The Survivalists Cover

8 Tips for starting The Survivalists

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Published: June 15, 2024 10:44 AM

Team 17 has managed to make a nice niche for itself. Grab a cutesy style, a healthy dash of humor, and some surprisingly complex systems and you have the reason they are so popular. Like their previous titles, The Survivalists can occasionally be a bit overwhelming, but it’s so addicting, that just becomes part of its charm.

 

If you want to skip a little bit of that preamble but still get a good time out of it, you have come to the right place. These are eight tips to get better at The Survivalists

Survivalists start

Learn the Difference Between Survivalists Build Modes

As you wash up ashore, there’s probably a few things you will likely do at the start of The Survivalists. You’ll check the raft, walk through bushes, and finally, you will open your crafting menus. With a quick press of the trigger you will find yourself caught up in a few recipes.

Fundamentally, marking the difference between the central build types is crucial for your development in the early game of The Survivalists. One is based on singular crafting and puts things into your inventory. To build things like the rope, you must have the right items in hand and then click the crafting button to build it.

The other build mode is far more long term. You place down what you want to build, like a bed or table, and the base blueprint will appear in front of you. What makes this so different is you don’t need the ingredients to start your build. Crucially, this means you can mock up a blueprint for your entire house, dungeon, whatever structure you want to build. Put all your walls down and now, you have something to work towards in the long term. 

Survivalists build mode

Build Every Recipe You Can 

Recipes in The Survivalists are a rather funny thing. You don’t earn them in a traditional sense or unlock them through what you find; you build your way to them. If you can’t figure something out yet, build everything you possibly can.

The majority of your recipes are locked away until you build much simpler things. Hay will lead you to a bow eventually, and stones will lead you to a shovel. As you can see in the picture below, I had to build nails before being given the chance to build a multipurpose tool. Even if it doesn't seem worth it, build everything.

Survivalist full build list

Fully Explore Your Island To Get The Best Loot

In The Survivalists, the island you start in will likely be filled with lots of good loot. This can range from towns of enemies to chests that can be broken up with a few good whacks. You can see your map with a button press, and this will give you a small rundown of your surrounding area. Make sure to fully explore everywhere you can possibly get to, even if it requires sprinting by and going back to your base. Make sure that, by the time you get back, you can see everywhere on the island with your map. This will give you a general overview of resources which are desperately needed for your growth.

It will also give you the location of bandits and tombs to explore later on. It’s a very good way of getting your hands on valuable resources quicker. Maybe as you explore, you find a rock with iron that will come in handy later on or a large set of trees valuable for cutting down. 

Survivalists Map

Learn Good Inventory Management

With the amount of systems in place, the number of items can occasionally be overwhelming. Keeping them secure and in the right chest will go a long way as you start to expand. Having easy to access food close to death is important, and stacking items of the same type will stop you from filling your base with chests.

Chests have a finite amount of space, and your inventory is rather small; having just enough ingredients for certain recipes will fill chests quite quickly. Basic things like wood, rope, and stone are useful in their base and polished form, but rare items and weapons also need a space that won’t clog up your inventory.

Having separate places for equipment, food, raw items, and sellable ones helps and will make that constant inventory management just a little nicer. 

Survivalists Inventory

Play The Survivalists With Friends

Perhaps the most obvious tip here, the game is designed to be played with groups of four friends, including yourself. The early game goes much quicker as part of a group, and the game is more fun because of it.

The more daunting parts, like enemies and the nighttime, go from a difficult slog to glee quite quickly as you win or get slaughtered together. You will get better faster and more enjoyably and learning to properly manage resources comes in handy late game

Survivalists Multiplayer

Find the Mysterious Stranger 

The mysterious stranger is… a mysterious stranger, funnily enough. He floats into your map from a hot-air balloon, and after giving him the requisite items, he opens up a shop to buy and sell things from. He comes and goes, basically at random and offers some equally random gear. As well as this, he offers keys needed to search the labyrinth's late game

As you kill enemies and open chests, you start to accumulate gold, and this gold can be used to buy basic items, treasure maps, or keys for later in the game. He’s a rather important ally and a good way of getting hard-to-find items.

When he appears, you will receive a short notification alerting you to his presence, and you have to find him and his hot-air balloon somewhere around the island. If you see the notification, grab all your sellable gear and go running for him. It’ll be worth it. 

Mysterious Stranger

Get as Many Monkeys as Possible and Train Them

I bet this is a tip you’ve never read elsewhere. Monkeys are by far the most valuable asset in The Survivalists. You can recruit them by saving them from cages or by giving them monkey food, which can be built on the fire.

Once you recruit them, bring up the monkey control menu, click on them, and they will start following you. You can then train them. To do so, click the right prompt after clicking looking at the monkey menu, and your character will give them a banana. This sets up a basic function where they will repeat the next action you do.

If you build something with the workbench or furnace, they will build it for you when you place the right items in. You also need to give them a multipurpose tool, which can be crafted quite easily. I’d recommend making one monkey work on furnace and workbench building and one work on structure building. This means your blueprints will build themselves once you put in the right ingredients.

Then, recruit as many monkeys as possible, build a chest full of weapons, build a training dummy, and teach them how to fight. Do the same steps as before except hit the dummy after they are learning, and they will become killing machines.

Hand them the right tools and they will follow you and fight any hostiles. This will make you practically invincible as they will swarm any enemy you find. You can also bring them on rafts, through shallow oceans and anywhere else you want to go. 

Survivalists Monkeys

Brave the Caves

Well, they’re more so temples than they are caves, but the title doesn’t work with a temple. The underground shafts, often found near enemy towns, can be a little daunting as they are filled with enemies, but that’s nothing an army of monkeys can’t solve.

Walk in and let them do all the work with bats, axes, and spears in hand, tiny opposable thumbs at the ready. These are always worth exploring as they are often loaded with chests and the occasional monkey to add to your army. If you are looking for iron, gold, and more loot early on, nothing is better than searching these. 

Survivalists Caves


 

And those are all the eight tips we have for you. Hopefully, by the end of this, you will be kitted out, have a nice home, and an army of ravenous monkeys. What more could you ask for? 

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| Former Staff Writer

James Bentley is a freelance writer / editor / musician who has had a deep love of games ever since his childhood. This love had led him to chase a career… More about James

More Info About This Game
Learn More About The Survivalists
Game Page The Survivalists
Developer
Team17
Publisher
Team17
Release Date
October 9, 2020 (Calendar)
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