Advanced Guide for first 4 game weeks

[Skrymaster]

NOTE: This guide is now deprecated, with the actual release of the game. I've re-compiled and tested most of the information here and made a new guide on steam for it, called: Advanced Starting Tips (full release)


1.Starting a new game, dig up Gerry, and before talking to donkey, go and use your garden's worktable, then go talk to the donkey.

2.Take the corpse in the morgue, cut the flesh, and go in the backyard.Once there, go to the sign on the left. It'll tell you to talk to a member of the inquisition(you will probably do that during the first week, but make sure you get there BEFORE the sun is in or past the middle of the sundial because you'll get your corpse earlier and you don't want that).

3.Now bury the corpse. Before talking to the bishop, you might consider digging up 2-3 stick bushes close together(you need 10 sticks later).

+++Keep the F key pressed after digging one, you will automatically walk to the other ones and dig up a MUCH greater chunk of them, possibly instantly, based on how long you kept F pressed before you got to them, conserving time and energy. In fact, this works with trees and stone stoo. Anything that makes use of your tools.

++Your tool durability will decrease based on actions performed, and not time spent on actions, thus you will neither lose nor save on durability with this trick.

4.NOW talk to the bishop about the certificate, after which the day timer actually starts ticking. Get your tools from the chest, go to the tavern and talk to Horadric about the garden, the contract, and the meat, and then trade him the contract.

+++Try not to exhaust unnecessary dialogue options as they could provide you with stories later on after unlocking a tech.

5.Go to the blacksmith, give him the letter, sharpen your sword, try to be energy efficient when dispatching the slimes, hp doesn't matter as long as you don't die, just line both up so you swing at both at once, and then turn the quest in

+++Now with the sword there are some barrels that can be destroyed around the village, for flitch and possibly iron parts. There's 2 guaranteed in the tavern, talk to horadric to get beer, destroy those 2 barrels and leave.

++You can give the beer to Gerry the next time you get into the morgue, but you don't have to go out of your way to do it, just make sure you give him the beer before the first sloth day ("moonday") that you intend to visit the astrologer.

6.By this point you need to go home, hopefully before the moon passes the middlepoint of your sundial. Sleeping before that guarantees that you fully restore energy by morning. On the way back Gerry tells you how to gather berries and shrooms(would've been useful to have that before heading to the village, but oh well).

+++DO NOT TOUCH YOUR BASEMENT YET (waste of energy and time)!

7.Now your goal should be clearing the bushes around your work area, and getting 10 sticks. Unlock the first wood technology and place that down. Afterwards, go to the North east and gather berries from all the bushes

+++DON'T touch honey trees untill you can actually use the honey to cook!

+++You will be eating berries mushrooms and apples when you need energy early game.

8.Go cut the grove of trees on the way from your house to the morgue, that's gonna be your primary source of trees. Make sure to dig up the stumps too, that will provide you with enough red points to unlock "soft spares". You will need 30 green points for "Important parts", getting that however early can be a great help.

+++For green points, harvest any and all mushrooms and berry bushes, and if really desperate, look for vine bushes that can be dug up for 5 green points each(they eat alot of energy and shovel durabilty though).

+++Always try to be by the lantern when dusk comes (when it lights up), preferably with all your energy depleted by then. If the donkey arrives with a corpse, get that corpse ASAP and put it on the autopsy table in the morgue, then go back home and sleep untill full energy(the corpse will be at 95%ish when you get back).

+++Since you've slept, you can simply reload if you mess up now. Before leaving the house area, make sure your shovel is above 15% durability, if not sharpen, then go to the morgue and commence autopsy.

++Removing blood and fat is a given, since they improve the corpse. Bones currently do not affect the corpse, and are needed later for white paint, but are not a priority right now, so don't get hard spares just for that.

++The starting corpses will be crappy 1red/2white corpses, after removing fat you will get them to -1red/4white. You can't see the negative red on the corpse, but burying them will result in a grave that starts at 1 quality and can go up to 4 max.

++If you have unlocked Important parts already, before removing fat and blood from the corpses, try removing the Heart, then the Brain, then the Intestines in that order. For all corpses, only 1 organ is the correct one to remove, the others will damage the white skulls alot. If you pick the wrong one, try the others to see which was the correct one, then restart the game, the organs will have the exact same effects for that corpse.

+The probability for the correct organ to be heart seems about 50%, brain at 30% and stomach at 20% (from my experience).

+Removing organs from starting 1r/2w corpses will have the following effects (-1r/-1w;nothing;-1w). You are interested in getting the -1r/-1w. Why? Because getting that one is actually good, since the corpse will end up at a -2r/+3w total, which will net you 2 quality when buried, with max 3, but that doesn't matter because you will not want to decorate them(too much energy wasted) and you'll eventually want to exhume them for better corpses later(at least 5 white skulled ones).

+This leads to saved energy on getting the church open ASAP, and saved time from not having to decorate the graves for a while.

++You will be able to pull off this trick alot easier with 2 or 3 pallets, so you can test all 3 corpses before restarting the game.

++You can store the bodyparts in the graveyard chest, and 1 of each organ, destroy the rest, they don't stack, and won't be immediately useful.


Now back to base building:

9.Keep gathering sticks, and work on making flitch from logs until you have 20 red tech points.

10.Unlock wood working FIRST, before anvil. It requires 2 iron parts, but you should have those from the blacksmith's slime quest. Making planks rewards 1 red point/ plank at a cost of 5 energy, and it's fast. This is how you will make all your red points to unlock anvil and tool smithing.

11.Count your remaining iron parts, you will need a total of 4 for the anvil. If you're missing some, you could try chopping stuff in your basement, BUT it's really energy consuming and likely you will only end up getting nails and flitch, if anything at all, so I don't recommend it.

12.Wait for early morning, and with your certificates from all the burials so far in hand(hopefully 4-5 certificates at least) go trade them for money and get the remaining iron parts to have a total 4, sell all your starting tools(except the hammer and sword) and with the rest of the money buy ALL the iron ingots you can afford (at least 6 ingots).

13.With this, head back home, place your wooden anvil, and start making your tools 1 at a time, first shovel(so you can bury stuff), then axe, and finally pickaxe.

+++With the new tools, you can finally go into the basement and clear it of all the debris ALOT more efficiently(keep F pressed to "charge your axe" between clears of debris for even faster clearing.

14.Now your next technologies to get are making firewood(for cooking muffins or cake or whatever) and the first grave decoration tech.

+++With the axe you can now start making firewood for cooking efficiently, so you might want to start gathering honey and making your dough for some free green points. Gathering honey takes 10 energy per tree, so take that into account.

15.By now you're probably week 2 in game and probably starting to get 2r/3w,1r/3w or 3r/2w corpses. Do the same trick with sleeping before autopsy as always to see which parts are the good ones

+++For the 3/2 corpses, getting the correct part will actually remove 2 reds and ADD a white skull.

16.By now you should get hard spares already, you can safely take 1 skull off of a 2r/3w corpse after it's autopsied, since it will go to -2r/5w and removing the skull will get it at -1r/5w, thus you still need only 2(+2) decorations for it to get maxed.

17.Start tending your grave, with the kits you have, repair the stone headstones and the simple stone fences you can (don't repair the cross though, but keep it around for researching later on), repair all wooden fences you can, and maybe 1 remaining wooden marker. Remove the remaining stick-bushes in the graveyard, and plot out all the graves in advance.

18.From now on, you should make it a priority to make wooden fences for graves, since they cost a mere 1 plank each, and give +2 for the graves. This should easily get you to +5 graveyard by the 2nd week, unlocking the church and faith.

19.RIGHT AFTER the mock cutscene sermon ends, IMMEDIATELY talk to the episcop for his task. He'll allow you to unlock clay working. Now going out of the church, go south until you see the clay pit and dig 7 clay.

20.Make sure that by next week's sermon, you get your graveyard quality as high as possible, make the 20 clay bowls(you will have 1 extra that you can just delete) and have 24 planks and 24 nails prepared, with 10 red points to spare. This might require you going to town and getting more iron ingots.

21.Go to town on sloth day(moon day) early morning (you might have to wake up earlier just to make it and back in time). Grab the skull you probably should've gotten by now, go sell your certificates, get all the iron you can get (but don't buy the last 2 ingots, they get more expensive than actually buying the iron parts or nails), and go to the lighthouse.

+++Gather apples from the 2 apple trees that can be gathered from, and then dig up the 3 stumps in the area, those will grow back as gatherable apple trees for further visits.

22.Talk to the astrologer, give him the skull, and then go back. Prepare for an eventual corpse this evening, get all your 20 bowls 24 planks and 24 nails ready, spruce up your graveyard some more, then go sleep.

23.It's showtime, grab your prayer, and the other stuff, go to the church, turn in the 20 bowls, this will get you a +5 blue scroll. Use it, and unlock "comfort of faith". With that, head in into the church, and place 3 more benches, your total church quality should be +8 with 80% chance of success and you will now get 1 more faith for sermons, no matter the outcome.

24.Now do the sermon. If it fails, you could just reload the day, or you could go with it, doesn't matter. Your total faith will either be 3 or 4, depending on whether you succeeded, and your income should be equal to your grave score X10 copper coins.

Congradulations, you just held your first proper sermon by week 3.

25.By week 4, you need to build a furnace (10 stone, 7 iron parts, some flitch) , unlock the iron anvil tech and remove your old anvil.

26.Get iron from the swampland to the north of your house, cut some firewood and get the iron ingots started.

27.Get a total 12 nails 8 flitch and 1 plank, and with a full energy bar, go fix the bridge to the east towards the mines. Once there, get all the coal you can dig, don't mine the iron for now.

28.Fuel your furnace up with all the coal you dug, then keep making iron every time it's done.

29.After burying a corpse one of these days, build your last church bench, and go into your church basement and clear it out. Hopefully you will get 2 complex parts from the stuff there, but if not, it's not the end of the world.

30.With 10 red points, unlock the church workbench under the "writing" tab, and look at what you need to build it. Get everything for it +8 flitch and 8 nails ready for next moon day. On your way out of the church, buy an exhumation permit from the mailbox and place it in your graveyard chest.

31.Keep burying every corpse, and by the next sloth day(moon day), exhume your very first corpse you buried(a 1r/1w grave), take it to the morgue and skin it.

+++Since you have a corpse out before midday, this will prevent donkey from delivering another, so you won't have to worry about getting back in time.

32.You will go into town again, however this time you will not buy iron unless you really need some to finish the preparations, get to the astrologer, get the apples for extra green points and energy, and, depending on how much money you have, buy the blue points book (5 silver) and use it, and you should also be able to afford 1 chapter from him (3 silver).

33.Go back home, sleep. Tomorrow is the 4th week's sermon.

34.Get all the stuff needed for the workbench and also the 8 nails and 8 flitch, the skin, the chapter and 3 faith.

35.Unlock the tech needed for desk 1, build the church workbench, the desk, and go to the desk and get prayer for faith. Use this prayer instead of your old one and you should get more faith and money from your sermons now.

36.With the skin you got, make paper and use it all in the church's study table, and start getting sweet blue points from grave decorations and human body parts.

37.Get inborn blacksmith ASAP, so you can finally make nails and parts properly.

At this point, you should have played the first 4 weeks in game in a very efficient manner.

+++For the future, you will want to prioritize upgrading your furnace to tier 2( you can get the leather for it from some of those crappy early game corpses you buried).

++The perk that allows you to smelt "double" the ores is currently not really worth it, it's generally a better idea to just upgrade your smelter, and unlock that lategame when you can afford squandering the blue points on luxury stuff.

+++As far as church decorations go, getting 2 confessionals is now actually worth it, previously they only gave a +2 church rating and a very slim chance of getting 1 faith and a story, and could be replaced by 2 tier 2 candelabras, for 4 church score in the spot they'd occupy. Now they provide 5 churchscore each, and are a more economical longterm churchscore boost than using candelabras and lighting candles in their place.

++As a side note, getting the incense burners built might also be a good idea, since incense becomes extremely easy to massproduce and is really cheap once you have your alchemical stuff in the laboratory set up. The burner itself is just a measly +1 churchscore, but with the tier 1 incense it goes to a +3, which is greater than the tier 2 candelabra without candles in. Since incense is really easy to produce( all you need is some white flowers and oil ) It serves as a cheap way to almost passively boost your church score.

+++As a food source, muffins are ok, but you should get the winemaking technologies ASAP, since wine is really good food source.

++It used to be broken, it could heal you over the maximum ammount of hp thus making you survive the intended deadly trap towards the journal, but as a downside(or upside I guess) it allowed you to stay indefinetly in bed until you got out manually. However it got fixed in patch 0.677 .

++It stacks to 10 and the bronze quality wine restores 30 health and 80 energy.

++Not only that but you can sell 10 bronze quality and 10 silver quality wine to the inkeeper weekly, since his wine stock drops by about 10 each week. You should do this on Gluttony day (brown taurus symbol) so you get to buy the grape seeds from the merchant as well.

+++Ever since patch 0.676, after you reload, talking to an NPC or reloading again freezes the game, so just restart the game whenever you mess up.

+++It seems that the removal of trunks in the morgue and laboratory as of patch 0.675 was intentional, since the other designated containers for those areas can now hold a whopping 25 items, almost twice as much as a trunk. Still, it's hard to tell what's intentional and what's not with their barebone patchnotes...

+++Provided you checked the sign by the church on the left in the early game, you can claim that burial site by talking to the inquisitor, accepting his friendship and giving him 20 firewood.

++This will allow the player to have a maximum graveyard capacity of 88 corpses, from an initial 42, thus allowing your graveyard to eventually have at least 440 quality.

===Many people complain about the change to prayers, they've finally gotten fixed, and everyone is up in arms about how they're now pointless or that grave score doesn't matter (which is not true, it used to not matter before, when most of them gave 1 gold each). Now they're balanced and people can't live with the thought of having to work for their money.

+++If you're wealthy enough, you could buy gold jewelery details from the merchant, and bronze book covers from the astrologer.At the church worktable, you can get gold star book covers.

+++Getting the playwright perk in writing tab of the tech tree(150 blue) will give a bonus to writing. Writing starts at a big negative early game, and in order to get the good quality books, you need both this bonus, and the buff from Prayer for Inspiration,to have high odds at writing good stuff.

+++It is actually possible to craft a chapter using only 1 note, and not having any other notes in your inventory or storages nearby. This will consume only the one note you inserted in all 3 slots, and output a chapter according to the recipe.Very useful to know when dealing with gold star notes!

++It is actually possible to get silver and gold star prayer books, which have their bonuses and requirement for success doubled and tripled. Silver donation book offers a money bonus of +100%, still has a +20% faith(this one didn't increase) and 2 silver, and it's possible to get it at gold quality, resulting in alot of money.

++The combo prayer can only be gotten up to silver quality, probably for balance reasons, if you use a gold tier book to craft it. It ends up requiring 30 church score for success, and provides a total +100% money, +100% faith, +2 faith, +2 silver

[xenxander]

Gets hit by wall of text. It would be easier to read if it were broken up.

I also did a stream, and am still doing one, about how 'fast' I can get things going.

I have 8hrs in a new game, and have 125 graveyard rating, all the faith research, the carpentry, and just am missing furnace three and anvil II, and special ores really, for smithing.

I ignored, largely, nature, except for bee-lining wine (obviously).

[therealjohnconnor]

Please - paragraphs and subheads! This is unreadable.

[Unholy Eve]

Might be a good guide but was instantly put off by the wall of text.

[Skrymaster]

Ok I tried to put it in a better, more easy to read shape. This is my first guide I post on a game, ever. Sorry for simply dropping the text bomb I guess.

[CloversDrop]

Nice guide, some good tips in there.

[Caretaker]

I have a 3r/3w corpse on my table. How do I treat it right? Thanks in advance! ^^

[Skrymaster]

Originally posted by Caretaker:

I have a 3r/3w corpse on my table. How do I treat it right? Thanks in advance! ^^

It is impossible to know the exact organ to extract for the corpse without testing first ( by saving the game beforehand and then trying to extract either heart or brain. If both of those result in losing white skulls, it's guaranteed to be the stomach. Then you need to reload the save and extract the correct organ out of the 3)

Other than that, taking the blood and fat out, and you might want to take the bone out too since you'll need it later for white paint. The resulting corpse will be a -1r/5w corpse and will give you a +1 approval when buried, which would require two +2 decorations to fully max.

[Caretaker]

Is there no way to get more than 5w out of it?

[Skrymaster]

Originally posted by Caretaker:

Is there no way to get more than 5w out of it?

Unfortunately no, not yet at least. There is the embalming table and blue embalming fluid that adds both a red skull and a white skull, but making blue embalming fluid requires Alkali, which requires a currently unobtainable alchemical ingredient.

[Caretaker]

Okay, thx a lot for the "private" consultation. ;)

[Caretaker]

Another question regarding (3r/2w) corpses cropped up. Can you elaborate what you meant in the guide by "ADD a white skull"? Can you take a skull from a different corpse and add it to another one? How? Or did I misunderstand you?

[Hellblade]

There's good autopsy tutorial by Rayune called TUTORIAL: autopsy/grave rating guide.

[Skrymaster]

Originally posted by Caretaker:

Another question regarding (3r/2w) corpses cropped up. Can you elaborate what you meant in the guide by "ADD a white skull"? Can you take a skull from a different corpse and add it to another one? How? Or did I misunderstand you?

By adding a skull, I meant that when you take out the correct organ on a 3r/2w corpse, the corpse will go from 3r/2w to 1r/3w, thus losing the 2 reds, AND gaining 1 white. This only happens to corpses with a starting 2 white skulls.

Originally posted by Hellblade:

There's good autopsy tutorial by Rayune called TUTORIAL: autopsy/grave rating guide.

I've read that guide before, and there's quite a few things Rayune is wrong about/ didn't quite understand, himself. For starters, he didn't realise that a corpse can have a negative number of red skulls(which while not displayed on the corpse, will increase the buried corpse's starting rating), he doesn't fully explain what removing an organ does, as the effects he listed are only going to work for a 3white skull or 4 white skull corpse. If you were to remove organs from a starting 1r/2w for instance, you'd get the following effects(nothing/-1r-1w/-1w), and also for corpses that start at 5 white skulls, removing the "correct organ" will actually remove 2 red and also 1 white skull.
He states that removing bones will damage the corpse, where this is no longer true.
He also states that order of removing components matters, where this is actually not true. As long as you remove the same components, it doesn't matter in what order you remove them in.

He also didn't update his section regarding decorating the graves. It's actually better to use wooden fences to stone now since they only cost 1 plank, take less energy to make, and both provide a +2. As for the wooden crosses being worse than the stone headstones, it's really debatable. I honestly always go for wooden crosses and completely bypass stone carving tech in favor of progressing other stuff earlygame. Stone carving eats enormous ammounts of energy and requires you to get stone, which I only gather for my furnace/furnace upgrade early.

[nathanpaulprince]

and now I have to play "catch up" on the game and play it correctly... :) no worries its just a game, the direction I took at first was to build up to 200 red points and then focus on what burying mattered... my trajectory was a bit different

[Skrymaster]

At the end of the day it's a singleplayer sandbox game where you pretty much can't really lose, so given that, you can play it however you like without giving it too much thought.

All I provided here was a "tryhard" version of what I personally did last time I played through, along with lots of various tips I discovered along the way.

The things in the guide don't cover the last 2 expansions with the tavern and refugee camp, those come in slightly later, and are more like additional flavor content.