Scrap Mechanic Survival Beginner Gameplay Guide and Tips

A beginner friendly guide for newcomers. This is depending on my experiences and research about the game. You can find a lot of other useful guide in steam or google. What i will explain here is only a proper (maybe) way to start playing Scrap Mechanic Survival. Feel free to correct me if wrong. And dont forget to leave a thumbs up if this guide being helpful for you ^_^

#1 Go around your ship and you should find 2 things.

So you will first spawn at your burning ship. DONT GO AWAY LEAVING YOUR SHIP YET!!

#1 Go around your ship and you should find 2 things.

• Master Battery = a quite big red-yellow battery. Why this matter? Because later on you will find another kind of batteries which is yellow-black
  
• A fenced path toward a lake.

After collecting the Master Battery, go to the lake. There you should find another 2 things:

• A water bucket
  
• Farming stuff

#2 Extinguish the fire on your ship and start farming

#2 Extinguish the fire on your ship and start farming

Use the bucket to take the water to extinguish fire on your ship, exterior and interior. The big fire on top of your ship cant be extinguished anyway. At the early phase, the smoke from the fire will help you find your way back to your ship when you go exploring and looting.

There is a place to put the Master Battery in your ship. This will turn on the ship, and the most important thing = The Craftbot. You can collect pretty much a lot of things inside your ship but most of them are for decorative purpose and useless for your at the moment (Decorative stuff will be useful later in the game when you want to build your very own base).

Go to the lake, take some soil, and start farming. There are already soils on the ground, pick it up and arrange it to ease yourself.
IMPORTANT = Dont plant too much crops at a time. Stick to 5 or 6 crops at most. I will explain why:

When you plant to much crops at a same time (Soils with no seeds are not a problem), this will trigger "Unauthorized Farming Detected" which will start a red timer countdown on the area. It seems that each type of crops got its own value, and the total value of crops you plant exceed or equal a certain value, it will trigger this Unauthorized Farming. When the countdown reached 0, bots will come and destroy your crops. I tried at the Workshop (later i will explain this), planting several group of 6 soils quite far from each other. One in front, at the side of the Workshop, and at the back of the Workshop, and these were not triggering the Unauthorized Farming.

Time in the game is 1 minute in game = 1 second in real life. So 24 hours in game = 24 minutes in real life. The countdown usually end at 0000 hours in game, which is midnight. This Unauthorized Farming will become helpful for you later.

Lets know about the bots before i explain more about this Unauthorized Farming:

• Totebot = A small green bot. 3 hits from melee, gun and gatling gun or 1 shot from shotgun to kill. Deduct about 10 to 15 of your hp when being hit.
  
• Haybot = A yellow bot holding a farming fork. 5 hits from melee or 4 hits from gun and gattling gun, 2 hits from shotgun to kill. Deduct about 30 to 40 of your hp when being hit.
  
• Tapebot = A blue bot with yellow tape around his face and body. 1 hit from melee or 1 headshot from ranged weapon or 2 body shot from ranged weapon to kill. Deduct about 45 to 55 of your hp when being hit. This bot shoot tape. Better dodge them than being hit. This bot usually found at Warehouse(Later i will explain).
  
• Red Tapebot (idk if this is the correct name) = As the name, it is a red coloured bot with yellow tape. Took the same amount of hit to kill. But the tape shot from this bot explode on impact. Im not sure how much it will hurt if being hit or near the explosion range.
  
• Farmbot = A big fat red robot with a metal cresent (Scythe) at his hand. Took 60 shot only from ranged weapon (Spud Gun or Gatling Spud Gun) to kill. I dont know if u cant even try to hit him with melee or close enough for shotgun. This bot swing his cresent, pretty much can one-hit destroy metal or wood wall. So idk how much it will hurt if u got hit. This bot also can shoot chemical (pink liquid) bomb from his other hand. Your hp will decrease if u stay in the chemical area.

So this is every hostile bots in this game at the time im writing this. Let me know if i missed anything.

Basically if your dead, you will respawn at last bed you ever slept (There is couple of bed in your starting ship). If you havent slept on any, you will respawn outside of your ship like the beginning of your world.

So back to the Unauthorized Farming. The first time you get this notification (depending the type and quantity of crops you plant), when the timer countdown reached 0, a bunch of bots from a couple of Totebots to an army of Haybots and Tapebots escorting Farmbot will attack your crops, if you keep the same amount or increase the planting area, you will get another notification a couple hours later (in game hours) with increased dificulties (quantity of bots and type of bots). First wave usually the easiest depending to consecutive wave.

Then how are you gonna settle this? Heres the solution. If you want to farm a lot of crops at a time, do it for about 1 or 2 wave only. Remember to come defend your crops at midnight. After the raid, STOP farming for a day at least. Then the next time you farm, the Unauthorized Farming raid wave will reset to wave one. So basically if you farm and rest day after each other, you will only face easy Totebots on the Unauthorized Farming raid.

Theres another guide by a user named Exund explaining about how raid works, the value of crops, the type of bots coming for different level and wave of the raids. The guide named "How Raid Works" sort of like that. But if you want to look for yourself each upcoming updates without waiting the guide to be updated, you need to learn how to read programming code ^_^ Ill teach you how.

SPOILERS WARNING: If you are a kind of player that like the surprise element of the bots attacking your farm, dont bother to have a look at that raid guide or what ill explain below.

You need to have a text editor. Notepad++ is a lightweight and easiest one to find. Its not the same as normal Notepad on windows. Go ahead install Notepad++
Heres how to find the raid information:

• Open your Local Disk (usually C), then open Program Files(x86) > Steam > Steamapps > common > Scrap Mechanic. Now you are in Scrap Mechanic game folder.
  
• Open folder Survival > Scripts > game > managers. You should see a file named "UnitManager.lua"
  
• Open that file using Notepad++
  
• Now from line 13 to 92, you should find the minimum crop value to trigger the raid, the value of each type of crops in game, and the list of bots for each raid's level and waves.
  
• On line 459 until 497 you should find the condition to trigger the raid. And the determination of raid level depending on the total value of crops planted.

Thats all. DONT EVER CHANGE A SINGLE THING IN THAT FILE. IT WILL DAMAGE YOUR GAME AND MAY RESULT FOR YOU TO REINSTALL THE GAME. JUST HAVE A LOOK, DONT TOUCH ANYTHING. So now you know where to find the information and be prepared to defend your farm.

Thats pretty much all about farming.

#3 Looting

#3 Looting

Basically loots you can find from loot boxes. Loots also dropped by hostile bots:

• Totebot = A Circuit (used in crafting recipes), and a Totebot Head (you can use this with other technical components to make sounds and songs)
  
• Haybot = A circuit, a metal rod (you need to refine this to get 10 scrap metal blocks), and sometimes a "Component Kit" (this is i thing a very very important things u need to collect as most of useful stuff need this in their recipe)
  
• Tapebot and Red Tapebot = A battery (Yellow-black one. Use as power souce for some components)
  
• Farmbot = A Warehouse Key for sure ( you will need this to access Warehouse later),sometimes Component Kit.

Any loots you found besides the road, in the buildings, and anywhere, they will respawn after a couple days in game. So if you are staying at a place and they are buildings nearby, make sure to pay a visit once every day or 2 days. This also apply for flowers, corns, cottons, and underwater resources.

So thats all about looting.

#4 Exploring

#4 Exploring

At the early phase of the game, after you are quite stable about food and resources, you might wanna consider to find next building, the Mechanic Workshop. U might find a couple of buildings near you ship after you walk for a while, and you should find a road. A black asphalt road. Follow the road and you should find the Workshop. The buildings tips are same for every time you play. The randomness of the map are only the distance, and the pattern of the road. So some of you might found the workshop pretty soon and some might need to walk for a while.

You might be really really excited to build a vehicle right? In my opinion, from your ship to the Workshop, for the sake of efficiency, DONT CRAFT VEHICLE YET. This is why, the craftbot on your ship, it is a basic craftbot. The scrap engine are only capable of powering 2 tires. So its just 2WD vehicle. And this other reason is the main i think, the scrap tires crafted by that basic craftbot are very very unstable. To travel from point to point, you will need to stabilize your driving that keep vibrating left and right, ending up wasting up your fuel to travel which took pretty much same duration if you run. That scrap engine fuel consumption is also bad compared to advance engine. So my suggestion, use your leg until you find the Workshop. Its actually the same in comparison, run = use food to fill hunger and thirst, basic vehicle = use a lot of fuels, both took about the same duration to move from point to point. Its all up to you. For me, ill save fuel because its only can be loot, and took pretty much resources (5 gas) to craft it.
Other reason why you shouldnt build the car on the early game is because to save Component Kits. As the Component Kits is the most important thing in the game to craft "technical" items and especially important to use to upgrade that technical items. Eg: You will need Component Kits To build advanced bot at the Workshop, to build advanced engine at the Workshop, and also to upgrade the engine. The Scrap Engine crafted from the ship's craftbot cant be upgrade and fuel inefficient. So if you can save your component kits, it will ease you so much further on in the game.

After you find the Workshop, you should find "3 sleeping capsule" building beside the Workshop. Search for the Master Battery in there to power up your Workshop. Be careful in each capsule there is at least one Haybot in there.

So when you Workshop powered up, that is your very first base. You should focus on gathering resources to build the most important bot, the Advance Craftbot. This contain recipe for all craftable item in the game.

Next, you might wanna explore to find nearby lake. There are definitely at lease one lake nearby. Again, the randomness of the map are distance. Some may found lake right behind the Workshop and some might need to walk a little bit. If you walk quite far but still not found the lake, return to the Workshop and search in another direction.

ANYTIME ANYWHERE YOU EXPLORE, DONT FORGET YOUR WAY BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM EITHER YOUR BASE OR VEHICLE. THERES NO MAP IN GAME UNLESS YOU ARE VERY HARDWORKING ENOUGH TO DRAW THEM ON A PIECE OF PAPER BY YOURSELF

Keep on farming and looting. Remember if there are buildings nearby, pay a regular visits. Now you can happily craft your very own first good vehicle. Upgrading the components to max level helps you so much in every way especially fuel consumption.

Next is craft the Refinebot and Resource Collector. this will help you so much to save time refining logs and metal rod from Haybot. Put Resource Collector on your vehicle and drive on the logs. It will automatically picked up into the collector. Back at the base put the full collector beside Refine bot and it will automatically refine them for you. Refinebot only output one type of block. So if there are wood logs and metal rod, and it refine all the wood first, it will stop working until you collect the wood block. It also stop working if the block stacks full. Every building block should have 256 quantity as "full stack".

The next thing is you should craft the Drill. It will help you to collect metal easily beside searching for Haybot, and collect stones that can basically be use to build protection for your farm to defend the raids. Drill can destroy cube-shaped rocks (Not the rocky-shaped rocks) into smaller chunks which can be hit using your Sleidgehammer to turn them into logs.

Keep exploring to find 2 important buildings:

• The Trader Mountains
  
• Packing Stations

Trader Mountains are off the road. You need to walk on the clear green area and you should find a fortress-like mountains like theyre protecting something at the middle. Find your way in and you found the trader.

You need "packed food" to trade with the trader. Obviously, everyone want the guns right? So if you firstly go to the trader having 2 tomatoes in you inventory, and want to trade something that cost you tomatoes, it will prompt that you have 0 tomatoes with you. That is "0 Packed Tomatoes" not regular tomatoes. You need to find Packing Stations. How? Back to your workshop, keep on following the road. You should find your first Packing Station and if you continue the road, you should find the second Packing Station. There are 8 different crops in the game and each Packing Station only pack 4 types of them.

At the trader price list, there are a weird green-packed-thing icon for some item you wanna trade. Idk what its actual name but for now im calling it the "caged-man". Where to find it? You need to find an abandoned campsite and you should find him. Basically if you wander around the trader mountains, you should find pretty much all type of biomes exist in the game. "Burning forest", "autumn forest", even the campsite should be nearby the fortress. And the most interesting is, the caged-man also respawn just like loots. But the respawn time is much later compared to loots.
There are some ways to carry the caged-man to the trader:

• Keep hitting with your Sleidgehammer toward the trader
  
• Hit him onto your vehicle if your vehicle have space such as a truck etc.
  
• Wield the cage to your vehcle (some caged man appears cant be wielded)
  
• Carry some extra block and "cage" the caged man anywhere to your vehicle.

Thats pretty much all of the basic exploring and finding resources.

#5 Further Exploring

#5 Further Exploring

After you got your gun, it should be no problem for you to farm or loot or fight anything. Dont forget to keep planting potatoes for your ammo gun.

Keep following the road and you should find Warehouses and many more point of interest such as Scrap Cities, Bush Maze, Huge Chemical Power Plant(That being said Totebots there are a bit aggressive compared to normal but as far as i experienced its the same for current version). Dont forget to fight the Farmbot to get the Warehouse Key.
You may also find more Packing Stations ( Although its still packing the same 8 type of crops) and more Mechanic Workshop. Yes, there are more than 1 Mechanic Workshop in the game. So you might wanna establish your second base maybe.
There are a lot of Warehouses in the game. 1 Warehouse = Need 1 Key. Currently you cant collect any decorative things inside the Warehouse (maybe can in further update) except on the roof of the Warehouse.
There are plenty of high durability item parts for you to collect to help build your own new base. You may need or want to move to a new place which is near the lake and trader fortress.
Then whats the point of the huge Warehouse for now? Well there are a lot of loot box even rare one, inside. Not to mention there are also a lot of Tapebots and Red Tapebots inside.
Maybe in further update the Warehouse will bring us a few more excitement.

#Advance Bot Crafting Guide

• When you arrived at the Workshop, you really wanna craft the Advance Craftbot. As i said earlier, all craftable things in game are in that bot.
  
• Next you should really craft Refinebot and Resource Collector. It helps you save so much time on refining logs. You might wanna build more than one Resource Collector. Refinebot will automatically refine logs from Collector at any position beside it. So maybe theres one Collector in front, at the back, and besides the Refinebot, up to you.
  
• So thats all the important bots. Now Cookbot. Idk if this bot is worthy to build for now. Cureently it have 3 recipes in there. 2 of them (burgers) does the same thing with different ingredients = fill up all you bars (hunger, thirst, and HP) to max no matter how low is them. Another one can be use to revive your friends if you play in a multiplayer world. In my opinion, for daily use, its not worth it to cook the burger as u need to time, energy to find and collect the ingredients compared to just eat the fruit that u have grow straight away. But these food cooked by the bot really helpful if u dont wanna die in Warehouse fighting with Tapebots and need to climb the elevator all way back to collect bag you items.
  
• Lastly, for the sake of cosmetics, Dressbot. all the clothes, gloves, bags, hats, crafted here are available for you across world and mode. So u can wear your favorite into your friends world.

#Warehouse Explore Guide

When you ready to enter the warehouse, there are TWO playstyle that u can use. But above all, of course you will need your spud ammo too, 5 or 6 stack of 50 is usually enough if you are a sharpshooter to one shot kill the Tapebots and can dodge their tapes well. So here are the playstyle when entering the Warehouse:

Confirmed Death Playstyle
As you already know or maybe experienced, Tapebots can kill you in 2 hits. So this kind of playstyle will definitely allow you to die in fight. So do your best in fight.

• You should really have a spawn bed (and of course slept on it) outside the Warehouse, either on vehicle or anyway you want. So when you die, you will respawn and re-enter the Warehouse right away.
  
• You should have a few ammo at your respawn point. If u died, all of your item including ammo, lost and left at where u died, but not your tools (including your guns). So if you died, you will have no ammo in your backpack when you respawn. This is hard for you especially when the Tapebot that kills you is alive and guarding your "death bag". So make sure you have a few ammo at your respawn point.
  
• When you died, your hunger and thirst bar will be at 20%, and your hp is like 60% if im not mistaken. Your hp does regenerate while you re-entering the Warehouse. Any food you bring from the first time you want to enter the Warehouse, DONT EAT THEM UNTIL YOU HUNGER OR THIRST BAR IS 0. This why, let say your hunger is like 5%, then you eat pineapple or even burger, it fill up the bar a lot. But suddenly if u encounter Tapebots right after you eat, and died, all of your bars will be reset like i explain earlier. So the food u just ate before u died, becoming a waste. So remember, JUST EAT YOUR FOOD WHEN YOUR BARS IS 0.

Pro Immortal Playstyle
Again, the Tapebots can kill you in two hits. You need to be fast to play like this. The goal of this thing is to stay alive until the end (reach the roof). You will need a lot of burgers cooked by your Cookbot depending on how good are you on shooting Tapebots and dodging their tapes, especially the explosive one.

• This playstyle doesnt required spawn point or extra ammo outside the Warehouse. As i said, this playstyle make u stay alive untill the end.
  
• Try to dodge the tape as good as u can.
  
• If you got hit once, try to run, or hide, eat a burger and continue to fight.
  
• If you want to save your burgers a little bit, u can run and dodge when being hit once. Your hp bars will generate enough for you to take the second hit. Continue fight, and when u got hit second time, u definitely wanna eat you burger.
  
• Try your best to dodge the tapes and one shot kill all the Tapebots.

#Other Tips

Some of these tips maybe actually a bug at current version.

• "Connect tool" works well with your vehicle as a "compass". When youre done exploring an area and wanna go back to the vehicle, use your connect tool to find the glow of your connections on your vehicle. Theres a limit on horizontal surface when you are too far from your vehicle you will not see the connections. Theres no limit for vertical distance for now, as the highest building in the survival currently a 5-Level Warehouse which is including the roof, its 6 level, yet you still can see the connection of your nearby vehicle using your connect tool. Well you can even check the vertical limit by your own using blocks.
  
• When you use glow stick on any surface, if you exit the game and reopen it, the used glowstick will disappear. So if if u use it as a beacon to find your way back while exploring an area, make sure dont exit in the middle of your activity or else you might lost your way.
  
• Dont waste your time and energy to trade Sawblade, Drill, and Soils from the trader. You can craft all of these using the craftbot with resources that is easier to obtain compared to farming and packing crops. You can get a lot of free Soils from "abandoned shops" by the road sides. Most abandoned shops got like 1-5 free Soils there. Go check it out.
  
• If you are on Unauthorized Farming countdown, and you exit the game, when you reopen the world, the countdown will disappear but it actually not. At 0000 hours the raid still will occurs. So remember if you are on countdown before exiting game.
  
• Never, ever, collect your Driver Seat from your full functioning vehicle. Your are not gonna like the result. The vehicle will suddenly move forward and will stop if it hit unmovable things or gone out of fuels.
  
• If you find a quite large forest or biome, such as a large burning forest or autumn forest (when you played for long enough you will know how large is a "large" forest), there must be a campsite with caged man at there. As far as i know, caged man doesnt respawn. So you need to do some exploration to find more.
  
• If you want to explore the forest but afraid lost your way back to your vehicle, you can use glowstick to help you find your way back after finish exploring. This method works well at night as glowstick are not helping much on daytime.
  
• If you want to explore far from your base (either the Workshop or your own base) but afraid lost your way, you can create a "beacon" using your death bag. Clear up your inventory and leave just 1 useless thing in there such as a block or whatever. Get some haybot to kill you at your base. Now you have a death bag at your base and wherever you go you will know your way home as the icon never disappear.
  
• Just follow the road and you should find every single "building of interest" in game. The road usually ends at a Warehouse. Go around the Warehouse and you should find the second Warehouse's gate connected to a road too. Now follow that road and continue your exploration.

#Be Creative, Have Fun ^_^

Anyway, enjoy the game. And remember, if you are in an elevator, "In case of fire, There are no stairs." ^_^

If you didnt satisfy to support me with badges, feel free to buy me a coffee.[www.buymeacoffee.com]. ^_^

PS: Ramai ke player Melayu? Kalau ramai aku nk buat guide dlm Bahasa Melayu jgk ni.. Klau banyak req kat komen, aku proceed.

[Dragon Fire 813]

Btw the caged farmers do respawn. According to the game files it's 30 ingame days after being traded in or destroyed (and yes, they can be destroyed by bots and harvest tools. Only the farmbots actively try to do so though.)

[Tyrax Lightning]

Ok, thank you so much for the response. :)

[Xtron135]

@Tyrax Lightning I think as far as I know, there is no way to know the damage on the structure until it is destroyed. But I havent been playing this game for a long time. Idk if this changed nowadays.

[Tyrax Lightning]

My apologies for the Double Post, but... Question: If your Vehicle gets hit by Bots and the hit parts survive the damage, can that damage be Repaired, does it auto-regen health back & we just can't see this in effect, or is all damage done permanent and we're screwed into never knowing which hit on that Part will be its 'straw that broke the camel's back'...?

[Tyrax Lightning]

Thank you so much for this Guide! :)

[Xtron135]

Dont build car early. Find the workshop first. Build a car with a bette rengine and tyre. If u use scrap engine and scrap tyre, it will drift like crazy

[TheoPart]

im 8 years old so I do need this I cant even build a car that dosint drift

[Kierteiyu]

The battery is in that big building on to path of loot

[Xtron135]

@ethanhep34VR Ive not playing this for a long time.So idk if new update changed it. But last time I played for this Guide, the battery supposedly around the ship. Just walk around the ship u should find the battery laying at the outer walls of the ship anywhere.

[ethanhep34VR]

where is the battery?