When you first get going on the Ikonei Island, it partly guides you into the basic gameplay loop of what how you will be uncovering and rebuilding the island. It's pretty linear leading you into the Heartlands, but once you do it starts to open up significantly while giving you some high level objectives, leaving it up to you to figure out how you want to progress.

As we move forward in this Getting Started Guide, feel free to do some extra exploring. This guide won't be a comprehensive walkthrough for the game. It will help get your initial setup in place to unlock some early necessary things and help you just get going. Also keep in mind that if you run out of inventory space or it's night time, you may have to do some extra running back and forth to clear inventory or go to sleep to reset back to day, even if I don't mention it to be able to continue on.

There is a lot of materials/items that starts getting thrown at you pretty quickly and little help in terms of how to get to them or where they are at. So I this section will just provide short path to help get you going.

On the way there, you'll be asked to pick up the Mech Arms on a broken Bridge. Hold onto that for the time being, there are 2 other parts we'll need to find. We'll use them all soon enough.

Getting into and opening up the Heartlands is pretty linear.

• You'll get in, see a cutscene
  
• There's a frog/statue to talk to
  
• Can only head right/east, another frog/statue teaches combat
  
• Keep heading east to meet Sariel and learn about Shrines and Construction Altars
  
• Sariel mentions her Garden and getting help from a Longhorn

At this point, you should find some more Long Grass laying around plus the Longhorns grazing around the area. You'll need to have 2x Long Grass in your inventory. With the Long Grass selected, approach a Longhorn until it prompts you to feed it - do so twice.

Doing this will cause you to become friends with the Longhorn, which allows you to use its abilities to break rock. Animal friends requires upkeep to keep them happy:

• Feed them when they are hungry
  
• Pet them when they want attention
  
• Water them when they are dirty
  
• Go to sleep at night when they are tired

If you click the "Listen" prompt when the cursor is on your animal companion, there is a "Check" prompt that will tell you want your companion is wanting in that instance. Generally, you only need to just feed and pet it, unless you can see the musty cloud around it - then you need to water it down to clean it up. In the Listen screen, you can also Bond with your companion, where you effectively take control of them for the time being.

Once you have your Longhorn friend, head all the way West, where you'll see a bunch of rocks blocking your path. Command your Longhorn to break the rocks. Continue along the path and shortly, you'll see it open up on the South-side of the path, and Sariel will be waiting for you. Approach her and she'll give you a short description about farming.

Just South of her, you'll see the Chest she mentions surrounded by bramble. The nearby Frog/statue will tell you about crafting a hatchet. This is done by going into your inventory, navigating to the crafting page, and using 1x Branch, 1x Rock, 1x Long Grass to craft a Hachet.

You can now access the Chest. Also note, that anytime you use equipement such as the Hatchet or Leaf Blade, a durability meter decreases until it breaks - at which point you need to craft another. If you need some extra room

The chest contains all the essentials you need to begin gardening:

• Talk to Sariel before you start gardening
  
• use the Hoe to dig a couple plots
  
• use the Donut Bush Seeds on the plots to plant them
  
• use the Watering Can to water the plants

Now that you have the watering can, you may notice your Longhorn has that musty cloud. Hover over him and hold the Water button until the meter fills up, then release, and you'll see that musty cloud go away! You can also water multiple plants at a time by standing in between several plots.

While you're here, there is a half-buried Construction Altar requesting 5x Branches and 5x Leaves to build a treehouse. May as well get that done. There is more inside to do, but you won't be quite ready to tackle much of that quite yet.

Making the Tree House also gives you the recipe for making a bed. You can either just grab one of the sleeping mats on the ground here, or shortly we'll be able to craft the bed (which I elected to do, sleep in style). Either way, I suggest carrying a bed around with you to just sleep whenever it its night.

Once you've done all that, it may hit night time. Find the nearby beds and go to sleep. The next day, you'll notice the Donut Bush plants have sprouted. Use the Pollen Bag on them, and you'll be able to immediately harvest your Donut Fruit. Talk to Sariel again to finish the Garden quest.

At this point, Sariel will show up back in the center area of the Heartlands. So you should go and talk to her. She'll ask you to repair one of the buildings around the center area for her. There are 4 total there but only 2 are readily available to be fixed up:

• Workshop (Upper-Left)
  
• Farmhouse (Lower-Right)

... and they both require at least 1 more Shrine to be repaired, which is a common thing for progression - needing to repair increasing number of Shrines to unlock certain Altars. For now there is 1 shrine we can easily repair to help us get going, so let's do that!

Head west and follow the fork South, where you will get a surprise visit from Frogboy and learn about his S.E.L.L Chest and Ribbit currency. Approach the Construction Altar next to the S.E.L.L. Chest and you'll need:

• Branch x5
  
• Rock x10
  
• Donut Fruit x1

Which you should mostly already have. Give it all to the Altar to clear the stairs. At the bottom, you'll see another Construction Atlar and a statue waiting for a frog. This one will teach you about Crafting Tables, which is the Altar waiting for you to use to fix one. From here, head due South, and you'll see a statue for a Frog and the path heads south-east. Follow that to a bridge blocked by a boulder.

You'll need to summon your companion Longhorn, too, to help clear rock nodes and scrap piles for materials. If you see the bottom left on your screen, you'll notice the companion window with "Summon" and associated button.



Click this to summon your companion right to you. Odds are it'll be unhappy, so give it some food and pets and it'll perk right up. After crossing the bridge, swing West to pick up the Mech Chest. Head back up to the Construction Altar and you should have enough rock, or almost enough. Also, you'll just need to pop into your inventory, click the craft page and use 4 branches to craft 2 plank.

Note: If you fixed the Construction Table and have extra materials, this is when you can craft the bed, in-place of the sleeping mat.

Keep working your way East until Sariel pops up for a force scene. After she's done talk, pop up North/North-Westish and you'll find the Mech Head nestled in a corner. Keep working East until you come to a Construction Altar for a Bridge. There should be a Copper Ore Node next to it, which will help get you the materials needed. You'll need 5 Plank, which requires 10 branches to craft.

Head East more, past the Bridge, and you'll meet up with an Octo Hammerhead named Milas. Feed him one of your Donut Fruit and reach her dialogue. He will then open up a shop you can spend the Ribbits currency at, which includes an Inventory Expansion (adds a whole extra row). You can also pick up the Copper Claymore next to her, which will do wonders for fighting enemies.

Don't worry too much about the Inventory expansion, you won't have enough Ribbits to purchase it and we'll be getting one for super cheap soon enough.

From here head follow the trail south into the Froglet Grove. If you have Frogs you can place them on statues along the way. Keep following south along the Eastern rock-face until you can follow it East. Keep East along the rock-face and you'll eventually come to a Construction Altar for the Froglet Grove Shrine. You'll likely have everything you need for the Shrine, which is just Copper Ore and Long Grass.

After repairing the Shrine, you'll be able to approach and befriend the Axepeckers' here by feeding them 2 Donut Fruit (you can toggle between what companion you want to control, so you can have multiple at once.) The Axepeckers can chop down the large Stumps you're axe can't handle yet, and they will help cut down Brambles. Use your map to warp back to the Heartlands and head to the to the Garden.

Make sure you have all 3 Mech pieces - then from the Garden, and with your Longhorn companion, head West and you'll run into some stones at the top of some stairs blocking your path. Use the Longhorn to break these. In this area, you'll start to see a lot of red flower plants. If you uproot them, you'll receive Red Petals. There will also be a new animal Companion, Bibi, you can befriend as well by feeding it 2 Red Petals. Bibis can pollinate your plants in place of the Pollen Bag.

Follow the path North West, along the dirt path - you'll go up another set of stairs. Head West where you see the Frog/Statue and a Construction Atlar just past that. Feed all 3 Mech pieces to the Construction Altar to unlock the "Crafty Apparatus Titan", or C.A.T. Talk to him and he'll become another Shop, with his own Inventory Expansion purchase - don't worry if you can't afford this, especially if you aren't selling stuff at the S.E.L.L Chest. We'll also be getting one for super cheap pretty soon anyways.

Head back to the Heartland central area and to the Construction Altar for the Bottom-Right foundation (just South of Sariel). You'll need the following materials:

• Copper Ore x20
  
• Rock x35
  
• Long Grass x10
  
• Red Petal x5
  
• Donut Fruit x8

This will seem like a lot, as you've been using a lot of material but it's nothing overbearing. Just run around gathering until you have everything you need (you can turn in smaller amounts as well, until you have everything turned in). If you gather everything else, you'll just need to sleep to get your plants for progress.

Turn everything in, and you'll build the Farmhouse. Go talk to Sariel, she'll then disappear. Head into the Farmhouse and she'll set up in there. At this point, if you've been using the S.E.L.L Chest to get Ribbits, you'll be able to purchase an Inventory Expansion from her for only 50 Ribbits!

With that out of the way, go check out the Construction Altar for the Top-Left foundation, the Workshop. For this one you'll need:

• Log x20
  
• Cloth x10
  
• Rope x8

Seems a bit more daunting since we haven't seen these yet (you may have picked up some rope), but fear none! We'll have these fixed up in a jiffy. If you haven't looked at your crafting tab too much, go check it out now! You'll see a new recipe for "Loom" under the Work Stations section of the first page for Crafting Tools. You'll need a Crafting Station to make this - which I suggest making one to place over in this area. I personally placed mine over in the Garden area by the Chest.

Gather any materials you need, craft the Loom - place it down where ever you want. I placed mine next to my crafting bench. Now for the Cloth and Rope.

• For Cloth: place Leaves in the Loom to make Rough Thread 1:2. Then place the Rough Thread into the Loom to make Cloth 1:1
  
• For Rope: place Long Grass into the Loom to create Rope 1:1

So you'll need a total of 10 leaves and 8 Long Grass. If I haven't mentioned yet, Long Grass can either be found on the ground or is harvested from the various Grass nodes and Leaves either found on the ground or are harvested from small fern-like plants. Both you need to cut with a Hachet.

Now, we haven't mentioned the Logs yet - we're getting to that. You'll need to have your Axepecker companion summoned for this one (we don't have a tool strong enough to go solo). From your Garden, head West into the Blossom Meadows we just unlocked. Go all the way left until the path is blocked by a large Stump - use your Axepecker to break it down. Now you have Logs. You can also use your Axepecker to cut down targetable trees to get Logs, Branches, and Leaves.

After turning in all the items to build the Workshop, you'll get a new recipe for the Cutter. Grab the materials, craft your Cutter and a Crafting Station and place it down. With the Cutter place, you can now make:

• Rock --> Cut Rock (1:2)
  
• Plank --> Branch (1:4)
  
• Log --> Plank (1:4)
  
• {Color} Petal --> Pollen Bag (ratio dependent on color)
  
• Fish --> Fish Bone (ratio dependent on fish)

You've gotten yourself started now - Farmhouse & Workshops built in the Heartland; have a Loom and a Cutter, among other things setup. What's next? Well, I'll let you decide that!

The game aims you to heading to River Falls for the next Shrine, which requires Cut Rock to repair the stairs to get there. You likely found some Cut Rock from scrap piles, but likely not enough. Now that we have the Cutter, we can make Cut Rock pretty abundantly now from any rock we gather through Mining Nodes or other Rock Nodes. By getting the Loom and Cutter, it pretty much sets us up for really starting get going in the game.

Also, the next 2 builds in the Heartlands central area require 3 Shrines repaired to build - So River Falls Shrine is sort of the next natural place to head to. At this point just keep exploring and work on your Map ratings as you are able to. I have a "Map Rating" section in this guide that gives a brief look at how to increase the different rating points.

The order of Shrines for best progression seems to be as follows:

• Froglet Grove - unlock Axepecker
  
• River Falls - unlock Stormdogs
  
• Fenland Point - gather Mud / unlock Otterlot
  
• Sunless Horn / Desert Dunes / Highlands (can all be roughly done together)
  
• Tangled Mesa

After you repair 5 shrines, you'll be requested to go to the Enchanted Plateau briefly. There is no shrine there (there is something else!), but you can head there to uncover the map at the Scholar Satatue once you are in River Falls.

Another thing, you may have seen, is your Longhorn upgraded! If you look back at that companion icon:


There is a little bar arcing over the image the fills with yellow. As you interact with you animal companion to keep them happy and utilize them that bar will fill up. You can see in this image there is one little yellow/gold "star" indicator - once that yellow bar fills up your companion will level up:


You can see in this image how it has 2-stars now. Your companion will change appearance to indicate this level-up. It will also get stronger and be able to break through tougher material.

I mentioned briefly about Scholar Statues above. Seen below:


By placing a frog on these, it will reveal the map for that region. Instead of just being overlayed with a solid color, you'll be able to see the topography of the region. You will also need to find these to see the Ratings section for each region, as well. (note: there is one area, off the coast of Tangled Mesa that is uncovered by unlocking the area and doesn't have a Scholar Statue.)

When you look at the map, each region as a rating based on the things you accomplish on that region. There are icons associated with the tasks to complete as follows:

As you progress the the regions, there are different animal companions you can befriend that provide different skills to help you out. As discussed previously in the guide, by interacting with and using your animal companions they will gain a sort of "XP". When their "XP" meter fills, they level-up to a higher star level, which changes their appearance and allows them to tackle higher starred obstacles.

The Food Preference for each animal companion gauges how much satisfaction they gain from the item you feed them. When "Listen" to your companion, they will have a meter to show how happy they are:


Feeding foods they love / like will help increase this meter - along with petting and bathing. You can see the indicator with arrow statuses showing which direction their happiness is moving and how fast. If you "Check" with them, they will tell you want they want - generally it's just feed and pet, unless they have a musty cloud around them then also bathe; and if its night time, you need to go to bed because they are sleepy.

You need the meter to be in, at least, the yellow to "Bond" with them - allowing you to take over control of the companion completely vs just them following you around and "commanding" them to use their abilities.

All throughout the island, there are pirate camps to deal with. It'll be suggested to you to sneak in and using the cannons to destroy the Crows Nest. These camps are set up like little mazes with various Pirate Hogbunnies stationed throughout the maze, and a couple of Crows Nests at certain points.

One of these Crows Nests will have the Pirate Captain, this will be the focus. When sneaking around the maze, the Pirates will turn in different directions in timed sequences. You will see a colored telegraph space that displays out in front of where they are looking:


In the image above, there is a light Orange telegraph projecting out in front of the Pirate. This is the Pirate's line of sight. If you are caught in this, you will be transported out of the camp and have to work your way back in again. As mentioned, the Pirate's will routinely change the direction they are facing, so you will need to run past when the telegraph space is "blocking" your path. Different Pirates have different color telegraphs, dictating different movement patterns.

You aim is to make it to the cannons spread throughout the camp.


These are what you will be using to destroy the Crows Nests. The Pirate Captain will start on a particular Crows Nest. Not all cannons can reach all Crows Nests, so you will need to work your way to cannons that are in closer proximity to the Crows Nest the Captain is on. Approach the cannon and aim it at the Crows Nest with the captain.


Each cannon only shoots 1 time and then you need to find the next cannon to shoot again. After taking a number of hits (in the example I'm using, the Crows Nest needed 2 hits) the Crows Nest will go down and the Pirate Captain will appear on another Crows Nest. Rinse and Repeat.

Once all the Crows Nests are destroyed, the Pirate Captain will declare the "Ship" is lost and all the Pirates will clear out allowing you free reign to move around the camp.

This has been a guide by


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