Tips and recommendations for starting Island?

[Galen]

So I just bought this game a few days ago thanks to the sales. Still on my first play through. Just attempted going to the Island but died on like the second day not having enough food. But if I don't sell stuffs to get coin, I can't get things to build and sustain. There's nothing for the villager to do because there's no lumber mill to work on or berry bushes to harvest.

So my question is, I am planning for a second try on the island and what are some tips that might be useful? Can I build like several boats and send villagers and resources to the island? For example, can I build 5 bots, each boat can hold 1 card, so I'll send 2 villagers, 1 coin chest, and two chickens on each boat?

[Xas]

Build up your mainland to sustain and have a force to kill ready first.
Don't rush.
Only one boat at a time, only need one boat/ship type anyway,
only helpers, resources and food types can fit in a boat.
Bring Iron bars from mainland over to island to speed up the process and storage.
Don't make pointless trips, wait till almost End of Moon before Sailing.
Make good use of the Monkey and Banana, free labour.
In the start, 1 villager can command few dozens of monkeys if play smart.
Use them to make sticks, cotton, ... sell for shells,
when used them enough, turn them into meat.
On the next trips, transport humans over to island.
Make Stone Quarries, Iron Mines quickly at island and Expand Warehouses.

Use the Pause button efficiently.

[Dschinghis Pan]

Early on you gotta sell most things that are not food and buy more packs.
Monkey can give poop and you'll sustain yourself on bananas for some time.

I got lucky and got a few parrots early on. Can deal with pirats and give some berries.

Consider cooking and selling fish for shells, rather than eating them.

Until you can buid the second-tier ship to actually transport resources from the mainland, you'll have to to focus on food.

Keep in mind soil either doesn't drop or is extremly rare on the island. I literally filled my first sloop with a ton of poop for that reason. But anyway, once you get the sloop, you are set.

[Pyro Hawk]

Originally posted by Dschinghis Pan:

Early on you gotta sell most things that are not food and buy more packs.
Monkey can give poop and you'll sustain yourself on bananas for some time.

I got lucky and got a few parrots early on. Can deal with pirats and give some berries.

Consider cooking and selling fish for shells, rather than eating them.

Until you can buid the second-tier ship to actually transport resources from the mainland, you'll have to to focus on food.

Keep in mind soil either doesn't drop or is extremly rare on the island. I literally filled my first sloop with a ton of poop for that reason. But anyway, once you get the sloop, you are set.

Soil is actually extremely easy (comparatively) to get on the Island with minimal set up. Of course, you first need to know the Composter is a thing and then build it. But afterwards, you just sacrifice five different food cards, wait a bit, and get one soil. Considering how fast food can rot, it's not exactly hard to end up with five food that will rot before you can eat it to sacrifice.

Now, what is more problematic for me is working out how to refill empty bottles to produce bottles of water which I can turn into rum. Apparently I've tried basically everything else and now can't remember what's left. Oh, and Seaweed is ridiculously rare. Sure, it's in the 3 and 4 Shell card packs but it seems to be one of the rarest cards in said packs. Which is annoying when I'm trying to find out if I can farm Seaweed in the Greenhouse, with some other card or if I really have to rely on random chance to get it.

As for actual tips on Island... Go in knowing that the only use for the Rowboat is to get to the island the first time. Once you've done that, rush for the Sloop which requires making a Sail from Fabric (four cotton+manpower) and Rope (2 cotton+manpower). I forget what exactly you use the sail with, but you should get the Idea for it pretty fast.

Once you've got the Sloop, you want to sail back to the mainland fast. I suggest loading up one cotton (not the plant, the harvested cotton) and one sand though I've not yet checked if the latter will be useful. The reasons? You can farm the cotton back on the mainland, which you will want in case your people on the Island get killed off before you sail back. This allows you to build a Sloop, or even Frigate (not sure if there's a fourth ship yet but don't think so) rather than being stuck with the rowboat.

The sand is because you can build the Sand Quarry structure for unlimited sand. But I haven't tested to see if you can actually build it on the mainland. Should be able to if you can take the sand back, with a similar story for gold ore. Though again, I haven't checked if you can use Gold Ore on the mainland to build a Gold Mine. It's probably allowed however because you still need to find something through exploring on the Island, rather than just needing the gold and glass to build the Cathedral.

So yeah. First trip to the island is entirely to unlock and build the Sloop, which you use to take cotton back to the mainland and maybe sand or even gold ore if their unlimited supply structures can be made on the mainland and you've got it spare at the time. Once you've secured your ability to build better boats on the mainland, travel back with two or three people instead of just the one and a lot of iron bars. Maybe some stone as well, but those aren't as useful or critical as iron bars.

The next step's basically building up the island so you have a strong force to deal with any 'problems' that appear whilst you are hunting for the needed relic (don't know the name because I've not quite achieved that yet). Once you've got an unlimited supply of wood, sand and at least one fish trap and soil up and running, you aren't going to starve. Will have to be a bit careful of losing your people however because sometimes things can go a bit sideways and mess with your 'strong defence'.

Such as the time my Swordsman ended up on 1HP right after I killed a tiger, my second militia was poisoned by a snake when I had no campfire, charcoal, or flint. Let's not forget that I'd just spawned a Shark to harvest raw fish from, not noticing how low HP my people were getting. Fortunately I'd just unlocked the Frigate, so I decided that now was a good time to rush back to the mainland with my surviving people on the Sloop and see if I could farm the needed cotton there. Which worked out very well.

You might get wiped out on the island a few times, or need to rush a retreat. But if you take some precautions like the ones I've suggested above, it's not going to be anywhere near as problematic as it could be.

Oh, and likely the biggest two tips of all to avoid getting wiped out: make sure you always have one campfire to make charcoal to cure poison as that can be nasty if you aren't prepared; and limit how many Crabs you kill until you can have five or six people on the island, half of which are either Militia or Swordsmen. Because if you trigger Momma Crab when you aren't ready... That is in no way going to be pretty. ESPECIALLY if you don't have cotton on the mainland, or managed to evacuate with a Sloop or Frigate.