Your first steps

You start in the Foal Pen with your companion. A welcome card offers three optional lessons, each at its own place. Lessons give no materials or Gloo, and you can replay them. Find them any time in the Menu under Tutorial.

Learn the basics

The Scarecrow in the Dead Forest teaches the controls, one step at a time:

1. Talk to the Scarecrow: walk up and press E.
2. Walk the four directions. The view is isometric, so W, D, S and A move you northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest.
3. Run: hold Shift while you move.
4. Jump: press Space.
5. Gather sap: stand beside it and press E.
6. Open your bag: press B.
7. Craft something: stand by the workbench and press V. It is practice, so nothing is used or made.
8. Check your soul: press C.

If something blocks a direction, step around it. When you finish, start again or return to the world.

Learn combat

This takes you to the Training Yard. You can also walk there: talk to Trainer Tamsin at the east end of Foal Pen's main road. Two short lessons teach strikes, the charge, the dodge and the counter. New characters unlock their attacks here: a human earns the sword, a horse the rear kick.

Learn fishing

This takes you to Tavi at Reed Bank in the Glasswater. Practice uses borrowed gear. Land one practice fish and you earn a free starter kit: a Willow rod, 50 m of line and 20 hooks. See Fishing: your first catch.

Then the world is yours

After the lessons, your next step is named and marked on your map. Take work from Farmer Hodge in town, gather, fire bricks, and when you are ready, claim a plot and build a stable. Each zone introduces itself in one sentence the first time you enter.

Characters from before the rework who never finished the old prologue keep their progress in it.

Next: What keeps you alive.