Things to Do First in Once Human - Once Human Guide - IGN (2024)

There’s much to do in the alien-infested world of Once Human. You have a home to construct, horrors to beat down, pants to sew. With all those options, it can be easy to be confused about where to start. That’s why we’ve put together these nine things you should do first in Once Human.

Communication Towers

As soon as you finish the tutorial and arrive in the real world you should focus on finding any nearby communication towers. These act as fast travel points, and will be huge time savers.

They are also easy to find. Just open up your map, look for the radio tower icon, and mark it. Once you arrive, activate the tower, and you will be able to fast travel from tower to tower or from your home base to tower quickly and easily.

Mainline the Story for a Bit

You can do a lot in Once Human, but you should focus on the main story for at least the first couple of dungeons. This will show you the basic gameplay loop, introduce you to how the world works, and help you find gear. It will also lead you to one of the most useful tools to help you in your journey: your own personal motorcycle. This vehicle will be extremely helpful for getting around the map quickly, and you will look cool as heck while you do it.

Upgrade These First

Memetic Cyphers are your upgrade points and are spent in one of four Memetic upgrade trees to unlock certain types of crafting, cooking, and gathering. You should focus on grabbing the top node from each category:

• Infrastructure: Disassembly Techniques and Smelting Essentials
• Crafting: Essential Tools
• Logistics: Stoves
• Building: Wooden Support

This approach will unlock most of the essentials you will need to get by early and will save you from regretting any of the points.

Build Near Resources

You will need to create a home base early, but that doesn’t mean you should just plop down in the first patch of grass you see. Look for an area near, but not directly on, a road. Make sure there are abundant resources nearby. If the area is saturated with other players' bases and campsites, either move your base or visit a Communication Tower and change to a different world, that way you aren’t competing for space or resources.

Important Facilities

Once you have a base, there are a few essentials you should focus on. Drop a Furnace and Disassembly Bench right away. This lets you create Charcoal – one of the most important crafting components – and break down junk into useful materials.

Next, build a bed, which will heal you and restore your sanity while you sleep. Then, build a stove to enable cooking and boiling water.

After that, grab the Gear and Weapon workbenches so you can craft weapons and ammo, and at least one Isolated Securement Unit to house any Deviations you collect.

Focus on Journey Objectives

In addition to the main quest, you will make progress on general Journey Objectives. These are typically simple tasks, like making a dish or crafting a specific type of equipment. Completing Journey Objectives are great as simple tutorials to show you how many functions work, and when you complete them, they can be turned in for XP and Energy Link, an important currency in game.

Complete V’s Commissions

V is your handy bird friend, and if you talk to him, he will offer you commissions. These are optional objectives you can agree to take on and hand out generous rewards and XP bonuses when completed.

Even if you aren’t going to focus on commissions, you should keep them active, just in case anything you do contributes progress towards these goals.

Equip Mods

Your weapon and equipment comes with Mod Slots. Adding these gives beneficial passive effects like bonus damage with certain weapons or enhanced critical attacks. They are removable, so there is no harm in equipping a mod and swapping it out.

Mods can also be enhanced with parts from disassembled mods and Energy Link. In short, load up all your gear with mods whenever you can and upgrade them regularly.

Make Some Clothes

Clothing is your armor, and you should pay attention early on to make sure you are well protected. You can find new and better clothing items as you adventure around the overworld, but they aren’t especially common. Instead, you are better off crafting your own gear at the Gear Workbench for a while.

You may need to chase down some materials, especially rawhide, but it's worth it to give you the added protection. You can also Calibrate your gear here, which upgrades pieces to higher tiers with even better stats at the cost of materials and Energy Link.

Now that you are a Once Human post-apocalyptic survival expert, you may want to join up with friends on your server. Check out our handy guide to show you exactly how to play with friends and everything you need to know about servers, explained.