Forward: This guide involves PKing and thievery. If you're not interested in this life style and would rather play a cooperative game this guide isn't for you. I will also not being going over basics like creating tools, or how to do certain tasks such as terraforming, mining, or smithing/forging. There are resources on this forum for this and the internet which will be more eloquent than what I can produce.
Hi, I am rx25 and this guide is to teach you how to play solo on this current alpha version of LiF. This guide works best on heavily-populated servers so you can benefit from others by taking their wares for yourself or using their facilities. Your alignment will go negative, and probably well over -50 within a day, be hated, flamed, but this is how the game is played. How much worse is a bandit with a pitchfork than people in stone walls and full plate and weapons attacking? Life is Feudal.
• Character creation: Choose which race you want to skill weaponry in. Each race has base minimum points in either 1H, 2H, or throwing, but it is imperative you get
at least 30 in warhorse handling, if not 60. The current version of LiF has equipping chainmail after Warhorse handling in the skill tree, and there is no way to train Warhorse in the game. As a result, if you don't have skill in it at the start you will not be able to equip chainmail. If you have 60 Warhorse you can wear chainmail, and regular chainmail provided you get levels in Chainmail later (since you need 60 in Warhorse to have 60 in Chainmail). This is the only way to do so. The other option you can have is getting the minimum 30 in chainmail and putting 30 into either Blade or 2H Blade mastery, as this will allow you to equip most basic 1h/2h swords you find without having to train with 'practice' weapons prior to equipping any blades you see (which, as a solo player might be difficult to acquire).
Attributes should be maximum points in Agility. Agility will allow you to run fast and generally have more stamina in fights, which is ideal in this game's combat system.
Peaceful skills can be put in whatever. I would recommend however putting most points at the start in Terraforming so you can get 60 so you can avoid leveling this skill because to me it's miserable to skill up.
• Spawning: Once you've spawned on the island, your first job is to start wandering for settlements. Basic huts and areas might have dropped bags full of basic loot such as primitive tools to take. If you can find things like a Pitchfork or chain mail you're already golden, but I've noticed less of people leaving more valuable things on the ground other than basic tools. Seek out any prepared forts and remember any good locations you know, for you might visit them later.
• Setting up: If you couldn't find valuables to loot, you will need to make primitive tools for yourself. Find your Plant Fibers, flint, and branches and make a primitive shovel, pickaxe, and axe. The key to being self-sufficient/able to PK others is to advance your skills to make the pitchfork, currently one of the most broken (OP) items in the game due to its range, ability to deal massive damage, and low production cost.
• Skilling: Skilling all of this depends on what kind of server you're on. Most have skill multipiers up at 5-10x the normal speed, eating food (apples) will keep your skill multiplier high too to powerlevel through all of this quickly.
Mining: I highly recommend wandering the map to find vacant mines already pre-dug with copper or iron prospected for you. Leveling prospecting is simply done by looking at the ground and scanning a large radius for iron or copper. It doesn't matter if you're close, you shouldn't care where it is on your own as you will likely not be making a settlement or setting up a mine for yourself. Just get 60 in the skill of prospecting. There should be some already excavated mines on the map and hopefully they are deserted so you can use them for yourself. Proceed to then start leveling up mining on ore veins you see and dump any iron/copper onto the ground as carrying it is too much of a burden (plus, should be easy to find more later).
If you really want you can carry 40 iron on you, you will probably not go through that 40 when you get to forging/smelting anyways. If you happen upon some Rock, store some (5-10) pieces for yourself, as you will need it to make a primitive hammer and crucible.
Forestry/Forge construction/findingThe next thing to do is find a forge/anvil around. Once you find a vacant one (or build one yourself, but that will result in construction, more work when you can just use someone else's. See how to make one
here, you are probably going to need to level up your forestry and logging to at least 60. Start inspecting those trees and snapping some branches, and cutting down some soft wood trees to be able to cut down hard wood trees. At this point you should create a primitive saw for your self so you can start making hardwood billets by sawing the fallen trees.
LoggingYour job now is to insert that iron into the forge with billets (probably going to need about 10 hardwood billets, but have more close-by) and start smelting. At this point you're going to need to have created a primitive iron and crucible so you can forge and make a blacksmith's hammer using the primitive hammer.
SmeltingIf you don't know how to smelt see this link:
http://lifeisfeudal.gamepedia.com/Smelting or this one
iron-smelting-tutorial-t2350/Once the iron has been heated up, it's time to use that crucible and create iron nuggets. These are the cheapest to make per piece of iron put in the forge and provide the most XP too. Continue smelting the iron until you make some iron bars (you need a minimum of 2 for 1 pitch fork, so if you want to make more then produce more bars) and nuggets until your smelting is at 60.
ForgingYou now need to make a blacksmith's hammer with the forge. Forge a blacksmith's hammer with the primitive hammer equipped (you'll need rocks for it, good thing I mentioned to have some) and using those iron nuggets we produced use the forge to make nails until your forging is 30. At this point you can use the iron bars you made and 1 billet to produce the Pitchfork.
• Onwards: With a pitchfork, and literally nothing else on, you're already a killing machine. Learn how to queue up the pitchfork attack for poking (move mouse quickly from down->up while left-clicking, then hold down the mouse button until you're ready to release it onto a body) and get comfortable using this motion. You can now PK most people who haven't teched up to weapons and steal/loot a lot of belongings.
If you're ever outnumbered, play smart and press 5 and book it out of there. Sprinting is strong, so is running into the water, but if you're on a server with admins they might have rules against running into the water.
Best of luck, your moral decisions are yours to carry out. You can be as scummy of a bandit as you want to be, this game is an alpha and there are serious balance issues which need to be addressed. In the meanwhile, this is an optimal way to play alone and defend yourself.