New Player Guide

Welcome

Welcome to Beasts of Bermuda - a dinosaur survival game focused on infinite growth and fighting against the weather and other players. This guide will give you the basics necessary for Survival in the game. This does not, however, gurantee it! Beasts of Bermuda can be a difficult game starting out, and you may not be able to grow even past 1.0. But don't worry, as you keep playing and you grow accustomed, it'll become a breeze!

Controls

The first thing you have to learn are your controls. By default you have:

• W A S D for movement
• Space to Jump
• C for Sniffing
• F for Interacting (such as eating, drinking, laying down eggs etc.)
• Double tap F for picking up items and other players
• Ctrl for Crouching, changing Stance, Diving, or Swimming Down (where applicable)
• Hold Shift to Run
• Alt to raise your head
• Q and E for strafing while swimming
• R to sit down (and R again to Lay Down/Sleep)
• B for placing down a Nest (males only)
• LMB for Primary Attack
• Hold LMB for Alt. Attack
• RMB for Secondary Attack
• Z for Ability 1
• X for Ability 2
• G for Ability 3
• Number 1 to 5 for using Calls
• Number 6 for Auto-Walk/Run
• Tab to view the Player List
• Enter to access the chat
• Hold V to view the Player Interactions Menu
• O to open the Character Menu

Although this may seem like a lot to remember, don't worry! Focus first on learning movement and eating/drinking. Once you're more confident, you can start learning more about combat, how abilities interact with each other, creature-specific strategies at survival and so on.

Getting Food and Water

The easiest way to find food and water is by sniffing. If you hold down the Sniff button (C by default), food will be highlighted to you and water will appear on the compass at the top of the screen.

Food
Meat won't always have an icon, but can be found by looking for large, red clouds of smoke. However, not all meat is good! If a cloud of smoke is more yellow than red, it may have gone rotten and will make you sick. When sniffing on a carcass, a blurb at the bottom of the screen will appear detailing how rotten meat is.

Add example photos here of the meat becoming more rotten.

Plants and fish will be highlighted with a blue or red colour respectively. Only plants that can be eaten will be highlighted blue! As you grow larger, more and more plants will become edible.

Add images showing the plants and fish colours.

Additionally to plants and meat, all creatures in Beasts of Bermuda have a diet. If the diet is ignored, your creature may go sick. If it's always fulfilled, your creature will survive much easier! Salt (which is required for most herbivorous diets) can be found near beaches or on large salt rocks and will also glow blue when sniffed.

Show off 3 different diets (herbi/Para, omni/Coah, carni/Rex?)

Water
Water can also be sniffed out by most creatures. By default, you will see water droplet icons on the compass at the top of the screen, showing you the nearest water sources in all directions. You may also see a tall pillar while sniffinf pointing at the water so it's easier to find from afar.

Show water at the top of the compass and the pillar.

Just like meat, water can also go bad by becoming dirty. Some sources are always dirty, while others start off clean. The more creatures that drink from one water source, the dirtier it becomes. Dirty water increases the water meter and satiation much slower than clean water, and maybe make creatures go sick. You can sniff a water source to find out whether it's clean or dirty before drinking it.

Show pictures of clean and dirty water.

Unlike meat, water sources can become boring. This has the same effect as dirty water, but is instead dependant on how often a creature drinks from the same source: drinking from the same lake 5 times in a row will make it more boring than drinking from 5 different lakes.

Show what the boring and exciting water message looks like.

The best way to get food and water without going sick is to always be on the move. This can avoid boring water or sitting and eating out of rotten gores because you couldn't find a fresh one in time.

Satiation
Satiation is the amount of extra, high quality food or water you received. By eating larger plants (or Fat Plants), Player Gores, Fish (if Piscivorous), and drinking from clean, exciting water, you can gain up to 50 extra points of food and water as satiation. You can check how much you have by going into the Character Menu or by looking at your food and water bars: if they have a cyan outline, then they have full stiation.

Show off multiple bars at different sat levels, e.g. water at full and empty, omnivore at half, carnivore at mostly empty etc. Make sure to show water at full and empty minimum, since it can be hard to figure out at first.

It's also possible to become overweight by eating too much food. Overweight creatures will move slower, generate less comfort, and regenerate stamina slower, but are heavier, have more health, and regenerate health much quicker. Not every creature benefits from being overweight, but if you expect to be fighting something large as another large animal, it might not be a bad idea to become overweight depending on the situation.

Show the Well Fed Neutral Buff.

Growing Faster

Beast of Bermuda's main goal is growth! Growing larger, and larger, so you can eventually become the king of the island. But by default, growth is pretty slow, especially if you play a larger animal like Apatosaurus. So, how do you speed it up?

Gauntlet
On the LifeCycle Gamemode (the default gamemode), after reaching 1.32 growth, your growth will pause. By going into the Character Menu (by hitting the O button), you can unpause growth and begin the Gauntlet. This will increase your growth to be significantly faster at the cost of an ever increasing food and water drain.

This option is not available on FreeRoam servers, where growth slows down significantly after 1.2 growth is reached instead, but growth is also never stopped.

Blessings
There are 3 Deities in Beasts of Bermuda:

• The Power Deity, who focuses on combat
• The Mobility Deity, who focuses on exploration
• The Survival Deity, who focuses on survival
  
  

Each Deity has its own associated tasks in the Trials menu (found by going into the Character Menu), but those are unnecessary right now. What you're looking for are their shrines. On every map, there are a minimum of 6 Grand Shrines (2 of each deity, 3 of which are found on land and 3 underwater). There are also a various number of Mini Shrines. The only difference is that you can Sacrifice yourself at the Grand Shrines only.

Show photos of the 6 types of shrines (all deities, mini and grand)

By going up to any of the shrines, you're able to interact with them. This brings up the Shrine Menu:
Photo of the Menu

By clicking on Trinket, you're able to pick up a small object from that specific deity. If you bring it to another shrine, you can interact with it again (make sure you're still holding the trinket!) and choose the Blessing option to become blessed by that deity who you're giving the trinket to.

Picture of the blessing menu

To grow faster, you need the Speed Blessing. To get it, simply walk up to a Power or Survival Shrine, get their trinket, then go to a Mobility shrine. The Speed Blessing gives extra growth at the cost of an increase in food and water.

Weather
By being in very harsh weather (typically during a storm), your creature will get a growth buff. It will only last until the storm ends, but can be stacked ontop of other buffs. You know you have the buff when this icon appears on the top left:

Show the growth storm buff icon here.

Nesting
Nesting provides many benefits, for both the parents and the children. One of those benefits is the growth buff given when you have offspring nearby. These must be your own babies, not someone else's, and must be smaller than 0.7 growth to give you this buff. Just like all the others, this can stack with other growth buffs.

You know you're being affected by the Baby Buff when this icon appear:
Show Baby Buff Icon.

Growing... Slower?
That's right! Sometimes, your growth may slow down or stop entirely. There are many reasons for this, which include:

• Restless Debuff - if you have been sitting in a cave for too long without leaving it, your growth rate is decreased
• Low Food or Water - the lower your food or water, the less growth you get
• Pausing Growth - in LifeCycle, it is possible to pause growth; it will always pause at 1.32 before the Gauntlet begins
• Growing Larger - the larger a creature gets, the slower it will grow
  
  

Avoiding Death

Death sucks, right? And maybe you've been able to play the game for an hour or two, had some fun, got to a good enough size, but then you died to someone bigger. Or someone way smaller. Or maybe even someone you thought was your friend! There are many ways for your Health Bar to deplete, and even some status effects that will have a direct effect on it, such as bleed. To help you on your journey, here are some of the more common ways to die, and how to avoid them!

Show off the health bar at full, low health, bleed, venom.

Weather and Shelter
If the weather begins to act up, it may be a good idea to find a shelter. Be it caves, trees, or even the giant Apatosaurus and its spikier cousing, Brontosaurus, shelter can be found in many ways. Try to look for opening and caves, sniff around for bright, pink plants, or stick to the trees and forests and hope it's enough.

But how do you know it's enough? By going into the Character Menu, you can see a Shelter stat. This is a percentage, meaning it can only go up to 100. And 100 is where you want to be! In order to avoid lightning or tornadoes, you want to be at maximum shelter. Not everything gives 100% shelter, but if it's just a light rain, then hiding in a log might just be enough to get you by. You can also see the Shelter percentage by carefully looking at your health: if it has a blue-cyan circle, then that's full shelter! If the circle is only half filled, then that's only roughly 50% shelter.

Show off Shelter at 0, 50, and 100%

Smaller creatures (like Velociraptor or Pteranodon), are more prone to being scared by weather events, which decreases their Comfort stat. If your Comfort drops too low, you start slowly dying from stress! There are talents to mitigate this, like Weather Resistance or Resilience, but someetimes all you need is another friend in the same group to be close to you and your comfort will shoot way up.

Comfort
Your comfort is signified by the Comfort stat in the Character Menu or the colour of your Health Bar. The more yellow-red it is, the lower the comfort. Conversely, if it's a pale blue, then your comfort is really high. You can also see the comfort of other players in your group by the colour of their health bars above their heads (when applicable). If your comfort falls too low (be it from other creatures, weather, eating unhealthy food etc.), then you begin to take damage.

Show off Comfort levels and colours, as well as how it look on other players.

In order to maintain high comfort, you would need to avoid eating poisonous foods or dirty water, stick to your diet, and have positive bias. Bias affects everything about your comfort, and can go into the negatives if you're not careful. To increase your bias, you should eat yellow flowers or pink and blue crystals that you find around the map. Alternatively, some talents can increase your base comfort stat.

Show the flowers and crystals.

Sickness
If you drink polluted water, eat a rotten gore, or are even affected by the dreaded "None!", you may eventually become sickly. Sickness decreases your stamina and AP regeneration, as well as increase food and water drain and making you louder while sniffing. Not only that, but other players can sniff you and see that you are sick, making you a prime target to be killed!

Although sickness won't lead to death directly, it may lead to starvation or being killed by other players, so it's best to avoid it. Keeping your Diet rating high, avoiding rotten/poisonous foods or dirty water, and eating food that your creature is supposed to eat will make sickness nearly impossible to get.

But if you do get it, don't fret! Look around for charcoal, keep your food and thirst high, and search for yellow and red flowers. They give extra bonuses that, while won't directly impact your illness, will make surviving through one (or in general) much easier!

Other Players
Here it is, the section you were probably waiting for! How do you deal with other players that want to kill you? Well, sometimes you can just... not deal with them! Playing as a fast creature means you can outrun them and eventually get away. You can use water to your advantage, especially if you have the talent Aqua Affinity, or try to run down hills and jump up structures to avoid death. If you're a semi-aquatic or a flier, you can swim away or take to the skies! The easiest way to avoid dying to players is to avoid players entirely.

If you're ever low on Health, you can also eat the pink flowers around the map, which will heal you a set amount. Alternatively, using the Healing talent and lying down to sleep will also heal you and your injuries really quickly.

Show off the flowers.

But that's the boring answer. And while there's a lot of cool strategies you can employ, maybe you want to play as one of the larger herbivores or carnivores and can't avoid fights. Or maybe you want to instigate them yourself. After all, a dead player is one less player that might kill you. So here's some Combat Basics!
1. Use terrain to your advantage. By having the high ground or protecting your back from other players, you limit their options to try and attack you.
2. Sit and Lay Down to heal. Sitting or Laying Down will heal your health, stamina, and AP much faster. Similarly, if you are inflicted with a status effect like Bleed or Injury, you can heal it off quicker by lying down to sleep.
3. Try not to run out of Stamina or Action Points. Running out of either stamina OR AP will lead to you being unable to attack anymore. This means your attacker is free to do as they please without any risk of dying. Try to back away or keep the opponent away to regain stamina and AP.
4. Use your abilities. Each playable creature has a number of special abilities or attacks they can use: Paleophis and Oryctodromeus can blind opponents, Wiehenvenator can use its Tenton Break bite, Parasaurolophus can stomp and deal massive damage and injury. Learning what your creature's abilities do and using them is crucial.

Regardless of your preffered option to deal with players, you will still need to use either your Stamina (the yellow footprint icon) or your Action Points (the circle behind stamina). These are 2 essentialy stats that should never be fully depleted or else you become defenceless. Almost every ability, from biting, to darting, or even shedding requires AP, and many attacks as well as springing and jumping use up Stamina. Sniffing also uses up a lot of AP, meaning that if you sniff for too long, you may not be able to fight back! There are talents that increase your AP and Stamina, or decrease how much it's used, but there are no special items that heal stamina or AP like healing flowers heal your health. The best way to regenerate them is to lie down and sleep.

Show the Stamina and AP symbols.

Although these tips are, admittedly, very basic, the nuance comes more from that last one: the more you learn about your own abilities and talents, as well as those of other creatures, the better you'll get at avoiding death! Sniffing opponents to figure out their build (be it through the blurb or through the colour they are highlighted as) is very useful. Feel free to look through the Group Finder or ask on the Discord Server for groups to help you along and make the journey much more bearable!

Going beyond Death

Death is not the end. Like the deities say on that frightful, red screen, you can come back stronger.

Inherits
During your creature's life, you may have gotten extra stat points in the form of inherits. Inherits can only go up to a +2 in a talent, and may similarly be negative as well. On a freshly spawned creature, you will get on average fewer or worse inherits.

Regardless of how you got your creature, you will always get inherits at the exact same growth:

• 0.45
• 0.6
• 0.8
• 1.0
• 1.2
  
  

Show off the inherit message popup.

Spawn creatures (aka a dinosaur you spawned in with without nesting or reincarnating) have the unique property of never getting negative inherits, as well as a unique system for allocating inherit points: if you get a lot of inherits early on in life, you'll get fewer later on in life and vice versa. There is, however, a limit of how many inherits you have on spawn creatures, meaning that if you get all of them too early, you may end up with particularly bad inherits.

So, how do you get better ones?

Nesting
While this mechanic was touched on earlier from the perspective of the parents, nesting is far more beneficial to the children. Not only do you have a chance to get a mutation, but your parents' builds directly influence the inherits you can get. This means that, if the two matched their builds to have the exact same talents, then you, the offpsring, are far more likely to get +1 or +2 inherits in those talents specifically. Being nested in is a great way to get a head start at survival, as well as getting inherits in mostly functional builds, making you much stronger as a result.

In order to avoid negative inherits, however, the parents must make sure the eggs haven't been harmed both during gestation and incubation. Inbreeding (breeding with your direct relatives) also leads to negative inherits. Having the talent Good Parent, nesting at a Great Nesting Site, or having the Survival Blessing active can all increase the chances of better eggs or even of rare mutations.

Once you have joined a nest, you will begin life as an egg. After some time (which varies based on active buffs and whether or not you're incubated), you can hatch and begin a brand new life.

Reincarnation
Reincarnation is another option at your disposal for getting mutations or better inherits. The game will essentially use your talents and stats twice, as if you "nested with yourself", to give you a brand new creatures. Although your inherits will still be linked to whatever talents you unlocked, they're also directly linked with your Trial Score.

In order to get better inherits, you must complete trials during that life. You can check your progress in the Trials menu via the Character Menu, or by pressing the Arrow next to any creature on Creature Select. Trial scores above 90% give the best results. In order to avoid any negative inherits, make sure your trials are above 85%.

If you plan on grinding reincarnations for better inherits and stats, it's easiest to grind only 2 of the trial types (e.g. Mobility Trials and Survival Trials), and then going to a Grand Shrine to Sacrifice (which matches that Deity's trial score to your highest trial score) or Pledging at any shrine (which matches your score to the second highest instead). Sacrificing will immediately kill your creature, whereas Pledging won't, but you must still die in order for its effects to help you.

When Reincarnating, all of your trials are reset, meaning you have to start all over again. If you are having trouble keeping trials high in a single run (or want a slow-paced reincarnation cycle), you may additionally Ressurect.

Ressurection
If you don't want to reincarnate, you may also ressurect a creature. This will give you the exact same skin and inherits, and will put you at a higher growth than reincarnation, but it requires sacrifices. Similarly to reincarnation, the higher the trial scores of the sacrificed creature(s), the easier it will be to reach the score requirement.

You may also ressurect for free, which will instead put you at a much lower growth than if you were to sacrifice creatures.

The main pros of ressurection is that you keep everything from that creature, down to the talents you already added (though you will need to deselect talents for them to work), and including your trials. Ressurecting a creature that has poor trials, or simply continuing to trial farm on the same creature ressurected over and over is a good way to maintain high trial scores without having to constantly be grinding them, which becomes much more difficult the more you grow. Once you reincarnate, all of your trials are reset.

Suggested Playables

Welcome to the end of this New Player Guide! I have written down everything I believe a new player should know, while also hopefully not making it so long it's a slog to read through. So, as a reward, here's some creatures I think a new player should try out! Or maybe you skipped the entire guide and just wanted to see what is reccommended.

Pteranodon/Tropeognathus
Currently, the only fliers in the game, although more are planned. By simply being able to fly, they have some of the highest survivability in this game, capable of picking their fights and almost always being able to get away if things get dire. They are great if you want to fly around and explore the map, as well as try out some aerial combat. The only downsides to these guys are the fact that Tropegnathus is capable of dealing a lot of injury damage, which will ground birds, as well as their piscivore diet means you're put in danger from aquatics a lot more often.

If you do decide to play a pterosaur, however, I suggest flying up really high without going into thin atmosphere so you can see anyone from far away and using your speed to either get away or get the jump on someone.

Oryctodromeus/Velociraptor
Another 2 rather similar animals, these two are the smallest playables available (with the exclusion of AIs). This makes them really easy to hide and get away with, essentially being the more grounded variants of the birds. Oryctodromeus gets a bonus in being able to make its own home in a very complext and fun burrowing system, whereas Velociraptor is more for those players who want to play carnivores rather than herbivores. Because of their speed and access to good getaway tools, they're great for beginners who want to learn more about blessings, buffs, diets, and generally like a more relaxed gameplay loop.

Of course, that's not to say these guys can never be used offensively! Plenty of people love being anklebiters after all... I'm sure there's some guide out there on how to be the best Destroyer of Legs.

Parasaurolophus/Megaraptor For those who like larger creatures, Parasaurolophus and Megaraptor are perfect! Both are deceptively fast, meaning you can always get away from threats, while also packing a good punch to kill a lot of creatures around their weight range (or even above!). Wiehenvenator is a decent Megaraptor alternative, but the latter's Z ability makes it just much more flexible and therefore beginner-friendly. They are also very popular picks, meaning you might just be able to find a group friendly enough to let you in and play together!

Aquatics...
Although I'd love to be able to give some good beginner aquatics, because of how restricting they can be, no matter which one you pick, you'll probably have a more difficult time than the land-based creatures above. Regardless, you still have some options! Lurdusaurus and Ichthyovenator are both semi-aquatics, meaning you can live both on land and in water to a decent degree of success. Paleophis has a whole 3 different forms you can choose from, making it one of the most flexible aquatic (and land!) playables in the game. For strict aquatics, you have Archelon, an omnivore that eats fish and coral, which, although not the easiest to survive as, allows you to survive far easier than the rest of the strict carnivore aquatic roster.

Closing Remarks
Well, that's everything! Now go out there and try out some of the creatures. Don't be dissuaded if they weren't recommended, nor if you die a lot at first - that's to be expected! Go make some friends, find some secrets, and most of all have fun playing the game.