The long running survival sandbox's myriad "final updates" have become a bit of a running joke in the community.
Terraria is gearing up for its 1.4.5 patch, the latest major update in 12 years of continued support from developer Re-Logic. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait, I thought this game got its final update” already, you would be right—Re-Logic has been considering moving on to its next project for around eight years now.
Prior to leaving Twitter in favor of communicating on the Terraria forums, Re-Logic head Andrew “Redigit” Spinks recently told fans on the platform that the game continues to sell too well for them to quit updating it. “After twelve years the game still sells like hot cakes,” Spinks tweeted. “There is so much demand it makes it hard to move on.”
“Really, 1.3 was the first intended final update,” Re-Logic head of business strategy and marketing Ted “Loki” Murphy told me when I asked for more context, referencing the 2015 patch that revamped NPCs and added achievements, Expert mode, and over 800 new items. “But then we had all these cool ideas—unfinished business, so to speak.”
Five years later, 2020’s “Journey’s End” update was another chance to quit Terraria. It started as a minor update, according to Murphy, but generated “great thinking” and grew into a major one, introducing 40 plain text pages of notes worth of changes, including new modes, bosses, a bestiary, and, of course, the ancient game of golf. And Re-Logic didn’t quit there: Journey’s End was itself followed up with a series of minor updates introducing things that were right on the cutting room floor of the patch proper.
Murphy described 2022’s Labor of Love update as “truly fan-driven,” a response to Terraria winning the annual Steam award of the same name in 2021. “We felt a calling to give another update to the fans,” Murphy said. “We took so many suggestions and inspiration from those very fans during that update. We don’t take that award or the people behind it lightly.”
While the upcoming 1.4.5 patch started primarily focused on Terraria’s crossover with Dead Cells, the roguelike metroidvania, Murphy says that further “unfinished business” lured the team at Re-Logic into once again going all-in on something more substantial. Despite Re-Logic’s commitment to Terraria and the seemingly inexorable creep of new updates, however, Murphy thinks that “the game is feeling very full and complete to [Re-Logic] at this point.” Even with Terraria’s continued sales success and vibrant fan community, “at some point, it feels right to start work on a second project.”
Murphy seemed enthused about that prospect, but it’s far from anything concrete at the moment: “This would also be good for Re-Logic and the franchise, as it will allow the team to explore ideas that might not work or work as well in the current iteration and technology of Terraria.” It definitely sounds like whatever is on the table would iterate on Terraria rather than pushing in an entirely new direction.
For now though, we’re still just waiting for 1.4.5—Terraria’s latest State of the Game post described it as “entering the (hopefully) final stretch.” Meanwhile, it’s far from clear when we’ll see truly the last big add-on for the long-running sandbox. “We’ve felt that way before—so we do never say never,” Murphy said. “When will Terraria’s final update truly happen? I don’t even think we can say that with certainty.”
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