Terraria 1.4.5 came out just a few days ago, and so I decided to relearn the basics. I first bought Terraria near the second trimester of 1.3, in early 2019, and did a few cheaty vanilla playthroughs. But the second I learned about TModLoader, I instantly got addicted, and aside from a brief reprieve when 1.4 came out, I was addicted to modded for the next six to seven years. During that time, I played through various modpacks, each one more grand than the last, on custom survival maps and default worldgen, the whole (Videos of a full Calamity-based playthrough exist on my YT wink wink nudge nudge). But today, we are going back to basics, with a playthrough of Vanilla Terraria 1.4.5, Master mode. The only special feature about this world are the placement of various Teleporters in random locations, obtained by using the "beam me up" seed.
The first culture shock, if you will, was the sheer lack of QoL features. No more veinmine, no more infinite-once-sufficient stacking, no more starter 200 health and silver tools, no starter hammer, none of that good jazz. It was from the ground up. Instead of having a squirrel sentry and being able to hunt for wolfrum pieces to make better summons, it was either transform a leaf wand into Finch (leaf wands you easily obtain from tree shaking), going into the snow biome to grind for Flinxes, or die a few times and wait for a certain Flower to generate. I chose the latter. It took several days and strategic tombstone placement, and during that time I was basically forced to go mining and consequently get a few NPCs to spawn in. But once Abigail was part of the arsenal, she remained an indisepensible asset until I was finally able to mine Hellstone later on.
Another, equally as large, culture shock was the fact that NPCs no longer sold boss items -- they would have to be made from scratch. As so, this necessitated the early game creation of various artificial biomes and mob grinders to be able to facilitate material acquisition. I created the first pyramid mob farm, and then another, slightly closer to base, for use in invasions, which I did, on several Goblin armies. A consequence of this was the fact that I had to construct various arenas in specialized places, such as crimson caves and beehives, and make use of things such as Bast statues and campfires. I learned the value of seemingly useless accessories such as the Brain of Confusion, as well as other armor sets that I have previously never touched.
Another smaller change was early game fishing. Originally I wanted to grind fishing until I was able to obtain Hellstone from underworld crates, but later on I simply defeated the Brain of Cthulhu and did the same. As of this post I have defeated Skeletron and gained access to the Mechanic, something that took a lot more effort than with mods.