As you fight your way through the treacherous world in Terraria, you will see the ground covered in all types of loot. But what if you got caught up in your exploration and forgot to pick these items up or you end up dead and are worried whether your valuables will disappear? In this article, we will clear all your queries regarding items despawning in Terraria.
Items do not despawn as you expect in Terraria. They can stay on the ground forever. However, if you quit your game or close the server, then they will go away. Also, there is a limit of 400 dropped item stacks that can remain at any given time.
We made this handy little guide to tell you all about whether items despawn in Terraria or not. We’ll talk about all the exceptions to this rule as well.
Item Despawning in Terraria
Items generally will stay in the world for a long time. It’s important to keep in mind that items in the “dropped” state will eventually vanish (“despawn”) once you exit the world, rendering them unrecoverable.
In single-player, all dropped items will disappear once you save and quit your game. However, in multiplayer, all dropped items are cleared when the server or host quits. Even if one person is online, the items will continue to exist.
When running your Terraria server using the TerrariaServer.exe application, there is no need for anyone to be logged in as long as your command window is open!
If your world is filled with more than 400 such loose items, they will start to disappear as new items are introduced to the world. Despawn priority is given to older items. Meaning newly dropped items can cause the oldest dropped items to disappear to make room for the new ones. While the item despawn-cap is set at 400, hitting this limit is unlikely outside of events like invasions, Solar Eclipse or Moon event
Exceptions to the Rule
There are some things that do not follow these despawning rules:
- The only item that doesn’t follow this rule is Fallen Stars. They disappear after the sun rises in the game i.e. after 4:30 AM.
- Items dropped in lava will despawn or be destroyed. This applies to all White Rarity items. Although, items have to sink around halfway into the lava pool to despawn. You can save them in many instances by creating a shallow platform over the lava.
- If you die over a lava pool and your items land inside, then sadly, you won’t get them back.
- Stacks of items are considered as one item. This means if you drop a stack of, let’s say, 400 sand, it won’t start to despawn other items in the world. It will be regarded as a single item.
If you are really worried about losing items in Terraria, then don’t worry. It is quite difficult to lose them. You just don’t quit the game you are in, and everything will be fine in most cases.
Very rarely, the dropped items will reach the despawn limit, so there is less worry there. Items dropped in lava are the only thing that you need to be careful about.