Terraria is a Sandbox and adventure game developed by Re-Logic and released in 2011. It is one of few games to have a developer-created and supported modding platform, known as TModLoader. By far one of the most popular mods available to the public is the Calamity Mod. Created by developer Fabsol and his team, Calamity released in 2018 and continues to be updated to this day.  The most recent update which launched in November of last year was the 1.5 version known as “The Draedon Update.” I’ve done several playthroughs with the Calamity mod and had nothing but a good time. 

Calamity adds six new game modes which increase the game’s difficulty. Among these are Defiled, which disables flight, Armageddon which causes bosses to one shot the player and Revengeance. Revengeance mode adds two new mechanics in the form of meters called rage and adrenaline. When these meters are filled, they activate a stat boost to assist the player, and then reset to zero.

Another positive change with Calamity is the numerous quality of life changes. For example, some items which are normally uncraftable and must be found in the world via random generation are now craftable using the calamity mod. A vanilla feature in Terraria is the world’s evil biome, (crimson or corruption). This is chosen by the player during world generation, and without another mod, only one of these biomes will spawn. There are some item variants exclusive to these biomes, meaning you need two worlds to get both variants. Calamity allows you to craft one variant into another, saving you the trouble of starting another world.

Terraria has two different world states, pre-Hardmode and Hardmode. The world’s state changes when the Wall of Flesh boss is defeated for the first time. In pre-hardmode, the Terraria base game adds seven bosses, and 10 in hardmode, the final one being the Moon Lord. Calamity expands upon this by adding six pre-hardmode bosses, eight hardmode bosses and a whopping twelve post-Moon Lord bosses. Thus expanding upon the vanilla game with lots of endgame content. 

Another great thing about Calamity are the new biomes. It adds the sulfurous sea, which lays on top of the abyss, a seemingly endless pit of water and darkness. It also adds the astral infection, which spawns in the world upon entering the Hardmode world state. In addition to the new biomes, Calamity adds shrines to each and every biome in the vanilla Terraria game as well as the abyss, each with a unique item that can only be obtained once. 

The Calamity mod adds a new class in addition to the vanilla game’s four (Melee, Mage, Ranger and Summoner) called rogue. Rogues can perform stealth strikes, allowing for a massive critical strike chance and damage output. The rogue class gets its own arsenal, with tons of accessories, weapons and armors that benefit the class. 

Speaking of which, Calamity adds tons of items for use by other classes as well. Some of these are upgrades to existing Terraria Items. An example of this is the Onyxia, an upgrade to the Onyx Blaster from the unmodded game. There are also brand new items such as the fan-favorite Murasama, a red katana that deals massive damage to enemies. 

Overall, the Calamity mod is a must-try for all who play Terraria on a computer. The sheer amount of content it adds is reason enough, let alone compatibility with other mods such as the Stars Above mod. In comparison to the other large content mods available such as Thorium and Split, Calamity by far edges them out in terms of content and playtime. Calamity is available for download via TModLoader on Steam. If you play Terraria, I urge you to try this fun and interesting mod.