A capybara's guide to basic survival

One "survivor" (until snake, panic, dead) I observed, wasn't aware of even the most basic things each capybara knows the moment it breaks out of the womb.

• When aiming with a bow, hold shift for a steady aim
  
• Use the middle mouse button to throw your spear
  
• You can pick up and carry up to 5 long sticks or up to 3 logs
  
• You can shoot down coconuts from the palm, using your bow
  
• You can lay out coconut-halves to be filled with clear water when it rains
  
• You can cut leaves from the ground to let them dry (on ground or in your backpack) and use those as tinder for your firestarter
  
• You can move stacks of items by holding alt while dragging. The same way you can insert a whole stack of items into something, such as sticks into a furnace or charcoal into a forge.
  
• Your backpack has two slots for two firestarters.
  
• Capybara-meat is full of deadly parasites and will cause you to rot instantly

As a Capybara I rarely have problems with my sanity. But these - "adventurers" are kind of unstable. Have you ever listened to one, when they drink from a natural source of water: They make sounds as if they would drink from the cuspidor of their leprous grandma. Now, imagine what happens if they had to eat maggots or if they would notice a leech on an arm or leg. Exactly, they would go insane! So here my tips:

Have an eye on your status corner. If there's a magnifying glass, something is wrong with any of your limbs. If you haven't been wounded and you didn't get rash (from ants or wasps) there are certainly some leeches on any one of your four limbs.

• Plug the leeches off, they are your main sanity sink. You are not made to endure such horrors. If you do not frequently forget to remove them, sanity will be no issue for you.
  
• Sleep in a covered bed and eat prepared meat to recover sanity.
  
• Don't sleep on the ground without a bed or chances are high to get a worm or two.

WARNING: Do NOT eat capybara-meat under any circumstances. Albeit protein- and fat-rich, it's known that its consumption drives humans insane in an instant!

Surprisingly, many of the, um, "outdoorsmen" who came to our jungle already brought some knowledge of our local flora with them: Bananas. This is a good start, I have seen others trying to feed on floor cover. But our jungle has so much more to offer!

Basically you want to keep at least water and one of your food-stats over 0. But the more food stats you fill, the more healthy you will be, and thus you will be able to take a prolongued bath in the local piranha-pond.

Water

If you drink from any natural water-source there's a big chance that you'll get some parasites. Only and always do this if you have at least two red mushrooms or a blue mushroom or a soursop-fruit (green fruit with nipples) at hand to kill the parasites.
While raining, put some coconut-halves on ground and drink the collected water.
When it doesn't rain and you have nothing against parasites, you need to cook the water in coconut-halves before it's safe to drink.

Common plants

You can eat almost any fruits and mushrooms you find in the jungle. But:

• Don't eat the brown mushroom with the web around it, unless it's dryed
  
• Don't eat the fingers-like turquoise mushroom
  
• Don't eat the berries
  
• Don't eat potentially disgusting stuff (like maggots), spoiled stuff, raw meat
  
• Don't eat uncooked bulbs

Once your eyes are trained for fruit-plants, you will never ever starve again.

Meat and bones

Throw your spear with middle mouse while aiming at an animals head. (Or use your bow.) If it's a medium sized animal it will net you a few heavy pieces of meat and a couple of bones.

Build a dryer early on. You can get the blueprint by closely looking at the dryer in the tribal camp that lies at the brook in the starter jungle. You can put several pieces of meat on it where it will dry. Dried meat lasts longer than cooked (or raw) meat. Once dried it will start spoiling, even if on the drying rack, and when you take it from the rack, you will have a piece of spoiled meat. Eat old dried meat directly from the rack to prevent this.

Bones are awesome. Not only can they be used to craft certain tools, but you can also put them into boiled water (in a coconut-half) to make a bone soup that adds to hydration, proteines and fat. Additionaly they reduce food-poisoning.

WARNING: Without any indication capybara meat causes you to corrode from the inside and inevitably die after 30-40 days.

Recently, on my midday-stroll, I observed a "pro" with over "800 hours of jungle RPG experience" AND who "wrote a 10 pages guide about dinosaurs and six-limbed cannibals". He was gathering the fruits of the jungle when he ran for that blooming banana tree and snake, panic, dead.

If he had read my guide, he would have calmly plug the bananas before he started to dress his calf with one of his tobacco dressings. So, what do you always want to have in your backpack from the beginning?

• Two or more bandages
  
• Two or more tobacco dressings
  
• Two or more bone needles or fishbones to remove worms in case you had to sleep without a bed

To make a tobacco dressing, combine a common bandage with a tobacco leaf in crafting.
Get bone needles by harvesting a bone.

WARNING: Tobacco dressings don't cure pestilence. Thus strictly avoid capybara bites by always keeping a safe distance and avoiding line of sight.