Terraria is a popular sandbox action-adventure game that offers players adventure and mystery. When you start playing the game, you need to build a basic shelter that your character will use as a home. Sometimes, when you try to access the house, you might receive the message, “this is not valid housing,” and you might be wondering why the house is not valid in Terraria.
So, why is housing not valid in Terraria? The shelter you have built in Terraria is not valid because it does not meet the minimum requirements for a shelter to be considered a house. Terraria’s developer included requirements on walls, size, background walls, and corruption, and if you do not meet the requirements on any of them, your housing will be invalid. You cannot use the invalid house to sleep and NPCs will not occupy an invalid house.
A home in Terraria is very important for players and NPCs. However, not every structure you build in Terraria will be considered a house because there are several requirements you have to meet while building the house.
When it gets dark outside or too many enemies are roaming your world, you can enter your house to sleep or escape the enemies. NPCs in Terraria also need houses to survive, and the player has to build enough houses for all the NPCs that spawn in their world. However, after building a house, you might see a message telling you the housing is invalid, and you might be wondering why it says so.
Your housing is not valid because it does not meet the minimum requirements to be considered proper housing in Terraria. If you see the message stating, “This is not valid housing,” it means that your house is missing one or more requirements. These requirements include walls, background walls, size, entrance, and corruption limit.
You have to correct the missing requirement before you or an NPC can occupy the house. Once you meet all the requirements, you will see the message “This housing is suitable,” meaning the house meets all the requirements and is currently unoccupied. The house should also have a chair, table, and light source.
Walls are the boundaries of the house and are the most important part of the house. You can use solid blocks of dirt, wood, or stone to build walls. The walls should not have any gaps, or the house will be invalid. You can use wooden doors on your walls as an entrance.
NPC rooms can share walls, but you have to close the doors to make the room a valid housing if you install wooden doors on both walls. The interior of the house must have background walls to be considered valid housing. You have to install the background walls; you cannot use the background walls that were naturally generated.
To be considered valid housing, the house must also meet specific minimum size requirements. The house must be at least 35 blocks, excluding the bounding blocks that make up the ceiling, floor, and walls.
For example, if you want a small house in Terraria, place six blocks wide and six blocks high, excluding ceiling, floor, and walls, to build a valid house. Some players love to build large houses for their characters or NPC, but there is a limit on how high a house can be in Terraria. The house should not also exceed 750 blocks in the area. Even if you fulfill the other requirements, the room will be an invalid house if it exceeds 750 blocks.
Just like normal houses in the real world, a house in Terraria should also have an entrance for it to be valid. The door does not have to be functional for the house to be valid. As long as the wooden door is attached to any wall on the house, the house will be valid even if your character cannot use it to enter the room physically. If you are building houses for NPCs, you do not have to place doors in each room. As long as two NPC rooms share a wall, two NPCs can use one single door to enter their rooms.
The amount of Corruption can also determine if your house is valid or not. A room should not have too much Corruption close to it, or it will be invalid. This requirement is very complex, and you need to pay special attention to the corruption near your houses.
The reasonable amount of Corruption close to a house should be no more than 49 Corruption type blocks. However, this is a rough estimate, hence the figure might vary depending on the difficulty. In Hardmode, meeting this housing requirement can be difficult because Corruption spreads faster.
Terraria How to Move NPC To New House?
NPCs in Terraria require housing to sleep during the night and escape attacks from other hostile NPCs. The player is responsible for building houses for themselves and NPCs in their world. If you have built other houses in your world, you might be wondering how you can move an NPC to a new house.
To move an NPC to a new house, you need to build the new house and destroy the old one occupied by the NPC. The NPC will move to the new house if it is close to the one destroyed. You can also use the “Housing Menu” to move an NPC from their old house to the new one.
The third method is using Portal Gun to move an NPC from their old house to a new one. An NPC will only move to the new house if it is valid housing and empty; therefore, ensure that the house is suitable before you move an NPC.
“Housing Menu” is a feature introduced in Terraria through Patch 1.1. This feature allows you to assign NPCs to live in the specific houses and check if a specific house meets the requirements for an NPC to live there.
When you want to move a particular NPC to a specific house or room, open the “Housing Menu” feature by clicking on the house icon in the upper right corner of your screen. Select housing query to check if the house you want to move an NPC into is suitable.
Select the NPC’s portrait and click on the house or room; by doing that, you hang the NPC’s flag on that house or room, thereby assigning that NPC to live in that room. If the NPC already has a room, they will move to their new house and start sleeping there until you change housing again.
Another method of moving an NPC to a new house is destroying the old house, and the NPC automatically moves to the new house. If you damage a house occupied by an NPC to the point that it becomes invalid, the NPC will move out of that house and start walking around. The NPC will walk around your world and move to a new unoccupied house if one is available.
Therefore, you should ensure that the new one you have built is suitable for the NPC before destroying the old house. You should also ensure no other NPCs are roaming around in your world because an NPC can occupy a house meant for the NPC you want to move.
Some players use a Portal Gun to move an NPC to a new house. The Portal Gun is a Hardmode tool that the Moon Lord always drops. The Portal Gun, when used, will create two portals, and any player or NPC that touches one portal will be instantly transported to the other one.
To move an NPC to a new house, first fire one projectile from the Portal Gun by hitting “Use/Attack” near the NPC. Fire the second projectile in the new house by clicking “Open/Activate.” Once the NPC touches the portal next to them, they will be transported to the portal inside the new house. The portals will close, and the NPC will start living in the new house.
You need to confirm that the new house meets the requirements of valid housing before moving the NPC. You can use the “Housing Menu” to confirm if the house has everything an NPC needs to survive.
In addition to ensuring that the house is valid, you need to ensure the house has a light source, a flat surface item such as a table, and a comfort item such as a chair. If one of the items is missing, you will see a message informing you that the item is missing in the house. For example, if you do not place a light source in the house, this message will appear on the screen, “This housing is missing a light source.”
Do NPCs Respawn Terraria?
In most video games, NPCs play important roles in the gameplay, like guiding the player, protecting the player, or trading. In Terraria, NPCs provide certain services to the player, such as selling items the character needs to build a particular object. When playing Terraria and one NPC dies, you might wonder if they can respawn.
NPCs respawn in Terraria after they die as long as a vacant house is available or a player meets their special spawning requirements. If an NPC lived in a particular house and got killed while walking around, the NPC would respawn and move back into their house. However, their respawn will be delayed if there is no available house in your area.
Some NPCs have some requirements for their initial spawn, and when they die, that requirement has to be met again before they respawn. A player cannot watch an NPC respawn; if the house belonging to the NPC is in your view, the NPC will respawn offscreen.
The most important requirement for an NPC to respawn in Terraria is an unoccupied house. Most NPCs need a house or room for their initial spawn, and their house will be key to their respawning throughout the game.
If at any point, their house becomes invalid or occupied by another NPC, the NPC will not respawn until another house becomes available. Therefore, if an NPC dies and you need them for trading, you should ensure a valid empty house for them to respawn quicker.
Some NPCs have other requirements apart from a suitable house that must be met before they spawn for the first time in your world. If an NPC has special requirements for their initial spawn dies, these special requirements have to be met each time they die.
For example, the Merchant will spawn at any time when all players on a world have a combined total of fifty silver. If the Merchant dies and the combined total of silver is below fifty, the Merchant will not respawn until the players meet this requirement again.
The Guide and the Old Man are unique NPCs in Terraria and have special spawning requirements. The Guide is the first NPC you will encounter in the world, and he usually spawns near the player when the world is created.
The Guide will move into the first house that you build in Terraria. However, when the Guide dies, he will not respawn in the first house. You have to build another house for the Guide to respawn.
When the Old Man spawns in your world, he will not move into any house but rather stay near the Dungeon’s Entrance. The Old Man does not require a valid house to respawn, and if he dies, he will respawn the next day near the Dungeon’s Entrance as long as Skeletron remains undefeated.
Summary
Housing is very important in Terraria, and you need to build valid houses to ensure NPCs spawn in your world. The NCPs generally walk around during the day interacting with each other, and players can interact with NPCs in their world.
The NPCs will move into their assigned houses during the night for safety. You need to ensure the house has walls, background walls, doors, light source, table, chair, and away from excessive Corruption.
If the house is invalid, the NPC assigned to that house will not go in until you repair the house or build another. The easiest method to move an NPC to a new house is using the “Housing Menu” feature.
You can also use a Portal Gun if you have one; however, it is very expensive to obtain. All NPCs in Terraria will respawn if killed, but the time it takes to respawn depends on the availability of a suitable house or a player meeting special spawning requirements.
