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Where are cattails?


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Posted

So I just started the game and I am stuck in the tutorial. I am running around after creating the stone knife (which was a problem in itself, because the description in the tutorial gives incorrect shortcuts) and I only find grass and birch leaves. It seems that my character is already starving to death. How can I progress here?

  • Solution
Posted

Welcome to the forums(and the game)!

Cattails are found near bodies of fresh water. On default settings, most water you see on the map will be fresh water; if it's a huge body of water then that's likely an ocean, which is currently a rare thing to find on the default settings.

2 hours ago, mf2 said:

It seems that my character is already starving to death. How can I progress here?

While cattails are important, if you are starving then your first course of action is to find food. Any food, provided that it isn't poisonous. Cattail roots can be dug up and cooked as an emergency food, however, that will destroy the cattail plant in the process and if it's a spawn with few cattails then searching specifically for them as a food source isn't the best course of action. I'd recommend looking around for some berries or mushrooms, or make a spear and go hunting(or fishing, if there's a sufficiently stocked pond).

If you're not having any luck finding food to forage though, you may want to start over on a fresh world that has some better options at spawn. Most spawns tend to have several cattails nearby, as well as berry bushes or mushrooms to forage for your initial food.

Posted
7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

if it's a huge body of water then that's likely an ocean, which is currently a rare thing to find on the default settings.

Then I guess I am lucky. I spawned at the beach of an ocean and behind me is a huge (and I mean HUGE) mountain that I can't even climb. I swam around the whole island to find a better place to land, but to no avail.

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Cattails are found near bodies of fresh water.

Thank you very much, so I am looking for lakes for rivers I guess. Maybe I will just try a new map. Again, thanks for the help!

Posted
On 1/27/2026 at 3:12 PM, Maelstrom said:

Cattails as a food source are very poor.   The benefit of cattails are practically eliminated for the work it takes to harvest them.   

Yeah you can't even eat them .. I tried.

I had exactly 7 cattails on my first map, so I started a new one and now I don't have any food ... oh well. Maybe with the third I will be lucky.

Posted
1 hour ago, mf2 said:

Yeah you can't even eat them .. I tried.

You have to dig up the roots with a knife and cook them before you can eat them. Each root gives 100 points of vegetable nutrition.

Posted
1 minute ago, Maelstrom said:

And for all the effort of digging them up and cooking them that 100 is barely enough to make up for the hunger creating doing all that.

Pretty much, hence why they're an emergency food.

Posted

Should I ever get to emergency levels of starvation my plans are to run about until I find berries, shrooms or some wild crops not take time rooting around like a pig and taking time to cook a root.   Much better off running over hill and dale for some quickly harvested plant matter that I can eat while picking.

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Posted

I would recommend that you break and pick up about one of three berry bushes that you find while exploring for other things, and plant those near where you want to build a base. After several days they will be large and start producing berries again and you'll know exactly where they are.

Keep an eye out for other crops, and if they are ripe, break them, take their seeds and eat the produce. Plant the seeds ASAP in a hoed spot adjacent to water. Get that farm going even in its simplest form.

Additionally, fish in bodies of water can be killed and cooked over a fire. Also keep an eye out for clay (reddish or bluish speckling on the ground). Once you can make a pot to cook in, this will not only almost double the satiation value of most foods but also give you a buff which prevents you using up any of your satiation for several minutes.

And if you're eating mushrooms, be sure to have the mushroom wiki page open! Some mushrooms are poisonous and absolutely will kill you!

Have fun!

Posted
6 hours ago, Ratbatboo said:

And if you're eating mushrooms, be sure to have the mushroom wiki page open! Some mushrooms are poisonous and absolutely will kill you!

Not necessary.  Tool tip for mushrooms will indicate if and how much damage they cause.

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