Checklists
All Interactive Maps and Locations
Enshrouded Beginner's Guide: Things to Do First
Enshrouded is an open-world survival RPG, where the world of Embervale has been overtaken by a deadly shroud. You take on the role of a Flameborn, whose task is to awaken other survivors and rid the world of the destructive fog. With so much to see and do, this Beginner’s Guide covers all you need to know before you use the power of the Flame to explore different regions, craft bases and workshops, and battle a slew of enemies that stand in your way.
Looking for something in particular to get started? Jump to:
- Basic Gameplay Mechanics
- Things to Do First
- 1. Build a Glider
- 2. Build a Grappling Hook
- 3. Craft a Wand
- 4. Find the Survivors
- 5. Stock Up on Essential Resources
- 6. Use the Blacksmith for Your First Build
- 7. Unlock Key Skills
- 8. Destroy All Shroud Roots and Clear Elixir Wells
- 9. Get The Wailing Blade
- 10. Runes, Runes, and More Runes!
- 11. Upgrade Your Backpack
- 12. Have a Meal and Take Snacks!
Enshrouded Beginner's Guide: Basic Game Mechanics
Enshrouded's Basic Mechanics | |
---|---|
The Shroud | |
Exploration | Building |
Crafting | Combat |
The Shroud
It goes without saying that a crucial part of the storyline and your gameplay experience in Enshrouded revolves around the Shroud. It’s not just roaming enemies that will be trying to take you down as you explore, but the consuming fog will too. All across the map, you'll see areas where the fog has taken over, making these spaces dangerous to enter.
There are also two types of Shroud, which you can distinguish by color. You can enter the blue Shroud but the amount of time you can do this for will depend on the strength of your Flame Altar. Red Shroud, on the other hand, is Deadly Shroud, and you won’t be able to enter this for more than a few seconds until you’ve strengthened your Flame Altar.
Become One with the Shroud
It’s essential to explore the Shroud just as thoroughly as the safer parts of Embervale, as it has unique materials needed for upgrades, and Elixir Wells, where you can find Shroud Roots that will give you skill points.
Exploration
There is a main quest line to follow throughout the game, which will keep you moving through the different regions. Completing these quests will also encourage you to strengthen your Flame Altar to access new areas and upgrade your gear to cope with the increased difficulty levels. As part of these quests, you’ll unlock Ancient Spires and need to read Obelisks, which will show you the locations of Shroud Roots, Flame Sanctums, and Flame Altars. However, there are points of interest and additional locations to find that only come from a thorough exploration of the map.
Essentially, the more you explore, the more you’ll be rewarded in Enshrouded. Look for notices on billboards and scrolls -- whether inside caves, in enemy camps, or even scattered around the Shroud. You can spot these by looking for a reddish hue that shines brightly around them.
By collecting these Lore Pages, you’ll not only learn more about Embervale, but these will often mark new points of interest on your map or begin side quests. Often, these points of interest contain hidden treasures, that you might need to excavate or track down in secret rooms. Completing these retrieval side missions will reward you with better equipment, weapons, and sometimes even crafting upgrades.
Building
Building isn’t just there to establish yourself a fancy base and keep nearby enemies out, it offers practice benefits for your character and your ability to explore the world further. First and foremost, your base will be where you receive the Rested buff. It’s worth investing time and energy into making your base cozy, as the higher your comfort level, the better your Rested buff will be.
In addition to this, upgrading your Flame Altar will allow you to make a bigger base. Meanwhile, strengthening your Flame Altar ensures you can survive in the shroud for longer.
Crafting
The more your craft, the more you learn! You’ll start the game with a simple set of crafting recipes, but you'll soon have hundreds in your repertoire. First up you'll want to craft some essential equipment like an axe and pickaxe, but as you forage further and excavate rocks, you'll soon have a huge library of resources that will allow you to craft weapons, ammo, potions, and more.
Combat
The combat you experience in the game will range from fighting creatures and bugs in small groups to taking on big boss fights. You'll need to engage in melee and ranged combat fighting styles, depending on the enemies you'll go against. But with a host of skills to unlock in the Skills Tree, and different weapons to try out, combat can look however you want it to.
Beginner's Guide: Things to Do First
By following the main questline and exploring all there is to do in Embervale, you're going to sink a lot of hours into Enshrouded. To prepare for the long journey ahead, here are the things we recommend you spend the first few hours doing.
1. Build a Glider
You can unlock the recipe for the Glider as early as the cave passage you take from the Cinder Vaults to the plains. Defeat the creatures in here, and when you loot your bodies you'll pick up Shroud Spores. This is needed to craft the Glider, so it'll immediately unlock when you pick these up.
You'll also need Shroud Wood, however, which you can get from chopping down trees in the Shroud. Head off into the Shroud to follow the second questline, but feel free to come back and craft your Glider before completing it, so you'll have the handy tool early on. This can be used to fly across Embervale, but it uses up stamina when doing so, so keep an eye on the wheel.
Bonus Point!
Unlock the Airborne Skill in the Assassin Skill Tree to reduce Stamina consumption when using the Glider by 30%.2. Build a Grappling Hook
When you've found the Blacksmith, you'll also encounter a group of Scavengers at the entrance of the Ancient Vault. Scavengers will have Metal Scraps on them, which you'll need to build a Grappling Hook. Loot the area around the Ancient Vault, and their bodies to pick up enough Metal Scraps to at least get this key piece of kit equipped early on.
You can't go very far with exploration or completing the main story without the Grappling Hook, so you should get this and the Glider equipped as soon as possible!
3. Craft a Wand
If you want to get straight into ranged attacks but don't want to wait to find or craft ammunition, then use a wand! You just need 2 Bones to make a basic version of it and it never requires any ammo. It's also a great way to save backpack and storage space, as opposed to a Staff, which requires charges. You'll also regularly find variants that use different elemental attacks as you explore Embervale.
4. Find the Survivors
Five different survivors dwell in the Ancient Vaults across the Springlands (the first area you’ll explore). You can awaken them all fairly early on in the game so focus on completing this! The quicker you get them all, the better, as each of them has different skills, which will expand your recipes and crafting abilities significantly.
The first of the craftspeople you’ll unlock is the Blacksmith. You’ll then be able to get the Hunter and the Alchemist. To get the Farmer and the Carpenter, you’ll need to work with the Hunter and the Alchemist, as only completing their quests will get you all five of them. Once you have them in your base, they’ll have certain conditions you need to meet to appear initially. This is typically just Sheltered, so ensure you have a roof and some walls around your Flame Altar.
- Blacksmith
- Hunter
- Alchemist
- Farmer
- Carpenter
5. Stock Up on Essential Resources
A lot of the early recipes in the game require the same materials, so you'll want your storage chests overflowing with them to unlock everything quickly. Here's what we'd recommend you focus on:
- Wood Logs and Stone - Using your Axe and Pickaxe will have your pockets filled to the brim with wood and stone in no time at all. These are going to be used to make important factories for each of your survivors and turned into other resources, so we can't stress that you always want to have these in abundance.
- Plant Fiber - String is used to make almost everything at the beginning, including the Grappling Hook and the Glider. You can make String wherever you go, by using the Manual Crafting Menu to make it from Plant Fiber. Get used to tapping E as you run around and pick up ALL the plans you can find. You can never have too much Plant Fiber (or too many twigs for that matter).
- Metal Scraps - These are a little trickier to come by, as you'll need to find Scavengers either in mines or encampments and take them down to get hold of Metal Scraps. Recipes either require Metal Scraps or Metal Sheets, so you'll want to craft the Blacksmith's Kiln and Forge to get your scraps into sheets as soon as possible!
- Salt - The first time you're shown that Salt mine, mine as much of it as you can! You'll need it for the backpack upgrade.
- Sparks - You'll need these for upgrading your Flame Altar, so you'll want to go around and find all of the Flame Sanctums and Flame Shrines. You can revisit these to collect Sparks more than once, so keep doing this every so often to stock up on Sparks and ensure you've always got them when the time comes to strengthen your flame.
6. Use the Blacksmith for Your First Build
Once you have the Blacksmith, you can start to work on your character and get them kitted out in some of the Best Early Game Armor. We'd recommend making the Rising Fighter Set, which will give you a health buff and improve your regeneration. It's a level 8 Armor set that you can get around Level 3, so it sets you up for the long haul until you can craft Armor available from other survivors that fit your playstyle or you find some hidden treasures along the way.
7. Unlock Key Skills
If you're mining, finding points of interest, and battling everything in sight, you're going to level up fast. There are general skills in gold that sit in the center of the Skill Tree, although there are plenty of options to choose from, we'd recommend getting these 5, which will cost you a total of 10 Skill Points.
Skill | Cost |
---|---|
Merciless Attack | 2 Skill Points |
Power Parry | 2 Skill Points |
Sneak Attack | 3 Skill Points |
Backstab Damage | 2 Skill Points |
Well Rested | 1 Skill Point |
These skills will have you buffed each time you rest at your base, and give you two types of attacks that you can perform. Merciless Attack is enhanced by the Power Parry, which will work alongside your Shield and its Parry Power. Sneak Attack, on the other hand, benefits from the increased backstab damage.
Once you've got these, you'll want to start unlocking skills across the different branches that work with either the Ranger, Mage, or Warrior classes available in the game. Not sure which builds to go for? Take a look at Best First Skills: Enshrouded Early Game Builds.
8. Destroy All Shroud Roots and Clear Elixir Wells
Unlocking Ancient Spires and reading Obelisks will show you any Elixir Wells and Shroud Roots you don't happen to stumble across yourself. Each time you're going to take one of these down, you'll receive Skill Points and if it's guarded by a boss, you'll also get loot with higher rarities and lots of XP!
9. Get The Wailing Blade
A unique Legendary Weapon so early in the game? Don't mind if we do! You might get lucky and pick up a Legendary version of a weapon when you clear the first Elixir Well and defeat the Fell Thunderbrute, but if not, the Wailing Blade can be there to see you through the first few hours.
Head for The Alchemist's Ancient Vault, but before you step inside, pick up the Lore Page to the south. This will send you on a small side quest to the Scavenger Stash not far from the Ancient Vault. Inside, you'll find a gold glowing chest (indicating the loot is Epic or Legendary), with the unique Wailing Blade.
Bonus Point!
When you have this equipped, it also acts as a torch, so no more worrying about journeying into dark caves or out and about at night!10. Runes, Runes, and More Runes!
Getting hold of weapons with higher rarities also allows you to enhance your equipment at the Blacksmith, Hunter, or Alchemist. The higher the rarity, the more slots the weapon has for upgrades. To upgrade them, however, you need Runes... and sometimes, quite a lot.
The best way to get Runes early on is to slay enemies in the Shroud and salvage any weapons that just aren't doing it for you. Once again, the higher rarities receive an added benefit here, as you'll receive more Runes for salvaging them.
11. Upgrade Your Backpack
If you can, skip the small upgrade size and jump straight to the medium! You'll want as many of those extra pockets as possible to forage, harvest, and mine all that you can.
Learn How to Upgrade Your Backpack
Want to know how to get this crucial upgrade? See our How to Increase Inventory/Backpack Size page.12. Have a Meal and Take Snacks!
Get in the habit of eating a good meal before you venture off and taking the right food with you. Get water to help with your Stamina, whether that's near your base or looting from enemies. Hunt any animals you find, then cook any meat obtained from them to give you a health boost.
Pick fruits and vegetables where you go! Each of these has different benefits, and you'll always want a stack of Purple Berries for health regeneration early on. Once you get to Revelwood, you can also add Strawberries to your health regeneration snacks, and food like Hazelnuts to increase your strength.