Survival basics

Your first priority

You begin in a Vault with no electricity and only 2 clean Water. Staying inside will not solve the problem. Your first job is to leave the Vault and search the wasteland for a reliable water source.

Go to the World Map and use Explore. Each attempt costs 20 stamina. Keep exploring until you discover the Contaminated Well.

The well does not provide clean Water. It gives you Toxwater, but Toxwater will keep you alive while you work toward restoring the Vault.

Collect water

Travel to the Contaminated Well and collect Toxwater. Hauling water costs 25 stamina, so do not spend all your stamina exploring and arrive too exhausted to collect anything.

Your first survival loop is:

1. Leave the Vault.
2. Explore until you find the Contaminated Well.
3. Collect Toxwater.
4. Return to the Vault before you are too exhausted to keep working.
5. End the day and recover.

The player drinks 1 Water or Toxwater when the day ends. Clean Water is used first. If there is no clean Water, Toxwater can prevent dehydration, but it limits stamina recovery to 70% of maximum.

Going without either type of water causes dehydration and removes 35% of maximum health. It can kill you quickly.

Train Endurance

Once you have enough water to survive another day, use the training equipment in the Vault to train Endurance.

Endurance increases your maximum stamina. More stamina means you can explore more times, travel farther, or haul water before you have to stop. It does not increase the amount collected by one water-hauling action.

Training Endurance costs 30 stamina and takes 90 in-game minutes, so collect enough water first. Do not use the last of your stamina training when you still need to travel or haul water.

If you want to increase the amount of water collected in a single haul, train Strength. Water hauling uses Strength to calculate its yield.

Build a routine

Do not try to repair the entire Vault immediately. First make water reliable:

1. Keep at least one Water or Toxwater for the end of the day.
2. Use the rest of your stamina to explore or haul water.
3. Train Endurance when you have water stored and enough stamina to spare.
4. Repeat until you can make longer trips without exhausting yourself.

The Rest action can help in an emergency, but it has diminishing returns. The first three rests recover 15%, 10%, and 5% of maximum stamina. The fourth gives nothing, and later rests cost stamina.

Restore the Vault

After securing a source of Toxwater, the next problem is electricity. Follow The Vault’s Heart quest to repair the reactor. Power is needed before the Vault can become more than a dark shelter.

Later, The Vault’s Thirst quest leads to the Purification Chamber, which converts stored Toxwater into clean Water. Purification happens at the end of the day after drinking water has already been consumed, so it cannot rescue you from that night’s shortage.

At the start, concentrate on keeping yourself supplied, increasing your stamina, and getting the Vault’s power back.

Related topics

• Time and calendar
• Vault management
• Economy and trade
• Combat system

Play the current build from the official itch.io page.