How to start the right way?

[Hexzyti]

I'm new to the game and have heard its an extreme challenge. I'm up for the challenge but would really appreciate some tips so I dont spend the first few hours confused and frustrated.I am grateful for any advice

[Knight_of_Gallifrey]

You have access to majority of crafting (to be clear, seperate from building blueprints) despite it not showing up in your notebook.

First things first you will want your axe, blade, and spear.

You can harvest the big stone for a trio of stone to save searching time. Stick+rope+stone+stone will get you your axe, no need to play around with the basic stone axe. Striking a log with your axe will get you two long stick and a plank or the log can be harvested directly for 4 sticks and a plank.
A pair of stones can be made into the stone blade which you will need to harvest animals, it is also the fastest at cutting grasses and leaves. The right most equipment slot is exclusive to blade so you can still have quartet of other equipment while still being able to harvest.
Lastly a long stick+rope+stone blade will get you a spear. Spear can be thrown with middle mouse button and a headshot will insta-kill any animal. Otherwise it is likely too run off with your spear.

Now that you're armed head north and, when you reach a river, go west along the north bank to get too the abandoned village with the first story beats and can serve as a reasonable base of operations. By putting up a frame, and then putting on a roof you will have your save point. Note the choice of materials for roofs/walls, palm leaves work well enough to protect a fire or dryer (yes, dryer pauses when being rained on) from the rain but don't expect it too hold your weight if you make a second floor and try to walk on it.

Before we truly get comfortable you will want some armour. Bannana leaf+ropex2+stickx3/bonex3 will make a single piece of armour that you can put on through the examine menu, as you would for treating injuries/removing leeches.

Speaking of leeches, anytime you see a magnifying glass along your status bar it means you have something on/wrong with you, so examine your limbs. Everything from leeches too lacerations will trigger the magnifying glass to appear.

Any mushroom growing on logs (so not the spiderweb ones) can be safely eaten. The red ones remove parasites, the yellow ones that glow green in the dark restore energy to stave off sleep, and the bright blue mushrooms found on the largest trees are anti-parasite and energy giving. Take advantage of the anti-parasite mushrooms to drink unsafe water early on with no repurcussions.

Once you're comfortable, make the ayahuasca to advance the story and open up the next segment of the map.

[Gwido]

The very first thing to do is get some small stone. Note that you can "harvest" big stone by right clicking on it to get 3 small stone.
Then, search for sticks on the ground, and get some vines on big trees.

With that, make a stone axe, so that it will be easier to cut down trees.
With a long stick, a stone blade and a vine, make a stone spear.

Find a place to install a leaf bed, a shelter (or a wood frame with a roof of some sort), and make a fire.

With that, you have the bases to continue the game and discover how to survive. ;)

I'll don't say more, because the fun part is to discover things by yourself. :)

[Hexzyti]

wow thanks guys! I'm pretty bad when it comes to starting out in survival games so the advice gives me a goal to achieve immediately. I'll be sure to refer back to this as I'm playing, thanks again

[starlight78sso]

Keep an eye out for coconuts, they will be green and found either on the ground or in palm trees, can get them from the trees by either throwing stones, or like me, just chopping it down, usually need the wood anyway. You can drink the water out of them, and harvest them, then harvest again to get the coconut meat (decent source of fat to start off), and then can use the bowl for soups, or lay a bunch down to collect rain water. Can use a whole one after drinking from it with rope to make a container to hold 40 units of water.

The village Knight_of_Gallifrey is a great base spot, I usually make a tree house out of largest tree that is to the south of the village, there will be like 4 large trees that you can get the rope from surrounding it, and lots of trees around to cut down, dont cut the stump and they will regrow in a few days.

[xXpayne420Xx]

Confused and frustrated is just part of this game lol. When you're in the story mode, they start you near a pond, and if you venture up the hill you'll see a chasm in front of you with a log bridge to cross over, and that brings you to the main game area, where you can get bitten by snakes, spiders, scorpions, puma's, run into ant hills, and the most dangerous animal in the jungle MAN (hostile tribals). The first thing you should do is craft a stone ax and chop some of the tall skinny trees and small palm trees without a trunk (not the small palms with the red tinted husk). Then, make a palm tree bed and make a palm tree hut to save your game. Make a fire under the protection of the hut so the rain can't put it out. Craft a spear, stone blade and a fire starter. Catch a fish, find a birds nest, slay some ground foliage and wait for the ground foliage to turn dry, which can be used to keep your fire going (it wont start it however). Eat, drink, gather, craft, sleep, is the cycle you want to repeat for a few days until you have full stats and enough food and water to venture over the log to the main area. Head shots kill anything with 1 hit, so a puma or a human hit in the coconut = lights out. A bow and spear are best at killing and the swords are for clearing and ax for chopping. Avoid headhunters early game unless you got a bow and some arrows.

In the starting area before you cross that bridge in front of you, it's relatively safe for a while and there are no animals that can hurt you besides bee's, leeches, and yourself by eating something weird or falling from too high. The only real danger, is if you stay there too long maybe about 5-7 game days, then the tribals will find and attack you, and try and destroy anything you have constructed.

That gives you 5 days to get ready and gather resources to explore the main area of the game where everything goes. Now, back to the log bridge in front of you. To the right is another bridge that leads to a dead end and is resource rich as far as lumber goes and no hostile animals can spawn there either. To the left of the log bridge that leads to the main area, you can find a cave if you venture up the incline toward the natural wall barrier, that has an obsidian stone on the ground, and that stone can re-spawn every day or so after you sleep. Also, it has an iron vein on the wall, and a lizard that spawns that isn't worth the time it takes to catch and eat it. You can make an obsidian spear with 1 obsidian + long stick + rope and that should be the 2nd thing you craft after crafting an ax to chop wood with. Once you have 2 obsidian + 2 rope + stick you can make an Aztec weapon, which is great for cutting ground foliage or gathering herb fauna and you should craft that before you venture out. The recipe for obsidian ax is 1 obsidian + 1 stick + 1 rope, but I recommend crafting the stone ax a couple of times first and use them till they break, then craft the obsidian ax when you have enough obsidian.

Certain trees have food and you don't want to cut those down because they drop food, spawn food, or grow food every few days. Here are the ones to save as best as I can describe them, the medium banana trees with husky trunks can spawn a cluster of bananas that give "carbs" (cut the small banana plants with no trunk to make armor from banana leaves). Palms that have a red tinted trunk can drop nuts that you need for "fats". Old logs that mushrooms grow on give various benefits, such as +1 sanity (pale yellow), +2 energy (yellow and glows at night), -1 parasites (red caps), and all mushrooms give carbs. The tall palms can spawn coconut that you can throw your spear at to make them fall, alternatively they will also drop randomly to the ground. You have to cut the protective yellow layer first and then what I like to do is drink the water then harvest the coconut. Make sure you make a coconut flask with the whole brown coconut after you drink the water + 1 rope, which can be used to gather 40 units of water. Use the spear to catch the large fish in the pond harvest and cook the meat for protein and use halved eaten coconuts to gather rain water then fill your coconut flask with that water.

Lastly, let me touch on armor and healing. You can make armor out of banana leaves, sticks and rope, which you can make right away, even if you don't have the recipe. Once you get deeper into the jungle and find bamboo, then that is the better armor. I haven't found out the best armor yet, but even the banana armor helped not get torn to shreds by the puma and the bamboo is even better. You gotta pay attention to the magnifying glass alert because leeches always get on you or you might get slashed and need to repair yourself. The yellow herb that you make bandages with is the main thing you wanna stockpile and different variations of them for different types of injuries. It's not always a clean heal and the skin can die and you need to have some maggots to eat the rotten flesh. Maggots can be harvested from spoiled meat.

That's pretty much all I know so far. I like the blue mushroom that you find on the giant tree with the vines, look on the floor of those big trees and there's almost always Brazil nuts and those are great too. Always have a bunch of those and blue shrooms when you go exploring. Make shelters to save and beds to sleep every once in a while, unless you play perma death mode.

[Liil]

Something i worked out very late on in the game, use stones to throw up at coconuts to knock them down! Wish I had known this much earlier in the game. This was you do not need to chop down a tree and you get the reward!

[starlight78sso]

Originally posted by Liil:

Something i worked out very late on in the game, use stones to throw up at coconuts to knock them down! Wish I had known this much earlier in the game. This was you do not need to chop down a tree and you get the reward!

I chop them down, usually because I need the wood anyway, and you get 4 logs instead of just 2.

[Hexzyti]

Are there coconuts in the starting area?

[Gwido]

yes

[starlight78sso]

Sometimes. I've only found them in the area where you wake up once, but if you go to the abandoned village (not far from where you wake up) you will usually find several palm trees that have them.