I find myself in a barren landscape, with a strange fellow staring at me. I guess I’ll… build a house?
Deforestation, Pillaging, and Explosives!
Your First Day
Target Items
- wood
- wooden sword
- slime
- torches
- rope
- workbench
- wood walls
- wood doors
Extra Items
- mushrooms
- sand
- clay
- stone (20)
- furnace
- cobweb (20)
Environment Control 101
We begin with your everyday deforestation. Hack down all the trees in your immediate vicinity. The first thing you should make is a workbench, then a wooden sword. The wooden sword isn’t very strong, but it’s a swinging type weapon, and the copper sword you spawn with is a stab type weapon, which makes the slimes harder to deal with.
Don’t forget about depopulation! Kill all the slimes you see for slime to make torches. You can’t really avoid this part. It’s almost not even worth mentioning. But I mentioned it anyway. The Guide should help you out, but he usually doesn’t seem very committed.
You Need a House Before You Can Throw a House Party
Build yourself a house (it’s really for the Guide; he moves in without even asking - or helping build!).
A workable house.
Safer for the natives.
Maybe not!
That’s better.
That works, too.
Wait. How Do I Build a House?
Ideally, you would build your first house around your spawn point. So figure out where you spawn by reloading, or just guessing. You don’t want to put any blocks on the spawn spaces, as they will get destroyed on your next respawn.
There are special rules for making houses habitable, but rules are boring. You can google that crap. The main point is to prevent bad guys from ripping you to shreds. Walls prevent bad guys from spawning in that space. Villagers also prevent bad guys from spawning. You want your houses to have walls and you want villagers to move in. To avoid being turned into shreds. Those tombstones are a little too snide for my taste. Mocking me in my moment of despair.
Rectangles are fastest, you can make it pretty later. Or make it pretty now and get ripped to shreds in the dark when night falls. Choose your own adventure.
Build a floor 20-30 blocks across, then up as high as you can (6 blocks works but it’s a little cramped - with some creative acrobatics you can get it to 9 high), across the length of your floor and down 3. Break out the first 3 side wall blocks you put down.
Put the doors down first (make those at the workbench). This prevents accidental wall placement outside the house, which just looks unprofessional.
Add your walls (make those at the workbench, too). Make this less awful by toggling block auto-target (left ctrl) and hold down the mouse button. Walls will get placed automatically up to the edges of the inside of your (read: the Guide’s) house.
Add a comfort item (such as a chair). This will make that hobo Guide move in and start taking up space, getting in front of your bed and storage chests so you can’t click on them without socializing. Ugh.
Good Job. Now Run!
If you still have time before night falls after all that hacking and building, run as far as you can in one direction, breaking everything in sight. The locals love that. They also want you to take any of their stuff you find in the chests left conspicuously under the overhangs and in the surface caverns. And take the chests; you shouldn’t just leave that trash lying around. You should put it in your house. You’re performing a public service here.
Let me take care of that for you…
Bonus
Grab any cobwebs you find. 20 cobwebs and some wood will net (almost a pun; ‘web you’ didn’t really work here) you a wooden yoyo. All the cool kids have yoyos.
Throwing lines like a boss.
Your First Night
Target Items
- ore! (iron/lead)
- blinkroot/blinkroot seeds
- heart crystals
- explosives
Status Check and Next Steps
Did you build your house and make a slightly better weapon? I hope you built your house and made a slightly better weapon. If not, spend the next 9 minutes dying and respawning. While you’re waiting for morning in a perpetual state of death and rebirth, read through the ‘Your First Day’ section to get a head start on the morning. If you rolled hardcore, that’s on you. Create a new character and try again.
Not dead? Great! Time to make space for activities. Expand your house if you still have materials. It can be tricky with those evil eyes flying around, but you can get it done. Actually, just wait until morning. Those eyes are jerks.
Dig!
Next, go mining!
If you built your first house on the ground, dig straight down through the bottom floor. Put a couple of wooden platforms down to prevent accidentally falling to your death while being domestic later on. This also keeps the house ‘habitable’, so the hobo Guide doesn’t wander through leaving the doors open at night.
This vertical tunnel is the start of your hellevator. Hellevators are 2-wide vertical tunnels straight down that span the entire height of the map, with a rope dropped all the way down. This lets you go down to the underworld in a reasonable amount of time. Use your auto-target mode so you simply have to hold the button down. Don’t diverge too much, we’re really just passing time here. This is not the most efficient way to gather the materials you seek, because your pickaxe is crap, and your health is crap, and you don’t have armor (or your armor is crap). Keep an eye out for heart crystals nearby.
Shiny Hearts Anonymous.
If you see a natural cave and are feeling brave, go for it. You want to keep as much money as you can, though, so don’t get yourself killed. After you’ve earned enough cashey money the merchant will show up. He commandeers himself one of your houses too, but at least he sells you useful stuff (like ropes and arrows!) and buys your junk.
By the way, the copper pickaxe is terrible, so you’ll probably get bored (I get bored). You can save your game and start it up again to respawn at your house (neat!). Drop any rope you might have down the hole you just dug. Good progress for the first day! Congratulations all around! Have a nice chat with the Guide. Or build a wall around him so he has nowhere to go. Eventually he may come to appreciate you, his overlord and captor.
Bonus
Bombs make the hellevator building process faster (and more fun!) so as soon as you find an explosive item, hold it in your hand! Then throw it! Getting caught in the blast is optional. Throw the bomb inside your house for more experience building houses. With or without the optional activities above, holding an explosive causes the demolitionist to show up and sell you more tools of mayhem!
The Next Day and Beyond!
Congratulations! You’re still reading! That means you either like my work or you’re some kind of masochist. It’s OK to be both.
If you thirst for more, look no further! Because I haven’t published it yet!
Thanks for reading!