Need tips on how to advance

[Everburning]

I'm a fairly new player, having started for about a month now. I think I got my basics down. Whats the best way to advance? I'm a PvE kind of guy and my general goal is to have enough biles to explore the darkness and find cool stuff.

Right now I begin to see the the rising difficulties in getting my biles up, which are around 70-80ish. The way I see it, I have to do something beyond just logging in and eating croissants and dragon's breath over and over again.

I probably have a very narrow minded view of this game. Are there other aspects I can work upon? Maybe more exploring or joining a town? I tried looking into purity but it's kinda confusing. Most guides are for the old system, I think, and my poor understanding is that whatever I do, my end product will be capped by the purity of the materials I find from scratch. Eg. I can only find 3% grass, my worms will be be around 3% and it will keep going down from the compost to the plants I grow, all of them will be within that range capped at 3%. Or is there a way to keep compounding on the stats so that it goes beyond 3% (Forgive me if my example makes no sense whatsoever.)

[thais]

Purity system is supposed to change a lot with the next update, so you probably won't have to deal with that anymore...

[alloin]

Try to eat a bigger variaty of food, you'll get to 150-200 in no time (if you use potions).

80 is more then enough to go to the darkness, try slotting some gear to make you stronger.

Got a bell up already, if not, farm silver for a bell, build defences, find golden eggs, thornflowers, bearpaws,....

[Everburning]

Any recommendations on what I should be working on now? Surely it doesn't just stop here.

[Everburning]

Try to eat a bigger variaty of food, you'll get to 150-200 in no time (if you use potions).

80 is more then enough to go to the darkness, try slotting some gear to make you stronger.

Got a bell up already, if not, farm silver for a bell, build defences, find golden eggs, thornflowers, bearpaws,....

Noted. Are there any guides on food combinations? Also,I have a very small camp, would people kill me if I build a town bell? Sorry for that stupid question, I find youtube videos of salem and so many towns that got wasted have town bells.

[Feone]

Try to eat a bigger variaty of food, you'll get to 150-200 in no time (if you use potions).

80 is more then enough to go to the darkness, try slotting some gear to make you stronger.

Got a bell up already, if not, farm silver for a bell, build defences, find golden eggs, thornflowers, bearpaws,....

Noted. Are there any guides on food combinations? Also,I have a very small camp, would people kill me if I build a town bell? Sorry for that stupid question, I find youtube videos of salem and so many towns that got wasted have town bells.

As a rule of thumb, if they can kill you they will. Regardless if you're a 5/5/5/5 char exiting boston or a major of an advanced town. Towns make it harder to do so, it's a good idea to have one.

[alloin]

It's indeed better to have a town bell !

[lachlaan]

The wikis contain info on the various food options and you can theorycraft some combos yourself. The open wiki has an okay .. ish .. guide or two, for various bile levels. Not sure about the tribe wiki but it probably does have guides.

Off the top of my head, the things you can do are :
1) Get a table, either simple table or fancy one, but simple to begin with is okay.
2) Eat 4-5 food items of any one food type, depending on how quick they reduce that food type's efficiency.
3) Vary your food types a lot, and eat them in an order that won't reduce the effect of subsequent foods.

For blood, you can use (sorted by type) :

Fishy stuff - Buddies on a branch
Bread - Cabbage cakes with wheat and red cabbage if possible
Pies - Humble meat pie with ideally wheat flour, beaver and deer meats for each respective ingredient, in any order. (Either deer cuts and beaver shreads, or viceversa)
Vegetables and greens - Tendergrass Rump with beaver meat and bunny meat.
Dragon breath salad might also be veggies, i forgot, don't use it often enough
Candy/Cookies, forgot which, are the croissants, best used before bread types as they nerf their respective sweet category but also count as bread.
If desperate for blood - slugs and critters category is, i think, frog chowder. Can easily get yellow plants and yellow frogs in boston for it. (south boston)
For poultry - cornmash gobbler, preferably with golden corn

Phlegm :
Slugs bugs and kritters - Either rabbit in the cabbage or shellroast virginians
Pie - Wildberry pie with blackberries used and preferably wheat flour.
Bread - I think either garlic bread or easier to make cornmeal flatbread (can be used for blood if need be as well)
Fish - If desperate, but undesirable - roasted eel filets

YB - Marrow dumplings for offal
Cabbage rolls with bear and red cabbage for veggies, alternatively tendergrass rump with bear and domestic turkey / snake meat
Empire bluecakes with gold corn and yellow corn if possible, or just any corn for cookies category
Pumpkin pie for pies
Beaver dam with a nice match of beaver meat and oakworth of the same foraged purity for game debuff, to be eaten before any other meat stuff.

Black bile :
For candy, candied oakworth tarts
For veggies, boiled gourd
For bread (?) barley cakes
For pies - can use wildberry, but it's pretty weaksauce for it
For fish you can use sea loaf, seaweed rolls or roasted eel
For nuts there's the nutcracker suite thinger
For meat, and your most powerful one depending on pot purity (for now) , Tenderboiled terrines made with garlic bulbs and bear shreads.

[Thor]

+1 for lachlaan!

[Kandarim]

70-80 is more than enough to face the darkness.

I'd say the minimum for some kind of efficient argo hunting is 55-60 biles with some attack slotting (that's when I moved a hunter alt to darkness).

And yes: at a certain point potions will speed you up a lot again, but you'll need a steady silver income for those.