Eleven kinds of land, one material each

The ground the tutorial starts you on: trees, fiber and enough cover to lose a wolf. Most first camps end up here.

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  Glowcap — A second route to a Mend inscription

  The caps only open between 18:00 and 06:00 game time. A daytime search finds nothing.

Fiber plants here carry berries, so a fiber run is also a food run.

Open, easy to cross and easy to be seen in. The quietest place to learn the camera without a tree in the way.

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  Quartz — Wayfinder Lens and most inscriptions

Quartz is what reveals the lens recipe, and the lens is what makes the rest of the map readable.

Where the metal age begins. Copper is shallow enough for a stone pickaxe; iron is not.

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  Copper Ore — Copper ingots, then bronze

  A stone pickaxe is enough.

• Iron Ore — Iron ingots

  Needs a bronze pickaxe or better.

Highland streams carry more tin than lowland water, which makes them the best place to pan.

The only place tin can be mined rather than panned, and the best source of bulk masonry.

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  Tin Ore — Tin ingots, then bronze

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  Limestone — Four cut stone from two limestone

If you found karst early, you can skip the panning tray entirely and go straight to bronze.

Slow going, but it hands you iron without touching a Highland deposit.

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  Bog Iron — Iron ingots, same as ore

  The smelt takes five seconds longer.

Two bog iron per ingot. Bring a bronze pickaxe and a lot of charcoal.

Open grass and acacia. The most efficient charcoal in the game grows here.

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  Acacia Resin — Three charcoal from two resin

  Better than burning logs, which give one charcoal from two.

Heat, distance and gypsum. A good place to build if you want nobody nearby.

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  Desert Gypsum — Three cut stone from two gypsum

Water is the constraint here, not wood. Fill your pack before you cross.

Palms, shallow water and pearls — which is the cheap route to a Wayfinder Lens.

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  Pearl — A lens without any silver

  Two pearls and one quartz.

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  Sea Salt — Three cooked meat from one campfire load

Sticks without logs. Worth a detour if you are building and short on handles.

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  Bamboo Culm — Six sticks from two culms

Cold, high and full of frost crystals, which the stonecutter turns into quartz.

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  Frost Crystal — Two quartz from two crystals

Quartz is the bottleneck on both lenses and inscriptions, so this is a more useful region than it looks.

Lava, obsidian and emberstone. The only region that supplies its own forge fuel.

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  Obsidian — A stone sickle with no stone

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  Emberstone — Fuel for a campfire or smelter

Obsidian is the one material that lets you make a gathering tool from nothing but the region you are standing in.