Code}{atch’s Reign of Kings may be a controversial title for its very “unoptimized” and “buggy” gameplay, but a lot of people still love it and play it. It’s kind of like a medieval version of DayZ, complete with all the lag and zombies that are depicted in the form of plagued villagers. Well, if you want to take a dive in the game but need some help getting started, there are a variety of beginner walkthrough guides available to offer some useful hints and tips.

YouTuber eNtaK has a 33 minute walkthrough up that covers a lot of the very basic gameplay elements, including how to hunt, how to craft objects, how to drink water, how to bandage and how to get a furance and work bench up and working. You can check out the video below.

So to start off, press ‘I’ to open the inventory. Players start with torches and bandages. You can heal yourself by switching to your bandages when your life is low and holding down the left-mouse button to use the bandages to restore your life. It’s also possible to click and drag items to the hot bar for easy access.

You can also craft items from the inventory menu using the manuscripts on the top right hand side of the inventory. Simply click on the item to craft and it will show the required materials necessary to build the item.

Throwing spears are some good early game weapons. You can make throwing spears by gathering wood. You can use the starting club to beat down a tree. Once you get the wood from the tree press ‘I’ to enter the inventory and created a wooden javelin to make a throwing weapon.

In the early parts of the game you will need stone in order to make some necessary building tools. You can find stone lying around mountainsides and cliffs. You can just walk over to the stone entities and press ‘E’ to pick them up.

You can stay fed by eating berries early on in the game that are located throughout the game world. You can grab the berries and eat them to keep yourself sustained.

You can also kill animals and gather resources from them. You get meat, skin, fur and bone from some animals like the elk. Flax is also very important and you’ll find it out in the wild scattered about the plains. It’s a white bush-like bit of foliage that blends in well with the environment. Simply walk over to it and press ‘E’ to retrieve it.

As showcased in the video, it’s best to make the necessary tools that will make crafting a lot easier, so after making a spear so you can hunt down animals for food and supplies, a stone hatchet can be made using stone, flax and wood. This will make it easier and faster to cut down trees.

In the video the next item made is a wooden work bench, this is used for upgrades and making more advanced tools and crafting stations. You’ll need 120 pieces of wood to make a work bench. The bench will grant you access to tier 3 and tier 4 crafting items. You will also need to upgrade the work bench to open up the option for making higher class tools, weapons and armor.

Larger and more complex items will take longer to craft, with the work bench taking an entire minute to craft where-as smaller items will only take a few seconds.

In order to gather more advanced minerals and ore you will need to build a pickaxe to mine ore such as iron or high-quality stone. One thing mentioned in the video is that you can use stone walls to keep other rival players out since you can’t melee attack and damage stone structures.

In order to make ingots, you need to first make a campfire. You’ll need wood to make a campfire. From there you will then need to upgrade the campfire to turn it into a fire pit. You’ll need additional supplies to upgrade it to turn it into a furnace. You can use the furnace to smelt ingots, this will allow for making stone structures from an upgraded work bench.

You will need to use wood to fuel the furnace to keep it heated and if you place meat inside it will cook it for you so you can eat it. You can also collect water to stay hydrated by going to a pond and holding down ‘E’ to collect water. Once you finish collecting water you can exit the pond and press the left mouse button again when you have your water pouch out to drink from it.

In the video, eNtaK also explains how important a Crest is. Essentially you use Crests to “claim your land”. Put the Crest up on a wall inside your house where you built your base and it will create a safe-radius that dictates that the land is yours. This will prevent other players from building on your land.

Reign of Kings has graduated from Early Access and is currently out and available over on the Steam store for $19.99.