If you’ve ever accidentally trashed your newly crafted Terra Blade while clearing out 40 stacks of dirt after a long mining trip, you know how frustrating avoidable inventory mistakes can be. Knowing how to favorite items in Terraria is one of the most underrated quality of life tricks every player should master, no matter if you’re a brand new pre-Hardmode newbie or a 1,000-hour endgame veteran. It takes less than a second per item, and it can save you hours of grinding to replace lost rare gear.
Step-by-Step: How to Favorite Items in Terraria Across Every Platform
The favorite function works almost identically across all versions of the game, with only small control differences depending on what you’re playing on. Once you mark an item as favorite, a small golden star will appear in the corner of its inventory slot, and it will be protected from accidental deletion, dropping, or quick-stacking into chests. To undo the favorite, just repeat the same action again.
PC (Desktop/Steam): Hover your cursor over the item you want to favorite, then hold the Alt key and left click. If you use a controller with your PC, the default input is pressing down on the left stick while hovering over an item, but you can remap this to any button you prefer in the game’s control settings.
Console (PlayStation/Xbox): Open your inventory, navigate to the item you want to mark with your controller’s D-pad or joystick, then press Square (PlayStation) or X (Xbox) to favorite it. Make sure you don’t hold the button down, as that will still drop the item even if you intended to mark it as favorite.
Nintendo Switch and Mobile: For Switch, highlight the item in your inventory and press the Y button to favorite it. On mobile, press and hold the item for half a second, then tap the star icon that pops up above the item slot. Mobile players often miss this feature, since the icon only appears when you hold an item down instead of tapping it once.
That’s all there is to the basic process. But there are a lot of hidden perks to using this feature regularly that most players don’t realize until they make it a habit.
Key Benefits of Favoriting Items Regularly
You don’t have to favorite every single item in your inventory to get value out of this feature. Even marking just your most used 5 to 10 items will make a noticeable difference in how smooth your gameplay feels. Some of the biggest upsides include:
- Prevents accidental loss of rare items: No more throwing away your hard-earned Meowmere or Ankh Shield while clearing out common drops after a boss fight or mining run.
- Speeds up inventory sorting: Favorited items don’t get moved when you use the quick stack to chests function, so you don’t have to dig through 10 storage chests to find your pickaxe or healing potions every time you return to base.
- Reduces mid-fight mistakes: You won’t accidentally drop your strongest weapon or healing items when you’re panicking and spamming buttons during a chaotic Moon Lord or Plantera fight.
- Simplifies modded gameplay: If you use large content mods like Calamity or Thorium, you’ll have far more unique rare items to keep track of, and favoriting stops them from getting mixed in with common mob drops.
I can’t tell you how many times I lost a full stack of Greater Healing Potions right before a Wall of Flesh fight before I started favoriting every consumable I kept on my hotbar. It’s such a small habit, but it saves so much unnecessary frustration over time.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Favoriting Items
Even though this is a simple feature, there are a few common missteps that can make it less useful, or even cause more problems if you’re not careful.
Don’t favorite every item you own: If you mark 90% of your inventory as favorite, you defeat the purpose of quick stacking and automatic sorting. Reserve favorites only for items you use regularly or can’t replace easily, like your main gear, boss summon items, or rare crafting materials. Leave common blocks, junk drops, and temporary crafting supplies unfavored so you can sort and trash them quickly.
Don’t forget to favorite hotbar items. A lot of players only mark items in their main inventory as favorite, but hotbar items can still be dropped or swapped by accident if you press the wrong button mid-fight. Take an extra 10 seconds every time you update your loadout to mark all your hotbar items too.
Favoriting doesn’t protect items from other players on public multiplayer servers. The favorite function only stops you from deleting or moving the item yourself. If you’re playing with strangers, still keep your most valuable items in a locked chest when you’re offline, or carry them on you at all times if you don’t trust the other people on the server.
Also, don’t ignore the visual cue. The little golden star is easy to miss if you’re in a hurry to clear out inventory after a long expedition. Double check each item you’re trashing for the star icon, even if you’re sure you didn’t mark it as favorite. If you use custom texture packs, test to make sure the star icon is still clearly visible, as some packs make it too faint to see at a quick glance.
Advanced Favorite Tricks for Power Players
Once you get used to the basic favorite function, there are a few more advanced ways to use it to make your gameplay even smoother, especially if you play a lot of modded or permadeath worlds.
Use favoriting to create a permanent core loadout section in your inventory. Pick 4 to 5 fixed slots for your main pickaxe, weapon, healing item, and building tool, and keep them favorited at all times. They’ll never move when you sort or quick stack, so you’ll always know exactly where to reach for your most used items without looking.
You can favorite entire stacks of items at once, not just single pieces. If you keep a stack of 30 Greater Healing Potions or 50 torches on you at all times, you only have to favorite the stack once, instead of marking each individual item. That saves a ton of time if you carry a lot of stacked consumables for boss fights or long exploration runs.
If you’re a builder, favorite your main building blocks and tools while you’re working on a project. That way you can quick stack all the extra loot and blocks you pick up while clearing space for your build, without accidentally putting your main building supplies back in a chest mid-project. Just remember to unfavorite them once you’re done with the build, so they don’t take up permanent space in your inventory.
For players who run permadeath worlds, favoriting every single item you carry is non-negotiable. One accidental button press that drops your best weapon mid-fight can end your entire run, so it’s worth the extra 10 seconds every time you pick up a new piece of gear to mark it as favorite. A lot of permadeath players even make a habit of checking all their favorite marks before heading into any boss fight, just to be safe.
At the end of the day, this tiny quality of life feature is one of the most impactful hidden tools in Terraria’s inventory system. Learning how to favorite items in Terraria takes less than a minute to master, and it will save you hours of frustration and re-grinding lost items over the course of your playthroughs. I still run into players with thousands of hours in the game who don’t know this trick exists, so don’t feel silly if you’re just learning it now. Test it out next time you log into your world, even if you only favorite your main weapon and healing items first, you’ll notice the difference right away.