The very first thing you should do as an Eve is to name yourself! Say "I am <surname>" and you will be now known as Eve <Surname> and all future generations will have that surname.

There are four different families, each with a homeland band and their own specialties. New Eves will spawn west, meaning old towns are to the east.

The language family does not have a specialty biome, instead it is able to understand the languages and trade more easily with other families. More info on biomes[onehouronelife.fandom.com].

When looking for a spot to settle, start by finding the nearest natural spring[onehouronelife.fandom.com], and run in a straight line east/west/north/south from that. Find a natural spring that is near a good number of resources, e.g. food, trees, soil, ponds, rabbits. Also look for a spring that has 2 or more muddy iron veins[onehouronelife.fandom.com] east/west of it.

• North > Tundra Family > Language Family > Jungle Family > Desert Family > South
  
• If you get a <Homesick> notification, you have left your homeland band and you are not fertile (no babies).
  
• Natural Springs and Iron Mines run in a grid (40 tiles by 40 tiles), each family gets a single iron unlock when they build their first well site.
  
• Make a well site on a natural spring by stacking round rocks on it
  
• This unlocks loose iron on the muddy iron veins up to 4 spots east/west (maximum 8 sites).
  
• Making a well by using a shovel on the well site will unlock more loose iron. Make sure you have collected the first batch of loose iron!
  
• Picking a well site that has a few iron east/west is important.

Make a home marker. If there is an existing one, cut it with a sharp stone and then hit with a stone to set your home. If no home marker exists, find a sapling in the grassland and cut it with a sharp stone. Now it's time to bring home all the things. (Cutting down your own home marker will remove it! However cutting down someone else's will not.)



If you're not sure about any recipes mentioned below, you can look the crafting recipes up onOneTech[onetech.info], or the Wiki[onehouronelife.fandom.com]. There is also an active discord at https://discord.gg/EUK2j5w5v2.

If you are finding these steps too hard to follow in the real game, there is a hidden area at the end of the first tutorial that has the resources needed for you to practice making steel tools, or use the second tutorial to practice.


Make a sharp stone and basket to gather food.

Gather 4 adobe, 7 or more clay, a stone
Make the adobe kiln[onehouronelife.fandom.com], 1 clay nozzle, at least 4 bowls and 3 plates.

>

Gather 3 ropes, 3 straight branches, one small curved branch
Use those to make a Fire Bow Drill[onehouronelife.fandom.com], Stone Hatchet[onehouronelife.fandom.com] and Snare[onehouronelife.fandom.com].





Gather a large quantity of branches from all the trees. You can stack small curved branches together to carry two at a time, or make a pump beam kit to carry four. You can also carry three in a basket if you have used a sharp stone on them.



Make two Wooden Tongs[onehouronelife.fandom.com], and at least one full pile of kindling near the forge. Save long straight shafts for tools.



Gather 1 thread for sewing an empty water pouch[onehouronelife.fandom.com] later.

Snare one rabbit[onehouronelife.fandom.com], bring back 1 flint chip. You need a flat stone and burdock root to make bait to catch it.



Now you are ready to start your first fire. With this first fire, light the kiln and fire all the clay items[onehouronelife.fandom.com], then cover the kiln with adobe to make charcoal.

Let the fire go out and cook the rabbit on the coals. Use the rabbit bones to get some needles, then make an empty water pouch with the rabbit fur. Make the bellows[onehouronelife.fandom.com].

A good spot should have ponds nearby, so if eggs have been gathered, you can now make a hot flat rock to cook omelettes on with this same fire.




Now that you have clay bowls, you can also start farming now with skewers or a stone hoe. If iron tools look like they are ready to be started soon, there’s no need to waste a milkweed to make a stone hoe as a steel hoe is much better. Gathering skewers for an early farm allows you to skip the stone hoe and go straight to steel.

This early farm was made using just one skewer. RNG luck!

Recommended early game food or how to max your yum

Wild Food
• Berry
  
• Wild burdock
  
• Wild onion
  
• Wild garlic
  
• Wild carrot
  
• Banana (jungle only)
  
• Cactus fruit (desert only)

Recommended simple recipes
• Carrot (plant carrot seed, gather seed from wild carrot)
  
• Onion (plant a wild onion)
  
• Cucumber (plant wild cucumber, spawns in yellow prairie)
  
• Tomato (plant wild tomato cluster, spawns in jungle)
  
• Pepper (plant wild pepper, spawns in jungle)
  
• Shucked corn (plant teosinte, spawns in yellow prairie)
  
• Popcorn (use dried ear of corn in bowl on a fire)
  
• Bowl of green beans (plant dry bean pod, spawns in yellow prairie)
  
• Cooked rabbit (skewer and cook on coals, spawns in yellow prairie)
  
• Turkey (hunt Turkey with bow and arrow, spawns in yellow prairie)
  
• Omelette (cook goose egg on flat stone, spawns on goose pond in swamps)
  
• Cooked goose (skewer and cook on coals, spawns on goose pond in swamps)

Recommended multistep recipes
• Pies (plant wheat, uses mutton, rabbits, berries and carrots.)
  
• Bean Burrito (uses wheat and dry beans)
  
• Stew (uses squash, beans and corn)
  
• Turkey Broth (uses a turkey carcass)

Club a seal with a long straight shaft, then skin it with a flint chip. Does not require any thread to wear, but it can be sewn into a coat. (Snow is now only accessible for gingers.)


Combine a reed bundle with a rope to make a reed skirt.


Cut and thresh wheat to make straw, then use a needle and thread to make a straw hat.


Using a needle and thread on 1 rabbit fur gives you a rabbit fur loincloth, 2 is a hat, 3 and 4 are tops and 4 and a half furs give you a backpack.


Once you have a bow and arrow, hunting wolves and mouflon in the badlands to get their skins is also a good way to get clothes. Skin the dead bodies with a flint chip. The mouflon skin can be worn on the body, and the wolf skin can be sewn into a wolf hat.

https://onehouronelife.fandom.com/wiki/Clothes

Even if you don’t know how to smith yet, you can help with these items :-

• Gather iron ore from the badlands. (Run directly east/west from the natural spring/well)
  
• Gather three flat rocks for the forge.
  
• Prepare one short shaft and a stone near the forge.
  
• Prepare three bowls and three plates by the forge, put charcoal into each bowl.
  
• Make sure there is plenty of kindling nearby.

https://onehouronelife.fandom.com/wiki/Smithing#Forge

A typical smith setup. Never take the flat rocks from the smithing area for eggs or graves!

Smith the tools in this order :-

• Smithing hammer[onehouronelife.fandom.com]
  
• Axe - the axe allows you to immediately cut some firewood to make a large slow fire.
  
• Shovel - the shovel is used to make the well, as well as to clear the land of stumps and other things.
  
• Hoe - the hoe allows you to farm.

Now you have the basic steel tools, you can expand the farm. Cut down trees to clear space for expansion - but never cut down trees that produce branches, these trees will produce kindling for the town. Check to see what farm crops exist, and if the town doesn’t have it, you can go out and bring back wild seeds to plant.

When there are no sheep yet, you are relying on wild soil, so depending on how far it is and how much you have, you should limit the size of the farm until compost is running. If you use up all the nearby soil before composting is available, you may cause a famine for future generations.

Another useful thing to do is to gather round stones near the farm to make cisterns eventually.

• Berries - do not create an endless expanse of berry bushes. Leave spaces for people to put bowls, buckets, and soil nearby.
  
• Carrots
  
• Wheat
  
• Cabbage - cabbage replaces berries and carrots as a more efficient way of making compost later in the game, however it requires a kraut board (three steel) and a crock.

Collecting carrot and wheat seeds in the prairie. Seeds on the ground will decay over time, so keep in bowls for long term storage.

• Corn
  
• Beans
  
• Squash

Collect seeds from wild plants in the prairie - teosinte for corn, wild beans and wild squash.

Making stew - https://onehouronelife.gamepedia.com/Three_Sisters_Stew

Milkweed will give you thread for clothes and backpacks (only until the sheep are finished, sheep allow you to upgrade to the ball of thread) , rope for buckets and carts. You can pluck milkweed seeds from the debris of a fruiting milkweed plant.

Keep all seeds neatly in a bowl as they despawn over time.

Milkweed doesn't have to be near the rest of the farms, so a good tip is to find a relatively unused patch of soil deposits and start a milkweed farm there.

Once all of the above have been finished and the farm is running smoothly, the next steps are to finish the rest of the steel tools and get a sheep pen running. Both of these require a bow and arrow[onehouronelife.fandom.com], so if that hasn’t been made, gathering materials for that is very helpful. Gather 1 rope, 1 thread, 1 yew branch, 1 skewer, 1 goose feather and 1 flint chip to make a bow and arrow.





If there is no more iron ore, you should gather some for the rest of the tools. To finish the full set you need an additional 9 iron ore (not counting the 4 used above), and that’s assuming the first tools haven’t broken already. Unless there is a snake terrorising your camp, or the sheep have already been finished you should make them in this order:

1. Pickaxe
2. Chisel
3. Steel file (requires a cooked goose)
4. Froe
5. Adze
6. Bowsaw


With these six tools you can now make buckets, carts, stone blocks, and most importantly mine an iron vein for even more iron.



The last two important tools are the knife and shears, which allow you to manage sheep, bake bread and eat turkeys.


This early pen is made from property fences. When making a fence like this make sure you block off the diagonal entrance so the animals can't escape. Alternatively, leave a space to make a fence gate

If there are no sheep, the town still has no renewable source of soil. Most early game pens are made from property fences, and replaced by wood fences over time.

Layout the pen near the farm and kitchen, so there is easy access for feeding sheep and delivering mutton to the kitchen.

To get the first sheep, you must find a mouflon with lamb in the badlands and shoot it with an arrow. Using a rope you can now bring the lamb home and release it into the finished sheep pen.

Feeding the lamb with a bowl of gooseberries and carrot will turn the lamb into a mouflon, and the mouflon will produce lambs that will grow into domestic sheep when fed with a bowl of gooseberries and carrot.

For more info on sheep pens, read https://onehouronelife.fandom.com/wiki/Domestic_Sheep
and http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4444

With the sheep pen running, the town has a renewable source of soil for the farm. The next thing that causes towns to die is water shortage.

Check the ponds near the farms - how many are there, and how soon will they dry up? If you sense an imminent water shortage you should prioritise fixing the problem as soon as you can.

---

The Newcomen pump is the most basic form of renewable water. To use it, fill it with a bucket of water and a basket of charcoal, then fire. It produces 3 buckets, of which the last should be used to refill it.

Before starting to make one, have a look around town and see if someone else has started work on the various parts. You can contribute by collecting the various items and placing them near the deep well.

A Newcomen pump requires a vulcanised rubber tire to construct, and after a number of uses will tear and require a rubber tire for each time you use it. Eventually the well will run dry and it can then be upgraded to the next level.

https://onetech.info/2220-Dry-Newcomen-Pump/tech-tree

You can also build cisterns (use a bowl of plaster on a stone pile) near the well to store water. Cisterns store buckets of water that must be transferred by hand from the main well.


Finally, the well can be upgraded to a Diesel Water Pump with a pump valve and a diesel engine, and it runs off tanks of kerosene. These resources are hard to craft and as of the current meta tanks of kerosene and sometimes the Diesel Engine itself are normally kept inside a property fence to safeguard them from thieves.

https://onetech.info/2388-Dry-Diesel-Water-Pump-tool/recipe
https://onetech.info/2343-Tank-of-Kerosene/recipe

The first and most basic building structure is the property fence. To make a property fence, use a flint chip on a small curved branch to get property fence twigs.



Property fence twigs will decay after 10 mins. Using the twigs on bare ground will give you a proposed property fence, which after 1 min will automatically become an approved property fence. Using a (round) stone on the approved fence will give you a shaky property fence, which will become a property fence in 5 mins.


After 2 hours of game time, the property fence will decay to a rickety property fence. To renew it, use a round stone on the fence.


Property fences are often used for early sheep pens and to safeguard high value items for the town.


The first thing needed for all buildings is a round stone and stakes, along with the building materials. Gathering the necessary building materials is normally the most time consuming part of building.

Use the round stone on the stakes once to make floor stakes, then use the desired floor material on the floor stakes.



Use the round stone on the stakes twice to four times to make wall stakes, then use the desired wall material (or a door). The most common walls are the adobe wall, which requires two adobe to complete and must be plastered within 10 hours (or it will crack), and the stone wall. Shelves can only be added to the horizontal plaster walls, which can also be painted.



Use the round stone on the stakes twice to make auto-orienting wall stakes, then use a shovel, then use a fence kit. To make a gate, use a short shaft on the fence.

Think about the big towns you have been in. What works? What was annoying? Plan your town to avoid those mistakes.

Some of my own thoughts:

• Berry fields should not be bigger than 4 in a single direction. This means people don't have to move so far to add soil and water, and picking the berries into a bowl is easier.
  
• Sheep pens should be bigger than 6x6 for a large town to develop.
  
• Sheep pens should be near the bakery for easier transport of mutton.
  
• Sheep pens should be near the farm for easier composting.
  
• The forge should be further away from these things.
  
• The main fire should be between the forge and bakery.
  
• The nursery fire should not be inside the forge or bakery so babies don't get in the way of work.
  
• Tools should be kept in the same place so people can find them easily.
  
• Badly placed stone roads are worse than no road at all.
  
• Have a clear idea of what spaces your roads are connecting, e.g. farm to bakery, bakery to rabbits, etc.

A diagram of the typical spaces in a town.

This guide is compiled from information learned from the forums and wikis. For more in depth reading, check out the forum for the most up to date guides and information.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2858

Any feedback is appreciated. Please let me know if there's a section you don't understand or you think needs expanding.

I have also decided to add an end section that shows pictures of cool layouts and efficient builds in towns, tag ruanna in discord and I might post them here.

A sprinkler farm

A rabbit farm

A nice graveyard

A snow city


Some late game towns