While playing Terraria, you’ve probably run into money troubles one too many times to count. Whether it’s the inability to afford a really cool item from the Traveling Merchant or gambling for far too long on Reforges, everyone wants to farm money.
There are tons of methods to get rich quickly in Terraria, with more traditional Mob Farms typically dominating the discussion, and a few more neglected methods getting swept under the rug. That usually means high effort for high reward, but there are some far less tedious methods out there.
I’ll be covering a few different methods to farm money in Terraria, going from easiest to most complex, and coincidentally from early-game to late-game.
Sea Shells
As a somewhat manual way to farm money in the very early game, go to the beach, collect some sand, and make long, flat platforms out of it. This will cause more Sea Shells to grow naturally, and Sea Shells simply sold by the sea shore sell for somewhere around seventy silver.
They genuinely sell for quite a bit more than you’d think, for something that only takes a small amount of active effort to start farming. Once the farm is up and running, just check back in every so often, mine up the shells, and sell them for a few gold.
Starter Mob Farm
The simplest thing to do to farm money is to find a nice place you can make a big, flat platform on, long enough to go off-screen in both directions, then use a rope to sit on top of it. From up there, most enemies can’t hurt you, especially if you box yourself in.
If you do this near the edge of the world, you can get Goblins to give you some extra tattered cloth, as well as the Palworld Crossover summons to sell for extra money. Just get an early-game summon, and let them do all the work, while you sit in safety.
This isn’t a very fast way to get money, but it is safe and completely automatic, so you might as well make it and have it going while you aren’t playing. You can further boost this by adding a chest hooked up to a timer, and conveyor belts that carry all the loot towards it.
Selling Thread
An exploit to farm money that has been around since 1.4.4 was somehow not patched at all in Terraria 1.4.5, but that means you still get to use it to your advantage. To start, make some housing in a Mushroom Biome. It doesn’t have to be on the surface, but you might as well make it there for the future.
Secondly, move the Dryad into the Mushroom housing, ensuring the houses are large enough to avoid a happiness penalty. If available, you can also move the Witch Doctor, Truffle, and Princess in, as they will significantly raise her happiness.
With her moved in with these NPCs in a Mushroom Biome, the Glowing Mushroom Seeds will be at a buy price of 1 silver and 24 copper. Use your pylons to move between here and the Shimmer, Shimmer the seeds, craft them into Green Thread at a loom, and then sell them back.
With it taking three seeds to craft, which costs 3 silver and 72 copper, the Thread sells for 4 Silver and 82 copper each. This method gets even faster the more money you put in initially, and every step gets far quicker if you turn Frame Skip off with a high-framerate monitor.
Underground Mob Farm
This is the most effective thing you can reasonably do for a casual playthrough, and while there are technically larger, more complex ways to farm money out there, you definitely do not need all that. This just requires that you have a ton of dynamite and a bit of patience.
In the underground, clear out around a 150-wide, 80-block-tall rectangle, and build a platform in the middle. You can make this platform out of conveyors to make this more efficient, or make it out of Pearlstone or Sand if you would like different biome drops.
At the bottom, underneath the platform, place lava to prevent anything from spawning down there. In the middle, create a box with walls on either side of it, and a ramp made of sloped blocks that feeds into the middle. Above the box, place walls to contain mobs, then sloped platforms on the outside of the walls.
This will make enemies clip into the box and be completely unable to escape. Once you have that, get a summoner loadout and fill the box with a minion that hits a lot, such as the Slime Staff, Cattiva, or Vampire Frog Staff. After that, equip a Lucky Coin, and watch the platinum roll in.
To further improve on this design, add a Water Candle and take a Battle Potion to boost mob spawns, place a bed underneath the chamber where you stand in case something like an Enchanted Sword ruins your day, and add 140 Jungle Grass blocks to further boost spawn rates.
