Survival: Fountain of Youth – Beginners Guide (How to Survive)

Starting Items Tier List

All credit goes to Owlie !

S Tier:

Leather Backpack (Don’t ask why, just pick this up as always).

A Tier:

Gun (Kill some boar and jackals with it and get yourself some really nice set of hide armor early in the game).

B Tier:

Iron Axe, Iron Spear (Very good weapon for you to defend yourself with if you don’t want to take the gun).

C Tier:

Navy Coat (You’ll only be troubled by sun 50% of the time and it only take half a day to get equipped with the leaf armor immediately).

D Tier:

Flint & Steel, Iron Dagger (Have neither the range of the spear nor the damage of the axe).

E Tier:

Meds (Very inconsequential choice by the time you finished reading this guide).

F Tier:

Food (Might as well go without any items at this point).

First Thing First

This game is very forgiving when it comes to the survival elements despite of the inherent complexity, and you should note that it is very important to keep your health as high as possible. Even the hardest dehydration or starvation would need at least a week to kill you if you start at a full health. Sleep, eat, and drink often to keep your health points as high as possible.

The main way you can die unavoidably is due to lack of preparations. Do not try to explore too far, instead make mental notes of the resources you can easily reach within 100 meter radius around your base. The general starting area have enough food and water sources to keep you alive for the first two weeks.

Status Effect:

To the top right corner of the UI is the list of the status effect, first thing you’d notice (unless you picked the navy coat) is the symbol of THE SUN, you are literally about to experience sunburn so run away to shade. Now that you’re not under the sun anymore Press “C” to open the status window

You’ll be seeing more variations of these from time to time which shows details on the current status effect. While most status do not have immediate negative effect, this will eventually develop into something that does. Everything you need to know about the game is available as in-game texts.

Just Completed the Tutorial, Now What?

Depending on the items you start with, get started by crafting what you don’t have

• Stone Axe
• Stone Knife
• Wooden Spear
• Leaf Armor
• Leaf Box Backpack

Shelter Tips

Broke: Go to De Leon’s cave on the first day and camp in there (Do not make a permanent base there, the scorpions will respawn)

Woke: You can build a canopy using the stuff found not too far from where you start

Enlightened: If you place a bed and fire adjacent to a slightly leaning boulder, it will provide the same benefit as being inside a shelter

Early Survival

Before you continue reading, make sure the first perk you pick is the thirst perk which adds +5 hydration to most of the food items you eat. This will be a lifesaver on your early playthrough

Food Need

• Coconuts (brown), Breadfruit
• Meat, Eggs. Just as a mention, cooking takes time which could be better spent looking for more resources

Thirst Need

• Coconuts (green)
• Berries, by the edge of the jungle or the small orange tree grove just around the anvil shaped cliff

Fire

You can only start fire using the firestarter tool and a campfire, upgrading the fire will lead to more cooking recipe and increased fuel efficiency. On top of that, having fire nearby will mitigate some of the environmental effects such as wetness and windiness.

Did you know? Torches have a 100% firestarting rate, you can lit it at anytime using the smoke signal. Always start fire using torch if you’re doing it at home

Tinder

Starting fire takes exactly one hour each attempt, having a tinder item is necessary to save time as you might fail and end up wasting even more time. The best tinder in the game is the cattail plants, followed by tree mushroom the the yellow leaves.

Where Do I Start Building?

Here is the list of the best place to build your base.

The Ideal Checklist

• Near the shore
• Near a lot of resources
• Near a source of wood
• Nowhere near a hostile animal’s spawn area

Optionally

• Flat and Spacious
• A fishing spot just nearby
• Close to fruit plants
• Close to strategic resources like obsidian or copper
• Not too far inland since this might lead to walking back and forth too often since many island means you’ll be spending more time returning from time to time with tons of resources

Where I’d recommend you settle at is the beach you start at. Not only it’s close to every single type of resource needed to kickstart your early game, to the north is a large groove of palm trees with enough logs to build every single machine and even a 3×2 house+docks.

Get Comfortable

Now that you’re done with all of the above, repeat this again for the next tier. Remember that upgrading the quality of life in your camp will mean that you’ll have more spare time to actually explore without having to worry about the survival aspect.

• Better Gear = Less time repairing and less time working
• Bigger Base = More convenience in one place
• More food stockpiled = More time to do necessary menial work

Step 1: Get Better Tools

A. The most basic stone tools can be crafted with just stones and a stick. Get the better stuff like liana ropes and thick branches to make the more complex stone tools and weapons.

B. A daring proposition would be to skip right to obsidian tools. Tempting, I know. Just north where you start is an obsidian mine just below a naturally forming stone arc. Some of the obsidian can just be picked right off the ground while the rest have to be mined off with pickaxe

Step 2: Get Better Shelter

The first thing you might wanna build is the canopy which should allow a wider workshop area to protect you from rain. After you’re done building the canopy. You’ll be needing a lot of wood logs for the next few steps so make sure that a log cart is the first thing you build.

Step 3: Get Better Source of Water

This will feel out of place for me to outright send you this far, but you do need to get these set up sooner so you won’t die of dehydration later on.

A: Palm Juice Collector. Just one of these are basically an infinite source of water and food. Mind you that pressing F lets you drink straight from the tap

B: Clay water collector. It requires a little bit of an effort to get the clay and build the machines but this thing will carry you throughout the whole game once you get this set up

Step 4: Get Better Gear

You should start looking forward to the next gear tier which is the hide armor. You’ll need a saw, a carpentry workbench, the tanning workshop, and the drying rack.

Step 5: Plan Ahead

Past This point is the moment you decide what you want to do next on your own. My suggestion would be to build the chemistry bench, build a house with the hammer, or even start working on your boat.

Don’t Do These Things

The following are ways you can easily die

Death by Attrition

After about two weeks, you’ll start to notice that the food and water found from the vicinity of your starting area. If you don’t plan ahead on improving the quality of life such as by building a dryer and a rain collector, you’ll eventually exhaust all of your time walking to collect faraway resource so be prepared.

Death by Falling

You’ll easily take fall damage from jumping off a tiny boulder. If you have to go down a steep hill, try to walk diagonally which should prevent you from veering down too quickly. You’ll survive most fall that would normally be lethal in real life as long as you keep your health up.

Death by Wild Animal

They are not exactly dangerous. Again, as I said before too many time, you’ll only die from them if you got caught off guard while your health is low. All the creature on hope can be easily killed in damage exchange without the need for blocking or parrying but the main way you can die is due to being attacked continuously by various wild animals without resting and healing in between those bouts.

Death by Nature

Rain, Sun, Heat, etc. These are easily mitigated by having better armor or preparing medicines. All of these are rather easy to forget and would eventually lead careless player to catching diseases.

Death by Diseases

Always focus toward curing any maladies as soon as possible, be it a small scratch or a runny nose. Those can and will progress into something that is even harder to cure with the basic medicines you have

Death by Drowning

Your swimming stamina is rather huge, you can swim around for several ingame hours before needing to resurface. It is important to keep a watch on your stamina bar as you will start drowing and lose health rapidly if you’re out of stamina. Try to bring a boat if you’re going after the underwater resources

Where Do I Find X?

Here is the nearest location of commonly needed item for your convenience.

Please note that this is basically a spoiler for the entire experience so I’d only recommend using this section if you’ve been running in circle for days

Also, I hope you’re already familiar with using the map and mapmaking mechanic in general cause i’m going straight to explaining things that are outside of the general starting area.

Bird Sector

Leaf (Broad)

• Birds of Paradise, the only near endless supply of this which are everywhere in the jungle
• Banana Tree, grows in clump so you can get a large amount of this + some meal on the go. First one is found a little bit north of the spaniard campside, the second one is on the northeastern edge of the jungle

Vines

• Big Tree with vines wrapped around it, you’ll know when you see it. One is just north of the starting beach. You can rarely find these just laying around the stone pavements within the jungle

Hide

Boar, Jackal, Peccary. You”ll need two spear, one for the sneak attack and another for fightin’. Try getting a bow earlier cause all bows seems to deal additional damage over time.

Sinew & Bones

Same source as the hides. Jackals seems to provide more sinew than the rest. Bones can rarely be found just laying around the ground.

Branch (Thick)

• Found inside of the Jungle, there may be boars and snakes around preventing you from gathering any of these trees
• Lots of thick branch can be found laying around the ground and underwater

Stones

Found everywhere, try looking for grey outcrops which should have piles of stones. You can also dismantle the massive rock (via crafting). For starter, you should deconstruct de leon’s campfire for the extra rock.

Branch (Strong)

Is not found on Hope, go read the next part.

Obsidian

• Just north of where you start are 3 deposits for obsidian with few of those just laying around. Try to map around one of the obsidian mine to get the location of the rest.
• There is also even more deposit far northeast of Hope should you need more

Flints

Found by the mountains paths, a couple is guaranteed to be found at the mountain cave.

Clay

Found near reservoir, there are 2 total which are marked on the map found in de leon’s cave. One is in the mountain and another is in the savanna.

Cattail

Found within the vicinity of Reservoir. Can also be found in small ponds by the jungle

Bamboo

Easily found in the mountains. There should be a groove just close by the mountain reservoir

Eggs

• Harpy Nests, lots can be found, these do not respawn so don’t pick any up if you don’t have any particular use for those.
• Killing chicken and harpies sometimes drops an egg and they all do respawn

Fish Bones

Gain by cutting fish caught by fishing. Some fish can be killed with harpoon spear, these are green and huge and often found near coastal rocks.

Buffalo Sector

Copper

This is straightfoward cause the story will railroad you here. Just look out for jaguars and your stamina while gathering these. Copperworking requires smelter, charcoal kiln, and a forge. All three requires tons of clay to build.

Clay (Part 2)

Since the clays at hope doesn’t respawn, you might want to get to the second region sooner as there are termite mounds with replenishable source of clays. There is also a rare clay pit northeast of the copper island which contains tons of clays. Remember to bring a shovel.

Strong Branch

Found on cannonball tree which would be one of the first few thing found on copper island. The tre have orange fruits growing on its branches. You’ll be needing these to build most of the tools and machines for this part of the game.

Seaweed Fabric

• The first part, the hydrillia is found anywhere around hope island where there is a rocky outcropping on the sea.
• The second part is the horseweed which is NOT found on Hope, the description given is wrong. One reliable place i found is the giant rock just north of santa maria’s shipwreck
• Third part is the loom which are made using cannonball tree branches found in copper/red island

Leather

Once you had made the copper pot and collected some cannonball tree branch, you should have the improved leatherworking workshop. The material needed to tan a leather can be easily found on Hope island. Note that a lot of water is required to make leather so make sure you have a water storage and catcher already set up.

Pyrite

A very rare resource found on the grounds within the upper section of copper island. If you have flints, you can make the next tier of firestarter tool with this.

Don’t Get Sick

Here, I’ll list all of the negative status effect and how you can prevent and cure it. I got these pictures from the demo promotions so some of these are not even in-game yet.

Prevention is better than treatment. But having at least a stock of every single medicines is even better. I’d personally keep at least 3 of each at home and 5 of each on the boat.

Environmental Effects

• Sun
• Protected By: Leaf Armor set or better
• Leads to: Sunburn
• Prevention: Stay in the shade, only go out at dawn/dusk or when it is cloudy

• Rain
• Protected By: Hide Armor set or better
• Leads to: Flu
• Prevention: Staying under shelter, just don’t go out at all in the rain

• Soak
• Protected By: Nothing
• Leads to: Flu
• Prevention: Not jumping into water without a good reason. Also try to build a dock so you don’t fall off into water trying to climb your boat

• Heat
• Protected By: Seaweed Armor set or better
• Leads to: Heatstroke
• Prevention: Get soaked every couple of hour. Go out at night when its cold

• Windy
• Protected By: Leather Armor set or better
• Leads to: Flu
• Prevention: Avoid high places or the titular windy island

• Cold
• Cold is not in-game yet. It is coming very soon though.

Diseases

Influenza

Caused by any the sea, rain, and wind. Simply having these status effect won’t give you the flu immediately so you can still clear it away by simply standing near a lit campfire. The medicine made using hibiscus petals found near the edge of jungles.

Wounds

Gained very rarely when you gets attacked by wild animal or while taking fall damages. The leaf bandage is made out of materials you can literally find anywhere so you should be able to keep a large stockpile of it.

Fever

Potentially what follows after becoming severely wounded. I haven’t confirmed this so I might intentionally get myself sick just to see the results.

Food Poisoning

Mildly unavoidable as every food carries risk of indigestion. The best way to avoid this is by cooking and curing anything you would eat. You can heal this using the chamomile that you can easily found all over the grassland plains.

Poison

Poisoning is caused by not looking at where you’re walking toward. Mainly caused by the scorpion and the rattlesnake. The simplest cure for this is made using the scorpions you can kill and pick up, the grotto cave has guaranteed spawn for these creatures.

Sunburn

You won’t get this immediately but keep a close watch on the top right corner which shows the progress bar on what would lead to this. Medicine made using tobacco leaves that grows near anywhere near a hibicus plant.

Burn

Caused by accidentally stepping on the campfire like a dumb*ss. Applying the burn medication twice should help.

Heatstroke

Easily mistaken with sunburn, this is cause by the ambient effect of the dryness of the copper island. You can easily cure this by making medicines out of the termites found in the southwestern part of the island, just below…

These stuff is not in game yet.

Malaria, Sulfur Poisoning. And possibly more.

Sulfur poisoning is actually already in-game and is found in the secret parts of the windy island, In the future this might become an ambient effect found in volcanic/underground biomes