| Getting Started | Player | Adventurer's Journal |
|---|
G'day. So, you're ready to start your new fair Dinkum life and build a home out in the bush?
Excellent, let's get cracking!
Starting at character creation, choose your appearance, character name, and an island name you like. These things will not affect your game play.
Each island is somewhat randomly generated. While they are similar to one another, their river locations, and biome borders can vary quite a lot. Each island looks more or less different, but it still feels familiar!
Each biome is in the same general direction from the centre of the island. The dock is always on the Eastern side, usually where you would expect it but sometimes it appears further out in the water on a nearby island. And there are always tele towers toward the North, East, South and West ends of the main island.
The opening cut scene, South City, can be skipped if you have seen it before, press Escape to skip straight to the airship.
After your airship lands, Fletch will give you access to view the Island Map and task you with placing the Base Tent. See below for choosing your town's location.
Choosing Your Town's Location[]
Where you set up your town is up to personal preference, but some spots will be more challenging than others starting out. Popular starting locations are near the centre of the map, near the dock, or near one of the tele towers for easy travel (after you have repaired the towers).
You can move any building later on if you wish, with a couple of caveats:
- You cannot move the player tent until you upgrade it to a house.
- It costs 25k dinks to relocate any building.
After placing your base tent, Fletch will task you with setting up your own tent.
After placing your tent, Fletch will expect you to report back to her. There is no need to hurry at any point, yet. This is a good time to explore the map, forage and collect things to sell to John the next day. Just be sure to leave a few toolbar slots open to accept quest items. You can also use the Traveler's Suitcase in the base tent as storage.
Time, in Dinkum, doesn't start to progress until you have received an Adventurer's Journal from Fletch. You will start at 10am on day 1, year 1. Before you talk to Fletch, let's explore!
Take Time To Explore[]
You can collect quite a pile of gum logs, yellow wattle and red bottle brush flowers, and a variety of fruits. The fruits can be sold for profit, eaten, or planted to grow more fruit, once you can purchase a shovel. The logs can be used for crafting or selling. The wattle and bottle brush can be sold or saved for brewing.
You can also collect shells! While the different types of shells do not stack in your inventory, duplicate shells of the same type stack, so if you have room, you can gather up quite a collection of shells to sell or save for fertiliser.
You can also venture out into the ocean and dive for Critters and pearls. Do be mindful of your stamina, and Sharks!
Cooked food is not only worth more, it is better for you than raw food, too. Since you can't craft much yet (Fletch will give you a recipe for a campfire before the end of the day though, which can be used to cook fruit), raw bananas will give you the most energy, apples will give you the best health, and the other two tree fruits (bush limes and quandongs) will give you a mixture of both. Raw cactus figs will actually hurt your health while giving you a little energy, so watch out for that! It's best to cook them first.
Your characters stamina will regenerate on its own when taking a break. Consumables can give you a temporary buff to regenerate health and/or stamina. Some of the better foods can offer your character buffs! After consuming a food with health benefits, take a seat on something like a gum log seat (crafted at the crafting table) to increase your health more quickly.
If you pass out while playing single player, your screen will go black, click on Revive and you'll progress to the next day.
When you press Revive, you will lose roughly 1/3 of the maximum durability of all tools in their inventory and 20% of the dinks you have on-hand. Any tools that lose their full durability won't break; they'll be left with 1-2 uses.
The day saves and automatically progress to the next day as if you had slept. The player starts the day with the default stamina and health levels for the start of a new day.
The Island Map[]
If you press M to open the map, you can use your mouse to move it around, zoom in and out, and place map markers (right click on a marker to remove it). For more map controls visit Island Map page.
Left clicking on a map marker will highlight its location on your mini-map, which can be useful to help you find your way back to town or other areas you have marked on the map.
You will also notice different coloured areas on your map, we will refer to these as 'biomes'.
The different type of land biomes are Beach, Bushlands, Desert, Mangroves, Pine Forest, Plains, and Tropics.
The water biomes are North and South Ocean, Rivers and Billabongs (billabongs are an Australian term for an oxbow lake, an isolated pond left behind after a river changes course).
There are also small, isolated islands in the North East of the ocean, where you will often find coconuts.
Some creatures may only be found in certain biomes at certain times of day, certain seasons, or under certain weather conditions.
Time Management[]
There is no need to stress over time management in Dinkum, really. You can play the game at whatever pace you enjoy.
Time progresses in Dinkum through days, seasons and years.
The clock starts at 7am and stops at midnight each day. If you use this Late time to catch up on things that cost low or no stamina, such as cooking and crafting, it can free up more of your day time to do the higher stamina costing activities!
A full day in Dinkum technically breaks down, by season, as follows:
| Full Day In Dinkum | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season | Summer | Autumn | Winter | Spring |
| Morning | 7am-11am | 7am-11am | 7am-11am | 7am-11am |
| Day | 11am-9pm | 11am-7pm | 11am-6pm | 11am-8pm |
| Night | 9pm-Late | 7pm-Late | 6pm-Late | 8pm-Late |
At midnight, the time will change to "LATE." Time stops for your character, but you can stay up indefinitely and it won't progress into morning until you sleep (or pass out from running out of stamina or get killed).
Pause is available in single player, in the game options menu. However, it does not appear in-game until you save, exit and restart the game.
Ending Your First Day[]
Fletch will offer you a Campfire recipe, a Bug Net, and a Sleeping Bag during your last dialogue on the first day. You can place the Sleeping Bag in your Tent, anywhere on open ground, or carry it with you on your adventures and use it when you get tired and want to end the day.
Using your Sleeping Bag is how you save the day progress and move on to the next day.
It is important to note that if you quit without sleeping/saving, you will start the day over again like it never happened the next time you load the game.
This is a feature that allows you to restart your day should you encounter a bug, or find yourself in a situation that you really want to undo, you can simply exit without sleeping and the entire day will be undone!
Making Your Own Way[]
Dinkum is an early access life sim. The main quest line won't hold your hand for long. Fletch helps you along just enough to give you some basic recipes and skills. After this point, it's up to you to build a town and fill your adventure journal on the island inspired by the wild Australian outback!
Life is what you make it here! You can build and decorate your town as simple or elaborate as you like. Eventually you will draw in visitors who may decide to stay once you become friends, all of whom can offer your town something useful.
You can invite your friends who play Dinkum to visit your island where they can help you decorate your town, tend your crops, shop at your stores, and enjoy some activities together such as Fishing, croc hunting, or hunting for treasure in the deep mine!
You can go fishing and bug hunting to fill up your adventure journal, documenting all of the different species you discover. You can even fill a Museum full with the fish, bugs and critters you collect, and sell any extras!
You can also learn how to make traps, and take on quests for fierce predators!
You can build a home of your own to customise and decorate however you fancy.
You can raise the Dinkum version of chickens, cows and sheep. You can grow all sorts of crops and plant an orchard and tree farm.
It is often said that the true end game in Dinkum is farming and fashion. Or is it "fashionable farming?"
Whatever you decide to do, have a lot of fun!