How are you supposed to progress in this game?

[Estiqaatsi 🔻]

I played for about 3h and it seems pretty unbalanced so far. Ladybugs, butterflies, and moths are basically impossible to kill as they escape too quickly and you have no chance to get to them and so get the drops. The mobs seems too strong even the smaller ones like the ants, if you don't make perfect parry every single time you are just gonna die no matter what, let alone going against more than one mob at a time or even against the wasps and beetles. No chance.

I know about weaknesses but so far I can only use wood sword/bow/club and the damage is pretty abysmal compared to the hp pool even the more small mobs have.

Fiber is just tedious to get, you need insane amounts cause it is required for almost anything crafting/repairing. I spent most of my time running around gathering fiber.

Oh, gathering is also tedious in this game, the "hold F to gather all" but you have to push F for every resource on the ground is just annoying, just let holding F gather everything.

Overall I'm a bit disappointed

[Drudackus]

Well it looks like you have it all worked out. Have fun.

[william_es]

Don't bother parrying or dodge rolling. They waste your stamina, leaving you unable to attack.

Just use the movement keys (W A S D) to move your character around. If you back up, some attacks will swing through empty air. As long as you aren't running, you're regenning stamina. Save all your stamina for attacks, attacks, attacks, attacks.

Every once in a while, in order to avoid being hit, turn and run away. Then stop and let stamina regen while they approach. You should regain all the stamina you used running, and probably regain even more.

So stay fluid, keep moving using the movement keys.

When you attack, as long as you have enough stamina you will begin to chain auto attacks together. The more hits in the combo, the more damage you do. Later hits have bonuses to damage, quite HUGE bonuses. So you might see very little damage on the first few hits, and then suddenly MUCH bigger damage numbers. It's because of the bonuses.

Because of that, stamina is literally one of your most important combat stats. The more stamina you have the more hits you can do in row, to reach the higher combos.

Also, sometimes when you hit them (especially with things like hammers) you will stagger enemies. You interrupt their attack with your hit. If you have enough stamina, you can stagger-lock them. They just constantly get knocked off balance, hit after hit after hit. They never get a chance to hit back. When your stamina is getting close to zero, turn and run. Wait for them to approach as you regenerate stamina. Then keep repeating.

PS: there's a setting for the game session that makes all the enemies "peaceful". They will not attack you, unless you attack them first. That can be turned on or off at the start of each play session when you pick what world to enter. You might want to set it to peaceful until you learn the ropes. That way you are the one initiating the fights, and you don't have to hack and slash through everything you run into.

[Lastig]

When you first start-off you don't excactly have a safe start due to the circumstances (lore).

You're supposed to dodge and weave to your quest where you will come into the town of the living. Your fellow smallworlders (NPC's). The 1st armor and weapon you can craft is i believe made out of stone which doesn't involve any combat. Basicly the game tells you you're unequipped to fight any bugs just yet. Else it would've forced us to make armor out of bug kills as our 1st set of armor.

i remember blocking takes up a lot of stam but doing a perfect parry is very rewarding and gives plenty of room to deal dmg. simply walking out of their atk with WASD is also a very solid strat.

I played through the game twice-ish.
The 1st time i just tried to kill the 1st bugs i saw and fought tooth and nail per kill. Any bug was a genuine Dark souls boss fight. I deal 2% dmg per hit and i take 50% of my life per hit.
started with bee-armor and switched to ant armor once i reached the NW corner of the starter yard.

On my 2nd run I came across this sturdy poisonous spear on a POI and made my way into the NW corner of the starter yard after getting a mandible pickaxe where i bumped my gear straight into 1 of the best armors in the game.
I believe its 1 you unlock by talking to. Merwick in the treehouse. The black & white ant armor set.
Getting parts from cockroaches was the hardest. They don't agree with the wasps and are hostle to one another. I took my time to look when a fight breaks out. The moment they got a winner i engage, loot the loser and try to beat the winner, be it wasp or roach.
the silk i got from destroying spidernest wich is fairly eazy if you focus those along the shoreline. spiders might be fast and excellent climbers.
But they cannot cross water.

In this NW area of the starteryard your also gonna jump in tools since you can farm iron scrap there and mud/soil on the broken bridge to the north to get that furnace going.
You should also be able to bump you weapons into iron quality and get a iron scythe or something so you start dealing some serious dmg.

[𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖆𝖍]

Go to the NPC marked in your map, gathering all resine/fiber/wood you find, craft the stone armor and sword, up your level to stamina first and have fun, it's not suposed to be an easy game at first, but later will be...

[Pestilence]

i just tuned them down in the games settings until i got some decent gear and weapons.

i agree this game is a bit over-tuned, especially in the beginning, and it tells you nothing. it was me looking up how to find fiber on google that i learned we can scan the world with our antenna. the game did NOT tell me i could do this.

[Randy Merica]

you need to play more than 3 hrs, You need to find new resources to unlock new crafting recipes. When fighting hordes try dodging. If your having trouble now your going to hate end game. I dont want to spoil bosses for you but what I can say is having the best gear/weapons in the game currently fighting 2-5 dudes at a time while archers are setting you on fire from a distance and hit like a truck. If you cant figure out how to kill a couple ants with wood weapons youre going to have some issue late game...

[𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖆𝖍]

Originally posted by Pestilence:

i just tuned them down in the games settings until i got some decent gear and weapons.

i agree this game is a bit over-tuned, especially in the beginning, and it tells you nothing. it was me looking up how to find fiber on google that i learned we can scan the world with our antenna. the game did NOT tell me i could do this.

you can see a bunch of tutorials with the owls effigy near where the game starts...