Casualties Unknown punishes tiny mistakes more than obvious risks. A badly packed inventory, one careless landing, or an untreated cut can end a promising descent. These tips focus on the habits and early upgrades that make each run more manageable.
Best Early-Game Tips for Casualties Unknown
Your first priorities should be crafting a Foliage Bag, preparing a few Dressings, and securing enough supplies for a Canteen, a basic tool, and a dependable light source. These essentials make exploration considerably safer before you begin pursuing more advanced equipment.
1. Increase Your Storage Before Collecting Everything
Inventory space becomes a problem almost immediately. Start gathering foliage from plants such as Glowplants and Geotrees, then turn it into the Rope and Canvases needed for a Foliage Bag.
Additional bags are useful early, but the Belt and Material Pouch should eventually become priorities. The Material Pouch is particularly valuable for organizing small crafting supplies, while the Belt provides convenient access to tools. Favorite important equipment so crafting recipes don't accidentally consume it.
2. Pin Crafting Recipes Instead of Memorizing Materials
Open the crafting menu with C, select an item, and use the pin icon to display its requirements on your screen. This makes gathering materials much easier because you can check your progress without reopening the menu.
I'd recommend keeping one important recipe pinned at a time. Finish the equipment you actually need before getting distracted by several unfinished crafting projects.
3. Stop Wasting Your Emergency Light
The starting Emergency Light has limited power, so leaving it running constantly is a poor long-term strategy. Activate it when inspecting unfamiliar terrain, then switch it off when visibility isn't essential.
Glowplant fruits provide another useful option. Keep one available for temporary illumination and consider carrying another to throw into dark areas. A proper replacement light source should become a priority before exploring deeper layers.
Health and Survival Tips
4. Always Have a Way to Stop Bleeding
Bleeding is among the most dangerous early problems because even an otherwise manageable injury can become fatal when ignored. Carry Dressings and treat significant blood loss as soon as you can safely stop.
Tourniquets can temporarily control severe limb bleeding, giving you time to apply further treatment. If glass or other shrapnel becomes embedded in a wound, stabilize the bleeding first rather than immediately attempting removal.
Glowplant fruits can also provide makeshift antiseptic treatment when better medical supplies aren't available.
5. Get a Helmet Before Taking Bigger Risks
Head injuries deserve special attention because brain damage can interfere with movement, consciousness, and your ability to control your character. A single bad fall can create problems that continue long after the initial impact.
Work toward a Makeshift Helmet early, then consider stronger protection as better crafting options become available. Preventing brain damage is far more convenient than trying to recover from it.
6. Eat Enough to Stay Full, Not Just Alive
Food affects more than your hunger meter. Maintaining good nutrition supports several aspects of your character's health, while reaching the Satiated or Full state improves happiness over time.
Geofruits are especially useful early because they help with hunger, hydration, and mood simultaneously. Don't overlook them simply because you already have enough food to avoid starvation. Their multiple benefits make them excellent supplies while they're fresh.
7. Save Water Before It Becomes Scarce
Water becomes harder to obtain as you descend, making early collection worthwhile. Keep useful empty bottles and cartons rather than immediately discarding them. Fluid containers can be placed into pools to collect liquids for later use.
Store containers inside bags whenever possible to reduce accidental contamination from environmental fluids. Groundwater should also be boiled before drinking to avoid sickness. Having a Canteen or another suitable container gives you more flexibility when water sources become unreliable.
8. Never Sleep Beside Water or a Drop
Choose a safe location before sleeping, preferably on suitable ground away from liquids, traps, and ledges. Your character can be displaced while unconscious, turning an otherwise harmless resting spot into a dangerous situation.
Naptails are useful for restoring your ability to function when energy becomes a problem, and they can improve mood. However, their sleep-inducing effect makes the location where you consume them especially important.
Exploration and Crafting Tricks
9. Inspect Items Before Deciding They're Useless
Hold Shift to reveal additional item information, including properties that may matter for crafting. Ordinary-looking materials sometimes serve functions that aren't immediately obvious from their names.
You can also hold Ctrl to highlight nearby items, making smaller objects easier to find. Reading descriptions is particularly important when dealing with unfamiliar food, chemicals, or medical supplies. Experiment with combinations when it's safe, but don't blindly consume everything you discover.
10. Use Throwaway Items to Deal With Traps
You don't always need to approach a trap to disable it. Throwing an expendable object can activate certain hazards, including Spike Traps and Jump Pads, from a safer position. Breaking the supporting tile can also remove many floor-mounted traps.
Be more cautious around Landmines. Triggering one remotely may protect you from the initial explosion, but it can also destroy surrounding terrain or release nearby liquids. Coils and radioactive hazards are generally better avoided than deliberately disturbed.
11. Check Both the Floor and the Darkness Below
Unexplored drops should be treated as dangerous until you can see where they lead. Throwing a Glowplant fruit downward can illuminate the landing area and potentially reveal hazards before you commit to jumping.
Glass is another easily overlooked threat. Broken glass blocks can leave sharp fragments behind, so clear visible shards before walking across them. A moment spent inspecting the ground is preferable to treating a preventable injury.
12. Keep Important Equipment in Secure Slots
Items held in your hands or mouth can be dropped when your character loses consciousness. Eating or drinking can also cause you to release whatever you're carrying in your mouth.
Use back slots and suitable wearable containers for equipment you cannot afford to lose. This is especially important when crossing dangerous terrain, since dropping a valuable tool during a fall may leave it somewhere difficult or impossible to recover.
13. Build Intelligence While Preparing for Deeper Layers
Crafting progression depends heavily on Intelligence, which affects your available recipes and ability to identify items. Reading E-PDAs and blueprints, crafting unfamiliar recipes, and interacting with traders can help develop this skill.
I wouldn't rush downward simply because you've found an opening to the next layer. Use relatively safe opportunities to gather materials, improve your equipment, and expand your crafting options. Entering a more dangerous environment with proper supplies gives you considerably more ways to respond when something goes wrong.
