Getting Started
Breaking, Carrying and the Pack
How to get a block out of the ground, where it goes, and what to do when you are full. Holding the button is the part people miss.
All of this is built and you can go and do it now. The one thing that is not finished is the row of four slots for clothing — there is nothing in the world yet to put in them.
Hold the button. Do not click it
This is the part everybody gets wrong the first time, and it is worth saying before anything else.
Breaking a block is a press and a hold, not a click. Put the crosshair on something, hold the left mouse button down, and keep holding. A pale box closes in around the block as it gives way. Let go too early and nothing happens.
A click does nothing at all, which looks exactly like a game that is ignoring you. It is not. Keep holding.
Some things take longer than others. Stone takes longer than turf.
What you break goes into your hands
Along the bottom of the screen there are ten slots. That is what you are carrying in your hands, and what you just broke lands in the first free one.
Each slot shows a little picture of the thing, its Icelandic name, and how many you have.
Press 1 to 0 to choose a slot, or press Tab to step along the row and Shift+Tab to step back. Rolling the mouse wheel works too, and is what most people end up using. Whatever is in the chosen slot is what you are holding — and what you will put down if you build.
(Ctrl and the wheel zooms instead, so the wheel is never doing two things at once.)
Building spends what you gathered
Placing a block costs you one of them. It used to be free, and it is not any more.
That is the whole point of gathering: what you build a wall out of is what you carried up the hill.
When you are full, the block stays in the ground
Fill everything up and you will find that you simply cannot break anything else. The block stays where it is.
This is deliberate, and it is not the game refusing to work. The alternative is dropping the thing on the floor, and a cube lying on the ground that you have no room to pick up looks broken in a way that is much worse.
Make room and carry on. Once you can build a chest or a storehouse, making room means walking home and putting things down rather than throwing them away — see Making Things.
Press E for the pack
Ten slots do not go far. Press E and the pack opens: twenty-four more slots above the ten in your hands.
The world dims behind it and stops moving. Walking and flying are switched off while it is open — the game is waiting for you.
E or Esc closes it again, and the mouse goes back to turning your head.
Moving things about
Inside the pack, everything is done with the mouse.
| To do this | Do this |
|---|---|
| Pick a stack up | Click it. It follows the cursor |
| Put it down | Click the slot you want it in |
| Split a stack | Right-click it — you pick up half |
| Change your mind | Click the slot it came from, or anywhere off the panel. Nothing moves |
Two more rules, and they are the ones people work out by accident:
- Drop a stack onto more of the same thing and the two join up. Anything that will not fit stays behind where it was.
- Drop it onto something different and the two swap places.
Things move freely between the ten in your hands and the twenty-four in the pack, in both directions.
Throwing something away
Sometimes you have half a pack of turf you are never going to use.
Pick the stack up and put it on the Henda mark at the bottom right of the pack. It is gone, and the game tells you what you threw away.
⚠️ There is no undo. Nothing you throw away comes back.
That is why it takes two deliberate moves — you have to pick the stack up first, then carry it across the panel — and why the mark sits well away from every other slot. You cannot do it by slipping with the mouse.
The four slots at the bottom
Under the ten in your hands there is a row of four: húfa, peysa, buxur, skór — a cap, a jumper, trousers and shoes. Each shows a faint outline of what belongs there.
They are empty and they will stay empty for now. There is no wool in the world yet and nothing to make clothes out of.
⚠️ The cold did not wait for them. Frost, wind and rain already take food out of you — see Cold, Wind and Rain — so when the clothes arrive they will be taking the edge off something that is already happening to you, not switching on a new part of the game. Wool will reduce what the weather costs and it will never cancel it.
They are there so that when the clothes come, the place for them is already where you expect it.
Two things worth knowing
Sign in if you want to keep anything. Playing without an account works perfectly well, but your pack is emptied when you close the page. With an account it is still there when you come back.
Dying costs you everything you are carrying — the ten in your hands and the twenty-four in the pack, both emptied. There is no going back for it. ✅ What you are wearing stays on, and anything you left in a chest, a storehouse or a hearth is untouched. You wake at the last hearth you lit, with full health and a full stomach.
So a long way from home with a full pack is a real risk, and it is meant to be. See Food, Health and Berries.
