Your first-day checklist
- Mark your spawn point on the map.
- Knap a knife and an axe.
- Cut reeds and craft baskets for more inventory.
- Gather food: berries, mushrooms you've checked, wild crops and meat.
- Find clay and mark it.
- Build a firepit under a roof and cook.
- Make a simple shelter and a grass bed before dark.
Before you start
Vintage Story, by Anego Studios, is a wilderness survival game built on blocks. It looks a bit like Minecraft but plays much slower and harder. Food spoils, temperature matters, tools are made by hand from stone and clay, and night is genuinely dangerous early on.
When you spawn, open the world map and add a waypoint where you stand. If you die you'll come back near that spot until you change your spawn later in the game, so it's worth knowing where it is. Press H to open the in-game handbook, which explains almost every item and recipe and will save you a lot of searching.
Read your three bars
| Bar | Colour | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Health | Red, left | 15 points by default. Regenerates slowly, but healing makes you hungrier. |
| Temporal stability | Cyan gear, middle | Drains underground, in unstable areas, during storms and near rifts. Running out is bad. |
| Satiety | Green, right | Your hunger, up to 1,500. Running, cold, armour and holding things in your off hand burn it faster. |
Temporal stability is the one new players don't expect. It's not something to fix on day one, but keep it in mind when choosing where to build. Caves and low ground are less stable than open surface and high ground, and moving house later is a lot of work.
Make your first tools
Your first job is a knife and an axe, and you make both by knapping. Look on the ground for flint or loose stones of a hard type: basalt, chert, granite, andesite, obsidian or peridotite. You need at least two stones.
- Hold the flint or stone, then sneak and right-click the ground. Flint creates a knapping surface straight away. With other stones, place one first, then sneak and right-click it with a second.
- Choose the tool head you want from the menu.
- With a stone in your hand, left-click the voxels outlined in orange to chip them away. Pieces that become disconnected from the main shape break off too.
- When the last highlighted voxel goes, the tool head jumps into your hotbar.
- Open your inventory with E and combine the head with a stick in the crafting grid.
Sticks lie on the ground and drop from leafy branches. Flint and obsidian make tougher tool heads than other stone, and only flint can make arrowheads. A bone handle instead of a stick also adds some durability.
Get more inventory
You start with a 10-slot hotbar, an off-hand slot and four empty backpack slots. With a knife you can cut reeds quickly. Ten reeds make a hand basket, which adds three slots when you put it in a backpack slot. Fill all four and you more than double your space. Baskets only go in the backpack slots while they're empty, so equip them before you load them up.
Find food
- Berries: pick ripe bushes by hand. Take cuttings with a knife to replant near your base later.
- Mushrooms: check each one in the handbook first. Some are poisonous, cooked or not.
- Wild crops: harvest them for food and seeds. They're one of the main early ways to start a farm.
- Cattail roots: edible once cooked, but eating them removes the plant, and you need cattails for reed baskets and chests.
- Animals: sneak and hold right-click on a carcass with a knife to collect meat, fat and hide. Meat must be cooked first.
Find clay
Clay is how you move forward. You need it for storage vessels, which keep food fresh longest, and for a cooking pot. New players often struggle to find it, so watch the exposed sides of grassy ground, riverbanks and slopes as you explore, and mark any you find on the map.
Clay items have to be fired in a pit kiln before you can use them. That's a day-two job for most players, but knowing where your clay is makes day two much easier.
Build a firepit
A firepit gives you light, warmth and cooked food. Cut tall grass with your knife to get dry grass, and chop logs with your axe, then combine a log and the axe in the crafting grid to make firewood.
- Sneak and right-click the ground with dry grass to place the base.
- Sneak and right-click it with four firewood.
- Light it with a firestarter or a torch by holding right-click on the base. The handbook shows how to make a firestarter.
Rain puts out uncovered fires and torches, so put a simple roof over your firepit. Once it's lit you can cook meat and heat sticks to make torches. Holding a torch in your off hand makes you hungrier, and water puts it out.
Get through the first night
Monsters start to appear after sunset, and without armour they're dangerous. A spear is the strongest early ranged weapon but breaks quickly, while a wooden club carved from a log is sturdier but weaker. You can also make crude armour from dry grass and firewood, and a basic shield from sticks and reeds.
The safer plan is not to fight at all. Build a small shelter from soil, packed dirt, cob or anything you have, close it in and make a bed from dry grass to sleep through most of the night. If you run out of time, a trader's cart is a safe hiding place. Some monsters can climb ladders, so a tower is less safe than it looks.
Stay warm too. Your body temperature needs to stay around 37°C, rain and water cool you down quickly, and a fire warms you up. Being too warm has no penalty, so stay near the fire.
What to do on day two
- Shape clay into a storage vessel and a cooking pot, and fire them in a pit kiln.
- Move food into fired storage vessels. Reed chests are fine for tools but let food spoil faster in warm weather.
- Start a small farm with seeds from wild crops.
- Keep an eye on temporal stability before you dig your first mine.
If you're deciding between Vintage Story and other block games, our guide to games like Minecraft compares them by play style, and our Luanti guide covers a free alternative. The community-run Vintage Story wiki's first-day guide goes into more depth on every step.
Frequently asked questions
What should I craft first in Vintage Story?
A stone knife and a stone axe. The knife lets you cut grass and reeds and butcher animals, and the axe gets you logs and firewood. Both are made by knapping flint or a hard loose stone.
How do I knap in Vintage Story?
Hold flint or a knappable stone, then sneak and right-click the ground to place it. Flint starts a knapping surface straight away; other stones need a second stone placed on top. Pick a tool head, then left-click the highlighted voxels away with another stone.
What is temporal stability?
The cyan gear in the middle of your bars. It drains underground, in unstable areas, during temporal storms and near rifts. If it runs out you start seeing the world distort, more monsters spawn and you take damage. Return to the surface or higher ground to recover.
Where do I find clay?
Look along exposed edges of grass-covered ground, riverbanks and slopes. Clay is easy to miss, so mark it on your map as soon as you see it.
Is Vintage Story on Steam?
No. It's sold through the developer's own website and authorised sellers. You register a game account when you buy.
Facts in this article were checked against developer and store sources on 12 October 2026. Prices, versions and dates change, so confirm on the official page before you buy.
