Pick whatever looks you would like for your character. The only choice here that will affect game play is which ship you select. Each ship is a different spawn location on starter island. If you are playing with friends you may want to coordinate with them on which to pick. Otherwise don’t sweat this choice, you should be leaving starter island for the mainland after not too long anyways.

-Hitting “E” will bring up your inventory, you can drag item into the numbered slots, click any of those numbers to have your character select that item.
-To eat, have a food item selected then right click, hold and drag to the icon of the food.
-Hit “M” to bring up the map, you will be on a small island that is connected to the mainland.
-Double clicking "W" and holding will sprint, but this will reduce your stamina.
-Click “F” to pickup any items you are standing over.
-If it's already night and you can’t see well you can craft a torch by dragging some twigs into the crafting menu and clicking the first recipe. Read more about how to get twigs and use the crafting menu below.
-If you die, you will turn into a ghost, fly around looking for purple glowing souls, if you collect them you will respawn faster. You respawn wherever your ghost is when the timer reaches zero.

-Go up to a tree and click to attack it, keep attacking it until the tree’s health is reduced to zero.
-Pick up all the twigs and apples that drop. One or two logs will usually drop from a tree, attack those next until they die - they will break into firewood that can be picked up. If the first tree you killed does not drop any logs just keep trying.
-Your crafting menu is on the right side of your screen after you hit “E”. There are two boxes next to each other that you can drag items into to use the items as ingredients in a recipe.
-A bonfire is 2 twigs and 6 firewood. Once you craft it your character will be carrying the bonfire kit, right click hold and drag down to the bottom icon of the hud. This will allow you to place the bonfire in the game world.
-With matches or a torch selected by your character approach the placed bonfire. You will see a flame option appear on the top of the hud, right click and drag to the flame icon to light the fire.
-When you approach the bonfire you will see a symbol of gears appear on the right of the hud, select that to open the bonfire’s menu. You can put additional fuel in the right box such as twigs, firewood, coal or charcoal.
-In the left box you can place uncooked meats and other foods, they will cook and appear in the top.

You will see four colored icons on the bottom left of your screen. From left to right these meters are:

-The red heart is your health. Taking damage will reduce it. Having a full stomach (no hunger) will replenish health over time - you can also use bandages to instantly restore health.
-The blue brain is your soul...or something. It does not seem to be fully implemented yet but when you die to become a ghost and then eventually respawn it will be set to zero. Pick up soul’s to replenish it to full.
-The yellow fist is your stamina. Attacking, sprinting and hitting resources reduces your stamina but it regenerates naturally over time. Eventually you will be able to construct a well that collects water. You can drink water to instantly restore some stamina. Carrying around a stack of water is a good idea as it will allow you to sprint/fight/collect resources with less downtime.
-Finally there is the green stomach, this is your hunger. Its pretty self explanatory - it will be reduced overtime constantly. Keep this meter full by eating food so you are always replenishing missing health and stamina.

Hit “E” and look to the top left to see your stats, increasing different masteries will increase your stats.

Strength: Increasing your strength will increase the damage of your attacks.
Constitution: Increasing your constitution will increase your health.
Dexterity: Increasing your dexterity will increase your stamina.
Intelligence: At this time magic has yet to be implemented, so this stat does not do anything yet.

As you perform actions you will increase your mastery over different skills, you can see your mastery levels by hitting “E” and clicking on the “All Masteries” button. When you increase a mastery you also increase your stats. You can see which masteries increase which stats on the "All masteries" screen.

The weapon skills: Hammer, Sword, Dagger and Bow are all increase by using the relevant weapon.

Carpentry: Increasing this skills allows you to build more and more buildings and eventually walls. To work and use some of the other crafting skills you must first use carpentry to build the required specialized buildings (or get a friend to build them for you).

Tinkering: This skill allows you to craft all the early game weapons as well as a few other random items that are used in other recipes.

Farming: High levels of this skill allow you to craft better fields which grow planted seeds faster.

Mining: Anyone can collect copper and iron sculptures but your mining has to be high enough to turn these sculptures into ores that can then be smelted at a furnace into ingots.

Blacksmith: At the smithy the blacksmith skill is used to craft weapons.

Tailoring: At the tailor shop the tailoring skill is used to craft armor.

In the early gaming constructing a bonfire or work bench is as simple as crafting them in the crafting menu and then placing them. The more advanced buildings of the game require a little more work. Lets use the survival tent as an example as it is most players first building and useful to get as early as possible.

First you will need to construct and place a work bench from the crafting menu.

The Survival Tent requires the carpenter mastery at level 5, so use your work bench to craft fences and any other items that require carpentry to increase your carpentry level until its 5. You will also need to collect 6 firewood and 2 small leather, kill rats, wolves and foxes for small leather.

Place the firewood and small leather in the work bench and click the recipe for "Survival Tent Building Kit", once your character finishes crafting it he will be carrying the kit on this shoulder and you can place it where you would like in the world. This will lay down the foundation, to complete the foundation you will need to (to be completed)

Small leather: Killing rats, wolves and foxes.
Large leather: Killing bears, deer and whales.
Braided straps: Attacking vines.
Tin Plates: Attacking corpses of sailors.
Water: Constructing a well.
Charcoal: Cook firewood and other wood based items in a fire.
Iron Sculptures: Mined in the volcanic and wetland biomes.
Dirt: Craft a shovel at a workbench and dig.
Copper Sculptures: Attacking copper veins.
Coal Piece: Attacking coal veins.
Stone Carving: Attacking rocks.

Check out this good guide for a complete list of items: http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=451355420

I will update this guide with more information over time and as content is added to the game, so check back.

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