With what to start?
I'll assume that if you made to the forums, you at least managed to create your characted and made it to Providence, so you already know how to walk and interact with stuff.
Welcome to the most harsh and cruel world, where is no place for trust!
First of all, have this link to a Wiki - it greatly helps, answering almost any question. However, if you like to discover game features (which are REALLY interesting here) by yourself - then don't use the wiki untill you feel a real need in it = )
1. Wilderness guide - walking into the wilds with a friend or alone!
If you do not have any friend to play with - find a NPC-guy that is shouting about leading to you the wilderness (the game will tell you to do so) and simply embark on your adventure. And skip this part to the part 2.
However, if you do have a friend who has already started playing, do the following:
- One of you must already have a claimstone (homestead) somewhere in the world.
If you started with someone at the same time - you will firstly face some challenges. One of you will have to learn skill Settling (unlocked by Colonial Tradesmanship) and then buy a piece of land (costs 150 silver) - by constructing a claimstone. To understand how to do that, you may read the rest of the guide.
You may try to wander around the Providence - to forage some starting curiosities (see your inspiration part of the guide) to learn settling skill.
[NOTE: You will loose ALL your items if you don't have a homestead (leanto or claimstone) and try to log off]
Then one of you will have to go to the wilderness (via wilderness guide) and forage indian feathers and indian arrowheads to make with the skill indian tracking some savage charms (inspirationals crafting menu) - 5 of them will be enough to buy a claimstone and therefore grant to you a possibility to settle together. Be sure that only one of you uses wilderness guides' help - otherwise you will not be able to teleport to another players land! Once you or your friend has a claimstone - make sure it has been right-clicked and set as homestead - let one know claim owners homestead secret.
Homestead secret - is a word (something like password) that allows you to add people to your friend list ("kin-list") and to spawn a new character at their base. Usually you do not tell your HS to random people.
- When you know your friends homestead secret (wich he can set in his friend-list menu, acessed in lower left corner
) - talk to the wilderness guide and instead of pushing the button, enter the secret word in to the textbox and then push enter! If a new second button appeared - you did everything right, and after pushing it you will appear at your friends base. If there is no second button - don't push the first one or you will be randomly teleported into the wild!After you asked the wilderness guide to lead you to the woods - there is no way to teleport to your friends base. You will have to walk to him, which is really time-consuming. For a new character it is adviced simply to create a new one if you mistakenly spawned yourself in a wrong place. To kill (behead) the previous char costs 150 silver - so most likely you will have now two characters.
(it is bad idea not to use the guide and try to find a place simply walking out of Providence - you will be too close to starting location and therefore robbed and raided too often)
2. Important numbers to know
There are many numbers that define your character. They are your humors, inspiration, proficiencies, and skills.
Your humors are the stats that may be spent for different actions such as building, combat, laerning etc.. They are represented with the lines of different colour at the top of the screen.
Phlegm (blue) is used for energy-consuming actions like running, swimming, sawing boards etc. You may think of it as your physical strength and endurance: the more you have it, the longer you can run, work etc.
Blood (red) is your health. If you recieve damage - you will loose blood. Once it is 0 - you will get KO'd. If you engage in combat with an animal - it will not kill you (you remember that in this game you can permanently loose your character if it will be killed). The animal will KO you and you will spawn at your base losing your inventory (but not the equipped items). However, players and some late monsters from the darkness can permakill you - so beware and trust noone! But dont fear - you can not face monsters that are able to permakill you in the beginning of the game. But you must know - every time you KO you lose half of your current inspiration and 2 random proficiencies are lowered by 1. (I'll tell about them futher). Also, you you were bitten by an animal you might start bleeding - and therefore loosing your blood, which also can result in a KO.
Yellow bile is your combat stat. The more you have it - the greater damage you deal with your attacks. Also, you can turn on movement type "forage" wich will give you the maximum possible chance of finding foragebles and will consume your yellow bile. The less of it you have left - the less damage you deal, so don't engage in a row of hard combats without a rest. Deers (and rarely bears) can break your bones, lowering your YB greatly - to heal you will need a splint (bones won't heal by themselves).
Black bile is your mental abilities, sanity - as it is used when you study inspirationals or place building projects (signs). The more black bile you have - the more you can learn without a need to eat, the faster you gain inspiration and the higher is maximum cap of how much of inspiration you can have. Hoover your mouse oner inspiration number in game to see the cap and how fast do you gain inspiration. Also, if you are scared by a bear you may be KO'd by fear, which consumes your black bile.
To restore humors you must eat food by right-clicking on it.
Your inspiration is a number you can spend to increase your proficiencies and skills. It increases over time, and skills literacy, a formal education and aristotelian logic make that process quicker.
Inspirationals - are curious items that will give you points to spend for increasing your proficiencies or skills.
Each inspirational you learn will consume said number of inspiration. If you study the same inspirational before you spend your gained knowledge - the cost for every next same inspirational will increase greatly (by 50%). So in order not to waste your inspiration - you must study different inspirationals.
If you get KO'd by an animal or player - you will loose half of your current inspiration.
Proficiencies are things that your character know about the world, they define your characters abilities. While they don't have really great influence on the game process, they allow to learn skills.
When you study an inspirational - it will give you some points in different proficiencies. When you reach maximum points in one or few proficiencies - you may choose to increase it. The one you've chosen will be increased by 2, and others that also reached their maximum will be increased by 1. Exception - Perennial Philosophy, this one must be increased separately, no other proficiencies will advance along with it. You can see on wiki what influence on the game process does each proficiency have.
In order to advance in skills you must increase your proficiencies.
Skills unlock you new buildings, recipes and actions. Mostly skills have clear description and you can understand from it what they will allow you to do. To buy a skill you must have said number of points in said proficiencies.
3. Gluttony and humors
In order to increase humors - you must enter the gluttony mode
by pressing these two forks that are under the humors bars. In this mode you will gobble food which will lead to increase of your humors - try to balance your stats and not to overtrain one humor comparatively to other as it will be harder to increase ones that are low.How does it work?
Each food has several numbers in description. Lets look on this caterpillar
You can see such numbers:
Aether (purity) - this is the percent of how much more of heal or gluttony you will gain. At 100% aether food will give 2 times base value (0% aether) of heal and gluttony. The mercury, sulphur and lead numbers currently have no influence on game.
Heals - are the amount of humors that food will restore while eaten normally, by right-clicking it.
When gobbled - here you see range of humor points given by the food when it is gobbled. This caterpillar will give you from 5 to 8 of blood and no other humors. Also, it will make you full and fed for 5 minutes. And there is 50% chance that after eating this caterpillar, every other slug or bug will be 50% less effective.
That is because caterpillar is from "Slugs'N'Bugs" food category. To see different food categories - open you crafting menu and find "food" there. In each category you will find recipes of some dishes. When you gobble food - it has a chance of reducing efectiveness of its category. If you gobbled a catterpillar and see a text saying "Slugns'N'Bugs 50%" - it means that any next food of this category will give you only half of points it should give (so next caterpillar will give only 2,5-4 of blood). Some foods restore this values.
So it means that you must eat different food - as if you eat many-many mushrooms, the first few will be tasty and will increase your stats, but next ones will do nothing except making you full and fed.
Full and fed
- is a debuff you recieve after eating in a gluttony mode that prevents you from increasing your humors for some time. You still can eat food normally to heal. Every 3 points you increase in one gluttony session decreases the duration of that debuff by half an hour - so the more you eat at one time, the faster you will progress!NOTE: if you also got the Quaffed and Quenched debuff from drinking some liquid, the Full and Fed debuff will lover the QnQ one.
(If you got 150 in QnQ, once you reach 150 points in FnF, QnQ will be gone)
When you cook different food, same recipe can give you different stats when it is gobbled - it depends on the ingridient you use. If you see in a recipe that it requires "any plant" or "any nut" - using different ingridients will lead to different numbers in the resulting food. However, If the recipe requires more than one of "any ingridient" - you will recieve increased gluttony value for some humor(s) only if all ingridients will be of the same type. For example, if a dish requires 3 of any slug - using 3 caterpillar will result in a blood-giving food, while using mixed slugs (i.e. 2 grubs and 1 beetle) will result in a middle-valued food (sometimes it is better than one-humor-oriented).
You may notice that usually "any igridient" is of the same category as the cooked dish - so it has main influence on the outcome.
Many of cooked dishes has several bites - you can heal multiple times with this food, but you can't gobble food that was bitten (can't gluttony with partly eaten dish).
4. Important features
Characters and Leantos - if you do not have a leanto or claimstone anywhere in the wilderness, you character will drop all his items (both in inventory and equipped) when logged off. This is made to prevent from making items in the game unavailable by storing them on an alternative character ("alt") that never logs in. And if your leanto is not on a claimed land, it still can be easily looted (player can take anything from your inventory or equipment), though crimnal will leave a scent. If this happens and you find yourself robbed - take the scent to the Judge in Providence.
Teleportation - you may teleport from your base to Providence (with stuff in your inventory to sell or exchange), from Providence - home and from any place to your base if you have empty inventroy (contents of your toolbelt and pockets does not count as inventory for teleportation, thus you may teleport with items in them)
Claims - in this game nothing is yours unless it is on your claimed land. If your first base got robbed - don't worry, this is Salem. In order to protect your stuff you must place a claim stone. For that you will need a skill "settling" and some silver (150 to buy in Providence rights to have some land and more silver to expend your claim). You may also make some fence around your base for more safety - as there are skills that allow to steal even from claimed territory!
Trading - once you've aquired some silver, you may buy needed stuff (such as nails or seeds) in Providence. Don't buy everything from NPCs! Players sell thing at much cheaper rates in stalls in the public market. If you want even cheaper prices - lurk through the forums in the The Trade-Wind forum. If you would like to sell something - start your own thread or simply shout out your offer in Providence.
Being AFK - in this game you better not be AFK. It is not that dangerous while you are obviously a new player, however when you advance - you may become a nice trophy for others. You may be cursed and permakilled, you may be found in woods and a bear will be lured in you or other bad things may happen. Better don't be AFK. If you need to go - log out.
5. Useful shortcuts
1. When building, you can Shift+MouseScroll items into the buidling sign by hoovering the mouse over the icon of needed item in the building window (and having it in your inventory) Be careful with your items, as, for example, Singing Old Log is also a woodblock - so you can accidently build it in (you can take out items from a sign in the same way if they were not built yet)
2. You can Ctrl+Alt+Click to drop ALL items on the ground of the same type from a container or inventory (Ctrl+Click will drop a single item).
3. You can Shift+Click to add same type items to a field, compost, oven etc. (having first one in your mouse) In that way it is way easier to use fertilizers on fields, fuel up firepits and smelters etc. But be careful - because the game will recognize items by the quality, not by the item type (therefore you can compost anything compostable, fuel up with anything that if a fuel etc.)
4. You can use minimap to pick up items if you can't find them on the ground - also rightclick on item icon on the minimap.
5. Shift+scroll while hoovering mouse over a container window will put your inventory items into that container. If you have inventory+backpack+toolbelt+pockets - items from the last equipped item that expands your inventory will be offloaded first after main inventory. Shift+Alt+Click will move all same type items into container.
6. When you carry an item (log, wooden box etc.) - you can right click it in your hands to put it precisely. Then you can use Shift to adjust it to the tiles grid and mouse scroll to rotate, or use Shift+Ctrl to place or rotate it precisely, not attaching to the grid. Same works while placing a building.
7. When digging soil, Ctrl+LeftClick will make your pilgrim to flatten the ground and same if Ctrl+RightClick when putting dug out soil on the ground. (in this way you can prepare flat surface for your buildings, if you recieve "the surface is not flat enough" message)
6. Ok, now I know all of that - what to do?
There is no certain goal in this game - it is about exploration and competition. The most exciting part is to unlock new recipes, buildings and game features, run your own home with fields, turkeys, flowers and many-many boxes and chests = )
But if you are new, here are some starting goals for you:
- Try to find the best place for settling
The place where you are dropped by a wilderness guide usually is not the best one: try to wander around and find something interesting to live near. It may be some water source - prefferably river or a place with wide variety of different biomes. Later on you may understand what exactly you should find for yourself and move to a new place.
- Arrange your little base
Place a leanto (if you moved from your initial base), make a campfire and, maybe, some baskets or carry some old logs closer to your place. You may store up to 2 containers in the leanto and they will be much safer in it.
- Forage for some silver
Best way for a new player to earn first money - is to look for indian feathers and arrowheads. Learn the skill "indian tracking' and you will be able to make a savage charm, which can be sold in Providence to NPCs.
- Try to make a big nice gluttony session
Try to cook a full inventiry of food and eat all in one gluttony session to increase your humors!
- Get some equipment!
Make yourself a barkpack - for that collect 5 birch barks, boil them in a clay pot, dry them on a drying rack and craft the barkpack! Make sure you have right skills to do everything.
- Find your own goals!
Become the most fearsome player, build the biggest town, be a forum-sitter, draw something on the map with pavement, make an underground base in a mine etc. etc.! This world offers so many possibilities! = )
If you didn't find naswers on your questions in this starting guide - try to use search in the Help forum or look up in the wiki.
Also, you may discuss and give feedback in this thread. Feel free to do it! = )
Yours,
Dithard Vonderherr aka Nord ErdTod
