Before You Chase the Trolls: 8 Things to Do Before Leaving Camp

Among the Trolls opens with a missing grandfather and a Finnish forest that looks calm enough to wander. That is exactly why the first hour can go sideways. Food needs cooking, arrows need replacing, tools wear down, and the darker routes do not care that you left your torch beside the cabin.

The safest opening is built around one simple rule: return to camp before a small shortage becomes a long walk home. The official game description confirms that scarce resources, harsh weather, wildlife, crafting, Väki, and Lykky all shape survival. Creator playthroughs of the demo repeatedly hit the same problems with food, ammunition, navigation, darkness, and durability.

This guide combines those repeated observations with current official material. It does not pretend Game Pelt has played the final launch build, and exact recipes or balance may change after release. The habits below are still useful because they solve the problems the game keeps putting between Anna and the next story objective.

1. Read the Journal Before Leaving the Cabin

Open the journal before following the first interesting sound into the trees. It collects recipes, discoveries, quests, and other clues that explain what the game expects you to build or investigate next. In the longer creator playthroughs, checking it often solved confusion faster than another lap around the cabin.

Do not treat it like a lore book you will read later. It is the closest thing the opening has to a field checklist. Look at the active objective, scan the available recipes, and note which basic materials repeat. That tells you whether the next walk is a focused supply run or aimless sightseeing.

The journal also helps separate a blocked route from a missed ingredient. If a bridge, tool, or interaction is not moving forward, check the recorded recipe and quest state before assuming the game wants you somewhere else. Five seconds in the journal can save ten minutes of arguing with a tree stump.

2. Gather Sticks Before You Commit to a Route

Sticks feed too many early recipes to remain an afterthought. Creator footage repeatedly showed players needing them for tools, weapons, arrows, and camp equipment. The sensible opening chain is to secure the basic cutting tool, make rope when the recipe calls for it, and finish the bow before wandering far from shelter.

That order matters because each tool makes the next supply problem easier. An axe improves wood gathering. Rope unlocks the next part of the kit. A bow gives you a safer answer to wildlife and other threats than closing the distance with a half-broken tool.

Pick up extra sticks while moving between objectives instead of waiting for a recipe to demand them. Do not fill every slot with them, but keep enough that returning to camp produces something useful. A forest full of wood somehow becomes very inconvenient once the light fades and you need one specific branch.

3. Keep the First Camp Close to the Cabin

The cabin is already your most recognizable landmark, so make it the center of the first supply loop. Put the campfire and early water equipment nearby rather than creating a second problem to find in the woods. The goal is a fallback point where food can be cooked, water handled, and the next trip prepared without another navigation puzzle.

This also gives every short expedition a clear finish. Leave with a purpose, gather what that purpose needs, and return before hunger, darkness, or damaged gear stacks another problem on top. Early survival games love turning three small inconveniences into one ugly death spiral. A compact camp prevents that.

The cabin does not need to become a perfect base before you move on. It only needs to support repeatable departures: fire, water, a few reserves, and enough organization that you know what is missing. Build the useful version first. Interior decorating can wait until the forest stops trying to invoice you for every mistake.

4. Cook Food Before Entering a Dungeon

Do not enter a dungeon because the doorway looks important. Enter when your hunger is stable and you have a cooked reserve. One long creator run nearly collapsed because the player pushed deeper without enough food, then had to solve combat, navigation, and starvation at the same time.

Hunting only solves half the problem. Raw meat still has to reach the fire, and gathering edible plants is not the same as carrying a dependable meal. Cook before leaving camp, then keep the reserve untouched until the route gets longer than expected. If the dungeon provides food, that is a bonus rather than the plan.

Official demo updates previously adjusted food availability inside dungeons, which is another reason not to build a strategy around finding supplies after entry. Balance can move. A meal already in your inventory does not care what changed in the latest patch.

5. Stock Feathers and Recover Your Arrows

The bow gives you distance, but it also creates a new resource problem. Sticks are easy to notice. Feathers can be the part that quietly stops arrow production. In the longest playthrough reviewed, ammunition pressure grew through the dungeon because the player had enough wood but not enough feathers.

Collect feathers whenever the route offers them and craft more arrows than the next hunt appears to need. Deer can take multiple hits, missed shots disappear into the environment, and a supernatural enemy is a bad time to discover that the final arrow lives in a tree behind you.

After a fight, slow down and recover what you can from bodies, walls, and the ground. Recovered arrows stretch every feather and reduce the number of supply runs between story pushes. Ranged combat is safer only while the quiver still has an opinion.

6. Carry a Torch and Quick Slot Healing

A torch belongs in the active kit before any route turns underground. Dungeons get dark enough that navigation becomes its own threat, and holding a light should be a decision you make before the corridor disappears. Waiting until the screen is black to reorganize the inventory is how simple rooms become mazes.

Put a healing item or potion on a quick slot at the same time. Official development material says potions are intended to help in dungeons, against enemies, and when bad Lykky starts working against you. The creator footage supports the practical part: healing buried in the inventory is slow when combat is already messy.

Treat the torch and healing slot as one pre-departure check. Light answers the route. Healing answers the mistake. Neither helps from a box beside the cabin.

7. Check Durability Before the Long Walk

Tools and weapons are supplies, even when their icons look permanent. A bow broke during one reviewed dungeon run, immediately turning an ammunition plan into an equipment problem. Another playthrough surfaced the hammer recipe as the answer for repairing damaged gear.

Check condition before leaving camp, especially after hunting or combat. If a weapon is already close to failure, repair it or carry what the relevant repair recipe needs. The same applies to gathering tools. A distant wood or food run loses its point when the tool required for the job breaks halfway there.

Do not wait for a durability warning to become the loudest thing on screen. Make condition part of the same routine as food, water, arrows, and healing. The useful tool is the one that survives the return trip.

8. Follow Landmarks and Bridges, Not Water Shortcuts

The map becomes more useful as landmarks are recorded, but it is not a glowing route painted through the forest. Use the cabin, unusual structures, ruins, and other obvious features to keep a mental chain back to camp. Check the map after reaching something distinct, then decide where the next leg begins.

Water may look like a clean shortcut between islands or objectives. Creator dialogue and playthrough behavior both warn against treating it as safe travel. Official material also presents normal and magical bridges as part of how the world opens. If a route appears built around a bridge, assume the bridge matters until the release build proves otherwise.

That means the longer dry route is usually the better first choice. Follow the landmark chain, repair or unlock the intended crossing, and keep a return route in view. Getting somewhere quickly is not progress if the trip back becomes a drowning test.

These eight jobs do not remove the danger from Among the Trolls. They stop preventable shortages from deciding the run before the mythology has a chance. Read the journal, build the first tool chain, keep camp close, and leave with food, arrows, light, healing, and working gear.

Then follow the proper crossing into the forest. The trolls will still be there. Your missing dinner should not be the thing that beats you first.