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These Nightingale tips and tricks will help you get ahead in this gaslamp fantasy survival game. With so much Nightingale doesn’t tell you, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed when getting started.
With a good few hours under my belt in Nightingale, these tips and tricks are things I wish I had known when I started playing, so let’s get into them.
For more, read our guides covering how to get and use Charms and some good Essence farming methods. Now, these are our Nightingale tips and tricks.
Give your resources to recruited allies
As you explore the wild unpredictable realms of Nightingale, you will encounter various NPCs you can hire to your cause. Hiring an NPC has several benefits and we’ve encountered zero drawbacks, making it a great option if you need an extra hand. Recruited allies will passively gather materials, fight enemies, chop trees, mine rocks, and so on.
Not only are their weapons indestructible while they use them, hired NPCs also have infinite carry weight. This means you can offload your hundreds of wooden logs onto them along with anything else weighing you down. Essentially, these hired NPCs are the ultimate pack mules and they will help you at every turn. Whenever you need the resources, bring them over to a chest to grab everything they have, and place it in storage.
Understand Augments and building traits
When it comes to crafting in Nightingale, you will notice your buildings and benches have certain innate traits – otherwise referred to as Augmentations – that hinder or help you. Traits work in a fairly simple way and they are easy to ignore completely.
Take your bedroll, for example. To begin with, you will be using this as your main way to sleep. If you happen to have a fire going and go to craft your bed next to it, you will see a green line connecting the two structures. This indicates an Augmentation will be active, and in the case of a bedroll near fire, this equals warmth and a better night’s sleep.
These aren’t always positive effects, but generally, they will help your structures perform better. Always pay attention to Traits by checking them in the crafting tab. The most common Traits you will encounter to begin with are Grit, Exposure, Warmth, and Lighting. As you progress, make a note of the structures that have an interplay with one another.
Pin locations on your map
While this might seem simple, the map system in Nightingale isn’t the most informative in its Early Access state. With this in mind, you have custom map pins you can place down to remind yourself of an area rich in resources or to mark a location to come back to when you are better prepared.
As you go around and explore more, only major places of interest will be marked down, so make sure you’re keeping track of where you’ve been by placing pins. Overall, it will help your exploration, which is something crucially important in Nightingale.
Claim challenge rewards in your log
Perhaps due to Nightingale being in Early Access, this feature isn’t very well telegraphed to the point you might miss it entirely. Within the main menu, you can switch to your Guidebook tab. In this tab, you will find another menu called ‘Challenges’.
This page has a list of in-game challenges that will provide you with various rewards when you fulfil the criteria. While you won’t get anything too fancy from these challenges, it is a fantastic way to get your hands on more materials, items, and resources when you’re first starting in Nightingale.
Don’t be afraid to extract items
Extracting your items – be they resources, old gear, or otherwise – is one of the best ways to get your hands on Essence Dust in Nightingale. If you’re like me and you are physically incapable of leaving any hint of an item left on the ground, whether that’s plant fiber or sticks, then this is what you can do with the excess.
By the time you’ve spent about an hour in Nightingale, you will have plenty of common items that you need to use to start making the most basic things. When you’ve done this, you will probably now have an excess of these items. While you should always keep items for a rainy day, you can safely throw out 100 plant fiber for a cool 100 Essence Dust.
Should you Extract everything?
Extracting is more of a case-by-case basis. You shouldn’t just throw everything away. Always make sure you don’t need it, especially if it’s a rarer material, before you cash it in for some quick Essence. Some items will get your more Essence Dust on Extraction, so keep this tip in mind when culling your resources.
You can move and replace structures
If you suddenly decide you hate everything about the base you’ve either made or are currently planning, it’s good to know that you can always redecorate and move things around. While not an immediately obvious option, you can do this with anything you’ve placed and built. You can also move structures you’ve laid the blueprints for, but not put the ingredients into making them properly.
To move a structure, approach it and press the X key on your keyboard. This will bring up another set of commands at the bottom middle of the screen, letting you Move, Copy, and Remove the item you are looking at. Press Move and then reposition the structure to where you want to be. Anything you Remove will also refund the material you used, so don’t just hit something to destroy it.
Take gear from recruited allies
Once again, recruiting NPCs is a fantastic thing to do in Nightingale. As mentioned, they are fantastic pack mules and will help out gathering and fighting, but you can also recruit someone to steal their equipment. Generally speaking, the NPCs will have slightly better gear than you depending on who you hire. While it is in your best interest for them to be strong and capable, you should consider taking all their clothes and gear for yourself.
If you feel bad, you can replace what you took with your old gear to ensure the NPC isn’t entirely useless. This is a great way, especially early on, to get better gear without having to craft anything if you don’t have the resources. You can also get better tools this way, so you should exploit this unless it eventually gets fixed.
Survey the area from high ground
When you look out over an area, any major and minor points of interest will be added to your map as a little icon. The best way to do this is to get as high up as you can and then survey the land to get an idea of where everything is. Doing this will reveal areas you can visit, along with adding NPCs and vendors to your map for easy access.
Not everything will be added to your map, and this is where our previous tip of placing custom map markers down will help you even more. The range of what is discovered depends on where you look and how high you get, and you can test this by checking your map after surveying the land.
That’s it for our Nightingale tips and tricks. For more, read our guides covering how to fast travel and how to play with friends.
Nightingale tips and tricks FAQs
What happens when you die in Nightingale?
You will drop everything you had in a chest where you die. Go back to this point to open the chest and claim everything back.
How do I recruit NPC survivors?
Talk to NPCs you see and there will be an option to recruit them if you are able to.
