Welcome to the Survivalist Handbook! This guide will cover all the mechanics in Patch Quest that are worth discussing. This series will have multiple articles which all cover a different part of the game. At the bottom of the page you can find links to other parts of the Survivalist Handbook!
This entry is still a W.I.P. since there's a lot to cover, and it also doesn't really cover mechanics, but more about how to use them to conquer the world and how to get through certain parts of the map.

Index
- Jungle Zone
- Hills Zone
- Desert Zone
- Ocean Zone
- Hive Zone (W.I.P.)
- Zen Zone (W.I.P.)

The Jungle Zone has 2 subhabitats, the Sticky Thicket and the Woozy Woods.

This is the easiest subhabitat in the game, if you have the right mount and strategy in mind, you’ll be breezing through this subhabitat within minutes, no matter your skill level.

perks
In terms of perks I’d recommend you don’t try this subhabitat out until you have Sap Extractor, as there are a ton of turrets in the Woozy Woods, which gives you a lot of opportunities to successfully use this perk.

mounts & strategies
It is recommended you take the Hypnoth with you on your journey, as they are really easy to find in the Jungle Zone, and ignore all the Dizzy terrain and turrets, of which there are quite a lot. Your strategy should consist of trying to find the spot in the corridor where the Confunguses are located, and use the Sap Extractor and the immunity to Dizzy from your Hypnoth to easily win any fight. Ambushes and Danger rooms are just as though as normal ones as long as you manage to not lose your Hypnoth.

This, on the polar opposite of the Woozy Woods, is one of the hardest subhabitats in the game. There’s a lot of micromanaging involved in surviving this place, and it’s important to know what you’re doing in order to succeed.

perks
The best perk to get before trying to traverse this area is the Wetsocks, as they make you much less likely to get ‘Sticky’ while trying to go through the Sticky Thicket. It is also recommended you unlock the Toad Shrine before going here.

mounts
There are 3 mounts here that are all equally viable, these mounts are the Poislug, Tattoad and Muktopus. Below are some pros and cons for each of them:

• Tattoad

The Tattoad is the best option for players who don’t have the Wetsocks perk unlocked yet. As the Tattoad has both a jump ability and a passive that makes them immune to the mud that’s located all over the Sticky Thicket. If you decide you want to use this mount, it might be an excellent idea to use the Jumbo Tattoad that you just caught in the Toad Shrine as a pet to easily get access to a Tattoad.

• Muktopus

The Muktopus is another mount that has immunity to ‘Sticky’, but it doesn’t have any jump ability. Instead having an ability that charges up your attack skill. This is a great alternative for when you can’t seem to find any Tattoad, or if you really like the mount of course!

• Poislug

The Poislug is a weird mount to use for the Sticky Thicket, the reason it’s good is because its passive makes it immune to the hookvines that are all over the place.

strategies
Your strategy for the Tattoad and Muktopus is to avoid getting caught by one of the hookvines, which shouldn’t be too hard. The Poislug has a strategy that involves trying to use the Bubble Bulb to safely traverse the stick terrain, watch out that you don’t get hit by enemies though (which is surprisingly hard).

The Hills Zone has 3 subhabitats, but since they’re all so similar, I’ll just cover the hardest one so you can base your strategy off of that.

This is probably the most interesting subhabitat in the entire game, because if you can manage to survive 4 rooms of its incredible danger, you’ll have a really quick road to the Spider Shrine, so quick in fact, that it saves you 10 corridors of travelling the other way around. Long story short, try to climb up Breakback Slope one or two times with the help of this guide just so you can have the incredible gamer satisfaction of taking a hard shortcut.

perks
There are not really any good perks, focus on getting perks that help with attack and defence, but Breakback Slope is more about skill than it is about perks.

mounts
There are tons of good mounts for this subhabitat, I’ll mention the pros and cons of each major mount that people like to pick:
Combusdile and Skurret (combat)
The Combusdile and Skurret are really good at Breakback Slope because of their heightened combat strength, the Combusdile has an incredible first attack, and the Skurret has the Artillery passive, which massively increases your bullet DPS, and its defense skill also gives you the ‘Odour’ skill, which works exceptionally well when trying to fight basically every monster in the game.

Rolladillo and Velostritch (movement)
The Rolladillo is great at climbing Breakback Slope because of its Hill Climber passive, which allows it to traverse the mud streams in Breakback Slope with ease. The Velostritch has the Turbo defense skill, which also massively helps with avoiding bullets and increases the time before the mud streams start to affect you.

Depending on which part of the Breakback slope you are struggling with, you should consider these mounts. Of course the Rolladillo and Skurret also have a defense skill that helps with traversal, and the Velostrich and Rolladillo have great attacking skills, but I wanted to highlight which mounts you should pick for one specific task.

strategies
Your strategy should involve trying to take the Breakback Slope on screen at a time, if you are really struggling with corridors, you can always just make enemies spawn and then back up to the start of the screen, where you won’t be interrupted by the mud streams. If you’re getting busted by the ambushes or Danger rooms and are using an attacking mount, you’re probably just not skilled enough (or don’t have enough perks) to beat Breakback Slope.

The Desert has 2 distinguishable subhabitats, the Cactus Patch and the Windswept Passes, I’ll only cover the hardest version of the Windswept Pass (the south one), but you can use the strategies for both.

This is likely the first time in the game that you’ll experience the ‘darkness’ effect in the game. Where enemies only get a red outline and bullets become harder to notice. There are no good perks to cure this effect.

mounts
The best mount is probably the Sandamander, because it has the Tunnel defence skill, which puts it above any other mount automatically. And it has Cactus Proof, which will probably save you more damage than any other monster will. Although if you find yourself lacking damage, the Croackamel is a good alternative, however, its passive ability that allows it to regain stamina doesn’t work in The Desert as there are no bug type critters there.

strategies
Your game plan should be to always keep an eye out on where the red monster outlines are, this is especially important in ambushes or Danger rooms. Luckily you don’t have to survive many rooms of this subhabitat before you can unlock a door and never have to visit the subhabitats again.

The Cactus Patch is also commonly known as the ‘screw you’ area. This area will drain all of your health if you’re not using the only correct mount, along with the fact that this area is pretty tough to traverse with all the dangerous enemies about, the above name for this area is very fitting.

perks & mounts
The Wetsocks perk is particularly useful if you’re not planning on using a Sandamander, as it increases the time before you take damage from Cactus terrain. On the topic of the Sandamander, unless you disgust the mount’s attacks, there is no better option for the entire subhabitat than this one. It makes you immune against all the cactuses because of its cactus proof passive. If you don’t want to use this mount, the Croakamel with its jump can also help you avoid all the cacti, but it's only a suboptimal option.

When Liam said the Coast Zone would be the hardest out of the 4 starter habitats (the ones directly connected to your home base), he wasn’t kidding. This area has a ton of nasty subhabitats that all have other mounts that are useful for it, therefore this is probably going to be the longest of the 6 segments. So buckle up and get ready!

The prickly tidepool is very similar to the Cactus Patch from the Desert Zone, having tons of prickly terrain that is sure to break any gamer’s heart.

perks
The perk recommendation is as always wet socks, just for if you need that little extra time to get out of a prickly situation.

mounts
So my first recommendation for a mount is that you take a pet Sandamander (preferably Elite size with a few hearts), and summon him at the beginning of the Prickly Tidepool. This is a good strategy as it allows you to just walk over the hazardous terrain and be done. The reason you need to bring a Sandamander all the way over here is because no monster in the Coast Zone has the scratch-proof (or cactus proof) passive. The best other alternative is the Seabra, which can jump over the prickly terrain, so this is basically the quick option. All the other mounts will probably end up making you take some damage because of the terrain.

strategies
There’s not really any strategy for this subhabitat, if you decide to mount a Seabra, be careful where you’re gonna jump, as you can easily get stuck between a sea of bullets and prickly terrain. If you pick the Sandamander strategy, you can just play the game normally.

So this place is, as the name suggests, flooded. Which means that unless you find a soaked-proof mount you’re probably going to need to deal with the increased cooldowns.

perks
It doesn’t really matter whether or not you have wetsocks, since everything is flooded you’ll get soaked either way when losing your mount for example. Just get perks that you like and you should be fine.

mounts & strategies
So there are 4 mounts that you’re realistically going to have that’ll help you out with traversing this place, those being the Clawtress, Galvangler, Muktopus and Styral. Any of these will work out great. Your strategy should be to always keep up your mount’s stamina, this can be done by capturing a new mount or using your attack skills to regain stamina.

Ever wanted to know what night time is like without getting obliterated by monsters within 3 seconds? The sinking tidepool has got your back! This place has falling rain and a ton of rivers that all go downwards.
If you’re trying to travel up through this zone, make sure to stay far away from the top of the screen, as that’s where bullets spawn.

mounts
The best mount for travelling through this subhabitat will probably be the Galvangler, as it can traverse through water streams without being interrupted. The strategy for this area is very similar to the one from the Breakback Slope, so go check that strategy out if you need that extra bit of help.

The jagged falls consist of mostly seaweed terrain, which slows you down to a crawl after spending about 3 seconds traversing in it. I’m not going to need to explain to you that you just need any mount that can dash, jump or tunnel to absolutely destroy this subhabitat. I don’t think you need much more advice than this. This is probably the second easiest subhabitat in the game!