Keep the fire alive

Your Homestead is built around a fire, and the fire is the safest place you have. Near a well-fed fire, the things of an ordinary night cannot reach you.

• Feed it Wood. Each log adds about a minute and a half. A full fire does not last a whole night, so someone has to feed it at least once in the dark.
• Watch it shrink. As the fuel runs low, the safe circle around it gets smaller.
• Embers are your last chance. Run out of fuel and the fire drops to embers. You have about 45 seconds of embers a night (20 on a Blood Night), and they come back at dawn. Feed the fire while it is in embers and the night still counts. Let the embers go out and the night is lost, though you can relight the fire to see the morning.

Dread is your fear, from 0 to 100. It rises in the dark and when things are near you, and it falls in the light and in company. It rises much more slowly with friends around you.

• At 40 you hear things.
• At 60 your eyes stop agreeing with you.
• At 80 something that hunts frightened people may come for you.
• At 100 you collapse, and wake by the fire a little steadier, with something cursed in your pack that frays your nerve while you carry it. It burns well, though.

Dread is yours alone, so a friend who is cracking needs bringing back to the light.

The first day is short. Dusk comes after a few minutes, so use them.

1. Gather Wood in the woods around your Homestead, and pick Berries so you do not go hungry.
2. When the bell rings, dusk is coming. Head back and feed the fire.
3. Stay in the light. Out of it at night you grow cold within a few minutes, and the cold makes fear worse.
4. Learn what comes. Crawlers circle the edge of the light. Watchers only move when nobody is looking at them. Never follow a light you do not know.

Keep the fire alive until dawn and your Homestead's night counter goes up by one. That number is your record. A lost night does not add one, and nothing takes one away.

Build your Homestead piece by piece on a grid: foundations, floors, walls, doors and roofs. Walls need a foundation, and roofs need walls. Your Homestead is saved, so everything you build stays.

• Defences such as palisades and gates keep things away from the fire. Spike traps are coming.
• Ward posts are lights that hold the dark back further from home. Some things in the night put lights out.
• Pieces cost Wood, Stone and Fibre from the woods around you. Stronger ones need materials from the Wilds.

Craft by hand, at the fire, at a workbench or at a forge: stone tools and a spear by hand, planks and blueprints at the workbench, iron at the forge. More recipes open as you survive more nights and bring back new materials.

• Cook at the fire. Cooked food fills you up for longer than raw food, and some meals calm you as well.
• Better gear comes from further out. Iron tools and calming brews need things found only in the Wilds.

From your third night you can build a Waystone at your Homestead, from Stone, Wood and Fibre. It takes you and up to five friends into the Wilds: step into its ring and go together.

• Every trip ends in the dark. You arrive in daylight, dusk follows, and then it is night until you leave. The real choice is when to turn back.
• What you find goes in your expedition bag. It is only yours once you get out, by the Waystone you came through or a beacon you light.
• If you fall, your bag stays where you fell. A friend can pick it up and carry it out for you.

Read about the Ashen Forest, the first place the Waystone goes.

Every seventh night is a Blood Night. More things come out of the dark, the fire's embers last a shorter time, and something with a name arrives.

The first is the Hearthbreaker. Listen for the bell going quiet and chains dragging through the trees. It goes for your walls and your fire, and no fire keeps it out. Build strong, keep the fire fed, and strike while it is stunned. Later you will be able to brace your gates against it. Later Blood Nights bring other things, and those are yours to find out.