The Survivalists pushes players to craft to survive. Players start with low tier blueprints and tools; the more you craft, the faster you reach higher tier materials. The starting island has many useful materials, but if you hope to progress, you will need to venture further than the safety of the sandy beaches.
Flimsy tools break too fast. Straw and wood walls don’t offer a lot of protection. Doors, beds, better tools, and more require metal. Metal quickly becomes a necessary material after building the basic items. The second tier bed requires metal nails to complete. Doors need metal hinges. After crafting the forge, metal tools become available. For all its value, metal is not easy to find. Here’s how to find metal for all your upgrading needs.
Finding metal requires the raft. Your safe beach is too basic to have such a rare item. Sure, you might get lucky and get a couple of metal items like nails from enemies or the Mysterious Shop, but you won’t find metal to mine on the starter island. Make the raft as soon as it’s available. It doesn’t cost much.
Metal has a chance to spawn almost anywhere, except your starter island. Metal spawns in some caves, but as our starter island did not have any caves, we don’t know if this will be an exception to the rule. Due to the game’s procedurally generated environment, our metal spawns may have resulted from luck.
Once the raft is made, you will need the sail. The sail is unlocked separately from the raft. Make the makeshift rug and luxury bed sheet to unlock the sail. Both items require fur, so get your monkey army ready. With the sail attached, pick a couple of monkeys and go for a ride. It might be a good idea to have an extra monkey holding a chest to carry as much as possible. We went east and found a source of metal after some time at sea.
Metal nodes are abundant in the volcanic biome. You might find some in caves in other biomes. The volcanic biome is harsh and dangerous. Players will take damage due to the heat and will need bottles with water or elixirs to survive. If you do not have glass items yet, you can run back and forth to minimize the damage.
