Is there a 'getting started' somewhere?

"Make a bow and cook some meat!"

How do I make a bow? It's not in the crafting screen.

How do I get meat? I've killed critters till i starved to death and got zero dropped meat. is it because I don't have a bow?

Another player gave me some meat. How do I cook it? "using" over the fire doesn't do it, and there's no meat item in the craft menu.

Clearly there's either something obvious i'm missing or the in-game character should have a PDA with google access.


And oh btw . . . If this has been answered, try searching "make a bow" or "cook meat" and see what flops out.

 

The starter quests sort-of walk you through this. The bow is either available at the workbench or the anvil (made from the workbench).
Just pressing 'c' to open crafting only provides a very limited set of recipes.

 

Bow crafting : See above ^
Getting meat : Bows increase the drop rates of meat a ton.
Cooking meat : Hit your use key (should be E) with your mousse over the fire, and you'll be greeted with a nice cooking interface.

 

STARBOUND GUIDES MASTER THREAD


http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/starbound-guides-master-thread.43184/



This is a good start. Spending more than a few minutes getting an idea on what takes you where will pay off in the long run.

 

You need to mouseover a structure (campfire, workbench, etc) and press E in order to use it. It's not like Terraria, if you've played that.

 

GETTING STARTED (Quick Guide):

1. Open your Shiplocker, which looks like this. You can open chests, crafting stations and generally interact with items by mousing over them and pressing "E".
2. Pull out everything. You have the Matter Manipulator, which once goes in your inventory, can never come out. It is a basic omnitool, able to very slowly break blocks as well as place them. There's also a very weak starter sword dependent on your race. Place it in the hotbar at the top of the screen. There's some torches, too, which provide heat and light, and some seeds you can plant.
3. Now, go to the teleporter at the left of your ship, press E, beam down to the planet, and cut down some trees with the Matter Manipulator.
4. Unrefined wood can be made into wooden planks. Press "C" to bring up the basic crafting menu. Scroll over to the Wooden Planks, click it, and craft it.
5. Get 35 planks and make a crafting table. Place it down, and press "E" to see what else you can make. Start by getting a Stone Pickaxe and Axe, which needs cobblestone.
6. Cobblestone is close to the surface. Dig out some of the dirt until you see cobblestone, get like 20, get some more planks and craft the Pickaxe.
7. Using the axe, look for some vines and cut them down. Using 4, you can make Bandages, a basic healing item. You can also use them to make a wooden Hunting Bow.
8. The Hunting Bow greatly increases the chance that a killed enemy will drop meat or leather. Meat is what you're looking for.
9. Make a Campfire and Furnace. These require torches. You can use your own, but you will need more to light up the caves. Coal can be made from burning 10 unrefined wood in a furnace, but you don't have that. Get some cobblestone, use some of your torches and make the furnace. Precious metal ore can go in here to be smelted. It's usually 2 ore --> 1 bar.
10. The Campfire is made with Unrefined wood and some torches. It's a crafting station, like the furnace and crafting table. Place it down, press "E", and place the meat in the slot. That will give you edible, cooked meat, which restores hunger. They also provide a ton of heat, and can be used to stay warm on snow or moon planets.
11. Go underground after crafting many bandages and torches to find iron, copper and silver over. Get a ton of it. Use like 8 iron bars to make the Iron Anvil, and then use the copper and silver to make armor and weapons.
12. DO NOT CRAFT THE DISTRESS BEACON YET. What receives the signal is -not- friendly. Before doing so, make good armor, a good amount of bandages, and an Iron Hunting Bow.

The rest should be easy to understand if you've gotten to the Distress Beacon. :>

 

Thanks for the replies.

couple things here

The "mouseover > press E" is what I needed. I was STANDING over and who knows where the mouse was.

The Master Thread is awfully low in the stickys to be all self important about being my "MASTAH" (=

A design point, they aren't differentiated at all from normal threads AND the sticky icon is out of traditional placement of stick icons . . . which is normally somehow right next to the title of the thread. I tend to look at stickies, but I couldn't find them in my intial scan, therefore my visual filter cut me out WAY before I got to it.

For the bow, the guide/tute says

Consequently, I was looking in the menus for "Bow" in the crafting menu as it's hililted specifically in that clear and concise "here's what you do" statement. You guys all said "Hunting Bow", which of course is what it's called in the crafting menu.

That's an important distinction, not just in terms of what to expect from the game -- that it may say one thing and mean something slightly different -- but for my part as well. Knowing that the guide may say "widget" when it means "alien widget" or "widget from a friend" helps considerably.

 

Searching for "bow" should still bring up the hunting bow, though, yes? If that does not work then it should be reported as a bug.