Q&A for How to Find Good Loot Early in Terraria

To find a meteorite, you have to first summon it. Travel to the crash site and make sure you have a buddy to help fight off the meteorite guardians. You'll need good armor and health before you go, and you will have to have a drill or a gold pickaxe.

It's not rare at all, as it generates every time you make a new world. You might need some to do some exploring to find it though!

A hive isn't nearly as rare as, say, the lizard temple, as there are often multiple per world. Just dig around underground and hives can be found relatively easily. They are quite noticeable as the hive block is different from any other block you find in the jungle. Just be careful fighting the queen bee; it's surprisingly easy to summon her even when you don't mean to.

Gather enough iron or gold to make armor, then make any silver/gold (your choice) for tools.

Gold is really common in some worlds, and platinum is found really deep underground in caves. You can use bombs or dynamite to blow up ores if you have a terrible pickaxe.

Try to find a chest out in the world and find a gold chest in underground wooden caverns as they normally give an enchanted boomerang or a flare gun with ammo.

You have to dig deep. Beware of red and yellow backgrounds. That means you’re approaching Hell (Underworld). Also, get a spelunkers potion. You can easily craft one or find one in a chest. Once this potion is on, you could see hidden ores and treasures.

Meteorite looks brown and will set you on fire like hellstone. To get a meteorite to fall, break a crimson heart or shadow orb.

You need to beat all of the mechanical bosses, then the jungle should spawn a pink bulb. Breaking that bulb should spawn Plantera. Kill it, and you should get it the key. Tip: Once you go into the temple, bouncy ball traps are something to look out for. The man-lizards are not that hard to deal with.

Talk to the dryad NPC. She'll spawn if there is valid housing and you have killed a boss.

The dungeon is located on the edge of the map (before the ocean). If you see a snow biome close to spawn, head that way. You will eventually find it.

Just mine and you will find it. Also, some shrines on floating islands are made of gold!

Find a pressure plate and hold it while underground. This will reveal traps and wiring.

You can build a skybridge, or once you're strong enough (silver/tungsten gear or higher), you can just go in and rush past it.

There's a strategy called "cave running". This allows you to get lots of rare loot but at the expense of ores. Simply find a cave and run through it, ignoring everything except traps, life crystals, and loot chests. If that isn't easy or quick enough, you can search for Living Trees which have loot chests inside them. However, the best thing you can do is find a 1 tile thick vertical tunnel on the surface. Dig down it to find the mightily rare Enchanted Sword Shrine, which contains a sword stuck in a rock below the tunnel you dug through. Break the rock, and you now have one of the most powerful Pre-Hardmode weapons in Terraria.