Getting started

A new character starts in survival with empty hands and an empty inventory: everything is gathered. The world starts at eight in the morning on the first day of spring, and a whole day lasts 20 minutes. This guide walks through the first hour. The keys are those of Controls and interface.

Mind the inventory

At first you only have the ten slots of the hotbar: the four bag slots stay empty until you sew a pouch, which needs leather. Keep to what the next steps need, and drop the rest (drag a stack out of the inventory panel).

Gathering

Everything below breaks at once with a left click, by hand, and its drop comes to you by itself when you walk near it.

• Sticks: Dead Branch lies on the ground near trees, most of all in forests, and gives one Stick. Leaves never give sticks.
• Pebbles: Loose Stones lie here and there (more in the mountains and on beaches) and give a pebble of the local rock, such as a Stone Pebble. Any pebble does for the recipes below.
• Flint: Loose Flint only lies where the rock under the soil is limestone or sandstone, in forests, plains, steppes, mountains, beaches and taiga. Each gives one Flint. A Flint Nodule in the rock needs a pickaxe: by hand it gives nothing.
• Fibres: tall grass and ferns give nothing. Reeds, growing next to water, give one reeds each, pulled into two Plant Fibres by hand. A Bramble gives one fibre, a Nettle sometimes one (one time in two).
• Logs: a tree trunk can be broken by hand, slowly (an oak trunk takes about four seconds a block); an axe makes it much faster. A trunk block gives its log, and sometimes Bark. Cutting a trunk brings down what stood on it.

For a first set of tools, aim for about 4 flint, 12 sticks, 7 pebbles and 6 reeds.

Making things by hand

There is no crafting grid in the inventory. Open it with Tab: under By Hand it lists every hand recipe you hold the ingredients for, and Make makes one. Two to start with:

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2

2 × Plant Fibres

3

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Plant Twine

A log also splits into four sticks by hand (split_sticks), handy when the ground runs out of branches.

Knapping a flint tool head

1. Make a Knapping Stone from four pebbles, by hand, and place it with the right mouse button.
2. Hold a flint and press E on the stone: the flint is laid on it.
3. A list of what the flint can become shows: the right button goes to the next one, the left button chooses. The shape to keep then shows as ghost voxels.
4. With a flint or a pebble in hand, every left click knocks one voxel off. Remove all the voxels outside the shape: the last one gives the head.

A voxel of the shape knocked off ruins the piece, which gives back a Flint Shard. A shard counts as flint, so it can be knapped again. Start with the axe head: it keeps the most voxels, so it takes the fewest clicks.

Inputs: Flint

Layer 1 (bottom)

Result: Flint Axe Head

Inputs: Flint

Layer 1 (bottom)

Result: Flint Knife Blade

The same stone knaps the pickaxe head, the shovel blade, the spear point, arrowheads (four at once) and the heads of the hammer, chisel, hoe, saw and sickle. See Knapping, clay and smithing for all of them.

Hafting the head

A head becomes a tool by hand, bound to a stick with one binding: Plant Twine, Birch Tar, Rawhide or Rope.

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Flint Axe

Tool	Head	Sticks	Durability
Flint Axe	Flint Axe Head	1	60
Flint Pickaxe	Flint Pickaxe Head	1	60
Flint Shovel	Flint Shovel Blade	1	60
Flint Knife	Flint Knife Blade	1	80
Flint Spear	Flint Spear Point	2	80

The flint axe fells trees two and a half times faster than bare hands. The flint pickaxe is the least that breaks stone and ore for anything: rock gives nothing by hand. Every block that takes time to break wears a tool of its kind by one use.

Campfire and fire

4

3

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Campfire

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2

2 × Fire Starter

1. Make a Campfire by hand (any pebbles do) and place it.
2. Press E on it with an empty hand: its slots open beside the inventory, two inputs, two fuel and two outputs. Put fuel in the fuel slots: a stick burns 30 seconds, a log from 90 (willow) to 170 seconds (beech), an oak log 150.
3. Take a Fire Starter in hand and press E on the campfire: it lights at once. A fire starter is used up; a Torch lights a fire too and is kept.

A wood fire heats up by 25 °C a second, up to 600 °C, and cools down without fuel; once the fuel is gone the fire goes out and must be lit again. Food in the inputs cooks as soon as the fire is hot enough:

Inputs

• Raw Meat

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Outputs

• Cooked Meat

Time

⏱ 40 seconds

Temperature

🌡 150 °C

Inputs

• 4 × Bark

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Outputs

• Birch Tar

Time

⏱ 60 seconds

Temperature

🌡 300 °C

Birch tar is a binding for the tools and makes four torches with one stick. See Fire and slow stations for the other fuels and stations.

Planks and the workbench

With the axe in your inventory, a log is split by hand into two planks; the axe loses one use.

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2

2 × Oak Planks

4

4

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Workbench

The Workbench opens a three by three grid for everything larger: chests, the pouches, the bed. See Crafting.

Night

The game does not stop at night, and nothing hurries it along. Wolves are more numerous after dark, and ghouls only come out at night, in the plains and the swamps. Some light helps:

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4

4 × Torch

A torch is also the only fire that warms you (the air feels 12 °C warmer within four blocks) and speeds up your healing (three times as fast); the campfire is for cooking. There is no hunger bar: health comes back slowly on its own, ten seconds after the last blow, and food heals.

Sleeping

A Bed is made at the workbench from three Wool over three planks, so it waits for the sheep: one gives one to three wool when killed, or when shorn with a flint knife (every three days). Using it with E makes it the place you come back to after death, and lying in it heals four times as fast. It does not skip the night.