Knowledge survives
when we share it.

FIELD GUIDE / 01

Your first day in the basin

1. Create your founder. Choose sex, hairstyle, hair color, eye color and skin color. Review the live character preview before beginning.
2. Learn the terrain. Use the left and right arrow keys to scroll across the 5,200-unit valley. The single entrance and visiting traders are at the left. Locate the cabin, stream, berries, woodland, stone and scrap.
3. Give a gathering order. Left click your survivor, then right click a resource. The survivor walks to it, harvests a carrying load and delivers it to reachable, compatible storage.
4. Secure food and water. Initial supplies are limited. Berries and water are early priorities. Watch stamina and make space for a bed before starting long projects.
5. Develop your founder. Open the advanced panel to assign the 30 starting attribute points. Keep some flexibility while learning the work you need most.
6. Repair and build. Gather wood, stone and scrap. Place a project, then assign a survivor to deliver materials and construct it. Build a research table to begin the technology path.

This field guide follows the current development systems. Controls, balance and availability can change. Follow the build’s first-use tutorials and check its version before applying these instructions.

FIELD GUIDE / 02

Select, order, inspect

Use management priorities for ongoing work. Direct orders help when a particular survivor must work a project or meet a trader.

FIELD GUIDE / 03

The valley has limits

Trees, stone and scrap piles are finite. Berry bushes remain after picking and renew on a harvest cycle. Herb plants and fruit trees provide their own resources. Twelve illustrated wildlife species roam, feed and idle: rabbit, hare, squirrel, raccoon, deer, rat, fox, boar, badger, wild turkey, hedgehog and ibex. Select a survivor and right click an animal to hunt. The worker pursues a moving target and must incapacitate it before harvesting. Species have different finite meat, bone and fur yields; turkeys and hedgehogs do not supply fur. Carcasses eventually decay, and wildlife replenishment is bounded rather than unlimited instant spawning.

Streams provide unlimited water while unfrozen. In winter a frozen stream supplies ice instead; plan processing and reserves before the cold arrives. Gathering continues until blocked by depletion, storage capacity, exhaustion or another constraint.

Carrying capacity governs each load in kilograms. Resource quantities and mass are different: a unit of water does not weigh the same as a unit of stone. Stronger survivors move more weight; heavy materials may require several trips. Supplies live in physical containers with accepted resource types and weight limits. Workers visit suitable storage rather than transferring stock remotely.

FIELD GUIDE / 04

People before production

Survivors start at level 1 with 30 unspent points. Each level adds 10. Useful actions earn experience; requirements rise exponentially.

Attributes also interact with tools, furniture, equipment, expeditions and upgrades. The advanced panel separates attribute spending, skill choices and equipment.

FIELD GUIDE / 05

Specialists are made over time

Development scope: 1,500 catalogue skills and prerequisite choices are implemented. Attribute and task modifiers have runtime consumers, but catalogue size does not establish balance. Specialist builds and long-term progression still need playtesting.

Every five levels grants a choice from three eligible skills. Unselected choices remain pending. Eligibility depends on attribute requirements and sometimes earlier skills. The content design includes 250 single-attribute skills and 1,250 cross-attribute skills spanning two through ten attributes.

The survivor Skills tab shows learned skills and pending choices only. The 1,500-entry content library remains behind progression rather than being exposed as an unrestricted in-game browsing menu. Review the three offered choices and their actual requirements before selecting.

FIELD GUIDE / 06

Outfit the survivor, support the job

Development scope: 992 equipment definitions and persistent crafted item instances support crafting, equipping and upgrades. Layered wearable silhouettes and tier fittings appear on articulated illustrated survivors. The equipment workshop pages through 990 craftable definitions, while the two starter item types remain represented by actual owned gear. Item illustrations and requirements are visible. Twenty technology tiers have distinct architectural motifs and station details; artwork and balance remain subject to refinement.

Nine body-diagram slots: Main hand, Off hand, Head, Shoulders, Back, Chest, Wrists, Hands and Feet. The founder begins in neutral level 1 worn clothing with a basic knife. Equipped gear appears on the survivor. Unused gear has a physical storage location, and an item keeps its identity and upgrade level when traded, stolen or recovered.

The catalogue includes more than 100 variants per slot. Items advance through 100 levels in 20 technology tiers. Material requirements change every five levels. Some upgrades need a forge or another station, which the assigned survivor must reach and use. Assign the wearer to upgrade an equipped item; the job requires that survivor to travel, haul materials and work at the required station.

Drag owned items onto compatible body slots to equip them, and inspect camp inventory for actual stored gear. Hover or keyboard-focus an item to review its scaled modifiers, slot, weight and level; a definition preview does not create an owned item.

Review costs, station requirements, research gates and success chance before committing materials. Relevant worker attributes affect upgrade success.

FIELD GUIDE / 07

A settlement in three directions

Development scope: shell expansions, room purposes, stairs and research-gated construction are playable. Survivors follow continuous routes along supported floors and real stairs. Locked doors can block interior routes. Arbitrary bridge and tunnel layouts remain a wider production goal.

Repair the cabin, extend left or right, add floors or dig basements. The Build panel lets you choose a room purpose and footprint before placement. Shells use a 100-unit room grid; furniture uses a 20-unit grid and must fit inside a completed, intact room. Unsupported floors, overlap and blocked stair clearances are rejected; legal placement is a gameplay rule, not merely a visual snap. Adjacent intact, completed rooms with the same purpose, shell level and room level merge once conflicting work ends. Furniture and containers keep their identities; the removed internal boundary no longer needs its door. Differing purposes or levels remain separate.

Room purposes are construction projects. Open Build, expand Existing buildings and rooms, select a general room, then choose an unlocked purpose, review the materials and work, and press Build room. A survivor must haul supplies and finish the work before the room gains its specialized purpose. Choosing an option alone does not change the room.

To create two rooms within a broad general shell, choose Partition room, set the left width and the new right room’s purpose, then review the quote and press Build partition. The left room remains general, the right room begins at room level 1, and both share the original shell’s level. The outside footprint does not change. An internal wall and door are built at the cut; an existing outer right-hand door stays with the right room.

Previews reject cuts through furniture or stair clearance, unsupported access, locked research and conflicting work. Existing furniture, storage and equipment keep their positions and identities; a newly specialized room still needs suitable equipment. Return through Build → Existing buildings and rooms to review deliveries, progress or cancellation. Clicking a completed building opens read-only Building stats / Room stats; construction controls live in Build. Cancelling returns delivered materials through the normal storage rules.

Rooms define appearance and efficiency bonuses, while equipment supplies the working function. A basic blacksmith room can improve smithing equipment by 10%; it still needs a forge, anvil or station to do anything.

Equipment can occupy any valid room. Placement shows total efficiency, including appropriate-room bonuses and unsuitable-room penalties. A transparent project is a blueprint. Inspect the preview before placing: room research, support, occupied space and access can make a location unavailable. Workers haul actual material loads before construction advances.

Installing a door creates a worker-built blueprint costing 5 wood and 2 scrap. Deliveries and construction must finish before the door protects the room. Lock or unlock installed doors deliberately: a locked interior route can also block friendly work. Buildings, rooms, stations and doors use assigned-worker upgrades.

Resizing a room is a timed renovation with material deliveries, progress and cancellation. Shrinking cannot strand furniture, residents or supported upper space. Larger rooms and buildings have size benefits. Above-ground and underground spaces respond differently to storms, radiation and temperature.

FIELD GUIDE / 08

Make room for tomorrow

Development scope: typed containers hold their own resource quantities and stored gear. Workers choose reachable compatible storage and carry loads between it and their jobs. Capacity, accepted types, room bonuses and item weight all matter.

The cabin starts with general storage accepting all item types. Boxes, crates, pallets and specialized storage have capacity and accepted-type limits. Higher levels hold more.

General storage favors a warehouse, while coal storage may receive its best bonus in a blacksmith shop. Full or incompatible storage blocks deliveries. Completed crafting output remains with its worker until it can be stored. Keep spare capacity before a harvest, trade or expedition return. Migration from earlier saves preserves excess stock as recoverable overflow instead of silently discarding it.

Resources have individual kilogram weights, so a large number of light items and a small number of heavy ones can fill the same container. Construction can require multiple deliveries. Assign Construction as a priority for automatic project supply and building.

FIELD GUIDE / 09

Workshops need people and tools

Click a workstation to inspect recipes. Queue one, several copies or a mix. Select a survivor and right click the station to work. Production continues while resources, research and equipment requirements are met.

Forges, anvils and bench vises have different roles; some produce items, others improve nearby work. Carpentry, medicine and filtration follow the same pattern: rooms support equipment, equipment supports workers.

A forge can turn 3 wood into 2 coal. Coal can replace wood more efficiently as fuel for metal and iron production, and traders can carry coal. A coal bin now supports an actual fuel supply chain, not just a capacity bonus.

Keep fuel and inputs nearby. Consider worker attributes and room efficiency when placing expensive equipment.

FIELD GUIDE / 10

Recover what the world forgot

Build a research table and select it to open the research web. Buildings, rooms, furniture, items and equipment follow branching, sometimes interconnected paths. Tabs organize main and specialized trees, including energy, water, agriculture, industry, medicine, civic, defense and transport. Locked colony room and station blueprints remain hidden until their research is completed.

Queue available nodes to research. Multiple projects proceed in order when prerequisites and work requirements are met. Research unlocks higher tiers and new kinds of equipment and rooms.

An unlock does not replace the materials, station or worker required to construct or upgrade something.

COLONY SYSTEMS / DEVELOPMENT 0.6

Power and water have operating conditions

Completed facilities share a Camp grid without individual pipe or wire placement. Inspect its panel for generation, demand, reserves and equipment warnings. Grid water is a flow rate; it is separate from the water inventory spent by recipes or consumed by survivors.

Furniture quality multiplies generation and grid buffer capacity by placement efficiency × [1 + 0.02 × (level − 1)]. At the same placement efficiency, level 100 has 2.98 times the level-1 rating. The appropriate room, its upgrades and size benefits can improve placement; an unsuitable room can penalize it. Listed power/water demands and fuel rates do not grow simply because the equipment is upgraded. Inspect the actual Camp grid rather than adding catalogue base values.

• Coal and biomass generators consume fuel from physical storage when supplying demand or charging reserves. Empty fuel stops output.
• Solar panels require daylight above ground; wind turbines work above ground, with output affected by storms. Rain cisterns collect during storms. Geothermal turbines require an underground location.
• Hand pumps and exercise bikes require a conscious survivor to operate them. They are not passive infinite supplies.
• Powered pumps need electricity. Cooled generators need water. Batteries and reservoirs buffer bounded reserves; they cannot cover a permanent deficit.
• Research, crafting, medical treatment, defense equipment and passive support respect outages. Workers can still haul construction materials during an outage.

Amenities do real work

Right-click training and security equipment with a survivor to maintain a work order that grants experience and spends stamina. Games, grooming and sanitation support recovery orders: these restore stamina and grant a small amount of experience. Health and loyalty recovery requires available food and water. Mandatory sleep and deprivation rules still take priority.

Completed, operational support furniture also contributes its actual domain effects. Command and radio support can help construction and expeditions; grooming affects trade, logistics supports carrying capacity, and gym equipment improves endurance. Grow-room support helps food/herb production, medical support improves treatment efficiency, and decontamination protects occupants of its own room. Sleep/recovery furniture and insulated organizers have local effects.

Support scales with furniture level and placement efficiency, requires an intact host room, and powered support stops during outages. Only the best duplicate of each furnishing kind contributes; camp-wide support is capped at 75%, with local work support using its own cap. Empty rooms and arbitrary piles of identical equipment do not provide unlimited bonuses.

Above-ground placement is required for solar arrays, wind farms, rain catchers and greenhouses. Geothermal plants, reactors, mushroom farms and vaults must be underground. Room blueprints reject incompatible floors before placement.

COLONY SYSTEMS / DEVELOPMENT 0.6

Fifty new facilities, one colony

Research unlocks the room and its two paired stations. An empty room does not generate power, pump water or craft supplies: build its equipment and meet its operating conditions. These are authored development definitions, not a claim of finished balance.

Utility numbers below are base ratings at level 1 and 100% placement efficiency. Actual generation and grid reserve capacities scale with furniture level and room placement; environmental availability, fuel and required inputs still apply. Physical item-storage capacity follows its separate container rules.

50 facilities

No facilities match these filters.

Transport: the elevator

Powered Transport research requires the Machine Shop and Battery Bank branches. Build an elevator for 12 steel, 4 copper and 2 electronics; it draws 4 kW. It creates an actual vertical route rather than teleporting survivors. An outage prevents new journeys; a passenger already between floors finishes emergency travel to a landing. Keep reachable stairs as a backup.

FIELD GUIDE / 11

Three priorities, one colony

The console lists each survivor’s primary, secondary and tertiary tasks. Available primary work wins; otherwise they search secondary, then tertiary work.

Separate essential supplies from projects that can wait. Keep construction available alongside gathering and research. Idle Survivors identifies people without useful work. Automatic workers skip unreachable or unsupplied projects, and reconsider priorities after delivering a gathering load. A manual order remains a direct assignment until it is blocked or changed.

Use manual orders for urgent intervention. Check storage, access, resources and station queues when assignments stall.

FIELD GUIDE / 12

Nobody is disposable

Food and water shortages slowly reduce health to 10%, then loyalty falls. At zero loyalty a survivor leaves and can appear again through expeditions or slave traders.

The founder never loses loyalty and remains at the health floor until supplied. Survivors cannot die. Combat can incapacitate them and leave them vulnerable to capture.

At zero stamina, survivors seek a reachable, unoccupied bed. If none is usable, they choose a safe indoor sleeping spot. Better beds improve both health and stamina recovery; a bed behind an inaccessible route is not an available bed. Exhausted survivors continue defending a camp fight at reduced movement speed.

Medical beds support treatment using supplies physically stored in the same room. Medicine is used first; bandages can cover the remaining treatment interval at lower potency. A partial dose gives proportional benefit. An assigned medic’s attributes and skills, the bed and the room affect recovery.

FIELD GUIDE / 13

Beyond the single entrance

Choose survivors and a real-time duration: 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours. Party attributes, skills and gear determine capability, loot and encounter outcomes.

Encounter difficulty varies from 80% to 120% of collective party power. Find resources, items, equipment or survivors; enemies and weather can cost supplies and health.

Open the report notification after return to review loot, each survivor’s experience, events, enemies, injuries and supplies gained or lost. Durations use real time, independent of simulation speed.

FIELD GUIDE / 14

One entrance does not mean safety

Development scope: raids use distinct interior and exterior lanes, door obstruction, sound detection and ranged attacks. Equipped weapons, accuracy, evasion and critical outcomes affect combat; visible tracers distinguish shots. Doors also develop distinct physical designs through all 20 technology tiers. These are simulation rules rather than a claim of realistic ballistics or finished combat balance.

Camp event difficulty scales from 80% to 120% of all camp survivors’ power, including expedition members. Sending strong defenders away has consequences.

The development content includes 200 survivor model definitions and 300 enemy archetypes. Those counts describe variety, not simultaneously active actors or finished combat balance.

Enemies can walk outside in front of ground-floor buildings to reach other targets. Raised interior floors distinguish indoor and exterior movement.

FIELD GUIDE / 15

A visitor at the gate

Select a conscious survivor and right click a visiting trader. The survivor must reach the trader before the barter panel opens. Ordinary and slave-trader visits have finite, distinct inventories. Negotiator attributes and trade skills affect buying and selling prices.

Use plus and minus controls to stage a basket from the trader’s stock and the camp’s stock. Mix resources, unused stored equipment, recruits and—at a slave trader—captive recovery in one offer. Equipped or reserved gear cannot be sold. Review subtotals and the balance before confirming; clear the basket to start again.

Scrap settles the difference. The quote checks stock, compatible resource and equipment storage, the negotiator’s presence and the remaining balance. A rejected offer leaves the camp and trader unchanged. Slave traders can offer former colony members from the missing-survivor pool; recovered people retain their identity. Traders cannot be attacked.

FIELD GUIDE / 16

The world keeps changing

Winter freezes the stream. Camp storms and radiation snapshot 80%–120% of collective camp power, including survivors away on expeditions. Long-term deterioration intensifies events, increasingly punishing survivors outdoors or in poorly protected spaces.

Protection follows where the survivor actually stands. Walking outside in front of a building does not count as being sheltered inside it. Intact walls, shell and room upgrades, insulation, healthy closed doors and underground rooms reduce exposure; damaged or destroyed protection is less effective. Advanced shelter reduces danger rather than granting unconditional immunity. Establish reliable food, water, shelter and research before harsher conditions arrive.

FIELD GUIDE / 17

Make the basin your own

Localization development scope: all 28 languages include authored interface, tutorial, operational and template translations, with bundled offline fonts for Arabic, Thai, CJK and broad Unicode text. Automated multilingual panel checks supplement coverage tests. Fluent review, terminology polish and final accessibility/layout review remain release requirements; newly introduced or unrecognized copy may still fall back to English.

The title menu includes New Game, Load Game and Settings after the studio splash and loading bar. Adjust resolution, frame limits, music, sound and language.

Localization scope: English, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Arabic, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Indonesian, Korean, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Ukrainian, French, German, Bulgarian, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Russian, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. Arabic needs right-to-left layout. Translations and layout require review before release.

Save before major changes. Development saves may evolve. Native and browser save recovery validate the primary and rotating backups before restoring a compatible save. The native app keeps at most one corrupt-primary evidence file. Recovery notices identify when a backup was used; do not rely on a backup as a substitute for your own long-term save archive.