Getting Started in Niffelheim

Overview

A guide to help new players get started: this is does not cover all aspects of the game! It only covers some basics to get started, and answer common initial questions.

Character creation and starting point

First, make sure your language is correct in “Settings”.
Changing languages while in-game can cause issues at this time. The Devs are aware and working on this issue.

Just select a Profile slot and click “Play”.

WARNING:
Do not change the Profile name from the default!

We have a known issue where changing the profile name will cause saved games to be completely lost. The Devs are working on a solution.

Then select your starting location, and number of AI opponents (up to 3, or you can have none at all). You have four options:

NOTE:
As Niffelheim is currently Early Access, only the Ancient Bear Mound has been developed. The Devs copied the Ancient Bear Mound to the other areas, so if you select them, you will be seeing the Ancient Bear Mound graphics. Eventually, the other 3 areas will be released as they are developed.

Since the four areas are identical, the only difference between them is how they connect to town. The first two options (Bear and Wolf) are slightly more convenient to the town shop (the paths to them are by the shop, so you do not have to cross town to return to them if you select one of these two areas).

We have no other options for character creation at this time, but the Devs have stated they plan a female Warrior in the future.

Once you have created your profile, you are at the main map, with two areas available: your starting domain, and the town. You cannot start in town (it isn’t available yet), so you must select your domain (it will have your color flag over it). This takes you to your start spot in front of your mine, and you are ready to explore Niffleheim!

Defending your castle!

I’m listing this as a first section, as your castle can be attacked at any time. You need to at least be aware what to do and how to respond.

Groups of skeletons periodically attack your castle, and can destroy it unless you defend it. They can come even if you are away exploring or deep inside your mine. Just be aware that you could have to return at any time, and keep in mind how to get back from where you are (next header).

Your castle is sturdy enough to survive for a bit, if it’s attacked when you are already engaged in a battle. Don’t panic: you can usually finish what you are fighting, and then go deal with the attack. There are also ways to make your castle take longer to destroy (more on that later in the guide).

Always have food on you! Then, no matter what you are doing, when you get to the attack, you have food to heal between skeletons if necessary.

Don’t run out of cash! You need 5 gold to port back to your castle from your mine or a dungeon. If you have no money, you can’t use this option… and it’s the fastest way back!

The fastest route back depends where you are when the attack hits:

• Workshop – just run back out. You will get there in time, even if you were far on one end or the other of the shop.
• On the surface, left or right of your castle – Until you get plenty of spare cash, you will need to run back. Usually, hostile creatures do not spawn very quickly, so if you killed them all as you went out, they will still be clear on the way back. Not always, though! Once you have a lot of money, you can spend 50 gold to portal to town, and then come back if it’s faster. Don’t worry: as long as you don’t get delayed killing things on the way back, you will get there in plenty of time.
• In your mine or a dungeon – Either press “m” to access the map, or click the red “attack” icon in the upper left corner. You will be prompted to go back to your castle for the cost of 5 gold. This takes you instantly to your front door to defend it! You will usually get 5 (or more) gold back from the skeletons, so this money is always well-spent!

You will have to look to see which side (left or right) is under attack. Keep in mind you may have an attack at both sides at once! If you do, it does not matter which side you clear first, as long as you kill all invaders on both sides.

You will always have multiple attackers, so always use the “f” key to attack. When you do this, the one you have hit will break away from the group and move slightly closer to you. The others will continue to attack your castle, so you will only be injured by the one you struck.

The skeletons are not very difficult, if you fight one at a time, and keep your health up.

Skeletons are very SLOW so you can retreat from them if you take too many hits. However, they will follow you, or return the castle – you must defeat them sooner or later! But you can retreat and heal – or even retreat and kill some rabbits or birds for food if you somehow get caught with none on you. Unless you have skeletons attacking both sides at once, you can kill or gather food from the other side–just watch your castle’s health!

As you get better equipment, some levels in Warrior, and build up your castle, you will defeat the skeletons more easily.

…check for repairs on your castle! If you go to the center engineering circle (the blue one over your mine door) and access it, it will either have options to upgrade (more on this in another section), or an option to Repair. You only get the Repair option if your building takes a certain amount of damage, so you could see that your building is not at full health (mouse over it to see the status bar), but still not have the Repair option, because the damage isn’t bad enough.

If you DO have the Repair option, select it, see what materials you need, and repair it right away! You could be attacked on the other side at any time!

The attacks appear to come in waves at regular intervals, one on each side of your castle. Once you defend a side, you will have a “break” for THAT side… for a while. Please note that you only have one health pool for your castle! Don’t let it be destroyed!

Useful hotkeys

Most actions in Niffelheim are easiest with hotkeys, including movement. While you can use the mouse to do all these actions, the keys have advantages. Here’s a list of the hotkeys that you will want to make friends with:

UPDATE 16/01/2017
*********************************************************************************
1. Use (activate) an item in inventory – RMB

2. Drag&Drop full stack – LMB

3. Drag (half stack), Drop (1 piece) – L.ALT+LMB

4. Sell/Buy 1 piece – Ctrl + RMB (also drop a full stack)

5. Move/Sell/Buy a full stack – Shift + RMB

6. Attack – F

7. Shield defense – С

8. Pick up item – Q

9. Dig a door/Build – E

10. Chat – Y

11. Map – M

12. Dragon – R

13. Dig/Collect/Chop/Open craft menu – Space

14. Inventory – I
***************************************************************************

Niffelheim uses the standard “wasd” keys for movement, most game movement is easier using these keys:

w = use portal item move up a level (when in front of a portal that leads up or “in”)
a = move left
s = use portal item and move down a level (when in front of a portal that leads down)
d = move right

A “portal” can be a door, or an opening into a dungeon, shop, stair doorway, etc.

Note: While “w” will take you into a shop, “s” will not take you out; you must click the “city” button to leave.

These keys have the advantage of a double-function when going up and down: they will first use the portal to open it, and then move you through the opening in that direction, if available. When using a mouse, this requires two clicks: one to open the portal, then one to click the arrow to move through after it opens. The keys are quicker.

If you attempt to go through a portal that does not have an option to go that way (for example, try to go “up” through the door to your workshop from the surface, which only goes “down”), you will still open the portal, but will stand in front of it until you either click the correct hotkey or arrow (and you will see the available arrows).

Initially, these are the most useful combat-related keys:

1 = cycle weapons/tool
Pressing the “1” key will toggle between your bow, your melee weapon, and your harvesting tool (which starts as your axe). To change tools, you must actually go into your inventory, right-click your other tool, and select “use”. This will put the newly-used tool in this cycle, and the previously selected tool into your inventory.

f = attack nearest target in the direction I’m facing

This key does nothing if you are facing away from your foe! You must first turn to face your enemies.

Pressing and holding the F key will repeatedly attack the same target until it is dead, while using the mouse could result in attacking different target with each swing. This feature of the hotkey is most useful when you have multiple targets, so you finish one before starting another (and so take less damage).

You can also use “c” to block attacks, but at the time of this writing, blocking isn’t as useful in combat or it’s timing/use isn’t clear. Also, you later can use “2” to summon your dragon–after you earn it!

If you are near a buildable location, you can use a hotkey to access it:

e = Engineering

The buildable/engineering locations will have a colored circle with a sunburst image on them. The first ones you see are the blue one (for your mine/fortress) and two green ones (left and right of your mine) for your outbuildings.

space = use the nearest item or harvest nearest resource (not including living creatures)

Pressing space will move you to the nearest “useable” item (crafting station, portal, plant to harvest, tree to chop, etc.), and use it. Note that you may move backwards to get into position to chop a tree or rock.

Also note, that space does not pick up items on the ground; it only interacts with items. If you kill something, and it drops items, or if you try to harvest something and don’t have enough space so it falls on the ground, you need the next key:

left shift = pick stuff up

This grabs the nearest item on the ground and add it to your inventory, if you have room. Please note it does not know to grab stackable items first, so there could be things on the ground that you can get, but the nearest item would require a slot you don’t have.

It also has a limited range, so you may need to move closer to items to grab them.

The most useful “information” keys:

h = character screen
Please note that it is not the usual/common “c” key, which is your “block” key. You can change it if you want in options.

t – tasks and chat window
m – map (teleport)

i = access inventory
Please note that you may find it useful to have inventory open in combat to access food, as we currently have no ability to bind hotkeys to food.

Escape = closes most information screens.
If no info screens are open, this will pop up an option menu, which also pauses the game.

Basic Geography

Because the only map we have right now is the Wolf Forest, I’m not going to go into what I believe are the specifics for that map, just a general overview of how the areas are connected.

You start in front of your castle: “home”.

You also have two auxilliary buildings at your home spot. You will want to eventually build these, as well as upgrade your castle to have walls and towers.

You start in front of a door. Go down through this door to access your workshop–one of your most important areas!

You cannot be attacked in your workshop, and there’s a lot of good stuff in here:

To the left from the entrance:

• Woodcrafting area
• the locked Vault
• Smithing area
• Trophy area
• your Throne

To the right from the entrance:

• Cooking area
• Alchemy area
• your starter chest/storage area

You have additional storage chests interspersed through the Workshop, but you must get the materials and build them. You only have one (far right) to start.

You need a code to open the vault. Hint: you can figure it out from clues in the workshop.

You access your mine by going down again from the entrance of your workshop. You get many resources down here, including metal of all sorts, building rocks, clay, salt, and a variety of mushrooms. You also have big “boss” caverns: the one big creature in these will be much harder to kill, but the chest will be full of rewards!

You will also find a questgiver deep inside your mine somewhere.

You can move across the surface both left and right of your castle. The creatures you run into will become more challenging the further you go from your castle. If you get past the final big hurdles, you will reach a signpost that will take you either to town or an adjacent area.

You can find other useful locations as “portals” along the surface. The Wolf area has several, but some are still in development. Some portals go into other dungeons you can explore, and find treasures (and danger!) within.

Specific to the wolf map:
I’m not including everything on the wolf map, but there are two key locations to note:

1. An altar on the far left side of the map (to activate charms).
2. A cooking station not far to the right from your castle (you can craft foods here).

NOTE:
If you get all the way to one side or the other of the map, the fastest way back to your castle is to go to town, and from town back to your area. When you return from town, you return “home”, in front of your castle, not to the far ends that led to town.

You get to town one of two ways:

1. Clear all the way left or right on the surface, and select the town option (free, but you may have a “combat” cost).
2. Pay 50 gold to go to the main map, and select the town (center area).

Key town locations, from left to right:

• Portal to Bear and Wolf areas
• Merchant
• Arena
• Temple
• Portal to Dragon and Eagle areas

The Arena area is under development.

You will visit the Merchant most often of all the locations in town. 🙂

Hunting and Gathering Resources

Immediately to the left and right of the castle you will find lots of small creatures running around:

• Rabbits
• Birds
• Frogs
• Hedgehogs

Rabbits and birds will drop meat you can eat (yes, even raw!). Try not to eat the BIRD meat! The first level of cooking has a simple recipe for bird meat that drastically increases its healing power, but you need salt for it (see the “What to do first” section of this guide, the part about visiting the Merchant for salt). If you need to heal, eat the rabbit meat first.

Frogs are not killed, just knocked out and captured. You only need do this if you have a lot of frogs, to clear spawn and try to get the other food-bearing creatures to spawn.

Hedgehogs only drop acorns, which are used to make beer. 🙂 The other ingredient for beer isn’t common, so the main reason to kill hedgehogs is also to clear spawn to get the other food-bearing creatures to appear.

Wolves do NOT drop meat of any sort, but they do drop hides that you can use for cash (see “what to do to start” section). However, they are VERY tough when you start, so make sure to only fight one wolf at a time in the beginning, and have plenty of food to heal between battles until you get some upgrades.

Rabbits and hedgehogs will run from you and hide in holes in the ground. Birds also run and hide in bushes. If you take a few steps away and wait, they will re-appear (but will run from you again).

You want to kill as many as possible by melee. Unless the wind is blowing, you can outrun rabbits, but not birds. You can kill birds with your bow–until you run out of arrows. Arrows require metals to craft, and you have better uses for that metal to start than more arrows. To kill birds, wait for them to stop moving, and close the distance. If they take off again, stop and take a step or two away. You can close the distance when they have stopped, and then kill them (you will need 2 hits to start, so use the “f” key!) Be careful not to herd them towards a wolf! Wolves prefer human flesh over bird….

Niffelheim has a wide variety of plants with different uses. Some are food, and some used in alchemy.

WARNING:
Not all plants restore health! Many fungi will actually remove your health. Watch what you eat!

The best plants for food are pumpkins of any kind. Honey pumpkins you can cook into a mash, and the others restore a fair bit of health.

Keep an eye out for straw sources; straw isn’t as common, and you need it for crafting:

• a clump of tall, dried grass stalks
• birds’ nests (may have eggs as well)
• beehives

Bees will attack you if you disturb their hive or plants near it. Wait for the swarm to fly up from the hive, then run in and get it. You can usually get it before they start stinging. Once the hive is gone, they dieappear. You will get some honey, too. 🙂

Some plants are very small, so use space to gather plants that are hard to see.

Save these plants, as you can cook them into better food rather than eat them raw:

• honey pumpkins
• red and white turnips
• beans
• wild and sweet persimmons

To swap between axe and pick, you must right-click the tool not equipped (in your inventory), and select “use”.

Trees can give wood, twigs, cones, and resin. If you need wood, look for trees with green branches. The ones that have dead limbs appear to give just twigs. You need more wood than twigs: you not only need lots of wood to build your castle but later you will need to convert the wood to boards for other building projects.

Stones on the surface only give building stones, and take quite a bit of chopping to get them. Since you can get building stones from the mine as well, you may want to save your pack space on the surface, and not collect these (unless you really need that stone!)

Trees on the surface do regenerate, but not very quickly. They can also change seasons (go from covered with green to not), sometimes while you are chopping them! If you clear all the way to town in one direction, it will reset when you leave for town and come back.

This can make wood-gathering difficult to start, until you can fight your way past the wolves and larger creatures past them. Alternate sides, and go mining to give your trees time to grow back. Also, as you mine, you may get more resources to upgrade your armor/weapons to get strong enough to fight your way to town. Any crafted items is better than what you started with!

Your mine is below your workshop. Use your pick on the crumbled dirt to open the tunnels. Each time you clear some dirt, you have a chance to get some resources on the floor:

• ores of all sorts
• building stones
• salt
• clay
• and other items…

Just hold space down to keep mining, and hit left-shift to collect the items as you go by. 🙂

Stay alert! You can have random enounters in your mine: clumps of skeletons, spiders, rats, and undead creatures can wander up on you! So always have food with you as you mine, and be ready to swap to your weapon!

Some recipes require ore, and some require ingots. You convert 6 ore to 3 ingots in your Smithy. So if you need iron ingots (the first level of metal), you need at least 6 ore to make some.

The mines are random, so you map will not match your friend’s map!

To open a shaft to the next level down, use your pick on the floor (use the mouse: space will not work for this). Not all spots can open a down portal, so watch for a message at the bottom of your screen to choose another location. Your pick will also start to dig a hole (as opposed to just bouncing off the ground with no “hole” graphic) if you are in a good spot.

You cannot dig a shaft “up”, just “down”. So you may have to go back up and over to get to a spot above you.

You don’t need to make down-shafts everywhere. Make strategic ones, preferably right below the last one, or close to it, so you can descend to the lower levels quickly.

Watch out for big caverns: these large, multilevel open areas house “bosses”. The bosses are tough, but always have a chest in the middle of the room filled with goodies and special items for crafting that you can only get in these chests. See “Fighting Bosses” for some tips on taking these out.

There is also a questgiver in one of the caverns.

After you clear out your mine, fungus can grow in it.

You can also find sigils, on a glowing stand. When you use it, you will get a scroll object in your inventory. Use it to apply the sigil, which will give you some sort of benefit.

What to do first…

I tried to list these more or less in order, but you may need to vary them a bit, depending on how well you defend against attacks, and how lucky you are with resources, etc.

See the section in this guide on this. 🙂

Be ready!

The only way to heal (initially) is to EAT. You start with a few bits of food, but that will run out very quickly. You need to have more, so you can recover if you have a close battle, or need to defend your castle. You can get edibles from hunting animals, and gathering plants. See the detailed section on hunting and gathering for specifics on how to get food before your auxilliary buildings are running.

The best items you will find to start to restore health (in order):

1. cooked/crafted food (what you start with, or what you make)
2. raw meat
3. pumpkins

Of course, there are other edibles, but those will help the most.

When you first go in your workshop, you will not see the crafting stations. You can see big open areas, but you have to build them!

Some stations are more critical than others.

You need the first level of the Woodcrafting station to make the wolf head helmet that will get your first batch of money. You need wolf pelts to make those, so if you aren’t up to killing wolves yet, you can delay this. This station also makes some armor upgrades, boards and rope, so you may need those.

You need the Smithing station not just built, but upgraded to level 2 to smelt copper ore into ingots. You need the copper ingots (and wooden boards from the Woodcrafting station) to build more chest space in your Workshop. The Smithy will also have some craftable weapon and armor upgrades.

You don’t need (nor will you have materials to make) alchemy items right at the start, and you can use the cooking pot on the surface–if you can get past the wolves to get to it! I recommend getting the cooking pot built shortly after the other two.

As soon as you can, make at least one or two more chests (preferably, the two just left of the entrance) to hold resources close to where you will work.

Your castle has three parts:

1. The castle building (“home”)
2. Wall
3. Tower

Initially, you must build these in that order: Castle, wall, tower.
After that, you can upgrade them in any order you choose, I always do the tower first, as that is what the skeletons attack first (once they are built), but they all share health, so the order may not matter.

You also must upgrade them in the castle/wall/tower order when you change building types (e.g. wood to clay).

Each upgrade makes it more difficult for the attacking skeletons to destroy your castle! Even just building the 3 sections will make your castle much more durable.

You have two auxilliary buildings: one left and one right of your castle door. You have three options for what to make them (so you cannot have all 3 to start):

• Sheeppen – wool
• Chicken coop – EITHER eggs or feathers
• Greenhouse – grows the seed planted

All of these give you some benefit, and you want something from both as quickly as possible.

The sheeppen cannot be made easily right away–you need lots of rope, which requires wool. This means killing a lot of sheep to get the rope to make the pen in the first place…The coop (and greenhouse) can be made right away, so those selections are best.

You can destroy the building and change them later if you wish.

In addition, you start with a basic stick trap, which can catch a chicken to put in your coop.

Fortunately, you are surrounded by plenty of wild chickens! You just drop the trap where you see them, and wait until one runs in.

WARNING:
Niffelheim has both male and female birds. The males have a little red crown on top of their head. The females do not. Putting a male chicken in your coop will produce feathers. You want a FEMALE to start, to produce eggs (food). Once you trap a bird, you lose the trap, so make sure you place your trap where you will get a girl!

Once you place your chicken in the coop, you will start to get free eggs – free food!

The other building ABSOLUTELY should be a Greenhouse! As you gather plants, you have a chance to get a seed of that type. The Greenhouse will produce one plant of the seed used in it every so often. You can change seeds anytime. If you need to grow a different plant for a bit, you just plant the new seed, and can put the first one back in again later (seeds are not destroyed).

The best seed to get is Honey Pumpkin. You can use a cooking station to convert honey pumpkins into a mash that restores 100 health, which is much better than anything you can hunt or gather to start. If you get one, plant it in the greenhouse right away!

The seeds are random drops when you harvest honey pumpkins in the wild…. so you have to get lucky and get the seed! If you have no pumpkin seed, there are other seeds you might get to plant for free food: for example, beans are also used in the first recipies, but you need 3 beans to make it.

Once you have your chicken in the coop, and a seed growing in the greenhouse, just check them periodically and remove the free food. This will give you a steady initial food supply.

You will probably need to visit the merchant before you can kill your way down one path or the other to town. That means you will need to spend 50 gold to get to town.

Before you go, you will need several wolf pelts and your Woodcrafting station built.

Craft the pelts into wolfhead helmets (the very first item in the list). These sell for 94 gold each at the merchant, so provide a very good supply of cash to start. I always make sure I have at least one to sell each trip, to recoup the 50 gold to teleport to town.

The more you have, the more worthwhile the trip will be. Ideally, for your first trip, you want at least 2 hats to sell (preferably 3)–more if you can, of course!

Once you go into the merchant, sell as many hats as you can. The merchant has a limited space to buy from you. However, you can reset that space by simply walking out of the store and returning inside. This does not appear to reset what he has for sale; it just clears out what you sold him, so you can sell more.

Now, I know he’s got a lot of tempting stuff! But you want to buy one thing before anything else:

salt

200 if you can, but at least 100 salt

Why?

The very best early food you make by cooking chicken meat and salt. You can get chicken meat from killing the birds by your castle, but salt does not drop often. So buy a big stack, and cook up all the chicken you get: it restores 140 health each (better than the pumpkin mash).

Between the cooked chickens and the pumpkin mashes from your greenhouse, you will have a solid food supply!

The next thing you want to buy is the very best melee weapon you can afford, if you can: these are far superior to anything you can craft, and weapon upgrades seem to benefit more in combat than armor upgrades. With your salted chickens in one hand, and a good weapon in the other, you will be ready to take on Niffelheim!

Fighting Bosses

As you explore your mine (and other dungeons), you will find large caverns with a boss in it. All bosses have a chest of goodies, which may have one or more of the following:

• better gear
• items for crafting higher level items – you need special crystals and gems for better items, and you get them from those chests
• lots of nice potions

So, if you kill a boss, you get potions which may help you kill the next one. 🙂

You can find bosses in your mine, or in the other dungeons in the area.

There are several different kinds of bosses. Some are very slow, and you can simply shoot them with arrows, then run away and shoot again. However, you will likely run out of arrows before you finish them, and will need to melee them to finish.

Most of these bosses hit HARD. You need some gear upgrades before you take one on!

Some of the bosses appear to spawn with partial health, and tend to be easier.

You also need stacks and stacks of FOOD. Open your inventory before you fight the boss, so you can eat while you fight. The first time you fight a boss, have at least a full stack of 20 cooked chicken on you, and be ready to eat it as fast as you can…

If you think you might die fighting the boss, lure them out of the room first. That way, you can recover and try again. In fact, one strategy is just to do as much damage as you can, and keep dying, although you may run out of money or equipment before you kill it…

Be sure to pop a potion (or two or three) before you engage a boss. You can make some defenseive potions in your alchemy station. Not very effective, but it’s a help. Potion effects may or may not stack (not confirmed).

Alternatively, you can go into another dungeon in the area, and loot chests. The chest could have (better) potions in them.

Bosses can respawn! So the boss room that you emptied yesterday may be occupied again today!

On the plus side, bosses often have better gear in their chests, so killing one makes it easier to kill the next one!

Dying

You lose 10% of your gold when you die. If you are low on gold, you can also lose an item or piece of gear from your inventory.

You then appear as a “ghost” at home. To ressurrect, you must find your body.

If you died on the surface, you will have to run to the spot where you died. Run past your body to ressurect.

If you died in a dungeon, your body will be … right at your feet. However, if you lost an item, it may still be down in the dungeon when you died.

You ressurrect right at your body, with all stats full–which is good, as if you died on the surface, whatever killed you may be nearby.

If you die on the surface, you may need to wait for whatever killed you to move away a bit so you have time to recover before it attacks you again.

You must actually take a step or two PAST your corpse to recover.