Help me get the vibe of the game

[Your English Teacher]

I'm having fun. Positive reviews after the first hour or so, I'm just struggling to get the hang of it. Survival games are my favorite genre for a while now. I'm finding myself stuck in areas because I can't climb cliffs (okay palword was a little absurd here), my gear doesn't seem up to fighting packs of wolves and bears and spiders, every point of interest seems to an enemy trap spawn point...I just can't get the hang of it.

Also, am I meant to stick on my first home world for a long while? The tutorial bounces you between worlds quickly. Am I trying to explore the whole map on my first abayance or am I bouncing and coming back later better equipped?

Is there leveling? Skills? Just equipment improvement using traders and resource gathering? I'm not even sure exactly what to do to prep myself for fighting spiders in a cave.

Thanks.

[Foxglovez]

Woof. That's a lot of questions but here goes. You go through those three worlds then get to home (tired of writing abeyance so much) where you kind of look around for a place to set down your first shack and gather mats and visit the trader. iirc he gives you a quest.

Build a tiny shack.
Basically this game is quest driven. The main quest is to up your gear score. That is the leveling in this game aka GS. You will give up your perfectly nice looking gear and make rag armor which helps you learn the crafting system. Those three realms you went through show you the biomes we have now. The second card for each is to denote level the biome will be at. And there's a third card but game will teach you that stuff.

tl, dr just kind of follow the quests you are given. It is very unintuitive for some of us. There are also some guides out by now but just bumble along for a bit. At some point you might decide to do a start over which is fine. You can have up to 4 characters. It's a fun game for the explorer. Ignore those with pants on fire that gotta get to the end quickie quickie if that is not your style.

[Foxglovez]

Regarding fighting, you will use your tools as weapons except for a sling shot at beginning. Use the usual LOS, kiting, but you will get a companion who makes a mighty fine meat shield. Make him/her a maul and hide behind them. LOL

[Your English Teacher]

Just found a partner at the trader. Had no idea building a couple of sleeping bags would get me a partner. I'll see what having a partner in the game does.

Do i stay here on this first realm for a good amount of time then? Explore this place and don't worry about leaving soon?

Thanks.

[Foxglovez]

Explore, build the shack, probably somewhere near trader and portal. You might well want to move later but for now that should work. Don't go big. Just let the game guide you.
Have fun. Put your bed in the shack and a cookfire. Welcome home.

[Your English Teacher]

Just played my first minor realm card. Changed the whole appearance of the world. So cool. Can there only be one active at a time?

Thanks.

[Faya AOP]

We can team up, go to discord and i give you a run trough for the first hours so you get the hang if you want.

[Faya AOP]

Yes you can only have 1 minor realm card.

The very first realm after the tutorial is where you put your Cairn structure. Which is basically claiming the realm and making it your allways return to.

[Baijiu]

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Just found a partner at the trader. Had no idea building a couple of sleeping bags would get me a partner. I'll see what having a partner in the game does.

Do i stay here on this first realm for a good amount of time then? Explore this place and don't worry about leaving soon?

Thanks.

You can't explore your entire abeyance, there's POI that are locked behind gear score, so you need to travel to higher level worlds to get better materials and recipes to make the higher level gear

[Foxglovez]

Faya - warn him about our trusty companions and how untrustworthy they are. lol

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Foxglovez:

Faya - warn him about our trusty companions and how untrustworthy they are. lol

Basically, do not give anything to your companions that can be fed to a fire or fed to a building in progress if you care about losing it.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

I'm finding myself stuck in areas because I can't climb cliffs.

Climbing picks. Make sure to build them with stamina based materials and also make sure to eat for extra stamina.

Then also carry around the mending kits to mend the inevitable broken legs from falling.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Also, am I meant to stick on my first home world for a long while?

Abeyance realm is you "base realm" it is the only realm you can create a recall point to with a cairn. Other realms can have a cairn, but they only suppress mob spawns.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Is there leveling? Skills?

Nope. Entirely all equipment based and based upon the stats. For example when you build a gun, you obviously want to use range bonus materials and not melee based materials.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

I'm having fun. Positive reviews after the first hour or so, I'm just struggling to get the hang of it. Survival games are my favorite genre for a while now.

Just take your time with it. Don't be afraid to explore the Guidebook section of the game. There's a wealth of information in there you can read when you're in the mood to learn more about specific things.

Following along the main quests can also help give you a more structured pace to playing the game while also leaving quite a bit of the game unexplained.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

I'm finding myself stuck in areas because I can't climb cliffs (okay palword was a little absurd here)

You'll get the Climbing Pick which can help in these situations, though at the start it will drain your stamina quite fast.

You can also freely build stairs and other objects to help you get up cliffs as well.

In other cases you can just spam jump to go up inclines and naturally vault up ledges.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

my gear doesn't seem up to fighting packs of wolves and bears and spiders, every point of interest seems to an enemy trap spawn point...I just can't get the hang of it.

Generally speaking if your gear is within 10-20 levels of the enemy you are facing you'll probably be able to defeat them.

As long as you are keeping three food buffs up you usually have enough health and stamina to freely disengage from combat if things get dicey.

Don't be afraid to use kiting and line of sight as a means of keeping yourself alive. You can place potions in a specific slot of the hotbar (Q for me) for quick use in combat without having to swap weapons/tools.

Lastly, once you get a companion you can use them in combat as well. At the start, if you gear them the same as yourself they can do the same damage, so it's a lot more useful in combat than in other games where the player's damage greatly eclipses companions/pets.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Also, am I meant to stick on my first home world for a long while? The tutorial bounces you between worlds quickly. Am I trying to explore the whole map on my first abayance or am I bouncing and coming back later better equipped?

For the most part yes. The Abeyance realm is important to go back to because that is where the "Sites of Power" that grant you additional Major Cards are located.

There is also an NPC in this realm that you will have to go back and forth in order to progress some of the quests.

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Is there leveling? Skills? Just equipment improvement using traders and resource gathering? I'm not even sure exactly what to do to prep myself for fighting spiders in a cave.

No leveling or skills in the traditional sense. However, enchantments grant additional actions to weapons/tools (i.e. healing, AoE attacks, tracking enemies, etc).

Your characters stats largely governed by the gear you are wearing and the consumable buffs you have active.

So overall, when you are preparing, try and get your equipment as high as your progression allows, max out your food buffs, and then bring some healing potions along.

[Your English Teacher]

Tell me more about the guidebook. I have found a couple of places now where I have gained a jumping/flying/anti grav thing. I don't know what it is.

Thanks.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Tell me more about the guidebook. I have found a couple of places now where I have gained a jumping/flying/anti grav thing. I don't know what it is.

Thanks.

Some of the POIs have a buff item in it (usually the POI with the lights game.) This changes from Power, Endurance, and Soaring every ten seconds or so. Soaring is the jumping one and it last maybe three minutes.

I tend to ignore them now, I used to save them for use to other POIs puzzles liek the climbing ones and the ones with lights up high. Once I learned I could range shoot the lights and use climbing picks they stopped being useful (except in swamp to avoid touching water.)

[dr46onfusion]

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Just found a partner at the trader. Had no idea building a couple of sleeping bags would get me a partner. I'll see what having a partner in the game does.

Do i stay here on this first realm for a good amount of time then? Explore this place and don't worry about leaving soon?

Thanks.

Your gameplay loop is as follow:
Do set up a main base in the abeyance realm.
Do make gear to allow you to complete a gear level locked dungeon in your first realm.
Make a set of card to go to your first expedition.
Complete the questline there.

Come back to your main base and rinse and repeat, get to a even higher gear level to do another dungeon, get more recipes to make new cards to go to a harder location.
Do the quest there... Then rinse and repeat until you complete all the quests.

You go from lv20, to lv30, then lv40, then lv60, then lv70, then quest ends and you can continue The Watch end game content for lv100 vault runs... That's it.

[Sasheria]

Originally posted by Kai:

Originally posted by Your English Teacher:

Just found a partner at the trader. Had no idea building a couple of sleeping bags would get me a partner. I'll see what having a partner in the game does.

Do i stay here on this first realm for a good amount of time then? Explore this place and don't worry about leaving soon?

Thanks.

Your gameplay loop is as follow:
Do set up a main base in the abeyance realm.
Do make gear to allow you to complete a gear level locked dungeon in your first realm.
Make a set of card to go to your first expedition.
Complete the questline there.

Come back to your main base and rinse and repeat, get to a even higher gear level to do another dungeon, get more recipes to make new cards to go to a harder location.
Do the quest there... Then rinse and repeat until you complete all the quests.

You go from lv20, to lv30, then lv40, then lv60, then lv70, then quest ends and you can continue The Watch end game content for lv100 vault runs... That's it.

This is pretty much it.

It is a basic fight monster, get gear, fight harder monster/quest, get better gear.

instead of "getting gear", you get more materials to make better gear.