Your First Day

This guide takes a new character through the first day on a persistent world such as Gaia, where the world starts in the Stone Age and knowledge is kept in books. It covers getting a research book, food, water, shelter, early tools and a safe place to sleep, in the order you will need them.

Contents

• What you start with
• Get a research book
• What to study first
• Tools without a book
• Water
• Food
• Shelter and warmth
• Light
• Sleeping and logging off
• If you die
• First-day checklist

What you start with

• Full food and water bars. They drain as you work, so plan water and food within your first hour. The bars are at the bottom centre of the screen (see Customizing Your HUD).
• Simple clothes. In the Stone Age that is a leather loincloth. If you spawn somewhere cold (tundra, taiga, or a temperate area in winter) you also get a fur coat and fur boots; keep them on. In the desert you get a robe.
• No tools and no knowledge. You don’t know a single recipe yet.

A short in-game tutorial runs on your first character and walks you through the controls.

Get a research book

Every recipe belongs to a chapter, such as Basic Toolmaking or Basic Furniture. You learn a chapter by studying it from a book. There are three ways to get one:

1. Found your own faction. Open the Faction tab and use Create Faction. Pick a name, draw a symbol if you like, then press Found the faction. The founder immediately gets the Stone Age master book, which holds every Stone Age chapter, and a pencil. You can do this alone; you don’t need other players.
2. Join someone who has a book. A book isn’t used up by studying, so one book can teach a whole tribe. Ask a faction to lend you theirs, or to let you study from it on their research bench. If they know a chapter, they can stand beside you while you study it to make it faster.
3. Buy or trade for one. Books and single chapter pages are ordinary items. Anyone can rip a chapter out of a book and sell, swap or give it away.

To study, hold the book, use it in your hand and pick Study: chapter. The menu lists the chapters you can study now first, then the ones that need groundwork, then the ones you already know. A Stone Age chapter takes 1 minute. Stand still until it finishes; you keep the chapter until you die.

What to study first

The Stone Age master book has twelve chapters. None of them needs another chapter first, except Regalia & Heraldry, which needs Weaving. For a first day, study these in order:

Later, add Stone Arms (spears, bone knife, bone and stone pickaxes, chipping flint on a rock), Archery (bows and arrows), Herbalism (bandages, splints, the drying rack), Primitive Armor, Field Defenses and Ritual & Worship. The Research node reference lists every chapter.

If a craft or action fails with “You don’t know how to do this yet. Study the … chapter first”, the message names the chapter you need. The Crafting Atlas in the IC tab shows what each recipe needs.

Tools without a book

You can get your first tools before you have studied anything:

1. Flint. Click a large rock with an empty hand on Grab intent to find a flint. Rocks refill slowly.
2. Sharpen it by knapping. Hold a stone or a second, unsharpened flint, and use it on the flint (in your other hand or on the ground beside you). Choose Sharp flake. Knapping can also make a flint knife, a flint spearhead or three flint arrowheads. See Flint.
3. A stick. Click a tree with an empty hand on Harm intent to break off a branch. Click the branch on Grab intent to pick the leaves off, then on Harm intent to clear the twigs. Use the sharpened flint on the stick to sharpen it.
4. A binding. Use the sharpened flint or knife on grass or tall grass to cut grass cuttings, then use two cuttings in hand to twist crude twine. Butchered animals also give sinew, which is stronger.
5. Flint axe. With the twine or sinew in your inventory or on the ground under you, use the sharpened flint on the sharpened stick. A twine binding wears out quickly; sinew or rope lasts much longer.

With the axe you can chop trees for wood logs. A flint spearhead used on a stick makes a flint spear for hunting. Use the axe on a stack of logs to cut 2 logs into 1 plank; this needs no chapter. Without an axe, Woodworking without an axe shows the hand route with flint, wedge and mallet.

Water

• Drink straight from fresh water. Click a river, lake or pond tile with an empty hand on Grab intent. Never drink salt water. Raw water can give you cholera: about a 15% chance per drink from ordinary water, 30% from jungle rivers and flooded ground, and 45% from swamps.
• Make it safe. With Pottery & Cookware, make a wooden mug to drink from and a bucket to carry water. Boil water in a clay cooking pot on a campfire before drinking it. The Starter Guide explains clay and boiling step by step.
• Milk never needs boiling. Use a bucket on a cow, ewe or goat on Help intent.
• Wells give clean water as long as nobody leaves dung within four tiles.

If you catch cholera, see Medical.

Food

• Berries. Click a berry bush on Grab intent to pick some. Each kind of berry has its own effect, and the effects differ from world to world: some are tasty, some are bad for you. Try a new kind carefully.
• Hunting. Kill small, harmless animals such as deer, rabbits or birds; even fists work. Stay away from bears, wolves, big cats, alligators and snakes. Butcher a carcass with any sharp tool, including sharpened flint, on Harm intent; on Grab intent you skin it too, for pelts and hides. Carcasses in or beside rivers can drift away, so drag them ashore first.
• Cook your meat. Raw meat gives food poisoning. With Basic Furniture, build a campfire (4 logs), put the meat on it and click it to light it. Basic Toolmaking’s dehydrator dries cutlets for food that keeps.
• Bird eggs are safe raw.
• Foraging. Use Forage nearby in the Crafting tab while standing on open grass or dirt. A 20 to 45 second search can find a stone, a small wood piece, wild seeds or, outside winter and the dry season, a bunch of edible mushrooms. Each patch of ground holds only a few finds and refills slowly, so keep moving.
• Wild crops. Ripe wild plants grow in open countryside away from settlements. Harvest them with a knife or hatchet for produce and seeds. See Farming.
• Fishing. Basic Toolmaking unlocks fishing rods and nets. See Fishing.

Eat a mix of food. Living on one kind of food for a long time slows your stamina recovery; see Balanced diet. For a lasting food supply, move on to Farming and Ranching.

Shelter and warmth

Any roofed area is shelter from rain, snow, cold and the desert sun. Watch the temperature icon on your HUD.

• Caves. Roofed areas are darker inside. A cave is the fastest shelter, but check that nothing lives in it.
• Build a hut. With Primitive Construction, put up log walls or roof supports, then hold a wood roof builder and use it in hand while facing each tile you want to roof. See Construction.
• Dig down. With Basic Toolmaking, make a wooden spade (3 logs), or a bone shovel from a wood handle and bone. Use it in hand and choose Tunnel to dig a hole to the level below. Use a wooden ladder (4 logs) on the hole so people can climb in and out instead of falling in. Underground, put up mine supports as you dig or the tunnel can cave in.
• Fire. A campfire warms you within one tile, a brazier (Basic Furniture, stone) within three. Feed them wood, coal or charcoal.
• Clothes. Skin animals for pelts, then study Weaving to make a fur coat, boots and hat. A fur coat helps in winter but won’t save you in a blizzard: get under a roof.

More on cold weather is in Winter & Long Rounds and the Starter Guide.

Light

Nights are dark, and a research bench makes no progress in the dark. Make a torch from a wood handle and animal fat (Basic Toolmaking for the handle, Primitive Construction for the torch). Use it in hand to light it; it burns for about five minutes and can be topped up with more fat or oil. A campfire also gives light. See Night time.

Sleeping and logging off

Don’t just log off. Your character stays in the world, asleep on the ground, where it can be robbed or killed and still slowly gets hungry.

1. Make a bed (Basic Furniture, 4 planks) or a leather bedroll (Weaving, 4 leather) and stand on it. Sleeping in a free bed makes it yours.
2. Put away anything in your hands.
3. Use Sleep in the IC tab and stay connected for the two minutes it takes.
4. Use Wake Up when you come back.

While you sleep properly your hunger and thirst don’t drop. You can’t sleep while you are ill, have fleas in your clothes, or are too dirty. The full rules are in Saving your character.

If you die

Death wipes everything your character knew. Your next character starts with no chapters and has to study again, so keep your books somewhere safe. If you had a bed of your own, your next character starts beside it; otherwise you start again on the mainland (see Your home land).

First-day checklist

1. Get a book: found a faction or study from a friend’s book.
2. Study Basic Toolmaking, Basic Furniture, Pottery & Cookware, Primitive Construction and Weaving.
3. Make a flint axe and chop some logs.
4. Drink, and make a mug, bucket and cooking pot for clean water.
5. Hunt or forage, and cook on a campfire.
6. Find a cave or build a roofed hut, and light it.
7. Make a bed, and sleep in it before you log off.

See also

• Books and Scholars
• Starter Guide
• Gaia
• Crafting