Casualties: Unknown Beginner Guide for the 1.0 Release

Why the first hour feels demanding

Casualties: Unknown is a cave-exploration survival simulator with simulated cardiovascular and limb damage. Wounds, infection and blood loss are central to its official description, so learning the health and crafting interfaces is a practical starting point. The Steam listing explains that survival focus.

Start with the built-in courses

Choose Basic Training before your first serious attempt. The release interface says courses can only be entered with the Experiment species; select that character if a course is locked. It introduces item handling, first aid, containers, crafting and sleep. The advanced courses become available later: the release interface requires reaching the second layer for First Aid and the third for Crafting, so you cannot complete everything immediately. These requirements appear in the developer's release text and the older beginner reference.

1. Right-click yourself to open your inventory.
2. Right-click and drag an item onto yourself, then into a slot, to pick it up.
3. Press R or use the heart button to open the health panel.
4. Press C or use the crafting button to open crafting.

These controls are documented in release Basic Training. Practice them there before depending on them during an injury.

The first layer

The layer guide identifies Gravel lands as layer 1. Use your opening attempt to practice the training tasks before making deeper progress your main objective. See the layer index and community assessment.

What should I craft first?

The release Crafting Course puts a container first and dressings immediately afterward. For preparation, open the archived dressing chain: rip spare rippable material and use the resulting pieces for a Dressing, checking the current recipe and condition labels. That linked recipe is labeled demo data; do not rip a bag you are using. Basic Training demonstrates a foliage bag made from one rope and two canvases. In crafting, select the rope recipe and then its icon in the top right; make the canvases before selecting the bag recipe. The release tutorial text supplies this sequence.

Craft without juggling everything

Nearby ground items can count as crafting ingredients, so holding every component is unnecessary. Open crafting with C and work through the intermediate items shown by the recipe. For historical component quantities and the distinction between Rope and Climbing rope, continue to rope and tools. The nearby-item rule is confirmed by both the release Crafting Course and the beginner reference.

How do I keep crafting from consuming my equipment?

Press F on an item you want to keep to mark it as a Favourite. Favorited items are excluded from crafting, which lets you protect a useful bag or tool while using spare materials. If you deliberately need that item as an ingredient later, review its Favourite setting. See the developer's Favourite text and crafting guide.

Where the evidence stops

The controls, course prerequisites and crafting workflow above appear in developer locale 1.0.1. Exact demo recipe thresholds and community judgments retain their own version labels. The full release extends the demo's layers 1–5 with layers 6–11; see layers and endings for that distinction, rather than treating a demo walkthrough as the complete game.