Guides:Desert Island

This is the page for the Desert Island topic. If you have any guides, tricks, or advise for surviving and thriving on Desert Island, we encourage you to edit this page! =Landscape= Desert is a desert as far as materials go. The one re-deeming factor is its mithril location, which can be described as tedious to obtain at best. As for survival however, even the mithril isn't helping. Mithril, being an end game item, requires high smithing. No other metal exists on the island other than gold, making the mithril utterly useless, unless you're fond of occasional visits from players who could destroy you in an instant should they so choose. The island is made of sand, has no trees or direct water sources, and the only food is prickly pears, which couldn't feed you even if you spent your entire game running from one cactus to the next.

Despite this, it's not impossible, nor pointless to live on. The island is further away from its neighbours than any other island in the old map, and it's massive yellow plains are great for hiding sandstone buildings. The desert mountain also makes a great place for hiding at, as you cannot see behind or on top of it unless you are at the island itself. Should you know what your doing, you'll notice that having cooking 2 will allow you to make prickly pear juice from the cacti, turning each plant into 56 thirst. Effective use of farms and sickles make farming apples and berries a breeze, solving the tree problem, and those with sufficient ranged ability can even multi-wield longbows to fend off attackers without leaving the island for metals.

Overall, desert is a rough island, and one with few rewards to reap, but not an impossible one. Like all the other islands, it has advantages and disadvantages, should you know where to look, and knowing how to survive there could be the difference between getting killed by a tribe on a raiding spree or successfully defeating or avoiding them. =Soloist Survival - Core Survival= Desert island is quite what it says on the tin, a desert. Nothing special about it. In fact, the only real perk is the mithril nearby, which is largely useless unless you have done a lot of preparations beforehand, or just have a coin press and too much time on your hands. Nonetheless, it's pretty hardcore, so lots of skill is advised before you settle. It's not just the knowledge that you need, it's the instinct a veteran develops to glance at their stats every once in a while. Otherwise you'll be spending a while heading back to the island on your trusty raft.

Whatever you're planning to do after you arrive, the main concept here will be to farm, build, and bake. A lot. Before you arrive, you will need to bring berries, apples, wheat, and preferably an architecture skill of 4. Lots of trees and foliage is also very helpful while starting out, and a sickle is very helpful in the long run. Once you arrive, you should make a quick 6 small compost farm, and plant your berries (this harvest should feed you for long enough to finish creating baked goods), followed by a larger apple tree farm which will be more permanent. If you don't already have architecture 4, use the tree stumps to raise your skill level so you can make a sandstone well. You should make at least three, as they're slow to fill, and you'll need plenty of excess later on. It's tedious work, but worth it in the long run.

After you've done all that, make a wheat farm. Water is precious (surprise surprise), so you should first train your cooking through juices to get to level 3, and make pies from that point onwards. This saves on dough, which in turn saves on water, which is especially scarce at this point in your survival. After a while the wells should fill up, allowing you to act less frugal. For now, make sure your using the dough to the best your cooking skill will allow.

By this point, you should be largely in the clear for basic survival. Apple pies each last around 45 minutes when playing alone, so your first batch will most likely be your last. Weaponry is also extremely scarce, no stone can be obtained without a lantern and pickaxe (gold and mithril veins), so you will most likely have to make do with a longbow and battle club for the time being. You can certainly advance further, but not without lots of effort, and that certainly deserves its own guide. Whatever happens in the future, you can be sure to enjoy the challenges that desert island brings with it. Have fun! =Soloist Survival - Desert Mountain= The top of desert mountain is the very pinnacle of unreachability. With the single exception of artificial islands built outside/underneath the world, not even Snowpeak island's mountain is taller, and the added ledges along the way make climbing up an achievement of little skill. With a clear winner in the ways of reasonable hiding places, a way of actually living on top of a solid block of sandstone is required.

First, the preparations. What you do here largely defines what you can do later, so rushing through the minimums at this point is not advisable. To start out, you want a lot of trees and leaves, and at the very least, berries, apples and wheat (along with a ton of sand). Preferably you should also take herbs, flax, corn, and perhaps even mushrooms and moss, but there is always a limit. If you spend too long preparing you might find yourself out of time before you even get there. A large quantity of ladders is also a great idea, making 15-20 will make climbing up and down the mountain a lot easier. Another huge limitation will be the type of sickle you bring, bring none and you'll spend much more time than you saved collecting crops, bring a mithril one and the time saved probably isn't a good thing in the long run (although long sessions may create exceptions, who knows). A steel one is highly advised, as larger crops suffer greatly from an iron sickle, especially in large harvests.

Once you have all that, bring a handful of small stones and a couple prickly pears to the mountain. It is advised to climb up the back of the mountain, as a curious raider may follow you and kill you when you get there. Your stats probably will not be the greatest when you arrive, so quickly set up a six compost berry farm for temporary sustainment. Collect a few of the berries by hand and then eat the rest off the bush, it saves on the tedious work of placing berries and hoping they don't fly off into space (which is much closer where you are). Once you have done that you can farm apples, followed by wheat, and give them each their own farm, making sure the apple farm is plentifully big, tree stumps are hard to come by (while wheat comes in large quantities). If you brought flax, herbs, or corn, now would be the time to create a small farm for each of them. If you decided mushrooms were a good idea, you'll need to wait a bit, as your farming level is not going to be high enough.

Farm apples for a while, and make a handful of granaries, a pavilion and a mill, the pavilion instead of a hut because you can't craft very well while confined inside a hut. Create a lumbermill and make a catapult (emergency evacuation), and then create some quarries. Preferably 4, if not 2. These quarries will supply you with sandstone, which creates wells, required for dough and therefore most baked goods. Place these wells and create a bucket if you have not done so already, and collect some of your wheat and make dough. Create uncooked bread until level 3 cooking is achieved, at which point you should switch to pies. A granary full of these will keep you fed for a long time, so once you have made about 5-10 don't bother making any more unless you intend on dragging bread around to random islands to see if anyone notices. Even without the pie you will last well over an hour, so once you have made your first batch do not feel pressured to continue, save the water for drinking (or fireproofing).

At this point you will have pretty much everything you need to survive, however little to do. A common idea is to make a cacti wall around the area, and you certainly could make a huge barrier of cacti walls around the mountaintop, but it would be highly impractical and pointless, the actual numbers are around 100 prickly pear crops for a single, holed layer around the mountaintop, a couple thousand for a wall that could actually hold against a semi-determined raider, and 10k-15k crop harvests for a wall that could stop a guy who actively wanted you dead. By this point the server would have given up a long time ago and shut down from the strain of having an extra 40k green wielded bricks on it. A better idea however, would be to start to farm unauthordox crops, and/or make the place look a bit nicer. In fact, there are many things you could do, from fried chicken to dragging around poisoned pies onto random spots on the map. Whether you want to create fake grass from a layer of leaves or own a chicken army, there is always something you can do, and this guide bids you good luck on this journey. Because no guide, no matter how intricate, can cater for all the possibilities atop desert island mountain. =Tribal Survival - Core Survival= Somehow, for some reason, you managed to convince your friends that settling on desert was the smartest idea. Congratulations. However, there's no point in persuading them to come if you're just going to die out, so this guide is aimed at groups of 2-3 closely bonded friends who have moved to desert island to live there.

For obvious reasons, desert island will not be a piece of cake to live at. It is one of the most isolated, tough as nails, pointless to live at islands. The only perk is the mithril, which you'll need to do a large amount of preparations beforehand to take advantage of anyway, and isn't a first priority when you arrive. You should make sure you bring berries, apples, wheat, lots of trees and leaves, and a handful of small stones for quarries. Before you set out, you should also have a collective nibble at the canyon berry deposit to restore your hunger and thirst, and fill your buckets at the cave water source. You'll need the backlog while starting out to avoid dying when you get there.

After you arrive, you should all work together to set up a farm, with a pre-assigned farmer planting a 9 crop berry plantation and a large apple tree farm. Forage a handful of berries (10-11) and eat the rest as time goes by. Use some of the trees you brought to make a hut, granary, mill, lumbermill, and a handful of extras if your architecture still doesn't reach four. Once you do get four architecture, forage the sandstone outside the desert mountain, and make as many wells as you can with them. Place them near the farm, and hopefully the sandstone should be regenerated by that point so you can continue to create more until you have around 5, enough to sustain everyone and allow for baking, assuming you use a bucket. The hardest part is over, and now all the basics are set up. Your still not quite prepared however, as it's still far too crude and rudimentary for survival.

As your architect makes some quarries for mass sandstone building production, the farmer should focus on creating bread, pies, and possibly other types of food depending on what you brought with you, and try and create a large backlog of foods so that the farm can be focused on material farming, such as trees and cacti. Longbows and battle clubs should also be created as temporary weapons for until you collect a good source of ores and stone. Your core survival is complete, however you have a long way to go before you can truly think of yourself as safe. Your hunger is no longer a threat, but the outside world is. The issue is that protecting yourself on desert island is hard, one of the many threats of desert island. This guide ends here, but your adventure does not. Enjoy the challenge and difficulties of desert island, as many will come your way. Good luck!