How to play guide for ATLAS

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This page will serve as a basic how to play guide for ATLAS. While there is very little information available at this time, we urge you to check back often, as new information is being added all the time! Feel free to edit this guide with any tips, tricks, and suggestions.

Basic gameplay

The player first spawns at a starter island of choice: North, East, South or West. This starter island is a safezone meaning enemy players cannot damage you.

The objective on the starter island is to farm the supplies to build a raft and bring enough food to make the journey to an island.

The Dockmaster in the main town on the starter island takes your supplies in exchange for a raft. It is advised to build a simple bed to place on the raft in case you die of hunger later on.

Start off by smashing trees and stones with your fists for resources. Press the collect button [E] on bushes for fiber. Create a hatchet and a pickaxe to collect these resources faster. Next up start killing animals with spears or bow and arrows for hide. Hide is necessary for the raft and for food to survive on the barren sea.

Basic controls

You should take time to familiarize yourself with the controls of the game. You can do this by clicking the 'Esc' key on your keyboard and then clicking on options. You can change your keybinds, as well as assign keybinds for things like increasing or decreasing the game brightness (very useful during the nighttime when you don't have a torch). Also, if you have a keyboard that does not have a numpad, you should change your 'zoom in button' for the map. You can open the map with M, and it shows you your global coordinates and position in the region you are in (marked by red x).

Name	Default effect
Move Forward	W
Move Backward	S
Strafe Left	A
Strafe Right	D
Run	Left Shift
Toggle Run	Right Shift
Jump	Space
Crouch	C
Prone	X
Toggle Camera	K
First Person Mode	Mouse Scroll Up
Third Person Mode	Mouse Scroll Down
Extended HUD info	Hold H
Toggle HUD	Backspace
Open Inventory	I
Use	E
Access Other's Inventory	F
Use Hotbar Slot Item	0-9
Open In-Game Map	M
Company Manager	L
Item Menu	?
Whistles Menu	'
Toggle Auto-Hide Chatbox	\
Global Chat	Enter
Local Chat	Insert
Crew Chat	/
Alliance Chat	Home
Toggle Chat	Tab

Tips and tricks (levels 1 - 8)

Leveling Up

The player can level up by gaining EXP by killing animals. Killing Predator (carnivore) creatures give more EXP than the herbivores. The player can change their respawn point on the fast travel or death screen to discover new islands. An EXP boost is given for each new island discovered. Once the player hits level 8, EXP gets capped and the player must leave Freeport regions to advancing further. Choose your skills wisely when leveling up. Learning "The Basics" skill unlocks stone tools (hatchet, pickaxe), campfire, torch, as well as basic clothes. The spear and archery skills require separate skill unlocks. The spear does more damage to players and animals than fists, but have a chance of breaking. Metal tools will have higher durability and harvest rates, but requires the smithy to craft

Resources

Many resources can fill as substitutes for resource types (ex: cotton or jute as a fiber resource). Holding [H] while looking at a resource will show a HUD of what resources come from that resource node. Some tools have better harvesting efficiency for certain resource types. Pickaxes are better for harvesting stones and meat. Hatchets are better for wood and hide.

Hydration

Water can be found in planted areas of the island (greener land). Prone [X] and click on the ground to toggle a minigame. Click inside the white bar three times to get the most water. Missing the target area in the minigame will give you less water from the spout. A perfect spout will produce 60 units of water. Once the spout is drained, the ground will be drained of water and players will have to move to a new area to make another spout.

Vitamins

Players need to consume proper amounts of vitamins A, B, C, and D. Foods will be marked by colored arrows to indicate what vitamins they give. Having too many or too little vitamins will damage the player. Vegetables will give vitamin A. Meat will give vitamin B. Fruits will give vitamin C. Fish will give vitamin D.

Freeports

These are the intended starting area in the game. PVP is disabled on all servers and there is a level cap (level 8). The carnivores are not as challenging and the resources are more plentiful.

Lawless Zones

Lawless zones are the zones outside of the freeport islands. They are PVP-enabled (on PVP servers) and hostile territories. Players cannot claim land in these zones. Players beginning in Lawless zones must build a tiny shipyard before they can craft a raft.

Companies

Companies are the guild/tribe/faction equivalent of ATLAS. Group up with other players to create a company or join an existing one. Discord is recommended.

Your First Raft

Whether you get a raft for half price through a Shipyard NPC in a Freeport region or build your own at your Tiny Shipyard, it can take a little practice getting used to making your raft go where you want. It is important to recognize that you have no rudder on your raft, and that the raft simply turns in the direction of the sail. The second thing to notice is that you can select how much of the sail is in use by 10% increments, or going full open or full close. The raft icon on your screen has a couple symbols to pay attention to: an incomplete circle (like a capital C) and an arrow. The open circle represents the direction your sail is facing. The arrow displays the direction the wind is blowing, while the length of the arrow gives you an idea for how hard the wind is blowing. That’s all you’ve got to control this thing. Seems simple enough? Turn the sail so it catches the wind and you’ll notice the open circle turn green in color. The more the angle turns away from catching the wind, the more the open circle will change color, from green to yellow, yellow to orange, and finally to red. You’ll find yourself at a dead stop if the icon is red. You’re ready to set out on the sea, to explore a distant land, or meet up with friends in the next region over. But wait...the wind is blowing the opposite direction of where you want to go! With no rudder, how can you possibly travel to your destination? In reality, if you were to turn your sail backwards, the wind would simply and awkwardly push your watercraft backwards. In Atlas, however, a Raft always must travel forward when its sail catches wind, even if the sail is backwards. Let’s say the wind is blowing directly at the front of your raft. You set your sail to 157.5, almost all the way backwards to the right. As the sail rotates around to catch the wind, your raft will begin to accelerate forward, into the wind, as it slowly makes a wide right turn in order for the raft to swing around and face the same direction as the sail. Around the time the wind arrow has reached 135 degrees (back right), you should now change your sail to -157.5, almost backwards to the left side. As your sail rotates around to the left side, there are a few seconds where your speed drops to nothing. Moments later, however, the backwards turned sail will catch the wind once again, and your raft will launch forward once more, slowly turning left in an effort to match the sail. Around the same angle (45 degrees left of straight back, or back-left) cut the sail around to the right again. By zig-zagging left and right across the wind like this, you are essentially traveling in the direction you originally intended, just with minor deviations in angle and speed as you go. This method is faster than the traditional method of simply trying to find the best angle possible and sailing upwind, going way out of your way, then to come back in at another angle. Keep in mind that if the wind is not blowing directly against your raft, then the angle you need to change your sail to the other side will differ from the 135 / -135 degree marks. With some practice under your belt, you’ll become a rafting pro in no time.

     You reached your destination...finally!  You pull up to the shore and hop off, not giving your exit strategy a moment of thought.  Later on, you go to pull away from land and it feels like your raft has lost its ability to turn.  You watch in anguish as your beloved raft scrapes along the rocks, other player’s shipyard, other rafts, etc.  If you’re truly unlucky, your raft will get itself stuck.  You’ve tried turning your raft in both directions, with different amount of sail in use, but it will not break free.  Don’t panic!  Give your sail 10% and turn the sail in the direction you want to turn.  The key here is to NOT catch the wind.  Keep the open circle red, and your raft will turn in place, allowing you to get out of almost any scrape you get into.

Initial Goals

This is a tough survival game. You are surely going to die a lot in the start, respawning to a random area of your home zone. There are two things you can do to mitigate the effects of dying.

• Building a storage box in order to store stuff that can't be taken by other players or lost to decay.
• Get a working bed so you don't spawn randomly, but instead spawn at a known location. Note, beds must be on a ship that is not in shallow water in your home zone, or in a base built on claimed land. And since you cannot claim land in the starting zone, that means leaving your starting island. (Although a few players just accept the random spawn and make a home where they start. Lawless zones do not have a level cap, as the Freeports do. But are much harder to survive in.)

So you are going to want to gather resources, gain levels, unlock better skills, and build a box, then a raft.

To get started on gaining resources, pick up loose rocks from the beach. These are some type of Stone. Then gather from saplings, thin trees about 12 ft/3m high. From these you can gather Wood and Thatch. Also gather from the underbrush to get Fibers. If you cannot find stone and wood by gathering, you can always punch rocks and full sized trees. This hurts you and is slow to deliver, but will eventually get you what you need.

Then you can build a stone pick with the first still in Survivalism, called The Basics. With that you can gather Flint and Wood to make a stone axe. And now you have tools to gather resources. You are well on your way toward becoming a pirate...if you can survive the wildlife. Archery is a powerful form of attack early on, so highly recommended.

If you are going solo, then you need the following skills to get off the island: The Basics then Construction, from this new skill tree, you can unlock Seamanship by first taking Basics of Building, Weaving, and Secrets of Building. In Seamanship, you take Sailing and you have unlocked the Tiny Shipyard and the Raft. You might try all sorts of skills to round out your survival experience, but Advanced Tools allows you to make a Metal Pick and Metal Hatchet, which give a huge bonus to resource collection.

And, of course, you could always team up with others, form a company. Skill specialization works great for small and large groups.

Note: Fists do more damage to creatures and players than tools do. It is recommended to fight with either fists or weapons (spears, bow, etc.)

Good luck!

Leveling Past 51

Collecting discovery points from various islands and ruins you find will increase your max level, So enjoy your journeys and land on all those islands, climb all those rocks, and find all those ruins!

Power Stone and Fountain of youth locations and How to tame Drake

Level	Points
52	24
53	47
54	71
55	94
56	118
57	?
58	?
59	?
60	?
61	?
62	?
63	?
64	?
65	?
66	?
67	?
68	?
69	?
70	?