Originally posted by brown29knight:

I wanted to share my experience, because I'm having a great time, and almost playing 2 different games.

My first playthrough was a normal (solo) play, where I died a lot but kept pushing on. Learning from my mistakes the hard way, and using gear to overcome lack of player skill and character skill levels. I got up to the end of current content, though I never found/fought Yagluth. 240ish game days for the whole play, with somewhere around 80 deaths, including a series to Moder that caused me to quit the world in frustration for a time

It was hard and frustrating, punishing play, where I would barely make progress, and lose most of it to corpse-runs.

Then I tried a ironman, (still solo) no-death, no-worldhopping, playthrough...

The second game is a worlds-different experience! Without ever dying, my character skills are much higher, and the difference is substantial. A great example is trolls. I would use 40+ fire arrows to bring down trolls in my first play, whereas in the second game, using hit-and-run tactics to use repeat sneak attacks, I would drop trolls with less than a dozen WOODEN arrows. Even after gearing up and going with fire arrows, I'm taking trolls down with 8-10 shots now, where first game, it took easily twice that. I'm at day 150, fully iron-geared, (and upgraded) and reading myself to face bonemass (mostly cooking new batches of the best foods, and getting medium healing mead.) Slower pace, but my lack of dying has made me into a powerhouse, making me harder to kill.

My advice for new players is this:

Take it slow. This game punishes you harshly for rushing in unprepared. A few extra minutes of preparation can save you hours of corpse-runs and re-grinding skills.

Make sure you have the best foods available as the health and stamina bonuses make a huge difference.

Train your skills: After getting decent leather armor and food, you'll be pretty much invincible to the first boss. You can summon and fight him as many times as you want. Use him to practice weapons/block and get those skills up.

Use and make things, even things you don't expect to use: Find seeds? make a garden and plant them. Getting the new vegi may unlock better foods. Have an option to make nails? Make a batch and see what new crafting options pop up. Not doing this hurt me when I got turnip seeds the first game, because I didn't care for the foods made by turnips, so I never planted them, and didn't realize that turnips were the last thing I needed to have to unlock the spice rack, which in turn unlocked sausages. (which I DID want)

Crafting tab items with stars by them upgrade basic crafting buildings, upgrading the cauldron unlocks new food recipes, while upgrading the forge or crafting bench lets you upgrade armor and weapons more.

Carts are affected by the weight in them. You may be better off making two or three cart trips than one overweight cart trip. If you find you have to sprint to climb a hill with a cart, you likely have too much in it.

Originally posted by ProstoNekit:

yes, the game is very cool. and good advice, I advise you to listen)))