What to do first

Open the settlement and make four checks in order: who can work, where supplies are stored, where people sleep, and which production or research step is available now. Fix the first missing support before spending materials on broad expansion.

Choose one purpose for the first expedition—collect a needed material, test the party, or learn a route—then prepare only what that purpose needs. This keeps the settlement and dungeon in the same decision instead of treating the dungeon as a separate level-selection screen.

You are ready to leave when the party has its equipment, food or rations, recovery option, and a return plan. If any of those is missing, shorten the route or solve that problem at home first; do not use deeper rooms to discover a preparation failure.

When the first run fills your backpack

1. Stop gathering as soon as a character shows Overloaded or the carry-weight warning. Return to the settlement before the warning turns a resource run into a recovery problem.

2. Open the Build menu and use the Storage category. Choose a storage option that matches what is filling the pack: general resource storage for mixed materials, or a dedicated wood, stone, or straw pile when one bulk resource is the problem.

3. Test unloading with a small stack of common wood or stone. Use the transfer action shown by your current interface. If the item stays in the character inventory, do not drop rare items to experiment; current player reports indicate that ground-dropped items may be sorted by available workers when matching storage has room, but verify that behavior in your build.

4. If hunger is also low, check the party inventories for an item with a Hunger value before starting another long gathering task. In the current playtest, Luma Fruit was shown as food and restored 25 Hunger; if cooking is blocked by rain or farming is locked behind Basic Agriculture, use the food already with the party first.

5. For low energy, finish a Basic Workstation task for Textile, then open the Housing category and build one Cloth Bedroll. In the current playtest, the workbench showed two Wild Long Grass for one Textile, one bedroll required four Textile, and that single bedroll could be reused; if the Main Quest shows Textile 4/6, add two more Textile tasks before moving on. Use the live recipe for your difficulty and build one bedroll first.

6. Let the characters rest after the bedroll is finished. They can sleep without one, but the current playtest shows faster energy recovery with it; the bedroll is a reusable comfort upgrade, not a sleep gate or a one-per-character requirement. Continue gathering only after the overload warning is gone and energy is rising.

7. After the first Main Quest completes, read the “Ominous Message” event instead of dismissing it as flavor text. In this playthrough it directed the player to recruit their own party and mentioned funding; use the Recruit button in the upper-right, then check the current recruitment screen for the actual offer and cost.

8. Once the house is finished, build the Research Workbench and open Research. This playthrough exposed Basic Cooking and Basic Agriculture; choose the branch that addresses the immediate bottleneck, and check the live cost before confirming.

9. If the Cooking Workbench blueprint says it is missing three Wood Planks, research Wood Processing first. Then use the Wood Workbench to craft the Planks and return to the Cooking Workbench; do not search for the recipe in the Basic Workstation.

10. If an expedition wipes the party, treat any returned money as recovery rather than permission to rush. In this playthrough, more than 1,000 currency made it quick to recruit four companions again; rebuild supplies, shorten the next route, and identify the failure before going back down.

11. If the Main Quest asks for a Wooden Goddess Statue, follow Wood Processing → Wood Planks → Special → Wooden Goddess Statue. The same objective can separately require two units at level 2, so building the statue and leveling the required recruits are two checks to complete.

Stabilize before you explore

Your first priority is a settlement that can keep people fed, housed, and productive. Build only what supports that loop, then make sure the party has the supplies and equipment it needs before leaving.

A useful first-run checklist from recent player walkthroughs is to set work priorities, confirm storage and sleeping space, check that research or production stations can operate, and review food, health, energy, carry weight, and a way home before committing to a deeper run.

A small, reliable base is more valuable than a wide base full of unfinished plans. When a new system becomes available, ask whether it improves survival, production, research, or expedition readiness before spending resources on it.

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Build a party with a job for everyone

An early four-member party gives you room to combine different backgrounds, traits, equipment choices, and skill trees; later Expedition Ranks can expand the available slots. Prefer a party whose roles are understandable and complementary over one built around a single clever interaction.

Keep notes on what went wrong after each run. If the party survived but returned unable to continue, the problem may be preparation or recovery rather than raw damage.

Use the first runs as information

Dungeon progression includes changing rooms, environments, enemies, and risks. The first few expeditions should teach you how far the party can safely go and what the settlement must produce next.

If the party is low on energy, food, health, recovery items, or carrying capacity, returning with a smaller haul is often more useful than turning a learning run into a rescue. Treat the portal or other return option as part of the plan from the start.

The game is designed around real-time-with-pause combat and meaningful character development. Pause early when you need to inspect a situation, reposition, recover, or change the plan.

How to read a failed run

A failed expedition does not automatically mean the party needs more damage. Ask what happened first. A character may have been exposed because the formation was unclear, the party may have stayed after the recovery plan was exhausted, or the settlement may have sent people underground without enough supplies. Each cause points to a different improvement.

Write down one observation immediately after returning: the resource that ran short, the room or encounter that changed the plan, the item that was missing, or the point where the party should have turned back. Then change one thing at home before the next attempt. This keeps learning connected to the actual run instead of turning a loss into a vague instruction to grind.

When the same problem appears twice, move it to the top of the settlement or research list. When it appears only once, keep it as a warning rather than treating it as a universal rule.