As an aside, this is my first time writing a guide like this. I studied how other guides I appreciated were written, but please, if you catch anything wrong, let me know. If you catch anything missing, let me know.

And well, if you like it, I'd love to hear it because it was a lot of work and I'm kinda hesitant to start another one without knowing I'm doing it right. Anyhow...

This is a highly-detailed (read: loooong and step-by-step) guide for two sorts of people: those who are new to immersive simulation gaming and unused to figuring out how to find secret areas (which the tutorial provides a few of) and those who understand imsims but want to speedrun the tutorial while also picking up every possible scrap of advantageous gear lying around. If you are one of the latter, skip ahead to Getting Everything You Can Out of the Tutorial Zone.

Immersive simulation games expect you to problem solve using things you find in the environment. Can you move a box? Can you jump up on top of that box? Congratulations, you can use that box to reach places you couldn't otherwise jump up to. It isn't all about parkour, but Project: Silverfish includes a lot of secret areas which can be reached by parkour-style problem-solving, including many obstacles (locked doors, seemingly deathtrap-filled hallways) which can be circumvented by looking around for alternatives. If you can see a shotgun through a window with a rig pointing it towards the front door you're supposed to go in through, and you can also see a bunch of boxes that can be stacked up under an open window to let you sneak in using non-OSHA-approved methods, you now have options! (Sometimes, stacking boxes or other things like crates/drums/pallets are the ONLY way to reach certain secret areas.)

Gamers have become familiar with this climbing term due to a number of FPS games; it involves placing your hands on an obstacle at or over your head-height, then jumping upward while pressing down with your hands to achieve greater height than a jump alone will get you...And allowing you to swing a foot or leg up onto the obstacle. If you've ever been swimming in a pool, and you exited by clambering up the side instead of using steps or a ladder, you've mantled!

In Project: Silverfish mantling is done by jumping (default: space bar) and then hitting the crouch key (default: left shift) at the apex of the jump. It doesn't work if you are already crouched. It doesn't work if you've moved forward against an overhang which will block your upward jump (including stiffening planks nailed around the edges of crates!). There are times you will need to jump after crouching to get through low-ceilinged apertures, and if you try to mantle at this point you won't succeed. Be aware of these differences and use jumping-from-crouch, jumping, and jumping-then-crouching (mantling) appropriately to get around. This guide will be very specific about this difference under the assumption that the reader is still learning to navigate.

Most new players will begin in the tutorial zone, shown on the map as "River Dock." There's a not-terribly helpful nor informative Inheritor who apparently piloted the boat you spawn on and whose primary job is to tell you that no, they do not care what your ticket says, this is your stop. Get off the boat and on the beach.


Listen carefully, and perhaps wait a minute or so for the sunrise and dawn-light to aid your search. You should hear (and see) a frog which will jump around every few seconds. Grab it using the F key. This is your new friend, Snack, who will be your lucky mascot during the endeavors to follow. You're a lizard, Harry! So Snack is food, so can be eaten to fill your hunger bar, or traded with other hungry inheritors. You can also put Snack (as well as other small creepy-crawlies) in a pot over a cookfire and double Snack's nutritional value by cooking. (Or, if you're a softy, you can just give Snack a new home in your locker and subsist on canned food and MREs. I'm not judging.)


Having acquired your first companion to assist you in the game, run (Default: Left Ctrl) and jump across the gap in the boardwalk, then crouch to get under the broken fence. This will bring you into an industrial area with a well-lit series of crated green-and-white tanks and large wooden crates to your left, and a (much less illuminated, almost hidden) iron gate to your right. The iron gate is unlocked and will let you run up the stairs behind it, bypassing the the jumping puzzle. If you're still getting used to movement in the game and need to practice those parkour skills, you will quickly learn that the large crated tanks are too tall to be mantled, while the large wooden crates can be mantled (but if you are too close the edge of them that may prevent you until you back up a little, as described earlier). Stairs or frog-style, get up to the next level, where you will find your first grabbable goodies.


At the top of the parkour course, or to your left as you exit the top of the stairwell, you will find a stack of bricks that you can easily jump atop (if you wish). Whether you're on top or not, an MRE and a bandage will be there, and can be quickly grabbed using the Interact (Default: F) or Grab (Default: G) keys.


A little ways beyond the stack of bricks, and a few more obstacles to practice on (remember that crates, drums, etc., can all be used to help you get height advantage to get over things, and can be dragged around, stacked, etc!), you will find another small loot deposit: three flares.


There's a stairway straight ahead of you. Best to crouch now, you will hear voices ahead in the warehouse building. If you glance right, you will see a couple of boxes against a distant wall. You can leave these alone for now, or if you want to bypass the warehouse, you could go grab them and stack them up to help you get over the big tank crates off-screen to your right. We're not going that way for this guide, but it's important to remember that in an ImSim you will very often have many options as far as where you can go and how you can get there.

Crouch and move up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, you'll find a partially-boarded up door with a pipe sticking down to block your path. You can interact with or grab the pipe, taking it into your inventory. Congratulations! You've found a weapon! It's a lousy weapon, and better will be available quite soon, but welcome to the bottom of the barrel!


Move into the building through the now less-obstructed doorway, and you'll see a rather complicated light-switch on the wall. Clicking this switch will turn off the lights in the warehouse below. As the pop-up messages tell you, crouching, moving slowly, and light levels have a lot to do with enemies spotting you.


Turning left, you'll see some shelves with a lit candle atop them, and a pallet with small boxes strapped on top of it. Mantle up onto the boxes and interact with the candle to snuff it out, providing you with a little more darkness (If you had a lighter, you could re-light it, but unless you were lucky with your starting loadout this is unlikely.).


Beyond the candle, in the doorway, is a dummy! Interact with it and slowly drag it back and to the side, setting it upright somewhere quietly. Or just knock it over, make a racket, abandon all stealth and prepare for a mob to come at you; I'm not your dad!

Beyond the dummy you'll find a strange robot-looking fellow with his back to you and weilding a heavier length of pipe. If you were sneaky you should be able to slide right up behind him, do a Heavy Strike, a long press for about a one-second count, then release when you're ready to whack him in the back of the neck. Which will kill him (Shocking!).


Take his pipe. It's got tape on it and a valve as well as a heavier T-junction on the end, which makes it a bit more deadly AND saleable to later shopkeepers for the amazing low price of $1 (one!) dollar! This makes it significantly more useful than your previous pipe which has no value at all.


Ahead and to your left you will find two barrels. You can jump atop them and fight the other guards from high ground, or you can pull or push one out of the way. Or you can bait them close from atop the barrel then jump over it when they come and hit them while the barrel prevents them from overrunning you. Isn't it nice to have options?


There are three of them in this area, and usually they have another zero-value pipe, another heavy pipe, and a small utility knife which is actually worth ten times as much as your current pricy pipe!


Wait, where's that third Progenitor's weapon?! If you don't see all of them, go into your inventory (Default: Tab) and notice that to the right is a section showing what's on the ground near you. Just click and drag anything you want into your inventory. This will be EXTREMELY useful later in the game when bodies are piled up, obscured by bushes, or loot is otherwise hidden from sight and can't be picked up by putting the reticle on it and using Grab or Interact. Loot all the things! Except maybe the cheap pipes. A dollar is a dollar, and no value is no value. Congratulations! You've learned how to do combat and defeated all of the enemies in the Tutorial zone!

Now it's time for your first secret (I don't count the stairs or the frog as secrets, they're not hidden, just not obvious)!

As you pass out through the gap where the two drums were, you should see a large crate to your left, next to the (unclimbable) crated tanks.

You can mantle (jump + shift at highest point of jump) up atop the crate OR you can drag any of the drums or small boxes over and build a nice little staircase...Whatever you're comfy with! Once you're atop the crate, jump onto the tank to your left.


You can see some racks next to the adjacent tank, one with lumber and one with pipe. We're going to that rack full of pipes! You'll need to mantle up again to get atop them. If you fall down, just try, try again.


Once you're on that rack of pipes you will see another crated tank at the end of it...And oh look! Some silly person stashed a fairly spiffy pistol and some ammo here! To get atop this last crated tank, you will need to crouch and THEN jump, because the roof here is low and the space you're trying to enter has no room for you to stand up in. Did you make the jump? Savor your reward!


You can now hop down (fall damage over this small distance is zero) and poke around the rest of the warehouse, but there's nothing else to be seen here.

You will need to crouch to exit the warehouse through the partially-raised garage door. Beyond it, atop some stacks of drywall, you'll find two more bandages and some food, just in case you took damage bashing the guards. Food helps you heal, and being fully fed increases your running speed. However, you can only heal up to full if you have bandaged any injuries so your Regen value (shaded) fills your health bar to the end. Examine future healing items you encounter looking for +instant health (immediately grants you health regardless of regen), +regen (increases how much of your full health bar can be healed), Regen Speed (increases how quickly you heal to your max regen level), and food (fills your hunger bar, which is depleted over time or by healing yourself).


Go left around the front of the pickup truck and you'll find a convenient table containing an oil lamp (turn on/off via interact key) a radio (same, music can be used to cover your sneaking noise and to attract attention), a rusty boat anchor of a semi-auto, and a few magazines of ammunition. If you missed the hidden pistol, this atrociously maintained plinker is your only ranged weapon going into the game. You could use the ammunition to take potshots at the bottles and/or dummies, but shooting in this game is pretty straightforward, so I wouldn't waste it. But hey. I'm not your dad. Knock yourself out. Pick the rusty hunk of junk up anyway, you can sell it for sandwich money.


Instead of wasting time on the shooting gallery, let's move forward towards the small brick shed behind the one-and-a-half dummies. A green crate can be seen on the floor. Goodies!


Inside the crate will be another MRE and another magazine of ammunition. Tasty! Exit the building and look back the way you came. In the distance, you'll see the shooting range, a couple of forklifts (are you certified?) and a military truck with its tailgate down to the left of the middle-distance forklift. Looks like another green crate on the back of that truck! (You should be seeing a pattern here! These trucks are all over the zone and many, many of them have cargo!)

Jump up into the back of the truck and find some cash and even more ammo! Then jump up onto the cab of the truck and head towards the stack of pipes with the blue tarp on them in front of you and to the left.


Jump on top of that stack of pipes with the blue tarp over it. It will let you easily mantle up onto the peach-and-white crated tank behind the forklift. From here you'll see some suspiciously stairway-arranged crates...And another transport truck with yet another green crate!



If you look really closely, you'll even see a pair of binoculars some generous soul left sitting on the edge of the truck-bed. Get your loot (binox, MRE, bandage).



If you jump atop the second truck and use it to jump onto the tanks in front of it, you'll find yourself looking back into the courtyard you entered the warehouse through. The two boxes tucked away in the corner could be used to make a stairway up to where you're standing, if for some reason you wanted to avoid going through the warehouse next time. I suppose some people might want to bypass the warehouse, pick up the junk gun, then use it to shoot the guards before revisiting the warehouse, but to me this is just wasting ammo. But hey, not your relative!


Let's mantle back up that stairway of crates heading northward to where the shooting gallery is, then jog past it and keep on going! You've found all that's findable here! (If I missed something, please message me!)

Next Stop: Red Rook Observatory!

Red Rook Observatory is a safe zone. You won't be attacked here (unless you attack the locals), and you'll be safe even in dangerous weather. The guide will advise you to put your weapon into a 'safe' position, but at least as of v1.8.3 no one will notice if you point your weapon at them (goodness knows Phil's unsafe as heck with that LMG he waves at you).

Just saunter right through the gates like you own the place. Ahead of you and to your left is a small shack with windows. Guess what's inside?

Did you guess a green crate with a bandage and some more ammunition? Amazing. You're getting good at this. This is .45 ammunition that'll probably be useful to you quite soon. Carrying a few rounds of every common ammunition makes using appropriated firearms much simpler.

Jog to the right around the observatory, up the obvious stairs, and say hello to Phil, the Inheritor with the big, spiffy light machine gun. Phil doesn't have an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ name but I intend to Phix that. Phil will explain a few things to you, including where to find the person who runs this place, Simmi. But we're going to make a few stops along the way...


Jog past Phil uphill and you'll see another small brick shack on the right side of your path. Beyond it, a couple of Freelancers hanging out in the shade and offering trade, a cooking fire, and to the left a door into the Observatory. Let's hit that brick shack first.



Inside you'll find a green cabinet, and if you look carefully, you'll see a bolt resting atop it! Players who've been through STALKER know what bolts are for, but to the non-cognoscenti they're useful for throwing at traps and some anomalies to temporarily disarm them (or just to find out what the latest weirdness you've encountered will do when you harass it with a spare hardware fastener). Snag the bolt, and inside the cabinet will usually be more loot, including an MRE, bandage, flare, and (that's right!) more ammo. This cabinet and all other containers in Red Rook Observatory do not respawn their contents so don't bother checking back in future.


Here's a cookpot! If you still have Snack, you can put Snack into the cookpot and double the poor li'l fellahs nutritional value. The 'Eat All' button will make you consume everything in the pot (You can eat up to 200 units of food, which is the maximum the pot will contain), or you can pack away leftovers 20 units at a time, but when you eat them later they will only be worth 18 units of food...That's not a great loss, and you will find plenty of creepy-crawlies, brown mushrooms (do NOT eat non-brown mushrooms), and canned stuff to toss into the pot in future. Carrying food with you to top off your hunger bar is very useful both for speed and for healing.

Don't leave food in the cookpot when you exit the zone, or if you go to sleep in the bed here. Those two uniformed vultures will gleefully abscond with your leftovers.


Behind the cookpot, our next stop will be these two Freelancers (identifiable by bright green trim on their otherwise mostly green armor...Sometimes bright yellow stag-head patches will be visible but not always). You can trade money or supplies/tools/weapons with them and their inventory will change each night at midnight.


Be forewarned that sometimes they will not trade weapons to you if that would leave them without a better weapon. It's cheapest to trade with folks who have spare weapons and make offers on their weaker weapons, but sometimes you'll find someone who has multiple weapons and (for whatever reason) doesn't like their most expensive weapon.

Here you can see that this fine individual has a racy and stylish $200 Mauser-like, which means they're happy to trade me the cheap little Intratec clone. Also notice that just to the left of the prices, there are sometimes little triangles. No triangles means that the trader is neutral about the item in question. Downward triangles means they don't really want it and will not offer good value for it. Upward triangles mean they really want something and will value it more highly in trade. They don't care one way or the other about their little machine-pistol, nor the shiny revolver I'm offering, but it seems they'd kinda like the shovel. Perhaps they have bodies to bury...Or disinter. I don't judge! Who knows what's hiding in a grave? Shovels are in the game for a reason!

Also notice the pale/shaded/solid orange bar above the two trade windows. When the arrow is over the unshaded pale part, your offer isn't good enough and needs to be increased. When it's over the shaded part (as shown) they're interested in the trade and consider it fair. When the arrow is over the bright orange part of the bar, they consider your offer to be on the high side and trading with them in this circumstance may increase your rep with their faction. Drag things from either parties' inventory to their respective offer boxes to move the arrow. You can add money to the trade by clicking the little window and typing in a number, but money usually isn't as good an option as barter.

I'm not really interested in this machine pistol. I don't have a lot of ammunition so accurately placed single shots are going to be a better option for me, at least for the time being. But it was a good example of a trade that could be made just coming out of the starting zone!


Go back towards the shed you robbed previously (you FIEND!) to find a locked gate with a warning sign on it. You can pick this lock later on in the game, but at this point you probably don't have lockpicks (or the firepower) to deal with what's behind it. Come back when you've got a decent rifle or shotgun, a fair bit of ammunition, and some experience dealing with the Zone's more dangerous denizens.


Now let's go to that shop your eyes kept wandering towards earlier while I was making you waste your time trading with the resting Freelancers. This is Eddy, sporting Freelancer green (and the aforementioned yellow stag patch). Eddy will buy anything you bring him, even taking stuff worth $0 without rolling his eyes at you. You can buy back items from him later for a limited time, but he's not a pawn shop so eventually you should expect them to be gone. He also has a nice selection of bandages, some ammunition, and maybe some fair starting firearms. We can loot better in Crossroads, though.


Next to Eddy is a small carport with another green locker in it! Is there loot in it? Possibly! This one seems to be a bit more random in its contents. Eddy won't hassle you about taking stuff out of it, which seems downright nice of him.

Having pocketed anything valuable and sold anything useless to Eddy, let's go meet our host and see if we can't get a place to bed down and...more importantly...a job. It's time to go into that big main building. Lots to see there. A giant viewing screen where you can play back recording tapes, a bunch of computers, a lot of radio equipment, and Simmi. Simmi's apparently the coordinator for the Freelancers here, and will offer you a bed and a safe stash. More importantly, she'll buy radio-related parts like copper wire spools and broken circuitboards from you at higher than normal prices. Best of all, she'll offer you jobs!

The tall cabinet and locker to the left and right of Simmi's office space are both locked, but if you come back later with a lockpick or crowbar, Simmi won't blink when you loot them. There's almost always a computer board in the right-hand locker which is useful for a quest later on. Talk to her, she'll tell you about Eddy, where you can sleep, a little bit about the Freelancers and other players in the Zone. She also has a half-dozen quests for you. You can take up to five, but I really recommend that you take the Crossroads Signal Jammer and the Replacement Wrench quests, leaving the rest open for later. Once you've picked out some jobs, go ahead and head up the left-hand stairs to the area behind those bright blue office dividers.


At the top of the stairs, you'll pass a workbench which you can use after finding some tools. Someone has left a bolt on it. You know what to do.


Past the white curtains you'll find Your New Home, with a bed and a locked cabinet on the right, two locked lockers on the left, some file cabinets with a Real Book (tm) on them that will help you understand a little bit more about the world you're in, and finally, bearing a spiffy spaceflight poster, you'll see your stash. Anything you store here is safe and cannot be stolen. Enjoy the newfound luxury of your home. Feel free to steal and read the book. Sell it if you like! You'll need lockpicks or a crowbar to open the locked containers, but for now, get an hour's sleep on the bed so you respawn here instead of all the way back at the beginning of the Zone. Put anything you don't immediately need in your shiny new stash, keeping only bullets, first aid gear, and weaponry. It's time to head out to Crossroads and seek adventure, trying not to get killed!


First, however, a test. There's something I didn't tell you to loot, somewhere in this final picture. See if you can find it. Survival in the Zone requires you to constantly be on the lookout for every little advantage and hint. Stacking boxes will not be enough. Observation for opportunities and awareness of enemies will be needed.


May the Zone smile upon you! Roam, and grow fat off the land, newcomer!