The First Day

The first day is always the most difficult. Especially if you're new to the Cataclysm. This guide is intended to help newer players develop the proper equipment and skills for their situations, and to begin planning the rest of their journey into the Cataclysm. (This guide assumes that you're playing the game with mostly default settings.)

Arrival

Blink. Look around the room. You're alive and breathing, you'd be surprised at how long you can keep that up given patience, knowledge, and as always, a tad little bit of luck on your side.

(side note: you may make an offering to the RNG gods before you start if you feel particularly inclined to do so.)

Your first concern upon starting should be to smash a locker to bits. Keep on kicking and punching at it until it crumbles to your might, yielding a pipe for your troubles. Don't grow too attached as we'll soon need to turn it into something far more useful. wield the pipe if you haven't done so already and take a peek out of the various curtains surrounding the room by examining them, if you see anything that looks like it could pose a threat to your welfare make sure not to alert it's attention. Some of the most common early-game dangers are deadly animals, such as a wolf or a bear. If it is safe to do so, take a cautious walk around the shelter and grab a rock from the floor. We'll be using this to craft a makeshift crowbar, the all-in-one tool for breaking and entering, as well as not being bad at a bit of skull-crushing if needed. After scouting out your immediate area, head back to the shelter and use & to bring up the crafting menu. You can use the < and > keys to navigate the main categories and the directional keys to navigate the sub-categories. Craft the makeshift crowbar and head down the stairs to enter the basement.

The Basement

Keep your guard up when you enter the basement, there could very well be a zombie lurking in the shadowy corners of the room. Once you've ensured the basement is safe you can begin to search it, some of the most useful things you can find are:

• Various pieces of clothing, if it looks like it's warm and like it won't hinder you too much then make sure you slip it on before you head back upstairs.
• Light Wearable containers, this means that the container has to have an encumbrance of 1, or less. Don't stack up multiple layers of containers. If you aren't sure if it'll effect you negatively, you can compare it to real-life. If you can't dodge a zombie effectively with three backpacks on in real-life, you cannot do so in Cataclysm.
• Meds are a definite scarcity in the world of Cataclysm, so make sure to nab any that you may find in the basement. Some of the medicines that you'll want to keep an eye out for are first aid kits, antibiotics, pain-killers such as oxycodone, codeine, and tramadol. Bandages are a good way to stop any bleeding. You can find more information about the other non-combat drugs and their effects in the meds section. Don't take a drug if you don't know what it will do to you. It will be quite embarrassing if your "Master Ultra Slayer of Hordes" drops dead after taking one too many painkillers.
• Anything that you can drink or eat with minimal difficulties, and that you feel is a good use of your valuable space. A good survivor always carries around clean water and various canned goods. Food will spoil if no measures are taken to protect it from its environment. (Canning, smoking, curing, etc)
• Tools, such as a hammer, hacksaw, flashlights and lighters. These will allow you to make the most out of your environment, and are necessary for a very large portion of the game's crafting recipes. Sacrifice as much space as you can for these, as you never know what situations you might encounter.

When you're sure that you've salvaged all that you could out of the basement, head upstairs with < and prepare yourself for...