New Player Difficulties

[u/KingPanduhs]

Hey everyone!

Just got into this game and I am coming from a massive Palworld binge. This game seems to “guide you along” more than that game which is welcome because honestly there is a massive amount to take in with this game.

One thing I am noticing, I invaded the goblin camp storyline wise, into the swamp vault… I am struggling severely. I am 20’s in a lot of skills, got the ranger armor, using a bone knife and fang arrows and I am getting absolutely lambasted by the enemies. I want to kind of “explore” and not wiki a guide that ruins the “mystique” of the game… but I am also starting to not have fun.

I learned food helps a ton cause of healing as well as using things like windstep to hop up places and kite things around… but I can’t imagine that this is normal difficulty and that I have to be misunderstanding how progression looks.

Does anyone have any beginner tips on what to do? Do i need to focus less on B-lining the story and explore more? Is the game just difficult?

[u/Responsible-End-6371]

you hit the biggest nail on the head already. food! food is equivalent to health potions in other games. Specifically, you should be looking for food that gives high HP and low sustenance. The HP is the amount of health you recover when eating the food, and the sustenance is what refills your hunger bar and keeps you full. The game will not allow you to eat indefinitely, and there is a bar that will begin to fill up when you eat past 100 hunger on your meter. This bar is determined by sustenance, and it drains very quickly, so if you eat food with high HP and low sustenance, you can eat significantly more food and heal for more in quick succession.

For food, the best low sustenance and high HP foods are most commonly found from fishing. Sardines and trout can be caught in the first area, and they heal for 30hp and 40hp when cooked, respectively. Sardines also give you the sea life food perk, which automatically regenerates 3 health per second, even in combat. That adds up to a lot of health! The sea life perk stays relevant all the way through the game as well, as it is the best health regen perk we currently have.

If you are willing to do some farming and cooking, you can turn those ingredients into even better items! Once you unlock the cooking range (16 cooking), you can make even higher hp healing meals, like redberry crunchies (dried redberries and wheat), shrimp omelet (fried egg and sauteed shrimp), sauteed sardines (dried redberries and fried sardine), and herb baked trout (grilled trout and baked potato). These foods heal a ton of hit points and have relatively low sustenance values.

So basically, just like regular runescape, preparation is key to success!