Tips and Tricks

Things that might help you when starting Return from Core

Tutorial

During the tutorial, you'll start off with a Splitting Pickaxe with 450 durability, that you will lose once you complete the tutorial. This is enough durability to mine most of the blocks in the tutorial area, but not enough to mine every possible block. If you want to hoard starting materials, consider using all the durability on it before leaving the Tutorial, through the hole the Train makes. Don't feel obligated to do so though, as the only materials you can find are Limestone and Copper Ore, which you'll find plentiful enough in the first Level.

Limestone will drop from any non-ore block, and Copper from Copper Blocks or drilled from Copper Veins on the floor in Level One. If your Splitting Pickaxe breaks, you can craft a Stone Pickaxe to continue whacking away if needed.

Funny enough, even if you break the Splitting Pickaxe, you will still drop it during the cutscene when you leave the tutorial.

Note: You may notice skeleton corpses lying around, you can break these for small amounts of coin to help you jump start your character in Level One. They will also drop Bone Ashes, which I believe only serve a single purpose, to fulfill a Side Quest in Core Town.

Endurance

You might find yourself wondering what is Endurance. Endurance is the curved blue meter in between your Health and Stomach gauge, this is used for performing Dashes. You start off with 34, but you can upgrade your Movement Talent later on to gain more charges. These will slowly recharge over time, but you can speed this recharge time up with Talent upgrades and/or Food/Potion/etc buffs. Note that while you can use Dashes to evade enemy attacks, it seems on-hit effects will still apply, as dashing into a Slime's spit will have you take 0 damage, but still get the Slowed debuff.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch appears to have increased base Endurance charges from 3 to 4

Old Joe

Upon entering Level One, you can find the next tutorial NPC nearby, Old Joe. He will teach you how to progress through Main Story Quests, and even provide you with helpful items to help you survive. Note that you don't actually have to wait for him to give you said items, you can actually craft them yourself from the nearby Crafting Table, but then you might run into a small problem- a few of the items he gives you are currently undroppable or unsellable, so you'll be forced to store them away somewhere as there's currently no way to destroy/trash said items outright.

Once you find mini-dungeons, you can then drop a storage container and stuff the items there before leaving to indirectly dispose of these duplicate items. Or drop them and try to flee before your auto-loot kicks in, but that can be kind of difficult.

Note that Old Joe also serves as a merchant, you can sell junk items to him for coins, and then use these coins to purchase useful starting items.



If you notice, the red box with numbers on each item will show the amount of stock the merchant is carrying. You can only purchase that amount from the merchant every day, resetting at 0:00, when the next day starts. With the starting coin you have, you can purchase a Copper Pickaxe to replace the Splitting Pickaxe you lost, as well as food or seed if needed. Even if you play with a world setting with the fastest hunger rate, you can subsist yourself quite decently by just buying Old Joe's stock of Wheat and Cabbage and cooking them into food items, once he starts teaching you how to cook.

Salvaging Old Joe's Old House

One of the very first quests Old Joe will give you is to go to his previous house and bring back three pieces of furniture to move into his new house. Once you've entered the glowing circle at the old house, you unlock the ability to pick up furniture, but you don't have to stop with just the requested three, you can salvage everything if you'd like.

This allows you to get more farm plots to grow crops, and also stock up on Wooden Walls and Wooden Floors to use towards a later side quest to expand Old Joe's current house. You can technically cheese this side quest though, by simply picking up and placing down existing pieces of his current house to fulfill the "craft and place # amount of [item]" requirement.

Shift + Left Click

One handy function you can utilize is shift + left click on items to quick-stack them into, or out of, containers, such as chests or furnaces. This is useful when you want to store things that the auto-stack button doesn't show up for (2 arrow button when interacting with storage units).

Hold Right-Click on Stack to choose Quantity

This is briefly mentioned in passing, so it might be missed, but you can hold right-click on stacks of item to narrow down how much of the item you'd like, strafing left or right on the green bar to select the desired quantity. Alternatively, if you want half, just right-click the stack to pick up half.

Farming Food

In Level One, you're introduced to farming and while it's quite simple to do, it can quickly become tedious as you scale up in how many crops you need to water three times manually with your watering can, before they become ripe.

Consider purchasing Wheat and Cabbage everyday from Old Joe to supplement your starting farmland until you reach Level Two and unlock Automated Sprinklers, which can automate the watering process for you, and make tending large amounts of farmland more manageable.

Shiny Blocks

While exploring the Level, you may notice Shiny blocks. These blocks will drop a random item or monster when broken. These can drop unique schematics for furniture or gear, as well as Parts or junk items that can be sold for 2,000 coins. Be careful, as the monsters can range from the weakest mob on the floor, to the strongest, that can easily chow down on an unprepared adventurer.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch either removed or nerfed junk items, as I don't see them pop up as much as previously, and I vaguely recall seeing a flower vase junk item sell for 500 coins instead of 2,000.

Mini-Dungeons

These intimidating-looking entrances are actually not that bad, and can be useful for completing kill [x] side quests given to you. They will drop you into small rooms filled with mobs that will aggro onto you, swarming you. Simply kill them all to proceed through them, they're typically 2-3 floors before completion, rewarding you with a random rarity box filled with loot. These can only be cleared once per day for each mini-dungeon, resetting at 0:00, at the start of the new day. These can also be useful for farming schematics for unique gear, such as the Rat series in Level One, an alternative gear set you can wear instead of the default Iron series.

Note that there may be a unique Mini-Dungeon on the Level that will have a different design, such as a Puzzle room with keys, or a room filled with nodes that will spawn an infinite amount of ants when you get near them.

Edit:
Major Update patch seems to have removed blueprints for the alternative designs, instead, opting for direct gear drops. You may find a random blueprint though, like I did in Core Town, but this seems to be unintended, and perhaps a bug?

I need Healing

Early on, finding sources of healing can be very difficult, or outright infuriating. The main source of healing are the Healing Dose Type 1/2/3 Potions that can sometimes be looted from chests or other sources, but are primarily sourced from the Monster Girls themselves. Once you've befriended them by raising their bond level to Level 2, they will start selling Type 1 doses to you, at a max limit of 5 daily, per Monster Girl. As their bond level with you rises, they might also start selling the higher Type 2, or Type 3 doses as well.



Later on, you may encounter merchants randomly out on the field, who will sometimes sell them, and once you've reached Core Town, you can also purchase them from Doctor Strange, who will sell them too.

Alternative sources of healing can be from certain food recipes, which confer a temporarily healing buff on you when consumed, such as Grilled Steak or Mushroom Hot Pot.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch changed food effects, e.g. - Grilled Steak no longer confers a healing buff anymore.



For the truly desperate, you could consider standing around a Bonfire, which heals you for 0.251% per second, standing inside a Hot Spring, which heals you for 15% per second, or sleep in a bed, which also heals for 15% per second. One thing to consider is just respawning yourself, as the only penalty is dropping a corpse which will contain everything currently in your inventory, excluding anything in your hot-bar, unless you've unlocked the final Health talent, Penniless, which nullifies this penalty. If you do not have this talent though, you can simply run back to your corpse and break it to recover everything. Note that if you die in a dungeon, your corpse will spawn at the entrance.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch buffed healing rates for Bonfire(0.25 - > 1%) and Sleeping/Hot Springs (1% - > 5%)

Another thing to consider is there's an achievement for respawning 100 times ;)



Don't worry if you die again while running back to your original corpse, as it appears you'll simply create another corpse to recover. I've confirmed 3 corpses, but there may be a limit before you start losing your inventory.

Monster Girls and You

Shortly after your encounter with Level One's Monster Girl, you'll unlock the Partner feature with Lilith. This allows you to raise your affection with the Monster Girls and eventually enables you to invite them into houses to live with you and enable interactions with them, whether it's sitting with them on a couch, playing a video game with them, or even peeking on them taking a shower.

The hardest bond level to raise, is probably the first one, Bond 1 to Bond 2. This is because the Monster Girl will be located at their starting location, which can be very far from the player spawn, and the only way to increase their affection is to gift them 4 gifts, daily. The lowest affection that Gifts can provide is 3, and it seems the maximum is 15. This means it will take at minimum, 9 days of constant gifts to raise them from Stranger to Friend, and be able to invite them into your housing.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch now has the monster girl spawn in your Base directly(after besting her, ofc), and heavily nerfed bond level requirements, with the first one requiring a measly 10 points. Even if you gift the lowest liked item (3 points), you can gift it 4 times (the daily limit) and instantly hit Bond level 2. Furthermore, since they join you from the get-go, they'll interact with furniture passively too for easy bond points.

Note that the ability to invite Monster Girls is tied to the Telegram furniture, whose schematics is tied to Lilith's bond 2 reward, meaning you will need to befriend her first before being able to invite any Monster Girl.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch removed the Telegram furniture and replaced it with the Camp Signal Tower which does the same and more, this is also obtained from the Blueprints that Lilith gives you as part of the Main Story Quest after she saves you from Mona.

That said, once you've invited them to your housing, it becomes much easier to raise their bond level with you, as this enables the previously mentioned furniture interactions with them, which will slowly and passively raise their affection with you, as long as you fulfill their desires.



Keep in mind that once you've accumulated enough affection to raise their bond level, you must perform the affection side quest to continue accumulating affection points, as it won't increase until you raise their bond level. Any extra points gained before raising the level will become wasted.

Aside from the previously mentioned ability to purchase potions from Monster Girl merchants at bond level 2, Monster Girls can also provide their Blessing to you for 1,000 coins. This will apply a 12 minute buff with a random effect from a limited pool, with each Monster Girl having their own pool to draw a random buff on. Note that bond level will affect the potency of the blessing, with a higher bond level granting stronger effects, and that you can only have one such blessing from each Monster Girl.

If you do not like the effect of the current blessing, you can always ask for another blessing to replace the existing blessing. As of this time, I do not believe the Level 5 or Level 6 Monster Girls will grant you any blessing, as it appears to not be implemented yet, and you may also need to constantly request a blessing with the implemented ones, as it appears to be bugged and will sometimes do nothing.

Also, all the blessings appear to stack.



Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch appears to have removed the Blessing function from the Monster Girls.

Lost Blueprint and Rupees

Part of progression is purchasing Lost Blueprints from Monster Girls, these can only be purchased with Rupees, which may drop randomly from mobs, shiny blocks, or even be granted as quest rewards. Keep in mind that while you need Lost Blueprints for progression, you only need a small amount, as there are only a few uses for them. For instance, to research all the Level One and Level Two tech with Lost Blueprint (Level One), you only need 73 blueprints total. Any extras will be useless and can be trashed.

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch removed Rupees, Lost Blueprints are purchased with coins like everything else. The required amount also seems to have dropped, as now you're mostly using the Super Drill components and ingots to unlock tech.

In the event you've accidentally burned all your Rupees on excess blueprints, you can simply farm shiny blocks or look for a merchant located randomly on a non-Core Town Level and see if they sell any Rupees, they will at times stock them to buy with coins. Keep in mind that they won't always sold though, so you may need to revisit after the stock changes at the start of the next day.

That said, Rupees currently only have one use at the time of this writing, purchasing the Lost Blueprints, so it's quite likely you'll end up with more Rupees than you can spend!

Thinking with Drills and Automaton

Before you go crazy with drilling everything in sight, keep in mind you will be able to unlock electricity in Level Two, enabling you to burn one fuel item to power several machines-

Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch now introduces Drills with Level Two, and it no longer consumes fuel items, rather, it's electric powered and serves as the inferior version to the normal electric drill. Furthermore, Coal was also introduced, serving as an easy to farm and very convenient fuel item to burn.



-and geothermal reactors and electric drills in Level Three, meaning you no longer have to farm fuel items to power your automaton.
Edit:
12/05/2024
Major Update patch pushed Geothermal Reactors back to Level Five, and in their place is Water Turbine Generators, which serve a similar purpose, albeit requiring a water source instead of heat vents.



Do enough to progress to the next level, and once you've unlocked these efficient means, you can then revisit the earlier levels and then go crazy with automatons.

Doctor Strange

Once you've reached Core Town, you'll have access to Doctor Strange, the Pharmacist of Core Town. He will sell a variety of potions daily, at times, with effects that you cannot find any where else. It may be prudent to visit him daily, if you wish to explore Level 5 without the assistance of a certain piece of gear...

[ruff1298]

@Fearthetaco Pickers need to be pointed to the source item (warehouse, the production machine), and then 180 degrees is either a conveyor belt, a storage item (the warehouse), or a production machine that accepts the item (i.e. Drill > Electric Furnace > Warehouse).

Pickers will only swing 180 degrees, and can only be used in two opposing cardinal directions. If you want to make L-shaped manufacturing, you need to have the pickers put the item onto a conveyor belt.

Underground Conveyors need an Aboveground Conveyor Belt to work. The Underground Conveyors effectively act as a teleporter within 10 spaces in a straight line, ignoring water, gaps, and walls, so they're useful to bypass construction and keep those spaces free for other things.

An example set-up goes:
[olist]
[*] Electric Furnace
[*] Picker
[*] Aboveground Conveyor Belt
[*] Underground Conveyor Entrance
[*] Underground Conveyor Exit
[*] Aboveground Conveyor Belt
[/list]

[Fearthetaco]

solid guide! know anything about the picker or conveyor system? playing around with them but havent figured them out yet

[st.eyeless]

Thanks for keeping the guide updated!

[aennly]

Thank you

[shotaimkiller]

thx