Asciilands Beginner Guide

Your first hour in Asciilands: what the tutorial teaches, the fastest route to stone tools, how to keep fed, and where to set your respawn point.

The 11 tutorial steps

A new character starts a guided tutorial (it shows as "Tutorial 1 / 11" at the top of the screen). The steps, in order, as listed in the game's current files:

1. A short tutorial. An intro card. You can skip one step with V or the whole tutorial with X.
2. Walking. Move with W, A, S, D and sprint with Shift + W.
3. Camera. Look around with the mouse.
4. Collect some supplies. Gather from a tree, a rock and a fiber plant: wood, stone and fiber.
5. Make a Plank. Open Crafting (C) and turn a log into a plank by hand.
6. Open your Pack. The inventory (I).
7. Open Map. Including the World view of the atlas.
8. Open Build. The building menu (B).
9. Open Settings. Controls, zoom and sound (O).
10. Choose a goal. Pin a Journal goal so its progress shows while you play.
11. Open Help. The Field guide (H), where you can also replay the tutorial.

Your tutorial progress is saved. If you skip it, replay it any time from Help (H).

Your first tools

You can gather wood, stone and fiber with bare hands. From there the route the game itself recommends is:

1. Gather a few logs, stone chunks and fiber.
2. Open Crafting (C) and make planks: 1× Wood Log gives 1× Plank by hand.
3. Open Build (B) and place a Workbench: it costs 4× Plank.
4. Craft sticks and rope by hand, walk up to the workbench and press F. Make a Stone Axe or Stone Pickaxe.
5. Open your Pack (I), select the tool and choose Equip.

Once you have a workbench, sawing is better than splitting by hand: at the workbench, 2× Wood Log becomes 4× Plank. Every recipe is on the crafting recipes page.

Tools and what they unlock

• An axe chops trees faster; a pickaxe breaks rock faster. A stone knife or copper sickle speeds up fiber.
• A stone pickaxe mines copper. Tin comes from panning at water edges (or tin ore in limestone karst).
• Iron ore and bog iron need a bronze pickaxe or better. Star Iron from meteorites needs steel.
• Tools wear out. A new stone axe lasts 80 uses and a stone pickaxe 100. Repair at an anvil or sharpen with a whetstone (smithing guide).

Health, stamina and hunger

Set a rest point early

Build a Campfire (4× Stone Chunk + 3× Wood Log) or a Camp (10× Wood Log + 2× Rope), stand next to it and press Z to sit. When "Rest point set" appears, that is where you respawn, even from another region. If the fire or camp is later destroyed you go back to where you first started. A roof and a fire both improve healing while you rest.

Carrying and storage

Your pack has a weight limit. Over it, you walk slower and cannot sprint. A Simple Bag raises the limit (made at a workbench from cloth and rope, or from leather and rope). Chests are public: anyone close enough can take what is inside, so keep supplies behind walls and a closed door, or build a Metal Chest, which only you can open.

Use the Journal

The Journal (J) lists goals by discipline. At the start the open ones are Gathering, Crafting, Building, Exploration, Companions and Trade. Other disciplines stay hidden as "Unknown discipline" until you discover them; they include smithing, magic, discoveries and farming. Pin a goal to keep its steps on screen.

Guest or Discord?

Guests can explore, craft, build in the wilderness and trade, and their progress saves on the server. But a guest character belongs to one browser. Clearing its data or closing a private window can lose it. Connect Discord to play the same character on other devices and to use friends, parties and towns. If that Discord account already has a character, you keep both saves.