Getting Started

### Settings

While it is always recommended to look through a game's Settings menu before starting any game I would like to specifically point out one feature that can help you a lot as you start out.

Going into Settings -> Misc you can enable Physics Lock which can help organizing items in your vehicle, and also helps stabilize the game a little bit. While not required it makes things a bit easier and a bit less glitchy. You have 4 options there:

1) Disabled - no physics lock at all.

2) Glove box, basket - the car's glove box and baskets you can attach to items will have items physics locked to those containers when put inside.

3) +Trunk, rack - in addition to the previous all items in the car's trunk and IFA W50 side-racks (between the wheels on the side) will also be locked. VW Beetle's behind-the-seat container area does not count as a trunk and instead you'd need to enable the next setting for items to stay there.

4) +Whole interior - in addition to the previous all items inside the car's interior will be physics locked. The most stable and least performance-intensive option out of the four.

### Home

You start out in your home's bedroom. Going through the door right in front of you by looking at the door, holding E/LMB and moving the mouse you can enter the garage. As you enter the garage, on your right you can see two doors - glass door leading to the outside and a wooden door leading to the basement. Looking up you can see the attic. You can get to the attic from either outside (go out the bedroom door leading to the outside, and up the stairs just around the corner, open the door, and crouch in) or by climbing up the shelves in the garage on your right just as you enter (spam spacebar while walking into the shelves).

### Gathering food and drinks

When you have hunger and thirst enabled in the main menu you'll need to make sure you eat and drink enough to survive. Foods will help you fight hunger, and water will help you fight thirst. Alcohol can be used for minor healing effect but it will increase thirst rather than quench it.

It's recommended to grab the basket with F on the left side under the table just as you enter the garage, and fill it up with all the food and drinks you can find in the house to not worry about food for a little while.

**TIP #1**: When grabbing an item with F and holding it you can hold down the middle mouse button to rotate it, and scroll wheel to move it farther from you and closer to you. You can drop the item by pressing F again or throw it away by holding F (the closer the bar is to filling the harder you throw).

Going back to the bedroom on the table to your left you can find a croissant and a sausage. On the stove right next to it you can find a bun. Put those items in the basket for easier carrying. It takes about a second or two for the physics lock to engage after placing items in. there is also a pair of binoculars on the table. grab those as well so you can see farther down the road. to use grab them and put them in your inventory and hit Lmb and scroll to use.

Next go to the attic of the house where you can find sausage hanging from one of the roof beams, and bacon on top of the said beam. Add those to the basket.

That is all the food available at the starter home.

Next you'll want water. Right next to where you found the basket in the garage there are 2 Jerry Cans under the table. One of them has 5 liters of water in it. Ideally you'd want to fill the can up, so you can grab the jerry can, and take it to the back of the house to where the attic stairs are, and go under the stairs. There's a barrel there with 40 liters of water in it. You can use it to fill the jerry can.

**TIP #2**: You can pour liquids from one container to another by placing the destination container down, opening its cap, grabbing the source container, aiming the mouse at the hole of the open cap, and holding down left mouse button when the cursor changes to a green jerry can and [LMB]: Fill appears on the bottom left corner. When you aim directly at the hole you'll also see how much is in there, so you know when to stop. It's fillable even around the hole itself, so you can fill it without seeing the content.

Alternatively you can also use the sink in the bedroom to fill the jerry can but for that one you'd have to put the jerry can in a position where the tap can be turned to be right above it, so water goes into the open cap of the jerry can. While doable it's significantly more complicated and requires fiddling with the positioning.

There are also plenty of alcohol bottles in the home, as well as 40 liters of alcohol in the basement in a barrel. If you wish, you could bring it with you but the benefits of that are so low you're likely better off leaving them here.

### Weapons

There are two different guns in the starter home. The first one is a hidden one but you can use scrollwheel to crouch down and go behind the stove in the bedroom, open the black door on the wall and jump in (spam spacebar at the correct height) to get a revolver inside the chimney. It only has 6 bullets but you can find more as you go.

It's recommended to keep at least one of each gun type with you so no matter what kind of ammunition you find you'll be able to make use of it.

**Tip #3**: Your character has 4 inventory slots. You can access them by pressing buttons 1, 2, 3, and 4. Small items such as weapons can be put into your inventory, so after picking up the handgun you can press another inventory slot to holster it.

**TIP #4**: Each gun can have multiple condition levels. The better the condition the more damage it deals. When finding a better condition gun of the same type it's recommended to throw the one in worse condition out.

The second gun is in a more obvious location and you've already likely seen it in the garage, on top of the table under which the jerry can with water was. The rifle can only hold one bullet at a time, and has none in it as you find it but right next to it you can see a green tin with 200 shots in it.

**TIP #5**: You can reload weapons by having the valid ammunition in your inventory. For rifle, revolver, and shotgun you do it by holding R, opening the gun with mouse, tapping R to insert a bullet (up to 6 in revolver, up to 2 in shotgun, and only 1 in rifle), and then holding R again and closing the gun with the mouse. For AK you just press R to swap the magazine to a magazine in your inventory. If you reload before spending all ammo then you can pick the magazine back up that still has ammo in it. Holding a magazine and looking at another magazine you can either reload (takes ammo from the one you're looking at into the one you're holding) or unload (takes ammo from the one you're holding into the one you're looking at) to organize your ammo.

There are a total of four tins of shots at your home - one you have already found, the second is on a crate in front of the attic stairs, the third one is on the edge of the well that you can find when you keep going forward when exiting the bedroom to the outside, and the fourth one can be found in your car.

### Car

And now to the main part of the game!

You have indubitably already noticed the car in the middle of the garage. You may have also noticed it's not exactly in the best condition. The type of car you get at the start is randomized, so it may not be exactly the same one in this guide. Let's start out by making it look as good as possible. For that we have 3 different items, and also some spare parts in the garage itself. To start out, let's open the garage doors and then push the car out of the garage so we will have more space to work with. Once you have opened the garage doors check and see if there is a bus at the stop at the beginning of the road.

**TIP #6**: You can disengage the handbrake on the car by either looking at the handbrake and pressing E/LMB or by sitting in either of the car's front seats and pressing Spacebar.

**TIP #7**: You can push the car in 3 ways. The first is just walking into it. The second is looking at a non-interactable part of the car (the main body but not the hood or wheels or doors) and holding F. The third, and the most controllable way is opening the driver side door, looking at the steering wheel and pressing F when it says [F]: Push & Steer. From there on you can use WASD to move the car.

**TIP #8**: You can hold V to sleep. It can be used to skip a night to be able to see better around you. When it gets dark enough for the electrical poles to light up you can stop, hold V, and when you wake up it should be early morning light again.

Once the car is outside, re-engage the handbrake and remove the hubcaps from the wheels, wheels from the car, and tires from the wheels. This is to make sure you don't accidentally hurt the tires when cleaning the wheels with a wire brush. Now that you have the wheels and tires separated from everything you can go back into the garage and you'll find 2 wheels and 2 tires at the wall where the table is. If any of those is in better condition than the ones you had under your car you can easily swap them out right now. There is also a spare tire and wheel in your car's trunk that you can do the same with. Don't worry, tires and wheels can't deteriorate in this game so you don't need to keep a spare (unless you actually lose one in a crash).

Once that is done, take all the small parts that can be fixed into a better condition and put them in front of the car - all 3 mirrors (2 side mirrors and 1 rear-view mirror), radio, both sun visors, the glove compartment lid, and both bumpers (not shown on image).

Each of those objects can have five different conditions - fully rusted (brown rust covering everything), crusty (greenish rust covering it), rough (visible color but looks rough and bumpy), dull, and shiny. For most parts wire brushes are the only way to restore rusty and crusty parts and the last two states have to be fixed with either sponges or polishes. Tires are an exception as they can only be restored with the polish.

Radio, glove compartment lid, and sun visors can be cleaned only with sponges and polishes starting from the fully rusted one even.

Now let's get on to the Body restoration!

First we'll grab both of the wire brushes in the home (feel free to put the revolver in the car for now).

**TIP #9**: You can equip some smaller items such as weapons, polishes, wire brushes, and sponges by pressing Tab. Press Tab again to unequip them. For wearable items such as glasses, hats, and cigarettes you can use Tab to equip them but you'll need to press X to unequip. They do not take up an inventory slot when equipped.

Both brushes can be found in the garage on the shelves. The first one is the easier one to spot being on the second shelf from the bottom. The second brush is on top of the shelf in the corner. Easiest way to access that is to spam jumping on the shelf to climb up. Once you've grabbed both, head outside and start cleaning the rusty and crusty pieces (except the ones that can't be brushed). Each brush has a limited amount of uses before the bristles are gone, so keep an eye out for when they disappear and you can just throw the handle away. It's up to you which part you want to clean first as you can always find more cleaning equipment later on when you leave home. You can clean by either holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse over the item until it's clean or just spam-clicking the left mouse button.

Once you've used up the brushes (or were lucky enough that you didn't even need to use up all charges) we'll move on to sponges. Sponges can be used for the last 2 conditions of the car that can be modified (rough and dull), and for cars such as Trabant 601 you can't even use brushes on the car body at all due to not being made of metal. Just like with brushes there are two sponges in the home - one is on the bedroom sink, and the second one is in the attic in the very back corner on the left side.

Once you've also used up the sponges we're on our last one - polish. Again, two could be found - first one is simply on the garage shelf's second shelf from the bottom, and the second one again in the attic but this time it's next to a bucket right above where the shelf is, hidden in a corner. The polishes are the only things that can improve tire condition, and tire condition is the only part that actually affects your car's performance so make sure to get those to the best shape first. Each tier of condition takes 4 sprays with the polish to improve, so once you see no more improvements after 4 more sprays that is the maximum condition of the tire.

When you're done with restoring condition on the parts feel free to re-assemble the car.

Most cars require 3 liquids (exceptions are Trabant 601 and VW Beetle as they are aircooled and don't need water) - gasoline, oil, and water. For the diesel version of VW Golf you'll need diesel instead of gasoline (which you can find in the basement in a barrel).

For gasoline there's a jerry can under the table right next to where the water jerry can was. Pour that into your car's gas tank, and feel free to put the empty jerry can into your car's trunk so you could fill it up later when you find more fuel.

For oil there's a yellow oil can on top of an oil barrel on the right side corner just as you enter the garage from the double doors. That will need to go into the engine's oil tank. To find that, open your car's hood and look for a yellow cap on the engine (the radiator also has a yellow cap, ignore it for now). Open it, and pour oil until it's full. You can also keep the oil can for the future. Note that there are cars that uses oil with the gasoline. You must use 95% gas and 5% oil. If you dont do it the car wouldn't start. To know what cars need gas with oil check two-stroke fuel.

For water we've already filled a jerry can with it, and we can use the same water to fill the radiator under the hood we just mentioned. The jerry can full of water you may want to put at the passenger seat for easy accessibility for drinking.

Once you've done that, feel free to also put the food basket on the passenger seat for easy access.

Now you're ready to sit in the car!

Once you've sat on the driver's seat feel free to adjust the side mirrors and the middle rear view mirror to see behind you properly. You can use Q and mouse movement + mouse wheel to adjust how exactly you want to sit behind the wheel, and you can hold Tab to move the camera to the original position. Looking at the wheel can show you the controls of the car which include handbrake, acceleration, brake/reverse, steering, ignition, leaning, and lights.

Press L once to turn on the day lights, hold i until the car turns into life, Spacebar to take off the handbrake, and then you can use WASD to drive. As you're driving out of home, don't forget to check your mailbox right next to the road.