Muck Beginner Guide to Surviving

Muck is a free survival roguelite game made by YouTuber Dani that’s single-player and multiplayer. If you’ve just started playing and aren’t quite sure where to start, this beginner guide is for you. It’s easy to get lost and not know what to do after the short tutorial is over. Continue reading our guide below for tips and tricks on how to survive and how to play Muck.

Survival For Beginners in Muck

How to Get Tools

The Workbench is your first step into crafting new gear.

Your first step in Muck is getting a rock so you can beat some trees for wood. Fortunately, a blue circle will appear on your screen showing where a rock is that you can grab. Follow the blue circle until you find a rock that you can pick up by pressing E when looking at it. Now you’ll want to break some trees labeled “Tree” with your rock to get some wood. If you try to break a stronger tree like a Birch one, you’ll need more advanced tools.

Regardless, continue following the tutorial tips to make a Workbench where you can create actual tools. Now all you need to do is get 10 Wood to create 10 Bark at your Workbench. You can find Bark under the Basic tab under the Workbench. Once you have 10 Bark and 10 Wood, head over to the Tools tab where you can make a Wooden Axe and Pickaxe. You’ll want these tools to speed up your resource gathering.

Continue upgrading your tools to unlock new armor and weapon recipes as you make progress. For example, use your Wooden Pickaxe to break dark Iron rocks and then smelt that ore into bars. Eventually, you can make an Anvil and start crafting more impressive gear. Each tier goes as follows from weakest to strongest:

Wood – Steel (Iron) – Gold – Mithril – Adamantite

How to Get Food

Cows and Yellow Mushrooms are a decent source of food when you’re first starting out.

If you don’t want to starve, you’ll need to get a food source while playing Muck. Fortunately, this is one of the easier parts of this survival roguelite game. When you’re first starting out, you’ll want to search for Yellow Mushrooms, Wheat, and Cows to get food. You can immediately eat Yellow Mushrooms to fill up your hunger bar. So keep an eye out for them while exploring.

Wheat tends to reappear daily so you can stock up on this item for making Bread. This is another great way to fill up your hunger bar when you’re exploring the island. Before you can make Bread, you’ll need to make a Workbench to craft your Wheat into Dough. Five Wheat makes one Dough that you can place into a Cauldron crafting station. All you need to do is place Wood or Coal into the Cauldron to fuel it and cook the Dough.

The third popular choice for food is to kill Cows for meat and cook that meat in a Cauldron. While you can eat Raw Meat, you won’t fill your hunger bar much. That’s why it’s worth throwing some wood into a Cauldron and cooking it up instead.

How to Get a Sword and Bow

Be careful of enemies attacking at your base at night when you’re not prepared.

Getting a Sword and Bow early on is a good way to keep yourself prepared for combat. It’s a little easier to make a Bow first, but both weapons are fairly simple to craft. Originally, you only needed a Workbench to create a Bow, but an update changed this.

Now instead of crafting one at a Workbench, you’ll need to craft a Fletching Table using 25 Birch Wood and 10 Flint. You can get Flint from rocks and Birch Wood obviously from Birch trees. Afterward, place the Fletching Table and craft whatever Bow and Arrows you like. And if you need help getting Rope, visit our guide on How to Make Rope.

In order to make your first Sword, you’ll need to follow a few more steps. First, use your Workbench to make a Furnace for smelting Iron Ore. You may need to explore a little bit before finding Iron Ore its placement seems random. Just look for dark black rocks that you can mine with your Wooden Pickaxe. Once you have some Iron Ore, smelt in at the Furnace and you’ll learn the Anvil recipe.

Return to the Workbench and craft an Anvil using 5 Iron Bars and 15 Rocks. Before you can make a Sword at the Anvil, you’ll need to make a Steel Axe and chop down some Birch Trees. Then, you’ll be able to craft a Sword using 7 Iron Bars and 5 Birch Wood. Once you’ve made it this far in Muck, you’ll have a good idea of the gameplay loop.

Once you start fighting enemies, make sure to take advantage of circling them to avoid getting hit. This works for most enemies you’ll come across aside from a few tough bosses.

What Are Buffs in Muck

Loot as many buffs as you have coins for to get a huge advantage in Muck.

Buffs are a significant part of the gameplay in Muck that can easily make you overpowered. If you’ve been playing for a bit, you’ve probably noticed chests all over the place that cost coins to open. However, there is one brown chest with a black trim that is always free. Make sure to take advantage of opening these chests early on to get a helping hand.

Every chest has a buff inside that will upgrade your character in some way. Examples include life leech, extra health, a shield, increased movement speed, extra jumps, and more. Before you can unlock these chests, you’ll need to fight enemies and collect the coins they drop. This is why combat plays a huge role in your character development.

So if you’re playing Muck on the Creative mode, you won’t run into any enemies. The only way you can get coins is by spawning enemies in using the gray challenge totems or crafting them. Once you’ve made it to mining gold, you can craft coins at an Anvil.

That’s all there is to our beginner guide for the survival roguelite game, Muck. Visit our guide hub for more useful answers to common questions in the community. Or take a look at any of the guides listed below.

Jeffrey Lerman

Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.