New Player, Feeling like I'm missing something.

[SlyeBLue]

Hi there. I'm relatively new to BTW, have been reading about it and mulling over it for some time before downloading and installing about a week ago. I love the style of the game and the direction FC took it, especially with the difficulty aspect. But there is one thing I feel either is a. Entirely too difficult or (and more likely) b. I just don't get; and that would be the early game food system.

I have been playing religiously for the week that i've had BTW installed, however, I can never seem to get past a starting shelter with maybe a furnace and once or twice a grindstone. The longest i've lasted was about 12-13 days, and I can never get anywhere because i'm constantly scrambling for food.

Day 1 I get my 14 wood -> stone axe -> stone pick. Then I have 2 choices, I can either gather food or build shelter. If I build a shelter, I have no food, and literally every single passive mob is slaughtered upon nightfall, yet there is never any meat dropped. If I gather food I have no shelter and quickly become one of the above mentioned "passive mobs".

So I usually grab a couple chunks of meat and then hastily scramble underground as night arrives.

Then day 2 comes and all the animals are gone, so I walk, and I find more, kills some, the rest get killed upon nightfall.

Slowly but surely all animals within a days walk are eventually gone, my mushroom supply is exhausted, and I am left without a reliable source of food, and usually starve.

I love this game, and I really want to advance up the tech tree and figure it all out, but I'm getting a little tired of playing the first 2 days on a loop.

Hope it wasn't *too* complain-y
-Slye

[FlowerChild]

Don't sprint and jump everywhere noob :)

First part is just don't sprint unless it's an emergency or you have an overabundance of food (which is not likely the case in the early game).

Second is build stairs, ramps (with dirt or other slabs), and ladders to avoid having to jump like a mad man. Choose your paths to go around small hills and mountains instead of over them.

Finding food is just half the equation. Conserving energy is the other half.

[Calo290]

Yeah, dirt slabs are your friend. You also might have to go on a couple days hunting trip if you're experiencing that much trouble with food. Usually by the time I've cleaned a days walk around me out I've got some kind of renewable crop going, pumpkins, melons, something.

[SlyeBLue]

Alright thanks for the tips guys, I shall keep diligently crafting. Any other tips/advice you have would be appreciated.

Oh also FC, you may want to know this. I respawned the other day near a village, but there were no villagers, no crops, no chest in the blacksmith, etc.. just the structures themselves.

Not sure if this is because you have yet to implement HC Villagers or if it's a bug. Throwin it out there.

[FlowerChild]

Not sure if this is because you have yet to implement HC Villagers or if it's a bug. Throwin it out there.

No, it's because the village is abandoned, which is by design :P

[jorgebonafe]

Take a look at the first few videos on this channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/JesarBTW/videos

I should give you a pretty good idea of how to play successfully in the early game and what mistakes to avoid.

[abculatter_2]

Another thing I've found helps a lot if you're having difficulty getting food, is to make a fishing rod. You can find the new recipe here: http://sargunster.com/btw/index.php?tit ... re_Fishing

And also remember to bait the rod by crafting it with rotten flesh, spider eyes, bat wings, or creeper oysters, and also there are certain times when you'll be much more likely to get a bite in a reasonable time frame.

[SterlingRed]

If you aren't already, make sure you're cooking everything. You get much more shanks (the hunger status bars) out of cooked food instead of raw.

In addition to the above advice on conserving energy, consider returning to the same place to hole up at night. Holing up in multiple places means you're just letting monsters get to new areas every night. If you return to the same place each night, they're not able to get to anything new. Thus it preserves any tasty critters in every area beyond the immediate area you hole up at. Make day trips to kill a few animals and come back to where you had holed up the previous night. If you do that, the food supply within half a day's walk out (half a day to return) should last you a rather long time.

[EpicAaron]

If you hate the idea of constantly going further and further for food, you could try playing a partially nomadic style. It involves traveling the world until you find a natural pumpkin patch. This patch can be used to feed chickens until a hoe is obtained (there are usually enough pumpkins in a single patch to last a long time). If you don't already know: 1 Egg + 3 Mushrooms = 2 Omelets!

[FlowerChild]

Oh noes, please don't recommend nomadic play. I thought I had finally convinced people that was a fairly bad idea :)

[EpicAaron]

Oh noes, please don't recommend nomadic play. I thought I had finally convinced people that was a fairly bad idea :)

Woops, I'm not recommending total Nomadic Play. That leads to lifeless worlds and death. XD

I try to explore for pumpkins as soon as possible, though. As a bonus, having the worldly knowledge and hidey holes set up before death makes death much easier to recover from.

EDIT: More original word choice.

[PatriotBob]

I'm not going to state that I know exactly what I'm doing, but it works quite well for me.

I tend to spend the first day getting enough wood for the first night and murder everything in my area. Make my home at night in the side of a hill to start collecting stone and cooking food.

The next few days while I'm collecting more wood and any remaining food. While I'm out and about I try to find a spot nearby to make a more permanent hobbit hole. (It's safer underground) I look for something near water, but not too close to the hats, and just outside of a new biome with lots of tasty mobs. The idea here is that you want to be near something like a plains biome, but far enough away that the chunks aren't loaded. This way it's a short walk to more food, but the bad things don't eat the tasty meats at night.

This should get you a buffer of a dozen days or so. Suppliment with as much mushrooms as possible, grow them in your cave/home as you dig it out. When you go out in the day kill what you need to have a safe buffer of food and look for pumpkins and surface caves with coal/iron. Don't go diving too deep. At night you want to mine out your base, get coal/iron, and dig down to the bottom of the first strata and try to break into caves.

Once you hit a cave, make a mountain of torches and light it up. Spelunk down to diamond and find all the coal/iron you can on the way. At some point you'll get enough iron for 2 bars. At this point I make a choice, if I have found pumpkins and there are near by chickens I make a iron hoe and start farming pumpkins for seeds, fetch chickens and solve the hunger on the most basic level. If not, oh well, get the 3rd iron bar and make a pickaxe.

TLDR;
Prioritize. Basic needs are food and shelter. You aren't going to be able to solve these problems completely at first, just lessen how drastically they effect you. Find the problem that you face the most, and make it less of a problem. Rinse, repeat, and try not to die. (You will fail.)

[ExpHP]

Building shelter? You've already done that!

The place where I spend my first night is, without exception, the place where I mined my first two cobble. In fact, nearly every single one of my bases in my current world began as the place where I mined for my first axe after a respawn. I keep hunting until the last drop of daylight, and then I just dunk into my little hole to mine when the mobs start showing up. This usually nets me 14-20 pieces of food and up to two pieces of armor on day one.

On that note, I always prioritize cows and sheep first. This is for several reasons. Both provide armor. Cows provide the best and most guilt-free food. And sheep take two hits. And most importantly, neither of them zip around like the road runner when you're trying to eat them. (pigs just ain't worth it, man)


Of course, when I refer to Beef as "guilt-free", I'm referring to food combinations. Beef is guilt-free because there's little you can do early game to make it better. If you plan on rescuing chickens, try to save Pork if possible (to mix with eggs). If there's an abandoned mineshaft underground, eat the foods that restore the most hunger first. Lesser items such as Fish, Chicken and Mutton have much more to gain from being mixed with any bread you find in chests down there. Anything you can do to stretch what you have helps!

[FlowerChild]

Can I just mention that it brings a smile to my face to read someone listing the various pros and cons of hunting particular animals?

That kind of shit just makes my day :)

[Gilberreke]

Important note that needs to be in every thread from now on until people get it: mushrooms don't need darkness to grow! They don't grow faster in the dark, nothing happens when you plant them in darkness that doesn't also happen in a lit up area. The only thing is that they pop off the ground when too close to a torch or sunlight. This means you can just plant mushrooms everywhere around your hidey hole and mining tunnel. Also remember there's a maximum of 5 mushrooms in close proximity. Once they hit 5, they stop growing, so keep them spread out.

I can't count the amount the amount of people that still dig dark, dangerous, mob-infested rooms for their mushrooms.

[Dorugami]

Obtain chickens asap. The sooner you get them, the easier it'll be. You can survive on poached eggs for the most part by constantly feeding about 10 or so chickens, it'll take time to expand them, but it pays off.

If you're gonna be working somewhere long term, better place down some slabs to avoid jumping or flatten the area entirely.

Kill everything. Literally everything you can reach. If you don't take the mobs now, the zombies will eventually. Prioritize cows and sheep to make early game armor.

Fishing is an option, but not recommended with the fishing rod for two reasons:
1. Hats.
2. Time.

If you must fish, fish from an elevated and sheltered position two or more blocks from the water and do it at dusk/dawn/full moon to minimize time spent mulling over your vulnerability.

Start a mushroom farm.

That's about most of what I did on my play-through, I hope it helps.

[EpicAaron]

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, and it is incredibly important. Remember to break vanilla eating habits!

To survive in the world of BTW, you only need more than 4 of your hunger bars full. At above 4 bars, you will be able to heal and walk at normal speed. Keep above that amount, but don't waste food by completely filling up until you have a reliable source set up.

[Ribky]

For help with food alone, our friendly neighborhood icynewyear has an excellent thread for helping out people in the exact situation you are in.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8007

As stated earlier, fishing can be an excellent food source at the beginning, however; the raised platform is a must, and I myself usually restrict my fishing activities to [gameplay spoiler below]

Spoiler

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full moons and rainstorms. That's when you'll get the most bang for your buck.

As for mushroom farming, I've run into the problem of harvesting away my mushroom farms too early for my own good too, but thanks to another thread about hardcore food somewhere on here I was able to trick my brain by "hiding" mushrooms under the bottom corner of the walls in my hallways, allowing mushrooms to grow and me to simply grab them and go en route to other activities. Set up like this (A = air, W = wall, F = floor, M = mushrom):

AAAAW
AAAAW
AAAAW
FFFFM

Simple trick, but it does help avoid the temptation of eating ALL the mushrooms if you are a fat, retched, glutton.

Other than that, hunt for pumpkins and melons early. Use seeds to lure chickens to a safe location ASAP. Once you have shears, do the same with cows and sheep. Fish when the right opportunities arise ;)

Good Luck.

[EtherealWrath]

Watch Icy's and FC's second LP- its a little spoilery in places, but they'll never lead you astray.

Spoiler

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[RobinHood3]

Hopefully this isn't hijacking the thread at all, but I finally have gotten to a point in my game where I have a small chicken coop and small hemp/pumpkin farm. My question is concerning food - aren't recipes like the mushroom omelet redundant and, in fact, pointless? The ability to eat a fried egg (total cost: one raw egg, 8 .."smelt units" -- total gain: 2 shanks) makes the mushroom omelet (total cost: one raw egg, 3 mushrooms, 8 ...... "furnace fuel bits" -- total gain: 2 shanks) a waste of mushrooms, does it not? I'm trying to maximize the food I'm getting since I'm at such an early stage of the game and can't make sense of the recipes.
Thanks!

[jkievlan]

Fishing is an option, but not recommended with the fishing rod for two reasons:
1. Hats.
2. Time.

Here's my strategy for fishing:

By the time I'm about a week into the game, I have three important things: (1) materials for a fishing rod, (2) plenty of dirt, and (3) enough wood to make some ladders. (If you don't have those things by a week of game time, you need to pay more attention to gathering them)

At this point I pick a spot inside my shelter and build a ladder to the roof. Once I'm there, I start building upwards with dirt, four blocks surrounding a hollow vertical tunnel with ladders inside. The idea is to have a perfectly protected tower you can climb from indoors without the slightest chance of getting attacked. I usually build it about 15-20 blocks high to be sure skellies can't get me from the top.

At the top, I build a 5x5 platform surrounding the tower so spider can't get up, and so I have a safe place to stand. That setup in itself is extremely useful because you can also build a ladder down to the ground, providing a way to enter and exit your base without getting surprised by mobs (you just climb to the top from inside, look around to make sure the coast is clear, and then climb down the outside of the tower).

Once you have your tower, build a bridge directly towards the nearest water from the top, until you're close enough to fish. Make sure you've torched up your platform and your bridge. Now, you have an absolutely safe spot to fish from, night or day. Hats and mobs can't reach you because you're too high and there are no paths for them to get to you. I'd post screen shots but I don't have a world where I'm near an early game base. Maybe I'll set one up soon and post pics here.

[ExpHP]

Hopefully this isn't hijacking the thread at all, but I finally have gotten to a point in my game where I have a small chicken coop and small hemp/pumpkin farm. My question is concerning food - aren't recipes like the mushroom omelet redundant and, in fact, pointless? The ability to eat a fried egg (total cost: one raw egg, 8 .."smelt units" -- total gain: 2 shanks) makes the mushroom omelet (total cost: one raw egg, 3 mushrooms, 8 ...... "furnace fuel bits" -- total gain: 2 shanks) a waste of mushrooms, does it not? I'm trying to maximize the food I'm getting since I'm at such an early stage of the game and can't make sense of the recipes.
Thanks!

Your numbers are off a bit.

Fried Egg = 1.5 shanks
3 Mushrooms = 0.5 shank
Fried Egg + 3 Mushrooms = 2 Mushroom omelettes = 4 shanks

Equals 2 extra shanks (or you can say 2.5, considering nobody in their right mind would eat the mushrooms raw).



EDIT: While we're on the topic, I'll point out that, contrary to popular belief, even grinding Wheat to make Bread is worthwhile. Grinding costs about 1 shank per item, so even just the resulting bread has a net gain of 1 shank. Mixed with a food that restores 2 shanks (fish, chicken, mutton), you have food worth a total of 6 shanks (for a net gain of 3).

[SlyeBLue]

I would like to thank you all for your great help and advice. Somewhere between being smart about movement and activity, to larger hunting trips, dirt slab usage, and a good bit of pure inspiration to keep at it, I found myself holed up underground with over 2 weeks worth of food, (20 steaks, 15 porkchops), a chicken to make eggs and ham out of those chops, a good amount of pumpkins and halfway to an iron hoe.

Your advice, and especially your encouragement made this possible. Thanks y'all.

Onward to victory!

[Elred]

Hello all,

First of all, thanks FlowerChild for that wonderful mod I discovered 2 days ago. I know Minecraft since the early days of alpha, bought the game when the nether came out, and never have I been so thrilled by the game as I am now, in term of raw difficulty. I died so many times, each time in a so ugly and stupid way, I feel like I'm playing Dwarf Fortress adventure mode, and I'm not saying this lightly. I love this kind of trial and error gameplay, and this mode did a great work at making specific biomes and zones very dangerous (and specifically rewarding) in their own ways.

I have the same problems SlyeBLue mentionned, mostly finding food and renew it. All my attempts at building a base were at the foot of a mountain, meaning I jump a bit, but I started using dirt slabs after reading this thread and it went much better. However, I'm clueless as to how survive until I have a hoe. Are pumpkins a mandatory part of any starting base? I only managed to get chickens once before, I was lucky and found a lone pumpkin on not far from my spawn (and then I died from a skeleton because it started to fucking rain and I needed wood and couldn't wait for the rain to stop).

I had a decent base in my last attempt, some 40 cobblestones and stuff, sufficient to renew wood stocks as needed (I had a jungle nearby from which I extracted a few trees), and 7 iron ores I found while exploring the many small caves around. But I still died from hunger eventually because I had to run farthest and farthest from my base to get food. I understand having chicken would have saved me this time though, but no pumpkins as far as I could see. Was I just unlucky? Did I do something wrong?

Also, information I didn't find. I understand we can get hemp seeds by using the hoe on high grass (Edit: Regular grass, thank you for correcting). Can we still get wheat seeds by using it on the (regular) grass blocks? Edit: okay, so only in villages. This makes it very, very interesting :)

Anyway, this thread (and the whole forum) is full of great advice. I shall keep on reading it until I get something good going. Next attempt will be with a friend I once played minecraft with (converted him to Dwarf Fortress at some point), it will certainly mean new challenges over the food and such, but we may be quick enough to have all we need by the first night.

[Mason11987]

Also, information I didn't find. I understand we can get hemp seeds by using the hoe on high grass. Can we still get wheat seeds by using it on the (regular) grass blocks?

Wheat comes ONLY from populated villages, which essentially put them out of reach until you go through the nether.

Also, hemp only comes from sowing regular grass, I believe, tall grass doesn't give you anything by breaking it.