HeavyMetalHero's Early Game Priorities

## Priority 1

Marin (or without Marin, just whoever is closest to the workshop) immediately starts metal shop. Any remaining people loot the piles that are nearest to them, then split up to start digging the rubble pile that gets them closest to the next usable loot pile. Build shovel for rubble as soon as the MW is up, then immediately after a crowbar for doors and cabinets. Day 1 is pretty static and once you get the hang of doing all this by the end of the day nothing else really matters.

## Priority 2

Upgraded metal workshop, as this awards access to the Hatchet, which is the strongest tool in the early game because you get 20 free fuel and wood. Fuel is vital since it doesn't exist naturally anywhere in the game's environments (afaik), and can only be made (from vital components that are needed to expand your base and craft) or purchased. It's doubly important if you start in winter, as a fairly healthy person can freeze to death in a single night without fuel in the heater. Wood is vital because it is extremely cumbersome to transport large quantities, so getting 20 in your base is essentially an entire 10slot character's scavenging run worth of wood, and you need it for all buildings and also barricading your shelter.

## Priority 3

Obviously get on the Hatchet next; the faster you get the hatchet, the faster you can get to a position of having surplus fuel which saves you a ton of construction goods since you won't burn any of them now. You also won't have to carry wood home for a few days, which speeds up your acquisition of components, possibly the most vital resource early game.

## Priority 4

Two beds, or one bed if you only have two characters (though the only 2-character start I know of has two free beds; I actually forgot about beds entirely when I wrote this because I used my current Anton/Cveta playthrough to work off of). If people have anything wrong with them and aren't currently working, shove them in bed until they literally won't stay there. This keeps them happy and healthy and makes the game easy.

## Priority 5

Usually a stove, since now you have the fuel to run it and probably plenty of food to cook. If you are behind, however, you will likely need to build a stove sooner than the above dictates to avoid starving. Always cook 2 meals at once (no exceptions) unless someone will die otherwise. Always have Bruno cook when available, period. However, if you complete 1-3 fast enough (so people still have a few days before they starve) or have acquired significant stores of canned food, you can and should skip stove and go straight to priority 6.

## Priority 6

Upgrade the normal workshop, to gain access to the shelter barricades. Since you already have the hatchet, you should have more wood than you have components (as you use components far more quickly) and therefore enough lying around to barricade the entire shelter by 6-8 days in. This means that even one person guarding with a shitty weapon nullifies most invasion risks, and even during a crime wave tends to be low risk. Also, since your guards rarely receive significant injury, you basically never have to bandage them, which means you save loot slots on bandages (you rarely ever see a full stack in the wild until you have torn apart a whole location and stacked it in one pile, and using 1 entire slot for a bandage in early game costs you 4 whole components that you won't be able to carry home) and also never need to trade for them, which is prohibitively expensive. No injuries = less sleeping, more steady guard at night, and in the long run makes it hard for anybody to ever go beyond simple sadness. If you get to this point unscathed, the worst of the grind is over. If you play it safe, you can play the game almost perfectly going onwards.

## Priority 7

Barricades: which is explained above, but it's given its own point for clarity.

## Priorities 8+

After this, upgraded stove is really good for saving water (and fuel, I think?). A water collector is often necessary early on, but upgraded stove simply means you will have to use the collector less, and trading 3 components -> 4 water every day or two really hurts your growth. Upgraded stove + Bruno is insane. Upgraded standard workshop is a high priority for the security door. With barricades + door, you can practically sleep through a crime wave with minimal losses if you feel you must. A trap is free, infinite food; once you have a spare slot to bring home 2-3 fertilizer without compromising your build, getting one out is nice (but then again, they cost a LOT of parts). A radio feeds you a TON of information if you use it every 1-2 days, and you should always leave it tuned to the classical station when you aren't using it. The most important thing is the weather station, practically, since you'll know 2-3 days in advance that you're gonna need the heater soon. Never get the heater until the day you need to start using it, pretty much. Upgrading it is a nice bonus if winter comes late enough in your playthrough.

## General tips

* Scavenge for tomorrow, specifically; fill your slots with the things you need tomorrow, or will use tomorrow, before any kind of general goods. Know what you're going out for, and come back with the maximum amounts of it you can carry. If it's your night one scavenging run, your people aren't hungry yet. They aren't sick yet, at least not so much that you can't have them sleep it off. They aren't depressed. You don't need anything but the exact number of stacks of components and wood that will allow you to build as many vital upgrades as possible on the next day; the faster you build your base up, the easier the game is because less random negative shit can occur.
* If you have 1-2 slots left over, THEN grab stuff you will need the day after (like if you have enough shit on night 1 to get upgraded metal workshop, now immediately focus on getting the weapon parts/wood for the hatchet. If that isn't available/you still have space, now you can grab a full stack of food to start getting ahead of yourself on that front.
* This is the general strategy for scavenging: don't just get what's valuable, instead get what will have the biggest immediate payoff, since you can always scavenge for the future in the future.

* Don't go overboard trading, and especially don't go overboard trading away shit. Only trade finished goods, as a general rule; only trade non-vital components when it is absolutely necessary for immediate survival, and only if you won't be using them for several days (like, say, a stack of sugar or tobacco on day 4 - don't trade it unless it'll save someone's life or if its for rarer goods like weapon parts or electrical parts that you need ASAP for a specific improvement).
* Finished goods are worth so much more than unfinished, and you have the power to turn all unfinished goods into finished, which means if you scavenge stacks of unfinished goods you are not attaining their maximum value if you trade them before you've turned them into something better.
* Anything that you don't need (alcohol, smokes, coffee, excluding when these things are preventing suicides) is fair game to cash in for buying more components to build with or finish. The most common things I buy during an okay early game are water, fuel and weapon parts, so that I don't need to waste components making water myself, wood by making the fuel, and weapon parts because you need to get a lot of tools up-front to make sure you're scavenging and building other vital stuff efficiently.
* A good practice is to put up stuff you explicitly don't need (pure barter goods, finished goods for vices your characters don't indulge in) immediately and then pull up the stuff you specifically need ASAP and see which side of the trade outweighs the other. If you have more to offer than you've taken, now start piling on as many things that you want sooner (especially stuff that's a pain to scavenge like wood/components!) until you're getting everything you can. If you can't even get the stuff you need from what you've already offered, however, you want to start adding surplus finished goods first (if you only have two people but you have 4 guns, dump the 2 most expensive ones since they're doing nothing for you even if you use as many as you can any given night - surplus meds are often good for this if you have stacks of 6-10 and nobody is sick or wounded) and only then start dumping stuff like herbs/tobacco/etc. This way, you're only selling stuff that is at it's maximum value, and only buying stuff that you can increase the value of. This snowballs your overall wealth as quickly as possible and lets you set up secondary industries like distillation/rolling/smithing/etc which snowballs wealth more. Once you can make this stuff without affecting your day to day survival, you're pretty much set to win without even having to take big risks if you don't want to.

* Special Thanks to HeavyMetalHero!