Warning, This beginner guide contains minor spoilers. IF you want to play without knowing anything about gameplay than I suggest you try the game without this and come back if you choose.
The first thing to make sure of when you are starting a new game, is that your island contains trees. You will need to build a raft, or better yet a canoe, as long as you can make or find a paddle. Use this to get you to a decent island where you can make a larger raft or a home base if you choose.
When you select a home base island I highly recommend making a rainwater collector from a turtle shell. I also line up all my coconut shells beside my water collector, as any open container can catch water when it rains. The water collector will hold more total volume. Water evaporates so don’t go thinking it rained and now you are good for weeks. By the end of the day your water could be all gone if you don’t find some closed container to store it in. Of course you can open coconuts for water. I like to remove the coconut husk, and then take the inner shell down to just a couple of hits so I can easily open them in an emergency. If you open them up all the way, again the water will evaporate.
Tools degrade over time, but that time is QUICK. Tools don’t just break like in most games, they will but it is more complicated than that. With every hit your tool effectiveness actually reduces. Harvest a large tree and you can see this very quickly. With the first couple of hits you will remove 100 bits of tree, after that its 99 bits, 98 bits etc. What this quickly leads to is your character is working overtime with worn out tools. You can sharpen tools by throwing them on the ground and striking them with a rock. DO IT. This will reduce the overall durability but you will get to use your tools for longer before they have to be recrafted. You can use a tool on an item when it shows a durability on the item, for example if you try to “axe” a rock the rock will show no durability but if you try to axe a plant it will show 100. Also when you hold down Shift it will show the worlds smallest help window as to what that tool can harvest on that item.
To make an item, select it from your crafting book and a blueprint will appear, place the blueprint on the ground and fill it with the required items. The items do not have to be placed in the order listed on the blueprint. They just all need to be placed before finally assembly.
You will want to craft the side pouch and backpack ASAP. HOWEVER do not try and swim with these items, you will drown very quickly if your inventory is heavy, or just with the backpack equipped. Cross small connecting islands on shallow water sandbars if possible, just “quickly” crossing a deep spot will cause you to drown.
Thirst and Hunger meters go up and health meters go down. So a perfectly healthy character will have 100 health and 0 water 0 food. A starving thirsty character will have 100 health 100 water 100 food. You will need to sleep, Don’t be afraid to take naps on the ground, but I find it most valuable to sleep until morning. The more rested you are the longer you can perform work. When you sleep on the ground you will not become fully rested sleeping until sunrise, but after you make a bed you will be.
Performing actions usually causes time to pass, for example when you finish a blueprint of any kind. Most of the time this will not be noticeable, your meters might drop while performing an action, where I found it makes the most difference is cooking. When you have a fire lit, and harvest a tree, or finish a blueprint time will pass in an accelerated manner possibly burning your food or causing your fire to go out before you food is finished. I recommend putting a fish on the fire and partially performing some actions to get an idea of how time will pass.
Another cool trick is you can harvest palm fronds without cutting down an entire tree if the palm tree is very short. Simply look the tree over and you will get a prompt that says palm fronds. The same goes for a fallen tree, if you back up about 1 log length away you can harvest the fronds without cutting up the entire tree. You can hold down the B for quick bases menu and C for quick crafting menu. You can add up to 5 items to each category, if you already have 5 it will not add another so deselect one then you can add a new one (stars on the menu show what is quick select accessible).
Salt, UG, one sure fire (pun intended) way to get salt is to boil water in a coconut shell on the fire. This will leave you with salt. Pick up the bowl and while holding it in your hand you can “put” salt on dried, cooking, or cooked meat simply look at the meat and you will see a mouse icon in the lower left side of your monitor that say “put”. After “putting” the meat will update to say with salt. Do not neglect salt it goes down slowly but you will start loosing health without it.
When building boats/rafts make sure to pick up the boat every time you add something to it. When you are not able to lift the boat it is broken within the game world remove the previous part. Do not place more than 1 blueprint on a boat at a time, add one part, complete it, lift raft. repeat.
Raft build tips, watch starting at 35 minutes if you don’t understand the above tip.
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