How to play guide for Forager

This page will serve as a basic **how to play guide for *Forager***. While there is very little information available at this time, we urge you to check back often, as new information is being added all the time! Feel free to edit this guide with any tips, tricks, and suggestions.

## Basic Gameplay

* Mine minerals, chop down trees, and hunt animals for basic materials.
* You can hover over items with your cursor to pick them up at any distance.
* Each resource destroyed gives some experience, gather enough and you can level up.
* You can use slide button to move faster

## Default Controls

* W: Move up
* A: Move left
* S: Move down
* D: Move right
* Aim using mouse
* Left click: Hit object
* Right click: Consume currently selected item, if possible
* E, Escape: Open character menu
* Space Bar: Tactical Roll

## Tips and tricks

* Never (or rarely) spend Bonus Orbs on extra energy as it is useless in the endgame.
* Put a Quarry on a large, clear island (eg. main island) and place a Mining Rod next to it. This will grant you an influx of resources passively and overall it will make it so you never run out of stone, ore or (if you have the skill that makes every stone give it) coal.
* Power Plants can be used to double the production speed of buildings, including Banks, Fishing Traps and Shrines.
* Sand is the only resource that cannot be automated; the player need to manually dig it up or hope for it on fish traps. Easier way to do this is run around the map digging everywhere with a Nomad or higher Shovel, and replenish energy through food or enemies.
* Drones are very useful once in the mid to late game. You can either build them or try and get lucky at a Sacrifice Altar by sacrificing a heart container for the "Termination" bonus, which gives you a free Drone and 10 EMPs. While crafting the first few Drones can be better, after a certain number getting them from the shrine is a lot more affordable.
* Since Drones automatically collect from Fish Traps, building a lot of them throughout the map while clearing land is a great way to get extra resources passively
* Build a few markets, the items it sells are sometimes valuable, like Drones or Spirit Orbs.
* Always plan ahead with your Skill Points; make sure that a thing unlocked by a skill doesn't require a different skill which you do not have (eg. don't get Factories if you plan on using them but don't have Offshore Drills yet)
* Do quests as they often reward you with unique loot.
* Don't trash or sell your sand, you will regret later on, since it is an important resource you can never get enough of.
* Use the Buy Land tab if you want to see further! This also expands the effective range in which you can pick up items.
* Banks are infinitely more useful if you have the perk that increases their effectiveness if you have more Banks nearby, and build accordingly.
* Gloves increase your attack speed, effectively increasing how fast you destroy resources.
* If you run out of inventory space, you can also use Vaults for extra storage.
* Amulets are incredible, especially if you can get them early, since they increase number of resources dropped and the first few tiers are relatively cheap.
* Surround an island with lighthouses and dig with a late game shovel. You'll obtain incredible amounts of sand and other materials.

## Amazing Farming Methods

### Bones and Great Skulls

If you have the Revitalize skill (energy from killing enemies) and the Necro/Death Rod, you can just farm bones and Great Skulls infinitely. Here's how to do it:

1. Use the Necro/Death Rod to summon Skeletons, and rarely, Skeleton Warriors.
2. Kill the spawned enemies and collect the drops.
3. Repeat step 2 for as long as you wish. You will get energy by killing the skeletons, so you can spawn them infinitely.

Additionally, getting the Skull Mask artifact will cause basic skeletons to not attack you, making farming much easier.

### Dig Spots and other boons

This is a crazy method to farm the perks you get from shrine boons extremely fast, allowing you to get a certain boon from the shrine for however long you want. Here's how to do it:

1. Place a shrine at your chosen location.
2. Activate the shrine and choose a boon.
3. Break the shrine then place it back down again to reset the shrine timer.
4. Choose another boon.
5. Repeat!

This is probably the craziest trick I have seen in the game so far. You can even select the same boon as before to increase the time limit, such as selecting the boon to make structures faster, then pressing the same boon again to extend the time. You can also do this with the Excavator boon to farm archaeology items. You can use the Prospecting skill to increase the chance of getting archaeology items.

### Items in general

This one requires a market. This trick works the best when you have the Supply skill (double market items and market restock time lowered), and the Bargain skill (market prices lowered). This is based on the fact that markets change their items every time you place it down, but do not change their restock time. Here's how to do it:

1. Place the market.
2. Buy any items you need.
3. Break the market.
4. Repeat!

This allows you to buy any item that gets sold at the market, so it's a really easy way to farm items.

### Slot Machine

This trick will make getting items from the slot machine much easier by simply lagging the game.

1. Obtain about three druid scrolls and wizard scrolls (more or less may be required based on how well your computer handles lag) through the market, crafting, or any other means.
2. Obtain an animal lure (technically not required, but highly recommended for removing the lag afterwards).
3. Place the animal lure on a plot near the slot machine (preferably one with a lot of open land).
4. Use the druid scroll to fill the island with the lure with trees, then use the wizard scroll to turn the trees into various animals.
5. Repeat step 4 until the game is noticeably slowed.
6. Go to the slot machine; the items will be slowed, giving you more time to react to them.

To turn off the lag simply attack the animals. The animals will also provide lots of poop, which is useful for making landfill in bulk, and large amounts of meat, hide, and other animal drops when killed.