Getting Started
Here's a how to guide for those who need a bit of help getting started in game.
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[Beginner]
For those who are new to the game and don't really know what to do, the first things you should look for is wood. Bush stumps and small tree stumps are the way to go. Your hunger and thirst bar take some time to deplete, so you don't have to start looking for food and water right away. You'll need bush stumps to make hafts for tools and weapons, and tree trunks to create a raft.
So first things first, forage two bush stumps in order to make two hafts. Also forage three tree trunks in order to make a raft so you have a way off of the island you are currently on. Once you have these items, look for stone (they should be gray rocks that you can forage off of the ground). Stone can be found near/in caves, or in places that have a gray colored area. You'll need at least six stone in order to create an axe for foraging large tree trunks, a pickaxe for mining metal ores, and flint for setting foliages on fire to cook food and smelt metal ores. A sword or a knife are other ideal tools, since you may never know what devious plots users may plan to kill you.
This island is located near the coast of the Mainland. Usually there's a bunch of bananas, coconuts, apples, oranges, and berries on this island. It's picked clean though :l
You now have an axe, a pickaxe, and a raft...but what do you do now? At this time your hunger/thirst bar should be around sixty or lower, so finding food and a water source would be a good idea.
- A note of warning: Natural occurring water sources take away 2 points from your health. It's recommended you craft a wooden bucket, tin bucket, or clay jug.
First off, go head to the big, main island. Ride your raft around the perimeter of the island, and if you find some brown colored ground with orange squares on it, hop off your raft and go towards that! Clay comes in handy when it comes to making jugs, since it only takes 3 clay to make one clay jug. Clay jugs and buckets can store water in them, plus you can drink from them without losing any health. In the mainland there are various berries, potatoes, and apples scattered for you to grab and munch on. Caves on the mainland also have water sources available for you to drink from or fill up your bucket/jug. If you can't find enough food to fill your hunger bar enough, there is a small, plentiful island that is located close to the mainland.
Once you get the hang of the game, you can start making more advanced stuff and upgrading your tools with better metals.
Just don't forget to have fun!
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[Advanced]
You know your way around the game. You can craft a mill and pretty fast ships in game. I don't think I have to tell you much about how to start off, cause you already know how to craft a bunch of stuff.
Still, here's a bit of a simple guide so you don't craft random stuff and then die from hunger/thirst because you completely forgot to check those bars.
This is a mill.
Forage bush stumps and tree trunks. Duh. Then forage stones for pickaxe and flint. You don't really need that axe because you're going to head over to a cave to mine five tin and five copper. Combine copper and tin together to make bronze, and then make a bronze pickaxe and bronze axe. Now you can mine iron and coal, but you're thirst/hunger bar is depleting fast.
If you're at the mainland, then great. It takes around three wood segments to make a mill, which is equivalent to three large tree trunks or six tree trunks. Craft a mill, forage four wheat to make a wheat bundle, place the wheat bundle through the mill to make flour, quickly find some clay on the mainland to make a jug (which you should have done earlier, but oh well), fill that jug with water, use the jug on the flour to make dough, use that dough to make bread, burn some foliage, AND then cook the bread. Try not to burn the bread; burnt bread can do some mean damage to your vitality.
You can make more bread/pies for later use so you don't starve to death.
So yeah, basically mine and then craft food.
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[Retrieving lots of food]
When you have grasped the basics at this game, you will want to begin to make more food so you won't starve. An ideal plan is to gather plants from different islands, (Apples, oranges, berries, wheat, bananas, coconuts, etc.,) then bring them back to your home shelter. Other ways of obtaining large quantities of food include trading, stealing, farming, or killing other players and looting their bodies for food. These methods are also great for bringing types of foods to islands that usually do not have much to offer, such as Mainland, for example.
To see a full list of the different types of foods, please go here.