This has changed quite a bit, and there are also alternate routes available. I'm documenting this mostly so I won't get confused while playtesting.
I. Initial Stuff
Gather resources.
Extract them to get sticks and fiber or bark.
Use your resources to craft a weapon (Swords are the best at the moment) and a Fishing Rod. Equip them both.
II. Animal Resources
Fight animals, making sure to kill at least three of the same kind. Getting more isn't a bad idea for future progression steps.
Go to pools of water and fish using insects as bait. Get at least three fish of the same kind, although getting more can't hurt.
Extract hide from the 3+ animals and scales from the 3+ fish. Use these to craft the Atomizer Bypass key item.
III. Base Building
Figure out some extracted or crafted item that has a high Aether value and atomize a bunch of it.
Find an area of the world that has a small room-looking thing with few exit points. Might have to look around different tetrads.
Use your aether to build a base. This can be pretty expensive, so the first step above is helpful.
------------------------------------ --- START OF CHANGES (bases v1) ----
Once the base is in place, put down a Newflesh Node, Research Station, Forge and Fuel Refinery. Putting down an Alchemy station or Analyzer might be nice for potionmaking, but isn't required.
Activate the newflesh node to set your spawn point.
Interact with the Research Station to get the Explorer Package.
Place down an attractor portal close to your base named "Home" or something so you can get back to it easily.
---- END OF CHANGES (bases v1) ----- ------------------------------------
IV. Getting the Manaflute
This part of the game progression requires two different paths which can be done in either order. These paths are:
1. Crafting the Byzantine Womb
2. Collecting 3 Tetradshards which form a natural triad.
Both of these goals must be completed in order to craft the manaflute, however there's a bunch of different ways of doing them.
1a. Crafting the Byzantine Womb by exploring Caves immediately
The Byzantine Womb requires metals, precious metals, and quartzshards, all of which can be found in Caves.
Getting into caves requires at least one Rope. Torches aren't strictly required but they're a good idea. Grappling Ropes and Bombs are nice to have, but are less important.
All of these items can be crafted from resources that are currently available in some capacity.
Entering Caves through this route requires finding a Cave Hole and entering it.
Once inside, precious metal ores, metal ores, and gashrooms can be collected. Bombs and Ropes are useful here, as well as having a nice stack of Fat to refuel torches and a stack of Fiber or Hide to rebuild ropes. Fat and Hide can be extracted from enemies in the cave if necessary, however.
Gashrooms can be crafted into Gashroom Bombs which will help you get further down or blow up Altars or Aether Lenses, releasing Quartzshards in the process. Gashrooms can also be crafted with Quartzshards to make Quartzbombs, which will destroy all Altars/Aether Lenses on screen.
When you've collected 24 metal ores of the same type and 12 precious metal ores of the same type, return to your base with a portal. Put some plant matter in the Fuel Refinery (ideally Wood) and use the Forge to turn ores into metals and precious metals.
Craft the Byzantine Womb.
1b. Using Towns to make various parts of the above path easier on yourself.
Use a portal window to get to the nearest town.
Make money somehow -- you can be honorable and sell items you've found, extracted or crafted. Alternately, you can steal items found in furniture in the houses in this town -- however with the new Theft system you can be caught by shopkeepers and NPCs and face penalties.
Use the NPC talking system to get a good idea of where different useful shops are and where towns are in relation to each other. Use the Journal feature to take notes and plan a kind of route.
Currently useful shops
This is in order of usefulness in the game's current state.
Pawn Shop -- if you're stealing stuff, these always sell lockpicks which make it possible to break into more valuable furniture. Pawn shops also occasionally sell clothing, which can be extracted into Cloth or Twine useful for crafting purposes.
Alchemist/Wizard -- Sell potion ingredients and buy potions. This isn't required but I like doing it.
Spelunker -- These sell stuff very useful to Caves like Ropes, Torches and Bombs. Best to go here first before trying something else.
Lumberjack -- These sell wood. You need a lot of plant matter to smelt ores into metals, and wood is the most efficient route. Lumberjacks also offer services to turn any trunk type into bark, increasing the amount of twine types you have available.
Geologist -- These sell precious metals, metals, precious metal ores and metal ores, allowing you to bypass that whole part of caves if you want (or are just annoyed). They also offer a smelting service to turn ores into metals, though it's expensive. They also sell rocks useful to creating bombs.
Butcher -- They sell fat which is useful for making Bombs.
Armorer/Bladesmith/Smith -- If there's no Geologist, these guys can also Smelt ore for a price (it's pricy).
Angler -- These sell insects which makes fast fishing for scales more viable. They also have the water records service, which is useful later in the game but for now can help you find more fish types. They also sell fish directly. They also have a service of extracting fat from any fish, which is useful for bombs.
Outfitter -- These sell clothing, which can be extracted for Twine and Cloth. Twine is part of ropes while cloth is part of torches.
Trapper -- Sell hide and scales, so if they work out right can give you everything you need for Ropes.
Botanist -- Rarely sell bark or fiber.
Restaurant -- Rarely sell fat.
Trading Outpost/Artisan/General Store -- Aggregate a lot of different stores. Probably not the best way of getting anything useful but it's possible.
1c. Accessing the Caves Ruin
By using the "ask around towns and warp to other towns" systems you can find the coordinates of a Caves Ruin.
You can then use the town Repulsor service to warp yourself there.
Right now Caves Ruins offer a guaranteed way to enter caves. They'll be a bit better later.
1d. Bypassing Caves completely
To do this, you need to find precious ores, metal ores, or the metal versions of those in furniture or by interacting with a Geologist.
Use starshards instead of quartzshards -- right now you have to find them, but they're not used for anything else so this is a viable strategy.
2a. Finding Tetradshards through Asher
Do the appropriate town steps to get money.
Ask around for where someone named Asher lives. Find that person.
They will be able to warp you to different dungeons.
You need to go to three dungeons in total with one in each pair: Wood/Ice, Water/Earth, Fire/Wind.
Once there find your way to a paragraph symbol and touch it to activate it.
Use the "dungeon hint" button to find your way to the dungeon's tetradshard. If it's too far, you can exit the dungeon and enter through a different paragraph symbol.
Collect one of each of the three types of tetradshard.
2b. Finding tetradshards on your own
Asher will warp you to the dungeons, but it's also possible to find them on your own. At the moment this isn't really worth doing, but once Scout animals get introduced it'll be easier to find dungeons on your own.
V. Opening Mana Cracks
Craft the Manaflute from the Byzantine Womb and one of each type of tetradshard.
Open your manaflute menu and go to three water/lava types that form a triad -- again, this is Wood/Ice, Water/Earth, and Fire/Wind. This means the colors you need are Green/Cyan, Blue/Brown, and Lava/Gray Water. Using the Angler Water Table service can be very helpful here.
Once there, stand in the appropriate water or lava type, press / and type in the word associated with that element. This will open a mana crack to your right.
Once you've opened mana cracks in a triad, you'll get the Monad song.
VI. The Entropic Plane
Get to the Void Sea that surrounds the world. The easiest way is by going to a town that's on the edge of the world, or finding a town that has the "Void Skips" transport option, as that will always border the void sea.
Find an entropic hole, press / and type in the Monad word to activate it. Interact with it to enter the Entropic Plane.
The first thing you need to do is find a Voidcore. It helps to follow naturally-generated diagonals as they appear at junctions of those. Voidcores are null symbols.
Interact with it to activate it.
Your goal with this plane is to feed it 999,999 Solid Light, which are the resources you see. The amount of solid light you get is determined by how far away you are from the voidcore, so going out further is recommended.
However, you lose large percentages of your solid light as you move around. The more solid light you have, the worse this is. To get around this, you can place down Time tethers -- these consume some solid light but allow you to build a "road" where you don't lose solid light. These have to be placed on symmetrical terrain, with higher-solid patterns giving off longer time tethers. The best strategy seems to be to place the time tethers first and then collect solid light as you come back. You can also use Energy Bombs to destroy solids making it a bit easier to route things -- however this consumes a bunch of solid light. You can feed the voidcore on multiple trips -- it doesn't have to be all at once.
Once you've fed 999,999 (also known as infinity in this context) solid light to the voidcore, you can "Propagate" which creates Void Pivots in the entropic dimension, the bottom level of caves and the quantum plane.
VII. The Quantum Plane
Use one of the Void Pivots to enter the bottom level of caves. If you're in the void sea for some reason you can also use it to get back into the useful part of the world here. Void Pivots can also be used here to "Clear quantum fog" which will make torches unnecessary for a short period of time and also prevent quantum visibility effects.
Find a Quantum Hole (it'll be green), press / and use the Monad song to activate it. Step into it to enter the Quantum Plane.
The first thing you should do here is collect a bunch of exotic matter (like around 100 ideally). If you get stuck, you can switch tetrads infinitely, though the terrain will also reset itself a lot as well.
Now, the goal is to get to the Chromodynamo before the terrain resets itself and it moves. To do this, you'll need to visit Void Pivots occasionally to give yourself a buff called "Worldlock" which prevents terrain movement. You can also gain the "Flying" buff, which lets you press shift to fly over terrain (and shift again to exit the mode). Lastly, you'll need to actually find the chromodynamo, which can be done in your Quantum Plane menu for exotic matter. So all told you'll probably need a good amount of exotic matter, and it's easier to just collect it first.
Once you've reached the chromodynamo, activate it. This will allow you to travel to other dimensions, and will warp you to a Strange Loop.
VII. Working on the Event Horizon
Your next step is getting to a region known as the "Event Horizon". To do that, you have to find a pathway between three or more dimensions where energy is created boundlessly.
To do that, use the Strange Loop to warp to an alternate dimension by putting in 2-8 symbols and clicking "Warp".
Each alternate province has an element associated with it, and there's a kind of puzzle game here where you buy and sell symbols in one of the elemental currencies, moving around the elemental map that's been used previously in a lot of places. The goal is to start in one currency and end up with twice as much of that currency or more by the end. This requires a lot of trial-and-error to find the right element-based dimensions, as well as the best things to buy/sell for a "profit".
Once you're successful, you can Enter the Event Horizon, which warps you to that place.
The Aleph Naught and Ourobori
Inside the Event Horizon, there's a fixture known as a "Naked Singularity" which is repeated over and over. The first time you interact with this, you can pick up the "Aleph Naught" item and its first tier.
You have several buttons here for new tiers to unlock as well as very useful equipment known as Ourobori.
Back in the overworld, open your new Aleph Naught menu. The first tier has a bunch of buttons. You click on them and click on an overworld tile. If it matches the description, that tile or thing is erased and you gain some soulshards accordingly.
The goal is to do this a lot to gain access to other tiers (and ourobori). Higher tiers will let you get more soulshards for doing them, but will offer additional things to use the aleph naught on.
The eventual goal is to have enough Soulshards to unlock the Soul's Pivot, which is the end of the game.
Basically the same as the above, with the following initial differences:
A heck of a lot more hand-holding in the beginning of the game. Various menus don't appear until you do the required steps, and you're guided through a lot of it.
You also get help whenever a new mechanic is introduced, and a general help menu that aggregates that kind of thing.
Despite the early hand-holding, at step IV you're given your ultimate goal, introduced to the two paths (that you can do in either order, one of which starts the story) and left to your own devices. The game definitely helps you play new mechanics but it lets you figure out how to accomplish any particular goal -- there's a lot of alternate routes and systems to explore.
And the following step-based differences:
The amount of resources you get from a space is determined by the amount of solids that surround it.
Combat is very different from how it is now. Game progression basically plays out the same way though.
You can bypass Step II through the Trapping and Fish Trapping mechanics. It's possible to never fish or enter combat all game, though the latter is highly unlikely because of enemy aggression in harder areas.
The Caves Ruin will offer Gashrooms and Cave Holes that go down multiple levels, making it quite a bit more useful.
Crystals can be broken down into Starshards -- you do find them in furniture sometimes. Scrolls and Wands can also be transmuted into crystals and then starshards, though this probably isn't worth it.
Asher actually has a story attached to him rather than just some buttons to go to different dungeons. You won't be doing busywork, but you will have more text and lore to read.
Scout Animals make it feasible to find dungeons yourself and not have to interact with Asher.
Dungeons will be very different, both on the outside and inside, but the overall goal is still the same.
The Quantum Plane functions a lot differently. Less annoying, more engaging, and way more options.
Instead of getting them with Soulshards, Ourobori are sold at Hyperbolic Shops for a ton of money. Getting them requires making a bunch of money yourself or getting in really good with a guild. You can also get them without doing a bunch of game progression steps first -- it's even possible to get them in your home dimension.
Naked singularities serve only to give you the Aleph Naught. And maybe some optional lore-based or information-based stuff.
Aleph Naughts work a lot differently -- you do certain tasks a certain number of times to "complete" them and need to do a certain percentage of each tier in order to progress to the next tier. You earn new tiers from within the aleph naught menu, and can eventually unlock the soul's pivot the same way.
A lot more story throughout.
The soul's pivot actually does something. And you also get an ending.
