Beginner's Guide

Choose a background

Ashen Veil starts you as Operator “MC”, woken from a long sleep in a pre-war shelter on the edge of Katowice. Your background is the one permanent decision you make at the start, and it shifts your base survivability:

Everyone starts at 100 Max HP and 100 Max Stamina, and both grow by 5 per level. A background is not a class lock: all fifteen talent trees are open to every Operator. Backgrounds also open extra options in encounters: Mercenary and Heavy Gunner characters can intimidate raiders into backing off, for example, while Scavenger and Nomad characters can sneak into a stash at night.

How the day works

Time in Ashen Veil does not tick in real time. A day is divided into seven parts: early morning, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, early night and dead night. Almost everything you do spends one part of the day: a fishing trip, a hunt, a scavenging run, a fight or a random encounter. A few long journeys, such as the Katowice Tunnels and the Slaughterhouse gate, cost two.

That gives you roughly six or seven actions a day, so planning matters more than speed. If you stay outside at dead night you can collapse, and you may wake up missing materials, so do not push on when the sun goes down.

Each day also rolls a weather type that changes what is safe: rain fills your barrels, storms close fishing and hunting, fog brings more ambushes and a High Heat day punishes you for going out thirsty at midday. Read the weather guide before your first long trip.

The first days

1. Play the prologue properly. Reach the buried shelter, restore power and take Cipher's transmission. If you search the maintenance shed you find 5 Wood and 2 Scrap, which is exactly what the Workshop needs for your first Fishing Rod. Fishing turns stamina into Raw Meat early and keeps you fed.
2. Open the base screen and build the basics. The Workshop, the Scrap Pit and the Defense Walls are unlocked first. Resources come from the Scrap Pit, ammunition and tools from the Workshop and safety from the Walls. See the base guide for the order.
3. Keep thirst and hunger under control. Thirst in particular decides whether High Heat is dangerous. Barrels fill on rainy nights, so a rainy day is a free water day.
4. Spend your first neural points on survivability. A few points in Survivalist or Juggernaut make the first expeditions much safer than a point in a flashy damage talent.
5. Explore close to home first. The Janow Warehouse, the Silesian Park Clinic and the Abandoned Bunker all sit near the base on the map and are good early exploration targets. Save the Tunnels (two parts of a day) for when you are healthy and rested.
6. Do not fight everything. Many encounters offer a way out: trade, bribe, intimidate or sneak past. Check the options before you pull the trigger.

Mistakes to avoid

• Running dry on Medicine. Medicine heals you, treats radiation and pays for several options. Keep a reserve of at least ten at all times.
• Over-investing in one stat. Dodge, damage reduction, critical chance and others are capped. Once you are near the cap, branch out.
• Selling your upgrade materials. Scrap, Wood, Cloth and Tech Data are the currency of your own base. Scrip is for the shops.
• Ignoring weather. A High Heat noon or a Rad-Storm can take half your HP if you ignore the warning.
• Fighting at the wrong range. Ranged weapons are weak up close and melee weapons cannot strike from afar. See the combat guide.

Where to go next

When you are comfortable, read the combat guide for the mechanics, the economy guide for resources and the build guide for a plan to follow to level 60.

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