Your first day in Terraria is bound to be one of the hardest. Keep in mind this is a guide only for Classic mode. When you first spawn, you’ll start with a Copper Shortsword, a Copper Pickaxe, and a Copper Axe. Otherwise, you’ll have nothing in your inventory.
The first thing you’ll want to do is start chopping down trees with your axe. If you don’t spawn in a forest, I would recommend making a new world-it’ll be quite hard on your first day otherwise.
Once you’ve cut down some trees and gotten about 100 wood, start to build a house. It’s a pretty simple endeavor-first, select the wood in your inventory by clicking on it. Second, you want to place wood blocks as the floor and one wall. One good size for housing is 9 blocks across and 7 blocks in height. The inside of the house (excluding the exterior walls) should be 7 blocks by 5 blocks. After doing that, go to your Crafting menu and craft a Work Bench and place it in the house. Next, using the Work Bench, craft two doors, a chair, and a table.
With your pickaxe, mine a three-block-tall opening in the left and right walls and place a door in the openings. Next, place your table in the house and place the chair next to it.
But wait, we’re not done. After placing your table and chair, go over to the Work Bench again and craft a bunch of Walls with your remaining wood. These are background objects, so you won’t bump into them. Place the background walls inside the house until the entire background in the house is filled with walls.
Got that? Now, go find some slimes and kill them for their Gel they drop. Next, craft some torches with one Gel and one Wood. Don’t have any wood left? Cut down more trees! Anyway, place a torch on the background wall inside your house and… you’re done with the house!
You’ve now completed the basic steps to surviving your first night in Terraria (don’t worry, the zombies can’t open doors). Next steps while the sun is still up could include finding a cave and getting some Iron, killing more slimes for gel, and/or planting more trees with the acorns that also should have dropped from the trees so you can get more wood later in the game.
Thanks for reading!