Your First Week

Your first week at the base covers the first burial, Herbert’s first quest and the opening of the village: the first part of the walkthrough. A week is six days and 45 minutes of real time. This page is about the habits that matter from day one: where tech points come from, what to buy first, when bodies arrive, and how to keep your energy and insanity in check.

What you start with

Where	What
On you, from the introduction	Rusty Pickaxe, Rusty Axe, 100 copper
Chest in the graveyard	Rusty Shovel, Rusty Hammer, 3 Wooden Signs
Chest in the yard	2 Boards, 1 Beer, 100 Water
Chests in the house	8 Bread, 5 Berries

Keep the axe and pickaxe on your hotbar. Mastery counts every tool on the hotbar, and putting a gravestone on a grave needs Building mastery 1. Move the shovel there too: you need it to dig graves, and planting in a garden bed needs green mastery, which the shovel gives.

Tech points and the first technologies

Tech points are the coloured orbs that pop out of trees, bushes, stones and junk when you break them, and out of workbenches when you finish building them. Red and green come quickly this way. Blue is rarer: early on it comes from the autopsy table, where picking a pocket always gives one. Tech points left on the ground never disappear, and going to sleep collects every one of them.

Your first sleep at home gives you The Concept of Wood and its Sawhorse for free. Good first purchases, cheapest first:

1. Bronze Works, 5 red: the Wooden Anvil and Bronze Nails from Bronze Scrap.
2. Gardening, 5 green: Garden Beds, which you need for Herm’s wheat.
3. Chopping, 8 red, and The Concept of Stone, 15 red: wood wedges, then Pieces of stone.
4. Woodworking I, 10 red: Wooden Planks, which half the demo’s recipes ask for.

Wood wedges and Pieces of stone need Building mastery 3, one more than your rusty axe and pickaxe give. Buy Building mastery +1, the first node of the Building branch on the talent tree. The first levels of Lumberjack (cut down 5 trees) and Rock Breaker (break 3 rocks) are free, and taking both gives that talent point.

After that, the long road is Pottery, Brick Making and the Bronze technologies toward Bronze Details. Those need Smithing mastery 2, and the Rusty Hammer gives only 1, so the Smithing branch needs its first node as well: the free first levels of Junk Fighter (break 5 barrels or trash piles) and Bronze Crafter (make Bronze Nails 3 times) give its talent point. See the table in the walkthrough for the whole chain.

The first burial opens your talents

Pick at least one pocket at the autopsy table before you bury your first body. The first level of Pickpocket and the first level of Last Respects (one burial) are both free, and together they open the inspiration page and give your first Anatomy talent point.

Spend it on Anatomy mastery +1, the first node of the Anatomy branch. At Anatomy 0 you cannot remove any organ at all. Then buy Skin and Bones (5 green, 2 blue; the blue comes from picking pockets), and you can take out skin cleanly. Bones need Anatomy 2 and skulls Anatomy 3 (and Skull and Teeth) to come out every time; below that most attempts go wrong. See Corpses.

When bodies arrive

After Certificate, Please, the donkey comes at 13:12 on Gluttony, Lust and Pride days. It leaves the body outside the morgue, and it only comes if the morgue has room. At the start the morgue holds one unhandled body.

So the routine is: before 13:12 on those days, bury, burn or dispose of the last body. Each Corpse Pallet I adds room for one more (4 Boards and 4 Bronze Nails; you already have the technology from your first autopsy). A pallet does not make the donkey bring more than one body per visit, but it means a visit is not wasted when you are busy elsewhere.

For each body:

1. Pick the pockets. Take out the Fat and Blood (a red skull each) and leave the Flesh (a white skull). Keep them: Fat later becomes Melted Fat, and Blood goes into the Magic bell.
2. Bury it and finish the grave the same day. An open pit or an unfilled grave costs 3 graveyard quality until you do.
3. Put the best gravestone and fence you have on it. Grave Expectations wants graveyard quality 10 and a demo grave scores 3 at most, so every grave counts.

Money and happiness

You start with 100 copper, which is 1 silver. The first steady income is Januarius in the village tavern, once the village opens: he pays 1 silver for each Burial Certificate, and the first five you sell him each week also give 1 happiness each. The weekly count starts over on Pride day.

That happiness does not help yet. You start with 9 happiness, and once the village opens it cannot go above 10. Only sermons spend it, one point per parishioner, so in the first week the certificates are worth their silver and little more.

Spend your first money at Herm’s store: Wheat seed for his own quest, and Bronze Scrap. Three scrap smelt into two bronze ingots, and one scrap makes six bronze nails.

Energy, sleep and insanity

• Spend a little energy before bed. The bed does not let you sleep at full energy. You wake as soon as energy is full, not in the morning, and sleeping at home saves the game.
• Do not stay up for two days. After 15 minutes of real time awake you get Lack of sleep, and while you have it every point of energy you spend adds insanity.
• Autopsies and graves raise insanity: 0.3 per swing at the table, 0.2 per swing digging or filling. Every point of insanity lowers your energy cap by one, and at 80 grim work stops altogether.
• An ordinary night’s sleep does not lower insanity. Beer does (−12 a bottle). There is one in your yard chest, and Januarius sells more.

See Energy, Sleep and Insanity for everything else that raises or lowers them.

The week at a glance

Day	What matters in the first week
Gluttony	The donkey comes at 13:12
Sloth	Nothing fixed
Lust	The donkey comes at 13:12
Envy	A thunderstorm all day; nothing you can use yet
Pride	The donkey comes at 13:12. Traders’ weekly happiness limits reset at 00:14
Wrath	Sermon day, once you have a church

A day starts at midnight, not when you wake up, and sleeping runs the world 50 times faster without skipping any of these. See Time and the Week.