Starting Guide

This page serves as a basic **How to play guide for Two Hours, One Life**. For more in-deph information, follow the links to other wiki articles or the twotech crafting guide.

Check back here from time to time, too, as new content may be added.

## Basic Gameplay

> *For how to start the camp from scratch see: Eve Guide*
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First, you have to find food. There are a lot of ways to get food, namely getting berries from a bush. Grab a round stone and sharpen it against another rock as a tool for gathering materials. The game has a progression of technology so the priorities and roles you can play will vary depending on your towns level of advancement. As an Eve, the first of a new family, or spawning into an early settlement called an 'Eve village' the game will be a frantic struggle for survival. Foraging food from the wild and gathering other natural resources will be the first priority. As advancements are made new roles open up, creating a forge will mean someone will need to forge metals and make tools which can make you more efficient. Nearby wild foods will be quickly exhausted by a growing population so setting up a farm early in the game is vital, once you have a farm you will want a kitchen & having a kitchen means you can work as a cook, creating a wider variety of food so people can Yum chain (see tips and tricks) and many recipes will provide more food pips than the raw ingredients would have. Progression is natural and with each advancement by your town new jobs are created, like miners, tending to livestock, being a tailor, etc. Survive and advance. There is lots to learn, many roles to play, and every game will be different.

## Controls

### Movement and Actions

The default way to control the player character is by using a mouse. Most actions are performed by using <left-click>, such as interacting with items or moving the character. <Right-click> is used to drop, switch or remove items from container. To use a weapon such as snowballs, use <Shift> and <right-click> at the same time. The <space-bar> can be held down to prevent the camera from moving.

You can turn on "KEYBOARD ACTIONS" in the the "SETTINGS" screen on the main screen or by pressing <esc> while in game.

**List of keyboard controls:**

* <W>, <A>, <S>, <D> - moving
* <Shift> + <WASD> - use/pick up an item from surrounding tiles
* <Ctrl> + <WASD> - select an item from the container
* <Space-bar> - use/pick up the item from the tile you are standing on
* <Shift> + <space-bar> - pick up the container from the tile you are standing on
* <Ctrl> + <space-bar> - switch items in the container on the tile you are standing on
* <Q> - take out item from your backpack
* <Shift> + <Q> - switch items in your backpack
* <B> - put on/take off backpack or item on your backpack
* <E> - eat/put clothes on
* <C> - pick up/drop baby
* <T> - use pocket
* <F> - freeze camera

### Speech

The <enter> key is used to open a speech box into which messages can be typed.

The maximum length of a message that can be typed depends on the player character's age. A newborn baby can only type 1 letter. The maximum message length increases by one symbol every minute.
Certain special phrases have unique game behavior. There are phrases for naming oneself or children, setting a password, and cursing disruptive troll players who abuse the game. For example:

* "**I AM DOE**" - sets the player's family name to "DOE", if the player does not already have a family name.
* "**YOU ARE ALEX**" - sets an unnamed baby's name to "ALEX" or the closest one if the name doesn't exist in the names database.
* "**CURSE MARY SUE**" - curses the player named "MARY SUE", preventing them from being born to you.
* **"NO BB"** - turns on infertility, preventing anyone being born to you. Works only if you're female.
* **"YES BB"** - turns on fertility. Other players will be able to be born to you if you're female between ages 15-103.
* **"PASSWORD IS PICKLE"** - sets the password as "PICKLE". Say the same phrase to use the password.

### Console Commands

The speech box can also be used to type various console commands by starting with a <forward-slash> ("/"). Console commands can be used for searching for crafting recipes, making emotes, and performing suicide (**"/DIE"**).

## User Interface

### Food Meter

The bottom left of the screen is occupied by the Food Meter. Each box on the Food Meter is called a "pip". If the Food Meter is depleted, the player character will starve. Eating food restores the Food Meter.

The size of the Food Meter changes according to age. At birth, the Food Meter contains three pips and increases by one pip per minute until it reaches a maximum of 10 pips during childhood (age 6). During old age, the Food Meter begins to shrink again back to three pips.

The "LEVEL" on the right side shows how many yums were eaten during the life. Each new food increases this number by one. Cravings, which can be found above the Food Meter, raise the level at least twice as much.

The "BONUS" shows overflow of food gathered by eating advanced meals or yums. It is a sort of additional food meter. It will deplete before the base Food Meter. You can only eat when you have empty pips.

### Age

> *For more info about age, see: Life Stages*
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Players age one year for each minute that passes in the game. If a player survives until age 120, they die of old age.

Age impacts the length of messages a player can write, the size of the Food Meter, and limits the types of activities a player can perform as a child.

You can check your age at the bottom right of your screen.

### Sex

You can be born in the game as either male (M) or female (F). You can check your sex at the bottom right of your screen.

Fertile female characters can give birth at any time from the age of 15 to the age of 103. They can also feed children breast milk during that time by picking up the child, but be warned this will cost the female's food meter to deplete. Holding a baby continuously when fertile will keep them full without depleting the food meter.

Being born male is quite rare as boys are only born to a family that already has at least three fertile girls. Males do not bear children nor can they feed them by picking up. It's possible to feed a child by clicking on them while holding a food. Be careful as some foods are excluded from force feeding (mushrooms, beer, wine).

By using a spawn code, you are spawned as Eve who is always female.

### Temperature Meter

The bottom right of the screen is occupied by the Temperature Meter. A line at the midpoint represents an optimal temperature.

Temperature affects the rate that food is drained from the Food Meter. Extreme temperatures drain food up to **5 times faster** than being at an optimal temperature. Consequently, players are highly recommended to obtain and wear clothes as quickly as possible.

Many factors contribute to temperature: biome, fire, clothing, floors, buildings, and disease.

Clothing insulates against temperature extremes by slowing the rate that the temperature meter changes and bringing it closer to the middle point. Perfect temperature can be reached only by standing near a heat-generating object like fire or by being in a closed building. The maximum insulation provided by walls and floors is in a small room 7x7; bigger ones will have cold or hot spots.

### Crafting Guide

> *For the Twotech guide see: Crafting Reference (TwoTech)*
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Just above the Age, Sex and Temperature Meter there is an in-game Crafting Guide (also called 'minitech'). To open or close it, click on it or press [V] on your keyboard.

Crafting Guide is invaluable in learning crafting reciepes. You can search almost any item by writing "/" in the chatbox followed by the name of the item, e.g. **/BOWL.** The minitech has two modes: HOW DO I MAKE and HOW DO I USE. You need to click the text to switch between them. The HOW DO I MAKE mode shows the previous step needed to create the thing you searched for or clicked on. The HOW DO I USE mode shows all that you can do with the item. Sometimes, when there are a lot of possible things to be done with the item, you will need to browse through many pages to find what you are looking for.

The ability of how to use the crafting guide is what differentiate new players from the veterans. There are thousands of reciepes in the game, no one knows them all, but you can make anything by following the minitech.

## Game Mechanics

### Tutorial

The first time the game is played, the player will be spawned in the tutorial.

The tutorial covers the game controls, food, temperature, clothes, yum bonus, crafting, names, and curses. The player must start a fire at the end of the maze in order to complete the tutorial.

The game has a steep learning curve, so learning how to play the game in controlled setting is extremely important. There is no way to skip the tutorial, however advanced players can complete it in less than two minutes.

## Tips and tricks

- When you first spawn in as a baby or even as an Eve, make sure to make a home marker using a stick (which is a cut sapling) and a round stone. You don't have to do it if you were born near a firepit or fireplace; in that case it will be assigned automatically.

- A good way to control hunger is to use the in game yum system. When you first pick up a food, near your character's mouth, you will see a speech bubble. It will say 'yum' or 'meh'. Eating yum foods only will give you a yum chain. Yum chaining will allow you to store food as if you're overeating and allow you more and more time to do things in-game. If you eat meh instead you will end up needing to eat more and more often. As there are only ten food bars, eating meh increases your chance of starving. The higher the yum chain, the longer you can go without needing to eat.

- As a baby you will only be able to say one or two letters at a time. To let your mom know you are hungry say F, it is the in-game universal way of saying "I am hungry, please, feed me".

- If you stand on an item, wild animals cannot bite you. They act like an object and need a place to stand to actually do damage to you.

- As a baby STAY where your mother puts you. Only follow her if she tells you to. You can starve very quickly as a baby & you can easily lose your mom if you try running after her.

- If you are cold, your food bar goes down faster. Wearing clothes, standing next to a fire, or being in a room with a fire and closed doors will all warm you up.

- If you want to focus on learning or crafting and feel you aren't ready for kids, say "NO BB". It will make you infertile. To be fertile again, say "YES BB". When you're over 104, you're too old to birth children.

- If you're stuck during crafting, check what the minitech in game says. Make sure it's on the HOW TO USE option.

For more tips and tricks, check out the #tips channel on discord

## See also

* Release date
* System requirements
* Fertility