"The moment you start cheating in a video game, playing it is pointless"- Ceronesthes

Starting out there are many options when picking a server. There is PVP, PVE, PVE-conflict, Hosting Unofficial and Joining Unofficial servers. I suggest starting with single player mode to get the basics and to set up keybinds etc.


Personally I do not recommend going to the official PVP servers due to them being infested with cheaters etc, especially if you are new to survival games, but at the end of the day it is your choice.
No matter what you choose it is important to manage your play time carefully.

To better help figure this out If you choose a PvP server, I recommend a stone age nomad style of scouting until you feel ready.
The gear you will need is food and water, basic clothing, simple stone tools, sleeping bags and simple healing items. Remember, stealth is a key part of scouting!


Once you have enough of the basics, pop down a sleeping bag and go explore or build a small stone 1x2 or 2x2 hut if you want to put the sleeping bag in there. As an extra tip, a good 1x1 or 1x2 make for great temporary loot storage during loot runs.


My last bit of advice for this section is this, no matter who claims to be friendly, no matter who claims to be allies, be ready for anything and know when it's time to move servers.

As you scout the map try to locate easy access to iron and reach level 10, If you like the selected server, then you will need more experience going forward.

Some methods for gaining exp are below.
These methods change from time to time so keep an eye on patch notes etc.

1. Craft an iron sickle (with luck you can still do this) you can harvesting puffball mushrooms as one method for good experience.
One place they are found is in small grass patches along the rivers north east side close to the jungle.

2. Make a pick and harvest black ice, B13 and C12 are two places to get it. It's high on the mountain ledges, you will need spiced food so check and see what humanoid mobs drop them or see if someone is willing to make some for you, otherwise it's level 29 to start making spiced food or you can farm up some silver coins at level 10, around Sepemeru B7 to trade at A7 (at least for now).
You could also get it by going to the frost temple at D14 I think but you might not be the only one going there so be ready to run and watch out for the frost giants and sabre cats.

3. Gathering lotus flowers, purple or black lotus are easy enough to get in the jungle, just keep moving if you go after black lotus or you could die to poison gas. Lotus have the same shape but come in different colours depending on the location you gathered them from.

4. Defeating grey apes. There are humanoid grey apes in the jungle, defeating these is one other method. They are hard to miss as they walk on 2 feet and they wander the ruins.
5. Defeating skeletons at the unnamed city. The large city at D6,
all around the wall and at it's centre are undead, tough but good for exp and sometimes drop good loot.

Other than that just gather, craft and defeat things as you go.

Recipes.
There are a lot of recipes around the map, The ones I can recommend to start with are

1. Relic hunter gear/ Cheap expertise gear, top left of B6, it's sitting on top of a building on the south end of the city. The pants and the chest piece.
2. Hyena gear/ Cheap concussive damage gear, top left of I6, it's in a thrall camp near a tent.
3. The corrupting and cleansing brews for sorcery, can be found at the mounds of the dead B11 and the summoning place H5.

Dungeon recipes are good to have so be sure to grab those as well. The dregs has one just at the entrance as you enter that could be useful for furnace bases, it's called a glowstick and it makes the area around it cooler whereas the basic torch heats up the area around it. Just try not to over do it with lights and other decor, trust me your pc will thank you.

The sinkhole holds a recipe for dragonbone gear, it's not the strongest gear but it is cheap, looks cool and handy gear to have.

Food! How to not starve.

Grubs, berries, aloe, bugs, meats and gruel! to name a few quick and easy foods.
Of all the foods mentioned, the easiest by far is grubs, eggs and gruel.


Grubs and gruel restore small amounts food and water but are very handy in a pinch or for the lazy gamer (like me!)

At lvl 17 you can unlock the grinder and lvl 18 the peasant knowledge will unlock the compost heap, once that's unlocked and set up all you need is compost and boom! you got a grub generator for endless food! or silk if you have the thrall for it.

If you don't like the idea of eating out of the compost heap, there is a station called the thrall pot, it's big but acts like a poor mans Preservation bin/ Fridge. So keeping gruel or dried meats will be easy enough while you level up.


There are recipes all over, I'll tell you of a few but the rest is up to you.
Don't forget there is also spiced food for exploring colder areas of the map.

Some good locations to check out are the mounds of the dead for two recipe books, I think the dried meats for combat buffs and trapper's cabin for a lasting meal recipe that's good for farming resources.

These locations are B11 for the mounds and G9 on the map.

Single player practice.
I often go into single player to practice building, I recommend you do the same.
Build small, build smart and if done right any base you build should last long enough to make a play.

Picking a spot.
Once you are leveled up enough, have scouted around and decided to stay, it's time to set up a farming camp. Pick a place near iron, aloe and water, these places are good starting points and hopefully a place you marked on your travels.
The map is a very important tool for planning your travels, raid strategy and resource marking.

Build small.
Again I recommend building small, it saves on time and resources. The other reason for this is making sure you don't get banned as a result of building big on official servers or unofficial servers with building rules.

Resource management.
Taking note of the resources you gather is important, more important is not hording to much in one location. Splitting your loot to several locations or to simply use up what you don't need so it won't be stolen is one method of keeping loot safe. You can also place and pick up building parts, have bearer thralls or camels sit still to hide away loot, getting creative with loot management can be tricky but never cross the line. If you know of and abuse exploits then there is no point in keeping the loot, you have already lost.

One tip I can recommend is picking a spot to camp and collect loot from chests as a bonus.
There is a useful station I like . The Improved dismantling bench is a pretty good way to recover or gain extra loot on short runs, just make sure not to place any important items in there by mistake.

Building tips.
First things first, Insulated wood (T2) and black ice (T3) are cheap time savers.
Of the 3 tiers of building blocks, I recommend T1/ sandstone or floatsom as the blueprint, T2 Insulated wood as a cheap T2 upgrade if you are short on time, T3 Black ice for final upgrade.
I Might make a separate guide on building layouts. Side note, any optional dlc building parts with flat faces are at times better for building, my personal favourite being the frontier set.

Another benefit of building small is it let's you make several other bases to fall back to and with sorcery in the mix, it can make for a pretty good portal network. Just make sure to turn off the portal to your main base before logging off.

Sorcery.
E5

Sorcery in my opinion is a good addition to some farming builds.
The first spell is Detect resources that allows one to see nearby resources and also has a bonus affect being to my understanding a form of careful harvest.

There is a follower type of note, the zombie. quick and easy to replace, they last about 2 days to my knowledge and are a good melee type follower in a pinch. You can use them to guard an area while rebuilding, distracting enemies or temporary bearer/ sherpa to hold small amounts of farm.

The second spell is Mass cull, this spell allows one to harvest HALF of all nearby resources, it pairs well with the Beast of burden attribute.

While every spell has it's use my favourite spells so far are Raise Dead, Summon corpse and Slow fall. The transportory stone and Elixer of rebirth are also very helpful.

You will need spell pages to learn new spells. You can sometimes find them where sorcerers spawn, defeat sorcerers that sometimes drop them and craft them.
I would recommend breaking a rank 3 sorcerer or higher on a wheel of pain and gathering the ingredients for faster results.
You will also need to know how to handle corruption so don't forget to learn cleansing brew and corrupting brew, also it helps to have a dancer/ entertainer nearby to help cleanse unwanted corruption.

Golems.
G7

Not much to say about golems although I hoped there was more to it.
Golems can be cheap placeholders or expensive tanks. The crystal parts are found in dungeons and some are more interesting then others, for example a lightning rod and an incense burner for area of effect buffs.
The stone and iron golems are good for afk farming or temporary area defence.
They are weak to star metal.
They can't be repaired to my knowledge, I hope this changes.
That's really it at this time sadly.

Human Followers.
The main three kinds of followers I often found myself getting first are T3 fighters,
Archers and Entertainers.
Crafting thralls are handy to have, specifically blacksmiths and armourers but with the recent changes you really only need one type of crafter each in an area at a time.
Relic hunter fighters are a good middle ground as all thralls can use melee or ranged.
The thrall menu is simple enough to follow.
Berserker thralls are heavy hitters, the cimmerian berserker being the most sought after thrall for a very long time now.
To get them you need to unlock the wheel of pain and set it up near one of the many thrall camps around the map, knock out and drag a thrall of choice to the wheel, feed it gruel and wait.
There is a more passive way to get followers called the tavern, this method will require gold coins. sometimes in thrall camps you may find a bar keeper, the recipe and services they have can be pretty useful for clans of many sizes. Guide the bar keep back to your base or simply rescue them, and set them up at a bar and you should be good to go. Once set up it will take time for thralls to start showing up.

Animal followers
Animal followers are hit or miss but if you want them try to aim for the greater versions for best hp and damage.
Animal followers of note are Wolfs, Crocodiles, Hyenas, Spiders, Snakes,
Sand reapers and Sand reaper queens, Bears, Boars, Mammoths, Sabre cats and Camels.
Useful if paired with human followers and they look cool but without the know how, not a very good area to sink time into if you are new to taming and combat.

Mounts
Just a quick list of different mount roles:
Horse with scout saddle for fast travel, good for scouting.
Camel for extra tanky inventory space, great for farming runs. E8 near the den.
Rhino for more pve combat.
Mounts of any kind are not a good idea to bring while exploring dungeons.

Body vaulting is pretty straight forward.

Body vaulting is something players do when they move servers or when they want to stash extra loot away using alt accounts. Something to keep in mind if you choose to get into raiding.
This is also good for wanting to try and save some resources in case you want to move servers, if it works out you may return to the server with at least something of a head start if the server hasn't been wiped.

1. Set up your attributes with the beast of burden perk
2. load up enough tools and valuables (raid mats, healing items etc) to set up a small base
3. Find a nice spot away from other players
4. Log off

Keep in mind your body takes at least 7 days to my knowledge,
to disappear from other players vision so make sure you find a spot high up and or away from farming routes, it's not uncommon for body vaults to equip sandstorm masks.

If you log in to no loot it's not the end of the world. You can get back up to upgraded iron tools pretty easy and you may be surprised, Iron or steel tools are perfect for Solo/ Duo.

If you made it this far, good luck, have fun and thanks for reading!