14 Tips and Tricks for Beginners in Smalland: Survive the Wilds

After fully completing Smalland, I am ready to share my knowledge about the most important game mechanics that can greatly accelerate your progress and improve your overall gaming experience. This article contains the most useful tips, secrets, and tricks for Smalland that I managed to discover in the process. If you know of any additional hidden or non-obvious mechanics, please write about them in the comments, and I will add them to the article. Let’s begin!

Build Bridges

Your character in Smalland cannot swim and will immediately drown if you jump into a stream. Because of this, moving from one shore to another can be a problem for a beginner. But few people know that you can build a bridge over a small river! To do this, place a foundation, and then use roof parts to create a crossing over the body of water. By spending 10 minutes on this, you will save hours of extra running in the future. Check out the Smalland beginner’s guide. You will find more useful information there about starting properly in the game.

“Teleport” to Respawn Point

There is no actual “teleport” in the game. However, you can set a respawn point (place a bed and activate it with the “F” key) and then restart the game by exiting to the main menu. Wherever your character is, they will appear at the respawn point. In this way, you can teleport from one end of the map to the other in a matter of seconds.

Furthermore, this mechanic can save your character from death. For example, if you fall into a river and start drowning, you have a few seconds to exit to the menu. On advanced keyboards (or autoclickers), you can probably even set up a macro. However, you can always just instantly close the game with Alt + F4, and that will work too. Note that these mechanics have not been tested in multiplayer, so they may work differently or not at all.

Use Antenna Sense

This is a special sense that your character possesses. It highlights not only resources and enemies but also the resistances / vulnerabilities of mobs. By default, Antenna Sense should be assigned to the “V” key, but you can always change it in the settings. Experienced players may find this tip too obvious, but beginners who don’t know about this mechanic may face serious difficulties at the start.

This is especially true for the vulnerabilities and resistances of the mobs inhabiting Smalland. Always check which type of damage a mob is resistant to and which it is vulnerable to. Otherwise, you won’t be able to deal proper damage to enemies, especially bosses.

Build Shelters

The game has a weather system and even a change of seasons. In addition to the player being affected by the temperature of the environment, weather effects (e.g., storms) also damage the player’s structures. That’s why you should never build your base under the open sky. Otherwise, at some point, you may find that your crafting stations have simply disappeared from where you left them!

A shelter in Smalland is considered to be a structure with a foundation, roof, and at least three walls. It’s easy to check if a shelter is built correctly: just place a regular bed inside and try to sleep on it at night. If the game allows you to do so, everything is fine.

During a storm, the player should be in such a shelter; otherwise, they will take damage and eventually die. Before the storm begins, you will receive a characteristic notification. You will have enough time to build a small hut and wait out the bad weather inside.

The cold also affects the character. Each armor in the game has a cold resistance indicator. If the resistance is insufficient (for example, when winter comes), the character will start to freeze. In this case, you should light a fire and stand next to it to warm up. Even better – put on warmer armor!

Use the Smalland resource map

I created it after fully completing the game. The map contains a large number of markers that will help you find the necessary resources.

Use the Smalland resource and creature database

The database was created manually through experimentation. It contains information about all creatures, resource deposits, and plants available in the game. The entire database is located on the 1 page and has a field for quickly searching for things that interest you. Enjoy!

Tame a Grasshopper as Soon as Possible

As soon as you get the opportunity to tame a grasshopper (when you receive the Grasshopper Treat recipe), you should do so immediately. The process is quite simple: you need to put 1 Grasshopper Treat in your inventory, then attack a Grasshopper and leave it with less than half health. After that, you can approach it and select the “Tame” option in the interaction dialogue.

The challenge for a beginner may be obtaining Insect Eggs, which are required for crafting. They can be obtained from ladybugs. The other ingredients can be gathered from poppies, which are abundant near Skadi.

The grasshopper will become an excellent mount and significantly speed up your movement in the world. For example, you will be able to jump from one shore to another or jump from any height without taking damage. But be careful: hostile creatures will attack your pet. After taming, no creature in Smalland becomes stronger than it was before. So try to keep your mount away from battles. It will be of little use there. You might even accidentally kill it yourself.

Learn how to tame other creatures: Ladybug, Gecko, Wolf Spider, and Damselfly.

Claim a Great Tree

Great Trees are huge oaks that can only be found in the main game biome. You can build your base at the top of such an oak.

To do this, you must first climb the oak using the chain of mushrooms that grow all around its trunk to the very top, and then talk to a special NPC to claim your rights to this Great Tree.

Great Trees are a key mechanic in Smalland. You can easily move your base between them by simply talking to the NPC gnome of another Great Tree. Due to their height, Great Trees allow the player to fly from one end of the map to the other (if the player has armor with built-in wings). And of course, you will be completely safe on top of such an oak. It is highly recommended to get a Great Tree as soon as possible. This will save you a lot of time.

Craft Regal Armor with Wings and Grapple Gun as Soon as Possible

Regal armor with built-in wings is available to the player almost from the beginning of the game. It can be crafted at NPC Drustana, who lives in a hive in the northeast. By the way, you can always find about 10 units of Honey Crumble for free at Drustana’s hive, and she won’t be angry if you just take them 😉.

The only problem is that you will need a Loom & Spindle workstation to create Textile Patches, which are necessary for crafting the armor itself. As soon as it becomes available, head to the swamps in the west and gather Silk from spider cocoons (be careful, the spiders are very venomous). You will also need to build a Tannery to create Herptile Leather from Herptile Hides, which can be obtained from Geckos on the southern shores, near the Rhino Beetle.

Don’t be lazy to craft this armor. You will only regret not doing it sooner. The wings built into the Regal chest piece allow the player to glide instead of falling. Essentially, you will be able to fly by jumping off your Great Tree, and for very long distances. This will save you a tremendous amount of time.

With the Loom & Spindle workstation, you can also create a Grapple Gun. Simply put, it’s a tool that shoots Hook ammunition, like Spider-Man (yes, that one) shoots his web. With this tool, you will be a real Spider-Man in this game! However, using it at great heights without wings is strongly discouraged. But when combined with the Regal chest piece, it will allow you to fly across the entire map in less than a minute.

Hold the “F” Key to Pick Up All Items at Once

I personally didn’t learn about this feature right away, so at first, I had to click “F” many times. However, if you simply hold down the key, all items that have enough space in your inventory will be picked up automatically. It’s a small detail, but it’s nice.

Repair Your Equipment as Often as Possible

Equipment can be repaired at a crafting table. The thing is, when equipment is only slightly damaged, its repair is completely free (resources are not required).

In the current version of the game (early access), this mechanic works a bit oddly, and I don’t quite understand where the item’s damage threshold is, after which it starts requiring resources for repair. There’s a chance that this mechanic has a random element. Nevertheless, it has been noted that if you repair equipment while it’s still in good condition (less than ~30% damaged), the repair doesn’t require resources.

Build Beds, Camps, and Outposts

A bed serves as a respawn point for the character after activation. If you place a bed somewhere and activate it, the character will respawn at that point after death (or restarting the game). If you have multiple beds, when the current respawn point is destroyed, the previous one will be automatically activated.

I’m sharing this information so you won’t hesitate to place beds in the world of Smalland. Use them for insurance before fighting bosses or strong mobs, and you won’t have to run for your items across half the map.

If you need to farm a lot of resources, you can always build a small outpost or camp with minimal shelter, a chest, a campfire, a crafting table, and a bed. In single-player mode, this is a practical approach that will allow you to unload your inventory, prepare food, or sleep at night. Constructing such a camp takes 1 minute.

Don’t Be Afraid to Take Damage

The farming method I want to discuss is obvious, but it’s important to just talk about it. The fact is, you won’t be able to dodge 100% of attacks, no matter how hard you try. One way or another, a mob will hit you: if not one, then another. Constant attempts to dodge by rolling can make fights last longer.

All I want to say is that you don’t necessarily have to do this. When almost any mob attacks you, you can quickly deal 2-3 blows in response. So why not take advantage of this? Instead of constantly dodging, you can simply counterattack 3 blows for 1! After the battle, you can always restore health using Simple Bandage, which is crafted at a crafting table with 3 fibers. Be sure to try this “HP exchange” strategy. You’ll be surprised at how much faster you can farm certain resources, such as Heavy Chitin.

Some Creatures Only Spawn at Night

Some creatures, such as Mosquitoes or Fireflies, can only be found at night. It’s important for players to know about this mechanic, as some recipes (like Damselfly Treat) require ingredients from these creatures.

At the moment, these are all the tips and tricks I know. In the future, the article will be updated. You can help with this by sharing something useful in the comments. Thank you for reading!