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Before you dive headfirst into Nightingale’s peculiar mishmash of Victorian-era fairy tales, you’d surely want to know what you’re getting into. After all, it’s another co-op survival RPG where you build and craft stuff as its primary gameplay loop. Thankfully, we did the headfirst diving for you and are ready to share some hard-learned wisdom and tips before starting Nightingale.
Note that some of these tips are based on in-game mechanics, and since Nightingale is still in early access, some of them might change without prior notice.
It’s Always Online, No Offline Play
Nightingale handles its online component a bit differently compared to other survival games. Even if you don’t want to play multiplayer or team up in co-op with other survivors, you still need to be online. Your saves are going to be stored on a server instead of locally.
That also means you don’t need to save manually; quitting the game will also save progress automatically. The downside is that you also have to have a reliable internet connection or suffer latency above 100+ milliseconds, depending on where you live. At the time, there’s no way around that, but who knows, the game might get its dedicated offline mode near its release.
Stick to Stone
Now, on to in-game mechanics: When you’re starting Nightingale during the early game, you have the option to pick between wood or stone structures right off the bat. Do yourself a favor and choose stone structures. That’s because harvesting wood and the whole act of tree cutting are janky and tedious.
By comparison, you usually only need to strike stone deposits once to break them and pick up the Stone Blocks — even at the lowest tier of gathering tools. It’s a lot easier to gather Stone Blocks than Lumber Bundles in this game, so forget about wooden structures unless you like to roleplay as a posh Victorian lumberjack.
Don’t Build Bases Near Trees
Speaking of felling trees, any tree that falls on your structures will damage the structures, and they deal quite a lot of damage. A single fallen tree is even enough to destroy a stone wall. So it goes without saying, don’t cut trees near your base.
Better yet, don’t build your base near trees. In the event that you get raided (and you will), there’s a fair chance you or your enemies’ swings can topple the trees around your base accidentally, destroying your base. Other players might also do this accidentally, even in co-op.
Actually, You Don’t Really Need to Build Bases
You can build some marvelous structures even early while starting Nightingale, but you don’t really have to if you don’t want to. There are plenty of ruins all over the map that can serve as your makeshift base. Just build a campfire and a bedroll in them, and voila, you’re a bonafide Victorian vagrant squatting in some unknown fairyland.
Bases still have their perks, such as fast travel and crafting stations or storage, but if you don’t want to go through the trouble of gathering materials, you can just hole up permanently in some ruins. Some in-game quests can introduce you to already existing bases, which you can then claim.
You Can Carry Storage Baskets (Sort of)
While on the topic of knowing about being more mobile and having less baggage before starting Nightingale, here’s a little exploit. The Storage Baskets you can build? You can move them around via the build interface (letter X on the keyboard)– even if they’re full of heavy stuff. This has some rather big implications for base building and material transportation.
These Storage Baskets are practically weightless while moving them around using the ‘Move’ option (letter R on the keyboard) in the build menu. This way, you can move materials from base to base to ease your building or carry the baskets around like your magic storage bags without worrying about weight.
Your Companions Don’t Have Encumbrance
As for weight management, your skinny character doesn’t have to bear it all. Your AI companions are more than capable of sharing the load. In fact, you might want to just give them the heaviest stuff, like the construction materials. They don’t have an encumbrance limit like you do, which is both ridiculous and advantageous.
This opens you up to certain gameplay possibilities, and you can pursue the nomadic lifestyle more simply by taking advantage of your AI companion’s proclivity for cheating. To perhaps balance this out, they have limited inventory slots, but that shouldn’t matter much, especially in the early game.
Resting at Night Will Fast Forward Time
Nightingale will teach you well enough just how convenient it is to have a Bedroll lying around while you’re performing the manual labor in your base. Resting will replenish your Rest rather quickly. However, there’s a limit to this, and you shouldn’t treat Bedrolls like coffee or energy drinks.
If you use Bedrolls at nighttime, then the game will skip ahead to the morning or sunrise. If you’re performing some tasks at night and suddenly decide to top up on a few missing segments of Rest, that will trigger the sleep or skip time. It’s something you should keep in mind if you’re finishing up structures hastily.
Food Doesn’t Seem to Spoil
In most survival games, including the most recent Palworld, there’s pressure to immediately cook food or even avoid overstocking because they have an expiration. That kind of pressure or limitation doesn’t seem to exist in Nightingale, thankfully.
There’s no expiration timer for the food, which probably means you can keep both raw and cooked food in your inventory as long as you want and not worry about it. Unless there might be an oversight on the developers’ part, feel free to hoard food.
Meat for Health, Plants for Stamina
Continuing on food, it’s not just for the hunger meter in Nightingale. You can also treat food as potions for your character. Meat generally lets you regenerate your Health, while plant-based food such as fruits helps you gain more Stamina to spend.
Their effects are even indicated via a timer right beside your Health, Rest, and Hunger meters. You’ll want to keep the food’s purposes in mind, especially when you’re licking your wounds after an encounter or when you’re rushing a base building through a hailstorm.
Always Bring an Umbrella with You
The weather in Nightingale is not just for show. The rain will make you wet and eventually cold (which can halve your Health bar). That’s why umbrellas are always recommended. For convenience, you can wield the umbrella in your off-hand, which is quite handy during combat.
Additionally, we mentioned hailstorms can occur in Nightingale, and apart from an umbrella, the only real defense you have against this insidious killer is a roof above your head. So it turns out emulating Mary Poppins (ya’ll) is a cool thing to do in before starting Nightingale.
