New Player Guide

Just a collection of hints, tricks, and suggestions, to make your experience of Aiyana better... from someone who really struggled to learn some of these things, to make it easier on newcomers to figure things out.

This guide won't contain any spoilers or secrets, but if people want that, I can work on a guide for that later.

Contents

1. Avoiding Starvation

2. Healing Damage

3. Planting and Farming

4. Fishing

5. Early Spells

6. Totems

7. Mining and Torches

8. Brief Guide on Entities

9. Brief Guide on Plantables

Avoiding Starvation

So here are the ways you can avoid starvation:

1. Collect berries off bushes, then collect the bush, and place somewhere on your base. Once at your base, wait for the grow meter to fill and then smack once to get the berry. Smacking again, takes the bush again. Totally safe to eat.

2. Kill creatures and eat the food raw. You will take health damage if you do so, so, make a cooking fire and cook it. Cooking it also raises the food given to you.

3. Fish for food; fish also cause damage if eaten raw. More on this in a later section.

4. Find chicken eggs and eat them. You won't take health damage from them.

5. Find raw vegetables growing and eat them. I'd only do this in an emergency though, as some wild crops are extremely hard to find, so its better to save them for farming. More on this in a later section.

6. Chopping down oak trees gives apples. Other trees give nuts, and some can be eaten safely, while others do health damage. In general, apples/nuts are better used in alchemy, but can be eaten in a bind.

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Later in the game, you gain access to recipes to make more complex meals that grant even more food and a food buff.

Healing Damage

Here is all the ways to restore health in the game.

1. Bandages. Can find sap off trees and sticky goo (or w/e) off insect kills or cactus trees in the desert. Some achievements also give sap as a reward.

2. Drain Life spell. Very close range spell, and can only target animals or hostiles. Takes a while to be useful for healing, but good in a pinch.

3. Resting fully restores health.

4. You will restore some health to a certain amount (I think its like 40% of maximum) after waiting several seconds at low health (39% or less).

5. Healing spell; this takes a while to achieve as you need a ton of combat perk investment to acquire it.

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The most common way I heal is Drain Life and not getting hit, so that the healing I receive doesn't immediately get lost.

Planting and Farming

Planting crops is quite simple:
1. Make yourself a hoe and bucket.
2. Equip the hoe manually (it doesn't auto-equip) and whack the ground you want to grow crops on.
3. Dig a hole for the water. Crops don't grow if they lack a water source near the tiled ground. Water provides watering up to 2 squares away (vs 4 in minecraft).
4. Seek out a water source, equip the bucket manually, and then lmb a water square.
5. Seek out your dug hole and RMB the bottom or sides of the hole, to place the water.
6. After a few seconds squares within range get watered, will become darker and hovering over with mouse shows they are watered and tilled.
7. Select the desired crop in your inventory, by placing in hotbar, and Q a square. Can hold lmb to plant continuously, to speed up the process.
8. Then wait time for the crops to grow.
9. Once the crop is fully grown (it will visually be bigger, with blue particles coming off it, and the grow bar will be full), lmb the crop to harvest it. You get 1 vegetable in the wild, but always get at least 2 when farmed. Occasionally 3, with high farmer skill, a specific perk, and farmer potion buff.

You'll also want to plant any saplings you find, in an area you will visit often. Some trees won't grow unless they are in the correct temperature range. You can craft a thermometer later on to tell you what the temperature is for your current region.

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Later game farming comes with a few conveniences.

1. After growing your own crops at least once, you can get Scythe. Scythe will harvest grown berries, without removing the bush, will harvest grass which is useful for later in composting, will harvest grown crops, won't disturb non-mature plants, and will even suck up the XP produced by grown crops. Very useful spell.

2. Later on you can get access to Grow Crops spell which massively eliminates the tediousness of waiting for crops to grow... especially pumpkins. I'm not sure if Grow Crops works on Saplings or Berries; honestly never tried.

3. Later on you can also do composting, which involves taking a raw fish with mulch (I usually use grass) to create a fertilizer. Fertilizers raise the quality of grown crops increasing raw food value and food value of meals they are used in. Different fertilizers work better with different crops, and is different for different worlds, so you'll have to experiment.

Fishing

Fishing can be done either with a Fishing Spear or via Bow and Arrow.

Early game its best to use a Fishing Spear as its cheap and a good way to build stamina. I usually make 3-4 of them, and toss each in turn and then go recover them. If you hit a fish, the spear floats to the surface. Otherwise you'll have to dive underwater and retrieve it.

Mid game, you'll want to fish with the bow, as its faster and easier to aim with, to hit moving fish. Also with arrows being cheap to craft, it doesn't matter if you lose a few arrows to the waterbed. Again, if you hit a fish, the arrow will be there, so you'll often recover an arrow that hit a fish.

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Some notes:

1. You do not earn fishing xp with the bow, but you do earn a lot of archery xp, which in my opinion is a lot better.

2. Water Walking spell can be great for grabbing fish that float to the surface.

3. Fish are needed for composting, so you may want to avoid eating them for food and stockpile them for later. Different fish make different fertilizers and you can find specific fish in specific biomes, so keep that in mind as well.

4. Game is somewhat forgiving on hitting fish with spear/arrow. You can be several pixels off and still hit them, as their hitbox is bigger than the actual fish.

5. If you are trying to get the Super Spear achievement, try to aim at a fish 15 blocks away, and aim the spear a block or two above the fish, so that gravity pulls the spear down and spears the fish. Best achieved by standing on the starter island and looking to the nearby shore and tossing the spear at a fish at the other shore.

6. Currently you only earn fish from fishing; no baubles or other goodies like in other fishing minigames.

Early Spells

There is 22 spells in the game. Many of them require heavy perk investment to get. One is earned by your first death. However, there are a few spells that I use constantly in the early game, and offer such suggestion here to make your life easier.

1. Drain Life = Good for some damage but also some healing. The ideal spell for hunting rabbits.

2. Scythe = Makes harvesting berries and crops so much easier.

3. Water Walking = Great for exploring, and great for fishing. Just be warned that while the spell is active, it is treated like ground, so you will take falling damage if you jump from sufficient height and land on it.

4. Enhanced Sprint = Makes getting around a ton less tedious.

5. Gather Pickups = Great for situations, like mining, where a drop appears just out of reach, and you want to "hoover" up the drops without mining extra blocks to reach it.

Totems

Totems are useful for several reasons:

1. You earn general xp to spend on skills, when you upgrade them.

2. It prevents enemies from spawning within its bounds, so you can work during the night without fear of immediate assault.

3. Upgrading grants additional inventory slots.

4. Eventually leads to challenges, which gives the ability to farm specific foes for creature drops.

5. Eventually leads to the creation of a portal, that can be used to reach lategame content.

6. Gives a sense of progression as you upgrade it and goals for reaching the next tier.

Mining and Torches

Mining is necessary to reach better tools, which makes life much easier and its the main form of progression in the game. Overall notes:

1. Different fuels for the torch will burn at different rates and produce a different torchlight. I prefer to use Magic Essence in emergencies, as its incredibly useful in alchemy and prefer to use coal in emergencies as well, as its great for smelting things or for making placeable torches (there is no charcoal sadly).

2. You can mine any block with any pickaxe. But if you don't want to be there for an eternity, you'll want a better pickaxe. Wood -> Stone -> Copper -> Tin -> Iron (currently the best).

3. Often I have to dig straight down to reach caves that go deep enough. Be warned that you may die from falling damage if you open up the roof and fall down. You can use the Hover spell to slow descent and a late game spell Emergency Parachute to usually prevent lethal falls. So dig a few blocks down, then dig forward and down, so that if you do open up to a roof entrance, you don't immediately fall to your doom.

4. There is no lava to worry about in the overworld, though there is lava and acid pools in the late game area through the portal unlocked via beacon upgrades.

5. Magic gems are found in a glowing green crystal and are used for attuning portals and very useful in alchemy. I usually save them for alchemy.

6. You can find Copper, Coal, Tin, Iron, Silver and Green Crystals in the Overworld. You can find Coal, Iron, Silver and Gold in the later area.

7. Midgame you can gain access to the Mining Light spell. It is very useful for exploring but its also annoying. The light source is like a firebug, so it produces an annoying buzzing noise. Sometimes I can ignore it, other times it drives me crazy and I then go back to exploring with the torch.

8. Lategame gets you access to Detect Minerals, which makes mining for Silver, Gold, and Green Crystals so much easier.

Brief Guide on Entities

Hostile:

Large Earth Elemental
Small Earth Elemental
Night Wolf
Wolf
Night Rabbit
Corrupted Native
Lion

Semi-Hostile:

Goat
Pig
Cow
Crab

Non-Hostile:

Chicken
Rabbit
Snow Rabbit
Sheep

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Also, incidentally, if you kill all of these, you can get the Master Hunter achievement. If you can't find all of them, some enemies in the lategame area count as well.

Brief Guide on Useful Plants

Trees:

Snowy Oak
Snowy Pine
Pine
Oak
Dark Oak
Redwood
Autumn
Willow
Acacia

and... Cactus. It counts as a tree, though it lacks wood.

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Crops:

Pumpkin
Lettuce
Tomato
Onion
Carrot
Red Pepper
Eggplant
Wheat
Corn
Potato

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Bushes:

Cotton (4 types; all same color, but found in specific biomes)
Red Berry
Yellow Berry
Blue Berry
Purple Berry

Final Comments

If there are specific questions that aren't answered here, and you want them answered, I might add to this guide, or later make a more indepth guide for things that don't really fit in a newcomer's guide.

Feel free to ask questions below though, and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

[Palandus]

@mparker28, check out my other guide, Achievement Hunter for a breakdown of everything in a biome. From bushes, to crops, to animals, and to fish. As many of that stuff is needed for achievements.

[mparker28]

Are the biomes that the different animal/crops/berry bushes found the same in each save, or do they vary? If they are the same, can you add that to the guide, or create a biomes section that lists possible flora/fauna? Thank you for the guide!

[Sacred_Chair]

Crap, was hoping to do that last. Thanks for the reply!

[Palandus]

Diamonds, unless something has changed, are only found in the chest that appears after defeating the Lava Lord in Lost Civilization.

[Sacred_Chair]

Any tips on how to find diamonds? I'm focusing on leveling up my totem and I'm not sure where to look; whether it be a bonus drop from minerals or a unique block type altogether.

[Palandus]

Updated the guide. Changed logo, fixed some typos and added two new sections.

[Laireon Games]

You can move beacons/totems one you place them down and they retain their levels.

The first one is free and any after that require magical gems to craft

[Terl]

That's good to know, thanks. Is it possible to move beacons and are they limited to craft?

[Palandus]

Yes there is. Its at the end of the exploration perk tree.

[Terl]

Great guide and i'm sure i'll return to it quite often. One question, is there anything like a teleport home spell?