The First Day

This guide is up-to-date with 0.E (Ellison) as of Jun 30, 2020

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, learning all the basics that's necessary to their journey into the Cataclysm.

Notes

This guide assumes that you're playing the game with no starting inventory and with mostly default settings for consistency, i.e., evacuee scenario, default world values, no surrounded start and npcs. We recommend you start with survivor profession, but this guide is based around a start without inventory, so this tutorial is valid for any class that you may choose. We suppose that you have no starting skills spend in survival, fabrication and cooking. You may make an offering to the RNG gods before you start if you feel particularly inclined to do so. If you unfortunately started in a vandalized shelter you'll unable to follow this guide as it's said, because sheet is missing from windows, and you may have to play different, like raiding early for supplies, fell free to reset your world if you want to.

Basic movement

See controls

Arriving

Blink. Look around the room. You're alive and breathing, you'd be surprised how long you can keep that up given patience, knowledge, and as always, a tad of luck on your side. And just like you, another survivor is right next to you, watching you.

Your first concern upon starting should be to take a peek out of the various curtains surrounding the room by examining them unless if your shelter is not vandalized. If you see anything that looks like it could pose a threat to your welfare make sure not to alert its attention. Some of the most common early-game dangers are deadly animals, such as a wolf, black bear, moose or giant wasp. These animals have been the cause of deaths of many early survivors who went outside their shelter door ignoring the repeated warnings of the safe-mode.

If it is safe to do, tear down one of the curtains and look g for a stout branch. Now wield the stout branch because in a pinch this can be used as your weapon, next you'll need to catch the necessary components for your basic tools. So first it's time to craft a Makeshift sling because it's a good way to storage things whit you, and it'll be very useful later on. Just open the craft menu with & them use Tab to navigate around the tabs until you reach the menu ARMOR and select makeshift sling, just make sure be on a brighter area and close to the sheet that you teared from the window. Dispose that stout branch and start working in this makeshift sling. After complete, open your inventory and wear this makeshift sling, grab back your stout branch back and wield it. Now before leaving time to you take a basic look around your shelter.

The Shelter

This is where you start, one of the many government evac shelters. Notice that you can see things when you approach these lockers and cupboards and you can check them by pressing e, There you can found some useful things for your survival like the wrappers of protein ration, bottle of clear water, folded emergency blankets, emergency jackets, flashlights, batteries, lighters and few plastic & paper junk. These blankets and jackets are useful clothings if you don't have any, for example if the profession that you choose when making your character is a shower victim or naked and afraid, these items can be extreme usefull, as they're both naked, and this blanket gives him a better covering in early game. In case if you want to use it, pick up the folded emergency blanket, them open the inventory select the folded emergency blanket and hit enter and them activate it to unpack it, this item is quite heavy and has a high encumbrance (encumbrance is a debuff) so just wear it if you really need, note that jacket has less encumbrance and it's more useful to start with. Notice that your shelter has a console and a door that wont lead to outside, this door blocks a stair to the roof and this door is also locked. For now ignore this because we'll head to the basement.

The Basement

Now it's time to enter the basement of your shelter. Do so by standing on the stairs and using > to go down. It's widely known that these shelters were poorly supplied but indeed it keep a extreme usefull items. The basement is usually composed of 4 rooms, the main one where the stairs are, 2 bathrooms and a hallway that covers the stairs.

The bathroom is where the important items are, they can be in both or in just one room, but there is a guarantee of: First aid kits, this item can save your life, this item contain lot of medical supplies and you can access them by activating it, useful to all kinds of damage caused to the player. Keep this item in a safe place. Soap bars, useful items to clean filthy clothing, since you can aways loot the clothes from killed zombies. gallon jug of bleach and of ammonia too, bleach can be used in early game to craft some bleached bandages.

Now that you've salvaged the useful things out of basement, it's time to prepare yourself for the days ahead and in the same way that you get on basement you can leave too, stand in the stairs and use < to go up.

Improving

Although the stout branch can work as a weapon, we still need a reliable weapon to be able to put up a fight, as there *will* be times when your survivor has no options except to fight. (Remember that this is a last resort, because if you are grabbed by a zombie, not only is your move speed reduced, but you can get badly bitten, and being badly bitten is effectively instant death without disinfectant.) So it's good to collect everything useful, and bring it to lighter area, you can press \ to haul the items on your feet around, try keeping most of the items at least 4 tiles close to you. Now, check if you can craft a cudgel & (remember to press \ again to stop hauling).

Cudgel is a strong early game melee weapon, you may need to smash a bench to get the necessary materials, if you still cant you'll be needing to craft an stone knife.

Any tool with level 1 cutting can help you craft the Cudgel, so let's craft the stone knife, for it go outside and press V to find a rock, bring 3 of them with you. If you don't see one then wander around a bit until you are able to stand next to and Grab said rock, remember as you walk around use V periodically to check for items on your surroundings. Head back to the shelter, them disassemble & a long string into small strings, to disassemble an item you have 2 methods, you can pick it up G and them examine your item in the inventory and them disassembly it, or move into the same tile where the long string is and press B and choose the long string to be disassembled. Now check if it's possible to craft & the stone knife, it's located on the tab Others (If you need help in finding an item to craft use L to search for it), if not possible yet to craft check what items is still needed.

Creating the stone knife consumes the stout branch you were wielding, this means that for the next task, you will need more construction resources like wooden planks, wield the knife that you just crafted and smash a bench to get the few planks if you haven't did it before. And now with the planks and stone knife crafted avaliable you may be able to craft & the cudgel.

Now, you will need a place to cook food and store water. First craft a stone hammer. And them make a screwdriver this time you have to smash one or two lockers for ten scrap metal. Once this is done, you'll be able to use the construction menu * to deconstruct furnitures, this is a better way to get all the resources of a furniture, because when you smash it you destroy some of those resources in the process. Alas with both the screwdriver and hammer at hand or in you inventory, it's time to go on roof.

The Roof

To reach the roof, you must get thru the door, if it's locked, don't be afraid of smash the door until you break it, remember to wield the cudgel, because smashing almost anything whit your bare hands damage you. Once done, go to the stair and use < to rise there.

Here you usually cant find much items, but there's one important thing, the standing tank. Use the construction menu * to deconstruct the tank (Deconstruct furniture). After finished you'll get four metal tank (60L) and a water faucet, and this tank you'll be very useful later, you can haul \ them to the shelter or just leave it right there, now go back to shelter.

Remember that when you're deconstructing something you'll need both your screwdriver and hammer with you, because you need to have both a hammering tool and a screw driving tool, and both them meet the requirements.

Beyond the Shelter

Note that in your status that at that moment you must already be hungry and thirsty, and for you to survive this you must know how to prepare your food and clean water.

Your next step is going to request that you get ready to go a little far from your shelter. Then open your mmap and look for a nearby forest (marked by dark green F on the map).

Explaining the map quick @ is where you're, F is forest, F is Swamp, R is river an these < and > marks are houses of a city and you should avoid getting close of it for now, it's full of zombies. You can navigate on the map to know what each character in your map mean.

Upgrading

Check your fabrication skill @. If it isn't at least one, deconstruct one locker and keep deconstruction some benches, until you level up your fabrication skill, and don't worry all this wood will be useful later.

Now we're going to raise your survival skill @ to two. To this we're going to harvest food in the forest, but you shoulder consider a thing, going without anything bigger on storage than your Makeshift sling you'll have to do 2 travels to fulfill this take, if you want you can craft a second makeshift sling too.

Leaving the Shelter

Although the forest is not a very hostile place for the character, it is still a dangerous place, and can hide some very strong enemies, so if you are hearing speech from somewhere, don't go there! If you see cobwebs stay away, same goes for some wild animals that stay in the forest, do not get into fights with the animals for now. If the safe-mode warning appears, see what can be with the V and react accordingly, if necessary to run, press " and keep your distance from danger, running cost stamina, so plan your scape route before running around, it's better run between the woods until he just lost your sight instead running on a open field and be chased to death (' can be used to ignore the enemy that you've seen to start moving again), so when safe switch back to walk " and you should consider too waiting until you catch your breath. But if you unfortunately get caught, just press in the direction of the enemy to attack him, and good luck.

Now leave the shelter to the forest that you want to harvest.

Harvesting

Keep your eye open, if you find dead human bodies on your way you can check the corpse if it has some useful items with it.

On the forest start checking e the bushes if you're lucky it'll drop random things, ranging to food, crafting materials or junk. So collect what is useful including ten or so fiddleheads and keep checking the bushes until you reach level two in survival skill.

When done go back to shelter and Drop your loot in somewhere. your next and final travel is to get water, to it you'll use one of that metal tank (60L) that you get from the standing tank. Since the tank is too heavy, I recommend you drop everything you have with you but your clothes, them wield the tank and go to the nearest water source that you have, can be a river or a small pound in the forest (pounds are very common in forest). When near the source of water examine it and pour it in the container. Don't drink this water in this way, it must be cooked first or you can get poisoned.

Having the tank filled you'll notice that's way too heavy to you for carry, so while you walk back to the shelter you'll lose much stamina, if necessary wait while you travel to not hurt yourself.

Inside the shelter drop this tank somewhere, time to go back to the crafting.

Cooking

Let's prepare the place for you start cooking, you don't want to set your shelter on fire so craft & one Brazier and activate to place it next to the water tank. Brazier is a place where you can set fire and it wont spread around, so it's safe to cook anything on it.

Now you'll need a fire drill to be able to start fire, so craft it too. When finished, separate your planks and splintered wood to burn it, you can use the advanced inventory management / to prescisse choose what you want to move out from a pile of objects, move it next to the brazier and use the construction menu * to mark an area of firewood source. With it when the fire is about to run out you'll automatically place another to keep the fire going unless if you're not using the fire for anything else.

Now last step before you start cooking is to bring another one of that metal tank (60L) and place it right with the other water tank.

With everything in place lets start by examinating the brazier to start a fire. Open the craft menu & go to the tab food and lets start by doing a multiple clean water, to craft multiple times a item select it on the list and press batch, so do 20x clear water. When completing it pour c everything into one of your metal tanks. Now use E to consume the clean water until you get slaked. Now you need to take care of your hunger, open the crafting menu again and boil all the eggs that you collected, doesn't matter if you use normal water to boil the egg, so use normal water, same to cook the fiddleheads. Eat the cooked fiddle heads until you get satisfied.

To finish craft a makeshift pot, this tool has two food cooking quality and will allow you to do cooked wild vegetables, them cook all of them this food has a duration of 2 days and low calories, so you can eat them just fine later on.

Preparing for the night

It's probably already getting late by now and have you ever considered where you're going to sleep, the floor or the bench can work, but why not a bed, they're comfy and really help the character to sleep more easy, and you can do it. Makeshift beds requires a good amount of materials but it's easy to do. But first you need construction skill two.

Let's start by crafting things that may be useful in the future, like a washboard. The washboard is used to clean filthy clothes, and you can find lot of theses with the zombies. So open the craft menu & and start doing a washboard. Keep in mind that doing the washboard alone wont raise your crafting skill so much, but you still need to reach the level two, so you can craft other things that requires crafting 1 or just make some wooden frames, they use lot of resources but can be disassembled later to recover, so make 3 of them, at once (you may have to disassembly extra benches for this task). Since you don't waste resources doing this task you can safely learn your construction skill without wasting materials, so after constructing them drop your wood frame on floor together with the others frames and press B to open the butchery menu and choose to disassemble everything once, keep doing this process until you level up.

By the time you reach crafting two it's very likely to be already night, or too dark inside, but don't worry you can lite up some fire and use it to keep doing your tasks, or you can use the light of the console, it's weak but does the job, so hurry up and finish the bed.

Insomnia

It is already dark, but you are not tired. Trying to sleep while not being tired can be difficult, much more if you have the insomnia attribute, so what to do? There are alternatives:

Organize your shelter. After you have finished everything you can to spend the day your shelter can be a mess. Organize your items, separate them according to their type, then you will know where they will be in the future.

Read a book. Reading books can consume a lot of time, enough to tire you out and still give you some benefit. And it's sure to have a instruction book inside the first aid kit. Reading this book increase your first aid skills.

Craft things. Not the best of the options but if you want you can craft stuffs using the light provided from the console, you can slowly gain some skills if you choose the right crafts.

If you really do have the trait insomnia you'll have a very high chance of failing to sleep even when tired, requiring to you do something else around until you get very tired to sleep without any trouble.

To sleep just go on your bed and press $, you can do it whit or without save, it's your choice. Sleeping heal some of health and restore your focus, things that you'll need on next day ahead. But keep in mind it may be better wearing an emergency blanket before sleeping, to keep your body temperature comfortable, as encumbrance don't matter that much when sleeping your body temperature do matter. You can check your body temperature by pressing + here you can see the armors and clothes that your character is wearing and what temperature is your body, and lot of others stats, fell free to navigate around this menu.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have finished this little tutorial with the basics for your survival. You know how to create things, how to interact with your environment, how to eat and sleep. But that is only a fraction of what is still ahead in this post-apocalyptic world, so why stop here?

In the next guide you will learn how to fight efficiently against the most natural enemies of this world, zombies, as this will be essential for your survival in addition to helping you to obtain extra resources in the cities.