A Dark Room Walkthrough: From First Fire to Lift-Off

The first ten minutes

The first light is free even though the button shows a wood cost: you start with no wood, so click it once. The fire starts at burning. A ragged stranger arrives, collapses, and the forest unlocks with 4 wood. Gather wood, keep the fire at flickering or higher, and build traps as soon as you can. The fire cools every five minutes; once the builder recovers, she stokes it for you and adds 2 wood every ten seconds.

• →Click light fire once. The first light does not actually consume wood.
• →Stoke the fire to flickering (2) or higher. At burning (3), the room warms and the builder recovers.
• →Gather wood at the forest. Ten wood per gather; fifty after you build a cart.
• →Build traps before anything else. Ten wood for the first, then ten more per trap, up to ten traps.
• →Build a cart (30 wood) as soon as traps are running; it triples each gather.

Village build order

Wood is the early bottleneck, so build in an order that turns wood into food and population. Huts raise the population cap by four each, but they are useless until you have food and jobs. The lodge, trading post, tannery, smokehouse, workshop, steelworks, and armoury each unlock a new worker or crafting chain.

The worker chain

Assign workers from the village screen. Every worker consumes something except gatherers and hunters, so build the upstream building first. The chain is: hunters produce fur and meat; tanners consume 5 fur per leather; charcutiers consume 5 meat and 5 wood per cured meat; miners consume 1 cured meat per ore; steelworkers consume iron and coal; armourers consume steel and sulphur.

• →Gatherers: 1 wood every 10 seconds. The safest early assignment.
• →Hunters: 0.5 fur and 0.5 meat every 10 seconds. Build the lodge first.
• →Trappers: consume 1 meat to produce 1 bait. Bait improves traps; use them only when meat is plentiful.
• →Tanners: 5 fur into 1 leather. Leather gates the workshop, armour, and the rucksack.
• →Charcutiers: 5 meat + 5 wood into 1 cured meat. Cured meat fuels every expedition and every miner.
• →Iron, coal, and sulphur miners: 1 cured meat into 1 ore. Do not assign them until the food chain can support them.
• →Steelworkers: 1 iron + 1 coal into 1 steel. Armourers: 1 steel + 1 sulphur into 1 bullet.

Before you leave the village

The Dusty Path is a supply problem disguised as an exploration game. Your bag holds 10 weight by default; a rucksack adds 10, a wagon 30, a convoy 60, and the late-game cargo drone 100. Water starts at 10 and can be raised with a waterskin (+10), cask (+20), water tank (+50), or fluid recycler (+100). One cured meat feeds two moves; one water feeds one move. Bring more than you think you need.

• →Buy the compass. The nomad sells it for 300 fur, 15 scales, and 5 teeth; the trading post charges 400, 20, and 10.
• →Craft a bone spear (100 wood, 5 teeth) before your first real trip. Fists are a 1-damage weapon.
• →Craft leather armour (200 leather, 20 scales) as soon as the tannery is running. It adds 5 max health.
• →Pack at least 20 cured meat and 10 water for a first trip. Turn back when either is half empty.
• →Bring torches. They are cheap (1 wood + 1 cloth) and the dark is not forgiving.

The Dusty Path

The world is a 61x61 grid with the village at the center. Landmarks sit at fixed distances from the village: the iron mine at radius 5, the coal mine at 10, the sulphur mine at 20, and the crashed starship and ravaged battleship at 28. Clear the mines in that order; each cleared mine unlocks the corresponding miner in the village. The game warns you when you are beyond your armour: iron armour is expected past radius 8, steel armour past 18.

• →Iron Mine (radius 5): clear the beast, unlock iron miners.
• →Coal Mine (radius 10): clear the camp, unlock coal miners.
• →Sulphur Mine (radius 20): clear the soldiers, unlock sulphur miners.
• →Crashed Starship (radius 28): unlocks the ship tab. This is the goal.
• →Ravaged Battleship (radius 28): the alien-alloy dungeon and the only source of the fleet beacon.
• →Outposts refill water once and leave 5 to 10 cured meat. Use them, then treat them as used.
• →Combat: you have an 80% base hit chance. Armour raises max health; weapons trade damage for cooldown. Carry healing items and do not start a long dungeon at low health.

The endgame

Alien alloy is the ship currency. Each point of hull and each engine upgrade costs one alloy. The ship needs at least one hull to lift off, but the ascent lasts 60 seconds and every asteroid hit removes one hull. Five hull and five thrusters is a comfortable target; more if you expect to get hit. The thrusters increase your movement speed, which makes the asteroids easier to avoid. After the ascent, the game shows your score and offers a restart; the fleet beacon adds an alternate ending.

• →Reinforce hull: 1 alien alloy per point. This is your health during the ascent.
• →Upgrade engine: 1 alien alloy per point. This is your movement speed.
• →Lift off when you have enough hull to survive 60 seconds. The button warns you before you leave.
• →The fleet beacon is optional. It comes from the immortal wanderer at the end of the Ravaged Battleship.
• →The trading post also sells alien alloy for 1500 fur, 750 scales, and 300 teeth if you would rather farm than fight.

Common mistakes

Most stalled runs are not lost to combat. They are lost to a cold room, an empty food chain, or a bag with too little water. Fix those three and the rest of the game opens up.

• →Letting the fire die. The builder stops stoking and the room cools; relight it and wait for the room to warm.
• →Building huts before food. Population without a food chain just creates idle mouths.
• →Assigning miners before charcutiers. Miners eat cured meat; without it they shut down.
• →Pushing past radius 8 without iron armour. The danger warning is not decorative.
• →Carrying too little water. Water is consumed every move; cured meat every two.
• →Spending all your alloy on thrusters. Hull is what keeps you alive during the ascent.