Kindling teaches itself through Maren’s notes, so nothing here is required reading. But if you would rather not learn the hard way, start here.
A campfire holds up to 600 seconds of fuel. What you put in matters:
A night is roughly 200 seconds. Two coal sees you through comfortably; a pile of logs and inattention does not.
A Stone Hearth holds 900 seconds and a Copper Brazier 1200, so the fire you can afford to leave burning while you are away is a fire you have upgraded. One bundle of Kindling is worth 30 seconds as fuel, but that is not what it is for — see below.
Blocks refuse tools below their tier outright — no chipping away at rock with your fists.
Ages unlock as you prove you can work the material: crafting a wooden pickaxe opens the
Stone Age; smelting your first ingot at a kiln opens the Copper Age;
working bronze at a smelter opens the Bronze Age, the last one.
Locked ages appear as ??? at the workbench, so you always know there is more.
Build a kiln from 4 mud brick and 2 rock. Hold copper ore, keep coal in your pack, and right-click it: ore plus coal becomes an ingot, and your first ingot opens the Copper Age.
The kiln gets you copper; the smelter gets you everything after. Build it in the Copper Age (mud brick, rock, and two copper ingots), then work tin ore from the desert and coal into tin ingots, and tin + copper + coal into bronze. Your first bronze ingot unlocks the Bronze Age: the tier-4 pickaxe, the heaviest sword and axe, and the best armor in the game.
The campfire is where every run starts, but it is not where it ends. The Stone Hearth (six rock and a Warchief's iron) widens the safe circle to 14 blocks, holds 900 seconds of fuel, and cooks for half the cost. The Copper Brazier pushes that to 18 blocks and 1200 seconds. Both recipes want Warchief iron — the seventh nights are how you earn a better fire.
Storms roll in on their own schedule. Under rain the light drops, the fog closes in, and any fire standing under open sky loses fuel five times faster than it burns. A fire with a roof over it — any solid block overhead — is safe. Wood Wall and Wood Roof pieces are cheap Wood Age recipes for exactly this.
This is the one fire rule worth memorising. A fire you have just built lights from plain wood — logs, sticks, coal, whatever you have. But a fire that has already gone out, whether the rain killed it or it simply ran dry while you were off mining, is cold ash: feeding it logs only stocks it for later. Only Kindling (two sticks and a wool, bound tight) makes cold ash catch again. Carry a bundle before you go anywhere for long.
Hunger drains as you move and work, faster when you are travelling. Raw meat is a nibble; the same meat cooked over your campfire is a meal. To cook, hold raw meat and right-click a lit fire — it costs five seconds of fuel.
At zero hunger you starve, and armor does not protect you from it.
Attack with left click; there is a swing cooldown, so spamming does nothing. Your damage comes from what you hold — a stone sword is +4, a copper sword +7.
Wear armor by right-clicking it: leather cuts damage 25%, copper 45%.
From day three, a trader is drawn to a burning fire during daylight and leaves at dusk. He buys wool and mutton, sells coal, mud brick and hide — and he knew Maren. He will not say more about her until you have survived a seventh night.
At dusk on day six, Maren’s warning arrives. On the seventh night the drums come, and with them the Goblin Warchief: 120 health, 12 damage a hit, with a pack behind him. He returns every seventh night, stronger each week.
Lakes run up to four blocks deep. Underwater you sink slowly; hold jump to swim up. When your head goes under, a breath bar appears — about eight seconds of air, then five damage a second. To get out, surface first, then hold jump to mount the bank.