How do I make stairs?

Question

How do I make stairs in Terraria? It's getting really annoying that NPC's can't go up platforms.

Answer 1

If you are looking for something that has the functionality like the platforms, where you can optionally go through them or up them, then that is not possible to make in a staircase.

With the changes in 1.2 though, everything should be able to walk up and down a 1 to 1 elevation change. So you can just make a tile of blocks that anyone can walk up and down. You can even use the hammer to make it look like a slope if you wanted, but this is optional and up to your taste in how you want it to appear.

Edit: interesting bit of new information from playing. You can place down Ingots of different metals and these act as a background as well as a foreground. How the AI will deal with them is a bit odd so far and I have not been able to rigorously test this, but these give you a set of stairs you can jump and land on or just simply walk past them. This may be a solution to your problem. I will update with more exact information as I find it, but it is a tentative third option.

Answer 2

As of version 1.2.3, if you place a Platform of any type, and hit it with a hammer (essentially making it a sloped platform), the platform will transform itself into a staircase. Here's the relevant line from the changelog for 1.2.3:

You can now turn platforms into stairs using the hammer.

Here's a video from YouTube demonstrating how this works.

Answer 3

There is now a faster way to build stairs without the hammer:

On the PC version, you can select a platform and hold down the "Ctrl" key. This will highlight a single block were the platform can be placed. If you place them in a diagonal instead of horizontal, it will automatically become stairs.

Not sure how it is done in xbox or other versions.