No Place Like Home EARLY ACCESS game guide

Overview

Accurate but incomplete coverage of the “Village” zone from the starting farm to the exit towards Lonely Hills on the far side of the lake. Work in progress, good start at least. For game version 0.15.98

Three MAJOR bug-fixes that EVERYONE asks about

I feel like i’ve said this half a million times already so I’m putting these right on top of my guide hoping that people will STOP ASKING ABOUT THIS because here are the three biggest bug fixes for bugs that happen to EVERYONE who plays this game. If you encounter ANY weird problems that freeze your game or make it impossible for you to play, try these three fixes FIRST. Then look at the bottom of this guide for additional bug news. If you still don’t find a solution after that, then go to the Discussions page and leave a note for the developers and they will try to fix it for the next patch.

If the game hangs at the loading screen, it is 99% probably NOT THE GAME’S FAULT, and NOT YOUR GRAPHICS DRIVERS either. The Steam download utility sometimes gets the hiccups and messes up one or two files during download processes. So go into your Steam library, right click on the game, select “Properties” then “Local Files” and on that page you should see a button for “Validate Local Game Files.” Click it. It will scan your files, then download ONLY the ones that are broken or missing. If it says it found a file or two and replaced it, then this was the problem. You can then go ahead and restart the game and it should work now.

From the game’s main menu, open the OPTIONS or SETTINGS menu, make sure you have these settings set EXACTLY like this or else the game will burn up your CPU and GPU and it will do REAL PHYSICAL DAMAGE TO YOUR PC!!
At the top-right the selection should say “Custom” for graphics level. Below that, EVERY setting should be set to “Performance” mode. And down the right side all the special effects like Bloom should be UN-CHECKED. And remember to scroll down to see more settings. If you set the graphics any higher, there is NO VISUAL DIFFERENCE within the game and it WILL DESTROY YOUR PC HARDWARE.

Also if you are returning from an older version of the game, DO NOT try to load an old save-game because everything will get messed up. If your save was from before the latest MAJOR update patch, then you will need to start a new game. Oh, the joys of early access LOL.

WARNING: THIS BUG MAY BE HARMFUL TO YOUR PC

EDIT 5/7/21: DO NOT set the graphics options in the settings menu to anything above “Performance” level. There is NO ON-SCREEN DIFFERENCE between “performance” and “high” but setting it to anything else will cause your GPU to be overworked; your GPU and CPU chips will both overheat and cook themselves, causing your PC to crash and could potentially cause REAL PHYSICAL DAMAGE to your computer hardware. I have a very high-end computer (GeForce 1080 with Intel i7 GPU) with no overclocking, it should not be heating up like this from such a simple program as this.

This issue has been mitigated somewhat in the latest update since the developers added loading screens when you transition between areas instead of just having everything load in as soon as you start playing. But it is STILL A BIG PROBLEM. I have posted a message on the discussion board asking the developers to remove the graphics settings on the user end so we will be forced to play on performance mode, until they optimize enough that changing those settings won’t destroy our computer hardware. Until they fix it, NEVER run this game on any setting above “Performance”. You have been warned.

The developers are focusing on other items for now, their plan is to take another look at graphics optimization AFTER the next update which should be in a couple of months.

So yeah… “PERFORMANCE” settings only, check the “Limit to 60 FPS” box, and if you still have problems turn off the ambient occlusion and bloom effects.

Other, less damaging bugs are down at the end of this guide. Those are the ones that will cause you inconveniences in the game, or break your game without actually breaking your computer.

Here is what your graphics settings should look like:

Introduction – and Warning

Rule number one for playing this game while it’s in early access phase 2:
Anytime a fresh update patch comes out, START FROM A NEW GAME and delete your old savegame! Loading an old savegame into a new version of the game tends to cause all sorts of crazy problems because the basic mechanics are still REALLY rough around the edges, not yet to the point where updates will play nice with saves from older versions.

As I write this, the game is in early access phase 2. It’s basically like an extended demo version at this point, you can access the starting farm and nearby village as well as one additional region, but the farming mechanics are fully operational and there are several “shops” around the world that you can access to upgrade your ability to farm and explore. The developer is working hard to add more content and solve problems but be advised it is still a VERY EARLY VERSION of this game and there WILL BE LOTS OF BUGS AND GLITCHES, and many things WILL CHANGE in future updates. And I’m not sure if I will keep up with it all, I may get tired of this game or get busy with other things and neglect this guide at times. So this is the current date I’m writing this, if it is significantly later than this date please assume a lot of this information is outdated now:

17 May 2021 – this guide is written for version 0.15.101 which is the current version. This is a MAJOR update compared to earlier versions prior to 0.15,0 so if you are coming back after playing version 0.11 or 0.14 expect some big changes.

So what is this game, exactly?
The world has become a landfill. Literally there is trash EVERYWHERE. Armed with a magical vacuum cleaner you have to clean up the world and restore civilization. You can convert the trash you suck up into recycled material which you can trade for recipes with various townsfolk, then you can build those items at your workbench if you have the right components. You will also be farming some fruits and vegetables, which you can then use a Kitchen to cook various recipes, or use a mayo mixer to turn eggs into mayonnaise, or use a jam-maker to turn various fruits into jam. Some vegetables, fruits, and dishes are required as payment for new recipes. You will also need a preserving machine to make “prepared meals” which is another major form of currency to trade with the townsfolk.

As you roam the world you will also find some aggressive robots that will attack you on sight. They have various types of attacks depending on the type of enemy. Killing them drops items, usually batteries. Batteries are primarily used to feed and tame some friendly pets called “cubebots” who live at a cubebot ranch on your farm, and they give you recycled material daily as long as you take care of their needs. There are also wild chickens you can collect by feeding them potatoes, they live on a chicken coop at your farm and give you eggs each day as long as you take care of their needs. As you venture farther from home you will find secret areas, more advanced items in the trash piles, new animals to put on new ranches, additional things to grow and cook with, areas sealed by hardier trash that you need special tool upgrades to destroy, and some interesting new landscape areas.

So in a nutshell it is a first-person adventure game crossed with a farming simulator. I enjoyed it, it’s not at all difficult but it is good fun for casual play.

FAQ

I see a LOT of questions getting asked repeatedly in the Discussion Forums. Here’s a list of some of the more common Q and A for you.

0. My game is stalling or running at very low FPS or I get a black screen problem? I’m running on a GeForce 1080, single monitor, with i7 8-core processor and 32 MB RAM. Runs fine on my system. BUT I will say this: graphics settings are still f’d up.
Under your settings/options menu, make sure of the following things before you start a game:
1. Top right – overall setting says “CUSTOM”
2. ALL sliders are set to “PERFORMANCE” level. Anything else will cook your processors.
3. TURN OFF all the effects on the right side of the window like bloom, etc.
They are still nailing down the core mechanics of the game. Graphical optimization probably will not be done for another six or seven months AT LEAST. If you turn the graphics settings down like I said, most of you should see better performance of your system. Besides, there is NO VISIBLE DIFFERENCE between performance mode and cook-your-CPU mode at this time.

If you are still having problems with stuttering, stalls, or black screens after lowering your graphics settings, try doing a “Validate Game Files” check from your Steam library. Possibly the Steam download utility had a hiccup and a file got corrupted or something.1. Can you HEAL YOURSELF? No. The only way to recover health is by going to sleep and ending the day. Perhaps in a future update (considering you are a farmer/cook) they might implement edible food but not currently.

2. The trash piles/blocks are floating and I can’t reach them? Yes, they are aware of the problem. Should be fixed in the next update or two. They just placed the objects too high for Ellen to reach. We’d all REALLY like them to increase the size of Ellen’s interact range instead of just lowering the trash though – because currently she can only touch things that are between her toes and her knees. Any higher or lower and she can’t interact with it.

3. I can’t figure out / find a particular recipe? Some of them are hidden behind purple rubber-trash bricks so you need the purple rubber drill upgrade to reach the suitcase that contains the recipe. OR, you can scroll down to the bottom of my guide where I list all the recipes. You can unlock a recipe by trial and error if you can’t find the recipe in a suitcase yet. But trust me they’re all there somewhere.

4. Can’t find the key fragment? I’m NOT going to help with this. The whole point of this game is exploring and finding things on your own. 🙂 But trust me they are all there, hiding in suitcases.

5. Can’t find Cornelius? He’s easier to track down than the keys at least. LOL.

• “FARM” – near the cave at the back side of the farm, through the red bricks and across the river… near Rudy’s first shop.
• “VILLAGE” – through the gate past Mark’s store, ahead and to the right… under the broken highway bridge. You have to walk around to the other side of that little pond to reach it.
• “UNDERGROUND” – in a little closet-like room just off of the main hallway. In the VILLAGE not the LONELY HILLS!! Good luck.
• “LONELY HILLS” – on top of the tallest peak in the area, behind and to the right of the strip mine where Rudy sends you to find fungus. Pro tip – he’s right next to a suitcase that contains a key fragment.

6. Where the heck did Rudy go? It used to be that Rudy travels as you progress through the game. As soon as you enter the Lonely Hills zone, he disappears from the back of your farm and reappears on the first hill to the right as you enter Lonely Hills, where he sends you to find three herbs for him. As soon as you give him the herbs, he vanishes again and moves to his permanent home which is down the hill and follow the river to the LEFT – past a wall of green glue-trash bricks so you need the green-glue drill upgrade BEFORE you give Rudy the herbs or you are STUCK. In a recent patch they changed it so Rudy no longer travels, he simply exists in three places simultaneously because apparently he’s a Time Lord now and his shop cart is actually a TARDIS. LOL.

7. Robots keep climbing hills or running through walls? Yeah they do. Pro tip: instead of trying to smack/drill them, use your water hose. Robots run on electrical components and they are not waterproof. Your hose gives you a ranged attack option and they don’t run so far away if you keep your distance.

8. My trees don’t drop any fruit? Trees take about a week to grow fully. Even after you see fruit in the branches it takes a couple more days. Then the fruit won’t drop automatically from gravity – you have to walk up to it and click the “USE” button (E key by default) to shake the tree and drop the fruit ONE AT A TIME. Once fully grown they will gain one fruit per day, and can hold up to six fruits at once if you skip harvesting for a day or a couple of weeks.

9. Frank won’t open the doors in my house? Frank needs some fancy foods – read my walkthrough for Lonely Hills to see what he wants because it doesn’t make a note in your journal or anything. After you feed him, he only unlocks the BROWN and WHITE doors in your house. The GREEN door is for you to open after finding three more key fragments. The RED door is not currently used, possibly for future upgrades.

10. My pet keeps falling through the ground and gets stuck under the deck behind my house, or they run so far away I can’t find them anymore? LOL yeah they do. Pets are dumb. Pick up their house and move it, they will teleport right to the house for you. But they will lose whatever item they were going to give you that day, you get another item tomorrow though.

11. I’m awake past 22:00 and I can’t save my game? Yeah this is a game-breaking bug. They’re working on it. Quit and load your save from the previous day.

12. What are the “daytime” hours? You wake up at 07:00 and no matter what you fall asleep at 22:00. Days go by pretty fast.

13. It takes too long to walk from home to Lonely Hills? Yes it does. That’s why there are CAMPSITES at certain points on the map. They look like tents. You buy a tent blueprint from Rudy, then you can build tents and place them on campsites. If you sleep in that tent, from now on you will wake up every morning there instead of in your house. There is a campsite in Lonely Hills, after you pass the train in the tunnel look up on the hills to your left and you should see a ladder leading up to a platform with a campsite. From there Rudy and Frank are just across the river to the right. BUT – tents cost COMPONENTS to create, which you also need to build your drill upgrades, health/combat/inventory/farming upgrades, and decorations/furniture workstations. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH COMPONENTS IN THE GAME TO BUILD IT ALL – only build one or maybe two tents.

14. What’s with the creepy trees by the lake? The developer accidentally attached the “blow in the wind” effect to tree trunks instead of leaves. So now we have weird evil alien tentacle trees. Should get fixed in the next update or two.

15. My water tank is empty? Didn’t you follow the signs in the tutorial? Just find a river or build a well and vacuum water out of it to refill your water ammo.

16. How do you save the game? There is NO MANUAL SAVE here. When you sleep, it still doesn’t save yet. It saves AUTOMATICALLY when you wake up the next morning. So if you quit the game in the middle of your day you will lose all progress from that day, next time you load the game it starts back at 07:00 that morning.

General Advice

General advice:

• Don’t use your old save game, start a new game for any update after 0.15 if you are playing from an older version. They are working on making it compatible with previous save files, but it’s still a work in progress – honestly easier if you just start the game over from the beginning.
• It is still VERY BUGGY, weird things are still happening all over the game. Especially involving sleep/wake-up mechanics. The patch is still brand new, they broke some things that were working previously and they’re trying to figure out why. Fixes should be coming in the next couple of weeks for most of them.
• The graphics options are still broken, setting it to anything other than “performance” will fry your computer and cause physical damage to your CPU and graphics card!! They are not planning on optimizing any further until the NEXT major update which will be in a couple of months.
• NEW crafting system: buy blueprints from people in the village, then build the items at your crafting station on your farm. Shops no longer directly sell the item, just blueprints.
• NEW currency system: use recycled materials as “money”, build jars of preserved food that also work as “money”, and cook food using ingredients according to secret recipes you find hidden around the world to make meals that act as “money.” Also sometimes individual ingredients are requested as part of the price to buy blueprints. n most cases you only need to cook ONE of each recipe dish in your kitchen to use for shopping. There are a couple (i.e. tomato soup) that you need two though. So you don’t have to go crazy in your kitchen unless you need a ton more prepared meals because recipe dishes are worth MORE POINTS in the preserving machine than their individual ingredients.
• Your most effective weapon against evil robots is NOT your drill, that is made to break up the trash. Your drill will damage most enemies (except the one with the black shield on his butt) but your best weapon is your WATER HOSE, those robots are not water-resistant!
• If you forget to water your crops for a few days, or if you leave them out after they are ready for harvest, do not worry they will not “rot” or anything. They will just sit there until you come back to deal with them, then continue right from where the process left off.
• If you need specific seeds but can’t find them in the trash piles, tame some DEER by feeding them acorns. You have to rebuild their habitat first by following Frank’s quests, but once you have deer they will give you a pack of five seeds every morning and each deer will give a RANDOM TYPE of seeds that day. It might take a couple of days to get what you need but deer are useful if you need seeds.
• Fruit trees do NOT automatically drop the fruit. You have to wait a few days for the fruit to get ripe, then click on the tree to shake the fruit loose. They will give ONE new fruit each day, and if you don’t harvest it for a few days they can store up to six fruits at a time so keep shaking it until the green highlight turns off to keep getting fruit that you missed over the last few days.

Controls

These are all listed in the Settings menu, also in the Encyclopedia tab in your backpack menu.

How to save your game:
The game automatically saves EACH MORNING when you wake up. Doesn’t matter if you use the bed by clicking on it to fall asleep, or if you die from an enemy and go unconscious, or if you run out the clock to 22:00 and fall from exhaustion. The save actually happens when you click the button for “WAKE UP THE NEXT DAY”. There is no manual save option in this game, and if you quit in the middle of the day then next time your game loads at the beginning of that day because it’s the last time that you woke up. You have a bed in your house, and you can build a tent to place it at campsites after you buy the Tent blueprint from Rudy’s shop. When you fall asleep, you will wake up at whichever you used last. When you load your game, you start at wherever you last woke up.

• WASD: walk around
• Mouse: turn the camera (horizontally or vertically). Pro tip: if you plant some trees and the leaves block your view, push your mouse up/down until you’re looking through the tree trunks instead of the leaves.
• TAB or “i”: open your inventory. There are also tabs for your quest journal, encyclopedia, and a map. In its current form the map is kind of useless though.
• Left click: swing your weapon to break trash or hit an enemy.
• Hold-left-click: use your drill for a continuous attack.
• Right-click: fire your water-gun for one shot.
• Hold-right-click: use your water-gun like a garden hose. Pro tip: robot enemies take damage from the water, gives you a bit of a ranged attack option.
• Space-bar: hold it down to use your vacuum cleaner to suck up trash, water, and items nearby.
• R: Remove anything you’ve built or placed on your farm and put it back into your backpack. Make sure you have enough space for it first!
• E: Some things need to be interacted with, you will always see a pop-up prompt if you can use it. In some cases you can select which item from your hotbar to use when you interact with an object.
• E while building something: rotate the item you’re buliding 90 degrees; you can’t rotate it after you confirm placement.
• Number keys: drag items into your “hotbar” along the bottom of the screen, then hit the number shown over that item’s slot in order to activate/use it. This is how you place soil plots, plant seeds, build chicken coops and cubot ranches, etc.
• Each day at 22:00 (10:00 pm) you automatically end the day and go to sleep. You start the next day at whichever bed you most recently used. Waking up the next day is where the game automatically saves your progress.
• GLITCH ALERT: there are some places where you could be running around exploring and you will get stuck on some weird piece of terrain. There is NO JUMP BUTTON in this game, but if you hit ESC for the menu there is a button there called “UNSTUCK.” This will respawn you directly to your house. Good to know, if you get stuck on a weird rock or if you are far from home and realize you forgot to water your potatoes LOL.
• Reloading ammo:
  Water Gun – use your vacuum to suck water from certain rivers and wells. (Buy the well recipe from a shop, then make one at your craft bench, then build it the same way as placing a soil plot or planting a potato.)

There are three types of farming in this game. Soil plants, trees, and animal ranches.
SOIL PLANTS – potato, tomato, pumpkin, lettuce, eggplant, strawberry, berries

1. Put a soil plot in your hotbar, press the number assigned to that slot, and decide where you want your farm to be. Press E to rotate the soil, though it’s symmetrical so why bother, and when it is GREEN it is safe to click and put it down. If it is RED you cannot put it there.
2. Pro tip: I like to work with several 6 by 4 farm plots instead of one gigantic one. Just helps keep things organized.
3. Put a fruit/veggie seed in your hotbar. Press the number assigned to that slot. White spots show where you can plant it (only on SOIL) from your current position. If you walk around, you can reach different spots. Press E to rotate, but it’s symmetrical so why bother, and highlight one of the GREEN sites and click the mose to plant it.
4. Right click to water every soil plot where something is planted. The water will shoot out approximately 5 spaces in front of you, and if you stand in the middle of two soil rows you can hit both rows with a single water shot. Plants must be watered each day or they will not advance to the next stage of growth.
5. It will take a few days after planting (water them every day!!!) for the plant to mature and produce something for you. If you walk up to it and it has a bubble showing an item, press E to harvest it. This destroys the plant so you will have to plant a new seed next time, but you get whatever fruit or vegetable it made. Just use the vacuum (spacebar) to suck it up into your inventory.

TREE PLANTS – apple, peach, orange, oak/acorn

1. These do NOT need a soil plot! Just plant them almost anywhere there is dirt/grass.
2. Put a seed in your hotbar. Press the number assigned to that slot, and decide where you want your tree to be. Press E to rotate, but it’s symmetrical so why bother. If it is RED you cannot put it there, if it is GREEN it’s okay. Click to plant a tree seed.
3. Pro tip: leave A TON OF SPACE between each tree, or between trees and any kind of wall or hill. They grow quite large and you’ll need to be able to walk between them.
4. Pro tip 2: I like to plant in neat rows to make it easier to move between the trees. I usually do a grove of 4 rows of 5 trees each.
5. It takes a few days for the tree to grow, then a few days for fruit to show up in the branches. You do not need to water the trees.
6. When you see fruit, walk up to the tree. If it gets highlighted in green, the fruit is ready. Press E to pick a fruit. If you wait an extra day or two, you can get extra fruit by clicking again. Then vacuum up the fruit by using spacebar.

ANIMAL RANCHES – chicken, cubot, pig, duck, etc.

1. First you have to buy the recipe for the correct ranch from one of the townspeople.
2. Then you need to craft that recipe from your workbench.
3. Put the ranch item in your hotbar. Hit the number assigned to that slot. Use E to rotate the ranch – and with these it is actually important – and if it is GREEN you can build it so click the mouse. If it is red you cannot build it there, sometimes just rotating it or moving it over a foot will help.
4. Pro tip: Leave TONS OF EMPTY SPACE around each ranch, the animals need room to roam and they will get stuck on walls, hills, other buildings, and anything else that gets in the way. If you don’t leave enough room they will also block your path so you can’t get through.
5. Now you can go into the world and find the animal that should live in that ranch. Feed them the item they want, and the next day they will start living at your ranch. Each morning they will give you an item IF you took care of their request the previous day. They might request to be petted (a hand/heart icon) so press E, or they might request more food so press E if you have one in your backpack, or they might request a shower so right-click to wash them. They will show a big red heart if you did it right… then the next day they will have another item for you.
6. Pro tip: the current settings for the angle that pets will accept washing is REALLY short and narrow, sometimes you have to run around a bit and adjust your position and try a few times to get them to realize you’ve done it.
7. If you fail to meet their request, they will still live there; they just won’t give you any more items until you do.

HOW NOT TO BREAK YOUR GAME

This game relies on RECIPES and BLUEPRINTS to get new items and upgrades. You’ll be doing the following:

1. FARMING vegetables and fruits to collect raw ingredients.
2. RANCHING and collecting raw ingredients from your pets.
3. COOKING dishes from raw ingredients in the KITCHEN.
4. PRESERVING dishes in the PRESERVING MACHINE to produce Prepared Meals.
5. RECYCLING trash into recycled materials in the RECYCLER.
6. LOOTING books, quality wood, and components from hidden suitcase caches – be careful since these NEVER respawn and there are only a few of them available!.

Before you can build an item, you have to buy the BLUEPRINT from one of the NPC shops.
Before you can build an item, but after you purchase the blueprint, you must CRAFT the item at your workstation.
Then you can place your crafted item on your farm; or if it’s a personal upgrade (inventory space, drill damage, health, crop yield or loot yield) then it applies automatically after you craft it. For certain things this will be instantly ready to use, for other things it takes a day or two to construct.

The shops AND the workbench both require MATERIALS to be spent in order to get your blueprints and craft your items. Most of them are easily obtainable as long as you know where some re-spawning trash sites are, you have a kitchen, and you have some pets and seeds. (Most of the respawning trash areas are underground.) BUT there are a few that DO NOT RESPAWN ANYWHERE, so they are available in limited quantities only.

BOOKS: mostly used to purchase new recipes. Found in suitcases that you find hidden in bushes or under trash piles. Once you use them all, you can’t get any more. Use wisely!

COMPONENTS: mostly used to craft items at the workstation. Also found in suitcases that you find hidden in bushes or under trash piles. Once you use them all, they are GONE. Use wisely!

QUALITY WOOD: mostly used to satisfy quests from Frank the architect. Only found in suitcases that you find hidden in bushes or under trash piles in the Lonely Hills zone. Once you use them all, they are GONE. Use wisely!

RECYCLED MATERIALS: you can get them from your pet cubebots on the ranch, or sometimes your pet dog/cat will bring you some, but most of them will be from putting your trash into the recycler machine. As long as you know where to find more trash to collect, you can make more of these.

PREPARED MEALS: put fruits, vegetables, or cooked dishes into the preserving machine. Different ingredients are worth different amounts of prepared meals. As long as you still have seeds and plants to grow, you can wait a few days to harvest more veggies and make more of these.

COOKED FOODS: certain recipes require payment in the form of a specific cooked dish from your kitchen. So before you toss all your cooked dishes in your preserving machine, double check to make sure you don’t need to save one to buy your next upgrade.

If you use your resources unwisely (particularly the COMPONENTS and BOOKS) it is possible for you to LOCK YOURSELF OUT of the ability to move further into the game because you won’t be able to build your next drill upgrade that you need to open the next area, and there are NO MORE components or books to be found in the areas you can currently reach. As such, when you are shopping for recipes and crafting items this is the EXACT order you should do things in. Stray from this list at your own risk!! I’ll mark all the “pretty important” items in BOLD, and the “super important” points in

for you to see easier.

LEARN and CRAFT the bonsai tree during the tutorial, if you want it.

CRAFT two Recycler machines (and consistently feed them trash to make recycled materials).
LEARN and CRAFT one preserving machine.
LEARN and CRAFT two chicken coops, start taming chickens.
LEARN and CRAFT two simple kitchens.
LEARN and CRAFT two cubebot lodges, start taming cubebots.
LEARN and CRAFT one (not two) super kitchen (the middle upgrade).

(at this point you will open the path downhill from the Space Dog Store, behind the blue trash bricks.)

LEARN and CRAFT the Expanded Inventory 1 upgrade.
LEARN and CRAFT the Augmented Drill 1 upgrade.
LEARN and CRAFT the Bigger Water Tank 1 upgrade.
LEARN the Sprinkler recipe, but do not craft any yet.
LEARN the Tent recipe.
CRAFT one tent. DO NOT put a tent anywhere in the village (underground, near your farm, or up the tree across the lake)!! It goes on the hill overlooking the deer habitat in the Lonely Hills zone, when you get that far in the game. Just save it for now so you don’t forget.
LEARN the Beehive recipe.
LEARN the Mayo Machine recipe.
CRAFT two or three Beehives, remember to collect honey for pigs daily.
CRAFT two or three Mayo Machines and start tossing eggs in to make mayo.
BUILD the Pig Sty you got for free as a quest reward, start taming pigs.
LEARN the Pig Sty recipe and CRAFT one additional Pig Sty.

(at this point you will finish the above-ground Village zone, and you will be moving underground to clear the Village’s labyrinth)

At this point you may want to find some oranges, carrots, and blueberries which are only found in the Lonely Hills (the next zone of the game, behind a big wooden door) for some of your cooking recipes. If you go to collect those, be sure that you DO NOT go into the cave there, only explore outdoors. Once you give herbs (found in the cave) to Rudy the shopkeeper he will vanish and you’ll be locked out of any further progress unless you have the green drill upgrade (for destroying glue/slime blocks) FIRST!!

LEARN and CRAFT two (not three) Super Recycler upgrades (the middle upgrade).
LEARN and CRAFT the Expanded Inventory 2 upgrade.

(Now you can continue in the Village’s underground, or move into the Lonely Hills as you please.)

LEARN and CRAFT the Augmented Drill 2 upgrade.
LEARN and CRAFT the Increased Toughness 1 upgrade.
LEARN and CRAFT the Finders Keepers 1 upgrade.
LEARN and CRAFT the Bigger Crops 1 upgrade.

Once you have that purple drill upgrade, you’re free to proceed with further upgrades as you wish.

Got Too Many Seeds?

I saw on the discussion board that a lot of people are whining because they are finding too many of certain seeds (apples mostly, and oranges because they get 30 clones of Cornelius LOL).

So if you don’t want any more orange seeds, just STOP FEEDING AND PETTING CORNELIUS. Like any other pet, if you stop paying attention to him he will stop giving you things.

If you have another item that you have too many taking up space in your inventory, well that’s an easy fix, too. If you find TOO MANY of any item, simply go into your inventory and drag it to the bottom right to the trash-can icon that will permanently delete it. This is useful for all those apple seeds, or if you grew a few too many tomatoes, etc.

But NEVER EVER delete the following items because they never respawn (or respawn SO RARELY you will never really get enough of them again), just put them into a chest if you don’t want them in your backpack:

• Quality Wood
• Component
• Book
• Electronic Waste
• Slime
• Rubber (or whatever drops from the purple bricks)
• Blueberry seeds & Blueberries
• Quest-related items (duh) like keys, healing herbs, filtering fungus, the bulbulator, etc.

Decorations

DO NOT BUILD ANY DECORATIONS, FURNITURE, OR WORK STATIONS FOR DECORATIONS AND FURNITURE that require Components or Quality Wood to craft!! Also don’t spend any Quality Wood on the blueprints at Frank’s shop until you are finished with Frank’s quests. Spending components on these will lock you out of MORE IMPORTANT THINGS like upgrading your drill, or various personal upgrades. Spending Quality Wood will lock you out of being able to progress through Frank’s quest line – which means you won’t be able to tame any deer.

The game has a limited number of Components, Books, and Quality Wood available, they are only found in the hidden suitcases which NEVER RESPAWN. You need ALL of these items to complete some quests and upgrade your drill to smash new bricks. If you craft ANY decoration items, you will be locked out of your game progress! IT IS A SOMEWHAT BROKEN FEATURE AT THIS TIME.

The basic decorations are made of Recycled Materials and Old Wood, which are both easy enough to find.

The advanced decorations are made of Recycled Materials and Rubble. Also easy enough to find.

The premium decorations are made of Recycled Materials, Slime, Rubber, and Old Wood mostly, though the Royal Bed also uses some Prepared Meals. You need the green drill upgrade to get Slime, and the purple drill upgrade to get Rubber.

The basic furniture is made of Recycled Materials, Old Wood, Rubble, E-Waste, and Slime. you need the green drill upgrade to get slime. The basic wallpaper is made of Recycled Material and Slime.

I have not yet built an advanced furniture workshop because I ran out of Components. Next time I run a new game I’ll look into it.

The problem is that the crafting workshops for the decorations and furniture require A LOT of components (those ultra rare items) just to build the workbench.

This means that you will have to CHOOSE between furniture (couches, paintings, etc, that go INSIDE the house) or DECORATIONS (neat little things you usually place OUTSIDE the house). You will not have enough components to do both. And remember: Get ALL the drill upgrades FIRST! After that you can start spending components on other upgrades and these work benches. They will be adding more components in future updates as you are able to access more regions of the map. Bigger available map = more places to hide suitcases. The decorations and furniture are INTENDED to be gradually unlocked as you play through the entire game, not 100% done in the first zone.

Mini-Walkthrough: Tutorial

Getting from the beginning of the tutorial to the end of the first area and finishing all the LOCAL quests will probably take you 10-20 in-game days, depending how fast you rush it. The day numbers on my Walkthrough chapter titles are for reference only, not meant to say “you must have this done by this specific day.” There is no hurry, none of the items or quests are on any kind of timer. Take your time, enjoy the walk… or try to speed-run it. Whatever feels right for you. 🙂

When you start a new game, there is a little tutorial to teach you the basic controls. It’s completely linear and there are no secrets off the path. You can NEVER come back here once you climb the ladder at the end of the path, but this is a good chance to get some “free” items before you even start the actual game. Here is how to get all the stuff from this tutorial:

• VERY FIRST THING you should do: Hit TAB or the “i” key to open your backpack and look at the quest list and the basic controls. So many people complain in the “bug report” discussion about issues that aren’t bugs they just don’t know the controls even though it’s listed right here the whole time!! Refer back to this screen if you ever forget the controls.
• Use SPACEBAR at the messy piles of trash to suck them up, since they are impervious to your drill.
• Use LMB to smash brown trash cubes. The ones with vines contain seeds! The red and blue ones require upgraded drills to destroy, but you don’t have those tools yet. The ones that look like a dirty wooden crate give you Old Wood, which is a useful item for crafting things on your farm. The regular brown piles give you trash mostly, or sometimes a soil plot that you can use on your farm.
• Use SPACEBAR to vacuum up all the pieces of trash and seeds.
• Ooh, look, a recycler machine! Feed all your trash into it by pressing E to convert it into recycled material which you can use like money at the local shops. This is the only use for trash in the game so don’t be shy about it. Hit E again to collect the result when the timer bar fills up and there is an icon that shows it wants to give you an item. This is basically how every machine in the game works: you put something in, wait for the timer to finish, then collect the result. Do this a few times to use up all your trash. Pro tip: the Recycler takes loads of 50 trash. So if you have LESS THAN 50 in your inventory, do not try to feed this machine because it only works if you give it a full load. If you give it 47 trash, it will take it all but them it just sits there waiting for you to come back with another 3 trash. You cannot recover the trash you’ve already fed into it. This one is INSTANT, but in the main game they take a few hours to finish working.
• A sign tells you how to plant potato seeds, but DO NOT plant them here or you lose them! Take them with you instead, use them on your main farm after the tutorial.
• Use RMB to shoot your water-gun. Hold the button down to squirt it like a hose..
• Refill your water-gun ammo by using SPACEBAR to vacuum the little pond.
  [*[ The sign says press E to harvest vegetables. Notice these ones have icons showing they want to give you something (potatoes in this case) which means they are ready to harvest. So go press E to pop the potato off of the plant. Then press SPACE to vacuum it all into your backpack.
• The tutorial says you can feed the chicken a potato to tame it and make it happy. In the main game you need a chicken coop before you can feed a chicken, and if you continue to feed/pet/wash it each day to make it happy then it will give you an egg the next day… but DO NOT feed this chicken a potato. That would be a waste of a perfectly good potato because you can’t actually get that chicken to live on your farm, she’s just an example of how to feed a chicken. Save that potato for later.
• Ooh, look… a kitchen stove! Feed all of your potatoes into that thing to make mashed potatoes Unlike other machines, the kitchen is INSTANT. Just hit the recipe at the bottom right to auto-fill with ingredients, then hit the COOK button and it drops the result right into your pocket.
  You should have six potatoes, so you can make three mashed potato meals. Foods like this are sometimes used like money at the local shops, and in the early part of the game it can take a long time to get enough ingredients for what everyone wants. So get all these free ones now! If you have more ingredients but no new recipes, you can also try experimenting by tossing a few ingredients into the machine to try unlocking a recipe on your own… good luck if you try it.
• Next up is the Preserver machine. Nobody wants mashed potatoes, so go ahead and drop all of them into this machine now. The result will be nine Preserved Meals. These are the main currency (along with Recycled Materials) used in this game. Different foods will give different amounts of preserves. For instance, a raw potato will give only 1, a raw tomato will give 2, and your mashed potatoes give 3 each. SO you turned 6 potatoes (6 points by themselves) into 3 mashed potatoes (9 points) to earn an extra 3 points from this machine. This one is instant like the recycler you saw a moment ago, but in the main game these things take almost a full day to operate a single load.
• Next up we have the recipe shop, and then the workbench. Go ahead and buy the recipe, note the cost of it listed at the bottom. Then you can either build it, or don’t build it, this one is just a little decorative plant so it doesn’t matter. You’ll get more recipes for new farm buildings, decorations, tools, foods, and upgrades as you go through the game.
• Ooh, look… a glowing box! Hit it with your weapon to break it and take it with you. Ooh, look a red pressure plate on the ground! Walk up to it until highlights and press E to use your new box on it. This switch does NOTHING, but in the main game they are useful for opening doors or building bridges. In the main game most of these red plates have CHAINS on them, which means once you place a box you cannot remove it – it will be permanently placed. But this one has no chains… so remember to hit the box again to take it with you after. Hey, free box!
• Ooh, look… a big red button! Notice the conduit (fancy word for “pipe that carries the wiring system”) links it to the gate. use your E key to activate the button and open the gate. If you hit the button again, it will close the gate.
• Ooh, look… a CHEST! Is it TREASURE? no, this isn’t that kind of game LOL. You can press E on the chest to open it and put your items into it for storage, or take items out of it to bring with you. Or you can press R on the chest to pick the whole thing up and take it with you. Take it with you now. You CANNOT pickup a chest if it has items stored inside, you have to empty it out first. While you’re here, press R on the Plant Field and use the vacuum to suck it up, too.
• Ooh, look… a ladder! That leads out of the tutorial and into your main game. Point of NO RETURN. Press E when the ladder is highlighted to climb it. Later you will see some grey manholes or cavern entrances that work the same way but for going DOWN a ladder instead of up.
• Ohh, look… there’s your treehouse, and just past that is your farm. Welcome home, Ellen!.

Congratulations, you can now officially start your little adventure! Enjoy!

Mini-walkthrough: Day One

Anytime a fresh update patch comes out, START FROM A NEW GAME and delete your old savegame! Loading an old savegame into a new version of the game tends to cause all sorts of crazy problems. There will come a day when this is less of a problem… but today is not that day. Each time you start a new game you’ll have to do the tutorial again. Only takes a few minutes, so no big deal.

From where you start, there is a tree with a ladder that leads up to your bedroom, where you find a broken bed and a lot of trash. Sleeping in bed will fast-forward time to 22:00 and end the day, waking up the next morning will save your game; then you wake up at 07:00 the next morning. You don’t need to sleep now, just be advised of how it works. There are three quests in here now. First, clean up the trash and feed a piece of old wood into the bed to fix it so it can be used. Then note the red door in back, you need to find keys to open it. That comes later, and since the decoration system is broken it doesn’t even matter. You also need an architect to help you fix up the old place, you won’t find him for a while though and again with the decoration system being broken it doesn’t even matter.

In a bush under the ladder to the treehouse is a SUITCASE – these are hidden all over the world.
Press E to open them. THEY DO NOT RESPAWN but they are the only way to get certain items like books, components, and quality wood. Just past the treehouse is the main farm zone which is full of trash piles. The VERY FIRST THING you should do is open the workbench near the farm entrance, and check the crafting requirements for the “Rubble Drill Upgrade” because this is absolutely the first thing you need to build. Probably on your second day you will make this thing.

You don’t want to clear the whole place out on day 1 – you want to do a few things immediately to save you a bit of time later. So follow my process for efficiency, or take your time about it, either way works fine. Start your farm by clearing that first plot to your right by using your vacuum (SPACEBAR) and hitting it with your stick (LMB) or just hold the attack button down to drill through it all. You won’t have long before 22:00 hits and you have to go to bed… but don’t panic everything will still be there the following day! (At this point in development) nothing in this game is on a deadline, there are no quests that expire, food doesn’t rot after a few days in your backpack… so there is no rush.

To the right from the entrance is a little plot of soil for growing vegetables. You can move it someplace more convenient for you. I recommend starting with a 5×6 size farm plot, plant some potato seeds there. Leave a strip of space and put another 4×6 or 5×6 soil plot to grow tomatoes. You can get a few tomato seeds early by swinging your weapon through the fence! So fill most of the plot with potatoes but be sure to plant ALL the tomato seeds you just found because you want to be making tomato soup ASAP. If you remove a farm plot (R key) you can pick it back up to put it somewhere else; if there was a plant growing on it you get the seed back; but it will not keep any water that you may have put on it. Remember to leave at least TWO soil-plot size squares of clearance around any obstacles. This goes for ANYTHING you are building! Water your plants. EVERY DAY. No water = no grow. As soon as your first little farm is planted, use the recycler machine to convert 50 trash into some recycled materials. Let it run while you continue clearing out the trash.

As you clean up this area you should pickup some potato seeds, old wood, farm plots, and trash. Plant your potato seeds on the soil plots, REMEMBER TO WATER IT (right-click) so it will grow overnight. Seeds only have one use in the game (so far) – to be planted, so plant them if you’ve got them. Anytime you notice the recycler finishes a load, feed it another load. Trash has only this one use in the game (so far). You should also have that chest you got from the tutorial. I recommend putting it near your potato farm and fill it with your extra potato seeds and trash for now.

Continue clearing a path straight across your farm from where you entered, through the little opening in the fence (past the sign that says “<-SHOP”) there is a smaller clearing by the river. Clear all the trash here, fill up your water-tank by vacuuming the river. You should notice a grey disk on the ground to the left, this is a sewer lid. Go down there to vacuum up some free stuff, and note this will be an entrance to an underground labyrinth later, then climb back up out of the sewer.

Now go through the big door, following the next sign pointing to the shop. Halfway there you should look to your left (just after a little archway) and notice there is a little ramp you can climb up to reach an item hidden under a trash pile on a ledge – go get it now. There were a few similar suitcases on your farm. Open them by pressing E. They mostly contain useful items like Recycled Material, Preserved Food, Books, or Components.

Head to Mark’s shop. Take a look at all the prices, maybe write them down (or check my shop chapter for reference) so you know what you need to focus on next. Come back often just to check prices and maybe buy some new recipes from time to time. Remember all shops in this game only sell BLUEPRINTS. You have to return to your workbench and spend more resources to actually build whatever recipe you just bought. There are “ITEM” recipes which you will need to build each time you want an additional one, and there are “UPGRADE” recipes that you can only build once. Even things like HP upgrade or backpack upgrade have to be built at your workbench after you get the recipe.

FIRST THING YOU MUST MUST MUST DO: Build the red drill upgrade, two more recyclers, and a food preserver. SECOND THING YOU MUST MUST MUST DO: Buy a simple kitchen, two chicken coops, two cubot lodges, and a few more chests. THIRD THING: Buy the blue drill upgrade, first backpack upgrade, and the upgrade for your kitchen. Then start working towards the green drill upgrade. So now you have some kind of plan to work towards. Not all of these blueprints are sold in this particular shop though; you’ll have to find the other two shops in the village to get it all.

Now you know what you are working towards, it’s likely almost the end of the day. If you can’t run all the way back to your house in time, the game will just automatically send you to bed. No big deal. Or you can go to the menu and select “UNSTUCK” button there, it will respawn you at home. Before bed, go put a new load of trash in your Recycler and if you have time you should build whatever blueprints you just bought at your workbench. Then you can select your bed with the E button to end the day and go to sleep. REMEMBER THE UNSTUCK BUTTON on the pause menu, it will be a useful tip if you ever get stuck on the terrain or if you want to come back to your farm from far away. (After you build a tent it will teleport you to whichever bed you most recently slept in.) In any case, every day will end just like this – at 22:00 hours on the clock you will go to sleep no matter where you are. Falling asleep in the field means you wake up at whatever bed you used most recently (your house or a tent).

Mini-Walkthrough: First Week

You wake up in your room, I think 07:00 is wakeup time. Exit the house. On the farm if you remembered to water your vegetable plants you should see them growing bigger and you should have just a couple of potatoes that are ready (if you left the original potatoes in place). And water your vegetables again!! If you ever forget to water them, they won’t grow any more that day. ALWAYS first thing you should do every morning is water your vegetable garden. Then you should spend some time clearing the rest of the trash out of your main farm area.

Place the TWO Recycler machines and the Preserving Machine that you bought. Raw vegetables are not very efficient in the preserving machine, it’s better to save them all until you have a Kitchen and you can start cooking meals before you preserve them. For the next few days you should find enough Prepared Meals to get what you need anyway, so save all your raw veggies for now. Put any trash you have into the recyclers. Also build the first drill upgrade so you can smash through the red rubble bricks. The rest of the first day should be spent clearing the rest of the trash off your farm, go behind that chunk of red rubble bricks that you couldn’t break yesterday and clear out that area too. In this new zone you’ll find a red button that opens/closes a gate in the fence. Open it, but don’t go through yet. You’ll find some chickens you can tame later, a new enemy – an orange robot crab that shoots acid at you (dodge when you see the green circle on the ground). And you’ll find some robot hermit crabs that have shells made out of trash. If you vacuum the trash off of their back, you can come back later to tame them. You’ll pick up a lot of useful loot here, too. In the back of the area is a ladder going up a cliff. On top is a suitcase full of goodies, then if you walk around that little shed and carefully drop down the cliff you’ll see another suitcase on a platform below.

Once this area and your main farm are all cleaned of trash, go back to Mark’s shop. Across from his shop are blue bricks you’re not strong enough to break yet… to the left of that on the other side of the fence is a box with a shiny glow on top. Drill through the fence to hit the box and take it with you – you’ll need it tomorrow! Then check Mark’s store. You should be able to afford the Chicken Coop now so buy that blueprint. Remember to go back to your workbench to build it! In fact, build two. Then place them on your farm somewhere… but LEAVE A LOT OF ROOM AROUND EACH ONE or else the chickens will get stuck, and you’ll get stuck trying to walk around the chickens. And that should do it for day two.

Day three starts out with WATER YOUR GARDEN AGAIN, collect any veggies that grew overnight, put a fresh load of trash in all your recyclers. Then re-plant any empty spots on your vegetable garden, and remember to water them all. This is basically how every day will start from now on so I won’t mention these steps anymore – just assume you’re supposed to do this first every day.

Now that you have a chicken coop, you can tame up to 10 chickens. So bring some potatoes with you while you’re exploring. You can feed them to chickens (press E when you see them highlighted with the potato icon) and the next day they will start living at your farm and will give you eggs each morning. In order to get eggs, you have to either feed, pet, or wash each chicken the day before. Hit E if you see a potato icon to feed it a potato, hit E if you see a hand icon to pet it (doesn’t spend a potato), or right-click if you see the shower icon to wash it. It will display a heart icon if you did it right, and the next day it will give you another egg. Note that the shower mechanism is a bit glitchy, the range and angle you have to be from your pet in order to have it recognize that you washed it is a bit tricky. Just keep trying, you’ll get it eventually. From now on you’ll have a choice to make: spend potatoes on chickens to get eggs, or save your potatoes for other recipes in the kitchen that you’re going to buy soon? Eggs are generally better than raw potatoes, but some of the recipes you need for shopping will ask you to use potatoes as an ingredient.

You can’t afford anything else from Mark’s shop yet, your farm is all clean, and your garden is watered… so go through the gate in the chain-link fence that you opened yesterday. Head across the river, clear all the trash around here. To the right is a ladder up a tree, there is a suitcase on top of a platform there and another suitcase behind the waterfall after you come down from the tree. In the area behind the wooden fence you’ll find a lot of new stuff. The tent is NOT useable yet, it’s showing you where you can BUILD a tent later. Pumpkin seeds are pretty important. Also a giant green spider that will jump on you like the red ones but he’s MUCH BIGGER so a bit harder to dodge and has much more health. Those blue bricks are electronic waste, you need another drill upgrade before you can break them… but you can walk around them for now. To the right, on a small hill, you should find Rudy. He runs another little shop. You’ll also find a stray dog. Agree to adopt it and you’ll get a “Dog House” item you can build on your farm – you don’t even need the workbench for this one. The dog will bring you an item every morning even if you don’t pet it or feed it. Good doggie.

Behind Rudy is a tunnel leading underground. This tunnel is isolated from the bigger maze, and it is basically a tutorial on how to press switches to open doors. Also note that there is a room here with an ORANGE PIPE IN THE WALL where the trash/seeds will respawn each day so you can find more seeds or old wood here if you need some. And in a side room behind some hanging ivy there is a BOX that you can use as a bridge; the box also respawns daily so you can take it, go use it, and then come back for another one. I recommend keeping three or four boxes in your inventory at all times.

Back above ground, on the left side of the area is a ramp with a red pressure pad near a fence. Put the box onto the pad and walk across. Hit the switch to open a ladder that goes down to Mark’s shop for a little shortcut. There are some seed piles here that respawn every few days. CORNELIUS IS HERE for a quest, too.

Back across the river towards your main farm, go left and follow the fence-line towards some blue E-waste bricks. There is a ramp with a red pressure pad there. If you got an extra box, put it on the pad and cross the ramp to reach another suitcase full of useful stuff.

Back on your farm, put a fresh load of trash into your three recycler machines. Make sure your garden is all watered. And if you’re using the Preserving Machine make sure it’s loaded so it will be ready to collect in the morning. This is going to be your nightly routine from now on. Just assume this is what you’re supposed to do before bed every evening, I won’t mention it every time.

That should take you two days. There are quite a few enemies and a lot of trash in that area. So your main task for day four will be to finish off this area where you found Rudy. In addition, it’s a good idea to build TWO chests to store your extra trash in, since you’re going to find a metric ton of the stuff over the next week or two and your basic recycler just can’t keep up with it all. Also have a chest for potato, tomato, and pumpkin seeds. Another chest for apple, peach, and orange seeds (keep all the tree seeds together), and another chest for eggplant, lettuce, and strawberry seeds. You don’t have a lot of those seeds yet but you’ll find a lot of them pretty soon so just wise to be prepared. Also build another chest or two for storing your produce and cooked meals.

Into Week Two

You should have some tomatoes now, hooray! You should also have planted a bunch of those pumpkin seeds you found on day three or day four, so they should be growing now. Grab a tomato and head to Mark’s shop. Buy the blueprint for a simple kitchen. Go back to your workbench and build one. Now you can start cooking meals, which means you can also start using the preserving machine. Also be sure you’re taking care of your chickens since you’ll need a lot of eggs from now on. I have a list of recipes and how much each food is worth in the preserving machine at the bottom of this guide, along with a list of shops.

To use the kitchen, you can either click and drag ingredients into the slot to cook it, or you can click on the recipe list on the bottom right to auto-fill that recipe. If you’re doing it manually, hold SHIFT and click an item to pick up only one of the item instead of the entire stack of 10 or whatever.

First few things you need to cook:

• Tomato Soup x 2
• Sunny Side Up x 1
• Fries with Ketchup x 1

Recipes are usually hidden inside the little suitcases scattered around the world. Or you can “experiment” and unlock a recipe on your own by trial and error. I’ll put a list of cooking recipes at the bottom of this guide. Notice that even if you found the recipe for it, you cannot cook a Basic Stuffed Pumpkin yet. You need to improve your kitchen first. The simple kitchen can only use TWO different ingredients at a time. Upgrade it once to be able to cook using three ingredients; upgrade it again to be able to cook with four ingredients.

Once you have your cooked dishes as well as five pumpkins and three eggs in your backpack, go back to the shops and purchase the following blueprints:

• Expanded Inventory 1 (from Mark at the Space Dog Store)
• Kitchen Upgrade (from Mark at the Space Dog Store)
• E-Waste Drill Upgrade (from Rudy at the hill beside your farm)
• Cubebot Lodge (from Rudy at the hill beside your farm)
• Tent (from Rudy at the hill beside your farm)
• Bigger Water Tank 1 (from Rudy at the hill beside your farm)

Build two cubebot lodges. Now you can feed batteries (found by defeating robot enemies) to those little white cubebots after you suck the trash off of their backs. They’ll come live at the lodge, and each day they will give you a Recycled Material as long as you take care of them. They’re just like chickens, except instead of potatoes they ask for another battery if they get hungry.

When you try to upgrade a kitchen (or a recycler or other machine) you need to have the PREVIOUS VERSION of it built and placed on your farm. Then the upgrade that you get at your workbench must be placed directly on top of the old version. Then it takes about 2 days for the upgrade to be completed, during upgrades you can’t use the machine so you might want to build a second (possibly temporary) one while the other one is under construction.

Build 2 tents to carry with you. you can build them at the tent sites and they’ll act like your bedroom: you can sleep there at night, and each morning you wake up there instead of your house. There is one tent site in the area near Rudy, too close to the farm to be helpful though. There is one up a tree on the other side of the lake after the shop, also too close to be useful. And there is one on a raised platform underground but you won’t get to that point for a while yet. Each morning you will wake up at whichever location you most recently slept at (by clicking E on the bed or tent) if you fall asleep out in the field. I recommend using the tent site underground as well as save the second tent for the site in Lonely Hills. DO NOT BUILD MORE THAN TWO!!! You need the rest of your Component items for other things that are more important than tents.

With that E-Waste Drill Upgrade, you can smash those blue trash bricks. Spend day five clearing out the blue bricks from the area where you met Rudy and your stray dog. Then go down to Mark’s shop and smash the blue bricks blocking the path through the fence.

After watering your garden, filling your trash recyclers, and getting gifts from your pet chickens and cubebots, head down to the zone across from Mark’s shop. There are some new things you’ll encounter here. First, tree seeds!! You’ll find apple seeds, peach seeds, and acorn seeds. I like to use the area next to my farm (up to where I met Rudy) to plant some fruit trees. Apples are basic, peaches are better, and later you’ll find some orange seeds, too. I’ll plant about a dozen of each type of tree. But LEAVE A TON OF SPACE BETWEEN THEM or else you’ll have trouble walking between them! Trees don’t need a little soil farm plot, just plant them in regular old dirt. You also don’t need to water them. But they will take longer to grow than your little vegetable garden. When the fruit is ready in about a week, you’ll see the tree highlight as you get close. Press E to shake the tree and get a fruit. If it is still highlighted you can shake it again to get another fruit. You’ll also find some new seeds for your vegetable garden: eggplants, lettuce, and strawberries.

There are some quests in this area, too. First up is one called “Extreme Recultivation.” You’ll have to attack some sick trees to knock them down, then plant a seed in its place. THIS QUEST IS BUGGED – DO NOT PLANT THE NEW SEEDS YET! It says it wants apple trees, and no matter what you plant there apple trees will grow. But the trees will tell you to plant an ACORN instead of an apple seed, and clicking on the spot will take an ACORN instead of an apple seed out of your inventory. And when you sleep at night the quest progress (how many new trees you’ve planted) will reset to ZERO so you can’t complete it unless you first spend a week and a half clearing all the obstacles, then do a speed-run to plant ALL 15 TREES in a single day. The developers are aware of this bug and are working on a fix.

Other quests include renovating a fox den for a cost of 10 Old Wood, then when you find a fox you can feed it a strawberry and it will live there and give you gifts if you take care of it just like the chickens and cubebots do. There is a super-polluted point in the river that needs a water filter, which we will find at the far end of this zone then come back and install it. You should also find five bear traps in the area that you should attack until they break and vanish for another quest to end poaching in the area. And there is a quest to repair a man’s house on the other side of the lake, which will cost 40 Rubble.

There are TWO routes you can take through this zone. The easiest one is above ground, which is where you find and complete all the quests: follow the path from the store, down the hill, around the lake and up the next hill, through a door and along the shoreline, and then open the gate behind the store from that side. It’s pretty straightforward, really. The other route involves going into the underground labyrinth. That place has a ton of enemies but also a ton of trash and other resources as well as a few recipes for your kitchen. As you go, you’ll run into some locked doors that you have to work around. There are several entrances to this underground maze, and if you hit a locked door then the next entrance from the surface will let you work your way back to that door and unlock it from the other side. There are several entrances, eventually the entire region will be connected in this way. The entrances are marked as “AP” for Access Point on my map.

Once you’ve made your way around to the gate behind the shop, you will want to make your way back across the lake and go to the Lost Hills zone. BUT FIRST… buy the green Glue Drill Upgrade from Rudy.

Week Two – Village above ground

I’ll start by walking you through the path from the shop, around the lake, across the ridge, and back to the shop by going above ground. This is the easier path. This will take several days if you take the time to smash all the trash blocks, kill all the enemies, and tame all the animals. You’ll find some pigs here, too, who you can’t tame without the ability to make honey AND a pig sty. So we’ll be focusing on those unlocks in this section. In my “Week Three” chapter I’ll take you through the same area but we’ll cover the underground labyrinth beneath it. The underground has a LOT more items, a lot more trash, and a lot more enemies. The layout of the place is also a bit strange, and it’s easy to get a little bit lost down there. That’s whey we’re going above ground first. Well, that and you can unlock the ability to tame and raise pigs faster this way.

We start at those blue E-waste bricks near the shop, which by now you’ve probably already smashed to pieces. Head down the hill until you see the trash-cannon blocks. You will take damage if you get hit by a cannon ball, so be careful to walk around their firing range. You can also use a BOX item to block their shots. Usually there will be a switch nearby to turn the cannons off, but you have to get past them first. Meanwhile, you’ll find some Apple Seeds and some Lettuce Seeds among the usual loot. Keep going down the hill towards that broken old house. On the right you should see an exposed basement. There is a door there that leads to the underground labyrinth. Remember it’s here, we’ll be back for this later. On the left is a button that unlocks a chain-link gate to let you grab some free stuff from suitcases.

Now you can go back towards the shop a bit, on your right there will be a gap in the fence. Follow that path. Up to the left is your first bear trap, hit it with your drill to destroy it. There are five of these to complete a quest, they are all scattered in this zone. To the right, towards the back of the house, you’ll see a sick old tree. There are FIFTEEN of these scattered all over the zone. Your job is to hit them with your drill until they fall down, then plant a seed to grow a new tree. Whenever you see them, knock them down… BUT DO NOT PLANT A NEW SEED YET!!! This quest is BUGGED and when you go to sleep the quest progress resets to zero no matter how many trees you’ve planted. So wait until we finish the WHOLE ZONE and then come back on a speed-run to plant all fifteen of them in a single day. I made a map of the village and it shows where the trees are. The quest SAYS it wants apple trees, but it will TAKE an acorn instead of apple seeds for each tree.

Make your way further into the area. There are a few giant spiders and a bunch of spitting crabs in here so be careful. Eventually you’ll reach a point where a quest pops about rebuilding a fox den. It’s just to the left, near the cliff face. You need to use 10 Old Wood to rebuild the den. Then you should find a fox somewhere in this zone and feed him a strawberry. He’ll live at the den starting the next day, and will give you items if you take care of him, just like the chickens and cubebots. He eats a strawberry and gives you a strawberry seed… which is kind of circular and useless if you think about it. Then down by the lake you’ll find a toxic waste barrel stuck in the river. You’ll need to find a water filter and then come back here to install it to complete another quest. The water filter is at the end of the zone, behind the Space Dog Store. So for now, just remember this is here. Also, be advised that you will start finding eggplant, peach, and strawberry seeds in the loot around here in addition to a ton of apple seeds.

Going around the back side of the lake you’ll see a little prize that is blocked by green trash blocks. These are “electronic glue” bricks, you’ll need another drill upgrade before you can break them. The big wooden door beside that leads into the swampy zone, but it is LOCKED and you cannot go there yet (maybe in a future content update). So ignore them for now and continue around the lake and up the hill. To the left is a little fenced in area you can access by using a BOX to cross a ramp.
There is another entry to the underground there. Further up, you’ll find a farmer whose house was trampled by a giant robot. Spend 40 Rubble to fix it and he’ll give you one pig sty as a reward. Then he can sell you some new crafting blueprints. Just behind the house is an open field with another entry to the underground. Keep going along the back side of the lake, there are more of those toxic trees around here but remember that quest is bugged. At the end of the lake you will find a button that activates a bridge. Now you have a shortcut across the lake back to the Store. At the end of this area are two sets of doors. The one that is up a little hill leads to the Lonely Hills area, and we don’t want to go there just yet. Then there is a cave to the underground, which we will come back for later. Use the other doors that go into the side of that ridge and they will send you to the shore on the other side.

There are more toxic trees along this path, along with some suitcase loot. At the end of the trail you will find two things worth noting. First is a LOCKED wooden door on a highway bridge. This leads to another zone which is not yet ready for public play (maybe in a future content update). The other is below one of the highway bridges you will find CORNELIUS THE CHICKEN KNIGHT again. After that, hit two switches – one opens the gate back to Mark’s store, the other opens a ladder going up to the area above your main farm. And be sure to collect the Water Filter item, too. Then walk back to that toxic drum in the river (downhill from the pig farmer’s house) and install the filter to complete that quest.

Go to sleep, and spend the next day RUNNING back through this whole area planting trees to complete the “Extreme Recultivation” quest. If you fall asleep in the middle of the quest, progress reverts to zero but you can only plant each tree ONCE. So they all have to be done in a single day.

Now you have a pig sty, you should have enough ingredients to build a Mayo Maker and a few Beehives. Get yourself some honey and mayo, go feed honey to the pigs (after you build your pig sty of course), wait a day and collect truffles from the pigs, do some additional cooking and preserving… you should be able to unlock some new recipes and craft some new stuff now. Of particular interest will be the green “Electronic Glue” drill upgrade. GET THAT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. DO NOT ENTER THE LONELY HILLS ZONE UNTIL YOU HAVE THAT UPGRADE RECIPE. If you are still missing a few components or books, head into the underground labyrinth and clear some of that place out. So that’s what I’ll discuss next.

Week Three – the Underground Labyrinth

I was GOING to make my own map, then I accidentally found this one that someone else made, posted on a wiki site. It’s pretty good so here’s the link[static.wikia.nocookie.net] if you’re interested.

Is this a shortcut? – No. This is definitely the long way around. Lots of doors locked with weird switches, a ton of enemies, and sixty five tons of trash to clear up make this much longer than going above ground. Also more rewarding in terms of loot you can get. For the most part it’s all the same kind of loot, but there is SO MUCH MORE OF IT down here.

Can you place buildings underground? – For the most part, no. This goes for production buildings like the Recycler and Kitchen, as well as Pet Houses like the Cubebot Lodge and Chicken Coop, as well as simple storage chests.

Can we grow crops underground? – Yes. Surprisingly you are allowed to place Farm Plots, Seeds, Sprinklers, and even Tree Seeds underground. Your plants will grow as normal, as long as you water them every day. However, you cannot place a well or any storage containers here to help you manage your underground farm so plan accordingly.

What enemies are found here? – The same ones you found above ground. Red jumping spider-bots, orange spitting spider-bots, and giant green jumping sipder-bots. I think there may be just one or two new ones: jumping spiders with black “shields” on their butts. Use your vacuum to suck the shield off of them, then use your drill to kill them.

Is there anything special here? – Yes. You will find Cornelius the talking chicken down here, as well as Napoleon the pig with a cool hat. Napoleon will be part of a quest from the Lonely Hills zone. And several suitcases full of loot in addition to the regular trash and related items. Aside from those few things, nothing really special is here. It’s just an alternate way to get around the village and a BIG source of trash, seeds, and various other junk. But there are a couple of new cooking recipes in some of those suitcases, too.

Does it connect the Village zone to other zones? – Yes, there is a big wooden door that leads to the area under the Lost Hills zone, but until you open a second garage door from the other side you can’t use the passage. Each side has its own locked garage door.

Does the loot here respawn? – Yes, in certain rooms. Particularly the ones with orange pipes sticking out of the walls. Just exit the sewers and then come back and a few pieces of trash will respawn. You might get seeds, regular trash, old wood, or rubble. You won’t get ALL of it to respawn, just a few bricks at a time.

Do the enemies here respawn? – No. Kill them once and they stay gone.

How do these dang switches work, I can’t figure out how to open this door! – Usually you will open a locked door from THE OTHER SIDE so you’ll have to go back above ground and return from a different access point. But when you reach a door and the switch is on this side, there are several different switch configurations. I’ll list them all for you now.

• Red switch – used more for turning traps on/off than opening doors. Hit it once to activate.
• Red pressure plate – put a box on it to activate. Sometimes used to open a door, but usually used to build a bridge over a hole.
• Blue switches – usually four in a set. Find and activate all four to open the door.
• Yellow switches – usually three in a set. Find and activate all three BEFORE THE TIMER RUNS OUT to open the door.
• Puzzle switches – marked with symbols. The correct sequence is usually written on a wall or sign nearby. Hit them in the right order to open the door.
• Grey basins – weird vases connected to the power pipes, usually located someplace you cannot reach by walking. Shoot it with your water hose to fill it up with water to activate it.

Since I found such a nice map online, I’m not going to spend time making my own. Here I’ll list the entrances in the order which you’ll need them. These correspond to the ladders with AP # on my map of the Village.

AP0: NOT connected to the main labyrinth. Across the river behind your farm, in the tunnel where you first met Rudy, the Stray Dog, and Cornelius the chicken knight. From the inside, the exit is just a ladder attached to the wall. Most of them are ladders from the inside.

AP1: At the edge of your farm, on the way to the Space Dog Store. At first it’s an empty room with two locked yellow doors but you can open them from the other side to let you come back to the farm.

AP2: Downhill from the Space Dog Store, enter through the basement of the destroyed house that’s the first thing you see straight down the hill towards the river. From inside, it’s a room with four raised platforms (one in each corner) and the ladder is on a wall in that room.

AP3: If you enter through AP2, this is where you will exit when you hit some locked doors that only open from the other side. It’s a door disguised as a utility closet near the cliff wall by a waterfall, where the cannons are firing. From the inside, it’s on a rock wall in a hallway that leads to a door with some yellow switches on a timer.

AP4: Past the fox den, a tunnel at the bottom of the cliff right below the main farm. If you continue up this path you will open AP5. From the inside, it’s in a room full of manholes right beside the sign that shows the code for your first puzzle door.

AP5: A tunnel appears on your farm, if you exit your treehouse and take about three steps inside the fence you’ll see it on your left. From the inside, you can go left from AP1, then at the end of the hall go left again and the ladder is right there.

AP6: across the lake and up the hill, in a fenced-in little area before you reach the pig farmer’s house. From the inside, it’s a small side-room like a closet beside a main hallway. The door with the coded puzzle switch for AP7 is just beside it.

AP7: On the other side of the pig farmer’s house, there is a cave at the back of a small grassy field. There is a sign outside the cave that has the code needed for a switch to open the door that connects back to AP6. From the inside, it’s in the room with four black bouncy balls and a gap where you had to put a box to cross into the next room.

AP8: In the field across the river from the hose with AP2 in the basement. In the far corner is a cave. From the inside, it’s a room with a lot of little garages, and a wooden gate at one end of the hall. In this room – there is a garage with four doors. Spider bots hide behind each door. If you walk close to the walls you will attract the jumping spiders and can kill them through the wall, or force them to jump THROUGH the wall and fight them in the hallway. You can also reach the button to open the door with your drill through the wall. You will probably GET STUCK in there because the doors close behind you. Use the “Unstuck” button from the pause menu to escape.

Lonely Hills – Working for Frank the Architect

WARNING: game breaking bugs here…

• You’ll unlock some new decorations and upgrades here. Still use caution about spending your Quality Wood and Components! Focus on getting the drill upgrades FIRST, then worry about upgrades and decorations.
• (Supposedly they fixed this bug) SOMETIMES but not every time, building an improved chicken coop and/or taming a duck will BREAK THE GAME by making you unable to save the game. Time keeps rolling past 22:00, if you sleep in a tent or bed it starts time at 22:00 instead of 07:00 AND if you die you fall asleep but you can never wake up so the game never saves.
• Fixing the deer habitat with old wood BEFORE talking to Frank breaks the quest. You can still build the habitat and tame the deer later, but the first part of the quest will never register as completed. So talk to Frank BEFORE you click on the deer habitat!

• Beware of the giant purple spitting spider! Its projectiles are huge and hard to dodge, it has a ton of health, and when it dies it splits into a bunch of tiny spiders (but they die from one hit from your drill). I recommend killing the big one with your water hose.
• There is a while doctor spider, too. He has a repair aura around him, his allies get healed so fast they’re almost invincible as long as they stand within its range. Otherwise it’s just like a regular red jumping spider.
• In case you skipped the underground in previous zone, then you did not encounter the shielded spider yet. It is a regular jumping spider with a black shield on his butt. Use your vacuum to pull the shield off first, then kill him in the normal way with your drill or water-hose. Essentially he has two health bars – one for the shield (which is immune to drill damage) and one for himself.

Map of first area, down by the river delta where it empties into the sea:

More maps of this area to come when I have time to run back through the area and make them. Maps of the underground areas are found in the next chapter for working with Rudy, since Frank keeps you above ground mostly while Rudy purposely sends you into a couple of caves.

If you were smart and bought the green (glue/slime) drill upgrade from Rudy before coming here, good for you. Instead of going straight up to the right, where Rudy is waiting for you, I recommend first going down the hill and to the left. Follow the path along the river until you reach a train in a tunnel. There is a broken wire that needs to be fixed with a battery, then you hit a button to open a gate nearby. The gate is right next to the river, just fifty yards or so in front of that train.

Go through the gate and follow the path until you find the broken deer habitat. If you look to your LEFT, you will see a ladder that leads up to a tent site. I recommend putting a tent here and sleeping at it to make this your new home base where you will wake up each morning, because you’ll be working around this zone for a while. If you want to, you can also bring some of your things over from your original farm and make a nice “home away from home” here. To the right, across the river, is a clearing beyond which is where the two NPC shopkeepers / quest givers live. So this is a good place to build yourself a second farm, for crafting and growing things they need in order to sell you new blueprints and finish quests.

Since you’re here, you can talk to Frank. He gives you a bunch of quests. BE CAREFUL! Quality Wood and Components are available in limited quantities, only found in the hidden suitcases and they never respawn! There are not enough components and quality wood to purchase and craft everything in the game right now! Anyway, here is what Frank needs you to do…

1. Talk to Frank about the deer in the area, he mentions an old deer habitat that needs work.
2. Fix the deer habitat by pressing E on it while you have one old wood in your backpack.
3. Come back and tell him it’s done, then he will ask you for 6 Quality Wood and 5 Carrots (there is a typo the quest says wood OR carrots but it really means AND). Get some and come back, he’ll build a deer feeder. Go put it in place at the deer habitat, then come back again.
4. Now you need an acid neutralizer to clean up the habitat. Go see Howard the pig farmer on the hill by the lake in the Village, and he’ll ask you for help in exchange for the neutralizer.
5. Go into the underground labyrinth at the cave to the LEFT of Howard’s house, where you have to use a box as a bridge for a ramp to get over the fence. Inside, turn RIGHT and go straight until you see a pig wearing a funny hat. This is Napoleon. Talk to him and tell him “Liberte” and then return to Howard. Job done.
6. Use the neutralizer on the deer habitat in the Lonely Hills. Go back to Frank again.
7. Now he wants an Olivier Salad AND 8 Quality Wood. You’ll have to get EVERY piece of quality wood in the Lonely Hills zone (some are above ground, some underground but they are all hidden in suitcases). Some of them are in areas you can’t reach until you do Rudy’s quests, so you can just come back later. The deer, once you finish the habitat construction, will eat acorns and give you a RANDOM pack of five seeds every day..

1. First Frank wants 1 piece of Quality Wood to prepare your walls for decorations. If you go back to your house, it doesn’t look quite so busted after this.
2. Frank wants some good food (Truffle Surprise and Ultimate Fruit Salad) to motivate him to unlock the brown and while doors in your house. The green door has three more key pieces that you’ll have to find on your own though.
3. You get a Wallpaper item. Use it inside your house, from your hotbar, to put wallpaper on your walls.
4. Now you can purchase his blueprints for crafting furniture and decorations. Remember: Components are used in drill upgrades, tents, and character upgrades; while Quality Wood is also needed for his quests to build your deer habitat. So use those items CAREFULLY if you play with decorations.

Back in your home, the BROWN DOOR is a large square room, probably the master bedroom. The WHITE DOOR is a smaller room with some angled corners, probably the living room. The GREEN DOOR is a smaller rectangular room, probably a kitchen or maybe a spare bedroom. The RED DOOR will remain closed for now, probably will be used in future updates for further expansions on your home.

Lonely Hills – Cleaning up the Environment with Rudy

Now go back to the entrance to this zone, go up the hill to the right, and talk to Rudy. He wants herbs from the cave farther to the right. FIRST, buy his green glue/slime drill upgrade if you haven’t yet.

Before you go into the herb cave, go past the cave and hit a button that’s hanging on a platform dangling over the cliff’s edge. This opens a gate down by the river. Now go into the cave. All three herbs are in glowing suitcases in this first big room. You have to ride that floating platform to reach all of them, and you have to shoot the bucket-button with your water hose to flip a switch that opens a door. In the back room is another ladder leading to an exit. There’s just a duck and some of those purple rubber bricks out there, but remember it’s here for after you get the rubber drill upgrade. Finish clearing out this entire cave. Note the big wooden door on the other end… it goes back to the underground labyrinth in the Village. The other locked door goes to another section of the Lonely Hills underground. Thankfully this labyrinth is must smaller than the one in the Village!

Go give Rudy his herbs, and he’ll relocate again. This time he’s over next to Frank’s shop.. BUT he will also stay available at the herb cave (to avoid a nasty bug where if you didn’t buy the green drill upgrade first he would relocate and get locked behind a wall of green bricks that you can’t break without that upgrade). When you get there, he sends you into another cave to find a Bubulator. Go get it, there are literally signs that point you to the cave.

Give Rudy the bubulator. He says he needs 40 Recycled Material and 15 Old Wood to fix a bridge that will lead to the next area, so give it to him now. As a side note, you’ll find a stray raccoon in between Rudy’s and Frank’s shops. You can pet it and bring it home. Like the cat and dog it gives you items every day FOR FREE. Now Rudy wants five special mushrooms. They’re across the river, follow the signs that say “fungi” and you’ll come to a big mining facility. There are five glowing suitcases in the area with mushrooms. Give them to Rudy and he sends you to go get rid of the toxic gas. Behind his shop is a ramp leading DOWN (not the ramp that goes up the side of his house) into The Hole. There is a ladder halfway down the ramp, use the ladder. Put the bulbulator machine in your item hot-bar, use it. BE ADVISED: after you use the machine and leave the room, the ladder disappears so you can NEVER COME BACK in here. Take what you want before using the bulbulator machine.

Be sure to thoroughly explore the area behind the strip mine, up in the hills there are a lot of those hazardous waste sites you need to cleanse, a few suitcases with components, and several TONS of every type of trash imaginable in case you need any more resources for crafting. Also tons of enemies. There is also a door leading down to the underground where you will meet a pair of talking pigs. They will ask you to get some oats. Howard the pig farmer in the Village has some oats and he gives them to you for FREE if you ask nicely. What a guy! Give the oats to the pigs and they give you a painting to put in your house. The area on the hill where the second Lonely Hills campsite is, has very FLAT ground on top of the hill. This makes it a great place to build a second (or third) farm! Lots of open space, and it’s flat so your soil plots won’t get eaten by wrinkles in the terrain!!

There is a glitch now where Rudy will ask you to get the fungi again, and they will reappear in suitcases at the strip mine, and then he gives you a SECOND bulbulator machine. you don’t have to do this, it is a GLITCH. If you do end up with an extra machine you can put both of them in the trash because you’re done with them. Likewise, at the cave location Rudy will ask you for herbs again. Don’t worry it’s just a glitch he doesn’t really need them, the quest should have been completed properly already.

Meanwhile… Cornelius is on top of a mountain on the other side of the mine. This should be the last time you have to find him, so after this he’ll move to your main farm. He will eat Truffles and spit out Orange Seeds, and you need an Improved Chicken Coop to house him. That same improved chicken coop is also good for keeping ducks. They eat carrots and give you duck eggs every day. And there are 10 hazardous waste dumps in the area that you need to clean up, too. Use a SINGLE-SHOT water gun and aim for the top half of the pile to clear it up. When you see plants growing out of the pile, it’s done. If you haven’t done it yet you can go down into the underground and finish cleaning the place out. Or go break up all the purple rubber trash bricks and collect some rubber – which is currently USELESS but will probably be used for a few blueprints in a future update – and get behind a couple of those purple bricks to open more suitcase loot and cooking recipes (assuming you haven’t already discovered the recipes by experimenting).

And the final thing to do is to drop down the hill from that final campsite behind the strip mine. NOTE: you cannot get back up the hill from here so if the door to the underground room where you got herbs for Rudy is still closed you will need to UNSTUCK to get out, or return to the village from the big brown door underground. But drop down there, you’ll end up by the river on the opposite side from the hill where you found Rudy asking for herbs. Clear out this whole area, and there is a door that leads underground. If you follow the path you’ll come to another ladder that leads up to an isolated area with some loot. You’ll also find the Pig Brothers here, arguing about oats. After they ask you for oats, return to the Village and see Harold (or was it Howard? Something with an H) the pig farmer whose house you rebuilt. He gives you oats FOR FREE. Give those to the Pig Brothers to complete their quest.

And that is it. You’ve done all the content they have available so far. Hope you’re enjoying it so far, and hope the bugs and glitches aren’t driving you insane. LOL.

The Blueprint Shops

… Work in progress. Under construction. More to come.

Ellen
Ellen (that’s the main character’s name) starts with a few blueprints unlocked by default, plus the one you can buy during the tutorial.

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Rudy
Rudy is first found on a hill by a cave behind your farm. As soon as you enter the Lonely Hills zone, he leaves and will appear there on the first hill you see to your right. Once you give him some herbs from a nearby cave, he leaves again and will reappear farther down the path if you go down the hill and follow the river to the left. Then turn right at the deer habitat and cross the river, he’s just ahead. Remember he is the only one who sells blueprints for drill upgrades so buy the green (glue/slime) drill upgrade BEFORE you get those herbs for him, his final location is locked behind a wall of green bricks that need that upgrade to get through.

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Mark
Mark runs the Space Dog Store in the village. He sells blueprints for the things you’ll need to get started in the early part of the game.

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Howard
Howard (aka the pig farmer) lives on a hill on the other side of the lake in the village. He sells blueprints for the pigsty, mayo maker, beehive, and a few other things so he’s pretty important as you progress into the Lonely Hills zone and explore the underground labyrinth. There is a typo, if you open his shop it says his name is Rudy but it’s actually Howard.

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Frank
Frank is the architect, he works near the Hole in the Lonely Hills zone. He mainly sells decorations, which at the moment are kind of broken because you are so limited by the number of Quality Wood and Compoonent items you can find in the game. But he also will un-block the final two doors in your house if you bring him a couple of fancy meals.

Crafting at the Workbench

Cooking Recipes

I’ll list each ingredient and each cooked meal, what farm machine or kitchen type you need to get it, how many prepared meals you get by preserving it, and the ingredients required to make it. Note that if you cook any meal in the kitchen that is NOT one of these recipes, you’ll get an item called “experimental meal” and the amount of prepared meals you get will depend on the ingredients you tried to use.

Raw fruits and veggies, mayo, and jam

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Meals cooked in a kitchen from other ingredients

Cooking anything in a kitchen that is NOT one of the established recipes produces a “cooking experiment” item, which can go into the preserving machine and will produce the same number of Prepared Meals as the individual ingredients would have.

Known bugs and glitches

*** Bear in mind I have NEVER bought, placed, or tested any of the decorative items (fences, gardens, benches, etc.) available. I’m focused on just the stuff that is necessary to progress through the game. So there may be additional bugs with those decoration items. ***

• KEEP GRAPHICS SET TO “PERFORMANCE” MODE ONLY! Changing that setting will overheat your CPU and GPU, causing physical damage to your computer hardware. I will edit this entry once the developer team has the graphics settings optimized enough to justify changing these settings. Meanwhile, there is NO VISUAL DIFFERENCE between the different settings anyway so there is no point to changing settings.
• Various places you will get stuck on the terrain and cannot move. Hit ESC for the menu and use the “UNSTUCK” button to get out – it will teleport you inside your house.
• If you build fruit trees too close together it is very difficult to walk between trees in this case. Leave a lot of space between each tree.
• If you build houses for the animals you tame in the wild, leave a good amount of space between each one or the animals will spawn in weird places and get stuck there so you can’t collect their items. The animals will also be obstacles you can’t pass if you build the houses too close together, and they’ll spawn on/inside a rock if you put it too close to a wall.
• When a second controller or steering-wheel is plugged in, normal controls don’t work. NOT SURE THIS WILL FIX IT but right-click the game in your Steam Library, select Properties, then the Controller tab. Change the drop-down box to say “Enable Steam Input.” Or if it already says that, change to Disable Steam Input. Then run the game and see if it works. If not, you will have to temporarily unplug your extra controller/wheel.
• If you place a chest or building too close to a ladder or manhole, activating that building will send you through that path whether you want to go that way or not. So try not to build things near ladders, caves, doors, or manholes.
• The pig farmer who lives on the hill by the lake, and the young man who you meet near the beginning and then later he moves to the Lonely Hills, both are named Rudy. To differentiate I will say “Rudy” when I mean the one that moves to Lonely Hills. He’s the one that sells your drill upgrades. For the other guy I’ll call him the “pig farmer” in this guide even though officially his name is Howard. It’s just a typo in his shop menu that says Rudy.
• You can place farm soil, tree seeds, sprinklers, veggie seeds, and water farm soil in the underground labyrinth. It’s nice down there because the ground is PERFECTLY LEVEL. However, you cannot place any other buildings there (well, kitchen, storage chest, recycler, pet houses, etc) so don’t get too crazy if you decide to build a farm down there. But things will grow
• SOMETIMES, but not always, when you purchase blueprints from an NPC it will appear as if nothing happened. But when you close the shop menu you will find that you got the blueprint AND kept your cooked food items because of a weird glitch. Not sure what causes it, but the “workaround” is that it only happens once in a while and it doesn’t actually break anything so who cares. You still need to have all the cost requirements (books, cooked food, etc.) to buy the blueprint or really nothing will happen.
• Frank’s quests use Quality Wood, and when you buy his blueprints it also costs Quality Wood to build the furniture and decoration workshop upgrades. But the Quality Wood is very hard to find (only in hidden suitcase loot) and there doesn’t seem to be enough of it. “Workaround” is this: choose whether you want to tame some deer (feed them acorns to get random package of five seeds the next day – best way to get blueberry seeds really) or play around with furniture and decorations for your house. CHOOSE ONLY ONE. Ignore all the quests for the other one until after you are completely finished with the one you prefer, hopefully you’ll find a few more Quality Wood items later.
• It seems like there are not enough Components to build all the upgrades in the game at this point. YOU DO NOT NEED more than one tent (placed in Lonely Hills zone), YOU DO NOT NEED the second or third water tank upgrade, YOU DO NOT NEED the third toughness upgrade. But you DEFINITELY NEED the red, blue, green, and purple drill upgrades or else you lock yourself out of any further game progress. So focus on the drill upgrades FIRST and plan ahead when you are spending your components at your crafting station. Not really a bug, just good advice.
• In Lonely Hills when Rudy says to go put the machine in The Hole, there is NO PROMPT telling you where/how to use it. You just have to go down there with the item in your hot-bar and use it as if you’re planting a tree seed or something. Then the quest will complete for you.
• After completing Rudy’s quests in Lonely Hills, you still have a bulbulator machine with fungi in your inventory. If you talk to him again he says the bulbulator is ready but we need the fungi. Go back to the strip mine and there will be more fungi. Get them and Rudy will give you ANOTHER machine so you will have two. Workaround: just ignore Rudy when he tells you to get more fungi.
• SOME people have said the jam machine will spit out infinite jams and crash the game if you try to collect it when your backpack is full. I have not encountered this bug personally so can’t confirm or deny the truth of it. Workaround: you only need about a dozen jam anyway so don’t make a ton of it, and don’t try to collect it when your backpack is full.
• IF you have a painting on the wall and THEN you put wallpaper on the wall, the painting disappears. So don’t wallpaper over paintings. Just like in real life, take the painting down first.
• Pets sometimes wander too far away, or else get stuck under the deck behind your house. If you need to bring them home, remove their house and place it back down – the pet will teleport home BUT they will lose any item they were trying to give you that day. New item tomorrow anyway so not a huge problem.

Bugs and Glitches with NO FIX yet

• Loading your game will sometimes make strange problems happen. It is EARLY ACCESS / ALPHA TESTING so please be patient with the bugs. The developer is working on it.
• NEVER open any menu screens, start building or planting anything, etc. after 21:45. If you are “busy” at 22:00 then instead of falling asleep the clock just keeps going. The sun comes up at midnight (00:00 or 24:00) and you can keep playing… but you can NEVER sleep again. If you die you get the “purple screen of death” which is the “go to bed” screen but just the background. There is no option to wake up the next day. You’re screwed, have to manually quit the game and start from the previous day’s save.
• You will BREAK YOUR GAME and lock yourself out of any ability to progress unless you craft the red “Rubble Waste” drill upgrade at your workbench as the FIRST THING you do on your farm. The area you can reach before you hit red rubble bricks is very small, so it is easy to use up all your resources and then you’ll be unable to craft the upgrade later – and you need the upgrade to break through the red bricks to reach other areas with more resources.
• You will BREAK YOUR GAME and be unable to make any progress if you craft any tents or inventory/health/attack upgrades before you craft the blue “Electronic Waste” drill upgrade!! That’s because practically all of the crafting requires Components, which are a limited resource only found in hidden suitcases. They didn’t put enough suitcases in the starting area
• Sometimes enemies, wild animals, or trash/food drops will end up on top of a rock or hill that you cannot climb, or underwater. Anything above the level of your knees or below your feet is untouchable, but those enemy robots can still attack you from up there.
• From time to time the animals will still be lying down but they will slide across the ground, their AI is trying to make them walk around without getting up off their lazy butts first.
• Enemies can walk through closed doors and certain walls. Example is underground, there is a door that is locked but the crab-shooter robot ran from me and went through the wall to hide in the next room.
• (Supposedly they fixed this one but I have not confirmed yet) Extreme Cultivation quest – description says it wants APPLE TREES to grow there, but it asks for and takes Acorns instead of apple seeds. Lose an acorn, grow an apple tree… but quest progress is erased when you go to sleep. The only way to finish this quest is to do ALL 15 TREES in a single day. Quest is broken.
• (Supposedly they fixed this but I have not confirmed yet) Cornelius the chicken seems to multiply geometrically when you complete his quest. You’ll end up with around 30 of his clones on your farm. Napoleon the Pig has a tendency to do the same thing but not always. Build your chicken coops AWAY from your farm to avoid getting stuck on Cornelius’s clones.
• When you put a piece of farm soil down, the grass sticks up through it and sometimes it is hard to see the good soil through all the grass.
• When placing ANY “building” – especially small ones like the farm soil or certain decorations – make sure the ground is PERFECTLY FLAT or it might get placed a little below your feet or above your knees – in which case you will never be able to interact with that object again. It will just be stuck there as part of the scenery and an obstacle to walk around forever.
• (Supposedly they fixed this but I have not yet confirmed) SOMETIMES, but not always, building an improved chicken coop or taming a duck by feeding it some carrots will TOTALLY DESTROY the sleep and save feature. So you never go to sleep, the clock just keeps going. The sun will rise at midnight (0:00) and you can just keep going… but you can NEVER “wake up” so you can NEVER save the game again. If you are killed, you fall asleep but you get the purple screen of doom – there is no “wake up” button and you have to use Windows Task Manager to close the program.
• Due to lack of Quality Wood and Component items available in the game, if you build two tents or too many upgrades that require those as ingredients BEFORE crafting all the drill upgrades, you will lock yourself out of the ability to make any further progress. You need those items for various quests and for upgrading your drill (which is the main way you can open new areas in this game). So use the items that are found only in hidden suitcases sparingly (Books, Components, and Quality Wood). They never respawn!!
• There simply ARE NOT ENOUGH “component” item drops in this game currently. You WILL NOT be able to unlock all of the work benches for furniture (indoor stuff mostly) and decorations (outdoor stuff mostly). You NEED the components to unlock drill upgrades FIRST or else you lock yourself out of being able to progress any further in the game. Then you need them for the upgrades for your water tank ammo, max HP, crop yield, loot yield, drill damage, inventory size, etc. Decorations and furniture should be the LAST thing you worry about. They will be adding more components in future updates as you are able to access more regions of the map. The decorations and furniture are INTENDED to be gradually unlocked as you play through the entire game.
• Graphics glitch – does not affect gameplay though. In the Village when you get to the section around the lake, the devs intended to have the leaves on the trees blowing in the wind but they accidentally put that effect on the tree trunk instead of the leaves, resulting in one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen in a video game: trees with tentacles!! LOL
• If you remove a coop, ranch, or pigsty while animals live there AND the animals currently have gifts for you, then you put the building back and re-tame the animals by feeding them again so they don’t run away… they keep their “free gift” speech bubble even though they don’t actually have anything. They lose the item they wanted to give you but for some reason they still want to talk about it LOL.