Savage Lands Beginner's Survival Manual

Introduction

Savage Lands is a fantasy themed survival game with focus on resource gathering, crafting, building and cooperation. The game can be brutal and unforgiving, especially for beginners, so use this guide to help you conquer the Sundered Isles!

When you begin a new game in Savage Lands, you will need to create a new character and a new map. You can make as many maps and characters as you would like and can play on any of your maps with any of your characters. Maps and characters are saved separately and everything you do in Savage Lands is saved almost instantly so take care in the decisions you make.

There are three island in Savage Lands: Snowmere, Freydalyn and Jormungahr. Each island is a large step up in difficulty so prepare as much as possible before moving onto the next island. The focus of this guide is the starting island, Snowmere.

There is not a typical progression system in Savage Lands; the gear on your character is everything. Because of this, crafting the best gear you can is paramount to overcoming difficult environments. There are many items and pieces of equipment you are able to craft from the very beginning of the game, some more useful than others, this guide will help you sort it all out!

As a beginner, you will die many times in the harsh environment of Snowmere. Do not let it discourage you! Death is never permanent and you will always respawn at the last respawn pike you touched or at the starting spawn point. You will be naked and missing all of your gear after dying but you can run back to your corpse and recover your loot.

HUD

The Heads-Up Display is composed of three sections: the chat box, your quick slots, and your status bars.

Chat BoxThe chat box is located on the bottom left corner of the screen. Here you will see system messages and messages from other players. When boss mobs spawn you will also see a special notification here. The name of the location you are at is shown directly above the chat box. Pay close attention to area names, this is one of the most useful features of the chat box.

Quick SlotsAt the bottom of your screen you will see 6 slots. 5 of them are quick slots, which you can place any item or weapon weapon into. Use the mouse scroller or the number keys on they keyboard to switch between items or weapons in your quickslots. The left most slot is your offhand weapon slot. You can put any single handed weapon into your offhand slot. Be sure to always have a good weapon in your offhand because it will be most readily available.

Status BarsHere you will see your health, stamina, cold and hunger bars as well as icons for any active status effects like bleeding or disease. The top bar displays health and cold, represented by red and blue, respectively. As you get colder your maximum health will decrease so it is important to stay warm by using camp fires and eating cooked meat. The bottom green and yellow bar shows stamina and hunger. As you get hungrier your maximum stamina will decrease and restrict your movement. Cook and eat meat to ensure you have a large reserve of stamina to chase after game.

Most of the time, your health and stamina bars should look like the picture on the left. When your cold and hunger bars increase, they will cut into your maximum health and stamina as shown by the image on the right.

Inventory [I]

Access your inventory in Savage Lands by pressing I (as in inventory) on the keyboard. Items occupy slots in your inventory and most items stack up to 20. Certain items, like Stone, Wood Sticks and Frost Berries, stack to 200, so pick them up whenever you can. Weapons and armor do not stack.

Inventory space is limited and as a new player starting the game you will find yourself constantly considering what to drop to pick up something else. One of the best things for new players to obtain are bags. Bags occupy a main inventory slot, or quick slot, but expand your inventory with additional slots. Aside from the two small bags you can find in Snowmere as a new player, additional bags must be crafted. Crafting a good bag or two should be among the first things you do on Snowmere.

Buildables [J]

Blueprints for structures can be placed from the Build Diagrams menu, accessed by pressing J on the keyboard and clicking on the home tab. I do not recommend constructing a hut or house until bronze or better tools are obtained since it takes too long to gather the necessary materials with tin tools. Houses are really only good as chest rooms or AFK zones anyway.

Get in the habit of constructing Pikes of Resurrection everywhere you go, especially when exploring new areas. Pikes are essentially safety nets, sending you back to the last activated pike upon your death. If you activated a pike near the area where you died, you will not have to run naked very far to your body. The harsh and cold environment is deadly so camp fires are also very important to be able to construct.

Crafting stations are among the most important structures you can build. You can build everything you will need on Snowmere by constructing 4 crafting stations. They should be built one after the other in this order:

Crafting Table

Tanning Rack

Smelter

Blacksmith

Arranging your crafting stations close together or in a circle works well to allow access to multiple stations from one spot.

Crafting [K]

Nearly all the useful items and gear in Savage Lands must be crafted. Cooking meat and repairing weapons or armor must also be done in the crafting menu. Access the crafting menu by pressing K on the keyboard. There are 5 crafting tabs: weapons, armor, items, meat and repairs.

You can craft some items by simply having the necessary ingredients in your inventory. However, many items require a nearby crafting station. Crafting stations can be placed from the buildables menu.

Camp Fire Raw Meat ➜ Cooked Meat

Ice ➜ Fresh Water

Crafting Table Bark ➜ Tannin

Stone + Clay ➜ Stone Slab

Babo Mushrooms ➜ Babo Powder

Tanning Rack Animal Skin + Tannin ➜ Leather Hide

Smelter Tin/Copper/Iron Ore + Coal ➜ Tin/Copper/Iron Ingot

Tin Ingots + Copper Ingots + Coal ➜ Bronze Ingot

Iron Ingots + Coal ➜ Steel Ingot

Blacksmith/Forge Tin/Copper/Iron/Bronze/Steel Ingots ➜ Metal Weapons/Armor

Materials

Basic materials are required in order to build most structures and craft many items.

Wood logs are obtained from chopping trees down with an axe or hatchet. Bushes can be cut for Wood Sticks or they can be crafted from logs. Once you have enough Wood Logs, you can craft them into Wooden Planks for buildable structures like the Crafting Table.

Obtain Sinew, Strong Sinew and Animal Skin by hunting game. Sinew can be crafted from Animal Skin and Strong Sinew can be crafted from regular Sinew.

Stone can be mined from regular boulders with a hammer. In addition to Stone, mining regular rocks will yield Clay, Whetstone and (rarely) Amber. Clay and Stone can be crafted into Stone Slabs at a crafting table for buildable structures like the Smelter.

Flint, Coal and metal ores come from mining rock nodes. Rock nodes are special chunks of rock that glow red when you approach them. Nodes respawn every in-game day so return to them periodically! Tin Ore is found on Snowmere, Copper and Iron on Freydalyn and Gold and Silver on Jormungahr.

Survival & Hunting

Keeping your cold meter down and health meter high is essential to survival. After you are injured badly by an attack you may likely be bleeding. Bleeding is a status effect which will quickly drain your health bar and often lead to death. The only way to immediately stop bleeding is with a Basic Bandage so be sure to pick Sundered Cotton whenever you see it. Sundered Cotton will respawn after two in-game days. Craft Cotton into Cloth Shreds then make Basic Bandages from the Cloth Shreds. Keeping bandages ready in a quick slot will save your life!

Hunger is also a problem but should not be an issue as long as you hunt regularly. Boars are the easiest source of good meat for beginners. Dont forget to cook all your raw meat at a camp fire after hunting. Eating raw meat does not warm you up and has a chance to give you disease. Disease will prevent your stamina from restoring and lasts for a minute or two so it's important to be able to cure yourself of disease. 10 Babo Mushrooms can be crafted into Babo Powder at a Crafting Table. When eaten Babo Powder instantly cures disease.

At night, packs of wolves will prowl Snowmere and can be quite difficult to deal with. Try to avoid wolves until you are better equipped as they can take you down in just a few bites.

Armor

Getting clothed will keep you warm, extending the amount of exploration you are able to do in addition to reducing the damage you take from attacks. The most basic clothes are Cloth Clothing, crafted from 8 Cloth Shreds. I do not recommend crafting Cloth Clothing, as the required Cloth Shreds are better spent on bandages. Leather armor is superior and fairly easy to make. In order to craft leather gear, you must first build a Crafting Table and Tanning Rack. Collect at least 6 pieces of Bark by chopping thicker trees and turn them into Tannin at the crafting table. You can then take Animal Skin and Tannin and turn them into Leather Hide at the tanning rack. A Leather Cuirass only takes Leather Hides, Leather Strips and Sinew. If you want to upgrade from leather armor, craft tin armor using a Smelter and Forge. Tin armor is the best armor you will be able to craft on Snowmere.

Shields are incredibly useful especially for beginners. When used properly, shields can absorb almost all of the damage dealt to your character in an encounter. Depending on your play style a shield is not necessary but I highly recommend new players building a shield and learning how to use it as their combat value only increases when you reach the second island. Shields only work when you have enough stamina so if you are using a shield be sure to allow your stamina to restore completely before engaging enemies.

There are two types of armor sets: light and heavy. Light armors consist of cloth, leather and fur. Heavy armors are metal armor sets. A heavy armor set with the same damage reduction stat as a

light armor set will actually shield more damage from piercing attacks than the light armor set so the damage reduction value can be a bit misleading.

All the armor pieces you will be able to craft on Snowmere have encumbrance. When you are wearing armor with an encumbrance value your movement speed will decrease. Once you get to the second island, Freydalyn, you will be able to craft special light armor sets that have negative encumbrance values, increasing your movement speed. Negative encumbrance armor pieces are among the best in the game so keep that in mind when comparing armor sets. Once you get to the second island I recommend having two armor sets; a light one for getting around and a heavy one for engaging in tough battles.

Weapons/Tools

There are two types of weapons in Savage Lands: single and two handed. Two handed weapons reach further than single handed weapons and do more damage but swing very slowly. Currently, two handed weapons are inferior in every way to dual wielding single handed weapons so avoid making or using two handed weapons as much as possible.

Many weapons in Savage Lands double as tools. Hammers mine rock while swords, axes and hatchets chop wood. The most important tool to have is a hammer. Hammers allow you to mine rock nodes. Better hammers mine nodes faster, allowing you to craft better gear faster.

The first weapons you should make are two Stone Hammers and dual wield them. Dual wielding only works with single handed weapons and increases your attack speed. Dual wielding hammers decreases the amount of time it takes to mine out a node.

Once you build a crafting table, tanning rack, smelter and blacksmith you can build tin hammers to replace your stone ones. Make them as soon as possible because mining nodes with tin hammers is twice as fast as with stone hammers.

Metal weapons must be repaired with whetstone when they break. Whetstone is obtained by hammering regular rocks (not nodes). Be sure to always have some whetstone in your inventory, especially once you switch to tin hammers.

The other weapon I recommend using as a beginner are axes. Build one or two Stone Axes and use them to cut down wood and attack enemies. Axes have slightly better range than hammers so they make for better hunting weapons.

Depending on your play style you may also want to use a bow and arrow. The Wood Bow excels at easily killing whole families of boars and is also useful for aggroing single enemies from afar. A single arrow will kill a small boar and two arrows will kill a doe (a deer without antlers). The bow itself can be crafted from a Wood Log and Sinew while the arrows are crafted from 5 Wood Sticks and 5 pieces of Flint. If you choose to use the bow make sure you are mining every Flint node you find because you can go through your Flint supplies pretty fast!

F.A.Q.

Q: Evil Lord Kruul is near... What should I do!?

A: Lord Kruul is a Snowmere boss enemy that is encountered in Saval. If you see that message in your chat box it simply means you are near his spawn point. Do not fear, he will not aggro on you unless you get close, so you can postpone battle with him until you are ready. Defeating Kruul and taking his skull is necessary to open the portal to the second island of Freydalyn. The portal to Freydalyn can be found at the area on the coast between the Inferno Stone and Tuloca Woods, near the base of the Tower of the Wyrms Guard.

Q: I've mined all the Tin I can find, where can I get more?

A: The best place for Tin Ore in Snowmere is on the coast of Saval near where Lord Kruul spawns and can be safely mined despite Kruul's evil gaze.

Q: I've mined all the Coal I can find, where can I get more?

A: Did you check around the big rock that encompasses the Ruins of Meltok?

Q: Is there a map in this game?

A: There is no map for Savage Lands beyond community made ones.

Q: What is the burning hot boulder near the dragon tower for?

A: That is an Inferno Stone from which Inferno Stones Shards can be mined. Inferno Stones Shards are not needed until you get to the third island so avoid getting too close to the Inferno Stone or you will likely die.

Q: I'm stuck! How can I get out?

A: If you are in an accessible spot you can just allow yourself to die and run back to your body. Otherwise, you can host your game online and ask a friend who can teleport you out to join.

Q: I can see another island across the ice! Can I run over there by foot?

A: It is possible to run across the ice to the next island but it is very cold and dangerous. There are places where you can get trapped out on the ice and a misstep could lead to your death. A corpse in the middle of the ice is nearly impossible to reach naked so attempting to foot it to the next island should be reserved to experienced players.

Q: Can I get to the top of the dragon tower?

A: You can try ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Q: Can I fight the dragon?

A: Yes it is possible to fight and kill the dragon but not until you have made it to the third island.

Tips & Tricks

When attacking, the left mouse button can be held down to maximize your attack rate. Both the left and right mouse buttons should be held down when dual wielding.

Encounters with difficult enemies can be avoided by retreating across water or climbing a tall rock or structure. Enemies will not cross waist deep water and can not climb up on rocks (although they can travel along the ground through rocks so be careful!)

Make as many Boars Tusk Pouches as you can during your stay in Snowmere. These are the best bags on the first island and having 8 of them will expand your inventory to 80 slots instead of 8!

A regular Torch is not only useful for lighting up the dark night, it can also be used to burn trees down which provides quick warmth and some easy Wood Logs. Just hold the Torch (not Dim Torch) on a tree for around 5 seconds and enjoy your temporary fire!

Many burned and abandoned buildings, like the two at Rodan Farm, can be destroyed with a hammer. Destroying abandoned buildings will yield a few sticks and wood logs.

Jumping diagonally is faster than jumping or running straight forward. Use this to your advantage to dodge away from enemy attacks.

After he is defeated, Kruul will respawn as long as the portal to the second island is not open. Kruul's Oak Smasher is a rare weapon that he will sometimes drop. It is a one handed club-like weapon that mines rock and cuts trees! While I do not recommend trying to defeat Kruul repeatedly until you obtain one, it is certainly a nice surprise when he drops it!

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=688370327

Beginner's Survival Manual