What do you get if you cross the survival crafting gameplay of Rust with the friendly visuals of Animal Crossing? You’ll get Longvinter, an open-world survival sandbox title that provides players immense freedom as soon as they enter the map. However, this free will to explore and act may confuse some players on how to play the game, especially for beginners. If you're a new player, keep reading this Longvinter Beginner’s Guide to get your bearings right upon starting a new game.

Longvinter Beginner’s Guide

Before moving forward with this Longvinter Beginner’s Guide, it’s important to note that this game focuses more on the freeform survival crafting experience than its narrative, if it exists. In other words, players are generally free to choose how they want to progress. Additionally, Longvinter currently lacks tutorial quests to help new players get their bearings. Nonetheless, the game has snippets that’ll appear upon reaching a specific milestone. These notes contain valuable information that can help beginners properly use features such as building and crafting. With that, here’s what you should know as you take your first steps in Longvinter!

Core Features and Mechanics

Longvinter generally focuses on a few core features and mechanics. Nonetheless, these elements provide substantial options to players, allowing them to craft, build, and survive using various techniques and preferences. These core features and systems include the following:

Crafting

Longvinter players must typically use the Workbench to craft items. This crafting station can be bought at Sgt. Lakes Outpost or found in various containers throughout the game’s massive map. Once acquired, use the Workbench to craft various items, including furniture, seeds, weapons, and power sources. Note that most craftable items can only be unlocked after discovering their crafting recipes. However, you must use the Crafting Book, which is sold at Kyrre’s Equipment (the orange vending machine at Sgt. Lakes Outpost) for 60 Mk. Using this book displays all currently available crafting recipes. As for acquiring crafting recipes containing powerful items, you must find research documents generally hidden in locked vaults at underground bunkers. These locked areas require access cards dropped by NPC soldiers upon defeating them.

Energy & Cooking

Energy is your character’s health, which will subtract when sustaining injuries. Energy reduces over time, particularly when doing activities like chopping trees, catching fish, and walking. Significant energy loss also occurs when the player is subjected to environmental hazards like heat and cold. Recovering energy is possible by using consumables found throughout the map. Alternatively, stand near a heat source like a campfire to slowly restore energy. Losing all energy bolts results in death, which also drops all items in your inventory, including ammo and equipped items. Note that you won’t lose character data when you die in Longvinter. Instead, you’ll respawn at a dock or house you’ve recently accessed, albeit without any items. Players can also recover energy by cooking and eating food. Cooking is possible by using a campfire or furnace. Beginners can start using this mechanic as early as the beginning of the game after acquiring the fishing rod and catching fish with it.

Fishing

Catching fish in Longvinter is possible with the fishing rod, which players can purchase from vendors for 59 Mk. Also, fishing can only be done at fishing spots, which are circles of fish found near coastlines. Once found, equip the fishing rod and cast the line toward the fishing spot. Rapidly press the key shown on the screen to reel the fish in. If successful, the fish, along with its description, will appear on the screen. Currently, 19 types of fish can be caught in Longvinter, which are the following:

• Arctic Char
• Axolotl
• Black Grouper
• Catfish
• Cave Crab
• Cod
• Haddock
• Misty Grouper
• Perch
• Pike
• Rainbow Trout
• Redfish
• Salmon
• Salmon Shark
• Stingray
• Swordfish
• Trout
• Tuna
• Whitefish

Hunting

Aside from fishing, players can hunt for food by killing birds. Complete this action using various tools and weapons, including the Chainsaw, Hatchet, or various guns. For instance, cooking bird meat is ideal since it generally restores 30 energy upon consumption. At the time of writing, players can hunt the following wildlife in Longvinter:

• Wolves
• Lynxes
• Reindeers
• Bears
• Goats
• Birds
• Foxes

PVP

Longvinter server administrators can toggle PVP before creating the world seed or clicking on the Settings menu. With PVP enabled, players can build and fortify bases, craft and wield guns and turrets, and use their skills and wits to best other players in "friendly" combat.

In-Game Regulations

Despite the freedom it gives its players, Developer Uuvana Studios imposed strict rules to keep the balance and integrity of the game. These guidelines include the following:

• Players shouldn't insult, harass, threat, or use offensive language.
• No use of discrimination or hate speech based on elements including (but not limited to) race, religion, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
• Players shouldn’t use inappropriate game names or gamer tags
• No impersonation of individuals, businesses, or entities for malicious purposes.
• Players who play the game using unjust methods, such as frequent camping, will be investigated and given penalties.
• Players can’t use Longvinter for any service or commercial gain, especially to profit from it.

Additionally, Longvinter doesn’t allow the use of cheats and exploits that may ruin the gaming experience of other users on servers. Using exploits to create an imbalance in the game's PVP experience results in a ban lasting 1 to 14 days. However, using third-party apps to modify the game’s core features and systems grants the offender a permanent ban.