Flotsam Beginner Guide

The opening town

You begin with three drifters and you can reroll them as many times as you like. A Quick Start written for version 0.3.7 says each person has two story fragments, about 90 combinations, and attribute bonuses of either two +5s or one +10, totalling somewhere from 0 to 20. The wiki instead says the opening guarantees one +5 or two +3s. Both notes are from Early Access. I print them side by side and I do not pick a winner for 1.0.

Open priorities with Y. Set every task to 2 first, then raise the jobs that match a person’s high attribute. You do not steer people directly. Map is M, research is O, production is P, pause is Space, and 1, 2 and 3 change speed. Those keys are from the wiki’s control list.

Build order that still matches later guides

The 0.3.7 Quick Start builds a Plastic Recycler so floaters queue themselves, then two Drying Racks and two Small Storage Yards, a woodworking saw, a Manual Generator, a Desalinator, a Scrapsmith, a mooring point, a fishing boat and fish sticks. I still use that spine because the Staying Alive guide, written much later, agrees on the scarcity: water, then food, then fuel. One firewood cooks one meal or makes one batch of fresh water. A seaweed node of about 20 units becomes about four salads. Wood becomes about 40 firewood. Leave metal, tools, oil and batteries on the beach until the yards exist.

Version 1.0 adds upgrades and new specialists this opening does not cover. Treat the build order as a pre-1.0 spine checked against later water and power pages, not as a quest the game prints for you. The research tree page is the next stop once the Research Station (4 by 4, 8 floaters and 6 planks in the codex) is up.

Questions