20. Improved Visual Movement
This mod may be simple, and it is far from necessary, but it can add a lot to your overall Terraria experience with its little animation tweaks!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Dynamic Movement - If you find the standard running and flying animations from Vanilla Terraria a bit dull, this is the mod for you! Your player will now move a bit more dynamically based on speed, direction, and momentum.
- Head Movement - Rather than constantly staring off to the side, your player character will now angle their head to track the movement of your cursor around the screen. Whether this is creepy or charming is up to you to decide.
- Improved Enemy Animations - Plenty of common enemies in the game also get new animations, making their movement slightly more realistic. At least, as realistic as a bouncing pixel-art slime can be!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
19. Lights and Shadows
This mod is also rather simple and focuses on improving the visuals of the game, changing how the lighting and shadows work in the pixelated world of Terraria.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Dynamic Light - This mod adds some gorgeous god-rays from the sun and a nice bloom effect to any glowing blocks or items, adding in a lot of flair to the normal Terraria lighting!
- Dynamic Shadows - This mod reworks how shadows work, making them behave more realistically according to the light sources on screen. For example, trees on the surface will now cast shadows that will shift as the sun moves across the sky.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
18. affe’s Death Counter
This mod may not necessarily be that useful, but if you’re like me, part of the fun of playing with mods is seeing all the fun new ways you can die! This mod can help you keep track of all that.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Death Counter - As the name suggests, this mod adds a death counter to your game to keep score of your total number of deaths. Now, you can brag to your friends about how low your count is, or even use it as a funny addition to livestreams or recorded content!
- Death Summary - This mod also keeps track of how you died each time, keeping separate scores for the different ways a player can meet their doom. What a fun thing to look back on at the end of your journey.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
17. Cursor Indicator
This is a pretty simple mod that adds a small visual tweak to your game. It is intended to help you line up shots more easily and should help you a bit with some of those speedier enemies and bosses that you might encounter from the Thorium mod.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Indicator - This mod adds a small indicator around your player that will point towards wherever your cursor is on the screen. This should make it far easier to figure out which way you’re shooting, swinging, or throwing even in the most chaotic confrontations.
- Configurable - The mod is configurable, allowing you to adjust the size and opacity of the indicator to your preference.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
16. Biome Tiles
This mod is a relatively simple mod that presents the player with the name of the biome they are in when first entering it. While it is not the most fancy or functional mod, this can be very useful when trying to explore new biomes from Thorium relatively blindly, and, luckily, this mod has official Thorium support!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Biome Tile - Since the biome tile announces the name of the biome you are entering, it makes it far easier to search through official wikis to find out what you’re getting into!
- Clear Boundaries - Because of this mod, it will be easy to know when you are officially within a certain boundary, which can be helpful when you’re trying to farm a biome-specific enemy or summon a boss that can only be summoned in a specific biome!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
15. Loot Beams
This mod adds a more functional visual flair to the game, that being colored beams of light that will rise up from loot around the player. Not only does it look pretty cool, but it can bring attention to loot that the player may otherwise overlook.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Loot Beam - Each item on the ground gets a small beam of light that rises from it, alerting the player to things they have yet to pick up, making them more visible in dark locations or chaotic situations.
- Visual Rarity - The color of the beam of light will be different depending on the item’s rarity, which can be super useful for a player with a full inventory when trying to figure out which things to prioritize.
- Highly Configurable - The player can change a lot about how these beams appear in their game, such as changing the minimum rarity or value of item required for a loot beam to appear. This way, the player is able to customize this mod to their preference so that it only shows up how and when they find it most useful.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
14. Roommates
The Roommates mod makes it a little easier to make space for all the world’s NPCs. Since Thorium will add quite a few brand new and useful NPCs to your world, this mod can really come in handy!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Roommates - As the title may suggest, this mod allows for multiple NPCs to occupy the same housing as roommates! Now you don’t have to spend nearly as much time making housing and can spend much more time exploring!
- Configurable - This mod is highly configurable, allowing for the player to determine whether additional furniture is required for each NPC as well as the limit of NPCs that can occupy a single housing unit!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
13. Boss Checklist
The Boss Checklist mod is a great way to keep yourself organized in terms of boss progression, especially when playing with a mod like Thorium that adds a bunch of new bosses.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Boss Checklist - The titular feature of the mod allows the player to view a complete list of the bosses available to them in their world. It will update automatically to show which bosses have already been defeated and which ones are yet to fall, making it far simpler to remember where the player is at in their playthrough.
- Boss Log - This mod is also incredibly helpful in that it allows players to see possible loot drops and other such information about bosses without having to tab out of their game and check the wiki.
- Boss Records - This mod keeps track of certain statistics related to bosses, such as duration of previous boss fights and the amount of hits sustained by players.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
You can also download it here from GitHub.
12. Boss Cursor
Similar to the Cursor Indicator mod, this mod adds a little visual indicator to the screen, only this time it will point the player towards any active boss currently in the world.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Indicator - This mod adds a small indicator around your player that will point towards wherever the active boss or bosses happen to be, including if they are off screen. This is great for speedier bosses or bosses that travel through blocks that can be harder to keep track of.
- Mod Support - The mod will function with any boss from any mod, given that the boss is coded with an icon, so it should work very well with Thorium without any tedious troubleshooting on your part!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
You can also grab it from GitHub here.
11. Heart Crystal & Life Fruit Glow
This mod is, frankly, pretty self explanatory: it makes Heart Crystals and Life Fruit glow!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Easier Hunting - Heart Crystals and Life Fruit are insanely important to Terraria progression, and when you’re dealing with mods that make the world even more dangerous, their importance skyrockets. With this mod, it will be way easier to find them while crawling around in the dark underground.
- Distinct Glow - The mod makes it so that Life Fruits glow yellow, allowing for them to be easily distinguished from Jungle Spores!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
10. WADTU
The title is an acronym for “What Ammo Does This Use?” and, as this title may suggest, can answer an important question when playing with mods that add in a bunch of new weapons. It also works with really any mod, including Thorium!
Here are a few of its main features:
- New Tooltip - When looking at any ammo-requiring weapon, there will be a new tooltip at the bottom of the list that indicates what ammo the weapon uses. Ideally, this will save you a wiki search and some frustration!
- Icon - Each tooltip includes a small icon that shows an image of the ammo. This helps make the message even clearer, especially when dealing with non-vanilla resources or ammos that the player may not recognize by name alone.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
9. No Useless Pickups
This is one of many amazing quality of life mods on this list. The No Useless Pickups mod prevents the player from picking up health and mana pickups when their health and mana bars are already full. While not a massive change, it can really save the player some trouble, especially when fighting some of the crazy bosses added in the Thorium mod!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Easier Arena Set-Ups - You don’t have to have your Heart and Star Statues set up in the harder-to-reach areas of your arena to avoid wasting the pickups now.
- Improved Multiplayer - No longer will your fully-healed friend steal the health pickups from you! The pickups will now only go to the player that actually needs it.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
8. Instant Platform Fallthrough
This is a pretty small mod, but it can make a massive difference in your gameplay, especially when it comes to navigating through your boss arenas as fast as possible. Every second counts when fighting any Terraria boss, modded or otherwise!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Instant Fallthrough - As the title indicates, this mod allows you to fall through platforms without having to land on them first. This makes it a must-have for me personally as I have lost too many boss fights to this tiny loss of momentum.
- Easy Use - There are no fancy hijinks or extra keybinds needed to make this mod work. Simply hold your down key while falling toward a platform and you’ll fall straight through!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
7. Death Conch
This mod is not very expansive as it really only adds one item. However, this is a very useful item, once you get your hands on it, and considering the brand new dangers that come from Thorium and the new places the player will want to explore, this might come in handy in the later stages of the game!
Here are a few of its main features:
- New Item - This mod adds a rare drop from the Solar Eclipse’s Reaper enemy: the Death Conch. This item functions like any other conch shell from the game, only rather than teleporting the player to a specific location, you’ll be taken to the last place you died!
- Quality of Life - In the late stages of the game, it can be harder and harder to get through dungeons or biomes and very frustrating to deal with coin or item loss upon death. With this mod, the careless adventurer has to spend far less time to recover progress upon death. This is especially great for when you’re trying to put multiple attempts into a particularly tricky new Thorium boss!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
6. Recipe Browser
This is a must-have for Terraria in general, especially when playing with a mod like Thorium that adds in a ton of new content. The Guide just isn’t as helpful with crafting recipe help as he once was.
Here are a few of its main features:
- In-Game Item Library - In game, you can now open a library with a search bar to see all the items in the game, allowing you to easily see what each item does and how to craft it if applicable. Hopefully, this can help cut down on how often you need to tab back into the wiki!
- Efficient Crafting - Due to the existence of the in-game library, you don’t have to spend nearly as much time scrolling down the crafting column or scanning over the wall of recipes given to you by vanilla Terraria. Simply search up what you need and craft away!
- Favorite Recipes - If you find yourself making an item frequently, you can now favorite the recipe to streamline the process of crafting them. This will make it much easier when you need to mass-produce torches and arrows.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
5. Better Respawn
This mod aims to improve how respawns work in Terraria based on some in-game factors to make them a little less frustrating.
Here are a few of its main features:
- Instant Respawn - Unless there is a boss currently active in the world, the player will respawn instantly upon death! No more staring at the boring timer after forgetting your Lucky Horseshoe.
- Full Health Respawn - If the nurse NPC is present in the world, the player will also respawn with full health! This can be super useful when handling chaotic events like the Solar Eclipse.
You can get the mod here on Steam!
4. Magic Storage
This mod is perfect for any Terraria player that, like me, struggles with storage. Since Thorium adds a ton of new items, it is very helpful to have a way to neatly organize all of them without all the hassle!
Here are a few of its main features:
- Condensed Storage - Rather than needing a huge room of separately organized chests to keep everything neat, this mod allows you to keep all of your items in one storage pool that can be accessed from a single point! No more wandering back and forth between your chests to figure out which one has the item you’re looking for.
- Efficient Crafting - The Magic Storage system also allows the player to condense crafting stations into a single object and hook it up to their magic storage system, allowing for crafting to be done with ease!
- Progression - You can improve your storage and crafting stations as you progress through the game. As such, this mod perfectly integrates itself with the natural progression of the game and feels like a seamless addition to vanilla and modded Terraria alike!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
3. Consolaria
This is a relatively simple content mod that adds in console-exclusive features from the different versions of Terraria. If you’re in the market to add in even more content alongside your Thorium content, this mod is a great choice!
Here are a few of its main features:
- New Bosses - You can now face the console-exclusive Lepus, Turkor, and Ocram bosses on PC! This is great for anyone that wanted to fight a giant, angry turkey in Terraria but never got the chance.
- New Events - The mod also adds console-exclusive events like Chinese New Year, Oktoberfest, and Valentine’s Day, along with all the loot you would get from them!
- New Gear - This mod adds quite a few new armors and weapons as well as plenty of charming vanity items like costumes and pets! If you’re like me and saw something cool on the Terraria wiki only to notice the “console exclusive” tag, I’m sure you’ll like this!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
2. Storm’s Additions Mod
For the modder who wants to add in even more content without interfering too much with the mods you already have, Storm’s Additions Mod is the one for you! It adds plenty of new content without completely shaking up the boss progression of the world or altering major aspects of the world generation
Here are a few of its main features:
- New Gear - New weapons and gear are always a fun part of modded Terraria, and this mod brings more than 100 new weapons and a bunch of new accessories and armor sets. Now you’ll have even more fun stuff to take on those new Thorium bosses with!
- New Enemies - The mod adds quite a few new enemies, including almost 30 new on-the-ground enemies and three new bosses!
- Quality of Life - This mod has a few quality of life features, such as making the underground mini-biome chests spawn in greater frequency, to make the overall Terraria experience better!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
1. Calamity
The Calamity mod is well regarded as one of the best and most challenging mods for Terraria in terms of game expansion, adding content throughout the vanilla gameplay as well as things well beyond it. While not originally intended to work together, recent versions of this mod have cross-Thorium support that allows the two mods to work together for the player that loves a good challenge!
Here are a few of its main features:
- New Boss Fights - The Calamity mod adds in 39 bosses to Terraria, including 12 post-Moon Lord bosses to give the player more to do after completing vanilla progression.
- New Combat System - This mod reworks how combat functions in Terraria in addition to adding a whole new weapon class: the Rogue. Now, stealth-based gameplay can be a reality!
- Items and Gear - With this mod, your game will be filled with over a thousand new items, including new accessories, armor, and weapons. On top ofter this, the mod makes previously un-craftable items craftable, which can save you hours on grinding that you can now spend exploring all the new stuff! In addition, the Calamity mod makes it so that Event and Boss Summoning items are not consumable, making it far easier to farm certain enemies!
- Biomes and Structures - This mod expands on vanilla biomes while also adding in completely new biomes and structures that really shake things up and give veteran Terraria players new things to explore!
You can get the mod here on Steam!
