This guide establishes the basic gameplay, keybinds and simple mechanics you will encounter.

Basic Keybinds:

Attacking:
Left Click enemy to attack
Double Click enemy to auto attack or harvest
V to free attack or to Fire Cannons

Tab: Cycle through nearby targets

Other:
I or TAB - Inventory
F - Pickup item (or simply click the item to pick up)
Double Click- Interact with item (or press E)
Q - Quests
C - Crafting
Y - Attributes
Numlock - Autorun (also mid mouse)

(Detailed keybinds found under ESC -> Settings in game)

Health and Energy:
Energy and Health will regenerate when near a campfire.
Press C to craft a campfire.
Certain cooked foods or drinks may also give energy and health.

Energy is required to do actions like attacking, harvesting, repairing, firing cannons and sprinting.


Death:
When your health reaches 0, you will die and respawn at your last saved checkpoint. Make sure you set your respawn point to a "message in a bottle" or a lighthouse (if applicable).
When you die, you will not drop your inventory in the normal mode of the game (mode modes coming soon). You will lose a small portion of your XP on each death.


Food and Water:
Food and Water are critical to maintaining optimal vitals. If your food and water levels reach 10% or lower, you will slowly start losing health and energy. In the normal mode of the game,
you will lose health up to a certain minimum threshold (roughly 10% of your max health).

You will not die of thirst or hunger in the normal mode of the game while on land, or while sailing on a boat, but your health will be at a bare minimum. In harder modes (coming later), you can die from hunger and thirst.

Note that if you jump in deep water or swim while hungry or thirsty, you may still die of hunger and thirst, as the water exhaustion will kick in.

Tips:
Certain foods like cooked fish will regenerate your energy as well.
You can catch a fish by using a spear against a fish pool.
You can craft a sharpening stone by collecting 5 stones.
Sharpening stones help a lot to counter early threats you may face.
Sharpening stones also make harvesting easier.

Placing an Item:
Click the item in your inventory and click "Use". Place the item at the desired spot by moving the mouse to the location. Click "Place"

Basic Cooking:
To Cook at a campfire, click to open the contents of the campfire and add raw meat.
Add sticks for fuel.

To make drinking water, place a barrel in the shallow water near the shore. It will slowly filter and collect salt water. Take the salt water from the barrel and cook it in a campfire for clean potable water. A firepit (or Advanced Campfire) can cook a variety of foods.

Pay close attention to the tooltips on items. Certain food items like steamed crab or clams will require water, raw meat and firewood as fuel. Drying rack can also make a variety of food items like Jerky, dried meat, Pemmican meals and Papaya Jerky. Feel free to explore the variety of foods you can make. Foods give critical buffs in the game and will work very well to ensure your success in harder encounters.



Swimming:
Swimming in Pirates of Pangea is not an easy feat. Since the water is dense and exhausting, swimming will make you hungry and thirsty faster, and will take enormous amounts of energy.
While it is possible to swim short distances using energy foods like Papaya Jerky or cooked/fermented fish, swimming is not something you can leisurely do in these waters.


Sprinting:
You may toggle sprint on by pressing the shift key. Sprinting takes energy and makes you hungry and thirsty faster. If you notice you are getting exhausted, or hungry and thirsty a lot, you may want to conserve energy by not sprinting as much.


Basic Combat:
Equip the weapon.
Walk up to the enemy and press V or double click the enemy to auto attack.

Certain weapons (like swords) have parry or backstab bonuses. Parry bonuses will trigger when taking a hit while not attacking. On a successful parry, a short buff will appear that will increase your damage and heal you.

Certain enemies are susceptible to ambush attacks.
To ambush an enemy, approach the enemy from behind while crouched or crawled and attack (press V or double click) when in range.


Couching:
Press Z to crouch. Crouching conserves food and water and reduces aggro from nearby enemies. It can also be used to make stealth attacks from behind. Certain monsters like Crabs and Widows are vulnerable to ambush. Crouching again will make you crawl and reduce the aggro even further. You may want to crawl up to higher level mobs, if crouching still catches their attention.



Damage Types:
There are five main damage types:
Physical, Poison, Bio, Fire and Frost.

Different conditions require different resistances to the above damage types.
Some monsters, for example Ghosts, deal bio damage. Some environments such as heavy winds deal Bio damage as well. To counter this damage type, you need to build up your resistance to Bio. Resistances can be boosted by scrolls, drinks (such as Rum), certain foods or certain armors.

Some monsters are weak to certain damage types. For example, crabs, sharks and some pirate ships are weak to poison damage. Attacking them with poisonous weapons or poison laced cannonballs will deal significantly more damage.

Some player ships have internal resistances to some of these damage types. Making one ship more suitable for a certain encounter than others.



Player Attributes:

There are 4 main attributes:
Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Energy
You can access these at any time by pressing Y (keybind for Attributes)

Strength increases your critical hit damage, and also allows you to carry more weight in your inventory. It also increases your appetite, making you able to consume more food and last longer.

Dexterity increases your critical hit chance and accuracy. With more dexterity you can hit for more on some hits and miss less.

Vitality increases your health pool and allows you to retain more water in your body. This makes you last longer.

Energy increases your energy pool and allows you to perform more tasks before needing rest at a campfire.

An additional attribute "Weight" can be obtained from scrolls and it increases the amount of weight you can carry.

Sailing:
Sailing is fairly simple in this game.
Craft a ship in a bottle, boat or a raft and place it in the water by the shore.
Placing them too close to the shore can get them stuck. Place them a bit further away from the shore. You can also place them in front of docks (if any on the island)

Double click the boat to mount it and use W,A,S,D keys to steer.
Use Num Lock for auto move.
Press X to dismount from the boat.

Certain sailing speed buffs can be obtain from nearby Wind effects (if any) or coming in contact with Mermaids. Keep an eye out for them while sailing!

Attacking from a boat or a ship using a melee weapon:

To attack a creature, for example a shark, dismount the boat and attack using a melee weapon like a spear.

Firing a cannon from a ship or boat:
To attack from a ship with cannons, you will need cannonballs in your inventory and "Fire Cannon" skill on your hotbar. You will need energy to fire cannon, so keep energy food like fish or similar handy. While mounted, steer your ship with cannons in the direction of the enemy and use the Fire Cannon skill to fire.

Repairing a ship:
Use the Repair Ship skill while mounted to repair your ship. You can repair an ally ship by targeting another ship while mounted. You will need Repair Kits in your inventory. Repair Kits can be crafted.

You can find quests from "Message in a Bottle" found on Islands. Crucial details needed to finish the quests will be outlined in the quest details. It is important to read the quest text for clues and hints pertaining to quests. There is no auto navigate to quest locations, and limited or no visual markers for quest locations, and that is by design.

When a Message in a Bottle has a quest, an exclamation mark will show up. Click the bottle to pick up the quest. Press Q for quest details to access the quest details later.

Quests will lead to newer quests with increasing difficulties.

Check the Message in a Bottle often for new quests.

Some tips for early quests:
Drinking Water Quest:
Remember to pick up the Barrel and set it near the shore in shallow water.
Once the barrel collects filtered "Salt Water", you can take it out of the barrel and put it in a campfire. Put some sticks in the campfire and it will cook and distill the salt water into clean water.

Chicken and the Egg Quest:
Pick up the Chicken and the Bags from the Ghost camp.
double click or E to open chicken and put the corn inside.
Chicken will lay eggs in a few minutes of gameplay.
These eggs need to be boiled with salt and water in a firepit (advanced campfire)
To get salt, you will need a salt maker that is crafted from a workbench.

You can find treasure chests washed ashore during storms or strong winds.
You can also find treasure caches from shipwrecks or from sinking pirate or smuggler ships.
Picking up flotsams can give map fragments that lead to great treasures when combined together in a cartography table. Map fragments can also be obtained from treasure caches.

To open treasure chests, you may need skeleton keys. Skeleton keys can be crafted.
Treasure caches can be opened by breaking it open with a melee weapon.