Reverend Vanover's Stupendulous Beginnings Guide

Greetings and salutations! In this documentorial device, I will learn and bestow upon you, the skills and basic knowledge needed to survive on the Acribos Archipelago!

Introduction

I've noticed a lot of threads of people asking how things work or for a better tutorial, so I've decided to write one as I figure out how to play the game.

If you see any information that is incorrect, or can be done a better way, please let me know and I will add/change it.

I'm currently playing in the beta version available from the SteamHammer.us site, and will be using it for most of this guide I think.

Getting Started

First you're going to want to launch the game and setup all your graphics and audio preferences from "OPTIONS" on the main menu.

Video Options:


Audio Options:


Controls should be left up to personal preference. I changed a few of them around for myself.

Next, unless you're joining a friend, you'll be hosting the game for your friends/yourself.

Click on "CREATE A WORLD"

Set up your settings as you like, but for your first game I'd recommend the following:


At the bottom is a feature I haven't messed with at all. I'd recommend leaving it off until you know what it does.


Next, we'll go into the game proper.

Character Creation

Now that you've launched your server, you have to make a character.


The appearances don't matter, as they are all cosmetic, but the attributes will matter.

I'd suggest putting some points into strength at base so you can carry a little more.

The settings I showed for the game creation for accelerated skill leveling make the attributes a bit easy to breeze through; but on servers you're probably going to have to level them up a bit faster and you won't be able to go down all the skill paths yourself depending on how the server is set up.

After you make your character, move on to spawn.

Fresh Spawn

Now that you've spawned, you should see something like this:


Press your bound inventory keymapping, by default Tango or India, to open your inventory.


The game gives you a few default items, but you'll need much more to get going in this game, so let's stop wasting daylight.

First, equip your standard clothing:


Then open your map, by default keymapping Mike.


I've highlighted some areas to look out for.


On the game world, there are several kinds of resources available on the surface.

Copper Scrap Piles:


Clay:


Sand/Water:


Rock:


Along with various forms of grass and dirt.

The first thing we're going to do is get started building our tools. We're going to need to find a copper scrap pile for this, so look at the map for round brown raised areas.

I'd recommend building near enough to one of these piles at early game so you can get more copper quickly as scrap metal copper tools are not very durable.

Along your way to the scrap piles, look out for orange trees! These provide much needed sustenance at early game, and you're going to need to gather both saplings and oranges.


After you build a shovel, you can plant the saplings to grow more food locally. The oranges can be eaten for ~21 points of hunger stat gain.

Right click to open the context menu and gather a sapling, and then gather some oranges. There is a finite number of times per harvest you can obtain saplings and oranges per harvest. You can see how many branches, oranges, and saplings the tree currently has by using Construction > Inspect


After you make your way to one of the scrap metal piles, right click on one of the tiles and find the option to gather scrap metal and right click it:


Right clicking on an option in the context menu will set that as the left click default action.

Now we're ready to start making our starter tools.

Tool Creation

We're going to need a good amount of copper scrap to make our base tools, so go ahead and gather up about 60 of it.

For our basic tools, we're going to need branches and plant fiber, so go around in grassy areas and collect plant fiber under Farming.


For branches, collect them off trees the same way you did oranges or saplings.


Start off by making a Scrapmetal Pick, Saw, Hammer, Shovel, and Axe. You can skip the Scrapmetal Machete for now.


After you've gathered these tools, equip the hammer first.

Bed, Basket, and Beyond

Now that you've got some basic tools, we're going to start off with the two most basic things you might want at fresh spawn: a sleeping bag and a basket to hold stuff.

You need 25 sticks and 25 fiber for the basket, and 8 sticks and 20 fiber for the sleeping bag.

After collecting all of this, right click on some flat ground to open the context menu. Under construction, click build.


Place down either the bed or the large basket first.


The controls on the top left control the building placement. Click and drag on the icons to move them.


X = Move along X-axis
Y = Move along Y-axis
Z = Move up and down on the Z-axis
R = Rotate along the Z-axis




Now we have our basket to store items in, and a bed to set our spawn point down.

Right click on the bed and use the context menu to set your spawn point.

Now, you can use the teleport home command in your hotbar. Default keymapping keyboard number 5.

Easy Bake Oven

The first building we're going to need is a Small Smelter.

Find some ground you want to place it on, and use the build menu to place down the smelter.



But wait! The ground is yellow! That means it's not level so you can't build there.

Equip your shovel, and right click on the ground and under construction, click Flatten Ground



You may need to flatten it several times depending on how angled the tile is.

Requip your hammer once it shows up as green.



Green Ground = Good Ground!

Now after setting up the build site, as we did for the bed and basket, look at the requirements.



What are these icons?

From left to right:
Shaped Stone, Clay, Clear Water, Bronze Ingot

The bronze ingots are the simplest to get right now, so run back over to the scrap pile and collect more scrap. You're going to need at least 90 scrap parts.

So get collecting that scrap.

After collecting 90 scrap metal you may ask, but how will we make ingots with only scrap?



The campfire requires a large number or branches from trees as fuel. 10 for the campfire itself, and I'd say more than 10 for enough fuel to make all 3 ingots we need.

You can only make one ingot at a time, so you'll have to baby sit the campfire while the ingots are being made.



Next you'll need to gather some clay. Thankfully, clay is pretty lightweight, so refer to the map I showed you earlier and find some clay. You'll need a shovel.



While you're near the beach, go down to the shoreline and collect some water. Right click on the water surface and under Alchemy, select Get Clear Water. No bottles required!



Pick up about 20 sand while you're down here too.

Head back to your smelter build site and deposit the ingredients you have so far.

Next, I'll explain stone.

Stone

You're going to need shaped stones for your easy bake oven, so find the nearest mountain. Check the map I used before.

This time, you need to find the area of rocky ground. Use your pick axe to gather some rocks.



10 rocks makes one shaped stone, but to make the shaped stone also requires a pick axe and will greatly reduce the lifetime of the tool while making large amounts of these rocks.



It helps to have your fast travel to home ability at these times because it cuts out the overburdened diarrhea walk back to your camp.

After you've gotten the stone shaped and added to your build site, equip the hammer and get to work.





Congratulations! You're one step closer to seizing the means of production.

However, we're not done. The next building requires Iron Ingots. I'll go into prospecting in the next segment.

Prospecting for Ores

Prospecting is one of the things that takes some time to get results.

Right click on some open terrain and in Metallurgy click on Prospect for Copper.



It should open the range scanner:



The following is speculation. Follow at your own risk and feel free to prove it wrong as this is purely off experimentation.

The way this works to the best of what I can tell is that each tick adds a search radial ring to the scan. For example, the lowest setting is 2x2, the next is 4x4, 6x6, etc. The max range following this hypothesis is 72x72.

To get started, use the highest setting, and scan. If it finds something, scan the same spot again, but reduce the range by one. Continue this until you don't find a result. That should give you a ballpark figure. Depending on how high the slider is without a result, I'd suggest moving 3-7 squares away either X, Y, or diagonally. The lower the scan range, the smaller the movement spacing.

The mineral we need is iron ore. The best place to find this is in a mountain. You might have even been close to it when gathering your stones previously.

Head back to the mountain, and scan. Keep scanning using that method until you think you've found something. Once you've gotten the scanner as low as it goes with a positive result, dig.



As you can see my method found Copper/Iron in a mixed ore seam in about 10 minutes.

This is what copper and iron look like:



The copper is the copper colour, while the iron is a reddish-brown colour.

After you've loaded your pants with iron ore, teleport home and dump it in your basket.

At this point,l you may want to invest in making another basket as the basket can only hold 900 grams of material and ingots and ore are heavy.

The ores will be smelted in the smelter into ingots. The conversion rate is 5 ore / 1 ingot for bronze and iron. You're going to need 8 ingots for what we need, and 40 ore pieces total for the first.

Smelter Operating

The smelter, unlike the campfire, runs on timber LOGS, so we're going to have to cut down a tree.

If you haven't already, make a Scrapmetal saw and axe. Equip both of them.



First, strip the tree of branches, saplings, and any potential fruit, as when you cut it down, all of these resources are lost.

After stripping the tree and then cutting it down, you'll see a log on the ground. The log is the resource bundle, not the tree itself.



If "Saw Up Timber" isn't the default option, set it as such and begin cutting the log into timber until it disappears from being exhausted of resources.



Next, to the smelter. Add ONE timber log to the smelter and light it up.



The smelter has a temperature control. Some materials can not be crafted at lower temperatures. Bronze ore can be smelted into ingots at 1000 degrees, but iron requires 1400 degrees. The plus and minus next to the resource icon control the temperature.



Smelt all of your ores, both iron and bronze. When you run out of ore, go grab some of that excess clay from the earlier trip.

We need to make a Clay Anvil Form.



Back at the smelter, combine the ingots and mold into an anvil and stick it in your pants.

Now we're going to move onto our next tool building.

Appearances are Everything

You may see something craftable at the campfire called a headlamp.



Do not be fooled by this interloper! This item is purely cosmetic. While it's equipped, it removes your beard and hair, and changes your head model to the original model. If you're okay with it, go down to the beach and grab some sand. You'll need at least 20. You can smelt the sand in your smelter to make glass.



This is one of the easiest cosmetics to make, so if you have some extra sand and want one, make it.

Stop, Power Hammer Time

The next building is a Small Power Hammer.

Go to your build menu and place down a Small Power Hammer. Level the ground as needed.



You know how to get all these resources, so I'll leave you to it.



The Power Hammer has the ability to make rifles, pistols, swords, sheet metal, and a lot of other higher-tier items. You'll also be able to make nails, which are needed for buildings.

After you get this building created, we move on to our next step: building a basic house.

The Iron Age

By now, you should have made some iron tools at the Power Hammer.

From this point on, we'll be relying more on excavated materials over the copper scrap, so feel free to move camp before continuing.

The Carpenter was Well-Known for Nailing his Work

Next we need to make a Carpentry Bench. Find a spot for it.



To make a saw blade, you need to go back to your old smelter and use 8 iron ingots to make a blade.



Take all the ingredients back to the build site and smash them together.

The Capentry Bench allows you to make more specialized building materials such as Door Modules and Window Modules, and more quantities of Edged Boards and Timber Beams.

The best part of it is that you pretty much won't need to carry hand saws most of the time any longer, and that it doesn't require fuel as it's hand cranked.

Go ahead and stock up on Wood Logs. Remember to plant saplings so you don't run out of sustainable resources.

Textile & Tanning Machine

We can craft a textile and tanning machine at this point.

Find a build spot for it, and lay it out as you've done with the other buildings.







This machine allows you to create the advanced ingredients used in clothing and armours.

Hovel, Sweet Hovel

We now have all the tools needed to build a small hovel to set as our home.

Level a bit of ground, and use the build function to set up a Hovel site. The whole ground doesn't need to be entirely level; as long as one of the squares is green, you should be able to build it.



This building requires Timber Beams and Edged Boards. Both can be made at the Carpenter's Bench.



The nails can be made at the Power Hammer. One Copper Ingot makes 10 nails. You'll need 30 nails.



And after gathering it all together, you have a basic house!



The door is controlled with a context menu.



Set your new home as your spawn and you're good to go.

Gold Rush

To do.

Airship Construction

To do.

Alchemy

Need Help?

For more help, please visit the Subreddit!

https://www.reddit.com/r/steamhammergame/

Post questions, share images, videos, streams, and discuss the game, because we all know the Steam discussions are uncivilized.

External Links

Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/530560/STEAM_HAMMER/
Official Site: http://steamhammer.us
Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4NPspsDNSwOFaCKzIoQvbA

[V92]

@sam

Not sure but that could be a big. Try reporting it to the devs in the steam forums or on the official forums.

[Samuel]

The smelter/campfire eats materials faster than I can say, "For Queen and Country!"
What is the burn rate, and is it possible to put in a resource that lasts for longer than three seconds?

[PEEBO]

excellent guide, ty for your time Rev o/

[Dr Science]

love this game devs plz dont quit on this one :P

[NerraGaming]

How do i make all my things locked so people cant steal my stuff?

[Therealseraphim]

i justgot the jetpack and failed misierably to flytothe airship any ideaon how to fuel up said jetpack

[Elrich]

very good guide got me through the rough part! thanks! Keep it up.

[KrazyKitsune]

Very helpful, useful for veterans of life is feudal and newcomers alike.

[Kuja]

Thanks for the guide, it's been a big help. Just having half of this in the game itself would have made getting started a much easier process.

[Hydra]

@Reverend Jesse V92 ty for your time and effort on the guide.