Savage Lands: review and hints/tips/tricks

No, not that one, lets try again.

There we go.

Savage lands (and yes you need the s at the end to not confuse it with many other things) is a survival rpg in early access on Steam. Savage Lands is made by Signal Studios and DigitalDNA games, who have some experience (but not much) with producing XBLA games. SL is reminiscent of Rust (a good but unforgiving survival game), set in the land of Skyrim (dragons and all). The producers have been doing a surprisingly good job at listening to the user feedback, and patch on an impressive once or twice a week basis. 

The game itself is quite simple, begin life in the stone age and end somewhere in the medieval era. What I mean is that you collect stone and wood and make simple tools, so you can collect metal and leather so you can make advanced tools. 

The world itself is an island large enough to get lost in which has a few minor distinguishable features to it, lots of frozen woodland wastes, and many many hungry wolves. 

The game has one harvest-able non-hostile creature: deer, and many harvest-able hostile creatures. These range from the terrible skeletons, to the hungry wolves, to the killer wargs, bears, and powerful deathknights, to the kill you like a giant in Skyrim forest troll/treant things.  

Playing with friends to build a town is rewarding, but currently nearly pointless as there is little to do end game other than admire your few stone and wood structures and bask in your metal armor. The textures aren't superb, but they aren't bad. The production company is making strides daily to add things to the game, so hopefully there will be more to do soon. 

If you can figure out how to rub two sticks together you will figure out and master this game in the first few hours. Then in the next twenty you will use your mastered skills to slowly scratch a living off rocks (literally as this is how you get metal) until you have enough to explore the game's Easter-eggs. 

The apes are a lie.

All in all the game is decent (for the survival genera) and shows some promise if they are able to get more locations, enemies, and items worked into the game. A bit of a story or a quest system would be cool too.

Tips: 
- the heavy hammer is the best for mining and easy to make, it is worth making over the others
- build yourself a shelter in an easy-to-find place with lots of rocks and wood around. That way you will have a place to drop your loot.
- do not underestimate the value of re-spawn points, in this game you will die and it's nice to know where to find your own body's loot.
- it is difficult to build storage chests until later (because of the materials they require) and they, like other things, should not be put into houses that can spawn loot randomly (like pre-existing structures) as this can sometimes delete your stuff.
- you will need a forge to make most worthwhile equipment, and building a forge is costly, you're better off finding one at an abandoned town.


Final review:
A for effort
C for execution
We will have to see where this game goes.

5/10 in general, but 7.5/10 for the genera.