Let me start with the conclusion: the scarcest resource in this game is not iron, coal, or diamonds. It's time, specifically, it's the number of steps you take between day and night every day.
I played this game for about two hundred hours and played it seven times. Every time someone asks me, how can I survive in the early stage? How to survive the first night? My answer is always the same: Don't stay out after dark. Sounds like crap, right? But what is really fatal is not the monsters at night, but the "effective action time" you waste at night📉
There are about 60 to 90 seconds during the day (real time), and you have to complete gathering, synthesis, construction, and hunting during this time. Converted into "action steps", it's about 120 to 150 steps. If you choose to fight hard at night, even if you can win, it will only change the variable from "survival" to "battle damage", and your wood and food will be burned in vain. The optimal strategy is always to visit the map, mine, and set up defenses during the day, and squat in the house at night to grill meat and bake pottery.
There is a small detail in the numerical values. The first cut efficiency of wooden tools is 0.5, stone tools are 1.0, iron tools are 1.5, and steel tools are 2.0. It seems to be just a magnification difference, but it affects your "stamina consumption/income" ratio. Using a wooden pickaxe to dig out ten rocks costs as much hunger points as using an iron pickaxe to dig out four. Therefore, the first priority goal in the early stage is not to build a big house, but to get out the stone pickaxes and stone axes. Many novices start building a two-story nest by rolling out wood like crazy, but they go astray. Your real capital accumulation is "how many resources are exchanged for each hunger point", not "how much wood you hoard"🌲
Let's talk about the numerical logic of hunting and food chains. Animals in the game have different amounts of meat, fat, and drops. The optimal hunting target in the early stage is deer, not rabbits. Rabbit meat will give you 2 points of satiety, venison will give you 6 points, and you will lose 2 points of fat, which can be used to make torches and oil. The running speed of the deer is about the same as that of the player. You can catch it without a bow by walking on the A card terrain. Chasing a deer consumes about 35 steps, but the profit is enough to last you until noon the next day. In contrast, chasing a rabbit, haha, that thing will turn at a right angle. You spend 50 steps chasing it, and the result is a small piece of meat, which is a total loss.
The peak benefits of the planting system began to be felt only on the third day. If you foolishly start clearing the ground on the first day, then you have to do the math. It takes about two days and nights for a hay seed to mature from planting, and you will consume about 3 hunger points by repeatedly watering it with a water bottle during this time. But if you concentrate your resources on an efficient meat cycle in the first three days, and then start planting potatoes on the fourth day, the saturated benefits of the crops will be very beautiful. With the right rhythm, you can almost completely stop eating raw food from the seventh day and completely get rid of fire anxiety🔥
If you ask me what the optimal strategy is, my answer is simple:
The first day: Stone ax and pickaxe, set up a matchbox near the water source that can block the wind from three sides, cook a pot of meat, and sleep.
The next day: Use the wood saved on the first day to make a bow, hunt two deer, skin them to make clothes, and then start looking for coal and iron.
Day Three: Start the furnace, make armor, and then this stage has already begun.
What really makes me think the numerical design of this game is excellent is that there will be no "absolute overflow" in all its systems. If you store too much meat, it will go bad. If you store too much wood, it will cause lightning strikes. Even raising cattle has a hidden value of "manure production rate." If not managed properly, the barn will turn into a swamp on rainy days. And this is precisely the most charming part of the game - it forces you to keep calculating, and there is an optimal solution every minute📐
Finally, a personal note: the benefits of taming horses and camels are actually seriously underestimated. Building a trap to catch a horse in the early stage can expand your daily exploration range by at least twice. On the surface, it only saves time, but in fact it doubles your heartbeat. In the later stage, this is a doubled resource gap. Remember this: this game is not about construction, it's about rhythm. If the rhythm is right, you will be a winner even if you stand still.
That's all.Anyone who has different opinions is welcome to comment in the comment area. I keep all the data, let's discuss it 😏