Condensed Tier 1 Guide

You should read this guide *before* you play TFC for the first time, unless players will be online to help you or you know there's a shelter close to where you'll log in.

The most important things when starting off in TFC are finding food, finding fresh water, and making a shelter. You normally can't die of starvation or dehydration in TFC, but this server adds a mod which changes that. Hunger depletes twice as quickly as thirst, so we'll focus on that first.

====Early-Game Food Options====

From best to worst, here are the types of food you should prioritize obtaining when you've just started playing in a world. If you can't find one of these food sources within a reasonable amount of time, then move on to the next.

 * Sea weed - It never respawns and a single piece won't restore much hunger, but it's easy to find in large quantities and you always spawn close to a liquid block in minecraft - usually an ocean. This makes it easy to find in most worlds when you spawn for the first time. You can find it underwater in beach and ocean biomes.
 * Pheasants - If you've never seen one before, they look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/cycuLMG.jpg
You can't breed pheasants to make more of them, so you might as well kill them on sight for the meat they drop.
 * Deer - Kill them on sight for the same reason as pheasants. They have several times more HP and run noticeably faster, so they're a little trickier to kill. You should use a weapon, such as a stone axe. (Axe crafting is explained later.)
 * Grains & Vegetables - Check out the pictures under the Growth Phases row on the right to see what crops look like in TFC: http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Agriculture#Crop_Types
If you see some in-game, harvest them. Check to see if you can right click to harvest them first. (A few crops can be harvested this way without needing to destroy them.) If you can't, harvest them by left clicking to destroy them.

 * Fruits - Fruit bushes look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/o314NU7.jpg (No fruit on it)
and this:
http://i.imgur.com/ZRe9iIm.jpg (No fruit on it)
Right click them to harvest their fruit if any has grown on them. Left click to break them if you want to take the bush with you and replant it at your base. Fruit trees look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/ZRe9iIm.jpg (No fruit on it)
and this:
http://i.imgur.com/pEs764z.jpg (Fruit on it)
Right click them to harvest their fruit if any has grown on them. Don't destroy their leaves by left clicking; that won't benefit you in any way. If you have an axe, you can destroy the wooden sections for a roughly 50% chance of getting a fruit tree sapling. (Axe crafting is explained later.) If you use your hands, you won't get any saplings.
http://i.imgur.com/obXvCmd.jpg
Always destroy the wooden sections starting from the top or sides and working your way downward. In TFC, if you destroy a lower section of a tree (whether it's a fruit tree or a normal tree), every wood and leaf block above that point will be destroyed. Always leave at least one trunk block attached to the ground so that the trunk, branches, and leaves can regrow over time.

 * Chickens/Cows/Horses/Pigs/Sheep - Passive mobs never respawn (except for squid), but these five types can breed with each other to create infinite animal farms. No other mobs can breed. Whenever you see a group of any of these 5 types of mobs, always leave at least one male and one female alive for breeding purposes.
 * Squid - These drop so little meat that they're not worth killing unless you're very desperate for food or want to powerlevel your butchering skill. (The more passive mobs you kill, the more butchering EXP you'll gain. The higher your butchering skill, the more meat you'll get when you kill mobs.)
 * Bears/Spiders/Wolves/Zombies - None of these drop food; these are included as a disclaimer. While we're on the topic of bears, they look like this and are often about this small:
http://i.imgur.com/gxm1BEh.jpg
But don't let their size fool you. They run just as fast as you do and can easily kill you in a few hits, even with a full set of low- to mid-tier metal armor. If you see one, run away immediately.


==Your First Tool==

To cook your meat (if you got any), you'll need to make an axe, cut down trees, get logs, and start a fire.

First, collect some rocks by punching them off the ground. They'll look something like this, depending on your graphics settings:
http://i.imgur.com/UmBLFAE.jpg
Once you have at least 2, hold them in your hand and right click. This will bring up the knapping interface:
http://i.imgur.com/9h31QT1.jpg

Imagine the stone square as a 5x5 grid, meaning that this one large square is actually 25 smaller squares. Clicking on any part of it will remove that section. Click the four corners to remove them. Once you've done so, the interface will look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/aaCL5FM.jpg

Finish knapping it into the following shape:
http://i.imgur.com/MFwOJYj.jpg
If this looks confusing to you, think of it as removing L shaped tetris pieces from the top-right and bottom-right corners. You can also flip knapping recipes sideways and they'll still work.

Once you've retrieved your axe head from the output slot, collect some sticks. Note that you can only gain sticks by destroying leaf blocks or destroying sticks that you find on the ground, which never regenerate. I recommend destroying leaves since that's almost always more reliable than searching for sticks on the ground.

After you have a stick, put it in your 2x2 crafting grid underneath the stone axe head and collect the axe in the output slot. You've just made your first tool. Find the nearest tree that isn't more than 20 blocks tall and start chopping the log that's closest to the ground.

Cutting down trees in TFC takes much longer than it does in vanilla MC but, once you're finished, the tree will be destroyed from the top downward, showering you in log items. Keep in mind that while an axe is normally considered a tool, it can also be used as a weapon, dealing about 15 times more damage than your fists. Also note that they break very quickly, not only when chopping down trees but also when using them to kill mobs, so always have at least one more than you think you'll need.


==Cooking Your Food==

Collect 7 sticks if you haven't already. Place 2 of them in your crafting grid so that they're lined up diagonally. Take the firestarter from the output slot. Drop 3 sticks on the ground as items, all on the same spot. (The default key to drop items is Q. I recommend changing it to something like 1 on the numberpad as soon as possible so you don't accidentally throw away important items in the future.) After about one second, the 3 individual sticks will clump together and create an icon of 2 sticks that are very close together. (This is probably an oversight and should display 3 sticks instead of 2.)

Don't stand too close to it or you'll just pick the sticks back up. With your firestarter in your hand, hold right click while looking at the 3-stick item until it transforms into a fire pit, which will be active/on fire as soon as you've successfully made it. (Don't stand on it or you'll take fire damage.) As you hold your right mouse button, your firestarter's durability bar will drain with each attempt to light the fire. The number of attempts it takes you to succeed will be random. Don't worry if your first firestarter breaks; you didn't do anything wrong. Make a new firestarter and try again.

After you've succeeded, right click the fire pit to open its GUI/interface/menu.
http://i.imgur.com/ZzGfCkc.jpg
The 4 slots on the far left are for logs. Without adding logs to the fire, the fire might go out so quickly that you won't be able to cook any food on it. Assuming you've followed this guide in order and already cut down a tree, you should hold shift and left click a log to automatically place it in one of the log slots. Cook all of your meat after you've added a log to the fire. Once a piece of meat finishes cooking, it'll drop into the slot below it and to the left. The other slot beside it exists to catch a second piece of meat if you want to cook another one without withdrawing the first piece of cooked meat.


====Fresh Water====

If you don't spawn within eyesight of a fresh water source, or you spawn next to salt water (the edge of an ocean), climb up the nearest hill to get a better view. If you still don't see one, pick any direction and walk that way until you find one. To find out if a body of water is fresh water or salt water, press F3. Below your coordinates info, you'll see the name of the biome you're in. Stand in the water. If you're in a river or lake biome, it's most likely fresh water. If it's a beach or ocean biome, it's definitely salt water.

Another way to know if a body of water is fresh is to stand in it while your thirst meter isn't full. If you can right click a solid block that's underwater and your thirst meter starts to replenish, it's fresh water; if it doesn't, the water is salt water.
When you come across a hole in the ground with water in the bottom, it's most likely a source of fresh water:
http://i.imgur.com/nGo6Q4G.jpg
Unless there's a cloud of steam particles rising off of it and the water is a lighter shade of blue, as seen in this picture:
http://i.imgur.com/yY2G7Ar.jpg
These are hot springs. You can't drink the water in them but, if you stand in them, your HP will recover noticeably more quickly.

Another way you can tell if water is fresh is to look around for cattails, which always look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/sWcrbN0.jpg
If cattails are growing in it, the water is fresh and drinkable.

One more way you can distinguish between fresh and salt water: when the temperature around you reaches 0 or drops into the negatives (press F3 to see what the temperature around you is), nearby water will begin to freeze. If it's fresh water, it'll freeze into blue ice blocks. If it's salt water, the ice blocks will be white.


====Your First Shelter====

Chopping down logs with stone axes takes an annoyingly long time (and you'll need to do that when you want to tear down one of the walls to leave, or to create a window to look outside), so let's use log piles instead. With a log in your hand, you can sneak and right click a block to make a log pile on top of it. If you right click a log pile that isn't completely full while holding a log, you'll add that log to the log pile's storage. If you right click a log pile with any other item or without holding anything, you'll open the log pile interface, which looks like this:
http://i.imgur.com/tPFVQSr.png

In the time it takes to remove a single normal log, you can easily destroy 5 to 10 log piles by opening their interface and removing all of the logs, which removes the log pile. This is convenient for creating doors or windows in your hut. Note that log piles can't be used as a roof since they can only be placed on top of solid blocks. Make a hut that looks something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/Bmd8Ceu.png
It's ugly, but functional. Half of the 2x2 log pile in the front of the picture can be removed to use as a door while the other log piles can be removed to use them as replaceable windows. From the inside, the view will look something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/HaEAo6o.png

However you build your shelter, don't forget to add a roof to stop spiders from climbing the walls, getting inside, and killing you. Consider removing a few roof blocks so you can punch spiders to death from below. Without a 2x1x2 empty space above your head, spiders won't be able to reach and attack you, but you'll be able to reach and attack them. This tactic can be used to easily obtain string for fishing rods, bows, silk cloth, and other items. Also keep in mind that windows allow skeletons to shoot at you, and tearing down a wall of your shelter to walk outside puts you at risk of being ambushed by creepers, which will almost certainly kill you in one hit.


====Parting Advice====

Never forget about NEI and how helpful it is:
http://i.imgur.com/l2n8YFZ.png
To better understand food, see:
http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Food
To move on to the condensed tier 2 guide, visit this link:
http://pastebin.com/qd1VguJV
Or visit this one to check out the unabridged tier 2 guide:
http://pastebin.com/8WnBb3rj
For everything else: search the wiki, use google, or drop by our discord and ask for help. https://discord.gg/vPJ8rvJ