A bit off topic, but I recently built my girlfriend a desktop and we've been playing a bit of Terarria together. Is reading the Terraria wiki the go-to method for figuring the game out and actually doing some fun stuff? Is starbound any more obvious with things you're supposed to do/build?
I feel like it's tough to know what items and materials make what in Terraria. I've only logged a handful of hours and I forgot to backup my game before building my new PC, but it seems a little tough to get your head around what does what in these games.
There is a learning curve with Starbound just as there is with Terraria. But in general there are a couple of different ways to play both games, namely:
1. Play it like a sandbox - build what you want, how you want, for goals you set for yourself. E.g., I started a new starbound game recently and discovered that my first planet was populated with a bunch of bird people. I set a goal of eradicating the foul buzzards, conscripting all of their architecture (which included some neat temple tile sets), and then building a temple to myself to live in.
2. Play to trigger specific in game events, e.g., by following quests, talking to specific NPCs, building a home to house specific NPCs (terraria), etc. In Terraria this eventually leads to a higher difficulty mode, where new materials and crafts are opened up, allowing more advanced sandbox and/or quest like play.
Both of the above methods involve a heavy dose of crafting, which means lots of digging, exploring caves, etc. The main difference has to do with the goal of that crafting. You can spend infinite time in terraria (and likely starbound) crafting an elaborate house, an underground lair, etc., while only advancing the "story" by some minimal amount. I suspect the same will be true in starbound, but the focus will not be on building a "home" per se, but rather a homeworld. At least that is what I think (hope) it will be.
FWIW - gathering does get faster as the tools you have evolve. Diamond pickaxes mine far quicker than stone, for example. So the tedium of resource gathering gets a bit less as one gets better tools. That said, the starbound beta thus far seems to be a little light on resources. At least compared to terraria. And the mining speed in general seems far slower.
But to answer your question - it is certainly possible to independently figure everything out about Terraria. But it is far easier and less frustrating to use the wiki. At least when it comes to figuring out how to craft something. For example in starbound, it is not intuitively obvious that the anvil (which is described as being used to craft weapons) is also used to upgrade tools such as pickaxes, hoes, etc. A quick look at the wiki clarifies the use of the anvil in that respect. Of course, the wiki is full of crafting and other spoilers, so it should be avoided if one really wants to be "surprised" by any of the content. But in this type of game, I think some spoilers are fine. Particularly as a major goal of the game is not simply obtaining tools, but figuring out fun ways to use them.