Beginner's Guide

*A Short Beginner's Guide to Grim Soul Survival*

**Feel Free To Contribute To The Guide Yourself!**

### 1) BASIC BASE BUILDING

* Building your home base and having somewhere safe to keep loot is the very first step. Sadly, the game starts by giving you very limited resources, so just build a simple 2X2 or 3X3 hut. One trick to save wood is to only build the outer floor tiles, since all you need are the outer walls.

### 2) EAT THE BERRIES

* Food and water are pretty scarce at the start, and this is exacerbated by the fact that you cannot produce any of your own until you have unlocked the necessary buildings (Well for water, Garden Bed for Leeks, Fire for Roasted Meat, Campfire for Berry Drink and Onion Soup).

There are berries that you can find almost anywhere, and they can be eaten to restore small amounts of HP, hunger, and thirst.

***Note:*** for every 10 *hollyberries* you eat, your character will become violently nauseous and need to puke. When that happens, you will be unable to attack and your movement speed will be severely reduced until you throw up using the secondary action button. To avoid an untimely death, try not to use these berries in the heat of battle (unless you keep track of how many you have consumed). Hawberries, however do not produce this sickness.

### 3) WHICH CRAFTS TO UNLOCK FIRST

There is a lot of stuff that you can unlock and build, but you only have limited skill points, and unlocking the wrong ones in the early game can make things a lot more difficult. This is what I recommend to unlock in the early game, in the following order:

* Stone Axe
* Club

These are the 3 raw “caveman” basics that you must have right from the start, or you will be picking up sticks and stones with bare hands. Next, I will recommend unlocking:

* Peasant Chest
* Ragged Sack
* Raven Cage

Both the chest and sack are essential to helping you carry and keep more loot – So unlock those first. I chose the Raven Cage first, as it unlocks quests and gives you more points quickly. While food is important, the garden bed requires seeds which are (stupidly) only dropped by creatures who are not a good idea to attack until you have better weapons than a club. However, you can kill non-aggressive animals (Deer) for their meat and hide, using a club and sneak attack.

### 4) FOOD AND ARMOR COME SECOND

Forget the stable first. It is impossible to complete in the early game.Even when you have unlocked all the above basics, you are not out of the woods yet… At this point, keep the bandage, stable, stone working bench on hold. Unlock the fire, garden bed, cart thill, and shirt instead.

* Bandage requires cloth, which is only available as a monster drop until you unlock the sewing table – Keep the cloth and create armor instead.
* Fire and garden bed will allow you to create highly restorative food.
* Cart thill is slow, but causes a good level of damage when used in sneak attacks.
* The stable requires a lot more materials, some of them unique drops only available in dungeons. Don’t waste your time with this one until mid-late game.
* The stoneworking bench serves very little purpose in the early game, only producing blocks to upgrade your walls or trade with the merchants. Spend your points on armor instead.

### 5) RAN OUT OF PICKS AND AXES?

If you ever fall into the unfortunate situation where the character dies, and you are left without any picks, axes, stone, or wood, just go to any easy difficulty area and pick up the loose rocks and sticks around the edges of the area. It’s kind of hard, but that's the only way to “revive” the gameplay.

### 6) SOME MATERIALS CAN ONLY BE LOOTED

Wood, stone, metals (Copper, Tin, etc…) can be farmed easily, but it is vexing that some materials can only be obtained by looting chests/monster drops.

* Copper Fragments
* Candles
* Seeds
* Grate
* Leather Cords

In the early game, I highly recommend keeping the Copper Fragments and Leather Cords as they are common ingredients for many production items. You can drop the rest to free up space for more wood/stone/flax.

### 7) RUN

Grim Soul is not a game with magic casting characters and explosive AOE skills. If you are swarmed by a mob of creatures, quickly run away and exit the area. The next time you re-enter (depending on how much time has passed and/or other factors), some or all of the mobs may have gone back to their original positions. Take note of enemies that are randomly spawned – there are so far 3 types that I know of:

* The 'Regular' mob ( Dire Wolves, Bear, Lepers, etc…)
* NPC Players
* Night Guest

The regular random spawn will not disappear when you exit-and-enter the area, just take extra note that if you want to continue farming in that area, you will have to kill those. For NPC players, just run away or kill them if you are feeling lucky… They occasionally drop good stuff. As for the Night Guest, it is indestructible – run away fast or equip a Torch.

### 8) INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

* Avoid making adjustments to your inventory while inside an area. You can be attacked and/or killed by newly spawned enemies before you even realize they are there.
* If you do need to make a *quick* in-area inventory change, make sure that: (a) the mini map is clear of threats, (b) you have as high health as possible, (c) you don't go more than a few seconds without exiting the inventory screen to ensure there are no new threats, and (d) you keep an eye out a flash of red indicating you are under attack (at which point you should exit the inventory screen as quickly as possible.
* Be especially wary of in-area inventory changes at night, as the Night Guest loves to murder unsuspecting exiles.

### 9) SNEAK ATTACK

While you are in sneak mode you do double damage. This is generally only possible on your first strike. If you exit and re-enter the area, some or all of the enemies (see above) return to their position, though they may still sustain the damage. You cannot sneak attack the same enemy again, they will immediately attack when you are in range.

### 10) LOOK OUT FOR THE DURABILITY

Weapons and armor break frequently in the game. Keep an eye on their state, and prepare to run when you are left with no weapons to fight.

### 11) LOOT QUICK AND LOOT SMART

Enemies can still attack you while you have the loot or inventory screen open. It is often necessary to exit the area in order to have time to safely clean up one's inventory (and heal up) before heading back in.

### 12) A FEW OTHER RANDOM STUFF

* “Fuel” in the Fire, Smelter, Campfire refers to wood.
* If you are having trouble placing some items, take note that they can only be placed on certain upgraded floors.
* Don’t bother to raid the bases of other NPC players in the early game – The only way to break walls seem to be using the Explosive Keg.