode when I do get around to playing this game.