Vortex Survival Guide

A quick guide to help you get through the first few days in survival mode.

How to get ontop of the food and water situation, defence advice and vital resource locations.

Introduction

G'day everyone!

So you have just booted up the game, picked Survival mode and been sucked through a Vortex and dropped on an alien planet.
There is a lot of bad news! This planet is NOT friendly. It is full of nasty monsters and aliens of all shapes and sizes and mostly, they all want to murder you.
To make matters worse, your annoying friend, Mark was also sucked to this world with you. Sure he saved your life, but now his leg is broken so all he can do now is eat all your food, drink all your water fruits and complain. Oh, and remind you about the cute girl you will never date because of an alien abduction. Jerk.

The positives? There is Bamboo and sticks! Hurrah, you are saved!
No truly, you are - if you pay attention to this guide, or have wits of your own.


If you have played Survival games before, you will understand the concept of this game.
Basically, by day, you must forage for supplies and resources, explore and build defences.
By night, you had better be ready buddy, grit your teeth and get ready for some wave defence to see how good you are at throwing spears without cross hair assist.
The objective, is to keep Mark alive, while staying alive yourself.
To do this, it is up to you to stockpile supplies, build fortifications, lay traps and fight the nocturnal attackers with whatever weapons you have at your disposal.
Mark will not help, he will cry like a little girl so you, Alex, have quite a task ahead of you!


Daytime is not a stroll in the woods either, in general aliens wont attack your base, but there are plenty walking around in the woods and open fields, generally getting in the way of you and your precious resources.
Oh, and there is a Dragon. It doesn't like you, and as this isn't Skyrim you can't kill it. You can yell angrily at it, but to no effect.

I'm scared, hungry and want to punch Mark in the face, what do I do?

First up, resist the urge to smack Mark, he actually comes in useful when the sun goes down!
As to the question, what do you do? Well here, I'll tell ye.

So the game has just started, it's night-time, you have a Machete, lighter and a rock. Mark is blabbering on about something, but you know that to survive, you gotta hit the ground running.

I've noticed, that night 3 is when night attacks really pick up, some of the big gribblies come out to play, and in greater numbers. So, that's the deadline for you wanting to have some basic defences down.
The first two nights, including the one your dealing with now, are pretty tame. A handful of alien dogs and mutant men-things will attack, running straight for Mark.
Mark, at night-time does two helpful things.
The first, you know what the attackers want to do. Stop Mark from talking by using extreme violence. So they will head right for him.
The second, and extremely useful thing Mark does, is radio you/call out whenever the monsters are about to attack.
When it gets dark you want to be near your base, but you still have some time before the spear slinging starts for last minute harvesting. The monsters attack sporadically, a few at a time, then a small break before the next couple. As you survive longer the attacks are larger and more frequent of course.
So until you hear Mark warn you, you are free to do whatever task you feel is important.

When it comes to orientation, I will use Mark as my reference. His left, is the left of your base. The direction he is facing is the front/forwards, ect.

So when you first drop in, to Marks right, there is a bush at the edge of the light from the campfire. As you approach it, there will be a machete symbol hovering near it, that means if you cut it with your machete you can harvest something. In this case, an unlimited amount of sticks.
Sticks are the most important resource in Vortex: The Gateway. They are used in most constructions, and you make a spear from one stick. So, go ahead and hit this bush and gather as many sticks as you can before getting tired.
Now, you want to craft some spears. 8-10 will be enough to get through the first night easily enough. Click on the sticks in your inventory, bottom left all the blueprints that you can make using sticks will show up. The first, are the spears. Alternatively, when you first press tab and bring up your inventory, you can access all the blueprints by using the buttons on the right.

So, now you have some spears and are ready to take down whatever beasty comes roaring out of the tree line. You want, to harvest, more sticks! You will need ungodly amounts of sticks, so if you have nothing else to do, especially at night, stick farming is both useful and so close to your base you can respond to any threats immediately.
With the sticks you are accruing, you want to start building containers. Each resource has its own 'container'. You need these to store and cook your food, and to have a sane way to organise and have access to all your goodies without dumping everything all over the ground.
The containers that you want to, in my mind, prioritise are;
Bird meat on a stick and ribs on a stick. Sure you don't have any meat now, but very shortly you will and you will need a way to cook it to stop you and Marky from starving to death. (after cooking something on these spits you will need to harvest another 6 or so sticks to replenish the ones that burn out after cooking)
Next, meat holder and ribs holder. Ribs holder needs bamboo but you can place the object and place the required sticks ready for daytime. These racks hold UNCOOKED meat, giving you a way to stockpile food. Bird meat on the meat holder, ribs on the rib holder.
You want a stick holder and a spear holder. Fairly self explanatory. You have somewhere to store excess sticks, and a supply of spears on hand to quickly replenish those used during a fight.
Water Fruit container
Oil Fruit container (needs bamboo but you can atleast place it)
Animal Hide container (again needs bamboo, but you can start work on it)
Filling up the stick and spear racks, and placing a handful of other containers down will more than keep you busy for the rest of the night. Don't be afraid to build more stick and spear holders, you cant get enough of either. By night 5 you will be burning through 40+ spears.

Some things to note.

The cliff behind mark is a great natural wall, in my experience, enemies do not jump down from it so it is a safe bulwark. Apart from the Dragon but as it flies it doesn't really count.
I tend to line my containers against the wall.
If a monster destroys one of your containers, all the items it was storing are lost! Very important to keep in mind, losing your food stash can seriously set you back if you're not prepared.
Have a little gap between each container, and be mindful of the size. Selecting the container you want can be a nightmare if they are clumped close together.
Trying to cook some tasty ribs but accidentally lighting the fireplace you are standing on can be awkward.

Daytme!

Congratulations, you have survived your first night! Whoopee.

Now it's time for the real work to begin.
The most pressing concern is to get on top of your food and water supply as fast as possible, initially this can seem daunting as you race around through the forest chasing pigs trying without any luck to hit them with your spears, while Mark radios in mentioning he is about to die of hunger.

Look to the left of your base (that is, Marks left). Empty your backpack of everything but the necessities (so your lighter, Machete, 6-8 spears and the rock – you don't want to throw the rock away in case you die and have to load, it is important and finding another can be awkward. So head left, quickly you will come to a cliff, looking down you will see some water – there is your safest and quickest source of H2O. Rarely are there any enemies around down there, the odd bird or alien occasionally shows up.
So following this cliff face around (to the left) you will find a path down, head over to the water and grab all the water fruits. Feel free to drink one.
From the water, face your base. Go to the left of your current position, you will see a glowing plant type thing, head towards it. You will find some oil fruit, brown potatoe looking things on stalks. Grab them all.
These are my favourite light source. Four sticks and one oil fruit makes a torch that lasts ¾ of the night and illuminates a large radius. When it goes out, pop in a new oil fruit and relight, that easy. Much better than scrounging a pile of sticks for a camp fire that isn't as bright and hurts you if you walk over it.
From the oil fruits, look back to the pond of water containing the water fruit plants. Roughly north east of your current position, is a forested area. Run over there, but keep your wits about you. If there is gonna be a monster around here, it's in this area.
You will find three food fruits here. They look like glowing melons inside a large burst open cob of corn protruding from the ground. Eat one, take the other two.
Time to head back to base, in order to maximise productivity, cut down a bamboo tree and bring back the three logs.
This little round robin will become a morning ritual that you partake in every day as it provides you with three critical resources, food, water and light.
Back at base, use the logs to build an oil fruit container. Give the remaining food fruit and 4 of the water fruit to Mark and put away your other resources.
Quickly build a tent so you can save the game.
So, both you and Mark are taken care of for now, time to get on top of everything. Make yourself a batch of spears, 14+ should do it. Head to the cliff to the direct right of your base. Looking out you will see a rolling plain, and a large rock formation in the centre.
Within the rock formation is another pond containing two water fruit trees (so 6 more water fruit) and plenty of oil fruit. It is also an area crawling with nasty critters. Inside the rock formation are small bugs that spit acid or something at you. Behind and to its sides are bipedal humanoid creatures that you will encounter attacking your base at night. And far worse, are the Rhino-creatures that stalk the plains. These Rhinos are tough. They move quite fast, are very aggressive and take 8 spears to put down. Hence why you want to carry a heap of spears out here, you need 8 for a rhino, assuming you don't miss, and the humanoids take 3, again assuming hits. You want a couple of spares.
Time to hunt one.
Why? Two reasons. 1: They give a few pieces of animal hide, useful in construction. 2: They drop a few pieces of meat. Kill one and you are well ahead of the food curve.
The easiest way is to lure a Rhino to a large rock and jump on top, if it has no path up there it can't hurt you and you can spear it to death with impunity. If you have/want to face it directly – make sure you are not at all hungry or thirsty, you will need a close to full stamina bar otherwise you will run out of energy before you've thrown your 8 spears and it will gore you to death.
Once you have killed and harvested the rhino, dump the horns as you wont be able to use those space wasters for a long time.

With meat and hide in hand, cautiously venture into the stone and glowing mushroom formation. Craft yourself some more spears beforehand, if you need to. Find the waterfruits (on the left side) and take them all. If you have any more room in your backpack, grab some oil fruit, you wont need more than 6-8 spears now.
With your loot head back to base.

Deposit the resources and start cooking the meat. With all the basic needs met, you can focus on defences.
Traps are cool, neat and later very necessary. But for the first few days, your focus should be on a perimeter wall. The monsters come from all around your base making a bee line for Mark, spending resources and time on traps, and hoping that the random path will lead the attacker onto the trap is too much of a gamble and may interfere with your desired building plans.
With one exception – bone traps. You likely earned one or more piles of bones during the night. These are used for bone traps which are by far one of my favourite traps. They take up little room, and are super easy to build and reset during a fight. Once used, they only need one pile of bones to re arm, meaning you can harvest certain attackers to rearm the trap!
I use these inside my walls, a wall behind my wall so to speak. For starters, build one or two in front of Mark.

So now your going to spend the rest of the daylight farming bamboo trees to build your fence. My favourite fence is the 6 bamboo piece. The 12 piece wall sure is tough, but will more than double the time required to get your wall up and running as you roam further and further out to cut down trees and cart back the bamboo
You really want to start from the two sides near the cliff that backs onto your base, assuming you are going for the semi circle that I use. Often the monsters attack from the far sides, and you really don't want them getting into your containers. Losing a few can be quite crippling.
Build 3-4 walls each side jutting out from the cliff is a great start and will give you time to deal with any attackers that may come from those directions before they get into your cookie jar.

There is no chance you will complete the wall before night, but don't fret this night isn't much worse that the first.

Once you have finished those wall pieces on each side, I really think the best idea is to get started on building a large watch tower. Its a tough 'wall' piece, you can save the game using it and hide from the dragon inside it, but its main and to me, vital use is it's vantage point. Jump up top and you are safe to throw spears down at the monsters trying to get to mark/break down your wall.
You already have the spears and animal hide to make it, so get working on the bamboo!
You should get it finished before dark, and then its up to you to decide how you wish to continue working on the wall.

Things of note:
At some stage, you want to turn the rock you have been carrying around into a repair and demolition hammer. It's heavy, but you will need one.
When it comes to speeding up bamboo harvesting and building multiple things you should;
Place the blueprint of a few wall pieces at a time, that way when you come back with your three logs you can immediately place them and run off for more.
When you get to a patch of bamboo trees, cut down 2 then carry 3 logs back. Each time cut down another tree then carry the previous downed tree's 3 logs back, this minimises time spent not ferrying bamboo.
Build a bamboo container, its always handy to have a few pieces stored in it for making traps during the night, as various monsters drop materials, such as bones that can be used to make quick and cheap traps even during fighting.
Also, as the sun goes down, you still have plenty of time so you can cut down a few more trees and ferry the logs back to

Surviving, day in, day out

You have survived the first two nights, you have the basics down and the location of vital resources memorised.
You also have a half built wall which needs attention, and you know that tonight, things start getting a little hairier. Things like flower head monsters and giant zombie aliens start showing up to break faces and take names.

So, first head off on your little round robin to collect some water, food and oil fruits. Make sure Mark is stocked, and then go harvest bamboo to finish off the wall.
Include a gate if you want, but it's not mandatory as Alex is very athletic and can leap over the wall without breaking a sweat.

Once the wall is done, you can start looking at traps, or of course, upgrading the wall, building towers or whatever else takes your fancy.
The best places to put traps are, ahead of the wall section that is directly in front of mark, in front of any towers that you may be standing in, and on the extreme edges of your base against the cliff wall as they are the spots that the most monsters will come from.

When it comes to traps, the bones trap and barrier traps are great, they are quick to build and quick to rearm (barrier trap only needs some raffia), however they both need parts that you only get from defeated monsters.
Of the two regular traps that you will be building in bulk, there is the spike trap and spear launcher trap.
The spear launcher is definitely my go to trap. When a monster (sigh, or panicked pig) walks through the trip wire, the trap shoots out a devastating volley of 5 spears which has the punch to kill most critters in the game. The best part about it though, to re-arm it only needs 1 raffia and 5 spears, so even in the midst of a fight it is no problem to jump down and re-arm the trap as soon as it nails something.
The downside, it is expensive to build, taking 7 bamboo logs and some animal hide, as well as spears and raffia.

The spike trap is simple and effective. Something steps on the 'pressure plate' and the wall thrusts up and delivers spikey death to the monsters face. Ka pow! Building it costs 3 bamboo logs and 20 sticks, and re-arming takes a hefty 15 sticks, which is not something you can harvest in the middle of a fight. So in general, these are set and forget.
As a tip, stick holder containers have a capacity of 15 sticks, so if you have a couple of full containers you can certainly re-arm your spike traps mid fight. Just depends on how much prep time you have.


You want to kill any pigs you notice around your base, not just for the ribs and animal hide, but they are a gigantic pain in the butt come night-time when they run squealing into your traps right in the middle of an alien assault.

Golden rule – you want lots of spare sticks and spears waiting in racks. If you have nothing else to do, such as at night, farm sticks.

In-between alien attacks, you want to manage your stamina but still make good use of time. That is, you don't want to be too tired to throw a clutch of spears at the next monster that comes to eat you, but you don't want to waste good stick picking time.
For starters, don't be afraid to keep your food and water bar full, as you have noticed once you are ahead of the demand, you acquire more than you need. Even some of the big monsters drop a few pieces of meat. So while making repairs and picking sticks, I try to keep my stamina bar roughly half full, ready for anything.

Until Mark sais it's over, it ain’t over!
Normally around dawn, Mark will say something along the lines of 'Alex, I owe you so much for protecting me', he has a few different lines but all similar to that. Until then, the attacks are NOT over. Even if it's daylight, until he has made his thankful announcement, there is every chance a giant zombie alien will walk into your base and eat him ending your game.
In essence, at night, pay very close attention to anything he sais.

The Dragon is a jerk. There is nothing you can do about it, just try and keep an eye out. During the day it will fly around, and if it sees you it will dive down and try and pick you up, fly nice and high and then drop you. If at full health, the fall wont kill you but yikes it hurts.



Well that should get you started and prepared to face whatever the island can throw at you. Once you have everything set up, you will have plenty of time to explore and enhance your defences, so have fun.

As one final tip, many of the bugs can be fixed by loading the game (make sure you save first)

Good luck everyone, and let me know what you think of the guide.

[HunterKiller]

OK, if I can ever make one. Thanks

[Emperor Fooble]

Thanks for reading! It's been quite a few months since I last played this, but if my memory serves you can hit the blueprints with your demolition axe to remove them.

[HunterKiller]

Same question. Although, I'm not taking care of that dude so, I'm alone.

[phatal]

Nice guide. How do you remove blueprints that you don't want to build?