Getting started

The title screen

CONTINUE returns to your most recent world with your last gator. To start another, choose PLAY, pick a mode's picture card, then choose NEW WORLD on its page. Set up the world, pick your gator and press START. PLAY WITH FRIENDS opens the joining and hosting choices. The profile chip opens YOUR GATORS. SETTINGS, EXTRAS and QUIT sit below the main actions.

The title's painted landscape moves gently behind the menu. To keep it still, turn on Reduce motion in Settings > Accessibility. Read Menus and settings: find your way around for the full tour.

Welcome to the valley

You are Tatazo, a young gator who lives in a river valley. A strange grey murk called the Gloom has soaked into the land: it turns puddles into grumpy blobs and makes gentle animals cross. Your job is to explore, gather, build, and calm the creatures the Gloom has touched. Nothing is ever hurt for good. Gloom creatures burst into clean water and leaves, and animals turn friendly again and run home.

You start in the village. It is safe: no creatures come in, nobody can fight there, and nobody can dig or build in it. Walk out of the village and the adventure begins.

What you carry

Every new gator starts with:

Wooden Club ×1Mango ×5Build Hammer ×1Wooden Hoe ×1Carrot Seeds ×4

The controls

Your weapon, your tools and the 1–8 bar

• Your weapon is the one you wear. Put a weapon in the Hand slot of your gear (the character menu, Tab). Every attack swings it: Tatazo draws it on his own, whatever he was holding. With no weapon worn, he bites.
• The 1–8 bar holds your skills, food and potions. Nothing else goes there: no tools, no weapons, no building pieces.
• A skill casts from its number key. Each new skill goes onto a free slot as you learn it, and in the Skill Book (K) you drag skills onto the slots you like.
• Food or a potion comes into your hand with its number; press the same number again to eat or drink one, just like a click. Put food there from your satchel (right-click it, or drag it).
• Tools come out with the tool wheel. Press H and pick an axe, a pickaxe, a rod, a hoe… It stays in your hand until you pick another or draw your weapon (the wheel's top slot, or any attack). With a controller, hold RB, aim with a stick and let go. A tool you just crafted comes straight out, ready to use.
• Seeds, building pieces and other things you hold: right-click them in your satchel (or pick them in the build menu) to take them out.
• R, F, T and G are optional extra skill keys: each casts the skill you set for it in the Skill Book (click a skill, then a letter key, or drag the skill onto the key). You can change them, like every key, in Settings > Controls. With a controller, the d-pad casts those four.

Your first steps

The tracker on the screen always shows the next step. Here is the start of the rookie path:

1. Meet Tiberius. He runs the village workshop. Walk up and press E.
2. Pick up sticks outside the village (E on them).
3. Gather plant fibre: punch bushes and tall plants (left mouse).
4. Collect stones: pick up pebbles and flint, or break small rocks.
5. Craft a stone axe: open crafting with C. Sticks, stone and fibre make your first Stone Axe.
6. Chop down a tree: your new axe comes out in your hand (H takes it out later). Swing at the trunk until it falls.
7. Craft a pickaxe: rocks and ore need one.
8. Build a workbench: craft it and it comes out in your hand; place it. Many recipes need one: see Workbench.
9. Cleanse the Gloom: calm three Gloom creatures outside the village, with the weapon in your Hand slot (or a bite).

After that come planting, fishing, cooking, building a home, turning a waterwheel, and at level 8 choosing your class. See the whole list on Quests and storylines.

Health, mana, stamina and food

• Health is your life. If it runs out you are knocked out (see Knocked out and getting up).
• Mana powers Mage skills and the shared skills. Stamina is for sprinting, dashing and some abilities.
• Health and mana grow back while you are fed. Eat something: a mango, berries, or better, cooked food, which keeps you fed much longer. When you are starving, the edges of the screen pulse red.

Levels and XP

Everything you do gives experience (XP): gathering, crafting, cooking, fishing, calming creatures and finding new places. Levels have no cap. Each level takes a little longer than the last, but stronger creatures, on the lands further out, give more.

Every level makes you stronger: your hits and skills grow, and so do your health and mana. Past level 130, where the strongest creatures stop, each level adds even more (see Levels and power).

At level 8 the Class Shrine in the village opens and you pick a class: Knight, Mage, Shooter, Ninja or Monster. See Classes.

Photos and Pico's postcards

Photo mode (P) hides the screen's panels so you can take a picture, wide or tall for your phone. Every photo gets a postcard code from Pico the parrot. The character menu (J) lists them on its NOTES page, under Pico's Postcards, with a button to copy each one. Give a friend a code: in the same world it pins the spot on their map, and used as a new world's seed it grows that very world and pins the spot.

Day and night

A whole day lasts about 24 minutes. At night creatures are stronger and some only come out after dark. Sleep in a bed with E to make it your home (you get up there) and to skip the night when everyone in the world is asleep.

Where to next?

• Read about the continents and their dangers before you wander far.
• Learn how fighting and elements work.
• Make a friend: wild capybaras graze by the river (see Getting around, and animal friends).
• Stuck? Ask on the forum. Someone has been there before.
• Found a bug, or something that looks wrong? Press F7 (with a controller: Menu > Feedback). The game takes a picture of the screen and asks what happened. SAVE keeps it on your computer.