Help and getting started

You start at 08:00 at your camp with a worn 4x4 pickup and a caravan. Your hotbar holds a shovel, a Goldseeker 150 detector, a 20 litre water cask, AA batteries, an empty paydirt bucket and matches. One day in the game lasts one real hour.

A field guide in the corner walks you through the basics: switch on the detector, search the pale gravel wash northwest of camp, read the signal, dig, collect the find, sell it and pan some dirt. Press F1 to fold the guide away. A few optional steps follow, such as using your torch, hunting, cooking and building.

Keep an eye on your water from the start, and head back to camp before the outback wears you down.

Switch the detector on with R. Press G to balance the coil to the local ground. Sensitivity and volume are optional tuning.

Sweep low and slowly in overlapping passes. A steady hum is the threshold tone. A rise that repeats at the same spot is a possible target, and that includes scrap. Hold Q (pinpoint) and check the signal from two directions before you dig.

The detector has three modes: All-Metal, Jewellery, and Coins and Relics. Better detectors reach deeper. Coils change depth too: a small sniper coil is shallow but precise, big coils go deeper. Hold a coil and press F to mount it.

Take out the shovel and hold the dig button for one cut. Aim beside the hole and tip the soil out. Then scan the hole and the spoil heap again; the target may be in either.

When you find the soil clod, press E to break it apart, look at what is inside and press E again to pocket it. Not every signal is gold. Hard layers need a pick.

The pan is slow but thorough: it washes out the fine gold the detector walks straight past. It needs water within a few metres, for example the camp basin, tap or tank, a rock hole or a river.

Shovel paydirt into the field bucket at your dig, carry the full bucket to the water and set it down. Then hold K to fill the pan, rock it left and right a few times, tilt with ↑ to spill the tops and collect what is left. With a controller: RT to fill, either stick to swirl and tilt.

Gold content changes with place and depth. Deeper is not always richer, so sample before you invest.

The small wash plant is a gravity sluice. Its water tank must stand higher than the sluice inlet. Fill the lower basin with a water can or the caravan hose. The wash kit is sold at Goldfield Supply; a pump runs from the yellow socket on the caravan, so keep the caravan battery charged.

The trommel processes far more dirt. It needs connected power and a water hose. You set drum speed and water at its control panel: F switches the motor, R sets the feed gate, H the water valve and T the drum speed. At full speed the large plant draws 6080 W including both pumps and the tailings belt, so a 6000 W generator needs a lower drum speed or extra power.

Feed it with an excavator. More capacity only helps if you can keep water, fuel and power coming. If water is scarce, a petrol dry blower concentrates dirt without any water.

Water is finite. Refill your tank with casks, collected rain, a river that is running or a bore you have developed.

A pumped water route needs a suction hose, a pressure hose and connected power. Lay the strainer at the end of the suction hose in a rain pit, river or rock pool. The pump only draws while the strainer is under water.

Drinking water comes from rain: rain IBC, then a cask, then the camper tank. Bore, river and pit water is for washing only. You drink from the camp tank with E.

Machines and vehicles burn fuel, and the right fuel matters: the small field generator runs on petrol, the tutorial power skid on diesel. Buy fuel separately, at the Kettle Garage pumps or as cans and drums at the Tucker Roadhouse.

Camp power can also come from solar panels, a battery bank or the caravan's 300 W inverter. Devices are switched on and off with F.

The caravan is your first shelter. Inside you can drink, rest and sleep, and use the galley. Press E at the bed to sleep until 06:00 or just rest.

Open the build menu with F8 to build your own camp: foundations, walls, doors, roofs, fences and gates. Aim at flat ground and place parts with the left mouse button. Timber, sheeting and screws are sold at the general store.

Eat and drink before you rest. A field bedroll under a built roof recovers you best; the caravan also gives shelter. Lay the bedroll out on level, clear ground or a built floor with E, then rest or sleep with F.

At night you sleep until morning. During the day a rest takes six hours. If you are not tired yet, the game tells you to stay awake a little longer. In co-op, everyone has to be at the bedroll for a group rest.

Place tinder next to dry wood, hold the matches and press E on the tinder. Rain can put the fire out.

Put raw meat on the tripod grill over a burning fire with E. Turn it with F once the underside is brown; left too long, it burns. Cooked meat keeps in a running fridge. Raw meat from hunting spoils within a day, so grill it soon. The cook pot takes tinned beans and half a litre of water per tin.

Your HUD shows temperature, stamina, water, food and rest. Heat and dust also wear you down, so plan around the weather: clear, overcast, rain, thunderstorms, severe storms, heatwaves and windy, dusty days.

You will meet kangaroos, wallabies, emus, Tasmanian devils and quokkas. A cornered kangaroo or devil can still hurt you.

Dangerous animals are dingo packs at night, wild boar and brown snakes. Dingoes keep away from firelight and lit work lights, and your torch makes one back off. A warning shot keeps a pack away for about three hours. Back away from a rearing snake; a bite needs a pressure bandage from the general store and a radio call for help.

If you prefer a calmer game, you can switch off dangerous wildlife (night dingo packs and charging boar) in the Gameplay settings.

Licences and claims are handled at the Land and Mining Office. A Miner's Right lets you fossick on most Crown land; the pastoral permit opens the station tracks. For your own ground you lease a claim or buy it outright.

Select a claim parcel on the map (M), then rent or buy it at the licence desk. When a lease runs out, the game reminds you and you can renew it the same way.

There are three towns: Redbank, Coolabah Ford on the river and Quartz Hill in the goldfields. You will find the Harlow General Store, Abara Prospecting Supply, Kettle Garage with its vehicle yard, the Tucker Roadhouse, the Land and Mining Office, a bank and the gold buyer.

To sell, find the buyer on the map, press E at the counter, look at the assay and confirm only the finds you want to sell. The gold price moves every week and the buyer keeps a 3 percent spread; each offer accounts for weight and purity.

Your starter pickup is a petrol 4x4 with four seats and a 75 litre tank. Later you can buy station wagons, a quad bike, a dirt bike, trailers, a camper trailer, a flatbed truck, a dozer, tractors and heavy haulage at the Kettle Garage vehicle yard.

For bigger work there are excavators (CE01, CE02 with front loader and its larger versions, EX30) and tipper trucks. All of them drive with the triggers on a controller. See the excavator controls for the arm and bucket.

Up to 4 people can play together online: a host and three friends. The host opens the pause menu, goes to the Co-op preview tab and chooses Host for friends, which makes a friends only Steam lobby. Invite friends through the Steam overlay. Friends join from a Steam invitation or with the lobby ID under Join co-op in the main menu.

The world and the save belong to the host. The host handles purchases, and some machines are operated by the host. Co-op is still being improved during Early Access.

There are three campaign slots. Each has an autosave, a quicksave and manual saves. By default the game autosaves every two in game hours. Quicksave with F5 and quickload with F9.

Saves are stored on your PC under %APPDATA%\The Nugget. During Early Access, save compatibility between versions may change.