Once Human: Getting Started Guide
This Once Human getting started guide will help you by getting to know the very basics of the game and give you some tips and tricks on the way. This will include picking the correct server for you and how you’d like your character, to even showing how to build your home and getting your first vehicle.
Choosing the Right Server for You
When you first load up Once Human, you will be faced with a menu. There will be 2 different types of servers. PVE servers and PVP servers. This will completely depend on the type of player you are.
There are many benefits of both. The PVE servers allow you to obtain different deviants (pets) than the PVP server. For example, on the PVE server you can get a Chefosaurus Rex which helps you cook, whereas on the PVP server, you will obtain the Pyro Rex, which fights by your side and shoots fireballs at your enemies.
As seen in the image below, if you are on PVE server you will also discover big guild boss fights, whereas on a PVP server you will be able to go to “war” and attack another enemy guild.
So it will be completely down to you to decide what you think is the correct server for you.
Character Creation
After you have picked your server, it’s time for the character customisation. Go ahead and look at the presets first to pick one that you like, then at the top of the screen you can change it in a bit more detail, for example, the hair and make up.
Play around with all of these features until you find a character that you like.
Please note – You can change your look in-game with the mirror item, but this potentially costs real money, so please beware.
Now that you have made the character, go ahead and press the ‘F’ key, and name your character. Enter the name you wish to use and once you are happy, it’s time to enter the game.
The Tutorial Mission
Shortly after a cut-scene, your character will appear in a lab, and you will need to use the “activator”. This is essentially a revival kit. That you will use when your character is down. Once used, your character will be able to move around freely.
Feel free to wander around and get used to the keybinds, a couple of important and basic controls I have listed below.
- WASD keys will be to move
- V key to Melee Attack
- Shift key to Sprint
- N key for Flashlight
- Ctrl key for Roll
- Left Mouse click to Attack/shoot
- Right Mouse Click to scope in
After you are familiar with the keys, it’s time to complete the first goal – explore the lab and find the passcode. This will allow you to open the first set of doors.
Look for the marker with “A-073 Memo”. Once you have found this, walk up to this and investigate it, which will give you the passcode.
Passcode – 0728
Now that you have the passcode, head to the main doors and enter the code on the keypad. If successful, the doors will open and allow you to proceed ahead.
Go through the door, and you will be given the objective – Find the Access Card and enter the research lab to obtain Cradle. You will notice a Rosetta Researcher on the floor nearby. Investigating this body will give you the Access Card.
Turn around and use the access card on the locked door to access the cradle.
You will now go into a cutscene and be given your cradle (basically a backpack for your deviant). Now talk to the strange bird called “V”.
After this dialogue, you will now be able to use Spacetime by pressing the “Q” key. It is advised to use this often when in different areas, as it will show you lootable items in the area.
Now it’s time to enter through the red door to discover your first ever weapon crate on the ground.
Looting this will now give you your first weapon, the machete. Equip this and carry on down the corridor. Time to attack your first ever enemies.
Go ahead and kill these enemies in the room and explore around. On your left side, you will find another weapon crate which has some molotovs inside and then, on the right side, you will discover a gear crate that has a hat inside.
Pressing the “K” key will bring up your gear menu where you can equip and unequip your weapons and gear.
Once you have finished exploring the room, make your way up the stairs. There will be a Rosetta Guard. Interacting with this body will show you about “notes” and how they are scattered around the world, and you can learn about Nalcott’s past.
You will now notice blue and red-colored doors. First head through the blue colored door to see open a loot crate, then head back and go through the red door to carry on through the tutorial.
You will notice a gear crate in front of you. Before you open this, look around and kill the enemy, then you can safely open it.
Loot the other items within the room and then go and touch the After-Image which is standing by the door.
You will now be transferred into another room. Use your “Q” key and spacetime to investigate the area. This will help you locate the “Spatial Theaters”. You can now see the old events that happened in this area. Watch each of these then proceed further on down the corridor.
Head through the door and kill the enemy and loot the gear crate before dropping down onto the ledge.
Drop down and kill the enemies, then you will now notice the “Butterfly’s Emissary”. This will be your first deviant that you find and can obtain. The success rate of capturing them will determine at what level your gloves are that you have equipped.
Touch the After-Image and you will now be teleported to a territory, where you can learn the basics of crafting.
You will appear at a house in the open world. Head on inside and talk to Mitsuko.
Now interact with the Secure Unit and deposit the “Butterfly’s Emissary” inside it. Then press the “F” key for the Facility menu. You can now synchronize the Deviant to your cradle. This will allow it to go inside your cradle (backpack) and it can now fight by your side.
As seen in the bottom right corner, Holding E will allow you to use your deviant.
After this, you will now be tasked to gather 10 logs and 10 gravel. Which can easily be done by going up to a tree and interacting with it.
Your character will then begin to cut the tree by bashing it with a rock. Like wise with the stone nodes. We do recommend gathering more than 10 of each node, as you will potentially need to gather more later on.
Once gathering the resources, you will need to place a campsite. You can do this by simply pressing the “T” key. This will bring up a blueprint of a campsite and when it shows a green color, you can go ahead and place it.
The campsite is super useful as it acts as a respawn point, and you can craft some basic items from the simple crafting bench. The campfire isn’t static either, meaning you can place it any time you wish around the world,
Now access the workbench and craft the 3 times Rustic Crossbow, 5 Arrows and a Pickaxe
- Rustic Crossbow – Requires 25 Wood
- 5 Arrows – Requires 10 Wood and 10 Gravel
- Crude Pickaxe – Requires 5 Wood and 10 Gravel
Once you have crafted the items, look at the crafting queue at the bottom and this will allow you to take them from the workbench.
As seen in the image below, open your backpack, and you will see the Pickaxe in your tools screen. Go ahead and drag this into the hotbar at the bottom of the screen, so you make sure this is selected before mining ore or cutting trees.
Then go to the “Gear” menu and make sure the crossbow is equipped.
Head back to the house, and you will now be tasked with defending the territory. So press the “F” key and equip your crossbow, ready for some action.
You will now watch a cutscene and be faced with a “Siren” monster. Run down the wooden decking and open the weapon crate to be given more arrows for your crossbow.
Go ahead and summon the Butterfly’s Emissary by Holding E and select Fatal Flaw or Auto attack. Your deviant will now help you fight the siren boss while you fire arrows at it with your crossbow.
After defeating the Siren boss, it will phase you back out, and you have a chance to obtain the “Festering Gel” deviant.
Sadly, if it is unsuccessful, then later on in your playthrough, we highly recommend using the Festering Gel as it is extremely powerful. It acts as cover so you can sit behind and shoot from it but also heals you and your teammates while restoring your sanity. Our personal opinion is this is an S tier deviant.
Head back into the house and talk to Mitsuko about the Deviation escape. Finally, you will need to press the TAB key and select your camera and take a photo of Mitsuko as a farewell keepsake.
So go ahead and equip the camera and a photo of Mitsuko.
Now you can finally turn around and exit the door to go into the New World – Nalcott.
You will now have finished the tutorial and now it is time to enter the world with everyone else.
Placing Your Plot and Building the Basics
Once you have finished the tutorial you will start by gliding into the Nalcott. Safely glide until you reach the ground.
Your first task is to find a suitable location and press the “B” key to place your territory terminal down.
Please Note – You can always pick up your territory and place it again if you feel like you are not happy with the location, and will just go on a short cooldown.
If you wish to adjust your plot so it’s in the perfect position, you can use the keybinds below, as Flight Mode is super useful, it essentially puts you into a Birdseye view and allows you to place objects super easy.
What makes this amazing is that you can place your territory almost anywhere and, if you wish, to move it. It’s very simple to just pick up your home and move it. This means you DO NOT need to rebuild anything that you placed down already.
Memetics
Now you have set your plot down, it’s time to start building, but before you can do this, you will need to unlock the nodes to your liking on the Memetics menu. This is basically the research tree for your character.
How this works. Overtime you will acquire Ciphers, which are points, and you can use these to unlock different things such as next tier tools, better ammo or new building structures such as wood or stone style.
You can reset the memetics any time if you wish by clicking on the memetics again and in the bottom right corner, you can reset this. Sadly it will deduct 30% of the currency spent on the Ciphers.
For starting out, we highly recommend picking these Memetics first:
- Disassembly Techniques – This will allow you to deconstruct any scrap you find and turn it into materials you need.
- Smelting Essentials – This will allow you to craft and build a furnace to smelt any ore you mine.
- Wood Supports – This will allow you to craft more flooring and walls for your plot.
- Essential Tools – This will unlock the Workbench so you can craft basics such as pickaxes and arrows.
- Gear Workbenches – This will unlock the Weapon/Gear Work bench to craft different guns and armor.
- Basic Gear – This will be needed later on, which allows you to craft armor and a machine gun.
- Ammunition I – This will be needed later on, which allows you to craft ammunition for your guns.
Once you have unlocked some memetics, you can now go back to your plot and go into the build mode by pressing the “B” key and add some more foundations down.
Building a Furnace
Your next task is to build a furnace. In order to do this, you will need to gather 30 gravel and 20 copper ore. As seen in the photos below, this is what copper ore looks like. Thankfully, copper ore also gives you Gravel too.
Once you have got the resources, press the “B” key for the build menu, then go to the Facilities menu and select the furnace. Now go ahead and place the furnace down.
Now that you have placed it, the next task is to create Copper Ingots. You can easily do this by first creating charcoal, which requires wood from trees to turn into charcoal, then using the charcoal and copper ore, you can now make copper ingots.
You will need a total of 50 wood to turn into 10 charcoal and a total of 30 copper ore. Combining the charcoal and copper ore together will give you 10 copper ingots.
Disassembly Bench
After creating your 10 copper ingots, you will be given the task of building a disassembly bench. Fortunately, you will be able to craft this straight away as it costs 10 copper ingots and 20 gravel, and you have already unlocked the Memetic for it.
Craft and place the Disassembly Bench on your territory. Any items you find in the world, you can put it in the disassembly bench and turn it into key resources you need.
For example, if you find a “tyre”, it has no purpose except when you put it in the disassembly bench and scrap it. This will give you rubber, which is a key material needed for crafting/upgrading your weapons.
Now, after completing this, you will be told to press the “J” key which will bring up the Journey menu. Inside this, it shows you all the tasks you can do.
Each time one of these has been completed, you will be rewarded with some supplies. It also gives you nice objectives to do while doing the main story quests.
Gear and Weapon Workbench
Once you complete a few more quests, you will be given the task of building a gear workbench and a Supplies Workbench.
In order to build a gear workbench, you will need 30 copper ingots, 10 metal scraps, 10 shabby fabric and 5 adhesive. You can create copper ingots via the furnace and the other materials can be obtained by looting houses and enemies and then disassembling them to create these key resources.
Placing this down early on is a must, as it allows you to create some armor for your character and weapons.
If you have unlocked the “Basic Gear” memetic, you will be able to craft an MP7 and some armor straight away.
As you will notice, it has “Weapon Crafting”, “Armor Crafting”, “Repair” and “Calibration”.
Weapon Crafting and Armor crafting allow you to use materials to craft a weapon/armor that is owned by you. This means you can upgrade it and repair it when it is too weak or has no durability left.
If you wish to unlock more weapons or armor, then you will need to earn blueprint fragments for that individual item. This can come from the Wish Machine later on or complete missions or even looting them from mystic chests.
You may discover armor and weapons in the world, but sadly, if you have not crafted the item, you will not be able to repair or upgrade it. So please bear this in mind.
Supplies Workbench
A Supplies’ Workbench is a must to have on your plot. It gives many items to craft, from ammunition to arrows to better pickaxes. It requires 30 logs and 20 copper ore. Once you have got the required materials, go to the build menu by pressing the “B” key and go to the Crafting tab and place it.
Make sure to have unlocked “Ammunition I” Memetic so you can see all the different ammo appear on the menu.
As you can see in the menu, you will be able to craft a range of different items. Even a better pickaxe or healing bandages.
Food and Water
One of the most important things before you carry on with playing the game is finding food and water. Thankfully, it’s not too difficult, you will be given some basics when you start, but eventually, you will run out. So we strongly advise unlocking the stove from the memetics menu and placing that down on your plot.
Then, when you are out exploring, look for animals to kill for meat and vegetables like corn to grab from farms. You will be able to either eat this directly or can cook it on the stove.
When it comes to hydration, you can simply collect water from the sea or a river. Then bring it back and boil it to get boiled water. This will be more than good enough for now until you learn better recipes.
A small tip is if you can place a bed down at some point in your house too, lying down on this will make you feel rested and completely restore your sanity too.
How to Get a Vehicle?
Now the final big question you may be wondering. How is everyone driving around on motorbikes or in cars? Well, first you will need to unlock the “Garage” Memetic and craft the garage on your plot. This will allow you to repair any vehicles you have. But most importantly, it will let you craft a motorbike.
DO NOT craft the motorbike just yet. A lot of people do not know this, but to save yourself a lot of materials, carry on with the story missions in Deadsville called “Welcome Back”. When you speak to Mary about going to the Monolith, she will give you a motorcycle for free.
Pressing the “G” key will allow you to pull out your vehicle and place it down.
What To Do Next?
You should now have got all the basics down, so you should be free to explore and venture around. There is plenty to do, from main quests to building your home, to even events such as fishing.
Before proceeding on ahead, place some storage boxes for your plot and mine lots of copper ore and get this smelted. If you are lucky, you will also get a “The Digby Boy” deviant from mining.
Then, if you place an independent, secure unit. You can place the deviant inside, and it will passively go out and farm you rocks and ore while you are out on your journeys.
Always remember to press “J” to get up your journal so you can do some optional things or earn your rewards.
We hope our Once Human: Getting Started Guide covered all the basic needs for you
If you require any more help or tips or tricks, then feel free to join our discord. Where someone can answer any questions there.
