New Terraria update solves secret seed confusion, brings back classic crafting, and adds a keybinding I've wanted for years

A new Terraria update has just landed that strips any confusion out of the secret seeds added in the massive Bigger and Boulder patch. Terraria 1.4.5.5 also brings back the ability to toggle back to the old-style crafting menu if you prefer it, and even more crucially adds several new toggles and keybindings for features such as dashing. That’s right; the days of double-tap dashing yourself into danger in the sandbox game are finally at an end.

Re-Logic has a tendency to keep poking small but substantial new features into its post-update Terraria patch notes, and the aftermath of Bigger and Boulder has been no different. Since it came out a few weeks ago, we’ve already had the likes of alternate portrait designs, effect toggles for flashes from crafting and lightning strikes, and even bulk crafting and buying. There are plenty of fixes, too, but they’re bundled in with all manner of extra quality-of-life options that are very welcome.

I’m most excited for the dash change, but the introduction of proper secret seed descriptions is news that will make plenty of players happy. Terraria 1.4.5 introduces a whole wealth of these custom seeds that you can enter in the world-generation screen to add modifiers to your new map. These all stack together, and can get pretty ridiculous if you start doing so, and with 35 of them in total it can be a bit awkward to keep track of them, especially as their descriptions have been purposefully vague.

Now, when you look through the secret seed list, you’ll see explicit details of what each one does listed in brackets, after the flavor text. Remembering that ‘invisible plane’ coats your whole world in Echo Paint so you can’t see anything is pretty easy, but what about ‘more traps please,’ which in fact removes all traps from the world? Yes, you could always cross-reference these to a handy list, but having them right in front of you in-game makes building the custom world you want much faster and more friendly.

The classic crafting window is back, if you want it. This can be switched on through the menu, if you just can’t get used to the new-look style. It’s taken me a while to wrap my head around it, but I do think I prefer the updated design; however, if you’d rather not try to reverse hundreds or thousands of hours of muscle memory, you can always return to the old favorite.

Then we have keybindings and toggles. Most importantly, you can now bind the dash to a key of your choice, and then choose to toggle the traditional directional double-tap dash on or off. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve accidentally dashed myself into an enemy or trap while moving back and forth at speed over the years, so this is an absolute godsend.

There are also new keybinding options for ‘armor set ability,’ ‘next loadout,’ and ‘previous loadout.’ Like the dash, these are all unbound by default, so you can choose to use them if you wish. Also in the settings, a ‘pause when unfocused’ toggle lets you choose if Terraria keeps running when you tab out in single player; this’ll likely come down to personal preference, but there are some good use cases, such as finding something to watch on your second monitor while you’re sleeping to progress time in game.

Elsewhere, the Invisibility Potion now fully hides you the way it did pre-1.4.5, gem critters will always have a chance to appear regardless of ongoing events, party bunnies can be shimmered into feelings, and mannequins have the ability to display minecarts. You can check the detailed patch notes for additional bug fixes, including a few solutions to item-duplication exploits.

Terraria patch 1.4.5.5 is out now. I’ll be watching closely to see if Re-Logic is able to satisfy its desire for extra inclusions before it feels the pull to make 1.4.6. In the meantime, you can catch me zooming about in a more controlled and precise way than ever before.