Basic Gameplay

= Introduction =
Creatures of Sonaria is a creature survival game that provides players the opportunity to interact with other users and sometimes NPCs (non-player-characters) in a colorful environment containing various biomes, a variety of creatures, and unique play styles.
The primary goal of the game as a creature is to maintain hunger and thirst levels in order to avoid starvation or dehydration and to ensure that its health does not drop below zero. Additionally, players can customize their creatures with unique skins, complete quests for special secondary color palettes, use Gachas to gain access to additional creature species, engage in combat, create or join packs, construct nests, or engage in the Trade World.
= Legacy =
== Starting Out ==
First-time players of the game are greeted with an introductory cutscene that explains the nature of the game, as well as the very basics of what's in store for the player. Once clicking through all of these, players are then given two creatures to choose from to pick as their starting creature, with each of them having their respective description.
Starter creatures:
* Momola, a poisonous herbivorous flier.
* Lissiceous, a toxic carnivorous semi-aquatic.
Upon picking the desired creature, new players are then immediately greeted with the creature's customization screen. After customization, players may either choose to play as their selected creature by pressing "Play" in the lower right, or return to the game's Main Menu. In the main menu, players may see their list of creatures, the "Trade World", and "Buy Creatures". It's highly recommended for new players to check the controls page to know how to get things done in the environment.
== Basic Symbols ==
=== Basic Survival Symbols ===
Once a player has decided to hit play, they will then be brought randomly to one of the spawn points around the map. They may notice the various symbols found on-screen, with most being self-explanatory. On the bottom-left corner of the screen, there should be five symbols grouped, which mean as follows:
* Orange Hourglass: Displays the age of a creature with a max age of 100. Once filled, the creature is fully grown. After reaching age 100, there is also a 5% chance that the creature may receive Glimmer.
** Age is filled over time, so under normal circumstances it takes the amount of time specified on the creature's growth time information in the main menu to fully grow, albeit this growth time can be increased or decreased through some effects and items.
** Age determines a creature's growth stage and how diminished its stats are, with the stats slowly increasing until reaching 100% once fully grown.
*** Juvenile stage (ages 0-33): the creature is quite small and lacking several model features, and sometimes even has a more limited mobility, like Momola being unable to fly as a juvenile. This stage is the weakest; juveniles are usually quick to lose hunger and thirst, and are without much defense, weight, or attack power, sometimes even lacking some special abilities adults have (or being weakened as well, like bleed, bleed defense, or restoration beam), but most of them will be functional by this stage.
*** Teen Stage (ages 33-66): once reaching age 33, any age mobility limitations get removed, but it's not until age 34 that the creature's model starts representing the new stage, attempting to grow and displaying more adult model features.
*** Adult stage (ages 66-100): once reaching age 66, most abilities that were restricted by age (such as Elemental Breaths, Snow Shield, or Warden's Rage) are unlocked, but it's not until age 67 that the model attempts to fully grow and develop all the adult features — including full gender dimorphism if applicable, which rarely appears before this stage. Once reaching age 100, all abilities that were still locked will be fully active (such as poison defense), and the player will have the opportunity to .
* Blue Raindrop: The Thirst bar. Drinking water refills thirst. If thirst completely depletes, the creature will suffer the dehydration status and lose health every few seconds. A low thirst warning appears shortly before this happens.
* Red Stomach: The Hunger bar. Eating refills hunger. If hunger completely depletes, the creature will suffer the starvation status and lose health every few seconds. A low hunger warning appears shortly before this happens.
* Green Arc: The Stamina bar. Running, ambushing, flying, swimming as a non-aquatic, and sprint-swimming as an aquatic all decrease stamina. Stamina returns passively by a set amount specific of the species and will regenerate faster by sitting, laying down or cowering. Some status effects and abilities can also regenerate or consume stamina. If stamina is depleted, certain actions such as running, ambushing, flying, and in certain cases attacking, will be limited.
* Diet Symbol: Visually describes a creature's diet. Hovering over or tapping the icon will make a small description of the diet appear. Diets do not only affect what items can be consumed for sustenance, but may also affect how the Thirst and Hunger bars are treated.
* House Icon: A house icon may sometimes appear next to the Red Stomach icon. This icon indicates the quality of shelter that a player's creature is experiencing. Any kind of shelter quality (with the orange shelter being the worst) protects against winter debuffs gained by standing outside in the winter for too long, while higher levels heal the cold status (yellow house and green house).
		
=== Health bar ===
In the bottom middle of the screen there should be a bar - this is the creature's health bar, indicating how much health (also called health points, hit points, or HP) that creature has left, with the remaining health in green and the lost health in dark red.
HP, unless under the effect of some status effect like dehydration, starvation, or bleed, recovers passively on its own over time, recovering a specific percentage of total health every few ticks. If a creature's HP reaches 0, the creature dies and the player will be sent back to the menu after pressing the "Try again!" button that appears.
A blue HP bar indicates that a creature cannot receive damage; this is used as both anti-spawn-camping protection for a few seconds, and occasionally as a god mode for developers.
Remember that a dead stored creature specimen cannot be played as unless a revive token is used to bring it back to life. An individual of a species you own being dead doesn't mean you cannot keep playing and creating new creatures of the same species. Dead specimens can be deleted from your slots as well to leave space for new creatures.
Also please notice that right of the HP bar, sometimes white text notifications in a red background may appear. These notifications may be useful for warnings or more esoteric information.
=== Breath bar ===
On top of the health bar, when playing as a creature with special ranged abilities, an additional bar appears called the breath bar. More information can be seen on the Elemental Breath section of the Creature Abilities page.
=== Status List ===
At the top of the screen, a list of most currently applied status effects will appear. Status effects can be beneficial or detrimental to a creature's survivability, so do not forget to hover over an unknown status effect icon to get an idea of whether it's doing harm or good. The environment and other creatures can apply status effects on you, so be careful!
* For more ideas about status-effect abilities, see :Category:Creature Abilities/Legacy.
* For more information about status effects, see Status Effects.
* To see category lists with status-effect creatures, see here.
* For a more complete list of each creature with additional information, see Creature Stats List.
== Creature Info ==
By pressing K, the Creature Info window will appear. This window will display some of the creature's stats while growing, as well as the base stats a creature can achieve by growing to a full adult:
* Health: this is gained gradually over aging, as previously mentioned.
* Max stamina: this value remains fixed throughout age, except under the effect of some abilities.
* (Walk) Speed: this indicates how fast the creature can move from point A to point B while not running, ambushing, or flying — those speeds can be found by checking the creature's stats in the Main Menu. The higher the value, the faster the creature is.
** Do not confuse with turn speed, which is a value that indicates how fast a creature can turn, with 0 being the fastest turn speed and higher values (like 7) being the slowest.
* (Base) Damage: the base damage a creature deals. Damage for all creature pages is pulled from the Creature Info window, but the actual damage inflicted on opponents varies due to a weight factor. The heavier a creature is compared to an opponent, the more damage that creature will do up to a limit, as described in more detail on the Combat page subsection.
* Appetite: this displays both the current max hunger/thirst according to age and other factors (left) and the max stat it can reach once fully grown (right).
* Mutations: a mostly-removed characteristic which will currently display 0/5 for all newly created creature specimens.
* Nightvision: this indicates how well a creature can see at night, with 1/3 being the worst and 3/3 being the best. Having 4/3 indicates the creature has a special ability called Nightstalker, which, while removing more night blindness, changes color vision during night.
* Tier: a 1-5 value. This gives a very rough indication of the creature's size and overall stats.
* Diet.
* Gender: this feature currently has only two values in-game, "Male" and "Female". Depending on gender the creature may have some gender dimorphism on its model, and will have a different mechanic unlocked when trying to place a Nest or Food Storage.
* Once a creature reaches 100 age, the option to become an (if not already done) also becomes available from here, located at the top of the box.
Note: the Creature Info does not display deduction of other stats, such as hunger or thirst depletion, stamina depletion, or health loss.
== Radar Minimap ==
Located on the top-right corner, the radar minimap is a useful tool to check the vicinity of nearby creatures that have their location visible, as well as your overall position. To read more about it, click here.
== Finding Food ==
Finding resources is a large part of the survival experience, as no creatures can survive without their required sustenance.
Water is easily found by opening the map with M, by pressing H to smell nearby water sources, or by visiting smaller pools of water which tend to be drinkable — currently, most water masses are drinkable except some top-cascades in the plains, the estuary, the salt flats, the surrounding sea, and the big seas.
Edible terrestrial plants will appear as bushes containing different kinds of fruit, which are easily found in open areas such as the Flower Cove and Plains. Seaweed will spawn underwater. Additionally, there are permanent plant sources both on land and in water.
Meat is generally harder to find, which can make life as a non-aquatic Carnivore or Photocarnivore more challenging. Meat can come from killing another creature, which can either be a player or NPC, or it can be obtained from Mystery Meat Co. spawns (small tier 2 carcasses that automatically spawn) and Doragonix tails. Players can be found all over the map, but may tend to go toward hotspots, such as the Desert Oasis. The use of the radar minimap can be extremely useful for finding players. Permanent meat sources are also available both on land and in water, albeit they are noticeably more rare.
It's also important to note that each creature does not only have a diet, but also fits into a terrain category, and possibly some extra habitat categories (such as Winter tag creatures), which can make finding food orders of magnitude easier or more difficult, depending on a player's gameplay style.
* For diets, see Diets.
* For more info about a creature's terrain category, see Mobility Types.
* For NPC information and locations, see NPC.
* For map locations, see Main World (Sonaria).
* For more information about food sources, see Food Sources.
== Shelter ==
Shelter is a basic need that protects against winter debuffs gained by standing outside in the winter for too long. By going into tunnels or going close enough to walls, players can gain some level of shelter to recover from those effects (at least a yellow house).
Shelter used to protect against Uncomfortability (now removed), which could be gained by ongoing dangerous weather such as tornadoes (now removed), or by being near same-sized or larger creatures. A high-enough level (green house) also used to protect players from getting dragged into tornadoes before they were removed.
* For more information about environment, see Environment.
== Other miscellaneous common buttons ==
While playing on the Map, other buttons can be found, related to other interesting functions such as Packs, Titles, Camera, enabling/disabling music, etc.
== Basic Combat ==
PvP (Player versus Player) is a major part of Creatures of Sonaria. In the game, both weight and base damage impact the amount of damage inflicted on a target. Larger creatures will tend to do more damage to smaller creatures due to their weight difference, and smaller creatures will tend to do less damage to larger creatures for the same reason. For the sake of fairness against spawn-camping, however, a shield has been put in place that gives temporary immunity from attacks for a few seconds after spawning, growing, and getting nested.
* For a more detailed document about combat information, see Combat.
== Other useful effects to know ==
=== Growth time modifiers ===
As mentioned previously, growth time can be modified by some other effects.
* If there are twice the number of carnivores than herbivores, herbivores age twice as fast.
* Under the effect of some seasons, some creatures may get a growth buff or debuff, such as Photocarnivores aging faster during droughts or herbivores during spring.
* The effect of some specific plushies can also accelerate, slow down, or freeze aging.
== Anti-Logging measures ==
As a measure to prevent loggers, multiple measures have been implemented, commonly called log penalties. Loggers are players who close their game window to immediately close their gameplay session to avoid facing consequences, instead of waiting for combat to end and then going to the menu.
The penalties are:
* If a creature's health is under 50%, logging while in combat will drop meat (in case the attacker was hunting for food, so they don't starve). This doesn't mean that creature has died, though.
* Special abilities and breaths are disabled for 10 minutes after rejoining, to prevent revenge loggers (those who exit the game to get to the same server fully refreshed and keep attacking the same target over and over again). The time counted is that while spawned in-game, meaning the time when waiting in the menu or with the game closed doesn't reduce the countdown.
* If a creature has more than 33 age and the player logs, the creature will lose 33 age.
** This won't reroll the creature's chances of being glimmer, nor remove already obtained glimmers, just remove the visible glimmer.
** If the creature was an , it will no longer be elder.
Please note that the mechanism that considers logging is currently a bit bugged and may mistakenly count Roblox crashing outside of a fight as logging, and fliers which were gliding without arrows to move may not fully count.
== Trivia ==
* Brequewk was the original flying starter before being replaced by Momola on December 23rd, 2022.
* During the early stages of official game release, Reviiaton was available as a third aquatic starter.
Choosing Starter.png|The two old legacy starters
= Recode =
== Starting Out ==
MyloTutorial8.png|Starter Creatures in Recode
MyloTutorial9.png|Customizing colours
MyloTutorial10.png|Scenting in important for survival.
MyloTutorial11.png|->
MyloTutorial1.png|Most creatures need water to survive.
MyloTutorial2.png|This is a status effect - many creatures and environments can inflict positive and negative ones towards you, so be careful!
MyloTutorial3.png|->
MyloTutorial4.png|Most creatures need food to survive.
MyloTutorial5.png|As important as spotting everything around is, concealing your presence is also vital.
MyloTutorial6.png|Performing the sit animation through V actions wheel button, something useful if your device does not support key binding.
MyloTutorial7.png|At the end of the tutorial, the damage block will lift - be prepared to avoid confrontation if possible until you've mastered the controls.
First-time players of the game are greeted with an introductory cutscene that explains the nature of the game, as well as the very basics of what's in store for them. Additionally, a Tutorial presented by a cartoony bidimensional version of Mylo will be played out, where players can choose between the following creature options, each of them having their respective description. All of them can be obtained later on the game with regular game currency: Shooms:
Starter creatures:
* Kaluaka, a sand-breathing all-terrain (semi-aquatic flier) carnivore with the ability to swim.
* Sochuri, a fire-breathing flier carnivore.
* Saukuryn*, a giant heal-breathing flier herbivore.
*Only as part of a starter premium pack which contains the three of them (Kaluaka, Sochuri and Saukuryn) for .
Upon picking the desired creature, new players are then immediately greeted with the creature's customization screen. After customization, players may either choose to play as their selected creature and continue the Tutorial, or return to the game's Main Menu. In the main menu, players may see their list of creatures, the "Trade World", and "Buy Creatures". It's highly recommended for new players to check the controls page to know how to get things done in the environment.
Once a player has decided to hit play, they will then be brought randomly to one of the spawn points around the map. As part of the tutorial, an special status effect will prevent taking and inflicting damage until completed.
== Basic Symbols ==
They may notice the various symbols found on-screen, with most being self-explanatory. On the bottom of the screen, there should be a HUD.
=== Creature HUD ===
The Creature Heads-Up Display contains most of the necessary info to know the status and wellbeing of a creature.
==== Health bar ====
In the top middle of the HUD there should be a green bar - this is the creature's health bar, indicating how much health (also called health points, hit points, or HP) that creature has left, with the remaining health in green and the lost health faded out in grey. By hovering above it, we can see more concise numbers (both decimal and as a percentage).
HP, unless under the effect of some status effect like dehydration, starvation, or bleed, recovers passively on its own over time, recovering a specific percentage of total health inherent to a creature's species every few ticks. If a creature's HP reaches 0, the creature dies, some addendum message or tip appears (either some motivational advice, or "YOU DIED!"), the Death Reward System script will reward the player according to their criteria, and the player will be sent back to the main menu after pressing the "Claim & Retry" button that appears.
As a measure to prevent revenge-killing and to dissuade throwing every single creature at an opponent, storage slots are temporarily locked for 2 minutes upon death.
A dead stored creature has two options: Revive, Restart, or be deleted. You have all three of these options even if you do not own the species.
To revive the creature to the state it was at before death (ie: age, mutations), you must use a revive token. Restarting will wipe your progress of the stored creature. If you do not own the species, you will need to pay a Shooms fee (trial price for males, x10 the trial price for females). Deleting the stored by clicking the Trash icon will clear that space for new creatures. If you do not own that species, you will lose that stored forever.
==== Stamina Bar ====
The yellow bar beneath the HP bar indicates how much remaining stamina we have. By hovering above it, we can see more concise numbers (both decimal and as a percentage).
Stamina returns passively according to a creature's specific inherent stamina and passive stamina regeneration stats. This regeneration can be made faster by sitting (x2) or laying down (x4) (unlike Legacy gameplay, cowering no longer offers any boost).
Running, ambushing, flying, swimming as a non-aquatic, non-semi-aquatic or non-all-terrain, sprint-swimming as an aquatic, semi-aquatic or all-terrain; jumping, darting and flying, ambushing, flapping wings as a glider or glider semi-aquatic and taking-off all decrease stamina. Some status effects and abilities can also regenerate or consume stamina.
If stamina is depleted, certain actions such as running, ambushing, flying, jumping and darting, flapping wings as a glider, and in certain cases attacking, will be limited. 
Additionally, if a creature unsuitable for water (that is, not semi nor full aquatic) is underwater and stamina is fully depleted, such creature will suffer "drowning" damage (damage caused because of total stamina loss underwater) every second, unless the creature's HP are below a certain threshold (as of 10th November 2023, if a creature has 5% HP or lwoer they won't suffer drowning damage). So in those cases, get out of water as fast as possible unless your creature's life depends on something inside water. Creatures suited for water do not suffer this stamina depletion issue.
==== Age Bar ====
This bar located on the bottom-right side of the HUD, displays the age of a creature; first with a max age of 100 and in an orange colour. Once filled, the creature is fully grown. By hovering above it, we can see more concise, absolute and percentage numbers.
* Age is filled over time, so under normal circumstances it takes the amount of time specified on the creature's growth time information to fully grow, albeit this growth time can be increased or decreased through some effects and items.
* Age determines a creature's growth stage and how diminished its stats are, with the stats slowly increasing until reaching 100% once fully grown.
** Juvenile/Child stage (ages 0-33): the creature is quite small and lacking several model features, and sometimes even has a more limited mobility, like Momola being unable to fly as a juvenile. This stage is the weakest; juveniles are usually quick to lose hunger and thirst, and are without much defense, weight, or attack power, sometimes even lacking some special abilities adults have (or being weakened as well), but most of them will be functional by this stage.
** Teen Stage (ages 33-66): once reaching age 33, any age mobility limitations get removed, but it's not until age 34 that the creature's model starts representing the new stage, attempting to grow and displaying more adult model features.
** Adult stage (ages 66-100): once reaching age 66, most abilities that were restricted by age (such as Elemental Breaths, Snow Shield, or Warden's Rage) are unlocked, but it's not until age 67 (and specifically until the creature model grows into the adult model) that the model attempts to fully grow and develop all the adult features — including full gender dimorphism if applicable, which rarely appears before this stage.
After reaching age 100, all abilities that were still locked will be fully active, there is also a 5% chance that the creature may receive Glimmer, and we are given the option to Elder.
* If a creature chooses to elder, the Age Bar will change - now the max age it counts to is 200, and it will gradually become purple the more it progresses to that new max age.
Please notice that while the age indicated is almost always the rule, abilities gained by growing into such stages only appear once the model has been updated to the appropiate growth stage, meaning that a creature pruposefully preventing model growth (f.ex. by living in a very small cave for the adult model to fit) will gain the adult stats but not their abilities until they reach an area where model growth is possible.
==== Diet Symbol ====
 Diet Symbol: Visually describes a creature's diet. Diets do not only affect what items can be consumed for sustenance, but may also affect how the Thirst and Hunger bars are treated.
This section is a work-in-progress and will be filled over time.
==== Appetite Bar Symbol ====
* Red Stomach inside a red circle: The Hunger bar. Eating refills hunger. Over time and acording to a creature-specific Hunger (depletion) rate, this stat eventually depletes. If hunger completely depletes, the creature will suffer the starvation status, lose health every few seconds, and their growth will be halted. A low hunger warning appears shortly before this happens.
** Unlike legacy's, this status reverses your health regeneration so it's actually hurts the creature, done in such a way that high HP regeneration creatures get a harsher HP drop than slower regenerating creatures.
==== Thirst Bar Symbol ====
* Blue Raindrop inside a blue circle: The Thirst bar. Drinking water refills thirst. Over time and acording to a creature-specific Thirst (depletion) rate, this stat eventually depletes. If thirst completely depletes, the creature will suffer the dehydration (Thirsty) status and lose health every few seconds, and their growth will be halted. A low thirst warning appears shortly before this happens.
** Unlike legacy's, this status reverses your health regeneration so it's actually hurts the creature, done in such a way that high HP regeneration creatures get a harsher HP drop than slower regenerating creatures.
==== Active abilities indicators ====
On top of the HUD, several abilities appear which the creature can use, vital in many aspects, from survival, to emoting, to performing actions when shortcuts or key bindinds are not available. These possible abilities are:
* Actions Wheel: allows to perform several actions without shortcuts.
** For more information, see Template:ControlsRecode.
* Strafing.
* Sprint.
* Jump/Dart/Glide/Flight.
* Other active Creature Abilities through the action buttons - 1 through 6; giving a maximum total of 7 active abilities.
=== Breath bar ===
On top of the health bar, when playing as a creature with special ranged abilities, an additional bar appears called the breath bar whenever you use up your breath. More information can be seen on the Elemental Breath section of the Creature Abilities page.
=== Oxygen bar ===
On top of the health bar, when playing underwater, an oxygen bar may be visible - this oxygen bar only appears in creatures that are capable of asphixiating. If they stay for too long underwater without going to the surface, this bar will deplete completely, and the creature will take asphyxia damage, a faster and more dangerous version of drowning damage which will not stop if the HP are below a certain threshold (it also stacks with drowning damage). Fortunately, this bar will remain full and will replenish as long as the creature remains on the water surface. So in those cases, always check the oxygen bar.
While in-game this is not totally clarified and sometimes some values are not mentioned, on the wiki this has been clarified by this:
* Full aquatic creatures with oxygen stat as "N/A" do not need this oxygen bar to survive.
* Creatures with 300 oxygen bar or N/A oxygen bar in the wiki, can obviously swim - but those with N/A do not need to breathe air. In-game, this rule can also be applied, albeit only if it indicates it has 300 or more oxygen, or if it has no oxygen indicator and is a semi-aquatic.
* For a list of creatures with oxygen bar, see Needs air to breathe.
* For a list of creatures without oxygen bar, see Does not need air to breathe.
=== Moisture bar ===
On top of the health bar, when playing outside water, a moisture bar may be visible - this moisture bar only appears in creatures that are capable of dehydrating by being outside water for too long, usually aquatics. If they stay for too long outside water, this bar will deplete completely, and the creature will take a special dehydration damage, which will damage the creature until leaving the dehydrated creature at half health; and causes stamina and health regeneration debuffs. Fortunately, this bar does not deplete if a creature is on the water's surface, and will refill and replenish as long as the creature swims below such water surface. So in those cases, always check the moisture bar.
* For a list of creatures with moisture bar, see Permeable Skin.
* For a list of creatures without moisture bar, see Dry Skin.
=== Status List ===
At the top of the main status box, a list of most currently applied status effects will appear. Status effects can be beneficial or detrimental to a creature's survivability, so do not forget to hover and click over an unknown status effect icon to get an idea of whether it's doing harm or good and by how much. The environment and other creatures can apply status effects on you, so be careful! You can also apply special plushie effects to your creature, which will remain visible on this area as well.
* For more ideas about status-effect abilities, see Creature Abilities.
* For more information about permanent stat modifiers, see Traits.
* To see category lists with status-effect creatures, see here.
* For a more complete list of each creature with additional information, see Creature Stats List.
== Creature Stats ==
By pressing , the Creature Info window will appear. This window will display some of the creature's stats while growing, experience aquired and necessary controls, as well as access to a help index through the top left corner button.
This feature has 3 different sub-menus:
* My Creature: displays your current growth stage and age along with the following stats:
** Species name.
** Diet.
** Tier: (Tiny (1), Small (2), Medium (3), Large (4) or Enormous (5)). This gives a very rough indication of the creature's size and overall stats, but quite useful for some tier-related abilities, like Latch or Grab.
** Gender: this feature currently has only two values in-game, "Male" and "Female". Depending on gender the creature may have some gender dimorphism on its model, and will have a different mechanic unlocked when trying to place a Nest or Food Storage.
** Mutations and Traits.
** Current Health: its max value is gained gradually over aging, as previously mentioned.
** (Base) Damage: the base damage a creature deals. Damage for all creature pages is pulled from the Creature Info window, but the actual damage inflicted on opponents varies due to a weight factor. The heavier a creature is compared to an opponent, the more damage that creature will do, as described in more detail on the Combat page subsection.
** Max current stamina: this value varies throughout age and under the effect of some abilities. Some creatures lose stamina over age.
** Max current weight: this determines your defense against many HP-damaging malee and ranged attacks (specially breaths) and varies through age, usually growing u with age.
** Current Appetite and Thirst Levels, modified by age.
** Speed: this field indicates several types of speed, depending on the creature:
*** Walk: this indicates how fast the creature can move from point A to point B while not running, ambushing, or flying. This varies through age as well. The numeric value indicates the number of studs per second.
**** Do not confuse with turn speed, which is a value that indicates how fast a creature can turn, with 0 being the fastest turn speed and higher values (like 7) being the slowest.
*** Sprint: this indicates how fast the creature can move from point A to point B while running through the sprint ability. This varies through age as well.
*** Glide/Flight/Dart/Jump: this indicates how fast the creature can move from point A to point B while using such abilities. These seem to vary through age as well. For flight and glide, the numeric value indicates the number of studs per second multiplied by 3.8.
** Number of Plushies equipped and their boosts
** Age Bar, indicating also growth stage and a customized growth image stage in the middle.
*** If you reached age 100, i gives the option to Elder.
** Funnily enough, and unlike Legacy version it does NOT display your nightvision stat, which indicates how well a creature can see at night, with 1/3 (Bad) being the worst, 2/3 (Okay) being slightly better and and 3/3 (Good) being the best. Having 4/3 (Great) indicates the creature has a special ability called Nightstalker, which, while removing more night blindness, changes color vision during night.
*** You wil need to find out while being on the Main Menu
* Survival Stats: useful content for the Death Reward System (including a counter of Death Gacha points) and to monitor your creature. However, some, like the number of revives used or disasters survived do not seem to count towards it.
** General Stats: Time played, distance travelled, missions completed, food consumed, water consumed, disasters survived and tokens collected.
** Combat Stats: number of PvP kills, damage inflicted and received, number of times abilities and revives were used.
* Controls: gives a list of PC controls usable by this creature in particular, along with a short description of them.
KMyCreaturesRecode25thNovember2023.png|My Creature
KMySurvivalStats25thNovember2023.png|Survival Stats
KControlsFirstPage25thNovember2023.png|Controls, first part.
KControlsSecondPage25thNovember2023.png|Controls, second part.
== Radar Minimap ==
Located on the top-right corner, the radar minimap is a useful tool to check the vicinity of nearby creatures that have their location visible, as well as your overall position, day/night cycle, season, weather and biome, as well as the shelter system indicator.
* To know more about radar and minimap, click here.
=== Shelter System ===
Unlike legacy, the Shelter System is available only during natural disasters, and shows if your creature is sheltered or not. For example, during a volcanic eruption, if your creature stays outside, shelter icon will be shown red, and if it stays in a cave, it will be green.
DisabledShelterIconRecode.png|Shelter icon when shelter disabled.
RedShelterIconRecode.png|Shelter icon when shelters enabled, not in shelter.
GreenShelterIconRecode.png|Shelter icon when shelters enabled, in shelter.
== Other miscellaneous common buttons ==
While playing on the Map, other buttons can be found, related to other interesting functions such as Packs, Titles, checking more advanced information, etc.
== Finding Food and Water ==
Finding resources is a large part of the survival experience, as no creatures can survive without their required sustenance.
Water and several static meat and vegetable food sources can be easily found by opening the map with M. Additionally, by pressing H you can scent nearby water and food sources, with most smaller pools of water usually being drinkable.
Edible fruits will appear as bushes containing different kinds of fruit and berries will appear as smaller pink herbs. Seaweed and will spawn underwater. Additionally, there are permanent infinite plant sources both on land and in water, albeit unlike fruits, berries and seaweed, they won't give special boosts for being eaten. Something which should be important to mention is that Photovores and Photocarnivores creatures are not free of predation by herbivores or omnivores, due to the fact that some drop a plant carcass as well, edible by both carnivores and herbivores and providing the same boost.
Meat lacks permanent infinite sources of food, which can make life as a Carnivore or Photocarnivore slightly more challenging. However, there are tons of static meat sources on both land and water that regenerate over time: carcass and ribs - the only diference between them is that carcass pieces can be taken out, while ribs cannot -, and autotomized Doragonix tails. Meat can also come from dead creatures, in that case it will offer specific boosts to the consumer, mainly a better satiation, which means hunger will deplete more slowly. Autotomized pieces also provide this boost. Players can be found all over the map, but may tend to go toward biomes, where specific quests are available that provide extra currency. The use of the radar minimap can be extremely useful for finding players.
It's also important to note that each creature does not only have a diet, but also fits into a terrain category, and possibly some extra habitat categories (such as Winter tag creatures), which can make finding food orders of magnitude easier or more difficult, depending on a player's gameplay style.
* For diets, see Diets.
* For more info about a creature's terrain category, see Mobility Types.
* For map locations, see Main World (Sonaria)#Recode Mode.
* For more information about food sources, see Food Sources.
== Environmental Hazards ==
Unlike Legacy Gameplay, environmental hazards are a far more prominent, frequent and dangerous survival aspect of the game, meaning that you'll have to be consantly prepared for them, specially natural disasters. Each one has their own peculiarity, so it is advised to check related information located in Main World (Sonaria), Environment, as well as some tips on the Combat page.
=== Water Quality ===
 Unlike legacy gameplay, drinkable water sources now degrade as more creatures drink from it. As water degrades, it will slowly begin to lose its blue color, turning brown as it reaches its lowest point. Color will not begin to change until the water quality becomes very low, making it difficult to tell the exact quality of a source of water from a distance. While water quality will slowly replenish naturally over time, rain will instantly raise all drinkable water quality by a substantial amount. Larger water sources will also take longer to degrade.
Drinkable water can buff or debuff a creature depending on its quality. Low quality, dirty water will inflict the "sickly" ailment and is drunk slowly by the player creature. Water of an exceptionally high quality (above 90%) will inflict "clean water" for a brief duration (60 seconds), an ailment that is the inverse of sickly and buffs the player by reducing thirst and hunger depletion by 20%, and increasing stamina and health regeneration by 20%. All water sources which fall in between this range have no additional effects on a creature and will simply replenish the thirst bar.
=== Lava ===
Lava is an special phase-through terrain, like a liquid, except that unlike water, a creature cannot swim on it and will just fall through it. While not all lava zones in the map are harmful, MOST of the lava areas will damage the creature upon contact, cause burn status and ashy lungs, unless a creature has the Volcanic ability.
== Basic Combat ==
Combat is another (and not the only one) of the gameplay survival aspects in Creatures of Sonaria. In order to survive, creatures must correctly assess their strengths and weaknesses on every aspect. PvP (Player versus Player) Combat is one of such aspects, even if it's hardly the only one and many other survival aspects may override the need to fight, or at least win a fight by killing the opponent, where a draw may sometimes become more beneficial. Remember, what has always mattered is surviving (specially for the Death Reward System and the Death Gacha) and the increase on extreme weather phenomena and other dynamic environment changes compared with Legacy Basic Gameplay only exacerbates the need to remain aware of such aspects during combat.
As such, players MUST consider ways of preparing to endure any possible unwanted attack, or preparing for a fight to strengthen their chances of surviving by recruiting certain creatures, applying special status effects, growing creatures for special stat differences or considering the best surroundings for your victory.
In the game, both weight and base damage impact the amount of damage inflicted on a target. Larger creatures will tend to do more damage to smaller creatures due to their weight difference, and smaller creatures will tend to do less damage to larger creatures for the same reason. For the sake of fairness against spawn-camping, however, a shield status has been put in place that gives temporary immunity from attacks for a 7 seconds after spawning.
For the sake of fairness against spawn-camping, however, a shield status effect has been put in place that gives a 10-second immunity from attacks after spawning.
* For a more detailed document about combat information, see Combat.
== Other useful effects to know ==
=== Growth time modifiers ===
As mentioned previously, growth time can be modified by some other effects.
This section is a work-in-progress and will be filled over time.
* Under the effect of some seasons, some creatures may get a growth buff or debuff, such as Mythic aging all creatures faster, or other seasons aging some creatures faster or slower.
* The effect of some specific plushies can also accelerate, slow down, or freeze aging.
== Anti-Logging measures ==
As a measure to prevent loggers, multiple measures have been implemented, commonly called log penalties. Loggers are players who close their game window to immediately close their gameplay session to avoid facing consequences, instead of waiting for combat to end (a counter which can be seen on the RED DOOR menu button) and then going to the menu.
The penalties are:
* If a creature's health is under 50%, logging while in combat will drop meat (in case the attacker was hunting for food, so they don't starve). This doesn't mean that creature has died, though.
* If a creature has more than 33 age and the player logs, the creature will lose 33 age.
** This won't remove already obtained cosmetic mutation and traits, just remove the visible aspects or effects of them. However, it allows for mutation and trait re-rolling if the creature had no mutations or traits. Only exception is glimmer, which cannot be re-rolled.
** If the creature was an Elder and its age drops below 100, it will no longer be elder.
== Trivia ==
* Originally during the final stages of Recode Early Release, there was some rejection of having all starter creatures as fliers of some kind and no full aquatics, gliders or terrestrials, plus the premium option at the beginning - something which intensified among old Legacy and casual players upon noticing that Sochuri had changed from omnivore to carnivore.
* All-terrains and glider semi-aquatics do not exist anymore as official mobility types in-game since they were absorbed by the flier and semi-aquatic mobility types, respectively. However, the terminology is still widely widespread, not only because of Legacy Mode still existing, but because several of the terms are less mouthful (f.ex. using "all-terrain" for semi-aquatics with the ability to fly, or glider semi-aquatics for those semi-aquatics capable of performing glide).
Category:Gameplay
Category:Legacy Gameplay