Things I wish I had known...

[Maelstrom]

It's been a while since we've had this kind of thread.  I thought it would be nice for all the new players to learn (and laugh at) the things us seasoned vets did when we were newbies.

 

1. Pit Kilns burn more than the what you put in them.  In my case, ME!  More than once I've run to the nearest water source to put myself out (streaming smoke and flames the entire way).

2. The most important items to obtain first: 2 flint, 4 sticks, 3 grass.  Craft 1 knife (2 flint and 1 stick), firestarter (2 stick, 1 grass) and one torch (2 grass, 1 stick).  The night get's insanely dark!

3. ALWAYS carry one torch in a separate inventory slot.  ALL torches in the hotbar can (and eventually will) get extinguished.  Doing so at night is horrifically tragic!

 

Add your bits of wisdom gained from that wonderful School of Hard Knocks...

[Cattastrafy]

1) That this game existed years ago.

2)

Edited March 19, 2025 by Cattastrafy

[LadyWYT]

1. Regarding pit kilns, it's never a good idea to build them in your starter shack. Particularly if your starter shack contains lots of flammable things, like grass, hay bed, reed chests, and yourself.

2. Mark the ore bits that you find on the surface--there's usually a deposit underneath.

3. Nothing but igneous rock for miles tends to make for a more challenging progression. That can be either a good or bad thing, depending on one's preferred playstyle.

4. Never sleep in the open, and never leave the door to your base open while you're sleeping. I got murdered by a sheep once from ignoring this rule.

5. If an NPC describes something as dangerous, it probably is and you should treat it as such, regardless of your skill level. Really, it's a good idea to pay attention to what NPCs say in general.

6. Always examine what you're about to eat to make sure it's actually something you should be eating, especially if you play with mischievous friends.

7. You don't need to rely on caves in order to find ore.

8. It's perfectly fine to dig straight down, provided that you're placing ladders as you dig. Your character will cling to ladders, so it's rather difficult to fall off should you happen to dig into a cavern.

Just a few tips that I can think of on the spot. Not necessarily all stuff that I had trouble with, but stuff that may not be immediately obvious to brand new players.

[ToothedMammal]

You can hit the "disable UI" button (I forget what the default keybind is but it should be listed in the options somewhere) while in bed you don't get the screen blackout and can see when the sun rises if you wanna get up as soon as there's light

[Thorfinn]

1. Crops are flowers.
2. Just how useful 3x3 tool is in clayforming. If you need something other than the 3x3 to make it, you probably don't need it.
3. You have too few buckets. One stack of liquid in buckets is almost one full barrel. One chest holds almost 13 barrels of liquid.
4. Just like in real life, you can run away from most of your problems.

Edited March 19, 2025 by Thorfinn

[ToothedMammal]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

5. If an NPC describes something as dangerous, it probably is and you should treat it as such, regardless of your skill level. Really, it's a good idea to pay attention to what NPCs say in general.

Wait are there NPCs besides Traders? I've literally only seen three people in my whole single player world and they were all traders.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, ToothedMammal said:

Wait are there NPCs besides Traders? I've literally only seen three people in my whole single player world and they were all traders.

Heh heh heh...play through the main story and you'll find them. Or I mean...explore far enough in the right direction, and you'll find them as well. But your best bet is starting off with the Resonance Archive--you can acquire a map to the place by doing a small favor for a treasure hunter trader. The story unfolds from there.

Of course, you could, in theory, find other locations without going to the Archive first, but it's rather unlikely, and some things won't make as much sense either if you're not really familiar with what's in the Archive.

[LadyWYT]

On the ladder aspect, I will also note that it's a really good idea to carry a few rope ladders on you at all times. Not only do they make it a lot easier to scale rough terrain, since they can be placed/picked up easily, but they can also end up saving your life should you fall in a hole that you can't otherwise climb out of(though you could simply switch gamemodes and fly out of the hole).

[Michael Gates]

Your first day running through a new area, you're relatively safe and few if any wolves will spawn. If you go back for a SECOND day... they will have spawned now.

[Dubbs Malone]

4 hours ago, Michael Gates said:

Your first day running through a new area, you're relatively safe and few if any wolves will spawn. If you go back for a SECOND day... they will have spawned now.

Ok so a lotta people seem to have trouble with wolves. They are absolutely no threat if you know how to fight them and it's incredibly easy.

Use a spear, sprint sideways around the wolf while you stab it. It will never land a single bite if you do it right and it isn't hard. I kinda wish they weren't so easy as this method has erased a cool threat of the wilderness in the game. It's really not even much harder to take on a whole pack as they do not have much of an answer to the strafing. To take on more you just need to vary the size of the circles and mix in some figure eights.

I guess I could make a guide so more people can see this.

[DUCATISLO]

pan sand n gravel for copper lol

 

most people forget this 

[Arcane]

The story structures distance scaling config exists and should be something you're made aware of, even if you're playing blind.

Spending hours running on an elk through terrain may be enjoyable for some, but for me it was the single most unpleasant experience I've had to date as a returning player that prefers light config modifications to a wilderness survival world.
"less focus on exploration and building" still has the estimated 2.5 hours travel time default, and not knowing if you're properly prepared for further engagements as you get led along the story sites might lead you to decide to make a return trip to prepare more which can really exacerbate a mismatch between the player's expectations, preferences, and the default settings of this config

[Broccoli Clock]

This doesn't really count as a "wow, if only I had known that", but the flint knaps you put on the ground are always oriented West/East (if we assume North is up on the map).

[-Glue-]

- Putting slabs in the crafting grid makes it so you can only place them horizontally, so you don't have to deal with the finicky placement when just trying to make a floor. If you put those slabs in the crafting grid, they can only be placed vertically. Very handy.

- When chiseling, you can place two logs, planks, or other rotatable blocks, in different directions, turn them to chiseled blocks, pick them up, and put them in the crafting menu together to combine them. Now you have both texture orientations on one block. Its also a good way to make sure the textures are facing the right way, when using multiple materials in one block. ie, making sure planks are facing the right way when adding them to an existing chisel block.

- When making chains or scales for armor, start by making plates, then forge those plates into chains or scales. Its easier to do, and you can use the helve hammer to really speed up the processing.

- You can fill a bowl from a crock in your inventory without having to place the crock. Good for when doing story locations, where you can't place items.

- You can oil hides with fat to make pelts, which opens up some new crafting options, such as warm fur clothing. (I was confused why I couldn't craft them for a while)

- You can put non-stackable items in crates. For example, I put all my temporal gears in a crate, since they don't stack, and cant be put in a pile.

I swear I had more things I learned, but can't remember. I may add to this list later!

 

[Bumber]

On 3/19/2025 at 4:24 PM, Thorfinn said:

1. Crops are flowers.

I think there's a caveat that it's only in certain growth phases.

[LadyWYT]

Also worth noting that you cannot, under any circumstances, tamper with story locations! Well, except for the odd bug or two, anyway, or the rare instance you need to interact with something in the location, such as a door, unowned storage containers, or obvious macguffins. Generally, all that means is that you can't break blocks or place them, like you can in the other block game. It'll be fairly obvious what stuff you can interact with otherwise.

The main reasons that it's noteworthy, is that it means that you can leave most of your tools(pickaxe, shovel, ladders, etc) behind to save inventory space, as you won't be needing them. You'll also want to make sure that you cut your pies before you enter the location(assuming you're relying on pies for food), as you won't be able to place the pies down to cut them inside the location itself.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Bumber said:

I think there's a caveat that it's only in certain growth phases.

Yes. Not the first (seed) stage, nor the mature stage. And some of the warmer crops are more limited or not at all. All that means is that it's probably a good idea to harvest stuff as it ripens and put in new crops ASAP. Which I do anyway. Not that it's a huge problem. The row of crops on both the right and left of the crop that is maturing is something with a different number of stages, and, at least for me, usually a different growing time owing to some of the rows being HFS, others MFS. You are still harvesting half your skeps every second or third day.

If you are the kind who likes to wait until everything is ripe, then harvest with scythe, maybe not as great an idea, unless you go gangbusters on skeps. Or not. How much honey and wax does one really need? And wouldn't you know it, they patched out the ability to stack barrels.

Which I didn't realize until I was well into trying out @Maelstrom's idea of turning grain into dough into compost. For the record, you will rapidly need to build a granary if you don't use at least 2 querns with full sails. Think 3 might be the magic number.

[Broccoli Clock]

Find yourself miles away from your body/loot? Your death is actually a waypoint on the map, which most people know as you can see the icon, however the /tpwp (teleport to waypoint) command can use that waypoint, it's called "you died here".

For those who wish to just teleport there, grab their gear, and forget about their failed mission..

/tpwp you died here

Set a waypoint at your home if you want to teleport back there.

 

[Deaderpan]

horse tail has a chance to grow on fallow soil, so if you're playing multiplayer, its not your friends failing to understand farming and planting single horse tail expecting it to grow

[LadyWYT]

9 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Find yourself miles away from your body/loot? Your death is actually a waypoint on the map, which most people know as you can see the icon, however the /tpwp (teleport to waypoint) command can use that waypoint, it's called "you died here".

For those who wish to just teleport there, grab their gear, and forget about their failed mission..

/tpwp you died here

Set a waypoint at your home if you want to teleport back there.

 

Tagging on to this--if you're the ambitious sort, look into the terminus teleporter. It's a late game piece of tech that once built, will allow you to teleport to last place you died, at the cost of one temporal gear per use. Ideally, it's not something you'll ever need, but if you want to acquire a "legit" method of teleporting to your death point, it is an option.

Nothing against using console commands to fix mistakes either--that's what they're there for!

[Broccoli Clock]

58 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Tagging on to this--if you're the ambitious sort, look into the terminus teleporter. It's a late game piece of tech that once built, will allow you to teleport to last place you died, at the cost of one temporal gear per use. Ideally, it's not something you'll ever need, but if you want to acquire a "legit" method of teleporting to your death point, it is an option.

Nothing against using console commands to fix mistakes either--that's what they're there for!

I've seen it in the guide, and had some jonas parts for it, but not all at the same time.

Not made any of the tech, yet, and not repaired any either, nor have I hit the archives. I've been enjoying just living in the world, rather than rushing progression.

[Thorfinn]

Since this just came up in-game... again... in permadeath...

Tip for Windows users: If you are prone to fat-fingering and can't pop the keytop off the stupid Windows key, remember to run a program like WinKill to disable the stupid thing, so if you get in trouble and have to sprint, you don't return to the stupid desktop and listen to the bad guys finish you off before you can return to the game.

[Sertyu]

On 3/20/2025 at 1:55 PM, Dubbs Malone said:

Ok so a lotta people seem to have trouble with wolves. They are absolutely no threat if you know how to fight them and it's incredibly easy.

Use a spear, sprint sideways around the wolf while you stab it. It will never land a single bite if you do it right and it isn't hard. I kinda wish they weren't so easy as this method has erased a cool threat of the wilderness in the game. It's really not even much harder to take on a whole pack as they do not have much of an answer to the strafing. To take on more you just need to vary the size of the circles and mix in some figure eights.

I guess I could make a guide so more people can see this.

Also, yo can just use water

run into a pond, and smack the wolf/s with a spear till they die, and if they run away throw spear at em

bears are easy too, just make 10 flint spears and throw them at the bear, if it takes too much damage it will retreat, and you can throw spears very fast

[Maelstrom]

More things...

• EVERYTHING is a resource in this game, not just items and inventory, but time and "hunger" are to be managed carefully.
• To use time wisely save tasks for the night that can be done indoors, like knapping tool heads and forming clay items.
• Mining flint yields only one flint.  Just collect EVERY. SINGLE. flint on the ground instead.  You'll need lots of it for fire clay and refractory bricks.
• It's easy to run out of sticks and grass early (especially when it comes to firing pit kilns) so take time to store it up when you're doing other things.
• Collect lots of horsetail when in the foresty areas.  Poultices are a life saver and should be on hand AT ALL TIMES.
• Axes are fast at harvesting non-wood things - like flowers (i.e. horsetail) and berry bushes.
• Throwing spears saves durability (another resource to be managed) and causes more damage.  Three thrown spears will kills most animals and all surface drifters.

[HalfAxd]

That captive rabbits breed like... 'er... rabbits....  OMG my pen is full of rabbits!