The Forest isn’t like other games. You won’t be given tutorials or guidance. There are no NPCs or missions. You’re dropped into a world and it’s up to your creativity and abilities to survive. You’ll probably die a lot, especially at first.

Below you’ll find eight hints and tips that’ll help you survive.

1. Craft

One of the simplest weapons you can make is a club. This weapon is effective in combat but won’t chop trees. To make a club, simply find an enemy cannibal and kill him. Once he’s dead, chop his head off and then build a fire. Place the head on the fire and wait for it to burn away the skin and flesh. Now, take your freshly cooked skull, find a stick and shove the skull onto the stick. You now have an effective weapon against the bad guys.

2. Build an effigy

Another effective survival tactic is to fully dismember all of the enemies you kill. With your new club this should be much easier. Take as many body parts as you can carry and decorate stick effigies with them. You can then light these all on fire as a warning to others not to mess with you. Extra hint: Build a log sled to transport lots of bodies at once to make harvesting them easier.

3. Food

It’s important to keep your energy up, and that means eating. You can hunt deer and rabbits, or maybe find a boar or racoon. Berries are available, but some might be poisonous. Another option is to cook and eat the body parts of the enemies you’ve killed. Body parts can be cooked by drying them on a drying rack, placing them directly on a fire, or for an energy-boosting stew add a leg to a pot of boiling water with some mushrooms and berries.

4. Buildings

A good base needs a good fence. You have a few options here, you can make a weak fence out of sticks, a strong wall out of stones, or take a dead enemy, drop him on a fire, wait for the body to burn away, and then collect his or her bones. These bones can make a great decorative fence that’s a lot stronger than regular wood.

5. Upgrades

Finding your weapons too weak against the ever encroaching enemy threat that cannot be reasoned with? Weapons can all be upgraded. First, chop at a tree to receive some tree sap. Now, bash away at some enemies — teeth should fly out. You can now use the tree sap with the teeth to make your weapons even deadlier.

6. Armour

Smash open the skull of a lizard, then cut off its skin to wrap around your body for effective light armour. Combine skin with leaves for stealth armour. Want even more powerful armour? Slice away at the corpses of some of the game’s bigger monsters and wear their skin as protection.

7. Stay clean

Covered in blood from fighting and chopping enemies? Make sure to find a clear water source to wash off. Getting blood inside your cuts won’t be good for you.

8. Still finding the game too hard?

Invite a friend to play with you. Sure, the enemies will scale up in difficulty as a result, but going online is a great way to learn the ins and outs of survival as well as making new friends.

Chop, build, and fight to survive in The Forest, out tomorrow on PlayStation Store.