What am I supposed to do? - Beginner Guide to Tree of Life

A beginner guide on how to play Tree of Life, with some helpful tips.

Introduction

Tree of Life is a really big game already, despite being early access. You can go fishing, blacksmith armor and weapons, build a guild hall, and make a bunch of friends or enemies. But where do you start on your conquest of Tree of Life? Here's some basics that can help you out.

Off the Boat

The very first major decision in Tree of Life is choosing what boat you start at. Each boat is in three set locations: though none of them have an inherent advantage, where you want to go meetup with someone or go start your life is important since the world in Tree of Life is huge.

The first boat drops you off in the bottom left hand corner of the island, close to the southern plateau wastelands and the center of the volcanic looking area of the map.

The second boat drops you off in the bottom right hand corner of the map, near the wetlands and closer to the desert.

The third boat drops you off in the upper left hand corner of the map, connected to the mainland by peninsula-like islands and is near the northern wastes as well as the desert.

Masteries and Stats

Okay, so you now in the water and can actually move about - what next? Masteries. The mastery system dictates what you can and cannot do, how strong or how weak you are. Every mastery (bar Healing, Musical Instrument and Tactics) give some stats in either Strength (damage), Dexterity (Stamina) and Consitution (Health). However, no one can be a jack of all trades and able to do everything, since you only have 400 Mastery points. There are ways you can affect your growth that lets you develop yourself in the way that you want.

By pressing E (or keybinded equivalent to bring up inventory.), you can click 'All Masteries' to see what you are working with. You will notice that every mastery have three button underneath it: Up arrow that lets that mastery level up whenever there are points or a 'chance' to, the lock which -while you still gain exp for that level- keeps that mastery on that level, and the down arrow which means that whenever you don't have mastery points but have points in the selected mastery, they'll go down when another mastery wants a point.

A special point to make on combat masteries is that anything you can deal damage to can level that mastery. An example is using a dagger to mine a rock will give exp to both daggers AND mining. A special leveling occurrence I found is that killing Sharkmen give experience to fishing, so keep that in mind when you see some waddling around.

While it is important to specialize, there are a few important masteries that you might want some levels in, especially as a solo player.

The Big Three

There are three important masteries that every person should at least delve a little bit into: Carpentry, Tinkering and Mining.

Carpentry is a mastery that mostly works with wood but has another important aspect - with the Systems table, you can being creation of buildings. Cabin, Snow Shredder, Mining Site and Wells are all really useful buildings that help you expand into camp creation but also gives you a place to store items. Also with carpentry, you can build a Carpenter's building which can build into making Bows and Arrows and a Tinkering building which gives you access to locks for keep your stuff safe.

Tinkering is a bit of an annoying mastery to level up, but is very helpful. First off, the first low end weapons can be created here like the Crude Knife (a Sword) and the Hatchet (an Axe) that help give you a big boost in fighting. Tinkering is also important since at level 6 and level 10 you gain access to pencil, paper and scrolls respectively, which are used to create building plans. Finally, at the Tinkering building, you get access into building locks for your home which is a big bonus in the way of some protection.

Mining is the last of the Big Three since mining is critical for access into metal equipment, metal ingots and creating some buildings. With mining level 10 one may use 10 copper sculptures to create copper ore, in which one may put in a furnace to smelt copper ingots. These ingot are your breakthrough into blacksmithing, locksmithing, and used for some buildings as well. While other gathering masteries are important to work on, Mining is somewhat difficult since you need to set up a mining building in order to easily level, and that rocks are more seldom to come across than trees (in a majority of the map).

Tips and Tricks

Now that you know what you are getting yourself into with masteries, where the heck do I find some of the things to help me level? Fear not, for here is a list of things you might have been scratching your head over!

• Oil is found in tuna and whales via fishing, also Sharkmen (testing). Pigs also drop oil as well.
  
• Rope is found in the living flowers and vines.
  
• Paper, as previously mentioned, is via Tinkering level 6.
  
• Iron is found in the desert and near the volcanic region of the map.
  
• Sh*t is found by feeding pigs' pig feed and watching them snort and poop.
  
• Leather is found on animals (Wolves, Bears and Whales.).
  
• Tin plates are found on 'Corpes' of Sailor. (aka the unmoving skeletons with a helmet on its head.).
  
• Charcoal is made via burning firewood or lumber in a furnace or bonfire.
  
• Pen and Paper may be created at the Tinkering Building at Tinkering level 5.

To level Ranching, one must get love potions from Cooking and combine with feed in order to start breeding animals (Male and Female).

You may have noticed big rock quarries around the map. These rock quarries very slowly spawn big rocks over time, so keep that in mind.

On Skeletons and Zombies attacking your home - if you are online, light a fire at your bonfire and they shouldn't bother your little hovel, sometimes just hit and running will pull the aggro away and the undead will just walk around doing nothing rather than going back to your building. However, let's say you aren't lucky enough to be online during the devastation. Coins help rebuild your home, which can be found on all non-animal npcs.

For those of you with a bit more malicious intent when seeing that other player cut down a tree - be careful! If you do enough bad things, you'll turn into a criminal and rather than losing a single item when you die, you lose everything! Be prepared for the risk and sometimes the reward when you see the red names in the horizon. Also in the case you don't want to be a criminal anymore, just hover over the red mark in the inventory screen to see how much longer you will be a criminal.

If you feel like emoting, hold X and drag to the emotion. Z allows you to sit down on the ground if you need a breather.

In Closing

Tree of Life is a really big game, so run around and explore! There are a lot of things you can do, so get your toes wet in the adventure. Joining up with a group is not needed, as the game is perfectly fine with solo play. Most of the game is about leveling your character, since resource requirements for building is not as high as other game.

If there is anything else you want to see added that's basic, be sure to let me know! I will eventually put up pictures when I am not too busy.

[Wilmerding]

I got stuck after character creation and couldn't figure out how to start the game! When I hit 'back', it made me start all over with character creation!

[泉映黎]

s

[Elder Kai]

how do i join a guild

[edlangj83]

how to fix axe?

[Dagon]

Yeah but how do I even get to fun part right now I can barely ifgure out how to move an wolves are everywhere i have no energy no health no food heck something killed me as I tried to eat my last morsel of bread. Hope the deveolpers do something more with my waste of money I spent on game that doesn't even good guide for starting out

[CosmicMermaid]

3 boats? I only have 2 options?? :/

[LiL Diesel]

HOW DO I CHATTT

[rubiebegonia]

how do I make a fire?

[(:PP) H0linka]

Same queastion as Gulos29

[Gulos029]

Where do i get the bull mount from?