Very simple guide & tips from a gamer dad who finished this game twice. Apologies for the formatting. I’m not a guide maker, just someone who enjoyed the game, played it blind, and wanted to help others that may be looking for guidance.
General Tips
– Start with the trees closest to the money making machine.
– You can just hold the left click button, no need to spam click.
– You do, however, need to spam R to throw the logs.
– You don’t need to face the machine to throw. You can spam R while you face any direction, as long as you’re close enough to the machine.
– When you’re not holding any logs, escape to the menu and hit unstuck to respawn at home immediately. If you do this while holding logs, your logs will be dropped on the ground… which is not a big deal.
– Level up Throw Distance first.
– Selecting rest or rest until morning doesn’t really matter. You’ll faint if you stay up too late (until you buy a lantern) but it’s the same effect as unstuck-ing, so there’s no real penalty per se.
– Go back to the trees near the machine and keep whacking.
– Level up Stamina next, then either Throw Distance again or Swing Power.
– You’d want to focus on Throw Distance while leveling Power and Stamina when it makes sense.
– Walk Speed and Run Stamina is not that useful early game.
– Stack Size is necessary around mid-game but not that crucial early on… don’t neglect this though.
– The priority is basically like this: Throw Distance > Stamina / Swing Power / Weapon Tier > Stack Size > Movement Speed > Running Stamina
– There is one point in the game where the Throw Distance upgrade is a bit too expensive for you and you’re almost done chopping all trees within your Throw Distance. This is when it’s a good idea to start pumping your Stack Size, only to help you max out that Throw Distance.
– You’ll only need around 200 – 400 mushrooms. 200 for lantern, 200 for drone. 20 more to change the lantern color to something like dark blue or cyan so you’re not blinded by the lantern at night time. You’ll find caves with tons of mushrooms so this not hard to get.
– Drone is an exciting concept but in reality pretty useless. By the time you get it, you’d probably be maxed out on upgrades… so just think of it as an achievement thing instead of being super excited about it only to be disappointed. Even if you get it before you’re fully maxed, it’s simply too slow and sluggish even at maxed upgrade to make any real impact.
– More mushrooms are needed to upgrade the drone, but I don’t see any trophies for that so it’s not useful at all.
– By the time you can consistently get 5-10k per run and owned a lantern, it’ll be worth it to buy 10 drinks for 500 total cost each time before your run. This will allow you to go further without having to “unstuck” and waste time traveling around the map.
– I would focus on trees you can chop in one hit over more profitable trees that require 2-3 hits. It just felt much more efficient this way, especially if you’re on top of your Throw Distance upgrade.
– In the next sections I’ll discuss the two different “playstyles” to get each of the two endings.
– You can just hold the left click button, no need to spam click.
– You do, however, need to spam R to throw the logs.
– You don’t need to face the machine to throw. You can spam R while you face any direction, as long as you’re close enough to the machine.
– When you’re not holding any logs, escape to the menu and hit unstuck to respawn at home immediately. If you do this while holding logs, your logs will be dropped on the ground… which is not a big deal.
– Level up Throw Distance first.
– Selecting rest or rest until morning doesn’t really matter. You’ll faint if you stay up too late (until you buy a lantern) but it’s the same effect as unstuck-ing, so there’s no real penalty per se.
– Go back to the trees near the machine and keep whacking.
– Level up Stamina next, then either Throw Distance again or Swing Power.
– You’d want to focus on Throw Distance while leveling Power and Stamina when it makes sense.
– Walk Speed and Run Stamina is not that useful early game.
– Stack Size is necessary around mid-game but not that crucial early on… don’t neglect this though.
– The priority is basically like this: Throw Distance > Stamina / Swing Power / Weapon Tier > Stack Size > Movement Speed > Running Stamina
– There is one point in the game where the Throw Distance upgrade is a bit too expensive for you and you’re almost done chopping all trees within your Throw Distance. This is when it’s a good idea to start pumping your Stack Size, only to help you max out that Throw Distance.
– You’ll only need around 200 – 400 mushrooms. 200 for lantern, 200 for drone. 20 more to change the lantern color to something like dark blue or cyan so you’re not blinded by the lantern at night time. You’ll find caves with tons of mushrooms so this not hard to get.
– Drone is an exciting concept but in reality pretty useless. By the time you get it, you’d probably be maxed out on upgrades… so just think of it as an achievement thing instead of being super excited about it only to be disappointed. Even if you get it before you’re fully maxed, it’s simply too slow and sluggish even at maxed upgrade to make any real impact.
– More mushrooms are needed to upgrade the drone, but I don’t see any trophies for that so it’s not useful at all.
– By the time you can consistently get 5-10k per run and owned a lantern, it’ll be worth it to buy 10 drinks for 500 total cost each time before your run. This will allow you to go further without having to “unstuck” and waste time traveling around the map.
– I would focus on trees you can chop in one hit over more profitable trees that require 2-3 hits. It just felt much more efficient this way, especially if you’re on top of your Throw Distance upgrade.
– In the next sections I’ll discuss the two different “playstyles” to get each of the two endings.
Fairy Ending (suggested first playthrough)
– I’ll try to make this as spoiler-free as possible.
– Talk to the fairy behind the gnome shop to start the quest.
– The glowing pillar of light you see in the distance are where the fairies are.
– For this ending, don’t bother being a completionist with the chopping. In fact, once you’re comfortably upgraded, beeline to the pillars of light.
– There’s a stupid map behind the gnome on the shop wall, but it’s terrible, so I wouldn’t rely on that too much.
– You should totally ignore the drone parts too, but if you stumble upon it just make a mental note of their locations as you’ll gather these on your second playthrough.
– I didn’t test this, but to be safe do not chop too many elder trees. I chopped a few to pass through the zone to the other side, and it was still OK.
– Some fairies are easier to find, some are terribly hard.
– If you’re lost and deep inside the forest, you can consider clearing out a large section of the forest so you can see the sky again. Sometimes, you’ll be lucky and see the pillar of light and then you’ll be able to re-orient yourself.
– If you still need multiple hits to chop trees, you can create “markers” on intersections by chopping some trees but leaving the root trunk thingy behind. This can effectively be markers telling yourself “go here next” or “nothing is here, go the other way”. You decide how you want to use this, if at all.
– If you stumble upon a strange boiler-like contraption, backtrack and make markers for yourself along the way so you can find this again easier next time. Otherwise you may spend hours trying to find these again later.
– Once you freed all the fairies, return to the one behind the shop and talk to it until you can’t anymore.
– Things will change. If you’re stuck in a room, check the side of the pillow on the bed, and you’ll find the item needed to proceed.
– Find the three boiler-like contraptions, go back and enjoy the ending.
– Talk to the fairy behind the gnome shop to start the quest.
– The glowing pillar of light you see in the distance are where the fairies are.
– For this ending, don’t bother being a completionist with the chopping. In fact, once you’re comfortably upgraded, beeline to the pillars of light.
– There’s a stupid map behind the gnome on the shop wall, but it’s terrible, so I wouldn’t rely on that too much.
– You should totally ignore the drone parts too, but if you stumble upon it just make a mental note of their locations as you’ll gather these on your second playthrough.
– I didn’t test this, but to be safe do not chop too many elder trees. I chopped a few to pass through the zone to the other side, and it was still OK.
– Some fairies are easier to find, some are terribly hard.
– If you’re lost and deep inside the forest, you can consider clearing out a large section of the forest so you can see the sky again. Sometimes, you’ll be lucky and see the pillar of light and then you’ll be able to re-orient yourself.
– If you still need multiple hits to chop trees, you can create “markers” on intersections by chopping some trees but leaving the root trunk thingy behind. This can effectively be markers telling yourself “go here next” or “nothing is here, go the other way”. You decide how you want to use this, if at all.
– If you stumble upon a strange boiler-like contraption, backtrack and make markers for yourself along the way so you can find this again easier next time. Otherwise you may spend hours trying to find these again later.
– Once you freed all the fairies, return to the one behind the shop and talk to it until you can’t anymore.
– Things will change. If you’re stuck in a room, check the side of the pillow on the bed, and you’ll find the item needed to proceed.
– Find the three boiler-like contraptions, go back and enjoy the ending.
Gnome Ending
– I know this is not the real ending name but I’m trying to be spoiler free.
– This is your “standard” ending, so you can totally ignore all the fairies.
– Follow the gameplay loop, this time totally destroying all the trees you come across.
– When you find the elder trees (they have a golden ring around the trunk) farm those immediately. Some elder tree zones are beyond your maxed out Throw Distance but not by much. Just run back and forth between the zone and Throw Distance range, because you need to “submit” all the logs for the counter to increase (you need 1000 elder tree logs, not 1000 elder trees).
– I think there are 3 elder tree zones, and you only need to fully farm 2 to get 1000.
– Return to the gnome after that and unlock the best equipment.
– Continue destroying all trees, during which you’ll easily find 2 of the 3 drone parts.
– The final drone part is actually inside a cave connecting 2 areas. You can’t really miss it because the cave is a large circular opening and the part is right in the middle of the cave.
– There are exactly 10k trees. If you thought you did everything but it’s not 10k, you simply missed and will need to double back.
– I don’t have a solid tip for this one, but you can try the good ol maze trick: stick to one side of the “wall” and just keep going. For example, just keep following every single intersection to the right, and you’ll eventually fully explore everything.
– Report to the gnome once you killed 10k trees.
– Congratz! You should get all trophies after this.
– This is your “standard” ending, so you can totally ignore all the fairies.
– Follow the gameplay loop, this time totally destroying all the trees you come across.
– When you find the elder trees (they have a golden ring around the trunk) farm those immediately. Some elder tree zones are beyond your maxed out Throw Distance but not by much. Just run back and forth between the zone and Throw Distance range, because you need to “submit” all the logs for the counter to increase (you need 1000 elder tree logs, not 1000 elder trees).
– I think there are 3 elder tree zones, and you only need to fully farm 2 to get 1000.
– Return to the gnome after that and unlock the best equipment.
– Continue destroying all trees, during which you’ll easily find 2 of the 3 drone parts.
– The final drone part is actually inside a cave connecting 2 areas. You can’t really miss it because the cave is a large circular opening and the part is right in the middle of the cave.
– There are exactly 10k trees. If you thought you did everything but it’s not 10k, you simply missed and will need to double back.
– I don’t have a solid tip for this one, but you can try the good ol maze trick: stick to one side of the “wall” and just keep going. For example, just keep following every single intersection to the right, and you’ll eventually fully explore everything.
– Report to the gnome once you killed 10k trees.
– Congratz! You should get all trophies after this.