Dinkum Beginner’s Guide: Ultimate Tips & Tricks for New Players

by Mike Alexander / Dinkum, Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 01 Mar 2022

There are many survival/life simulator games that challenge you to find a way to thrive in inhospitable places. However, most of them take place in locations that are either tropical or forested in nature. If you’re looking for something new, a change of pace, then you might just be interested in James Bendon’s new survival game, Dinkum. Dinkum is an Early Access survival game that is set in an area that is heavily inspired by Australia. There are billabongs, forests full of eucalyptus, and even sun-scorched deserts.

You’ll be tasked with finding natural resources in these places and using them to craft and build a life for yourself. Over time, you’ll go from living in a hut to being the head of a sprawling community that was built by your very own hands. The road to having your own town will be long and arduous. It might seem impossible at first, but with a little help, you can be well on your way to success. Thankfully, you’ll find some great tips & tricks to help you along in this Dinkum Beginner’s Guide. If you’re ready to conquer the Outback and become the ultimate survivalist, then grab your pickaxe, hug your koala, and let’s get started!

Build Up Your Cash Reserves

At the beginning of the game, you’ll probably want to get as much money as you can, as quickly as possible. This is probably a good idea, since having plenty of money for the supplies and equipment you’ll need five or so hours into the game.

The good news is that there is, in fact, a great way to get a ton of money very quickly. What you’ll want to do is obtain the fishing pole and bug net, and use them as much as possible. Catching fish and bugs is completely free, and selling everything you catch can be very lucrative.

For the first four or so hours of your playtime, spending a good portion of your time bug catching and fishing can give you a healthy little nest egg for later in the game. Some might find this tedious, especially with so much else to do, but these activities can be quite fun and relaxing once you find the correct rhythm.

Orchards

Once you have your home base more or less picked out and settled, you’ll want a way to get the resources you need much closer. One great way to do this is by cutting down some trees and collecting the seeds they drop. Every tree you cut down will drop two seeds.

You can then take those seeds you collected and plant them wherever you want. Something smart Dinkum players have done is form orchards close to where their budding communities are. And, since you’ll collect two seeds from every tree, you get double the plants!

These orchards can grow to be very large very quickly, and they are a great way to get a diverse source of different fruits as well as a stable supply of wood, which you will definitely need for building and crafting down the line.

Permit Points

One of the coolest mechanics in Dinkum is the milestone system. Every time you complete an action a certain number of times, you will complete a milestone, which can then be redeemed for permit points.

Permit points are probably the most valuable currency in the game, more so than even the dinks that serve as cash. You use them to purchase permits from your notebook, which will grant you all kinds of extra functionality and features.

At the beginning of the game, you’ll use your permit points to unlock the ability to mine and dig. As the story progresses, you’ll be given permits that give you critical abilities, and you’ll have to balance unlocking those with upgrading the ones you already have.

Don’t worry about the stacks and stacks of permit points you’ll get in the opening hours of the game, they’ll start to go pretty quickly when you start getting permits for abilities you really want. Especially when you find the permit that allows you to keep animals!

Machines

You’ll be collecting a lot of resources as you play Dinkum. Most of these resources aren’t usable in their raw forms, so you’ll need to process them. To do this, you can build the complex machines Dinkum has in place to do a variety of different things.

There are smelters, table saws, BBQs, and more. You’ll use smelters to process the metals you find into usable forms, table saws will turn logs into wooden planks for building, and BBQs will obviously cook the food you hunt or scrounge up in the bush.

A pro tip as far as machines go is to have multiple of every machine you make. This is a great way to maximize your efficiency and make sure you’re getting all of the materials you need quickly. You can pop into your base, leave all of your materials processing, and by the time you’re done handling your business you’ll have double the amount of resources you would have with only single machines.

Energy

As you explore, craft, and gather, you’ll need to keep an eye on your energy meter. Every action you take slowly depletes this meter, and once it runs out you won’t be able to do anything anymore. If you’re out in the field and need to keep working, you can eat some food to fill your energy back up.

There are plenty of things you can eat out in the wild, such as bush limes. However, eating these things on their own will only give you a small amount of energy in return, and you can only eat three pieces of food at a time.

If you want to maximize your energy restoration, you’ll want to eat proper, prepared meals, which can only be crafted at a food table. The recipes you’ll follow for these food items will of course require a bunch of ingredients, but the amount of energy they restore makes all of the collecting worth it.

Craft the best food in large quantities so you never have to double back to base in the middle of your resource gathering.

Dinkum Fishing Guide: Fish Like a Pro

Dinkum – The Ultimate Cooking Guide and Recipes

Dinkum Mining: The Ultimate Guide

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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