How do YOU do it?

[Enjen]

Afternoon Vintarians! 

I'm doing a playthrough and I'm trying to come up with what things to tackle and in what order. Of course, the order doesn't really matter, but I'm the kind of guy who likes to write a bulletin of "Need to Do" things and "Steps to take" notices. I've come up with a plan already, but I got curious.

How do You progress in your world? Do you hunt for food first or establish shelter. After that do you go for copper or establish a farm?

What is your order of operations when it comes to progressing forward in the game?
 

[Scorpixel]

Pretty standard i'd say:

Spawn  --> inventory expansion (grab early game materials and berries as needed) --> fire in a hut, cooking recipients and vessel(s) --> molds, start hoarding everything in sight while searching/marking copper and other deposits/POI --> copper if no tin, straight to bronze anvil+pick if lucky --> more mining (if good candidates) or storage/setup/construction

Food is such a non-issue that i need to remember to make a farm before the end of July. Pretty sure i don't actually need to beside the urge to use all the seeds, bushes and sapling in my chests.

I can confidently say that i've eaten more wolves than anything else. Also fish, i have no idea why but oceans are empty while random ponds are more fish than water.

[LadyWYT]

By the end of the first day I have my pit kilns firing cookware, a storage vessel, and the molds I'll need for metalworking. I'll have a reed chest or two for other storage as well. From there, I go exploring and mark anything useful that I find, returning to collect the copper bits I've found in order to get my first pick and hammer. After that, I'll go mine the deposits so that I can cast an anvil and a few ingots for a chisel, saw, and shears. However, if I get lucky and find a surface tin deposit that's big enough, I'll skip copper and go straight for a bronze anvil and tools. If I'm getting really unlucky with my ore deposits, I'll pan for what copper I need.

While working on copper and bronze, I'll also start my farms and leatherworking, provided there's a source of lime or borax to work with. If there are animals nearby that can be domesticated, I'll try to herd them into a pen and start that process too. Otherwise, after getting bronze I focus on getting to iron and steel as quickly as possible, as it's much easier to focus on building and decorating if I have good equipment.

As for the story...I usually don't worry about it until I have iron, at least. I like to take my time doing stuff, for the most part, and iron is easy enough to get that I don't really see a point in relying on bronze unless I really want that challenge.

[Daev]

I haven't made it all the way through the tech tree or story yet but i've put in over 60 hours just doing my test runs up to late copper until I finally tweaked the game to exactly what I wanted.  The modding capability and world modifications available to you offers so much I just couldn't settle on something.  Anyways I tend to do a lot of exploring as I make my way a few thousand blocks south until I find somewhere that tickles my fancy, marking all the POI I come across and collecting early materials.  After I settle in a nice hobbit abode I start up my clay molds and either hunt/forage while they fire and maybe start a small garden if I can.  After that I do another exploration of my further surroundings, mainly keeping an eye out for things like native copper and tin or lime and borax.  I then make all my copper stuffs and begin mining and leather working while focusing on the farm and storage matters.  Furthest I've made now is prospecting for other ores like tin.  I haven't made it to bronze yet, mainly because I just love the joy of exploration, even if it's just walking aimlessly, I love the early hunter gatherer type vibe.  I now have my second world that I am committing to fully (last one was modded and I was afraid of the update breaking the save and I had some new mod combos I wanted to try anyways.)  I think I've got the perfect mix of quality of life mods and a nice serving of vanilla+ with just a dash of more fantastical stuff (dinosaurs and Fauna of the stone age) Sorry I got a bit rambly!

[wildforester]

I just do it as needed and take good breaks. For me it’s phases of tasks, getting a hovel to survive in, making farms, upgrading the base, exploring, making paths, upgrading to iron… etc. 
 

All the while I’ll be tending to my base and doing little bits of exploration for materials. I initially tried to plan how I’d go about progressing, but I don’t think that makes for a fun game.

[wildforester]

I think one of the harder parts of the game is making a pretty base. Sometimes it’s cozy but cramped, other times it’s sprawling and ugly, it’ll be hard to make a nice base that’ll be able to expand. (I’m planning on heading underground for a while for some rebuilding of my base) 

[Alcyonaria]

Stockpile berries first. Then make a rammed earth cube to hoard garbage as I fire molds, then cave delving with only a torch to find ore. Once I get enough tools/armor I pan for a lantern. Make a nicer house, turn old house into a warehouse. Make 6666 meat stew, then start amassing the ridiculous amount of stone you need for a cool tower.
Then fuss over making a nice house with trim/support beams, and the eternal quest of making a chimney. 

[Echo Weaver]

Haha. I like to experience each tech level before moving on. Make a dirt hut at spawn and scout around for where I want to put my base while finding obsidian, clay, and copper bits.

Probably not the checklist you're looking for though 

[Michael Gates]

Run south for a day or two, collecting flax, baskets, and flint and recording the local geology

Start with initial 3x3 dirt hut. Farm first, with a full stack of medium fertility soil turned into "pier" fields sticking out into a pond. Then run around hunting for copper bits (mark those spots) while collecting crop seeds, stones, and more flint. Dig up a stack of clay and make pot, bowls, crucible, and hammer/pickaxe molds. When I get more than about thirty copper bits, grab some sand and pan until I've got forty, build my first pick & hammer, start a pro-pick mold firing, and go collect the underground parts of the copper I found earlier. At this point it's usually May 6 or 7. During evenings, this period, I'll usually turn my stones into cobble and start building a 7x7x3 cobble room. 

Build the pro-pick and second pickaxe and prospect for tin ores. One set or the other almost always turn up on the first day, if not on the second. Dig up tin ores. Now it's June 4-ish, I have bronze, I have some turnips or carrots just about ready to pick, and a big enough shed to start doing real work in. 

Things vary a lot from here on out. It depends on what resources are nearby. If there are pigs or wolves, I'll probably trap those. If there's lime or I've found a surface borax deposit yet, I set up leathermaking barrels. If I've got the seeds, I'll make another 64 blocks of piered farmland. Eventually I'll find iron, build a dutch door on my hut to farm drifters, maybe start in on some megastructure or other.

[JabZ]

I usually explore for 3-4 real life hours to find the perfect spot to live:
It needs limestone/chalk with a secondary rock layer suitable for making a quern (Andesite preferably).
I survive off of foraged berries and wild crops, i make 4 hand baskets first thing, keep a shovel, knife and axe on me at all times and make spears only when i need them.
I keep all seeds that I can find and once I've found a good place to build my home I begin by making a small fenced in crop field, basic shelter using dirt and logs.
After that i start making pottery: 1 pot, 4 bowls, 4 crocks, 1 watering can, 2-4 vessels, pick mold, propick mold, hammer mold, axe mold, shovel mold, anvil mold.
Once that's all set up I go out to look for surface copper to create the 3 essential metal tools of Pickaxe, prospectors pick and hammer to then get going on creating bronze as soon as possible.

[7embre]

Inventory expansion comes first, followed by consequent harvest of cattail roots, and then I'm off for a few in-game days looking for limestone and/or clay. At some point I do my first firing of cookware (somewhere around nighttime, to skip most of it), and then continue looking for a good spot to settle. Might find enough copper traveling. On my last playthrough I even managed to acquire enough rusty gears (14) for golden lantern. 

[Zane Mordien]

I spend the first few days searching for flax, turnips, copper and bony soil. My nights are panning sand & bony soil and clay forming. I live in a packed dirt shack until I have copper tools then I move. I want my farm started by June 1 so if I don't have a copper anvil by that time I have to use a pond to make my first farm. Once I get a cobblestone shack going I head out and start prospecting for tin or if I have the money and a merchant I buy the tin. All of the time I'm always searching for flax.

[Rudometkin]

Based on your listed points, my priority list would tend to go Food, Shelter, Farm, and then Copper. I'm naturally a slow progressor while I'm figuring out new systems. I think I like to immerse myself in one system at a time to master them before moving onto the next.

But I think I've become a master at collecting berries, seeing as how looking at a wild animal the wrong way tends to get me yeeted across the world in wilderness survival, and I am always surrounded by wild animals.

[Krougal]

Checklist:

1. Food and shelter.

2. Pottery.

3. Irrigated farm. (Build it in a lake since you can't move water yet.) Plant ALL the flax.

4. Charcoal.

5. Copper pickaxe, hammer and (optionally) prospecting pick.

6. Bronze anvil (not copper). Make all tools out of bronze from now on.

7. Make a saw, build a nicer house.

8. Farm berries, cat tails, bees, oak trees.

9. Find lime or borax, set up barrels to make leather.

10. Fill crock pots with meat and jam, seal with beeswax for winter. Turn leather into backpacks and armor.

11.Build a smithy with windmill powered helve hammer, quern and pulverizer.

12, Find/make iron and then steel. This takes a long time, but it's quite possible to make a full set of steel armor and tools over the first winter.

I believe I got this off Reddit and I still use it to keep myself on track. I have the same problem where I will Squirrel! if I don't have a plan. You have plenty of time until winter if you focus on tasks and don't get sidetracked.

My own observations/more details in spoiler:

Spoiler

1. Very first priority is a flint/stone knife/shovel/axe/spear and gathering reeds for 4 baskets, some extra are good for a reed chest or 3 and misc stuff, but keep track of the time and try to be done with reeds around noon. 

Chop down a tree or two. Collect some vines(12) to make ropes(4) for a crude bow & tongs if you see any, but don't dawdle in the forest right now since you'll probably be eaten by wolves (if you have the recipe available to you). I also like to have a crude shield and improvised armor.

Spend some time collecting clay and peat if possible, about 2 stacks each is a good goal. Stop a few hours before dark and start looking for a spot to hunker down for the night. I really recommend setting no monsters for 1st night. The first day can be maddening and it eases the pressure. Setting it longer I feel like leads to bad habits and makes it a little too easy.

I've found setting 1st night to not have monsters eases the 1st day rush, since I hate moving my base I like to have a decent location to start. If not then make sure to get dug in 1st night.

First pottery should be a pot/crock/bowl/crucible followed by a storage vessel, the sooner you get them going the better. Peat will shave 4 (game) hours off firewood, which is 8 minutes of your life. If you have the space or no monsters, then you should be able to get this going your first night. Otherwise if you have nothing productive you can do, make a bed and sleep.

2. Go out and gather more of the day 1 resources depending how successful you were.

After the initial pottery above, you'll want to make a pickaxe and hammer mold and at least 4 more bowls & crocks, 2-5 more storage vessels (you can put anything in them not just food). After that an anvil mold & some ingot molds (I start with 4-6 and work up to 12) and then go back to cranking out crocks. Make your pottery at night, explore and gather during the days. You'll also need 7 cobble for a forge.

Make yourself a straw hat it's cheap and provides some rain protection and warmth, and there are not a lot of head options. Your starter clothes will get you through any spring cold snaps before they deteriorate. 

If you have the crude bow, you'll want to make some crude arrows as well. Otherwise you'll need to wait until you get 3 twine for a simple bow, and feather for flint arrows (and if you find feathers they are preferable to crudes). If you don't have a bow, then carry 2-4 spears if you are going into the woods. Thrown they are very effective. Before longbow & bronze arrows, I still carry 1 or 2.

Forget about animal husbandry before your first winter. It will suck up all your time and crops and drag you down and then winter will be a struggle. Stay focused and kill everything in sight. Don't worry about food rotting, rot makes compost. You'll want lots of it. You also need fat. Lots of fat. Fat, resin and hemp are precious resources most of the game.

It goes without saying to collect resin when you see it and mark the spot on your map.

3. I like to settle on the north side of a lake and build my farm to the south of it. I am not really sure if the building blocking the sun makes a difference or not, even planting a field all at once there is still some randomness on when they finish growing.4

I recommend 3x3 plots with water in the center, so 8 each crop. I make a 4x4 grid of these and plant a row at a time if possible of K/N/P crops and rotate them after every planting, leaving the first 1 fallow after 1st harvest. In the standard climate, I like Flax/Rye/Parsnips as my spring/fall crop and Flax/Spelt/Onions for summer. Obviously use what seeds you have. I'll mix some of the other crops in as well sometimes, but those are really the most bang for the buck.

You cannot have too much flax, when you start pumping out windmill sails and tailored armor, you will burn through stacks of it. Save the flax grain for next year to feed your animals. 

Make pelts out of your hides before they rot since you'll need bronze tools to gather materials to make leather. 

4. Make some charcoal. I like to start with a 2x2 pit, but even 1 stack should get you just enough to make your first pick and hammer. I like to get this started before the farm honestly. Especially if I am not having luck gathering seeds. You should always have charcoal on hand.

5. Gather copper nuggets. Pan if you must. Pick and hammer. Prospecting pick if you aren't a shameless dirty cheater like me (I use https://mods.vintagestory.at/xray to scan for stuff).

6. Get tin. You don't need a tremendous amount to get started. This can be easy or hard depending on your luck. Again I can't recommend the Block Overlay mod enough unless you are a masochist. You'll still need to mine copper like mad. https://art.twgserver.ru/vsalloys/ is very useful. Contrary to popular advice, crank that copper all the way down in any alloys you make. While the tin may seem rare at first, once you've found a few deposits the demand plummets. There are things like ductwork and hoppers and still parts that can only be made of copper. Hoard that copper, you're going to be mining it a lot. 88/12 is your friend.

7. The saw unlocks so many things. If you are having trouble finding tin, I would even recommend making a copper saw/scythe/chisel/shears/8+ nails so you can get the ball rolling, but you'll have to bite the bullet and make a copper anvil as well. Also always, always, always have a spare pickaxe and hammer or two available. 

The scythe makes gathering grass and reeds a lot easier.

Make boards. Make some trunks (I like to have about 8 ) Make some shelves for your crocks. Make 3 buckets (1 for water, 1 for honey, 1 for press). Make barrels. Then make some more barrels. And then some more barrels after that. Did I remember to mention barrels? Orange Barrels!

We need barrels for tanning leather, I like to start with a half a dozen or so. We need barrels for wine. We need barrels for compost. Any time you have 64 rot, you should build a barrel for it.

Make a few bow staves asap (because they take like a month to dry) and throw them on a weapon rack.

Keep a bucket of water on you at all times. If it's true in MC, it is doubly true in VS. For pretty much all the same reasons.

Generally, I wouldn't bother with lamellar as it is too expensive for the protection it provides. Don't be fooled looking at that mold either, you need 18 casts to make a full set. You'll have leather armor soon enough.

8. Gather all the berries, doesn't matter if most of them rot. I like to make a fruit press (I make my cellar 7x7 and keep it and lots of barrels for juice in there) you will need a metal rod and a chisel. Juice and wine are actually useful food items, and Tyron recently upped the lifespan of wine to a year and a half (but only in the barrel, not in jugs for some reason). Also you can still use the mash for rot. You can also feed animals with it, although it rots fast out in the trough. There are mods to make animal feed. I feel they are very fair and balanced and are a good addition to the game.

It's good to gather some bushes and plant them by your base so you can have good future supply. I used to make myself nuts getting all of them, now I just try to plant a field of blueberries and be done with it. Do whatever you like.

Gather some cattail roots with a knife and plant them in 3x2 blocks for ease of harvesting with a scythe (preferably in water) near your base. With the bucket you can make lakes wherever you please unless you are in hardcore mode, but then if you are in hardcore mode, you aren't reading this  I like to have like 128 so I can harvest 2 stacks at a time. You'll need them for...

...Beehives. I like to go with the standard 8 layout from the wiki. I've found it to be highly effective. You'll need to find a wild hive, put an empty skep next to it, and plant a good amount of flowers around it. Once you've got your first populated, bring it back to base (harvest the wild ones or leave them in case of emergency). I like to stick them up on a fence post for ease of visibility.

It will take until summer for them to get cranking, harvesting half of them at once if possible seems to work best. That gives you enough honey to make 6 honey(1.5 crocks worth) of jam once you squeeze it out into a bucket (be sure not to eat it by accident). Which you should seal with wax and put on shelves in your cellar. You can fill the half with the next batch and the seal will not break. Or you can just wait til you have enough to make 2 batches, which is 3 crocks worth.

You can also start sealing up crocks of meat/veggie stew as well. Make some candles too. Oh, and you'll want to make at least 1 lantern asap and carry it with you at all times. As homage to Zork 1, I always make mine out of brass.

Use the shears on oak leaves before you cut the tree down to get more saplings so you can plant a forest near your base. Pine for resin is nice too, but you need a mod for grown trees to have a chance to produce resin. I also recommend the tree-tap mod to save yourself some jackassing around.

9. Hope you saved some oak. Find yourself a borax deposit or limestone as well. Oh, you should have a quern by now, if not make 1. Grind the borax or lime, mix with water. I keep 2 barrels of that. Fill 4 barrels with water and 5 oak each, seal, when they open again, put 5 more oak in 2 of them and seal. That gives you 2 weak and 2 strong tannin. Which is enough to get you 4 backpacks and started on leather armor. 

10. Always save your first piece of leather for a recurve bow (if recipe available) as it is the best bow in the game. If not stick with your longbow (you can use cheaper pelts). I made a mod to cut pieces of hide into 2 of the next smaller size (unpublished, but if anyone wants it I could publish it; it's just some simple recipes), so I always cut medium into 2 small and then try to go on a mass hunting trip to fill a barrel with 25 small pelts.

Don't waste large or huge hides unless you are killing tons of deer and moose and the like. Soak & scrape them so they don't rot, and then set them aside for sturdy leather later. Early game if you manage to kill 2 bears, it might be worth making bearskin armor, but then if you can kill 2 bears naked, you probably don't need it. It looks cool though. I honestly like the pelt as a rug. Also you can cut the head off and still use the pelt, so you should definitely make a helmet.

You'll probably want to make rawhide pants and mantle as your pants and shirt will be at 0% by winter. Also you should make all 4 fur pieces. The whole set is  25 Small hides, 4 fat (16 small pelts). Top it off with a straw hat, and that should give you about 11C of cold resist.

After your bow and 4 backpacks, make leather armor. The full leather armor, not the jerkin, it has better dmg resist and durability. The jerkin and used as a base for chainmail, which I wouldn't consider making before meteoric iron or even steel.

Tailored armor is T2, which is widely regarded as the best travel armor for it's low penalties. Gambiosed is even better if you've got the recipe. You can make blue dye out of woad (a flower) that doesn't require mordant. You probably don't have the cloth to waste right now though. I like to have 2 full windmills up asap. That is a lot of cloth. Later it is absolutely worth it and you will wear it endgame as your day to day (non-caving) armor or depending on your playstyle, even your only armor.

I think I already talked about this in earlier points. If you've been following this guide, you'll have way more food than you need for the next year, let alone winter. You should have made an oven by now, which is used to make bread and pies. I recommend making fruit pies and meat stew with veggies for as balanced a diet as you can get pre-dairy. Don't make too many pies though, as their shelf life is limited. Bread is also great since it stacks and keeps for over a year. Then you can eat fresh fruit and/or jam (or drink wine) to get your fruit needs. There's also grilled bushmeat, and then you can make porridge with veggies, or whatever combos suit you.

You should mine some halite and ground it for salt too. You'll want to make pickles and salt some meat for longer trips.

11. Make helve hammer heads out of bronze until further notice. You'll need an iron anvil though. You'll also want 2 iron pounder caps to start (skip bronze). I prefer to use meteoric iron as much as possible and save the regular iron for steel. End-game you'll want steel pounder caps.

Feed the pulverizer with an elbow chute from a chest, put a hopper over a chest on the output end. You can't rotate the pulverizer for some reason, so you'll have to adjust your setup around it. In Soviet Russia, pulverizer orients you! This is 5 copper plates.

I like to setup 2 windmills, about 6 large gears (for torque), and a clutch and transmission on each device (partly to conserve power, partly to prevent noise induced headaches). If you can't afford the setup, you can just break/replace an angled gear as needed to stop/start. I'll work up to 3 helve hammers eventually (that's only 1 clutch/trans for all the hammers as they work in tandem).

No matter how much resin and fat you have stored up, it feels like there is never enough so start slow and expand your system as you go. Eventually you want to put the mills at 170 altitude (on standard height map) but the sooner you can get a quern up with even a low level mill, the less crap you have to grind by hand. Just put a stack or half stack (for things that are 1:2) and swap it out when you come home for the night. Hopper setups are frustrating and wasteful, and if you aren't in a hurry or building the Pyramids of Giza you'll be fine. Later you can sink resources and time into building a better system.

12. The secret of steel. Conan's people were massacred for this. Guard it carefully. Not a lot to say here, handbook and wiki have good info. Concentrate on weapons/tools first, armor 2nd. Chain or plate seem to be the way to go. So make chain and decide if you want plate later (you need chain to make plate). 

You can go mine chromium to make sturdy leather, for another 8 (total) inventory slots.

Mine titanium for t3 bricks. Oh! Yeah, bricks, make the effort for the T2, olivine is easy to find. If you use the T1 you are going to be aggravated (well the T2 will only make you less aggravated, but still aggravated)

Make a coke furnace (just regular fire bricks) and bloomery (again use T2), because why not. Go hog-wild with multi-colored pottery.

Explore! Do the story! Dig too greedily and too deep and have zero fucks given! The world is your oyster.

If you haven't lost the will to live play by spring, then you can start raising animals, which adds new and complicated layers of frustration to an already complicated and frustrating game. I'd start with sheep/goats since dairy is the only thing you really lack. Although with the recent price of eggs and all...

Wow, this turned into a full blown guide!

I decided to save it on Google docs, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ub-kQ-oJZM1N4sDTBcyRP_KBJH6A3EGLjktOudwae-Q/edit?usp=sharing

 

Edited July 29, 2025 by Krougal

[Krougal]

Actually, I think I'm going to walk back what I said about the bearskin armor, considering it can be made early game with no infrastructure, and it is better than wood lamellar, it isn't so awful. It still isn't great, but then low tier metal armor sucks too.

All you need are some bones and rope and...you...have to kill...2 bears (because when you cut the head off you still get a pelt, so you can make 2 helmets)...Did you ever hear the story of Goldy-Seraph and the 2 bears?

Corrected a couple other things, but it's a hassle, from here on out I will update the google doc but not the forum post.

Edited July 29, 2025 by Krougal

[Maelstrom]

The first day priorities are pretty set in stone for me.   Day 2+ get's a bit more muddled, especially as time goes by.

Day one - copious amounts of:

• Flint to knap tool heads during first night
• Reeds for inventory and storage
• Sticks and grass for torches, firepit and pit kiln
• Logs for firepit and pit kiln (maybe start charcoal pit)
• Sufficient food to survive first night and into second day
• Clay deposit for first home.   Last objective of the day is to dig into clay deposit as night falls to craft initial clay items (cook pot, bowl, crucible and crock plus 1 or more storage vessel(s))

Day two - begin search for intermediate goals-  copper, bees, wild crops and the forever home.

Day ASAP - Once surface copper has been found, secure enough copper for initial tools, mine copper deposits and craft pro-pick to prospect for bronze alloys, plant initial crops.

Day before end of May - Once bronze alloys are found, finish scouting for and prepare to move to forever home.

Day June+ - Settle in at forever home location, begin gathering resources and planning forever home layout, and secure ability to begin focusing on late game goals (iron, steel, story elements).

In my current world by the time I had found my clay hole, I had found bee locations (yes plural), sufficient flint and sticks, but was struggling to ge the grass and logs because I had a 2,500 block journey to find said clay.  Day 2 found surface copper deposits, before mid of May (12 day months) had crops in ground, moved to forever home, mined copper and found high iron reading but no bronze alloys.  It's currently late June, I have planned the initial layout of forever home, tin bronze tools, but conserving said bronze ores and have male and female goats for future husbandry.  At this point I'm not worried about having food for winter and focusing on building initial forever home buildings - main room / initial warehouse, cellar with consideration of planning paths to important places, like copper/tin mines and determining where the low eleveation farm will be.  I settled at 170+ blocks altitude and a lower altitude will have a longer growth season for flax.  Why settle so high?  Mechanical power is most potent 60 blocks above sea level (my sea level is about 140 blocks) and degrades for every axle used to transfer power from the windmill to the mechanical device.   Settling high up means more consistent productive mechanical devices.

[Dilan Rona]

Bout the same for me regarding some of the order. Expand the personal storage. Find a good point to plonk down as a base, and collect food, bones, and hides. Every map so far, I still make the same mistake (leaving the farm for too late), yet still manage to collect enough crops to last me past winter. With enough food in trunks, and cooked into meals, it becomes less of an urgent matter, and more secondary. That is when I pay more attention to exploring.

[Maelstrom]

Those first farms are strictly flax.  Gambeson armor and windmills are expensive the first year.

 

[Dilan Rona]

For some odd reason, flax can be the hardest crop for me to find sometimes. That and cattails. My current map has the closest cattails a good 300 blocks away from my spawning area. And on single player worlds I tend to make my base close to, or at world spawn itself.

[Maelstrom]

I've found grains can be kinda clumpy.   I've had worlds where I get nothing but flax for a 200 block radius and then another area of nothing but rye or spelt.  In my current world (1.20.10 generated and not updated) the clumpy isn't so big, but if I find one type of grain I'll probably see another 1 or 2 within 50 or 100 blocks.

[Krougal]

10 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I've found grains can be kinda clumpy.   I've had worlds where I get nothing but flax for a 200 block radius and then another area of nothing but rye or spelt.  In my current world (1.20.10 generated and not updated) the clumpy isn't so big, but if I find one type of grain I'll probably see another 1 or 2 within 50 or 100 blocks.

No matter how much flax you find, you need more!

I like to have hundreds of it planted ASAP.

[Maelstrom]

I concur.   By the time I begin my second spring I've got multiple stacks of flax.  In my first long term worlds I had a warm weather outpost where I farmed 4 stacks of flax (1.16-1.17).  In my 1.18-1.19 world I had 6 stacks going.

Gambeson, a 4 rotor windmill and now sailboats cost a lot of flax.  Additionally, patching clothes and yourself has a non-zero cost.   I don't feel comfortable that I have enough flax until I've got my 4 rotor windmill fully upgraded because harvests after that will provide sufficiently copious amounts of flax for my needs.  But that usually doesn't happen till the end of the second summer.

[Krougal]

One thing I'd add; I am finding it out myself since I've been more successful faster every time I have come to the conclusion that the more raw materials you gather before winter, the less boring a winter you will have. I hit Feb and have got cabin fever, because making steel is boring and I have nothing else to do (mostly because I've burned through all my flax). Yeah, I've been going out mining but I'm ready for the snow to end.

I have realized that I waste far too much time when the days are long over-crafting instead of being out exploring and gathering. Unless it is something you need in the immediate future then set it aside when morning comes and finish it the next night.

Winter is almost over and I have barely even touched a sealed crock of food. The only crop to be concerned with the first year is flax.

Edited August 6, 2025 by Krougal

[Krougal]

So I've been continuing to work on my google doc. I came up with an actual day 1 checklist.

 

Spoiler

 

Day 1 Checklist:

• 6+ sticks
• 7+ tool-grade rocks
• 2 knives and a spear
• 64 cattails. 4 hand baskets and a reed chest
• (Optional) 48 cattails. 2 more reed chests
• (Optional) 3 cattails and 6 sticks. Crude shield
• 2 shovels and an axe
• 44 red or blue clay
• 32 peat
• 65 dry grass
• 44 sticks
• 16 logs
• Find a place to camp for the night.
• Fire starter
• 2+ torches
• (Optional) Crude door.
• Make firewood out of all the remaining logs
• Campfire
• Improvised body armor
• Pot, bowl, crockpot and crucible
• Storage vessel

• Shelter 

 

Forum converted all the boxes to images and made a mess out of it. The guide has an actual checkable checklist, and I plan on taking it further.

Oh, I decided to release that mod I mentioned, https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/27343

I didn't feel it was worth it's own post, but it's a thing now, and so far 92 people have downloaded it, so at least some people found it useful

Edited August 8, 2025 by Krougal

[Mrozak]

4 hours ago, Krougal said:

So I've been continuing to work on my google doc. I came up with an actual day 1 checklist.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Day 1 Checklist:

• 6+ sticks
• 7+ tool-grade rocks
• 2 knives and a spear
• 64 cattails. 4 hand baskets and a reed chest
• (Optional) 48 cattails. 2 more reed chests
• (Optional) 3 cattails and 6 sticks. Crude shield
• 2 shovels and an axe
• 44 red or blue clay
• 32 peat
• 65 dry grass
• 44 sticks
• 16 logs
• Find a place to camp for the night.
• Fire starter
• 2+ torches
• (Optional) Crude door.
• Make firewood out of all the remaining logs
• Campfire
• Improvised body armor
• Pot, bowl, crockpot and crucible
• Storage vessel

• Shelter 

 

I am sorry, but your checklist is garbage.
But you can fix it by add the tasks you forgot:

• Get eaten by an angry boar.
• Get mauled by a sneaky bear.
• Get ass torn by a pack of wolves.
• Fall into a hole and die.
• Fall in a deep hole in the rock, without pickaxe.