Len's Island - Things I wish I knew before playing

Random assortment of tips and tricks to help both new and experienced players alike.

Intro

Given that Len's Island is still in early access, I found the in-game tutorial to be awfully lightweight and very few guides exist.

Therefore, this guide aims to highlight a handful of things I didn't see covered elsewhere that would've helped me on my first playthrough.

Enjoy!

1. Bees

• You can actually avoid them and any damage they cause simply by dodge rolling away from a falling tree. That simple.

Even if you get hit and it'll appear as though you are stun-locked - you're not. Bees act as a local AOE, which means they're avoidable.
Simply place your trust in the dodge roll to avoid most if not all of their barrage of -2's.

2. Fishing - How-to

• Just like with melee attacks, when the white circle appears you want to 'click' it before it disappears to reel in the fish. However...
  
• When a red circle appears, simply ignore it and let it pass on its own. There will be a white circle that'll come up afterwards. Clicking while it's red, will fail that fishing attempt.

Click when you see a white circle
Don't click when you see a red circle

Personal note: I was under the impression that a red circle meant my fishing rod wasn't high enough tier to handle the fish, and that a blue one allowed me to catch rarer fish... that's not the case, there's no higher tier fishing rod than the starting green one.

3. Fishing Locations

You get roughly 4-5 attempts per fishing spot Failed attempts do not count towards the total number of attempts per spot
Pond / Lake
Bluegill Rainbow Troute
Ocean / Beach
Sardine Swordfish Fugu Salvaged Metal
Cave
Anglerfish (See "Fishing - How-to" above!) Stone Coal

4. Making Coins - Centaine the Sorcerer

• Go to Centaine's house at night
  
• Sell Dark Essence, profit

This is more of a public service announcement:
If you've maxed out your storage capacity for Dark Essence, sell what you have so you can pick up more along the way.
Leaving your backpack full means you're essentially leaving free coins (purple orbs) all over the dungeon floor.

The following is an additional way of making some extra coin while you dungeon dive:

You'll find Centaine's house at the south end of town. She'll only appear at her house at night.
If you talk to her, she'll allow you to reset your skill points or recover your backpack.
More importantly, on her table you'll find a purple orb - interacting with it will allow you to sell x10 Dark Essence for 3 coin.

Personal Note: While not worth much, the more you dungeon dive the faster you'll accumulate Dark Essence and the sooner you'll max out your backpack storage.
I didn't find her till well after I found the need for Dark Essence at the Alchemy table and as a result left a lot of orbs along the way.

5. Making Coins - Flowers (Town lvl.1)

• Upgrade the town once, build a house for a villager and move the Florist in ASAP
  
• Collect any flowers you come across, plant all seeds, sell all flowers for 5 Coins a stack

Each villager you welcome, opens up a shop that allows you to buy/sell items relating to their profession. So while the furniture builder shop allows you to sell Clay/Stone/Wood, don't, because you'll need those for crafting.
Instead, the following is one of the faster ways of making some quick early game coin:

Early on you'll find roses scattered throughout your starting island, hacking away at them has a chance to drop seeds. Get them all!
Collect all necessary building materials to upgrade your town.
Build a basic house and move the Florist in. She'll setup shop the next day, going to sleep will fast-forward to the morning. Or...
Setup a basic farm - it won't take you long to get a few 3x3 flower patches growing, and you'll get decent XP per harvest too. You'll want a watering can next, until then each time it rains it'll help your crops grow too.
Profit! The Florist pays 5 gold per 5 Roses. You'll need 50 Coins to upgrade your backpack to double its size. Before your new batch of flowers blossoms, you can already sell any flowers you've hacked along the way!

Personal Note: Fret not, flowers don't come into play until late game alchemy and construction so don't hesitate to sell any if you need the extra coin.

6. Making Coins - Pumpkins (Town lvl.2)

• Upgrade the town a second time, build a house and move the farmer in ASAP
  
• Collect any pumpkins you come across, plant all seeds, sell pumpkins for 5 Coins a stack

Each villager you welcome, opens up a shop that allows you to buy/sell items relating to their profession. So while the Blacksmith allows you to sell iron/coal, don't, because you'll need those for crafting.
Instead, the following is an additional way of making even more early to mid-game coin (because you can't rely on dungeons alone):

The Forrest biome, it's that little dark green island on the left.
Early on you'll find pumpkins in the Forrest biome, hacking away at them has a chance to drop seeds. Gather any you come across!
For this to work you'll need to have the town upgraded to level 2 (Mining Town). Also ensure to build a house for the farmer and move him in.
Get farming - it won't take you long to get a few 3x3 pumpkin patches growing and you'll get decent XP per harvest too.
Profit! The farmer pays 5 gold per 5 pumpkins. You'll need 1000 coins for that final backpack. What you don't eat, sell! What you don't sell, eat!

Personal Note: By the time I unlocked the farmer I'd amassed hundreds of pumpkins and dozens of seeds, so the sooner you get shops up and running, the more ways you'll have to generate coin and the sooner you can work towards all the blueprints too.

And lastly, anything you plant and later harvest has a chance to double your seeds per harvest. So always plant at maximum capacity to maximise your yield of flowers and food.

> Shopkeeper coin limits

Looking at the above Pumpkin method, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that once the Farmer (or any vendor) runs out of coin from buying your pumpkins, he won't have any coin to buy any other produce from you either. You've hit the cap!

• There's a limit to how much coin a vendor has available to spend
  
• This limit (their max) does increase with each town level
  
• Coin recovery appears to be 40 coins per day (for the Farmer)
  
• Not selling anything for a few days allows vendors to recover coin slowly until their maximum

This is why it's important to also grow and harvest flowers as well as be aware of the other methods for accumulating coin, some furniture items cost upwards of 500 coin so every bit helps.

7. Making Coins - Lucky Jack The Pirate (Town lvl.2)

• Upgrade the town to lvl 2, build a house and move the Pirate in
  
• Buy the Treasure Map, find the treasure, profit

Jack unlocks the option to play Blackjack and gamble against him.

As gambling would have it, Blackjack (or any form of gambling) is not a reliable way of making coin - RNG is a fickle beast. The most you're able to gamble is 10 coins, winning doubles it, getting a blackjack nets you 25 coins.

However more often than not, you'll go bust or lose to Lucky and will be on your way to earning the 'Gambling Problem' achievement.

Instead, his value is in purchasing his treasure map (one of the furniture items he sells) and locating his hidden treasure using it.

The following is an additional albeit slower way of making some extra coin on the side:

Upgrade your town to level 2, build a house and move Jack in.
He'll set up shop just outside the inn, on the right side of his table you'll find the map - buy it for 35 coins.
Place it in your house and take a closer look. X marks the spot so find this island. You're looking for a red starfish that can be hit with the pickaxe.
The starfish resets every couple of days, rinse and repeat.

Personal Note: Blackjack is still more luck than skill based and chances are you'll lose more than you gain. The map is where you'll get reliable coin from.

Just remember that growing, harvesting and selling vegetables and flowers should still be your primary method for making coins.

Thank you!

If you made it this far, I really appreciate you checking this guide out and hopefully you found something useful within.

[ackadia]

Unless I'm missing something, they have since relocated Centaine to a stall in the third town (Shavar) and she no longer buys or sells dark essence.

(Release 0.9.041 ea)

[Moimee]

Thanks!

[CA$HG]

hot to tame a tiger ASAP!

[Drizzard]

thanks! the fishing thing had me ready to throw my controller at the wall. glad to see it included in your guide, along with everything else!

[Krow]

Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions, being Early Access and with Flow Studio's communication around the new big update, I held off on updating this guide.

I'll be looking at updating it some time after The Cursed Underworld Update comes out on September 10th. There looks to be a decent and noteworthy amount of changes coming, so a fresh save and a new start would probably be recommended.

[craftylaracroft]

Now you can plant TREES! I haven't played in over 2 year because of all the UPGRADES which ruined my HOUSE and other things. I was almost done the 1st cave when they keep upgrading the game and changing things. I did kill the BIG guy in the 1st cave. I was also did many other caves to get Items. So I gave up playing here. It use to be fun playing, now it is an ordeal to play a game they RUINED for HARD CORE PLAYERS. These people always want more and more in a game and ruin the game for other people to play. Just stick with WOW which was ruined by hard core players along with other games. Your information is okay but If you played years ago I was doing this all the time with products. It isn't new! The fishing sucks though!!

[Mr.Good]

@Krow, Cave pond also has a small chance to drop light stones

[Fluffy McBeardy]

Awesome Guide! Straight forward and well set out with useful tips and great explanations. Here, have some Steam points you clever Birdy!

[little.gb]

Thank you for the guide it is helpful!

[Atlantic Antic]

Thanks for the guide - very useful. If I can add one thing, always plant trees either together or in the foreground of your plots. Some crops located behind them may not be accessible immediately unless you wanted to chop down the tree early.