Your first hour

Make your traveller

You spread 330 points across six stats, each from 10 to 100, and spend 12 skill points on your first skills. A weapon skill costs 6 points and a defense 3, so one weapon and two defenses is a sound start. A skill you do not train still works, at half strength. Stats, skills and levels shows what each stat feeds.

You start with a plain sword, bow and wand. Wear the one your skill is for: open your pack with I and double-click it.

Find your feet in Bellwether

You arrive on Bellwether green. W and S walk you forward and back along the way your body faces, and A and D turn you. Drag the mouse to look around. ? opens the list of keys in the game, and Controls has the same list.

The Watch Bell stands on the green. Binding to it for 5 gold makes it the place you wake when you fall, once you have the gold. Until then you wake on the green anyway.

Learn to fight

Leave the road and you will meet silt skippers, the weakest thing that bites, in packs of three. Click one and press F. You run to it and keep attacking until it falls. Hold X to guard against a blow you cannot step away from, and watch your stamina. Combat explains the rolls.

Double-click what a creature leaves to take it. Sit (G) or lie down (B) between fights to mend faster.

Mind the tide

The sea rises and falls every 30 minutes. It covers the low shore and the mouths of Saltmere's two caves, Saltcut Galleries and Brine Hollow, and a traveller whose head goes under drowns. The Tidecut Gate below the village can hold the water back. Each landmark and cave you find for the first time gives experience. See The tide.

Spend what you earn

Open the Character panel with K and spend experience on the skills and stats you use. Early ranks are cheap. Your weapon skill makes your blows hit in full more often, and the defenses do the same against a creature's blows on you.

Break Brinebound

Brinebound, the coral guardian at Brine Hollow, is level 3 with 120 health. It shows each blow before it lands: step away from the sweep, get clear of the slam, and strike while it recovers. Everyone who lands a blow shares the victory, so fight it beside other travellers if you can. It rises again 1.5 minutes after it is broken.

Leave for Bellcross

Helping to break Brinebound opens the Bellcross Gate for you. Stepping through leaves Saltmere for good, so finish what you want to do there first.

In Bellcross, bind at the bell, read the task board north of it, and pick one of the four gates. The country outside the town and the first island of each chain are the next steps up. Islands lists what lives where.