Hytale Beginner Guide: Your First Day in Exploration Mode

This guide covers the first day of a new Hytale world in Exploration Mode, as of Update 6 (August 27, 2026). Each step comes from the official patch notes or the Hytale Wiki, listed under Sources at the end. Chapter 1 arrives on October 12, 2026, and the changes it is known to bring are noted where they matter.

Quick Start Checklist

• Pick up rubble, sticks and plant fiber around the spawn point.
• Pocket-craft a Crude Pickaxe, Crude Hatchet and Crude Sword: 2 rubble, 2 plant fiber and 2 sticks each.
• Mine 3 stone and chop 4 tree trunks, then pocket-craft a Workbench.
• Make a Campfire, a few Crude Torches and a crude chest.
• Get 2 Light Hide from animals and craft a Crude Bedroll to set your respawn point.
• Find the Ruined Temple near spawn, get past its Earthen Golem and step through the gateway to the Forgotten Temple.
• Interact with the Heart of Orbis to start collecting Memories.

Choose Your Mode

Exploration Mode is the survival mode of Early Access. Hypixel Studios calls it an exploration-focused experience built with the content and systems the game has right now: a procedurally generated world where you can explore, build a home, grow crops, craft and play with friends. The Hytale Wiki describes it as survival with progression but no fixed goal.

• Creative Mode: every block, flight, no damage and unlimited stamina, with no progression.
• Adventure Mode: the planned story mode. It is not in Early Access yet.
• Hardcore (Update 6): chosen when you create a world. Permadeath gives each player one life, Three Strikes gives each player three, Nine Lives gives everyone a shared pool of nine, and Soulbound ends the run for everyone when any player dies. The Hytale Wiki adds that with any of them on, you drop everything when you die.

Without Hardcore, dying drops 50% of the items you carry and lowers your equipment's durability by 10% by default, and both can be changed in the world settings. See Death Penalty & Keep Inventory for every option.

Your First Minutes: Rubble, Sticks and Plant Fiber

In Update 6, every Exploration world starts at the First Gate of the Echo, in Zone 1, the Emerald Wilds. The land around it is randomly generated, so no two starts look the same. The first materials you need are on the ground nearby:

• Rubble: small stones lying on the surface. Press F to pick them up, or break them. Any type of rubble works in the early recipes.
• Sticks: press F on a pile of sticks for 2 to 5 sticks, break bushes, or fell trees.
• Plant Fiber: break bushes and tree leaves. Most bushes, except berry bushes, also break when you swing a weapon through them.

When you cut through a tree's trunk, the tree collapses and drops sticks, plant fiber and Tree Sap. Keep the sap, because torches need it.

Craft Your First Tools Without a Bench

Open your inventory (Tab) and use Pocket Crafting. It makes a small set of items without a bench, using only what you carry.

• Crude Pickaxe: 2 rubble, 2 plant fiber, 2 sticks. Breaks stone and most ores; the rarest ores need a better pickaxe.
• Crude Hatchet: 2 rubble, 2 plant fiber, 2 sticks. The tool for trees and anything made of wood.
• Crude Sword: 2 rubble, 2 plant fiber, 2 sticks. Compare it with every other weapon in the Weapons List.
• Campfire: 4 sticks, 2 rubble. Cooks meat and other food, and burns fuel such as sticks, plant fiber or logs.
• Crude Torch: 1 plant fiber, 1 Tree Sap and 1 stick make 4 torches.
• Crude chest: 10 tree trunks. Holds 18 slots, and two placed side by side join into one 36-slot chest.

Crude tools and weapons craft instantly (Update 3). In Update 6 a Crude Pickaxe or Crude Hatchet has 150 durability and crude weapons have 80. Update 7 (October 12, 2026) raised these to 200 and 120.

Build a Workbench

The Workbench is the main crafting bench. Pocket-craft it from 4 tree trunks and 3 stone of any kind, so mine a few stone blocks with the pickaxe first. Its recipes sit in four tabs: Survival, Tools, Crafting and Tinkering. Benches can also take ingredients from chests placed nearby, so keep a chest next to it.

A Tier 1 Workbench makes the next stations and the backpack:

• Furnace: 6 tree trunks, 6 stone. Smelts ore into ingots with fuel; press its button to start it.
• Tanning Rack: 6 tree trunks, 3 stone, 3 Light Hide. Turns hides into leather.
• Unlock Backpack: 8 Iron Ingots, 8 Medium Leather, in the Tinkering tab. Adds 9 inventory slots. Update 1 moved it from a Tier 2 to a Tier 1 Workbench. The Backpack Guide covers both upgrades.

Upgrading the Workbench unlocks better gear:

• Tier 2: 30 Copper Ingots, 20 Iron Ingots, 20 Linen Scraps. Unlocks Cobalt and Thorium tools, more benches and backpack upgrades.
• Tier 3: 30 Thorium Ingots, 20 Cobalt Ingots, 30 Heavy Leather, 50 Shadoweave Scraps, 25 Essence of Fire. Unlocks Adamantite tools.

The Crafting Calculator totals the raw materials for a recipe, and Ore & Material Locations shows where each ore spawns.

Food, Health and Stamina

You start with 100 health, and it does not regenerate by itself. Food and potions bring it back.

• Wild Berries: press F on a berry bush. Restores 5% health and gives tier 1 Health Regen for 45 seconds.
• Raw meat: dropped by animals such as boars, deer, rabbits and sheep. Eaten raw, it restores 5% health.
• Cooked Wildmeat: cook raw meat at a Campfire. Restores 5% health and gives tier 1 Health Regen and tier 1 Health Boost for 45 seconds.

Food restores 5% to 15% of your health at once, depending on the dish, and most cooked food adds regeneration over time. Since Update 7 (October 12, 2026), cooked-food buffs last 6 minutes, and Bread, Popcorn and Cheese restore 5%.

Stamina starts at 10 and refills at 3 per second, starting one second after you stop using it. Sprinting, guarding and charged attacks spend it. If it runs out while you guard, your guard breaks until stamina is full again. Fruit and vegetables give a Stamina Boost, which raises maximum stamina and the refill rate.

Nights, Beds and Your Respawn Point

By default a full day lasts 48 minutes: about 29 minutes of daylight and 19 of night. World settings can change this.

• Sleeping: you can sleep from 7:30 PM, and sleeping through the night takes you to the morning.
• Respawn point: a Crude Bedroll (3 plant fiber, 2 Light Hide, pocket-crafted) sets where you respawn. A new one placed less than 500 blocks from an old one replaces it, and respawn points show on your map.
• Light Hide: dropped by animals such as deer, goats, pigs, rabbits and sheep.
• Light: put a torch in the off-hand utility slot to light your way while you use a pickaxe or hatchet. You can also place torches from that slot.

Find the Forgotten Temple

The Forgotten Temple unlocks Memories, and Hypixel Studios says it will be the hub for progress through the Early Access chapters. To reach it, find the Ruined Temple in the Emerald Wilds; the Hytale Wiki says one normally generates fairly close to spawn. Forgotten Temple gateways also show as markers on your map.

• The guard: an Earthen Golem stands in front of the gateway. It has 160 health, attacks when you come within 10 blocks, and a new one appears one in-game day after it is defeated. The Bosses List describes its attacks.
• Inside: the gateway leads to the Forgotten Temple at the Edge of the Echo, a floating island with Kweebecs, merchants and the Heart of Orbis at its center.
• Coming back: the gateway returns you to the portal you used. The trip also sets the time of day in your world to a random point; in multiplayer, a player who stays behind can prevent this.
• Other zones: each zone has a temple with its own gateway: the Drylands Temple in the Howling Sands, the Snowlands Temple in the Whisperfrost Frontiers and the Firelands Temple in the Devastated Lands.

Start Collecting Memories

Memories are Hytale's bestiary. Interact with the Heart of Orbis once to unlock them; after that, you collect a creature's memory by encountering it. You can carry up to 48 new memories at a time, so go back to the Heart regularly to record them. Hypixel Studios says the rewards are permanent and shared with everyone in your world.

• 10 memories: decorative chests at the Furniture Workbench and Eternal Seeds at the Farmer's Workbench.
• 25: more chests and seeds, and room for one more Teleporter.
• 50: Morph Potions at the Alchemist's Workbench, more chests and seeds, and room for one more Teleporter.
• 100: the Ancient Gateway and Portal Fragments at the Arcanist's Workbench, Backpack Upgrade II, more chests and seeds, and room for two more Teleporters.
• 200: the Harvest Trophy, more chests and seeds, and room for two more Teleporters.

Since Update 7, some creatures must be beaten in a fight before you get their memories. The Memory Tracker is a checklist for what you have met, and Portals & Fragment Keys covers what the 100-memory reward opens.

Where to Go Next

• Explore the zones: there are four zones so far, with the Emerald Wilds around spawn. See Map: Zones, Regions & Biomes.
• Upgrade your gear: the Tier 2 Workbench needs copper and iron, so those are the first metals to look for. Keep your tools working with the Repair Kit Calculator.
• Play with friends: see Multiplayer: Play With Friends.
• Chapter 1 (October 12, 2026): Hypixel Studios says the Chapter 1 journey starts inside the Forgotten Temple. See Chapter 1: Release Date & What's New.

Default Controls (PC)

These are the defaults in the game's Controls menu, as listed on the Hytale Wiki.

• Move: W, A, S, D. Jump: Space. Sprint: Left Shift. Crouch, slide or roll: Left Ctrl.
• Primary action (attack, break): left mouse. Secondary action: right mouse. Abilities: Q, E and R.
• Interact or pick up: F. Drop item: G. Hotbar: 1 to 9.
• Inventory: Tab. Map: M. Chat: Enter.

Sources

• Hytale is finally here! (January 13, 2026)
• Hytale Patch Notes - Update 1 (January 17, 2026)
• Hytale Patch Notes - Update 3 (February 17, 2026)
• Update 6 Patch Notes (August 27, 2026)
• Chapter I: Out of the Breach, the Update 7 notes (October 12, 2026)
• First Look: Chapter 1 and More (July 16, 2026)
• Hytale Wiki, modes and the start: Exploration Mode, Gamemode, Hardcore Mode, Death, First Gate of the Echo, Controls, Inventory
• Hytale Wiki, materials and crafting: Stone Rubble, Stick, Pile of Sticks, Plant Fiber, Crude Pickaxe, Crude Hatchet, Crude Sword, Campfire, Crude Torch, Small Crude Chest, Workbench, Furnace, Tanning Rack, Unlock Backpack
• Hytale Wiki, survival: Health, Stamina, Wild Berries, Raw Wildmeat, Cooked Wildmeat, Time of Day, Crude Bedroll, Light Hide
• Hytale Wiki, temple and Memories: Ruined Temple, Earthen Golem, Forgotten Temple Gateway, Forgotten Temple, Memories