Nightingale Beginner’s Guide – Tips & Tricks to Master the Game

Nightingale is a fresh game from Inflexion Games where you explore an open world. It’s about a world that fell apart, and heroes called Realmwalkers go through portals to find Nightingale, a city believed to be humanity’s last hope. When you start playing the game, the mechanics may seem a little overwhelming but fear not. In this Nightingale Beginner’s Guide, we will share some tips and tricks to make your experience more efficient and fun!

Beginner’s Guide – Nightingale

The following tips and tricks will help you understand how the game works.

Look For Puck

In Nightingale, the story happens in the Fae Realms, big lands that used to belong to magical beings called the Fae. Puck, a strange person, is your guide as you begin Nightingale’s journey. Whenever you finish a task and need to speak with Puck, just search the nearby area. He’s usually not far away.

Explore Realms By Crafting Cards

In Nightingale, the main way to play involves making cards. These cards help you move through special doors to different places called Realms. In these Realms, you can find more stuff and learn new things to help you go further in the game.

At first, you can put together two cards. One card picks what kind of place you’ll go to (like a forest or a desert). The other card decides what type of Realm it is (like Byways or Abeyance). You can also choose how hard the Realm will be, and if you want to play alone or with other random players. Later on, you might come across Realmic Transmuters. These are machines that use cards to change things in the Realm. For example, you could make it so the sun never sets, or you could make it always nighttime to get more items from bad guys.

Attributes To Survival

In the Nightingale game, there are three important things you need to know about. They show up as bars or meters at the bottom-left of your screen:

Health (red bar): This shows how healthy your character is and how much damage they’ve taken. Your health gets better over time.
Rest (blue bar): This shows how tired your character is from doing too much. That’s why you need to take breaks or rest for a while.
Hunger (green bar): You have to eat food regularly to stay alive.

If any of these bars get empty, your character will die and come back at the last Estate Cairn you activated.

Make Your Estate Cairn And Prioritize Bonuses

When you face extreme weather like scorching heat or hailstorms, it’s smart to find a safe place to stay. This could mean finding a cave or setting up a simple tent—anything that shelters you from the elements.

Finding comfort not only helps you but also improves the workbenches you make. For example, putting them on solid ground or near a fire can boost your resilience and ensure better lighting. Getting these comfort bonuses helps your health and stamina recover faster, and speeds up crafting when you use workbenches. It’s also important to build the Estate Cairn in an Abeyance Realm. This special marker marks your “home realm,” no matter where you go next, and acts as a quick travel and respawn point.

Gear And Tools Crafting

Your character’s equipment level is measured by something called “gear score.” The higher it is, the better you are in battles and other activities where gear matters. At the beginning of Nightingale, you have basic weapons and outfits made from simple stuff. But later, you unlock blueprints that need better materials. These materials need better tools to gather. Early on, your equipment isn’t good enough to collect some resources. Like, breaking stone needs a simple pick, but getting tin and quartz needs a better one.

Collect Items For Food

Surviving in Nightingale’s wilderness means eating plenty of food. It’s important! Your Hunger meter goes down as you play, so you must gather lots of food to stay alive. You can pick berries and mushrooms with your hands by pressing ‘E’. No need for tools! To get meat, you have to hunt animals in the different areas you explore. Then, use a Hunting Knife to cut the meat, hide, and bones from their carcasses. After gathering ingredients, build a Campfire with six rocks and start cooking. Assign cooked food to a key so you can quickly eat it by pressing ‘F’.

Keep A Torch With You

It’s crucial to have a Makeshift Torch for your journey in Nightingale because it gets really dark at night there. Without a good light, it’s super hard to see anything around you. To make a Makeshift Torch, you’ll need five plant fibers and five sticks. You can hold it along with a one-handed weapon like a sickle or knife. This way, you can see in the dark and not get lost. Another option is to rest in your bed when the sun sets. This lets you skip the dark and dangerous nighttime travels, and you’ll wake up at dawn instead.

The Bound

In Nightingale, the Bound are the biggest dangers. You’ll come across them mostly in Occupation-type situations in small ruins across the map. They’re also in Fae Towers, different landmarks, and sometimes appear when portals are activated. The Bound can be tiny creatures that move quickly or ones that release poisonous gas, as well as big monsters and powerful enemies called Apex. It’s smart to think ahead and plan your attack because there are usually a lot of them, and they can weaken you with their numbers.

Get Companions

You don’t have to go alone through the Fae Realms, even if you’re playing solo. As you journey, you’ll meet different characters called NPCs. Some of these NPCs are survivors, and if you help them with their tasks, like building things or protecting them, they might join you as companions. Once they join you, they’ll stick with you wherever you go, even teleporting to keep up. They’ll fight enemies and gather resources with the right tools. You can also use them to carry heavy stuff, so you don’t get weighed down.

Trade Essence With Vendors

You can collect various Essences as prizes from chests or by defeating enemies. These Essences are like money that you can spend at Essence Traders to buy blueprints. Blueprints are plans for new or better Workbenches, furniture, and other things for your base, as well as more choices for Realm cards.

Fae Tower And Bastille Challenges

Fae Towers are big buildings found in different places. Try to finish the tasks inside, which might include fighting enemies or jumping challenges. If you reach the top, you can use a device to see other important places nearby. These places might be Bastille ruins, which also have Bastille Challenges like fighting or finding hidden symbols. When you finish these challenges, you might find a chest with rewards inside, a plan for crafting something, or special powers that make your character stronger for a short time.

Guidebooks For Help

Lastly, because Nightingale is really big in terms of maps and has lots of different worlds, you might find things you don’t know about while you explore. That’s where the Guidebook can help. You can open the Guidebook by pressing the ‘B’ key. It has a bunch of helpful stuff like info on crafting materials, a journal for quests, a glossary for words you might not understand, and explanations for how the game works. It also lists different types of Essence Traders and what they sell.

Check out additional Nightingale guides below:

Use these tips to become a great Realmwalker and feel free to leave more tips in our Nightingale Beginner’s Guide if you have any in the comment section below!