This guide will describe how to achieve a group of achievements in addition to the 50 days or survival. However, the guide does assume the player knows the game mechanics, and not just the basic ones.

For example:
• Does the player know they can hide inside from predators, even an ice hut?
• Does the player know they can starve a little, letting the heart bar recede, but not die? Knowing that your health will recover when you’ve eaten?
• Does the player know that crafting rabbit gloves takes hours and hours of work?
• Etc.

If not, then I would suggest a general overview of the game and game mechanics.

For all players, I suggest the online maps the community has created.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=530202531

The first step would be to plan what additional achievements you would like to accomplish, if any. The first three are the obvious:
• The first of many (Survive 1 day in survival mode)
• You made it! (Survive 10 days in survival mode)
• Ready for when the SHTF! (Survive 50 days in survival mode)

These next may be accomplished just in your regular exploration, but I tend to sleep inside, and since the fishing hut is considered outside, I planned a fishing trip with supplies for 3 days and slept when I needed to, and fished while I was awake:
• Night Walker (Survive 1 full night outside)
• Beneath the Starry Sky (Survive 3 full nights outside)
• It was THIS big! (Catch a fish weighing over 5 kg/11 lbs)

The Don’t Starve achievement is possible even later in the game when you are relying only on your rabbit snares and fishing for food. I tend to eat whatever during the initial exploration, then settle down to meat/fish only – keeping the canned food for emergencies. The Living off the Land achievement seems glitched in my game, because I solely consume rabbit, wolf, and fish for the last 25 days … but perhaps I had a tea or coffee in there somewhere. In any case, it should be accomplishable as well.
• Don’t Starve (Keep calorie store above zero for 10 days)
• Living Off the Land (Survive 25 consecutive full days only consuming calories harvested from wild plants and animals (single game)).

I achieved the Silent Hunter award by accident. I searched every possible spawn location for a gun … twice. There just wasn’t one. By then, I was nearly 30 days into the game and doing fine.
• Silent Hunter (Survive the first 50 days without shooting a firearm)

You may be able to accomplish more, depending on your desires; check the achievement lists for this.

To be fair, I have started Mystery Lake several times, but the rabbit farming on Jackrabbit Island really takes the cake. Therefore, I suggest a base on Jackrabbit Island using the house for sleeping, storage, and safety from the weather, with 2 snares outside of each door … as a long term goal. This guide is written based on using that location as your starting base.

Avoid encounters, as much as possible
A clear goal for days 1 – 50 are to avoid wolf/bear encounters. Especially if you are working towards the Silent Hunter achievement. You cannot avoid them all. Be prepared with bandages, antiseptic, and painkillers. If you achieve a full avert on a wolf (with a knife or a hatchet), keep an eye out for the wolf corpse so you can harvest it. With the silent hunter quest, you will not be killing deer directly, so leading them into wolves, and then hand killing the wolves, may be your best bet.

Equipment durability and tinder/matches
Another key item to keep an eye on is your equipment durability and your fire starting resources.
Every chance I had, I broke down branches with my hands, I harvested rabbits with my hands – not tools. This avoids wear and tear on tools. I did this even though I had two whetstones, three knives and three hatchets. At day 50 I have my original knife and hatchet, but no whetstones.

Keeping an eye on how much tinder and matches you have is also important. Running out of tinder is surprisingly easy. To avoid this, be conservative, don’t start two fires at once (to be more productive when cooking a lot of food). Try not to use the potbelly stove in the fishing hut (as it consumes the same amount of fuel, but only has one burner). Haul your catches back to a fire, or start one outside the hut. Also, try to use the last 2 hours of any given fire to melt additional snow for water.

Side note: all of this worry about tinder no longer a concern when you have levelled up your firestarting capabilities. I apologize for not knowing the levels off the top of my head. However, you can made tinder from two sticks. So it is not all doom and gloom.

Tinder and matches are consumed on a fire start attempt. If you are new to the game, you will likely start with a 40% chance to start a fire and experience a lot of failures, literally burning through your stores of tinder and/or matches. This is why I suggested the above efficiencies with the fires. Finally, if you can hold off on cooking until you have more things to cook. I tend to wait for 6 rabbits; or 1 wolf/deer and 4 rabbits; or 8 fish and a few rabbits. Etc.

I like to keep my clothing above 70% health, so a random wolf encounter won’t destroy them. But this may not be advisable if you are running short on sewing kits.

Storage spots
Finally, create some storage spots, and keep them up to date. Cedar/Fir and sticks in the two closest fishing huts. Cooked/raw food on the porch. Wait to cook the food. It will gain 50% "health" upon cooking. Regular food (peanut butter, crackers, sodas, etc.) are stored inside. (Raw/cooked food decays much slower outside, whereas regular food decays slowest inside). Backup clothes at Jackrabbit island. Etc.

Boredom
You will be tempted to re-research the map for things you are starting to run low on. If you have already covered the entire map, I'd suggest staying put.

Day 120, you are low on scrap metal, and you are BORED. All you do is check your SNARES and some occasional fishing. So you set out to re-research the entire island. This is where the game gets you. The bears and wolves have taken over, and you will run into them. And it may be the end of your game. Avoid this by taking meticulous notes at the beginning. Scrap all dual head lamps and toasters with the repairable hacksaw. So there is no need later to search for missing parts.

When you do leave the map for better grounds, leave yourself a few bullets and weapons to bring with you. Don't wait until the last moment.

Days 1 through 10 (at least), will entail you exploring Coastal Highway.

You want to explore the Quonset Gas Station and surrounding houses and cars first, before the wolves spawn. You may even get too overburdened to carry everything. That’s fine. Store it locally for now. You are specifically looking to fill out the KNIFE, HATCHET, HACKSAW, and PRYBAR items; as well as the normal items, like matches, food, and wearable clothing.

You can explore the rest of the map when time and materials allow. I did my exploring as I got ahead of things (like food), and kept exploring through day 20. You don’t want to leave for the other side of the map with just a couple of food items. Store enough up for the trip, and ensure you have left some behind in case you return with less than you expected.

Scout ahead
As you explore, keep an eye on the two BEAR locations on this map. Bears range quite a ways from the noted location on the map. I have seen the bear on Misanthrope’s island as far as the waterfront cottages. The other bear I have seen near the cabin and as far north as the campgrounds. If possible, get eyes on the bear or wolves from a high location before heading in, so you can plan a route to avoid them.

Stay out late, but in a house/hut/trailer
Don’t stress about staying an extra day somewhere so you can avoid travelling in the dark or bad weather conditions; use the time to repair some clothing items, or play cards, if you have to. I eat the canned and dry goods for food during these first 10 days.

Food
After I get the rabbit snares and fishing going, I store these goods for emergency use only. And even then, I eat the oldest ones first.

Selective gathering
The following list contains some notes on items that you do not need to keep everyone that you find.
Prybar - you only need one, two at the most
This holds true for the Can Opener, Cooking Pot, Recycled cans
Lighting Flashlight - I don't even bother keeping
Storm Lantern - more of a personal choice, but I never use this, and instead use torches
Bedrolls - your starting one is fine
Moutaineering rope - you don't need it for the achievements in this guide
Charcoal - to begin with, I keep 8 or so on hand, and use them at will, later on, I just keep one on hand

Clothes will be overly abundant … but not necessarily meet your needs. Leaving extra clothing behind to lesson your carrying capacity is a great choice. I found cloth to be abundant, and there is no need to convert the unused clothing to cloth.

Obviously for everything else, keep as many as you find and bring them back to the house on Jackrabbit island.

Finish up your exploring during these days.

You should have 4 actives snares in place (two outside of each door), and spares. This and fishing will be your go to food sources. And it is nice to come back to some rabbits after a hard day of exploring.

Also, use these days to finalize your wearables. I start the rabbit gloves sometime in these 10 days.

Store cooked/raw meat outside
Cooked/Raw food degrades much, much slower when stored in outside containers. On Jackrabbit island, are two dead bodies. One on the backside that is hard to get to. But the one on the downslope towards the ice huts is easy to get to, and I use this second body for additional storage of cooked/raw food.

Also, the plastic container on the island on the way to the fishing hut is a great place to store cooked food. I can count many times that I’ve ran out of food, but not wanted to brave a blind march back to the house (and possibly encounter a wolf).

Store additional wood and items
Establish a storage of additional branches, cedar planks, fir planks, etc. in the house atop Jackrabbit hill, in the ice hut between Jackrabbit Hill and the Fishing camp (i.e. the southern/western one). These are locations where I occassionally get stuck out and do not want to hike back to Jackrabbit island.

I also start bringing cured gut and hides to the crafting table and house in the fishing village and storing most of them there.

At this point, you should be solely eating meat and fish. This will help with the Living off the Land achievement, but also ensure you have back up/emergency food on hand.

You should plan fishing days with sufficient food so you won’t need to cook while you are there, and then fish until you almost cannot carry any more. If you plan correctly, you could spend at least a night out, if not all three, for those two achievements. And if lucky, you could also accomplish the BIG fish goal. When you return, you should have some rabbits to go alone with all that fish, and be able to enjoy a good long cooking session. If you are too full of meat, put some fish in the plastic storage bin and come back for it later.

At some point near day 20+, you will over reach, or get caught out. Perhaps the game with throw several things at you at once, such as: two wolves at a time, during a snow storm. Or you try to harvest a fresh deer without a fire, but the wolf in the background catches you.

In these cases, you will need to keep your avenues for safety open and available. Walk backwards towards an ice hut or regular house, if you can. And then enter and wait it out. Avoid a re-encounter until you have fully healed.

During this span of days, you should have at least rabbit gloves and deer pants, if not the wolf coat. You should also have a good stock of snares.

This is where I normally get bored and want to explore another region. If not before this.

However, if your goal is to make 50 days, then hunker down on Jackrabbit hill and the fishing hole … and wait it out.

Running back and forth making food can be boring. Make a wolf skin coat in your spare time or the deer skin pants. Keep fishing to get the fishing goal. Create a great store of cooked food for your upcoming day 50+ trip. Anything but roaming into an unknown and unpredictable situation.

I found the combination of unpredictable weather and wolf spawns to be enough to keep me working hard – at least it kept me busy trying hard to avoid eating those canned goods.

And that’s it. I ended at 50 days with enough food to start my trip to jog through the ravine to Mystery Lake. Over packer that I am, I’ll likely be crawling. 😊

Hope this guide helps. Feel free to leave comments, corrections, or suggestions.

At Day 52, I slogged through the Ravine and got to Mystery Lake. There's a guide and several videos online to help you while in the Ravine. But except for one detour, you just follow the tracks.
It takes quite a while, and if you are too heavily loaded, you won't finish it in a day, and should be prepared for sleep. I did manage it in a day, and avoided wildlife, but I suspect mileage will vary here.

Once through to Mystery Lake, you will arrive near the Dam. Honestly, just explore the Dam for a day or two ... I actually only explored the same level, and ended up with way more goods than I needed. To start with, drop all of your gear near the front door, then bring back loads of things to sort through and store them in that room (or the desk or the locker). Your goal here should be finding sewing kits, weapons, whet stones, etc.

About Day 55 I moved onto the Camp house and spent a couple of days there. Then moved to the Trapper's house and set up a couple of snares outside the back of the house.

I used this time to explore the rest of the map. In all honesty, I had expored the Camp HQ on the way to the Trapper's homestead. But I came back to visit the various Ice Huts and Cabins on the SE section of the map.

Given the new weapons, the new whet stones, etc. I was able to keep at least 3 axes, 2 knives, and 1 hacksaw completely available (above 75% health). The crowbar too.

During this time, and with some comments from Jaspo below, I noticed that a wolf would stop hunting me once I stepped onto the porch at the Camp HQ. At this point, I began using the floor of the porch as storage for all the cooked fish I have. I'm still testing it, but it appears to be outside storage.

Side note: you cannot place the bedroll on top of other things. But you can place things on top of the bedroll, and still sleep in it. I found this helpful in the ice huts and I may use it at the Camp HQ porch, if I need to solve for Cabin Fever.

Ok. These are the worst days. The boredom will drive you to want to wander between the Camp House and the Trapper's house. DON'T ... unless you have to. The wolves respawn, the bears are more active, etc.

I like to not waste bullets on a charging wolf. But if it is charging ... I shoot it. I use bait pretty successfully if I have time to avoid shooting it. Line yourself up so that you are backing towards the direction you want to go, then drop the bait and keep backing up.

Around day 80, without an aurora ... the animals sensed me, and came from all directions. I managed to lure a deer into a wolf, and then shoot the wolf near the deer ... then I built a fire near them, while I harvested and cooked the meat.

Near day 92+ I had the same issue ... tons of wolves, and I found hiding in the camp house and ice huts was just not going to cut it. So ... I shot another wolf near the door to an ice hut, and did my skinning/cooking thing.

Honestly, beyond avoiding camp fever ... my biggest issue was BOREDOM. Boredom breeds sloppy gameplay, and I wanted, so many times, to just roam the map. But that is wrong. Or I wanted to leave this map, and explore another. But that is wrong as well.

I am into 100+ days, and about 50 days on Mystery Lake. Between fishing and rabbit harvesting at the Trapper's place, I bet I can make 150 ... before I truly need to explore because of deteriorating weapons.