Core Keeper Beginner’s Guide: Top 5 Tips for Underground Survival

by Mike Alexander / Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 10 Feb 2022

Uncover an ancient underground mystery and fight to survive in Core Keeper, the newest game from the developers at Pugstorm. You awaken in front of a massive ancient relic, confused and shrouded in darkness. Along with up to 7 other friends, you will explore an infinite, procedurally generated subterranean world, fight monstrous creatures, farm, and craft to discover the secrets and purpose of the core. However, survival won’t be easy. Death constantly looms, whether it be from monsters, starvation, or treacherous terrain. Thankfully, I have a few tips to share in this Core Keeper Beginner’s Guide that can help you conquer the underground and bend it to your will. So grab your torch, and let’s get started!

Light Your Path

Speaking of torches, you’re going to need a whole lot of them. The game doesn’t clearly tell you this, but you’re able to craft torches right from your inventory window! All you need is 1 wood, which can be gathered by punching the wood you’ll find in the surrounding area. Once you have a bunch, go ahead and craft as many torches as you can, and then place them down strategically around the starting area to light up your starter base. This will serve you well for the opening hours of the game. The game has a map that will fill out as you explore the cave systems, but placing down torches periodically as you explore is a smart way to be able to find your way back to your base quickly when you’re in trouble. And you will find yourself in trouble quite a bit.

Don’t Skip Meal Time

Core Keeper has a bar under your health bar that you will need to keep an eye on: your “Food” bar. This shows your level of hunger, which will affect your ability to do tasks like mining and running. And, if it runs out, you’ll die. You’ll need to keep this bar full by eating food that is either found on your adventures or cooked at your home base. Food that you cook will always be better than found food, as it will give you buffs and perks that found food does not. Depending on what you cook and what skills you have, you can buff your health, attack power, and many other aspects of your character. To cook at your base, you can craft a cooking pot using 5 wood and 6 copper. Having a cooking pot ready to go is good to have in the early hours of the game, and you’ll want to have plenty of cooked food before you venture out.

Make Tools As Soon As You Can

To more efficiently mine materials and make better weapons, you’re going to need a furnace. You can craft one using 20 dirt walls and 10 wood. Having a furnace available to you will open up a whole new world of tools to make your mining and adventuring much easier. You’ll undoubtedly have some ore in your inventory by now, probably some copper. Put whatever you have into your furnace and wait for it to turn into bars. Then, you can craft a number of tools, including pickaxes, shovels, swords, and hoes for gardening. Craft whatever you’re able to, but I recommend at least crafting a few pickaxes. They’re extra useful because they’ll allow you to mine for better materials faster, and you can also attack with them if you get ambushed. All of your tools have durability meters, though, so make sure you have enough when you set out on an expedition.

Start A Farm

In order to be able to cook, you’ll want to start a farm using the various seeds you’ll find out in the cavers. Using your crafted hoe, you can till some soil and plant your seeds. These seeds will need to be watered, so you should find a water source to fill up your watering can. Plott out a safe, well-lit path to get there and back fairly frequently. With your seeds watered, you’ll then just have to wait till they finish growing, and then harvest them. Farming is a great, easy way to keep your food supply high so that you don’t find yourself starving.

Avoid Confrontations

Until you’re able to craft decent weapons and armor, you’ll want to try to avoid getting into fights. You’ll occasionally be accosted by slimes, but if you find yourself getting overwhelmed, you should book it back to camp. If you’re on a good collecting spree and you die, you’ll drop all of your hard-earned loot, and be unable to reclaim it. That can be soul-crushing, so make sure you have an escape plan ready to go. When you’ve explored deep enough, you’ll begin to hear a deep thumping noise. This is also something you should avoid. Those sounds are being made by the game’s first boss, and if you’re just rocking regular clothes, a pickaxe, and maybe a shovel, he’s going to stomp you out and take all your goods, so run in the opposite direction.

Conclusion

There you have it, my spelunking friends! 5 tips to help you overcome the early hours of Core Keeper. I hope that if you use them, you’re able to move past the opening hours and see everything the game has to show you, and maybe even defeat the source of those stomping noises. Good luck!

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Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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