Mirthwood Beginner's Guide: Gameplay Tips, Mechanics, Features & More

Developer Bad Ridge Games have launched their medieval fantasy RPG Mirthwoodfollowing a two-month delay announced in September 2024. As the developer needed additional time to polish a few gameplay mechanics and features, players can jump into this sandbox environment, but there are a few things to help them along their epic journeys.

From game settings, difficulties, exploration, and more, these tips and tricks will ensure they make the most of their adventures within the Continent and the Free Lands with a few surprises they must know about. This handy guide will provide players with a bevy of settings, must-know features, exploration tips, and valuable advice to help them make the most of their time in Mirthwood.

Pay Attention To The Character Origin, Class & Profession

Mirthwood isn't the atypical cozy sandbox game as it combines open-world, management, and RPG elements with its medieval fantasy setting. While the Character Creation feature isn't as diverse as those prevalent in popular RPG and MMO releases over the last few years, it does possess unique options that most players may overlook.

After customizing their character's in-game Appearance, they'll be tasked with selecting their character's Origin, Class, and Profession. These specific character traits and attributes can provide unique buffs, but some drawbacks may hinder your character's progression with specific gameplay mechanics like farming, crafting, and combat.

Starting with Origin, these are unique locations across the Continent and the Free Lands that players can choose from one of five areas, and selecting one gives you one of five unique traits: confidence/assertiveness, accommodating/agreeable, curious, honorable/conscientious, or introverted. The Social Class selection gives them three options, Royal, Noble, or Peasant, which provides players with another attribute but its correlating drawback; for example, choosing the Peasant class means your energy levels take longer to deplete at the cost of being "socially unpolished."

Lastly is the Profession or background, from which there are seven options or jobs to choose: Actor, Criminal, Farmer, Fighter, Herbalist, Ratcatcher, and Tinkerer. Each Profession or job has a unique trait or attribute with a downside; like for example, selecting the Fighter class means your weapons inflict greater damage to enemies; however, your "goods" have less value when sold.

Writer Note: In a separate guide, we'll provide a more in-depth guide to character Origin, Class, and Profession and the benefits they offer for specific gameplay styles. Players who participated in the Closed Beta or played the demo will have their game files carried over so they can continue their adventures or begin a new one should they choose.

Go Easy Or Hard With Combat And Survival

Here's another feature players didn't quite expect, but to enhance the gameplay experience in Mirthwood, players can make specific in-game mechanics more streamlined or challenging. This can be done before starting the game (for new players), or if they're on a loaded save file, they can navigate to the game's Settings from the Pause menu screen.

Within the Settings menu, there are a few options to toggle on or off, but specifically for this, the two settings to look at are "Easier Combat" and "Easier Survival." You can have the option to toggle one or both on or off to make combat and surviving the open-world environments and enemies easier or more challenging, depending on their playstyle and preference, so play around and see which you prefer!

Keep Your Health, Stamina, And Hunger In Check And Above Bar

Now, once you're in-game, there are a few things to pay special attention to, especially as they progress through the main questline. At the bottom left section of their screen are three bars that players must keep an eye out for, especially when they fall below 25%, which should inform you on what to do next.

These three bars are the key to your in-game survival, as maintaining them will ensure their survival during exploration and combat and avoid an unwanted or untimely demise. Starting from the top bar colored red is the Health bar, which depletes when taking damage during combat and can be remedied or recovered HP by consuming Health Elixirs and food items.

The next bar below the Health, colored yellow, is the energy or Stamina bar, which gets consumed each time your character sprints or completes various tasks like foraging, farming, and mining, just to name a few. To regain their Stamina bar, there are Stamina Elixirs to purchase or craft, replenishing the bar, and they can continue with their tasks or explore the world surrounding them.

Finally, the orange bar below the previous two bars is their Hunger bar or meter, which depletes continuously during the day and can be refilled by consuming HP-boosting foods. Remember that specific Social Classes and Professions can hinder these bars either by depleting them faster or making it slightly challenging to recover enough HP, Stamina, or Hunger when consuming food and Elixirs.

Napping And Sleeping Is Vital For Overall Health

Here's the interesting part regarding Mirthwood's survival mechanics (Health, Stamina and Hunger) a few players may wonder why they can't replenish their respective bars or meters. This is due to exhaustion, which can prevent layers from regaining their HP, energy, or Hunger back, as there's a form of barrier that restricts this from happening, and it ties into their exhaustion, which napping or sleeping can resolve.

As long as players are near a bed or sleeping bag, they can opt to nap or sleep for a few hours to remove this status effect before waking up to start or continue the day. Once this status effect is gone, it's safe to consume any food items or Elixirs to refill their Health, Stamina, or Hunger bars, and if they need any of these items, they can be bought at stores or foraged or harvested before being cooked and ready to enjoy!

Use Money Wisely, Spend Cautiously

Speaking of spending money, which we'll discuss in more detail on the in-game economy, earning it is challenging if you're not paying attention. Especially in the first few hours of Mirthwood, spending your money unnecessarily can set players up for failure relatively early, an instance that happened to us, but after a few hours and three ongoing playthroughs, there's a reason why this is the case.

So, initially, players can earn some coin when looting chests, but as the game progresses and they need more money, farming is a good early-game task or skill to use to gain profits when the produce is sold. However, farming isn't entirely profitable when the game progresses beyond the early game section, as players will be spending more money on purchasing seeds, which is counter-productive, so other more profitable options are hunting and mining.

The reason is that mining ores and precious minerals can sell for a high value when mined and smelted into bars. Likewise, with hunting, they can use a bow and arrows, which can be given to them from an NPC in the village south of their house, they can use them to hunt various animals that drop pelts, and they can be sold for a good chunk of change.

Writer's Note: We'll provide separate guides on farming and trading in Mirthwood and help players ensure they get more value for their produce and consumable items. Likewise, we'll explain where they can locate the vendor that sells farming-related items and structures to build on their Housing Plot.

Your Journal Keeps Track Of Quests And Letters

As with most traditional RPGs, keeping or following the active quest is usually done in the form of a handbook or Journal that players can consult at any point during the quest. In Mirthwood, players have a Journal that they can bring up if they're unsure about the objective or gain a clue about completing the objective or quest by hitting the "J" key on their keyboard.

Tracking quests is one of many things that can be done from the Journal as they can access all active and completed Contracts, found letters, books, and clues that may be of significance or value later in-game. The letters, books, and clues are mainly found through exploration by visiting homes, shops, campsites, and within chests when looted, so do spend some time acquainting oneself with the environments for who knows what can be found.

Take Note And Converse With Villagers

There are a few confirmed ways that quests can be received or triggered in Mirthwood, with the main questline occurring quite organically in-game. As mentioned before, there are other ways to add quests to their Journal, such as finding letters and books that can grant them side quests to complete; however, are players aware that there are different methods of acquiring quests?

One of the first ways is by finding a Notice Board in front of the Bog and Briar Inn, where they can collect a quest from the board to complete. Another way is to speak to Villagers with a speech bubble above their head, indicating to players that they have a task to complete and, in doing so, add quests to their Journal, which remains active until they're finished, as setting a quest active is done by pressing the "J" key, navigate to the Quests tab and click on any quest to make it active.

The World Is Your Oyster So Explore It!

In the early game section of Mirthwood, most of the map remains unnamed or undiscovered, which can be a problem when completing quests, side quests, and Contracts. Especially when following an active quest, the quest location/s can be somewhat vague as it will provide some information, but not having the location name can cause more problems than solving them.

This is where putting on your best hiking boots may be of value, as exploring the open-world environments will unlock these locations, including their names, all villagers, unique locales, and Points of Interest to make navigation much more manageable. Perhaps the most important locale to unlock through exploration is Fast Travel points, and there is a handful to be found to make traversal more accessible (the first one is located on their Housing Plot).

Interact with the discovered Fast Travel point and select the intended destination, and they'll arrive at their new location without having to consume their Stamina or lose HP if they encounter enemies on foot. Luckily for players, using the Fast Travel system won't require them to spend any currency or money like other RPGs and MMOs do, which can be more of a pain to deal with when earning money is a little challenging.