Darkwood Beginner Tips
Darkwood is a survival horror game that has finally released on Steam. In Darkwood, the main goal is survival. This means scavenging supplies, fighting enemies (or not fighting), and weighing the risk/reward of everything you do. Due to the random nature of Darkwood, it’s hard to create a guide for the game, but I’m gonna throw some tips at you. Here are some general Darkwood beginner tips and tricks.
Learn The Controls
Darkwood features both Keyboard + Mouse as well as controller support. Regardless of whether you think K + M or controller is better, your survival rate will significantly increase by knowing the controls which you can see under controls on the menu screen. Knowing which button does what will seriously help you when you are panicking and running away from enemies. Instead of dying, you may actually survive!
Combat vs Running
When you start Darkwood, your character is weak. Fighting enemies is not the best idea. Instead, strategically approach situations where enemies are present. Listen for the barks of dogs and growls of other creatures to determine which directions to avoid. Avoid enemies whenever possible. When in doubt, RUN! If you must engage an enemy, use items such as stones to keep your distance (stones are weak though).
Once you have collected enough resources to start building weapons then you can begin to engage in close combat. Again, choose your engagements wisely as you are rather squishy early game without armor of any kind.
Day Time Scavenging
Darkwood follows a simple pattern of scavenge during the day and hunker down during the night. Here are some tips to help you:
Sight
Line of sight is very important in Darkwood. Your character has limited vision which means you don’t see everything around you. Make sure you look before you start walking as there are traps littered throughout the world that will damage you.
The same strategy can be applied to enemies. When you see an enemy, they have sight range. Getting close to an enemy will aggro them. If you don’t want to fight, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE.
Corpses
While out scavenging, listen for crows as they circle near corpses. Corpses often feature very valuable resources which can help you immensely.
In the early game, consider sticking close to your hideout as you do not want to get lost and have night fall. Spend your time looking for resources that will increase survivability and make your character stronger.
Night Survival
Night is falling
Like any good survival game, things in Darkwood ramp up at night. At night, new enemies appear and they are much stronger than those you face in the day. As Darkwood points out, the best approach at night is to hunker down inside a Hideout.
Keep the generator topped up.
Hideouts are littered throughout Darkwood’s various Biomes and usual feature generators and electricity. Generators require Gasoline to run and provide light. Light can be useful, but also draws enemies to your location, so choose wisely when running the generator.
Another aspect of Hideouts that make them safer at night, is the ability to barricade windows and doors. Doing so increases the defenses of the Hideout, and makes surviving nights easier.
Surviving nights is a major focal point of Darkwood, as it unlocks reputation with the Trader which can be used to purchase good items and resource everyday. You want to survive!
Death and Consequences
As Darkwood is a game based largely on randomness and not knowing what you are doing, the likelihood of dying is rather high. This is to be expected and serves as a good way to learn the game. However, what happens when you die is determined by which difficulty you play on. Currently, there are three difficulties you can choose from: Normal, Hard, and Nightmare.
Normal: The best choice for a first playthrough. When you die in normal mode, you drop some of your inventory. This can be collected by returning to the place of death.
Hard: The Player starts with four lives (lives can be added via Embryos). If all lives are used, the game ends. Like Normal mode, the player drops some of their inventory on death.
Nightmare: Player only has one life. This is the “permadeath” option in Darkwood.
As this set of Darkwood tips is targeted towards the first time player, I highly recommend playing on Normal while you learn how the game works.
Darkwood is a deep and interesting survival game. The tips above are simply meant to get you started on the right foot. As you venture deeper into the game, you will soon learn the various nuances of the game. Get out there and start surviving!
