Fighter

The Fighter is a melee and defensive specialist.

To become a fighter talk to the Guide to get the quest. You will need to find, and use a certain number of life crystals, and kill a number of creatures in the corruption or crimson.

Skills (N Terraria 6)

Skills (N Terraria 5) 1: While it says 176%, Explosive Impact's area damage doesn't appear to match up to it, giving only 10% or so bonus damage over a standard weapon attack. That said, the weapon attacks at the same time, potentially allowing both skill and weapon to deal damage.

Unlike Heavy Slash, Explosive Impact may be used with any Melee weapon, including the Paladin's Hammer, letting you take advantage of weapons with a higher base damage.

Skill Ratings

The fighter can max all except one skill, and raise the final skill up to 5, making them a fairly user-friendly class all-told.

Melee Efficiency: This is basically why you're a Fighter. 30% more damage in your chosen method of violence can never be wrong, max it early, stab things often.

Vigor: As a fighter, you're pretty much going to have to eat melee damage at some point. 30% more defence from your already sturdy Melee armour is going to serve you well.

Accurate Sense: Deal more stable damage. Another okay, if uninspiring, skill. A good candidate for your 5

Weak Point: Everybody loves more crit. Fighters even get their own hoity-toity version with consistent 2.5% increases, making Thieves jealous.

Provoke: I can't say I've ever used, or wanted to use, this skill. But who cares? It's free. Maybe it'll come in handy for you some day.

Heavy Slash - You need it to be level 5 to get Explosive Impact. It's largely indistinguishable from a regular attack except it takes mana, requires you to not be attacking when you use it, and only works with swung weapons like swords.

If it connects, it's a very powerful one-off hit that can kill many non-boss enemies in a single hit and leave bosses reeling from pentuple digit damage. If it misses, it's going to be a long while until you can try again, and does require some prep (or the standard "Use Shield, spam skills strategy), which makes it an awkward proposition in some of the tougher boss fights. If you really want it, consider which other skill to leave at level 5, otherwise just use it to unlock Explosive Impact - which, incidentally, is another fine candidate for leaving at level 5.

You may want to save a (True) Dawn's Darkness in your hotbar and wheel it out when you use this skill, it's got almost the same damage output as the Terra Blade, but if its inherent health-steal kicks in, you'll be looking at potentially 5000+ points of healing. Just remember that the blade has to hit for the leech to work.

Explosive Impact: It's pretty meh damage and fairly short range, but on the plus side, it does penetrate walls with its AOE aura, pierces pretty much everything, and it's a second damage skill you can rely on while blocking.

What Build?

Fighters have two significant choices. One is to maximise their Agility to end up with about 60% dodge. That's a pretty solid figure that will allow your fighter to remain decently survivable while remaining mobile and offensive.

The other direction is to maximise Strength and Vitality. This will maximise your Health, Defense bonus from Vigor and give you the capacity to reach a 75% block rate with the right shield, and still have great melee damage.

I personally recommend the second, since you may have some trouble with Hardmode bosses with the former. Load up on Vitality, load up on Strength, and hit everything as hard as you can.

Final Level status bonus