New Player Guide

This page gives an introduction to the world of Len's Islands along with tips on how to progress

## What is Len's Island?

Len's Island is a game about building and exploring. The main goal is to upgrade the town. You will be gathering resources, exploring caves, sailing the sea, and fighting enemies to constantly improve your gear and your base. There are a variety of mechanics in the game with detailed instructions below:

* Combat
* Building
* Farming
* Fishing

## Tutorial

When you first arrive at the island, you are given the quest Getting Started. This starts you with the following tasks:

1. Construct a house
2. Place a bed
3. Build a workbench
4. Explore the map
5. Visit the mayor

This acts as a basic guide to getting started in the game. After completing the quest, the real game begins. You can find a guide for it here.

## Getting Started

When you first start the game, you will want to start gathering wood, stone and fiber.

* Wood can be gathered from cutting down trees with an axe
* Stone can be gathered from mining stone boulders with a pickaxe
* Fiber can be gathered from cutting plants with a bladed weapon
* Cutting down blueberry bushes gives you berries and occasionally seeds
	+ Tip: If your hunger bar is empty, you won't die but your health will decrease to 50%

After you acquire a decent amount of resources, you can build yourself a starting home. Press [F] to enter build mode.

* Place a bed underneath the a roof to set up a home base and sleep through the night
* Don't worry about building the perfect house just yet, you can always recycle the materials and move it later
* Try and build close to the town to save time running back and forth

After you have built your first home you will need to craft a workbench. A workbench is vital to your adventures as it lets you craft new weapons and tools along with new structures for your base. Now that you have a good base of operations set up, you should make your way to the town of Bridgewater. Talk to Mayor Gerald to learn more about the town.

* The town is where you can buy and sell from NPCs
* The town can be upgraded at the message board, unlocking more villagers
* In order for a villager to move in, you must build them a house with a bed in designated plots in town

While you can gather resources and upgrade the town now, it is recommended to wait until you have better tools to cut down on grinding for resources. In order to craft better tools, you will need iron shards and coal, which can only be found in caves and dungeons. In the middle of the map is a cave icon. Once you arrive you will see a large door blocking the way.

* The door is unlocked after activating three pillars
* Activate the door to mark the location of the pillars

After unlocking the door, you can make your way inside the cave. WARNING: this is where you will encounter your first dangerous enemies. Make sure to bring some food in case you need to heal quickly. Inside you can find different boulders you can mine, some dropping coal and iron.

* Instead of trying to clear the dungeon with a knife, start mining for resources
* Craft and Iron Pickaxe first and then gather resources to craft a torch, Iron Sword, and an Iron Axe
* Caves are very dark, making torches a necessity. Luckily, these last indefinitely
* Tip: All resources respawn, including trees and boulders

After you have upgraded your gear, you can start to explore the cave. You will encounter various monsters throughout. Making it to the end you will see a blue force field. Entering it will bring you into a challenging fight against multiple monsters. After you clear them out, you will find an NPC named Jared. He is a blacksmith, and once you make him a house in town he will set up shop

Congratulations! You have completed your first journey and are now well equipped to explore the rest of the game. What you do next is up to you. Here are a few tips to get you started:

* Prioritize upgrading your backpack at the tailor. It will save a lot of time traveling back and forth and allows you to upgrade the town more
* Craft a raft to explore the sea and find different islands. These contain different resources as well as other dungeons
* Set up a farm to create a reliable source of food and income

## Money Making

### Efficient

At first, it can seem rather challenging to get gold. By exploring caves and dungeons you can find some coins lying around but it will take a lot of time before you have enough to buy anything. Selling resources is a much faster and consistent way to make money. Here are a few ways to get some gold when you are first starting:

* Sell flowers to Steph the Florist. You can find wild flowers growing on different islands. They sometimes drop seeds as well, allowing you to grow them in your garden
* Sell caught fish to Kevin the Fisherman. Higher quality fish can be found swimming in circles in the water
* Sell dark essence to Centaine the Sorcerer. You will gather a lot of void essence simply from exploring and will eventually run out of room

### Suboptimal

These methods require more work with less reward, but are still profitable:

* Sell building supplies to Omar the Builder. This can be beneficial if you have an excess of supplies, but there are almost always better ways to use these resources
* Exploring dungeons. You can find a decent amount of coin in caves and crates

### Not Recommended

You can play Blackjack with Lucky Jack the Pirate, but you are a lot more likely to lose money than make anything. Should be played for fun rather than making money.