The complete idiots guide to surviving the horde and the demo pt 1

[Aetherlock]

This guide is for those who are brand new to the demo/game and seem to be having trouble surviving through a horde attack at night or just want to jump ahead of the learning curve a little bit and take advantage of someone else's early misfortune. So, after a couple straight up humiliating deaths and a couple more due to my being an idiot. If this sounds like you, then continue to read on. I finally broke down and decided that I was going to pay very, very close attention to the mechanics of how this game works and come up with a strategy on how to beat the horde at night that anyone can follow easily. You know, idiot proof. For people like me. So here goes.

1. FOLLOW the TUTORIAL - Do EXACTLY as the tutorial says. Not only will this help you figure basic things out quickly, it is absolutely NECESSARY in order to get the quest tips to complete correctly and move on to adding the next questline in your upper left hand HUD. You might as well do it anyway since even though the settings in game shows an option to turn off the tutorial, as of right now you can't actually turn it off! (Hey Dev's, yeah you!, that feature is broken)! Don't jump ahead and make things before the tutorial asks you to, because the game code isn't smart enough to realize that you have already made it and will IGNORE those items as if they didn't exist at all. So you it will just force you to make the item again when the questline deems it necessary to satisfy the requirement and check the box/tick the flag in the games code to move on to the next thing. Stupid, but there you have it. Anyway, keep following the tutorial and doing exactly what it says to do up until the part where it tells you to build a shelter. Then STOP!!! DO NOT be tempted to put your shelter, bed or or traps on the beach!!! I will get to where to put those in the section titled "preparing for night", Pay very close attention to this part because it's going to make your playthrough much easier and immensely more enjoyable in the long run. You can build your workbench and initial campfire, etc, there and most likely will want to since it's convenient and not to far from where most of the starting resources are anyway. You also have a limited amount of time to gather your first resources and your stamina is very low, so you want to do as little running around at first as possible. That's fine. I suggest placing these items relatively near the first altar on the beach. More on why that is later.

2. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE - The game has an auto-save feature and it works relatively well, but as AFAIK isn't adjustable in game as far as frequency. I am not exactly sure how long between auto-saves, but really it doesn't matter because you want to be saving your game in these early stages far more often than it triggers anyway. Save after every successful quest completion. Save after every significant item find, skill point increase and level up! I assume some, or all, loot is RNG because I have gotten different drops from different chests and of varying quality on different playthroughs. Speaking of skill points and level ups, lets go into that next.

3. Skills / Leveling up - Inevitably your character is going to acquire skill points to spend. I suggest putting all your skill points in the beginning of the game into two skills until they max out, but lets start with the first and most important one. "Laborer" This skill is under the "Power" tree and gives bonuses to wood cutting and stone mining damage. This helps with gathering resources quicker, but most importantly upgrading it three times and maxing it out gets you to the second skill we actually want, "Walking Chest". This skill increases your inventory size and carring capacity. Critical for early game success to store all this damn stuff you find everywhere and seemingly have no place to put because of limited inventory and the sheer number of different components and items available all over the island or required by the questlines for recipe purposes, building, or upgrading just about everything in-game. There are bags and packs which you can craft to also increase inventory size, but they usually require upgrades to workbenches or certain items to attach them to, like "Gliders" which we frankly just don't have yet in the first few early days. A lot of people are going to be tempted in game to put points into the skills for run-speed (under the Agility tree), don't. Those points in the beginning are precious and better used elsewhere. Yes, time is of the essence before the horde comes at night, so this seems like a good idea, but the increases to this skill are not worth it, just yet. Some people may also be tempted to put points into "sturdy organs" (hunger and thirst decay modifier) and "healing" (health regen modifier), they are good choices, but not as necessary yet until after the previous two I mentioned. Yes having your thirst and hunger decay slower and increasing your health regen seem like logical choices in the beginning because of the fear of being killed by the horde, or forgetting to eat and drink regularly. You definitely want to max those out, just not till after my first two choices. You won't need to worry about the horde at all anyway in just a bit if you listen to my advice, though you will need to still remember to eat and drink. Make sure you watch those bars closely and don't let them get to low, because if you run out of either one your health drops VERY quickly! Sometimes so quickly you don't even have enough time to react and then, well you just die. I wish the Dev's would make running low on hunger and thirst more obvious and trigger at a more reasonable setting. Just putting a small white cloud bubble with a drumstick or water drop next to your cursor seems to me like not enough of a smack in the head. Maybe the screen starting to flash red periodically when you get below 25% and the flashing increasing in intensity and frequency the closer you get to, you know, DEATH!!! Might be useful, just a suggestion. (HINT, HINT)

4. Stats / Leveling up - Don't forget to spend your Stat points! For some reason in the game the Stat page shows your "Stat" points as "Skill" points. Obviously this is a mistake that the Dev's will hopefully sort out soon, but it isn't critical to the game (HINT, HINT Dev's). It just adds another level of confusion to a few other things in game that are incorrect like the questline in the tutorial eventually asking you to find the trader in "Erden Fortress" and the map calling it "Erwen Fortress". Little things like that. Not terribly game breaking or anything, but definitely an annoyance. As pointed out to me in another discussion here on Steam, it is still pre-alpha stages for the game. So just know things can only get better from here, shrug your shoulders and lets move on. There are four "Stats". Health, Stamina, Attack and Defense. I suggest spending your early points like this, two points in health, two points in stamina, one in each of the others as they come. The points in health and stamina will help you immensely in the first few days and because we are spending them here this way, is the reason we are initially ignoring the "Mutation" skills I mentioned in the previous section.

5. Preparing for night - So, here it is. Easy mode... As I mentioned before, do not build your shelter, bed or traps on the beach! Those giant tempting remnants of structures on the beach seem like obvious and logical choices to try and incorporate into your survival strategy, for Blackbeards sake DO NOT DO THIS! The only possible worse place I can think of to build your home away from home would be to build on the abandoned ship over the (shudder) water! I mean the undead night-horde aren't called the "Drowned One's" for nothing! Luckily I couldn't see any way to build there anyway, so thank the Dev's for that. What you want to do instead when the questline of the tutorial get's to the part about building your shelter is to go to the entrance of the Jungle. Their is a corridor that leads to the area where you were asked to hunt the boar and collect the contaminated water. Just after you step off the beach and into the corridor, just a bit into it and on the left is a recessed area in the rock. THIS is where you want to build. Go all the way to the very back of this area where the two palms are and cut them down with your axe. Gather the resources and build your floor as far back into that cove as the game will let you. You don't need much of a shelter at first, so just start with a small 1X1 floor in order to satisfy the questline point and move to the next item. I built my 1X1 walls two high on three sides, then added my 1X1 roof. I logically left the opening facing out away from the rock face for easy entry. I don't recall if the questline specifically stated to add the 1X2 entryway on the front of the structure, but I did anyway just to finsh it out. Jump in, wait a few seconds, jump out. Refresh quest done, on to the bed. I built my bed outside the structure on the ground just to the right of it and up against the rock face. You can place it right over the top of the vegetation, no worries. The bed is important because it acts as a respawn point, which is important and I will explain more in the next section. Don't worry about sleeping either. It will tell you that you aren't tired enough. So it's basically just quest item to complete for now. After that the questline should tell you to build a campfire in the close vicinity of the bed and structure. I placed mine on the left far enough away that it doesn't burn anything up in case there is some sort of fire mechanic built into the game and just because it was aesthetically pleasing. Now for the best part. The questline is going to tell you to build a "trap" hammer. Do this if you haven't already and then go to the entrance of your little recess right where it turns out into the jungle corridor. You definitely want to SAVE YOUR GAME here! When looking out into the corridor the beach should be to your right, and further into the jungle where the boar was should be to the left. Look directly to your left and their is a large boulder thats sort of flat-ish on top. Try and climb up on that rock in the front from the corridor. Notice where the general section is that allows you to climb up. Keep that in mind for when you are building traps here in a minute. Now. Start building the small spiked wall traps between the two boulders near the entrance. Point the spikes out facing the direction of the corridor, not into your recessed area with the structure. I stepped out far enough that I could fit about four to five of these traps side by side with no gaps between the rocks. Make sure you don't build them out so far into the corridor that you hit them when you are running by them through the corridor later. Remember that rock earlier that we climbed. Remember not to build a trap right in front of the spot where you can climb up. The spikes will damage you just as easily as the horde, so you don't want to accidentally stab yourself to death on your own trap. Remember NO GAPS BETWEEN TRAPS! You can build one in front of the boulder on the beach side if you like. Especially since it seems the majority of the horde come from the water and it's in that direction. Step back, repeat the process again slightly behind the first set of traps. You should be able to fit 3-4 more of the small spiked wall traps again, or you could mix it up and add the circular spiky ones that point in every direction. I think they cost the same, so it really doesn't matter here. Once you finish the second set, step back again and do another. This time you should have enough resources left and a small enough gap between the boulders to get two traps across. Make sure these traps are the small spiked wall traps again, pointing out towards the corridor. If for some reason you run out of resources you can always climb up onto the rock on the jungle side and hop out. Go get more stuff, climb up onto the rock when you get everything you need and hop back in. The AI for the horde doesn't seem to be smart enough to figure out how to climb, so you should be 100% safe when you are back in your safe zone. I did have one jump up, somehow, onto the boulder once, but he never tried to climb over (scared the crap out of me at first to be honest). But it just stood there dumbfounded while I speared him from underneath. Never happened again after that when I started standing back by the structure on the ground to either the left or right. When the one that got up onto the rock happened I was standing inside the shelter when night fell and the dead came. I think the game adjusts their attack pathfinding based on where you are exactly in the game and at what height. Once I started staying on the ground they never tried jumping again, thankfully, and just ran into the traps on the ground in the corridor by the hundreds. Like lambs to the slaughter! With all the traps you layed and there relative height, you don't really even see them anyway. Just their enemy hit point markers as they pour in and quickly succumb to your traps. Then just sit back, relax wait for the horde to fizzle out, the timer to run down and your experience and loot to start rolling in. Make sure to check your newly acquired loot after each night run. You may be surprised what the game gifted you. The next morning, the questline should mention something about teleporting to the altar on the beach. Open up your map and do this now.

6. Teleportation - Now that you have your little sanctuary set up and a shelter, bed and adjacent campfire near it. You can teleport back to the altar near your little sanctuary whenever you want by going to your map and choosing the altar at the beach. This is important as it lets you fast travel to your safe spot before each night before the horde is out to get that a**. Climbing up on that boulder and standing next to your shelter is a far better option and a fail safe if you are running for your life back there right before nightfall. This also allows you to save those precious Cthugha stones for more important things later like growth and purification or whatever other secret purpose they may serve.

That's it, that's the easy way to kicking the sh*t out of this games basic mechanics and surviving the first few nights on the island without too much effort. Hopefully this little guide will help others like me and some of those people who have complained about the "difficulty" of the game and bashed it for not giving it half a chance and just writing it off. I will add a few other small tips and tricks in part 2 for after you have done all the above and are now ready to really start exploring in earnest.

[Cal]

Best skills to get in the game is the one that lets you take NO damage from your traps. Traps can be used ALL game and you will never regret it. Mining faster or chopping wood faster doesn't save you from the horde as much as no trap damage does!
Good guide other than that point.

[Aetherlock]

Yes, that is true, having that skill is great for the long run, but this is just for the first few days of play really. Just enough to get you through those horde attacks at night until like day 3-5. After that you can specialize in whatever fits your strategy best. Having that skill in the first few days really doesn't net you anything. As you will not be exploring far from the beach to other locations where traps are abundant. You are still trying to complete the tutorial and level up as quickly as possible in order to get to those locations later. The skills I outlined here directly impacts your ability to collect and store resources to accomplish the night survival part easily and get those levels via mass mob kills each and every night without having to lift a single finger or fight off a single enemy during those attacks. You build, and then stand and watch. Thanks very much for the feedback and the compliment. Hopefully others will also find something useful out of it.

[Cal]

I personally don't like taking damage from my own traps while I am battling the horde. There are many play styles though; I just like this skill 1st.

[Aetherlock]

Cal eredeti hozzászólása:

I personally don't like taking damage from my own traps while I am battling the horde. There are many play styles though; I just like this skill 1st.

That's the point of my guide. You aren't taking damage from your own traps while battling the horde. You are literally not "battling" the horde at all. You are literally just standing back by your shelter watching them run into the traps over and over and die on the traps until the time expires. No battling involved in anything I put in the guide or in what I have said previously. If you are running into your own traps what the h*ll are you doing outside the safe zone, IN FRONT OF THE TRAPS, that my guide instructs you to build to begin with? Your'e not following my guide if you are. That's the entire point of this guide and my previous arguments for why I didn't choose that skill for the first few days play-through. It would net you no benefit for THIS strategy at such an early point in the game. You are arguing for a putting points into a skill for a strategy that this guide doesn't promote. Not sure how I can make that any plainer or why I keep having to point that out. There is no personal attacking or battling of the horde using this guides method for the time period specified IN THE GUIDE!

[SmallArchangel]

Thanks for this guide; just tried the demo version briefly this morning (like, 5 minutes or something!) and much as I love survival games, felt a bit overwhelmed at the thought of learning a new one from scratch. Hordes every night sounds a tad heavy, unless you know more about the mechanics, and I don't have a lot of gaming time like I used to.

Much of what you say seems like common sense, but having played other survival games, I would have been inclined to engage directly with the horde, not realising it was not actually necessary. I imagine that later in game one would do exactly that, though, with better gear and stats.

I will give this game a proper go, now, armed with at least a vague clue what I am doing!

[Aetherlock]

SmallArchangel eredeti hozzászólása:

Thanks for this guide; just tried the demo version briefly this morning (like, 5 minutes or something!) and much as I love survival games, felt a bit overwhelmed at the thought of learning a new one from scratch. Hordes every night sounds a tad heavy, unless you know more about the mechanics, and I don't have a lot of gaming time like I used to.

Much of what you say seems like common sense, but having played other survival games, I would have been inclined to engage directly with the horde, not realising it was not actually necessary. I imagine that later in game one would do exactly that, though, with better gear and stats.

I will give this game a proper go, now, armed with at least a vague clue what I am doing!

Glad you found it helpful. Yes the horde mechanic at night can seem a little intimidating at first. If you aren't well prepared in the first few nights you can easily die. This guide was made specifically to help people avoid that, Later stages of the game are tougher, with tougher enemies, but you get tougher as well. So balance is going to be key for the dev's to watch out for. I am sure they will. Good luck and thanks for the praise.

[Tumbling Dice]

Nice guide, tks. early access always requires a lot of mental flexibility as the mechanics develop, change, get debugged, new things to interact with, this helps. I played demo and got sucked in, an interesting mix of survival game, pirates, zombies, monsters, magic.
Which tree is trap damage protection on? Not for day one, but for a mid term goal.
Also any thoughts on using the fairy? Seems a weak hand grenade, a shotgun and shield, earthquake I have not used.

[Zaarel]

Maybe they changed things but the dead climb that boulder now

[Aetherlock]

Zaarel eredeti hozzászólása:

Maybe they changed things but the dead climb that boulder now

I havent played it in awhile. This guide was for the demo version. They probably have made numerous changes since then to the mechanics of the game.