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This is a guide designed for first time players of One Hour One Life to get started as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Tutorial and server selection
Complete the tutorial. When the game offers death via the room full of rattlesnakes, dont take it. Keep playing until you die of old age at least once. Try picking up various items and go through the full tab list of recipes.
Go here in a web browser http://onehouronelife.com/reflector/server.php?action=report and find an empty server.
In the main menu settings, check custom server box and enter the url of the empty server. They are all in the format of serverX.onehouronelife.com where X is the number of the official server.
1. Explore
Find a small round stone, sharpen it on a big hard rock, then keep it with you at all times during this phase.
Berries, bananas, wild onion and fruiting cactus can be picked with your bare hand. Carrots and burdock must be cut with your sharp stone before you can eat them.
Badlands and swamps generally have no food you can use til later game. Deserts have cactus, but fruiting cactus are very rare. Green grasslands, Yellow Praries, and Jungles are the places you need to be if you need to eat, preferably you are already there before you even reach half food bar. Praries tend to have less food then green grasslands, and jungles are more dangerous.
Before you move on to the settle phase, you need to find 2 reed bundles in the swamp, cut them with your sharp stone, move them from the spot you cut them, then combine then to make a basket. Put your sharp stone in the basket, then fill the other 2 spots with extra food. From this point on, if your basket is ever empty of food, make it a priority to find more, even if you are nearly full on your food bar.
2. Settle
During this phase, you are looking for a very large plot of green grassland with several berry bushes/onion/burdock, milkweed, trees with hanging branches, fertile soil piles, and a few saplings. It must also be near to a decent sized swamp and at least a small yellow prarie.
Use your sharp stone to cut a sapling and pick up the skewer, put it in your basket with the sharp stone. Find a round stone and put in your basket as well.
The exact center of your home camp should be very near a goose pond for a source of water, and a juniper tree and maple tree for fire starting. Place the skewer on the ground and hammer it in with the round stone. You now have a home marker and can always find your camp no matter how far you wander.
Now that you have a camp, keep in mind a few of the rules of short term village sustainability. Try not to pick the last berry from a wild berry bush, as one berry will respawn every 10 minutes or so, but picking the last berry will kill the bush. If you need to cut a wild carrot to eat it, use your bare hand to pick the carrot seed first and drop it on the ground first before you cut the plant. Try to pick milkweed when they are fruiting, set down the milkweed stalk, then click the pile of milkweed debris and drop a few milkweed seeds on the ground.
If you are inexperienced, don’t try to raise a child until you reach at LEAST the end of this phase. Apologize and tell the baby you are new, and move on.
3. Fire and pottery
Make sure you are full on food and have a bit extra in your basket. Leave the basket behind in your camp, and find 4 straight branches from maple trees and one curved branch. You can pick these with your bare hands from maple trees and poplar trees. Then collect at least 2 more branches from either those trees or yew trees. Bring all these back to your camp. These 3 trees occur almost entirely in the green grasslands.
Use your sharp rock on a flint stone to create pile of flint. Pick up a flint chip with your bare hand and put it the basket. Bring back 1-2 flint chips to your camp.
Use the sharp stone once on 4 of the straight branches to create 4 long shafts. Use the sharp stone once on 2 of those long shafts to create 2 short shafts. Use the flint chip once on 1 of those long shafts to create wooden tongs. Use the sharp stone once on the curved branch to create curved shaft.
Take your basket and search for milkweed in the green grasslands. Pick it with your bare hand, and put it in your basket. You must combine 2 milk weed stalks on the ground to make a thread, and 2 threads to make a rope. Once you have 2 ropes in camp, you can continue onto the next step.
Find another round stone and sharpen it on a big hard rock, then bring it back to your camp. You should have 2 sharp rocks 1 flint chip, and 1 round stone in camp at this point.
Combine one rope with a short shaft to create a tied short shaft, and combine the other rope with the curved shaft to create a bow drill bow. Pick up the remaining short shaft and combine it with the bow drill bow to create a fire bow drill. Combine the extra sharp stone with the tied short shaft to create a hatchet.
Use the hatchet on 2 of your remaining branches to create 2 piles of kindling. You should have a fire bow drill, a long straight shaft, and 2 piles of kindling at this point.
Take your basket and sharp rock and go to the swamp. Set the basket down and pick up 2 piles of clay with your hands, putting them in your basket. Find tule reeds and cut them with your sharp stone. Set a ball of clay on empty ground, pick the reed bundle up and combine them with the clay to make adobe. Put the adobe in your basket and bring it back to your camp. Repeat until you have 3-4 adobe.
Fill your basket with more clay from the swamp, leaving the piles in camp until you have 4-6 clay.
-Use a round stone on 1 of the adobe to create an adobe oven base. Use the round stone once on the regular clay balls to create a wet clay bowl. Use the round stone on a wet clay bowl to create a wet clay plate. You should have at least 2 wet clay bowls and plates at this point.
Take another adobe and place it on the adobe oven base to create an adobe oven. Use another adobe on the oven to create an adobe kiln.
Collect a leaf from a maple tree with your bare hand. You need to pick the straight branch first if the tree has one. Collect juniper tinder from a juniper tree with your bare hand. Bring the leaf and tinder back to camp.
Use the fire bow drill on the long straight shaft to light it. Take the leaf and use it on the smoking straight shaft to light the leaf, then use the leaf on the juniper tinder to light the tinder. Take a pile of kindling and place it on the smoking tinder to create a small fast fire.
Put the remaining pile of kindling in the adobe kiln, pick up the long straight shaft and use it on the small fast fire to create a firebrand. Use the fire brand on the adobe kiln to light the kiln.
You need to work quickly at this point to fire all your bowls and plates before the kiln goes out. Pick up your wooden tongs and left click a bowl or plate to pick it up. Left click the kiln to fire the clay plate/bowl, then right click the ground to drop the finished bowl/plate. Repeat til all of your pottery has been fired.
4. Farming
Use an empty basket on a fertile soil pile to pick it up, then dump it in your camp. Get 2 baskets full. The basket will carry small 3 piles of soil but you want to form piles of 2 for best efficiency, so use a clay bowl to pick up 1 small pile and seperate it, then do the same with the other large basket pile, dumping the bowl of soil on the first small pile you seperated. You should have 3 seperate piles of 2 small piles of soil now.
Gather a few extra skewers. You can make a stone hoe instead, but this requires rope and a long straight branch and is only somewhat more durable than skewers, so skewers are cheaper and easier to start farming with.
Use the skewer on the piles of soil to create a deep tilled row.
Pick a gooseberry and use a flint on it to create a gooseberry seed. Place the seed in a deep tilled row.
Use an empty clay bowl on a goose pond to fill it with water. Dump the water on the soil with the planted gooseberry seed. Goose ponds have 3 visible water levels, and will refill over time unless you fully drain them, so try and find a different pond if the pond looks almost empty.
If you pick the last gooseberry from a domestic gooseberry bush, it will turn brown after a few minutes. Use a clay bowl to pick up one small pile of soil and place on the languishing or dying gooseberry bush to save it from death. Then at your leisure, water the bush with another bowl of water to start growth of more berries.
After you have several planted and watered gooseberry sprouts, pick a carrot seed from a wild carrot with your hand and plant it directly into a deep tilled row. Water with clay bowl as usual. Carrots require more care than gooseberries. After about 4 minutes, they will turn into a row of carrots. You can pick all of the carrots now, or wait another 5 minutes and they will go seed, yielding no carrots but several more seeds.
Once you have a thriving berry and carrot farm, you can move on to planting wheat seeds and milkweed seeds in a similar way to carrot seeds. Pick the milkweed plants only when they are in the fruiting stage unless you have several milkweed seeds laying around, to keep a slow supply of milkweed stalks flowing into your village. Wheat seeds can be picked freely from farmed ripe wheat to expand the production of your wheat farm.
Cut the wheat with a sharp stone, then use a straight or curved branch on it to thresh it, seperating the grain from the straw. The straw may be used with clay for more adobe, and 2 bundles of straw may be combined to make more baskets for better storage/organization or for your kids’ usage.
5. Advanced skills
At this point, you should have a decently thriving farm and can accept babies freely. With a properly maintained farm, your village will survive until your children run out of nearby fertile soil, water, branches, etc. If you were playing on an empty custom server, and another child was born to you, you can die of old age and will likely respawn into your village. Alternatively, you may uncheck the custom server box in settings and start playing the game the way the developer originally intended. The next skills to learn are cooking, trapping of rabbits with slings, sewing clothing, farming of advanced cooking crops such beans, squash, etc, and lastly, smithing.