Any advice for surviving the early game?

[Aldath]

I just made it to Moon-on-something and exploration beyond has become quite hard as whatever few coins I manage to get are used for lamp oil and I can't get any decent bow until I get richer. Any tips on how to become better early on?

[Blah64]

Stop using lamp oil.
Accept the madness.

[Dracoco OwO]

Do dungeons and make money by any mean you can, you can also find merchants on the road and kill them, they might drop expensive items but it might mess with the economy of cities.

[Kalir]

Originally posted by Blah64:

Stop using lamp oil.
Accept the madness.

average death's harlequin follower

[Strill]

There's no need to keep your lamp lit all the time. Just use it when you need to.

[Muse Snooze]

Originally posted by Blah64:

Stop using lamp oil.
Accept the madness.

entirely this. I didn't bother with preventing madness until I had over 40 oils.

[Nea]

Originally posted by Muse Snooze:

Originally posted by Blah64:

Stop using lamp oil.
Accept the madness.

entirely this. I didn't bother with preventing madness until I had over 40 oils.

That sounds like the game is working backwards...

Anyway, early game is definitely not beginner friendly, and I'm not a fan of it (while I am of the genre).

[Flingdagger]

Don't use the lamp, just avoid the amber. Look for berry, prey and herb icons close to the farm. Attack all of them and avoid the monsters until you grab enough fur and chiton to sell for a short bow. Once you have the short bow, look for the monster spawns that are close(ish) to your farm, they are the easiest on the map. Start with the bats and don't let them gang up on you. Try to focus on killing one at a time, helps to use the trees/rocks for cover. The human enemies close to the farm are easy and will drop plenty of arrows, enough that you will never have to buy any once you start farming them. Use your home-farmhouse to sleep when your health gets low. Look for travelers, stay a couple of spaces away from them and follow the ones that are headed to the moon city, when they get in trouble, jump in and help them out, they will give you between 100 and 200 coins if you succeed and drop items if you don't. You can also hit E when close to them to trade with them. Don't try to hard to appease the angels right off the bat. After you get the hang of how to easily handle the beginning mobs, you can start working on the ruins, the low level dungeons that have the mechanical things in them. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to use the TAB key in map mode, to mark all the areas you have visited. Second is to write the riddles down and the name of the area you get it from once you start farming the tears. The third is that the Wolf Spirit, the gift, is a savior. Once you get that, you are set to do almost anything but it takes 5 points and you will sacrifice early strength improvements. It's worth it though, you get plenty of tears in later game to make up the difference.

[Whiskers]

There's an amulet in one of the lesser dungeons that prevent's madness " Clown's amulet". It really made navigating through amber alot easier. Before that though I just avoided ambermist and just tried to appease one of the gods for their abilities.

[SquareDildo]

Avoid earlier posters.

Pay attention to wind and avoid Amber clouds. In the very early game, you can make some money by beating enemies like bats and bandits around the capital. If the fight looks hard, run away. You can even run away with enemies next to you. Even better if a trader is ambushed by those weak monsters. Then you get 200-300 gold for saving him.

Get a club. It's a more damaging weapon than a dagger. Get some leathers and a round shield (doesn't harm stealth). Stealth is good for resetting Poise regeneration.

Talk to the priests in the capital. Your biggest early increase to fighting stats is through the first god quests. Each of them involves finding a city of a god. Follow the road.
Then you can press G to pick a gift, and your stats get a +5 bonus. This is enough to get a beefier melee weapon.

Sleeping in a town is a lot cheaper than using health potions.

Shortbow/crossbow is good for softening enemies before melee.

You get energy by killing enemies and attacking innocent forest creatures.

[Supervisor de abeja]

Is there any way to recharge the lifestone?

[daggaz]

Dont listen to flingdagger.

The game is kind of broken as far as combat. As with so many roguelikes, RUNNING AWAY is your best option. Run away all the time, and regen your poise before attacking more. Never approach an enemy, let them come to you then strike. Abuse the stairs like there is no tomorrow. Then proceed to kill anything that cant one shot you. Get money, as soon as you have enough for the next tier, get a god and buy that weapon. Continue murdering everything in sight.

(DEV, you should check out dungeon crawl stone soup for a lot of solutions to these exploits as well as their dungeon generation algorithms. GREAT game, great devs).

[Element]

Originally posted by Flammifer:

Is there any way to recharge the lifestone?

Apparently there is a way to repair them, but I haven't figured out how/where yet.

[dumboo]

Originally posted by Element:

Originally posted by Flammifer:

Is there any way to recharge the lifestone?

Apparently there is a way to repair them, but I haven't figured out how/where yet.

Only if you devote to Dust. You can then repair devices.

Join us. We are the future.

[dumboo]

I've played an awful lot of roguelikes, and I don't really count this game in the genre because death is so mild. You don't lose anything except time in the worst case, and overworld deaths are basically consequence-free.

Just run away a lot. The world is dangerous, you don't need to fight your way out of everything. Madness is not very dangerous, but amber clouds are -- the monsters that spawn in them are no joke.

[dumboo]

There's no reason to spend money on lamp oil. If you enter pretty much any dungeon, you'll find oil pots you can use to refill your empty vials. You can pop in, refill vials, leave and autosave, re-enter and kill yourself to reset the dungeon, and repeat.

In many cases you can sell empty vials for more than you paid for the oil, so that's also an option.