The Do's and Don'ts of Playing Core Keeper

Core Keeper took the PC gaming world by storm, securing half a million downloads within two short weeks of its Early Access launch. Appealing to the sandbox lovers of Minecraft and Terraria, Core Keeper offers users a chance to craft, farm, and explore a strange underground world.

In the early days, many users found themselves frustrated by the lack of tutorials guiding their progress. A lot of gameplay came down to tinkering around and figuring things out on the fly.

Now that Core Keeper has been around for over a year, we’ve got some gaming help that will make your first few hours of gameplay a lot more rewarding.

Read on for the most important do’s and don’ts of playing Core Keeper.

Don’t Agonize Over Your Background

When you first begin your Core Keeper journey, you’ll be tasked with creating your character. Your options are simple but we know that some gamers get caught up in trying to find the perfect background to get started. In our experience, the background you choose for your character does yield some individualized perks, but no one choice is going to set you back or give you a major advantage.

After about an hour of gameplay, it all starts to even out. Every starting player will need to prioritize similar items, which we’ll discuss below, so the playing field is pretty level no matter your character’s background.

Feeling Frustrated? Start As an Explorer

If you don’t have the patience to start without any of the tools you need, consider starting as an Explorer. Explorers start out with a lantern, making it easier to navigate the underground world before you’ve managed to craft anything.

Other notable backgrounds include the Miner, who starts with a pickaxe, and the Fighter, who starts with a copper sword. If none of these character classes interest you, don’t sweat it. Every character is able to start crafting these items pretty early on.

Do Look for Interactive Visual Cues

If you don’t want to make use of the handful of walkthroughs that are out there now, you’re going to want to stay on the lookout for visual cues and interactive possibilities. Core Keeper doesn’t give you much of an in-game tutorial and the plot is loose, so you’ll have to figure things out as you go.

If you’re struggling to figure out how to interact with something, slow down on the button mashing and look for highlighted icons that will show you how to open a new menu. After the first hour or so of playing and exploring, you should get a good sense of how to interact with your environment and all the goodies you pick up along the way.

Keep an Eye Out for Shimmering Spots

You’re going to need to mine a ton of ore throughout the entire game, so don’t ignore ore when you find it. If you notice a sort of shimmering light on the periphery of your screen, the game is trying to tell you to follow it to discover more ore.

Eventually, you’re going to have enough supplies to build a few storage chests. Make sure that you do so and keep everything, offloading what you can’t carry and don’t actively need so that you can come back to it later.

Do Start Crafting

As we mentioned earlier, you’re going to be able to start crafting almost right away, regardless of your character’s background. The three things you should focus on include:

• a pickaxe
• torches
• a workbench

The first thing you’re going to find is wood, and you can use it to craft a pickaxe in your pack menu. However, anything you build in your pack menu won’t last long, and a workbench will allow you to craft higher-quality items.

Having a large stock of torches on hand is a must. When your character is running around without objects in hand, you can carry torches to light your path. However, you’ll find that as the game progresses, you won’t always have a spare hand and instead, you’ll need to light torches on the walls of any room you plan to stay in for long.

If your wall torches aren’t doing the trick, you may need to start carving out more space. Removing random chunks from the walls will prevent the light from being obstructed, giving you a much clearer view.

Don’t Ignore Your Skill Points

Core Keeper is generous with its XP points, giving you points for every little task you complete. This includes mining, crafting, and running. When you see that message saying you’ve achieved a new Skill Point, don’t ignore it.

Instead, go into your skills menu and assign that new Skill Point ASAP. Assigning Skill Points helps you to build up little advantages throughout the game, like blowing through food energy at a slower rate or mining faster. This may not seem worthwhile at first, but it will become important as the world grows and you encounter more enemies that require besting.

There are a ton of Skill Points offered up in the game, so take a look at this Core Keeper skills guide to find out what to keep an eye out for and how to increase Skill Points efficiently.

Don’t Rush Into Combat

As tempting as it may seem to start fighting those moving puddles of slime, hold off until you’re prepared. One slow-moving enemy is easy enough to defeat with mediocre weapons, but one can lead to a dozen, which can lead to your death.

Dying in Core Keeper is frustrating because you drop everything you were carrying in the same place where you died. You’ll have to journey back to that part of the map to retrieve everything, which tends to mean finding and crafting additional items along the way.

If you’re itching to start fighting enemies, craft a copper anvil that will allow you to forge armor. No matter how great your weapons and melee skills are, you’re going to struggle to keep up without quality armor.

Do Eat and Sleep

One quaint feature of Core Keeper is the built-in need to eat and sleep. You’ll encounter a lot of “wild” plants throughout the cavern, but they won’t get you as far as the food that you’ve cooked. Craft a cooking pot, build a garden, and start combining ingredients to boost your speed and health.

To make the most out of your prepared meals, you’ll also want to craft a bed, something you can do when you’ve collected a good amount of fiber. Resting in a bed can replenish your health bar so that you can re-energize through eating while you’re out exploring. Over time, you may want to build additional beds in other parts of the map so that you can get a quick doze in without having to trudge back to your main camp.

Do Play With Friends

Core Keeper will support up to eight players in a single game or “cave system,” so don’t hesitate to get friends involved. Online gaming is a known source of making new friends, but Core Keeper doesn’t allow you to pop into random worlds unannounced. Instead, you’ll need to share your game ID with people you know if you want to bring them along for the ride.

Playing with friends will allow you to explore the cave system and unlock new areas faster. You can run around together or split up to explore and mine separately.

Don’t Underestimate a Good Server

Your server will make or break your gameplay experience, particularly as the Core Keeper cave continues to expand as you progress. It’s not uncommon for PC gamers to find that budget servers can’t keep up with sandbox games, but AleForge is changing all of that.

With the AleForge server for Core Keeper, you’ll experience a luxury gameplay experience at an affordable price. From enterprise hardware to mod support to customer support, we provide everything you need to enjoy Core Keeper, whether that’s through solo missions or alongside friends.

Our goal is to ensure that you’re happy with our server before you make a commitment. Try out our test domain to check your latency to our data centers before you register.

Play Core Keeper and More With AleForge

Playing video games is a ton of fun, but only when you have a great server that will keep up with your progress. AleForge makes playing Core Keeper a breeze, whether you prefer a solo or multiplayer experience. We also offer gaming help and provide thorough customer support for all our members.

To get started with AleForge, register an account today. You can access tons of PC games at an affordable price while still enjoying a luxury gaming experience.