Best Way to Play

After getting through a pretty good playthrough without losing a single person and only killing one person (he was bugged out and stuck in door that I had to go through), here is some advice for a great win.

Controls

The game is controlled entirely by your mouse. And goes like this:
Left Click: Makes character move to certain spot
DoubleLeft Click: Makes character run to certain spot
Right Click:Used in inventory to select all in a slot, or when trading used to grab ten of an item from the other person.

Starting Out

Now that you know the controls you should know what you should do early game.
This was my third try and as a result I started in the winter, which immediately made my playthrough harder.

If you start in the winter gather up as much wood and fuel possible and try to get a hatchet (you can build one with a level 2 Metal Workbench) so you can chop up furniture to get more wood and fuel. Also you should get two heaters to keep your people warm or else you will get sick, and medical supplies aren't easy to get. The game usually throws you a bone by giving you medical supplies in your base but not much.

But if you start in the summer or just warmer weather you still need wood and fuel, but also another neccesity will be components.Components and wood will be required for almost all of the things you will build (except for electrical stuff like the mixer, thermoregulator, radio etc.) You want to keep up a good supply of these items never wanting to go below 20 of each.

Now your first few nights you should just scavenge places where in the description it gives no mention of other people like Shelled Cottage or places where there are just homeless people like the school and Decrepit Squat. They should give you the building blocks for starting your shelter to become something better.

Things to Prioritize:
Food
Medical supplies
Wood
Electrical Components
Components

What to build

As you start your first day you should start building. Start with a bed and metal workshop on the first day.(Heaters if you start in the winter)

The second day you should build a stove, and rainwater collecter (if you are not in the winter)

By day three you need to start building equipment if you haven't already. You need to have equipment (excluding lockpicks and sawblades), and weapons at home( you need bullets if you have guns). If you leave it at home if you get raided the people you left there will use it to defend the base. If you don't have any or not enough there is a chance that you will lose stuff or have one of your people wounded.

By week one you need to have your workshop leveled up to level 2 and you should have a moonshine distiller. Also a radio can only help you at this point (Radio tutorial: Left click with mouse on the dial, move mouse around to tune radio, and when you see a solid non-blicking white light hold it to get some news).

By the end of week two you should have a lvl 2 metal wrkshop, two rainwater collectors, animal traps, and you should almost have all the materials to make a lvl 3 wrkshop.Plus board up your breaches, and you should have 2 beds by now.

During week three it is best to first to first reinforce your door after maxing out your wrkshop. Then you need to build an alcohol distiller and an herbal wrkshop.

By the end of the month you should now have and herbal garden, two animal traps, lvl 2 herbal wrkshop, three rainwater collectors. and have a maxed out metal wrkshop. Also try to have some armchairs and maybe a guitar. Also stay stocked on filters, bullets, fuel.

Mid to late game Scavenging

After week seven in addition to getting what I told you to get I reccomend that you start picking herbs, gunpowder, shell casings, fertilizer, and sugar.

You will need these to start growing herbs and vegetables, making bullets, making mooshine, and making medicine.

Trading

Trading is a key concept and you will always need to do it so when you have the chance take advantage of it. It really helps to have Katia since she is a good trader.

Medical items like herbal meds, bandaids, and pills are very good trading items so that is why you need the herbal wrkshop to make these things. If you have herbs and alcohol, you can make the herbal meds, get some components and you have bandaids, but if you herbs and medical parts (broken pills) you can make pills.

Having working guns is also good I reccomend trading away any assault rifles and pistols and just keeping shotguns.

The garage is a great place to exchange medical supplies for materials.

Medicine will make it so you won't have to got to very dangerous areas meaning not risking your civilians which is always a plus.

Character advice

Have Katia do any trading related tasks.
Have Boris do scavenging in safe areas.
Have Anton set up the animal traps (faster time to catch food).
Let Marin do most of the building (cheaper).
Let Bruno cook the food, make moonshine, alcohol. (Uses less fuel, sugar and water.)
Let Ronan or Arica clear out hostile areas. Ronan is better in gunfights since he does more damage, but Arica is a great person for stealth, as she is nearly silent moving. (Both do 1 hit backstabs)

[roper2255]

This guide is pretty solid, but I would disagree with needing to build a stove and rain water collector. I have managed to keep all my people alive with minimum food consumption by just feeding every raw meat and vegetables. Yes, their status will say "Still Hungry", but it keeps the from starving without having to use a lot of food resources. The only time I would make someone fully fed is if they are sick or wounded so that they will heal better. I have done this on multiple runs and have gotten the perfect endings each time.

[Editfish]

Is this guide still accurate with all the updates and new DLC?

[LookinSpacey]

Bruno also uses less supplies when making meds in the herbal workbench

[Anderson]

The "U" key turns off and on the interface.

[Anderson]

Hey, great guide. There is also the TAB key to quickly cycle between characters.

[llamaface]

rmb makes you run lmb makes you walk

[SwitchY]

I made it to day 7.. still got all my people and doing decent but according to your guide I have played the game all wrong. I am going to try and do damage control now and upgrade my equipment and do a better job at scavanging. If I make it to week 2 I think I did fairly decent in my eyes. aha

[Akuu]

Thanks for sharing your experience. As I said every try is different, and the playing style is also an important factor. I'll keep in mind this tip for my next winter game :)

[mpeijzel]

A reason to build 2 regular heaters instead of 1 upgraded heater is that when you start in winter, you do not have the components to build an advanced workshop, a temperature regulator, and the heater upgrade in just a few days.
You may luck out by finding electrical components in your starting house, but often I am not that lucky.
People can try the tips from the original poster. Then, when you find yourself stuck, look at what is wrong, and take care of it, and remember it in the future. Everyone has his/her own playing style after all.

[Akuu]

Good starting guide with some helpfull advice to begin. One thing I don't agree is when you start in winter you'll have to upgrade your heater instead of getting 2. I've done this by upgrading workbench to lvl3 (for the regulator) and metal bench lvl2 to have enough fuel with the hatchet until upgrade. After that with 2 or 3 fuels a day you keep a warm shelter untill the end of winter.
By the way having 2 heaters needs too much fuel and scavengers have to spend space to get them instead of food or materials (it's my point of view). As every try is different this could be helpfull or not ...