This guide is intended for mid-to-late game players. Beware, some minor spoilers below!

Certain creatures and content are only available at certain levels of reputation. If you have only been at a positive reputation value, then you will have not seen all the creatures or their unique resources and loot they drop. Reducing your reputation will also make the game more challenging for you, potentially giving you a new play experience. The opposite is also true if you have only been at a negative reputation.

Different islands feature unique content and experiences. You will also notice temperature effects that may alter the way you need to play to survive, opening up new gameplay scenarios. You can always go back to your previous islands if you travel. Islands are persistent and unlimited, and will even update when you come back to them after some time.

Opening up new crafts will provide new mechanics and strategies. You only need to be adjacent to or holding one of each item in a craft to unlock it.

One strategy to unlock as many recipes as possible is to have three chests adjacent to you, all with many different items. Fill them up with things you haven't crafted before or rare things you found. Walking in between them could unlock a few interesting things for you.

Alternatively, you can find old instructional scrolls from creatures and treasure chests that will unlock a recipe. You can do this until all crafts are unlocked.

Completing some milestones may force you to try new things in the game you never thought to do. Unlocking milestones will also unlock milestone modifiers; unique gameplay modifications that can be toggled when starting a new game. Some of these modifiers change the whole pace of the game, while others provide great things to start with.

Unlock your full potential by maxing out your equipment and tools through mastercrafting. Use 100%+ efficacy in your crafts and use as much skill as possible (100%+) to get the best results. You may want to use magical armor that enhances your skill when doing this as it unlocks new potential effects when mastercrafting. Use magical items to upgrade and enhance these crafts further. Alternatively or additionally, try for very low reputation to spawn more and more aberrant creatures increasing the likelihood of "relic" drops.

Wayward has a "win" condition, but the way to do so is a bit cryptic and hidden. You'll likely have to modify your reputation multiple times as well as travel to different islands to unlock the ability to "complete" the game. While completing the game is not the intent of the end-game, the option exists for players that like to feel like they reached the true "end" of the game before moving on. Ya'll come back now! Ya hear?

Playing the game in a multiplayer setting is truly a different experience. You may have to fend for multiple people if you are playing co-op are care to help other players. PVP-enabled multiplayer games shift the gameplay into something entirely unique.

Wayward has four standard game modes. Hardcore, Casual, Challenge, and Custom. While hardcore and casual are self-explanatory, the challenge mode offers up something unique in terms of gameplay. You will no longer be just surviving, but also playing against the clock in trying to complete the quests in as least turns as possible. The custom game mode also offers something a bit unique for you if you are looking at modifying the difficulty or tailoring Wayward to your playstyle.

Modifications can open up new ways to experience the game. Here's a few examples:


TARS will play the game for you! TARS is an AI assistant that will attempt to play the game and survive for you. It's a work-in-progress, but is already very impressive and can get to the end-game if given the chance. TARS is even capable of traveling or being placed into different modes (tidying up, gardening, etc.) and can even be given certain tasks to perform if you are too lazy... err... busy to do them yourself.


Debug Tools is essentially a dialog-focused creative mode mixed with cheating... err... development tools. Many aspects of the game can be edited including spawning creatures, changing terrain, disabling fog of war, changing time of day, and much more.


MapStuff will allow you design your own map, using the power of pixels and colors! This is a great tool for creating your own island much faster than manually doing it through Debug Tools.

There are many more mods available as well. Check them out!

Using the aforementioned mods, Debug Tools and MapStuff, you should have all the tools you need to create anything you can imagine. You could even attempt to create your own puzzle/challenge map with unique rules and scenarios.

Are you technically inclined and want to modify Wayward in ways not done before? Check out the modding guide[github.com] to get started!

Try streaming or producing a video on Wayward! Not your thing? It could even be as simple as uploading a screenshot of your base to Steam or uploading your game save to the Steam Workshop. How about helping out with the officially unofficial Wiki[wayward.fandom.com]? Or, why not write a new guide? Wow, how meta!

Let me know if you have any other ideas!