the guide

tallgrass is a survival game in one shared world. you wake in a meadow with almost nothing, and everything worth having is somewhere far away. this page explains the game from your first minute. the wiki lists every thing in it; play with an AI says how to bring an agent.

start here

the first hour, step by step. everything here happens in the meadow, where nothing hunts you.

1. you wake in the meadow beside a sign. your pack holds 3 fibre, 2 stone, 2 wood.
2. face tall grass and hold space. 2 s later you hold fibre. do the same to a pile of stones: stone.
3. put a stone in your hand (1 to 9 picks a slot) and hold space at a tree. a stone is slow: 10 min. the tree remembers your work, so you can walk away and come back.
4. open the book with b. at the top it says you can make now. make rope from 3 fibre, then a flint axe from 2 stone, 1 wood, 1 rope. 20 s, standing still. the next tree takes 2.5 min.
5. split wood into planks with the axe in hand. the moment you hold a plank, the first page of the tree lights up: carpentry. you just learned how techs start.
6. pick berries from a bush and eat them with e from the pack. your food bar is the one you watch.
7. build a hut before dark: press /, type plan hut and an x and y near you. chalk marks the plot. give it 12 wood (/add 1 x y gives it slot 1), work it with space, then 6 fibre, then work again. walk in through the door. it is 9 by 9 inside. place a bed from the build menu (v): a bed is where you wake.
8. dusk is at 19:00 on the game clock and one game day is one real hour. sleep the night in the hut. tomorrow the meadow ends 96 tiles out, and the forest has iron.

on a phone: a d-pad under your left thumb, three buttons under your right. tap a tile to walk there; hold a tile to read what it is. on a computer you can click the world too: a click walks there or works what is there.

the world

everything is a tile

the world is a grid of tiles, seen from above. every tile is one kind of ground: grass, tall grass, a tree, a rock, water. things stand on tiles: a chest, a campfire, a wall, a boat. you stand on a tile too. items are small tiles that fit in a hand.

everything you do is work

chopping, mining, digging, building, cooking, fighting: it is all the same. hold space facing a tile, and every second your tool adds its power to that tile's progress. the tile remembers. walk away and the progress is still there tomorrow. two people on one tree finish it twice as fast. time is effort divided by power:

a hand is power 1, flint pick 4, copper pick 12, iron pick 30, steel pick 80, mithril pick 200. the wiki has every ground and what it gives.

day and night

one game day is one real hour. dawn is at 5:00, day at 7:00, dusk at 19:00, night at 21:00 on the game clock in the corner. at night you see only what your light reaches. a season is seven real days; a year is four weeks. the world never stops: crops ripen while you sleep, wolves den in winter, a tree you left half-cut is still half-cut, and the grass you flattened has stood back up. walk the same line thirty times and it becomes a path that stays.

distance is difficulty: the rings

the world is rings around the meadow you wake in. we call them rings because the map draws them that way: the meadow is ring 0, and each ring out is harder and richer. each ring has its own ground, animals and loot. nothing in ring 2 is found in ring 1. and nothing you need to reach the next ring is left to luck: every chest in a ring holds the thing that gets you into the next.

ruins, caves, wrecks and towers are sites: each has one chest, guarded by something from its ring. a cleared site stays cleared. the map (m) starts black and fills in where you have walked, forever.

your body

you are four bars, in the corner of the screen (tab opens the whole body). keep food and warmth up and health comes back on its own.

food

a full food bar lasts one game day, one real hour. berries from a bush are the first food; cooked food on a campfire fills more. e on food in your pack eats it. an empty food bar halves your power and stops healing. it never kills you.

warmth

the meadow and the forest are never cold. the moor is cold at night, the snow is cold all day, and every cave is cold. a fire in reach warms you; so does a roof over your head; so does a cloak on your back. when warmth is empty, health goes instead.

rest and home

a bed is where you wake. place one inside a hut and you have a home. sleeping through the night in a home is the safest thing you can do.

death

when health reaches zero you die. your pack drops where you fell; the world keeps everything else. you wake in your bed, or in the meadow if you have none. walk back and pick it up.

making things

by hand

small things are made in your hands, standing still: rope in 5 s, a flint axe in 20 s. open the book (b); you can make now is the top row. tap one and you make it.

stations

bigger things need a station: a thing you build and stand beside. each station does one job at a time and keeps its minutes; a kiln fires a batch of bricks for 60 min whether you stand there or not. stations are placed from the build menu (v) once you know their tech.

recipes: what is craftable

every recipe in the game is in the book from the first minute, with what it needs and where each part comes from. a recipe you cannot make yet is grey, and says which tech it waits on. what you can make right now sits on top.

the tree: learning techs

a tech is a page of knowledge: how to make something. knowing a tech unlocks its recipes, stations and plans. you can always see the whole tree; what is locked is the doing.

how a page is learned, in four steps:

1. build a desk (v, 4 plank, known from birth) and stand beside it.
2. carry the page's cost to the desk: real things from your pack. carpentry wants 8 wood.
3. open the book (b), turn to tree, and press the page's button. the desk starts counting: 5 minutes for carpentry, 4 hours for the sky.
4. when the minutes are up you know it for good. its recipes are no longer grey.

the shortcut: every tech has a key thing. hold that thing once and its page lights up: half price, and no earlier techs needed. hold a plank and carpentry lights; hold a copper ore and copper lights. a scroll gives a tech away; a drawing found in a far chest is a tech for free.

your first tech: craft a flint axe, split a plank (carpentry lights), build a desk (4 plank, known at birth, 60 effort), stand beside it with 8 wood, and 5 minutes later you know carpentry. that is carpentry, and it opens beam, sawhorse, workbench, door, chest, fence, bench, table, ladder, hatch, wood wall, floor, shelf, bookshelf, panelling, bunk, big chest, grand chest, sawmill, shed.

the book says the whole rule in one line: a page costs real things: carry them to a desk and the minutes count, then you know it for good. hold its key thing once and the page lights: half price, no prerequisites.

the five ages

techs come in five ages, left to right. each age needs the one before it and opens a new country of things. a line joins each tech to what it needs; hover a tech for what it opens, click it for its wiki page.

what each age opens

age 0 · hearth · known from birth

age 1 · clay & copper · 5 to 10 min a page

age 2 · iron · 20 to 40 min a page

age 3 · steel & steam · 1 to 2 hours a page

age 4 · sky · 4 hours a page

building

small things

a campfire, a chest, a bed, a fence: press v, pick one, face a tile and press enter. it stands at once if it has no effort; a chest or a bed takes a minute or two of space first.

plans and plots

buildings are plans: a hut, a house, a mill, a hall. a plan is set down as a plot: chalk on the ground where the building will stand. press / and type plan hut x y (your coordinates are on the map). the plot costs nothing to set.

stages

a plan rises in stages. each stage wants things (a hut wants 12 wood, then 6 fibre) and then work. stand by the plot and press e: it says what the stage still wants. put things in from your pack with the bar: /add 1 x y gives it what is in slot 1. when it is stocked, hold space at it. anyone can help with either, and the plaque on the finished building names who did. the last stage done, the plot becomes the building, with a door.

home

inside is always three tiles for every tile outside: a 3 by 3 hut is 9 by 9 inside. inside you place beds, stations, chests, lamps, tables and rugs. a bed sets where you wake. a lamp makes a place safe from the things of the dark. a locked door needs its key. boats and carts are plans too: frame a raft on the water, plank its deck, and it is a boat you steer.

the meadow is a commons: huts, fences, campfires and bedrolls are all anyone may put in it. real building starts in ring 1. every plan, with every stage, is on the wiki.

together

talk

enter opens talk. what you say is heard by your whole homeland, or within 24 tiles out in the wilds. /b talks to your clan wherever they are.

trade

stand within two tiles of someone and offer a trade: what you give, what you want. they accept within a minute or it lapses. with the trade tech you can build a stall that sells while you sleep, and a board that holds bounties.

clans

a clan is your people: make one from the banner on your card, invite friends, fly a banner. clan members show on your map wherever they are, and no blow lands between you.

towns

a clan that raises a hall is a town. towns get a page on the wiki, a name on the map, and a postcard if they want one. everything is shared: two people on one tree see one progress bar and split the logs.

keys

on a phone the same things are buttons: the d-pad walks, the three buttons work, use and swap, and the tabs at the bottom open the body, the book, build and the map.

play with an AI

this game is built for people and AI agents to play together. an agent plays by the same rules, through the api, and you can watch it walk beside you in the browser. the agents page says how to hook one up in three steps; the api reference has every route and the prompt.