A new game that has piqued our interest is Cryofall, available now on Steam. Cryofall is a multiplayer survival MMO, sci-fi colony simulation game that is quite frankly… addicting. Explore, craft, farm, build, trade, and more! Cryofall is a flat/isometric/2D graphics but don’t let the simplicity fool you. This game has the bones and complexity to keep you entertained for hours.
Table of Contents
Joining A Server
To start your journey in Cryofall, first, pick a server. Either PvP or PvE AND there are options of official servers or player-made servers. All servers have the potential to be wiped, as this game is still in development. Official servers are more consistent with the wipes, only wiping with updates. Player-made servers are at the mercy of the man in charge. If you want to control your own fate, I’d suggest renting your own server. But if you enjoy the company of others, I’d recommend an Official server simply because the title “official” will always keep the servers filled with players.
PvP vs PvE Servers
Official (and player-made) servers are either PvP or PvE servers. Both offer the same experience of PvE, meaning, there will be world events and other fun activities. However, in PvP servers, on death, you will lose your non-equipped loot and players are free to murder you and raid your base.
In PvE servers, loot stays in your inventory on death, other players can’t kill you, or steal your resource nodes, or raid your base. Overall, I’ve found that PvE servers like to group up and build towns where players can trade amongst themselves. PvP is more of a Rust situation, don’t be caught out alone, or you will be attacked.
Selecting Your Character
Your little survivor’s face can be customized along with his or her hair. In addition, you choose 1 of 4 stat-altering classes that will affect your survivors’ skills when first starting out. Choose more health, or more food detention, or go for skills and add a 10% mining efficiency. The stats that offer higher efficiency in the gathering proficiencies tend to have a negative impact on other stats to keep balance.
After playing the game for about a week now, and restarting a couple of times just for fun. The Independent Worlds class is my favorite to start out with because the +15% heath regen is essential in the early stages of the game. It’s very hard to get your life back (without meds) when a little snake rolls around and strikes you leaving you poisoned and bleeding.
Basic Functions
- Left-click – are your basic actions; eating food, shooting guns, swinging weapons, collecting and using water and all other actions
- Tab – equipment; view items, eat and drink, equip clothes and tools, view defensive stats
- C – crafting
- Ctrl + left click – pulls single items from a stack and can transfer the single items between inventories
- Right-clicking a stack – cuts it in half
- K – skills tab; shows all skills and progression
- M – map
- N – collections (finding items rewards Labor Points)
- H – social tab
- P – politics aka clan management
- J – quest log
- G – technologies (unlocking new crafting and building)
Completing Quests
The quest line is beneficial for both learning the game and acquiring labor points. You will see your completed quests AND unfinished quests in the top right-hand corner of your HUD. These quests level with you. There will be quests for each phase of the game. The upside, free labor points. The downside, you will have to use some labor points to complete said quests.
Biomes
Each biome in Cryofall offers unique resources and unique animals to hunt. Biomes ranging from volcanic wastelands, all the way up to peaceful oceanside scenery. Some biomes are rarer than others, but the core materials are all the same. All biomes will have the necessities; fiber, wood, stone, an animal, a type of fruit.
Ore mining nodes are speckled around the map via the Rocky Mountains. Meaning there will be sections of “mountains” that house the ore nodes needed for higher tier crafting. I know what you’re thinking, this map is flat. These mountainous areas are surrounded by walls, and you have to enter through pathways to keep the illusion of climbing up a mountain to reach the peak. These Rocky Mountain locations are not areas where you can build your base. This restriction is to protect these nodes from being claimed by a single person or clan. These chokepoints are rough in PvP.
The maps are procedurally generated so the biomes aren’t going to be in the same location on every map. Therefore, the is no way to truly pinpoint the Borealis Forest. The best way to find biomes for your map is to ask your chat. I will say, even though the maps are procedurally generated, I did see biomes within close proximity to the biomes in previous maps I played in. For example, the Borealis Forest up toward the northern portion of the map, and the tropical biome was down south. They didn’t perfectly line up in identical grid boxes, but they were close enough.
Building a Base
In order to build a base, you will have to claim land. To claim land, you will need to unlock the land claim item via the technology tree Construction. Place it down and done. The land is claimed. Now, all the land inside that bubble is your land. In PvP, you will need to protect your land claim via walls but in PvE it’s different. Once that land claim is down, walls or not, no other player can access your things or destroy your stuff. The only way for another player to legally access your items is by giving them access via clan rights.
Rotating Furniture
I see this question asked in chat about every 20 minutes. It is not possible to rotate any buildable items inside Cryofall. In Cryofall you cannot rotate building items or crafting stations or walls or doors.
Skill Trees, Technologies, and Labor Points
All building and crafting items can be unlocked using Labor Points via the various Technology Skill Trees. There are 5 tiers. To unlock the more advanced tier in a particular Tech Tree, one must unlock its predecessors in the skill tree line you are looking to advance. For example, if I want to unlock Construction Tier 5, I must first unlock Construction 1 through 4. This is where having friends becomes really valuable. Labor points are required to unlock everything, so if the labor can be divided amongst friends you can get to the end game items faster.
Labor points in Cryofall are earned by completing quests, unlocking collectible items, and collecting resources. Every node destructed rewards labor, so just by simply playing the game, you will progress your labor even if you choose not to complete quests. Earning labor points without quests will take longer, but you can prioritize exactly which technologies you want to dump labor points into.
Crafting
Everything you need in the game can be learned and crafted. The basic tools and armor can be crafted in your inventory, press C. The rest of the crafted items, the complex items, will need a special crafting table. Whether it is food, medicine, armor, weapons; it all will require a crafting bench. Press B to take a look at all the crafting tables you have available, and unlock more via the Technologies tab.
Repairing Items
To repair items in Cryofall craft a Tinker table. Once you have the Tinker table craft some duct tape. The only thing I really dislike about repairing items is that you need two of the same items to fuse together. In my opinion, this is not technically repairing the item, you’re just merging two low durability items together. I would prefer for example, if I needed to prepare a pickaxe… I would prefer to be able to fuse more iron ore and wood into a damaged item to actually fix the item. Instead of just having to make another one anyways.
Water, Food, and Health the Basic Necessities
The survival aspect of Cryofall is no different than any other survival MMO. You will need to juggle your hunger, thirst, health bar, and stamina bar. Although I will say stamina isn’t detrimental to juggle. It’s mainly tied to sprinting. Water is manageable, there are many ways to easily acquire water. Health is a very slow regen, so get good at crafting health potions. If you choose the Independent World character origin you earn a +15% health regen which I personally recommend.
When it comes to hunger, location is key. The biome you choose to live in will determine the type of food available to you. The tropical biomes near the beaches are by far the best biomes when it comes to easy food. Tropical biomes in Cryofall have lots of fruit trees readily available which provide a decent amount of hunger energy and will provide you with some thirst requirements as well. In addition, eating fruit salad (crafted with fruit in the Tropical Biome) will give you a positive boon for eating healthy food.
Clans and Friends
H and P are your hotkeys for social management as listed above (P = Politics H = Social). Clans in Cryofall is how you and your friends will be able to access land claims together. It is not a requirement of being in a clan, but it is an option. Land Claim privileges are controlled via the land claim HUB. Once inside the options will give you the freedom to lock all other members out or share access to your base with your clan.
When it comes to joining a clan, you can either join a large server clan or create a clan just for your friends. It is super easy, press P (open Politics tab), from there you can see all the top clan which you can apply to join. OR press the “new faction”. In the new faction tab, select a name and icon and done. Add members to your clan via the social tab.
