Beginners Guide

Getting Started
If you haven't already, please take a look at User Interface and Controls first, or have it open as you play. It will get you acquainted with the HUD and the controls.

The Escape Pod
When you first start out, you will be on the world next to your crashed Escape Pod. You may look inside that Escape Pod, just as you would a chest (Press the "E" key while hovering the cursor over it). After you open it, press P to pause the game: it will prevent monsters from spawning while you are sorting your inventory and action bar. Grab everything from it, because you are going to need to destroy your ship afterwards in order to scavenge the parts off of it. You won't be leaving any time soon.

Now put some of those items in your Action Bar. The most important of them to get you started and keep you protected are the Glow Torch, Lantern, Pistol, Glowing Bullets, Syringe - Healing Small, Escape Pod, and Flares. You can leave the rest in your inventory. Make sure to put the Ammo (glowing bullets) in the bottom row of the same column the Pistol is on.

Surviving Until You Get A Shelter
Use the Glow Torches. Put them on the ground around where you are working. This is a very important part of the game. The game is based on Light and darkness. In light, enemies become white (after some time) and therefore are vulnerable to attack. But not before. Also, light helps to keep them from coming near you. For now, since you don't have many, you might want to pick them back up as you move away from the area you are in and take them with you.

You can also use those Glow Torches to attack with, they will accelerate the process of making the enemies vulnerable to normal attacks, and they can be used to actually inflict physical damage.

You have a pistol as well. But it only comes with 25 Glowing Bullets. So use it sparingly. It works really well at lighting up enemies so they can be hit, it also does a fair amount of damage. But don't use it as your primary protection. Use it only when you really have to because those bullets will run out fast.

Your First Shelter
You'll need a building material for a shelter. The easiest and quickest one to get is Wood. So go find yourself a Tree, and get Wood. Just hold down the Left Mouse Button on the Tree trunk, you will begin using your Wood Axe on it, and then wait for the Tree to break.

Trees will give you Logs. You will then take these logs and craft them into Wood. You do this in the Resources section of the Crafting menu. Now craft that Wood into Wooden Wall and Wooden Back Wall. This is done in the Crafting menu under the section Building.

Start building! Make some Wooden Blocks and add them to your action bar. Just draw a box, or whatever shape you prefer, and make sure you don't forget the floor either. These are the physical barrier between you and the creatures outside, as well as floors for you to place objects on. Next make some Wooden Walls to place across the whole area inside of your shelter to fill in the background. Make sure you keep the shelter closed while you do this, so you are not attacked.

Now get some light in there. Place that Lantern down in the middle of the room, you can move it later. It's not going to light up until you turn it on with the "E" key. Then go ahead and place the Combinator in there somewhere and power it the same way.

Although you could craft Wooden Doors before you placed the Combinator, you really didn't need a way out until now. Build a Wooden Door or two from the Building section of the Crafting menu. Open up a 4 block wide wall on either side of your shelter and place the Wooden Door(s). As with most things, you can open and close doors using the "E" key. You can also pick up doors and other objects that you want to relocate using the "Q" key.

You can go ahead at this point and mine and explore. But if you die you will re-spawn back at the default world spawn, where your Escape Pod was. That may not be a desirable location. In order to spawn back in your shelter, you'll need a Bed. In your Escape Pod, you had 10 Leather. Along with the Wood you collected, you can build a Bed. It's in the Crafting menu under the section Furniture. Once you have crafted your first bed, place it on the floor somewhere in your shelter. The bed will also provide you with health regeneration while sleeping in it. So it's a good idea to sleep at any chance you get if you have low health. Of course, later in the game you will get items that will regenerate your health faster. That should complete your first shelter.



Now go out and explore the world! It is important while exploring to make sure you harvest Flower as they are needed for crafting and opening up that line of research.

Going Further
Ok, so now you have got a shelter and maybe explored a little bit. You will need to mine at some point. By mining you can acquire things like Stone to build better nicer looking structures, and Ores to craft more advanced items with.

First things first though, use some of that Tar you have in the Tar Buckets from the Escape Pod along with some of that Wood you got earlier to make some Torches. Go to the Crafting menu and select the Lights section. You will find the Torches there. Build some, sparing as much of the Tar and Wood as you would like, or use it all. Tar and Wood are easy to get. These are normal Torches, unlike Glow Torches, these use fire to illuminate the world. And they are made from materials you already have. You will need them when mining.

Along with mining for stone and ores make sure you take one of your empty buckets after you have used the tar, and get a Water Bucket, as that opens a line of research that you will need.

Mining
Go outside, or make a hole in your floor and begin digging down. Select the first slot on your Action Bar labeled "AUTO". Then position the mouse over the Dirt, Ore, or Stone and begin mining. Try to get some Stone and some Coal. Stone is useful for building, but you can also use it to build a Furnace. With a Furnace, you can turn those Ores you find into bars.

It's a good idea to take some wood with you on your mining expeditions. This way you can build Wooden Platforms and place them in order to get back up.



Furnace
With the Stone and Coal you mined, and the Scrap Metal you got from your Escape Pod, you now have the materials to craft a Furnace. Open the Research menu first and begin researching it. When it's done being researched, open the Crafting menu and select the Devices section. There you will find the Furnace. Craft one and then place it on the floor in your base.

It won't work just yet, so don't go trying to smelt some ore right away. You have to turn it on first using the "E" key. Once the furnace has been switched on, you should be able to melt pieces of Scrap Metal down into Tin. Copper is the first metal you'll research, and the first one you can actually mine ore for (There is no naturally occurring tin ore). Many of the recipes in the game require a special device, such as the furnace before you can complete them which will need to be placed and powered on before the recipe can be started.