If you are starting out as a brand new player, I recommend you select an empty server to begin with. This will allow you to learn and get used to the gameplay mechanics and all the basic requirements for survival without having to worry about more than animal/NPC attacks. To open the server list, click "Play" from the main menu.

First, make sure you're sorting the servers by ping. The lower the number, the better. Click on the "ping" column on the list of servers (it's the far right column) so that the little pyramid next to the word is facing with the point up. Servers with good ping will be in green, bad (high) ping will be in red, and servers that can't be reached will have a "T/O" which stands for "timeout".



Some servers are modified beyond the vanilla experience, and they usually say what the mods are in the server title. For example, the title might include something like "NoDecay" or "BaseProtect". For the sake of learning the game, I recommend choosing a server without mods. Official servers don't seem to be modded, but they're usually pretty full.

So to recap, my recommendation for your first server is:

• Low ping (aim for 50 or lower)
  
• 0 players (or as close to it as you can get, or try a PVE server)
  
• No mods

As an example, I'll show the server I chose to learn on:

Server name: Unforgiven - Heat
Type: America
Version: Alpha 15
Players: 0/40
Ping: 37

To join a server, click on it and then click Connect (Y). Servers with a lock symbol mean you'll need a password to be allowed to play on them.

===Important Note===
Once you've joined a server, after the first time you log off of it, be sure to add it to your favorites so you can easily find it again. I'm not sure how reliable the "history" function is. To add a server to your favorites, right-click the server name and select "Add to favorites" from the dropdown. You can also add a server to your favorites if it sounds cool and you want to check it out later.

For now, the server list is not very long, so this is the quickest way to choose a server. Once more servers start appearing, you'll probably want to use the Search tab at the top so you can narrow the parameters for what kind of server you want.

This is largely something you're going to want to play around with. The box on the left customizes your character's physical appearance, and you can check different angles of changes you make by click-dragging with the right mouse button on the character itself or on the empty space.

The center box is where you'll choose your character's name & your group name. Under Group Type, if you hover over each option it will give an explanation so you can better decide what you're going for.

The box on the right is where you'll design your flag. This is what will mark your territory, so you should take the time to make it something you like. The "Pattern" dropdown box has various shapes and images you can select to put on your flag. To place more than one, you add a layer. Be sure you're on the right layer when you're trying to move a shape. Play around with the positional/color settings until you get what you're looking for. It's a bit of a learning curve, but if it's not really important to you during your first time, you can just click "Random" and it will generate one for you automatically. "Expand" enlarges the flag so you can better see the details while you make changes--click it again to make it go away.

Once you're done with all your customizations, click "Done" on the center box to continue onto the server.

When you spawn into a server for the first time, your inventory will consist of nothing but a "Gnarled Hobo Stick", a pack of cigarettes, a torch, and a pair of underwear.




To access your inventory, press the Tab button. Press Tab again to exit out of it. You can click and drag to move things around or put them on your hotbar above.

If you have multiple of the same item in your inventory, you can separate it into stacks by right-click-dragging to the left or right. You'll see the number on that item go up or down depending on which direction you drag your mouse, and when you let the mouse button go, it separates it into two stacks with the chosen quantities. To move an item quickly from a box to your inventory or vice versa, double-click it instead of dragging it.

To use an item on your hotbar, press the corresponding number on your keyboard. For instance:
1) Press Tab to open inventory
2) Click & drag torch to slot 2 on hotbar
3) Press Tab to exit inventory
4) Press 2 to light torch
5) Press 2 again to extinguish torch

or

1) Press 1 to choose your Gnarled Hobo Stick, then click your left mouse button to swing it.

You'll notice that opening your inventory also opens your crafting menu (the box on the right). It says "Blueprints" at the top, but disregard that.



If you haven't learned the blueprint for an item, you won't be able to craft it and it will appear as a "?" in your crafting menu. You can still click on it to see what it is and what it takes to craft it.

Hovering over any item or blueprint will give you information on it. For instance:



Limit = how many you're allowed to place (most items don't have a limit)
Upkeep = how much it costs to have in your base (I'll talk more about upkeep later)
Capacity = how many items it will hold
Health = how many hitpoints it has before being destroyed
Materials = what you'll need in your inventory to craft it
Value = how much you can sell it for (using the Shipping Bin, which I'll cover later)
$0.00/lb = how much it's worth per pound
Weight = how much weight it adds to your inventory when carrying it

If you press:
Z = toggle ground grid on and off
C = toggle between first- and third-person view
B = open blueprints (more on this in the next section)
N = open newspaper (more on this later)
M = view map (press escape or M again to exit map view)
< or ; or = or ' = whistle (different types of whistle)
/ = global chat box
F = yell
G = gesture (if you hold G, you can select which gesture to do)
T = kick
I = opens inventory (same as Tab, but less convenient)
O = opens Communication and Social (this is where you manage your group if you have one)
P = opens your character's stats, where you can see your hunger/thirst/health levels, your leveling progress, and any status effects that are active like bleeding or Hunter's Chew, as well as letting you see your mental state. This key also opens the party menu.

Press Esc to go into your game options and make whatever adjustments you need for sound, graphics, etc. Your VRAM consumption bar is located at the top so you can see if you need to ease up a bit on the graphics.

This is also where you'll be able to access "Parental Controls" (aka streamer/YouTuber controls) to disable custom land names & blood/gore (there is EXCESSIVE blood and gore when harvesting animals or chopping up human bodies). You can't do anything about flags yet, and the "Mute gross sounds" option* doesn't actually work, but other than that the options give you a good amount of freedom to customize.

If you're in fullscreen mode, you'll notice the window minimizes any time you click off of it (whether you hit the Windows key or have more than one screen you're doing something on). It stays up if you put it in windowed mode, and only minimizes when you tell it to.

*Periodically, your character will defecate, and the sound effects for this are WAY over the top. Squirting and farting sounds, lots of grunting, and it's LOUD. I usually just mute my computer when it happens. Your character will usually have to poop when you first log back in after a while, and if you don't trigger it, it'll just happen on its own. You can collect the poop to use as fertilizer later, or sell it for a few pennies.

To bring up your map, press "M". You can then navigate around the map by click-dragging, and using your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
You can place a pin on areas of interest by clicking "Player Pin" on the right, and then clicking where you'd like to place the pin. You can remove it by right-clicking the placed pin. I haven't played around with it yet, but I suspect the "Group Pin" option would be visible to anyone in your group. You can toggle map grid and points of interest on and off using the little symbols above the pin area.



The lighter areas of the map show you have explored those areas. The tan line is a dirt road, the grey line is the railroad (which shows where the train is at any given moment), and the blue is bodies of water.

A white box indicates you've set a flag down and claimed that territory. A black box indicates a claimed territory that has not been paid upkeep and is decaying. A green box indicates a claimed territory other than your own that has been paid upkeep and is still protected.

You can access your blueprints by pressing the "B" key. At the top of the page, you'll see the different tabs indicating the different blueprint categories. There's no search function for this as yet, so if you're looking for a specific blueprint you don't have, you'll just have to select its category and try to find its picture.



Note the levels on the left side. This is the minimum level your character has to be in order to unlock those blueprints. Remember, you can check what level you are by pressing the "P" key and looking under the "Physical" tab.

The way a blueprint is shaded indicates its availability to research:
Tan = you can research it, but you don't have all the required materials in your inventory
Grey = you can't research this yet (too high level, or you need to research its connected items first)
Green = you can research it, and you have the materials available to do so (researching something will remove those required items from your inventory and use them up)
Blue = you have already researched it

If you hover your mouse over an item, it will tell you stats about the item, what it does, and what it requires to research. A check mark will appear next to the requirements you're currently meeting, and an X and red text will indicate what you're lacking. To research a blueprint you have the materials for (green), just click on it. A popup will appear asking if you're sure you want to research that item. This is nice because it prevents you from making expensive mistakes if you were too hasty and clicked the wrong item.



Not everything will be able to be crafted from your base crafting menu. Many things have to be made on a station. Hovering over the item in your blueprints list will also tell you where you can craft it. Researching a blueprint just means you've unlocked the ability to craft that item--you'll still need to gather the materials to make it once you've unlocked it.

You can scroll down using the scroll bar on the right side to see more blueprints lower down. The lower on the page, the higher the level you have to be in order to unlock and research them.

Pay attention to what the items do, and be smart about what you choose to spend resources on unlocking first. I like to focus on tools and stations first, as in early game I'm dealing with a lot of raw resources and need to be able to harvest and process them. Some blueprints you may never choose to unlock, and it really depends on your play style.

While you're farming, you might be attacked by an animal. If you don't have any ranged weapons (weapons that can be used from a distance, like bows, guns, or throwing axes) on you, I recommend running away, as animals can kill you pretty quickly if you're up close. You can currently outrun any animal. Some will chase you a long way, and some are faster than others, but you can always escape just by running.

Humans are a slightly different story. Human NPCs have ranged weapons, usually rifles or pistols, and can shoot at you from a distance. You can outrun these too, but it's a bit harder and some of them will chase you down too. It's better to have something you can hide behind and shoot from to return fire. Humans spawn at campsites, which don't appear on the map but can be easily recognized by the bonfire and tent in the middle of a sandy clearing. Some human NPC encampments are quite large and have several NPCs that spawn if you approach, so be aware and try to steer clear of the area if you don't have a ranged weapon to fight back with.



I'm not much of a PVP player, but when going against human NPCs, I try to aim for the head as that does the most damage. I've mainly used the bow so far, and it's got this cool thing where when you shoot, the camera follows the arrow and shows you exactly where your shot fell so you can adjust it as needed. This makes for a lot of difficulty shooting at a moving target, but it's really nice for stationary targets or ones that are moving directly toward you. You can usually get a few shots in with your bow before they finish reloading their weapon, and I like to build a little foundation + windows right near the camp so I can use it as cover and farm the NPCs for their materials (cheap, I know). If you're using a gun, press "R" to reload it. It will also reload itself if you try to fire it while empty. If pressing "R" doesn't do anything, then you're out of the correct ammo for that gun.

After you down an NPC, you'll want to go pick up whatever they dropped, but do it quickly before another respawns. Sometimes they drop an item that will glow, and you pick those up by walking into them. Other times they drop a loot sack, and you'll open it with "E" and then click "collect all" so you can grab the loot and leave the area quick.

If you die during the fight, your death location shows on the map, but the NPC who killed you will still be aggro and will have a sixth sense for where you are the second you approach. They WILL leave their spawn area to come after you, so know that it's going to be pretty hard to get your stuff back if you don't return with another weapon to fight back with.

You'll have a respawn timer on your bed (if you set one down), so you may have to wait for that cooldown before you can spawn back into a specific area. Your body will just be a loot sack, and you can zoom in on the map to find its exact location. This red X will remain on the map for a good while even after you retrieve your loot sack, showing where you died in case you want to go back for some more fighting.

Using Hunter's Chew (available in your base crafting menu) can really help with finding animals to hunt down--if they're anywhere nearby. Once you've consumed it, any nearby animals will appear as a collection of red dots in the distance, and the closer you get, the less scattered those dots become until they merge together and the animal appears--you're following the trail of where it's been. There's no way to really see what kind of animal it is before you get up close, but all animals are huntable. It's important to note that Hunter's Chew has no effect at night.

The best tactic is to shoot them in the head, run away to put some distance between you, run some more, turn and shoot, etc. until you down them. Once they drop, you can go harvest their bodies, but be aware if there are any other animals in the vicinity, because it does take a while to harvest the whole animal. If you're going hunting, then hopefully you've got a hatchet or pickaxe you can use to harvest them with. Just keep hacking away at them until their body disappears--it's worth it for the pelt alone. (Hides are different from pelts, and you only get one pelt off an animal.) Some animals are glitched and won't allow you to harvest them, so if you're still not getting anything after a good number of hacks, try walking away a bit and coming back at it from a different angle before giving up.

Animals can run up onto anything you can, they just can't get through a closed door (all the way). Their heads will poke through if they chase you into your home, and they can come in if you open your door. As I write this, two cougars have been hanging out at my door for the last 20 minutes. it remains to be seen if they'll eventually give up.This isn't exactly what I was looking for when I wrote my Tinder profile.



==Important Note==
Harvesting from human and animal NPCs yields a lot of fairly realistic blood. When you hack up humans, their body parts will actually separate, so just be aware of that if it's something that might bother you. There's an option to switch this off in the options menu under "Parental Controls".

If you destroy someone's flag, your "Heat Level" will go up. You become marked as Wanted, and an NPC posse will show up to kill you. You can evade them if you don't want to stand and fight. (This is all I have to say on raiding for now, as I haven't actually had the chance to really raid anyone yet, other than a player who had left the server.)

As the only tool at your disposal when you first spawn in, your hobo stick is what you'll use to gather some initial materials. You can use it to hit rocks, trees, and brush which will yield things like stone, wood, and other related mats.

You'll need to build stations to craft a majority of items. Most stations can be upgraded, which will unlock further types of items you can produce there. Most stations have a little info symbol that, if hovered over with your mouse, will tell you what that station crafts, what the items costs to craft, and what fuel it requires to run. It'll also tell you how long each fuel type will burn and at what heat level. Please note that on many stations, you will lose whatever fuel you put on, so be careful to only use what you'll need or you'll end up wasting a lot.



Here are the different stations, and what they all craft (omitting fuel requirements):

- Note: you will lose any fuel you put into this
Cooks food, & breaks open geodes.

• 10 Beans = Baked Beans
  
• Canned Beans = Baked Canned Beans
  
• Potato = Baked Potato
  
• Bannock Recipe = Bannock
  
• Corn = Cooked Corn
  
• Corn Bread Recipe = Corn Bread
  
• Raw Poultry = Cooked Poultry
  
• Fried Chicken Recipe = 6 Fried Chicken
  
• Raw Meat = Cooked Meat
  
• 100 Giblets = Cooked Giblets
  
• 100 Human Giblets = Cooked Human Giblets

>>>>>Upgrades to >>Firepit
Same items as Campfire
>>>>>>>>>>Upgrades to >>Cauldron

The newspaper is where you'll find all kinds of useful and fun information. Press "N" to open it. Here are the sections found in the newspaper, and what they're for:

This section is for bounties. Sometimes the server will set a bounty automatically on an NPC.

[[to be continued]]

Upgrade kiln 2 times until it's a smelter
How to make ingots & stone slabs
Under meds--"laboratory"
Right clicking with hammer destroys big time!
Problem: can't actually disable gross sounds
Make steel recipe at laboratory, then craft at smelter
M=map>>blackbox = someone's base, white box = your base
F=yell
Z=grid on ground toggle
C=first person view/3rd person view toggle
Learn blueprints by having the resources, press "B", & click on the BP to learn in the tech tree. Some missing BPs don't show up on tech tree--trap door, builder's chew
Hunter's sight has no effect at night
If an animal attacks you, RUN! Run away a bit, turn & shoot til it gets near, repeat this process til it's dead. Be sure you have enough ammo! They can run up on things the same way you can, only a closed door behind walls will protect you.
Build your house structure with sticks first, then upgrade to log. Research BP for stone/timber upgrades.