Overview
In this guide I am going to try and give a full detailed outline of how to do survival. I will be breaking down every aspect from starting out for the first time, to raiding your first warehouse, and I will give tips and tricks for the best playing experience!Please note that I am currently working on this guide, so not everything is going to be included!
Creating World Backups
If you want to prevent from having a completely corrupted world, or you did something, or something happened while playing. Chances are you would like to go backwards in time. With world backing up you will be able to that, and it’s really simple!
Start off by creating a new folder (you can create it wherever you want, I would recommend in your “Documents” folder or on your desktop for easy access) and rename it to something you will remember such as “World Backups” for example.
In order to backup your world, you will first need a world (obviously) You will then need to find the location of the world data base file. In order to do that, you want to press “Windows+R” and type in “%appdata%” then press enter. From there you want to navigate to the folder that is named “Axolot Games” you want to click through the individual folders till you come to a folder that contains all of the main folders for Scrap Mechanic. In that folder you want to navigate to the folder named “save” You are going to go into it and look for the folder named “Survival” once you enter that folder you should see the a file with the title of the world you have created.
For easier navigating I would recommend creating a shortcut to the “Save” folder in the exact same place where you created your “World Backup” folder, or inside of the world backup folder.
To create a backup, right click on the world file in the “Save” folder. Click copy, go over to your “World Backup” folder, right click, and finally click paste. Make sure you rename the file to say for example “[world name here] Backup 1” every time you create a backup or copy of the world, make sure to name it according to what number backup it is, or what date you created it, to make it a lot easier to find the exact file you want when reinstating an old save.
To load up a backup, all you have to do is copy the backup file you made and paste it into the “Survival” “Save” folder where all the survival worlds are located.
Starting For the First Time
If you have played the game for the first time and you have not seen YouTube videos on it, this section will be the most helpful as I will go through the steps to having the best and fastest starting experience. I do want to make a disclaimer that there are other sources and guides on how to efficiently start a new world, but I am going to give you a very simple run-down on how I would optimally do so.
When you load up the world there is a lot to take in. You start off in front of a crashed space ship of sorts that is on fire. If you try to enter, the whole inside is engulfed with flames. The first thing you must do, is go the exact opposite direction from the way you were facing when you spawn in. When you walk in that direction you should see a clear path that leads to a pond. On the left side of the pond you should see what looks like a garden or farm. Take this moment to look at the board that shows you how to farm.
If you did not understand what the board was trying to get you to do, continue reading on. First, you want to go up to the shack on the left. You want to grab the seeds by holding down right click. Once you have the seeds, walk over to the spot where there are soil spots. With the seeds selected in your inventory left click on a soil spot, and it should plant down a seed, do that on only 3 more plots. What you then want to do is is find a plastic bucket. There should be in plain sight sitting on top of a rock, and one within the farming area. Grab both of them, and with one of them selected in your inventory click on the water. The icon for the bucket should have a raised handle indicating that it is filled with water. Repeat the same with the second bucket. Walk over to where you planted down the seeds and left click with a filled bucket in hand looking at the crop. The soil should turn from a light brown to a dark brown almost black color indicating that it is watered, repeat that for the rest of the seeds you planted. On average, the wait time for a crop to grow is about 15 – 20 real life minutes. Make sure to get a few of each crop for a decent food source.
It is important to plant no more than 8 or 9 in the same area as that will cause the Farmbots to detect it as “Unauthorized farming” and at 00:00 the next night, you will get raided by Farmbots that if you don’t fight off, will instantly break the crops you just planted.
The next stage is to collect a bunch of materials and loot everything around the starting area. The first thing to do is fill your buckets with water, we are then going to put out all the fires in the crashed ship. Once you have done that, walk to the back right corner where there is a shelf. Grab the object that looks like a lamp and grab the switch that sits above it, along with anything else that looks useful. You are then going to walk towards the back of the ship, and into the room on the left. Take the “Sun Shakes” that are sitting above the bath tub on a shelf, and grab anything else that you can pick up that is in the back rooms. You are then going to leave the ship and walk through the destroyed area on the left. Take out your hammer and destroy the loot crates that sit on the damaged path. Once you have done that and gone to the end, continue and you should see a ruined building. Enter the ruined building through going up the stairs. When you are on the inside keep breaking those loot chests, but notice that there are things that look like sticks of scrap. Those are Haybot spines, and if you refine them by looking at them and pressing “E” you will receive 10 “Scrap Metal” Go through the building navigating all the way to the top, and go back down to the bottom. Across from that building there should be a parking lot and another ruined building. In the parking lot there should spawn 3-4 Haybots. In the next part I will tell you how to effectively fight them, but once they are fought, continue by looting that building. You may have to use your lift to access some areas by using your lift. To use your lift, place it down on the ground, stand on top of it, and press the up arrow to make it move up, and down arrow to go down.
If you get hit by a bot, it hurts. specifically haybots are a big danger to you and it’s not as easy as running from them. They can keep up to you pretty good and you are required to kill them. In order to defend yourself and most importantly kill them without taking damage you first of all need to get out your hammer. With the hammer in hand, you want to walk up to a hay bot. Once it has gotten your attention, you want to make sure you have a clear path behind you. You want to walk backwards looking directly at the haybot and hold left click to have your hammer constantly swing. When walking backwards the haybot should be able to out-run you, but you will be able to hit them. As you hit them, the haybots will try to stop and swing at you with their pitchforks, but because you are constantly moving backwards, they are not able to hit you. It always takes 5 hammer hits on them in order to finally kill them. Once you kill them, they explode into many parts, and they will always drop you their spines. Do the same thing, and hold “E” to refine them and get their scrap metal.
Finding the Mechanics Station
Most people will not know what do do in the area of the crashed ship other than continue to farm and figure out how to get the ship up and running with power. This is not needed at all, and finding a place called the “Mechanics Station” will put you into the right direction for further advancing your survival ability and will lead you to make an effective first car that isn’t a pile of junk (literally) that can actually get you places and be used as a tool in the future.
Finding the station to some people is pretty hard depending on the world generation, however, if you follow the next steps, no matter what your world looks like you should be able to find the station. The first thing you want to do is check the time. It is important to have daylight so you can see where you are going, I would recommend doing this around 15 – 18 when it is almost night, and if you want a buffer, you can always start earlier, but that time will come in handy later. For this part I would recommend putting your “draw distance” in the graphics settings to high or very high.
Once you are set on food and you have a stack or more of every seed you can obtain and you have gotten all of the loot, you want to go down to the parking lot where it should be connected to a road. Once you reach that road you want to go to the right. The left should be an instant dead end. When you go right you want to keep following the road in the straight-most direction. If there are roads that branch off to the left or right, ignore them and keep going straight following the path. If the road suddenly ends, and it is possible to happen, keep walking in the general directing where the road stopped.
While walking you are going to want too look for a building that looks like an over-sized gas station. Usually you don’t see the main building first, and in most cases what you would want to look for is a giant glowing wrench that you could be able to see over treetops. If you are having a hard time finding the station, once it is night time you may have a better time seeing the glowing of the wrench, and having a very high draw distance will also help you see it from a far distance. The station will always be connected to a road that will in the future lead out to other important locations.
Once you have found and arrived to the station, you will notice that there is a main garage and there is 3 tube looking building on the right. You want to start off by going to the building labeled with a number 3 on it. In order to get in, take your hammer out and hit the door in. Be careful as the door will spring back and can hit you causing you to be knocked out! That aside, in the back there should be a bunk bed, and I would recommend sleeping in the bottom bed as that will make that your spawn point, so in case you do die, you won’t be sen’t back to the crashed ship where you would have to walk back to your stuff. The next thing to do, is enter the room labeled as number 2. Make sure you are ready to fight with your hammer as there is a haybot waiting inside. You want to kill the haybot and in the back of the room there should be a battery looking thing. You want to pick up the battery buy holding right click and you want to then leave the building going into the main garage. once you walk into the main garage there should be what looks like a port on the right where you can fit the battery into. You hold the battery in your and and left click on the port, and it should bring power to the mechanics station. Once you have done that, behind you on the left side of the wall there should be a starting craft bot. You will need this to create basic resources but don’t use it to create vehicle parts just yet, as that craft bot is the exact same as the one that you would have used in the crashed ship to make a junk vehicle. Above the spot where you put the battery there should be 2 ramps that go up to an area, walk up the ramp the you should be able to press “E” on the desk looking thing. This is very important as this is where you will be able to create a Craft Bot that includes all of the advanced parts and blocks, a Refinery Bot to refine unrefined objects, such as Haybot spines, a Cook Bot to cook healing capable food, and a Dress Bot to get your mechanic out of their burnt and ragged clothing.
