Starting Guide

Critter Coast has a very comprehensive tutorial for new players. This starting guide is written alongside the tutorial to help new players if they get confused, and to also point out some tips and tricks along the way!

## Basic UI

Throughout the game, you'll have the following icons on your UI:

## Starting the Tutorial

To begin playing, follow the tutorial's instructions and walk around until you reach the purple stuff.

## Purple Slime

Welcome to the world of purple slime. The first thing is to open up some space on your starting island (your base which will later become the town), which means getting rid of the purple slime everywhere! Purple slime is the one and only enemy in Critter Coast, so you will spend much of your time doing various tasks to clean it up.

Look at all that slime. It's everywhere.

## Tasks

Follow the tutorial and tap the yellow star in a pink bubble. These stars represent tasks and are the main objectives to guide you through the entire game.

When you tap on the star, it will show you the requirements of the task. All tasks ask for an item or a combination of items, usually higher level ones requiring merging. The rewards are usually a tiny bit of XP but also unlocking areas, new features, or placing decorations around your town. Certain special tasks will always give you awesome rewards like chests, which will be covered later.

Tapping Go Merge! brings you to your backpack, leading into the next major section of the tutorial.

## Merging

You can't have a merge game without merging, and most of the merging in Critter Coast is done in your backpack.

Follow the simple merge tutorial to create a level 3 tool object. As you merge, you'll notice you will open the leafy grids to reveal their trapped contents. Merge onto the trapped items to get rid of the slime covering them, which will free the grid for you to use. Make sure to keep an eye on what trapped items you reveal - you might just need them later!

Note: Merging does not require energy.

You can also tap on items, even trapped items, to show a tooltip at the top of the screen.

Clicking on the blue info button on that tool tip will show you the merge chain up to that item (or past it, if you've already discovered items further down the chain).

This is useful for identifying trapped objects to free later! It's also useful to see how many more levels the object has. Items like XP stars, coins, and energy bolts CAN be merged, and if you have the space to hold onto them, you should try to merge them to their max level before using them to get the most value.

Once done with your initial merge task, tap on the Go button to find the task on the map and complete it!

Proceed to meet your first NPC, Otter!

NPCs can give you tasks too, and they will have the same task bubble over them when they want something. Finish Otter's requests and you'll find your very first chest!

Chests give all sorts of goodies, but remember that they require energy to loot. Some chests will hold more than 1 reward, but each reward will cost 1 energy to claim.

The chest will reward you with you first item kit - in this case, a small tool kit! Kits work a bit like chests, but they hang out in your backpack instead and they contain MANY items. A small tool kit, for example, holds 13 items (though it feels like the small tool kits you get in the tutorial might hold more, thanks devs!). Just like chests, you need to spend energy to claim their contents though, so fully looting a small tool kit will cost you upwards of 13 energy.

*An interesting point with kits: If you partially loot it but don't use it up, you can still use it to merge. For example, if you loot a small tool kit 12 times, you can merge it with another small tool kit to make a medium tool kit, which you can then partially loot before merging a large tool kit. Partially looting kits will dramatically increase the number of items you receive from the entire merge chain. For this reason, it's a good idea to keep in mind how many items are in each kit. See the kits page.*

## Islands

Once you receive a map, it's time to go explore the wild yonder with your boat, which is moored off the dock at the southeast corner of your town.

When you have a map item in your backpack, you can use the boat to travel to islands. Islands function as puzzle stages, where you will have access to forage spots but also island-specific tasks. Progressing through an island can be very energy-intensive, but you need to complete them for rewards necessary to progress the game.

Follow the tutorial to visit Lonely Cay, the first island in the game. This first island contains a treasure chest and only has a single patch of purple slime to clear and a two stages of repairing the house. The later islands will contain forage spots along with treasure chests, but will also have far more tasks to complete as well as a shrine, which will be covered in the shrines section below.

It's important to note that once all tasks on an island are completed, you will be kicked out of the island and you'll no longer be able to visit it. That means that, given how an island's forage spots can really help completing tasks in town, sometimes it's worth it to partially explore an island and leave its last few tasks untouched for a while.

Finishing Lonely Cay's tasks will reward you with a Magic Chest, which you should loot and merge for the level 5 Magic item you'll need to unlock another section of the town.

## Shop

Now that you have access to more of the town, you'll start to encounter more characters and functional buildings.

Start by helping out Badger with cleaning the General Store area. In doing so, you will be led to use your first forage location.

Foraging requires energy and each spot can only be tapped for a certain number of items before it goes onto a 1 hour cooldown. See the Forage page for more details on foraging mechanics.

Tap the wood spot and merge the wood items in your backpack with the trapped wood items to make the required item while also cleaning up your backpack! Follow the tutorial until you've opened up the General Shop.

The shop sells items for gems and coins. If you scroll down, it will also sell coins and gems via In-App Purchases. At the top of the shop, there will always be a category of free gifts. You can claim 2, and then the shop will restock after an hour.

## Shrines

Continue on with the tutorial and help Lizard out with some tasks.

Around this time, you should level up, which earns you an Energy Chest.

Unlike other chests, Energy Chests do not require energy to use. Loot it for Energy items, which you can and should merge as much as you can.

You'll also earn a Cleaning Kit, which is much less exciting but no less valuable at this point in the game.

Clean up and speak with the Elder Tree, who informs you about Shrines.

Shrines are found on islands and, from now on, are the last puzzle on each island. That means that we need to sail out once more, but to do that, we need a map. Luckily, Otter is giving out maps in exchange for completing the required trades at the Trading Post.

From now on, maps are always acquired through the Trading Post, so much of your time will be spent filling Otter's many trade requests. For the tutorial, he only requires two trades, but that will increase as you complete more islands. You will always need to fill every order in the Trading Post menu before you can earn a map. Once all trades are fulfilled and you are given your map, the Trading Post will have a 15 minute cooldown period before showing the next set of trade requests.

It can be much easier to fulfill all the trade requests if you have access to extra forage spots on islands, so it's a good idea to get as many trades done as you're currently able to before completing an island.

Continue clearing slime to find a Rose forage spot, which you'll use along with the earlier Wood forage spot to fill Otter's orders.