If you are reading this, it means that you survived too. It looks bad, right? The end of the world, demons running the place and so on. But don’t give up hope! Humanity got to where it was due to it’s ability to adapt? That’s what we are doing now. We’re surviving, and we are growing stronger.

We fled the initial demon invasion and built a base with all the survivors we could gather. So far, we have been able to repel every attack and even take the fight to the demons occasionally – but that could change at any moment. We know we are just a minor nuisance to them; they could obliterate us if they actually put their minds (or whatever they have inside those thick skulls) to it. Hopefully we’ll be ready for them before it comes to that.

Just in case, I am writing this guide: to share what we learnt the hard way. I will try to share some useful information on how to survive this Apocalypse. We will hide copies of this document on every foray out of our base and send them down the river – hopefully there are more people like us out there who could find our experience useful. That way if we don’t succeed, if we perish in the end, at least there’s a chance that we contribute to the cause of mankind. Read carefully, survivor – and best of luck to you, for you will surely need it.

It’s great that you are already thinking of sending the demons back to hell, but that’s not gonna happen on your first day in Apocalypse Town. That’s my first piece of advice: stay calm and take your time. Stop. Think. Plan. If you make too much noise too early, the demon horde will notice you before you are capable of defending yourself. Keep a low profile for a while and take some time to build your base, train your teammates a little bit and craft some equipment.

I will try to guide you through the aspects of life in the base and the challenges we faced so far: managing our colony, defending it, forays into enemy territory, research, magic… This first chapter of the guide will tackle the most basic topics, so consider it a “Surviving the Apocalypse 101”.

Don’t worry, later on, we will write in more detail about different aspects of survival. For the time being let’s concentrate on the first and most urgent topic: the basic things you need to know in order to, well, not starve to death or be mauled by the first evil ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you find.

First thing you will need is a cabin with a bed and food table. Your survivors will eat and sleep here, so they will often walk to and from this place. Choose the location of your first cabin carefully. You will need to regularly collect water, positioning near a well is a smart choice. Wood, trees, and stones are also essential early on, so try to choose a location with many of those nearby as well. The less time the guys spend walking, the more work they can get done.

Next, food production, your existing supplies will not last long. The base should be able not only to produce enough food and water to keep everyone alive, but also a surplus for storage. You will need it for the teams you send on combat missions – and to be prepared for unexpected situations that disrupt your daily life, such as a small horde of demons attacking your base and eating your best farmer. Yeah, that happens.

One vegetable farm can support two survivors, and one farmer with no special skills, can handle 3-4 farms. But farms are rather inexpensive, so don’t be shy: build a few more and train a few Survivalists to take care of them. You can’t afford to have too many farmers, there is much work to be done in camp, but a small specialized team of food producers should be enough to keep even a larger colony fed.

Don’t forget water! When your supply of water starts to run out, order someone to fetch water from the well, make sure fetching water is high in their priority. At first a single water fetcher should be more than enough to keep you supplied, so you can stop the water gathering after a while, and start it again as needed. Later on you will need someone working the well full time, and may even need to build additional wells or rain collectors. A single water-working survivor with no special skills should be able to quench the thirst of 13-14 survivors. The farther they have to walk to sleep and eat, the less efficient. Store some drinking water for cases of emergency too.

You are now on your way towards building a sustainable base, but now it’s time to take a look at your survivors and their skills. At their base, all survivors are equal, regardless of gender, race or religion. The differences between the survivors are in their professions and skills.

Each survivor has a profession, such as a Fighter or Occultist, and they all start with a few starting skills. Skills may affect everything a survivor does. Some skills allow survivors to perform certain tasks faster, or more efficiently. Some skills may give survivors advantages in combat, or when using certain weapons or armor. Other skills allow survivors to build or craft stuff that no one else can.

Other than the starting skills, survivors gain new skills when gaining levels. Every task that a survivor performs grants them experience points. When a survivor earns enough experience, they level up, and you may choose which skill they learn. The available skills depend on their profession and which level they gained.

In earning experience points, not all survivors are equal. Survivors have tasks that they prefer, depending on their profession. When performing these tasks, survivors earn experience 3 times faster! Fighters, for example, gain experience faster when training and fighting enemies, while Occultists gain experience faster when researching the occult, or performing rituals. Try to prioritize for each survivor tasks they prefer, as much as you can. This takes some balancing, as sometimes you will need stuff done even though they are not preferred tasks. Like training your fighters, having a guy hitting a dummy day and night while the rest are breaking their backs doesn’t seem like the most efficient thing to do, but you will need their fists when those pesky little imps find make their way to your base

As for missions, survivors will gain experience when dealing damage to demons in combat – but not for simply being there. Everyone will have to engage the enemy if you want them to gain experience. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter who delivers the killing blow. And remember, Fighters gain 3x experience for dealing damage. They really love a good brawl!

Remember that I said not to rush into battle? There are a few exceptions. In the early life of your base, rescue as many survivors as you can. As long as saving them is not too risky, when you notice there is someone fleeing from demons, go out there with a team and bring them back home with you. You will need as many people as you can muster – and later on, when your team reaches 6-7 survivors, rescue missions will become tougher.

Keep an eye on the noise you make though! The larger your population, the more awareness they generate. If your awareness is very high when the demons attack, they will hit you much harder! There are ways to compensate for the number of survivors, some research, some skills, and patrolling lookout points. Until you are able to do that, keep your population size in check.

Now, as for other fights… First of all, no matter how much you prepare, sometimes things go wrong – an injured survivor needs time to heal, or medicine, and both are scarce. Additionally, when you send a team on a mission they will need food for the journey, and that can be a heavy toll for a small base with little supplies. Last, when your team leaves the base, they also leave behind their duties. Less workforce, so make sure whatever it is they’re going to get - it’s worth that lost time.

But still, sometimes scavenging materials can be much quicker and more efficient than gathering them around the base. Just make sure you can handle the enemies that are guarding that area.

Those demons are brutal, tough and strong – and there are lots of them. But you are smarter than they are. We will focus on combat strategies in a separate guide, soon, but here are some starter tips.

First, don’t forget to take the best equipment you have. And I mean it. You would be surprised at how many survivors die out there just because they forgot to pick up their bloody shields before leaving the base. Second, fight dirty: ambush the demons, lure them into traps, and attack from behind. Use whatever advantage you can gain! Set a trap with some ranged fighters at a safe distance, protected by melee fighters behind covers. Then send someone to lure your enemies into the ambush and hit them with everything you’ve got. They won’t know what hit them!

It always pays to know your enemy, of course; there are demons who attack from a distance and others who prefer close and personal; there are creatures who fight heavy and slow, others light but fast… Again, we will go into further detail later – just keep your eyes open out there and take note of everything you find.

There are few things that are worse than not having enough farms to feed everyone: starving to death when you have plenty of raw food but no prepared means, or being attacked and not having enough weapons to defend yourselves. Pay close attention to your base inventory and keep your stuff as updated as much as possible!

Remember that you can automate your crafting: for every single item, you can establish a minimum/maximum range of crafted items; that will order your crafters to keep the stock within that range. For instance, if you set auto-craft for your salads with a 30-50 range, survivors will start crafting salads as soon as they drop below 30, and will keep going until they reach the upper limit or run out of materials.

Regarding weapons and armor, I’m not implying that you should have one of everything per survivor – but in the best scenario, everyone in your base should have their personal equipment (weapon, armor and equipment), and a nice stock of usable items, such as med-kits or grenades to replace those they use. It’s not easy to achieve this, though, and it depends a lot on how efficiently you run your base.

Spending time researching technologies or studying the occult may seem frivolous when there’s an apocalypse going on and survivors need to eat, but you won’t believe how much easier life can be with a steady flow of science and magic. All that we have seen so far is good for laying low, surviving and hoping for the best, but if you really want to win you will need to research.

Through research you will improve your fighting capabilities, your base efficiency, and gain some special perks. Have any free survivors, specially engineers and occultists, working those experiment tables and occult libraries. Build more than one! The faster you are able to research and craft firearms, the better chance you have of deflecting those increasingly difficult attacks on your base.

Well, that’s more or less what we’ve learnt in our first few weeks. Before moving on, I have to add a few quick tips:

Plant trees early on. Running out of trees to chop is really, really inconvenient – and it happens. Trees take time to grow, so don’t wait till the last moment.

Scavenge for scraps and medicine in the base until there are no more. Crafting scraps takes a lot of time and should be done only as a last resort; it’s best to get them in your base, and then scavenge for them. Almost everything you build or craft will cost you scraps.

Remember that the force of the demon horde grows the longer you wait. Attacks become increasingly more powerful, so you must not dally, build a strong economy and defend your base. Guard towers and barricades will become essential in the advanced stages of the invasion.

With that, we will finish this guide. In our next chapters, we will give you more elaborate tactical and strategic advice. Assuming that you don’t starve to death by then, you will need this advice to give the demons a taste of their own medicine, research more complex subjects, and find a way to end the apocalypse. Stay strong and endure, survivor. I wish you luck out there.