Beginner guide

Start by requesting the technical playtest, then treat the first hour as shelter and height. You are a Sprýg gnome, about 10 centimeters tall, in a procedurally grown Dark Forest. Cold, hunger and hidden threats are the pressures the store page names. A tree, a hollow log or a rock crevice is a home. A birch-tree milestone is not in this build.

Before you launch

The store game is still Coming soon. The thing you can install today is the playtest, and only while Steam still shows it open. Use the join the playtest steps while you are signed in. Read the playtest limits before you invite friends. Progression ends before Birch Trees. Befriending Väsen is turned off. Some tools, workstations, building pieces and materials are missing. The test is English only, and keys cannot be rebound.

If your keyboard is AZERTY, stop and read controls first. The studio says those layouts may not play as intended until rebinding exists.

Check the system requirements against your PC before you download. The posted floor is a 64-bit Windows 10 machine with 16 GB of RAM, DirectX 12 and 15 GB free. A laptop under that line is a poor first session.

The first session

Play the opening alone even if you plan to use co-op. The store page says the game is fully playable solo offline, and a solo hour teaches the scale. Pines, mossy boulders and damp rocks are climbs, not set dressing. An official screenshot shows a quest called Climbing Spryg Gnome with the objective Find the Gnome. Follow that kind of prompt. It points you at the vertical routes the forest is built around.

Gather what the ground actually offers. The store page names blueberries and twigs, and it names arrows and musical instruments as the span of crafting. It does not publish recipes, so do not hunt for a spreadsheet. Open crafting for the short list that is real, then experiment at whatever workstation the build still includes. If a station from a trailer is missing, that is the test, not a bug you need to solve tonight.

Put a roof over the group before you chase the horizon. Building covers the places the store page allows: treetops, hollowed logs, rock crevices and misty lakes, plus bridges, moss and low light. In this build the piece list is limited. Pick one of those sites and finish a small shelter. A half-built platform in the canopy is a bad place to learn the quit-while-saving bug described on saves.

How to treat the forest

Väsen are in the world, and they are not a pet system yet. The Väsen page explains who is named. In the playtest they can fight more than the studio wants, including among themselves. Do not stand between two agitated beings to test a befriend button that is not in the build. Calm and gifts are the Early Access plan. For this week, give them room, keep a campfire between you and the dark, and read survival if the night starts to hurt.

Whistle is bound to Z on the official treehouse screenshot. Use it when you lose a friend in the branches. The hotbar shows slots 1, 2, 3, 4 and B. The test will not let you move those binds.

What to ignore for now

Ignore class guides, tier lists and boss routes. No class picker, no achievement list and no named boss roster have been published. Classes and factions and bosses explain what is actually in the lore instead. Ignore code redeem posts. Codes is empty on purpose.

Tip: First session, play solo, climb to one shelter, and leave before Birch Trees. Invite the group on the second session, after you know the save finishes cleanly.

What to do after

When the shelter holds, walk the Dark Forest page so you know which biomes are described and which are not. If the test closes, wishlist from the release date page and wait for Early Access, which is when befriending and the rest of the Väsen are supposed to return.

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