How to Survive & Thrive In Your First Year - Beginner Tips

Day One

Time does not start on your first day until you place the base tent. Abuse this to collect everything that is not nailed down. Grab as much fruit, red and yellow bush flowers, wood, etc, as you can on your first day. Also mark any orange and white towers you encounter on the map. You’ll need these later, but for now, on day one, grab everything you can. When you run out of space in your inventory, drop all your items in the place you want to start your town by pressing Q or dragging them out of your inventory, then run around again grabbing everything gain. After you’ve grabbed literally everything you can and have a mountain of items lying on the ground, place the base tent down and then load up your travel bag in the base tent so that the items do not despawn. The travel bag has an additional 24 item slots. Place the visitor’s site and then when John visits, proceed to sell everything but the fruit to him. This early money will help you jumpstart your town.

1,000 Ways Not To Die

It’s Australia-ish. Everything is trying to kill you. Well, not everything, but mostly everything. The primary land-based hostiles are Bush devils, which are large black furry big tooth creatures found in pine forests, Wary Mu, who are based on the Cassowary, a large flightless ostrich like animal, and Crocodiles, which are found in the rivers. Crocodiles also come in glowing form in the mines, but that's for more advanced players. There are also sharks, but they generally stay in the ocean. You may see one flopping around on land, be aware they can still attack you and they do a lot of damage. Dingos, kidnas, frillies, and roos are initially passive until you attack them, but then will fight back. Blue jellyfish will attempt to sting you. Regular mu, which are based on brownish ostriches and bush turkeys currently have no attack ability. The flying birds, such as cockatoos and the dreaded magpie also have no attack ability.

Fencing prevents animals from spawning in completely fenced areas and animals cannot cross fences (there’s one exception: deeply submerged fenced may be ignored by animals). Fence off your town early on with crude fencing to keep the bush devils, wary mu, and crocodiles at bay.

You can also use fences offensively. A tin spear is a terrible weapon, but it’s all you may have and that’s okay. Setup a long row of fences and bait a crocodile to chase you. Jump the fence and then stab the croc with the spear through the fence. As the croc tries to walk to the end of the fence to get you, keep stabbing. Run back along the fence and then jump over it and repeat until you have some tasty crocodile meat, which when cooked provides a good health bonus. You can do this for all sorts of animals and fencing blocks the fireballs from bush devils. Be aware that you cannot do this with hedge fencing as the spear breaks the fence and the frillies area of attack will hit you through the fence.

The animals have very predictable attack patterns that you can time. Crocodiles will open their mouths before lunging, wary mu will put their heads down to ram you before charging, bush devils will open their mouths to launch fireballs at you. All of this gives you time to get out of the way, but as you’re learning these, don’t be afraid to use crude fencing to give you something to jump over and shield you from the attack. There is no armor and no shields in this game you can equip, but you can place fencing strategically.

Another alternative to dealing with crocodiles when you have tin weapons is a line of campfires as when the croc makes a turn around the fire, their tails will catch on fire causing damage, eventually killing them. Just don’t light yourself on fire.

On that note, placing your campfires in water will reduce how much accidental damage you do when you inevitably get to close trying to cook and light yourself on fire.

The game will play its own version of the Doom Music when you’re in the aggressive trigger area of a hostile animal. Pay attention to this to avoid being surprised.

Avoiding running out of stamina when swimming as you will start to take damage and will eventually get knocked out when you run out of health.

First Year Foods

One of the first things a new player should do is get the excavation license from Fletch which lets you then buy shovels from John. Take the fruit you collected on day one and the shovel you got from Jon and plant most of the fruit you acquired on day one by digging a hole, dropping one fruit into that hole (press Q or drag one item out of your inventory), and then covering with dirt. Fruit tree orchards will be a great source of money and food for you until you get your farm going. You may want to space your fruit trees one or two tiles away from each other as during autumn, mushrooms will appear on all soil types except for sand if a tree is in an adjacent tile. Mushrooms are good eats and good for selling. Learn more about mushrooms with this guide.

Fruit trees will take roughly between two to three weeks after planting to produce fruit. Quandongs, Lime, Banana, and Apple trees are all available early on. You should have access to a campfire early on, use that to cook fruit for better food, but work towards getting basic crafting materials to build a cooking table from the crafting table in Fletch’s tent and then make fruit salad from two of each of Quandongs, Lime, Banana, and Apple. Fruit salad provides a more energy and lasts longer than cooked fruit. It will be one of your best early foods for energy generation. You can also harvest cactus fruit, but they low value items, but a minor stamina regenerator when cooked. Do not eat cactus raw as it will hurt you.

Also invest in the brewing license from Fletch and use that campfire to make a billy-can kit. Billy can kits are great for making jam from fruit, all of which except for apple sells for more than their cooked equivalents. Lime and Quandong jam are good balances of health and stamina regeneration, but banana jam is the standout. For the low cost of 10 bananas and a billy can kit, you get 10 minutes of faster movement speed and 5 stamina per second. Between fruit salad and banana jam, your energy and health requirements should be taken care of. These are so good that you can even rely on them for the regular late game daily usage. You’ll want to invest in more billy can kits to make lots of jam both for consumption and selling to make dink.

Gimmie The Dinks!

In addition to selling jams to make money, get the logging license from Fletch and start cutting down the yellow and red flower bushes. Wattle, the yellow flower, and bottle, the red flower give seeds when chopped down and they can be replanted to form vast fields of flower producing bushes. These flowers can be harvested and then placed into the billy can kit to produce teas, which are good for stamina and health regeneration, but also for straight selling. The cost to setup a brewing facility is fairly low and you’ll never pay for the flowers, so it becomes pure profit. As you progress, you’ll be able to take those teas and turn them into brews for even better drinks and profit.

Now that you know about the animals, be aware that they are good sources of money. You’ll need traps and an animal collection point. Crocs, bush devils, wary mu are worth a lot when trapped and sent to the animal research center via a collection point. Get the trapping license from Fletch and start making simple traps. You can sneak into a wary mu nest at night when they are sleeping and setup a collection point near or even in their nests. Surround the top right corner with your basic traps (five basic traps total, as it's two per side plus the top right corner) and they’ll auto deliver themselves when the wary mu walks into them. Bush devils leave their nests to hunt at night, so you can also sneak in once they leave and setup a collection point with traps around the top right corner. Crocodiles are a bit harder as they’ll spawn in rivers and ponds. If you find an area that consistently has many crocs spawning, setup a collection point on the shore and then bait them into the traps. It’s an easy way to get lots of money early on as these animals are worth thousands with bush devils netting you 12,000 dinks apiece. You get the trap back in the mail the next day.

Get the rowboat from Franklyn and head towards the small islands in the northern ocean where you’ll find coconuts. Coconut is the most highest selling raw fruit, but first start a coconut planation, preferably as an expansion of your orchard. You can also brew them into a coconut drink which provides similar stamina regeneration as fruit salad.

Fishing is also a good source of food and money but can take some practice to get proficient at. Buy the fishing license from Fletch and get a rod from John. The biggest fish in the game, the shark will ignore the fishing rod you buy from John and the competitive fishing rod that Max sells twice a year and larger fish like Tuna, Marlin, and Golden perch will easily break the line of the beginner fishing rods. Focus on the small fish, waiting for the big audio “kerplunk” and then rapidly press but don’t hold the button to reel the fish in. When the fish struggles, slow down the clicking until it stops struggling and reel it in. You can get a fishing boost by cooking and eating the yabbies and shrimp critters found in the rivers and oceans to help you catch more fish. You can store your caught fish by placing them on the ground. There's a certain nomad that comes around the island and will buy your caught fish for a premium. Pay attention to the sound of a whistle.

Bug catching can also be a good source of money, but we cannot currently eat the bugs. Yet. Get the bug net from John or the superior competition net from Julia twice a year. Certain bugs are worth quite a bit of money and can be sold to John, Julia on the days she runs the bug competition and a certain nomad. No license is necessary

Summary & Check Out My Other Guides

With your belly and stamina full, the beasties under control and supplying you with money every day via traps, an orchard and flower farm producing food for consumption and profit, you’ll be on your way to the more complex aspects of the game. Work on getting iron weapons, better equipment like the barbecue, more ores, farming, and unlocking all the remaining licensees as well as moving NPCs into your town. There’s a whole world to this game and this is just the start, let’s make it a good one.

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