Get a perfect first day start in Solarpunk by prioritizing clean water, raspberry farming, and a roofed bed before nightfall so your cozy survival run begins smoothly.
For a strong first day in Solarpunk, your goals are simple — secure water, food (raspberries), and a roofed shelter with a bed before nightfall, which means building a research table to unlock rain collectors, laying down farm plots, and crafting a bed under a roof so you can sleep through the dark and set your spawn.
Solarpunk is a cozy little airship survival game, and your very first in-game day sets the tone for everything after it. The plan below is a tight day-one routine: get clean water flowing, get a couple of raspberries in the ground, and most importantly get a bed built under a roof before the sun goes down. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.
What a perfect first day looks like
A “perfect start” here isn’t about rushing deep into the tech tree — it’s about covering the three things that keep you alive. The moment you load in, your attention should go to water, raspberries for food, and a quick shelter with a bed.
The bed is the one with a hard deadline. Unless your monitor is cranked up bright, night in Solarpunk gets very dark, very fast, and it’s genuinely hard to see what you’re doing. Having a bed ready means you can simply sleep through the dark instead of stumbling around blind — so treat “bed before nightfall” as the whole point of day one.
Starting settings worth adjusting before you load in
Right when you boot up, the settings menu is worth a quick pass — though these are personal-preference tweaks, not requirements. The starting camera feels a touch zoomed in, so nudging the field of view up a little can help. If the audio runs loud for you, turning down the music volume makes the early game calmer.
The last one is the most subjective: inverting the airship controls. Some players find that more intuitive, but it really comes down to feel, so leave it default if inverted flying isn’t your thing. Once you’re happy, click My Worlds, name your save anything you like, and jump in.
Standard or Soft: which difficulty to pick
| Mode | Hunger & thirst | Lightning | On death |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | Normal rate | Can kill you | Drop your inventory where you die |
| Soft | Slower rate | Can’t hit you | Respawn keeping your inventory |
Before you spawn, the game asks whether you want Standard or Soft. Standard is the default, and it’s what this routine plays on. Soft is the gentler option — your hunger and thirst tick down more slowly, lightning can’t kill you, and dying is far less punishing.
On Standard, death comes from a handful of sources: falling, crashing your airship, or letting yourself get too hungry or thirsty. When you die on Standard you drop your inventory where it happened and have to go retrieve it, whereas on Soft you simply respawn with everything still on you. Neither choice is “wrong” — pick based on how much risk you want on a first playthrough.
How to set up your first day in Solarpunk
Grab the glowing resources
Pick up the glowing berries, cotton, and sticks near spawn, and eat a couple of berries so you can sprint.
Sort your inventory
Tidy your bag so food, sticks, and other materials are quick to reach.
Craft an axe and fell trees
Hold left-click with the axe to knock down trees — the first starter axe reportedly lasts about five hits before it breaks.
Build a crafting table
Quick-craft a crafting table and plop it down to open up more recipes.
Turn cotton into cloth
In the resources tab, craft cloth from the cotton you picked up earlier.
Build the research table
Combine cloth and wood to make a research table.
Unlock the water collector
The starting water is dirty, so unlock the water collector in your research table first.
Craft and place the water collector
It needs stones, sticks, and wood — make one and set it down.
Make a pickaxe and mine stone
Turn wood into a stick, craft a pickaxe, then hold left-click to break stones.
Set up about four rain collectors
Playing solo, three or four rain collectors should carry you through dry stretches.
Craft a hoe and till a plot
Use the hoe to make a few farm plots, leaving small gaps so sprinklers fit later.
Plant your raspberries
Drop raspberries into the tilled plots to get your food supply growing.
Unlock the bed and build hammer
Research the bed, then craft a build hammer plus the cloth and sticks it requires.
Place the bed under a roof
The placement prompt only lets you set the bed on a floor and under a roof.
Wall it off with a door
Use the build hammer for walls, add a door, and seal the last gap with pliers.
Sleep and set your spawn
Sleep through the night, then click the pillow to set your respawn point.
Build a roofed bed before your first nightfall. Night falls fast and gets pitch-black, and sleeping skips the dark while also letting you click the pillow to set your respawn point.
Video help
Rain collectors, wood, and other day-one gotchas
A couple of things will trip you up early if nobody warns you. The first is water: whatever you find lying around at the start is dirty water, which is exactly why unlocking the water collector is the very first research priority. Once collectors are gathering rain, you have a clean supply you can actually rely on.
On how many collectors to build, a good rule of thumb solo is about three or four. It rains often in the early going, but you’ll eventually hit a few dry days back to back, and having enough stored water is a relief when that happens. If you’re playing with friends, plan on building more than four to cover everyone.
The other big one is wood — you need a lot of it early, between the crafting table, research table, water collectors, and the walls of your hut. The good news is that once you knock a tree down you can replant it, so the starting island effectively gives you near-infinite wood if you keep cycling trees. And don’t dawdle: once the sun starts dropping, it gets dark quickly, which is the whole reason the bed comes before anything optional.
Where Part 2 picks up
That’s a solid first day — water collected, crafting and research tables built, raspberries growing, and a roofed bed with your spawn set. From here, the next session heads out to explore the middle mini-island, starts preparing for the first lightning storm, and keeps you on track for further research. We’ll pick all of that up in Part 2.
Related Solarpunk guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I pick Standard or Soft for my first playthrough?
Standard is the default and plays fine for a first day, but it’s the harder of the two: hunger and thirst drain at normal speed, lightning can kill you, and you drop your inventory where you die. Soft slows hunger and thirst, removes lightning deaths, and lets you respawn with your gear. If you’d rather learn the ropes without harsh penalties, Soft is the relaxed pick; if you want the intended challenge, stay on Standard.
How many rain collectors should I build on day one?
Solo, around three or four is a safe target. It rains frequently early on, but you’ll eventually get a run of dry days, so a small buffer of stored water matters. Playing with friends, build more than four to keep everyone supplied.
Where does the bed have to go — does it need a roof?
Yes. When you go to place it, the game’s prompt states the bed can only be placed on floors and under a roof, so you’ll want walls and a roof up first. In practice that means building your little hut before the bed will sit down at all.
Will I run out of wood, and can I replant trees?
You’ll burn through a lot of wood early between tables, collectors, and walls, so it can feel tight. But you can replant trees after knocking them down, which gives you effectively infinite wood on the starting island as long as you keep cycling them.
How do I set my respawn point?
Sleep in your bed, and once you’re up, click the pillow to set your spawn. After that, if you die out in the world you’ll respawn back in your hut instead of wherever you fell.
More questions⤵
Why is building a bed before nightfall so important?
Night gets dark fast, and unless your screen is very bright it’s hard to see anything to keep working. A ready bed lets you sleep straight through the dark, and it doubles as your spawn point — so getting it up before the sun drops is the single most important goal of day one.
