Core Keeper: Complete Survival Guide

From your first minutes next to the Core to automated mining and Titan fights: progression order, skills, farming and cooking, base building, bosses, and what the 1.3 "Riders of the Underground" update added.

Researched September 2026 — current as of version 1.3.0.2 (Riders of the Underground, 21–22 September 2026). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

1. Build around the Core. You wake up next to it, and it's your spawn point, your base anchor, and the goal of the early game. Your first base should sit right beside it.
2. Light everything. Darkness hides enemies and ore. Craft torches immediately and light your paths.
3. Copper first. Mine copper ore from the starting dirt caves, smelt it in a Furnace, and make copper tools and armor before venturing far.
4. Plant Heart Berries early. Food is how you heal and buff; a small farm near the Core pays off for the whole game.
5. Use the Cooking Pot. Combining two ingredients makes far better food than eating raw produce.
6. Your first three bosses awaken the Core: Glurch the Abominous Mass, Ghorm the Devourer, and the Hive Mother. Their drops go into the Core.
7. Skills level by doing. Mining raises Mining, fighting raises combat skills, cooking raises Cooking, and so on. Each skill has a talent tree.
8. Pick a weapon style and commit. Melee, ranged, magic (Mage), and summoning (and now Warlock scepters in 1.3) all work; focusing one levels it faster.
9. Bring friends if you can. Co-op supports up to 8 players with drop-in/drop-out, and dedicated servers are available.

How the World Is Laid Out

The world is procedurally generated, with the Core at the center and biomes expanding outward. A rough progression order:

Mining blocks with a better pickaxe tier gets harder the further out you go. Some areas (such as the Great Wall around the early zones) can't be broken until your pickaxe is strong enough, which gates you into the intended order.

Core Systems

Mining and Tools

• Pickaxe damage decides what you can mine. Upgrade it every time you unlock a new ore.
• Ore tiers broadly follow biome order as you move outward: copper, tin and iron in the early and mid zones, then scarlet, octarine and galaxite in the Wilderness, Sunken Sea and Desert, with further late-game materials beyond. Smelt ore into bars at a Furnace (and later, upgraded smelters). Each new ore unlocks a new tier of tools, weapons and armor at the matching workbench.
• Shovels dig up ground tiles and dig out buried items. Fishing rods catch fish from each biome's waters.
• Bombs clear big areas quickly and level Explosives.
• Mining skill increases mining damage, so early digging pays off later.

Skills and Talents

Skills include Mining, Running, Melee Combat, Vitality, Crafting, Range Combat, Gardening, Fishing, Cooking, Magic, Summoning and Explosives. Every level earns talent points in that skill's tree.

Suggested early priorities:

• Mining — the whole game is digging; everything goes faster.
• Your main combat skill — damage and survivability for boss fights.
• Vitality — max health levels up just by taking damage and surviving.
• Gardening and Cooking — better crops, better food buffs.

1.3 changed Summoning: minions now persist indefinitely instead of expiring, the spawn cooldown was removed, you can spawn your maximum number of minions at once or despawn them whenever you like, and two new Summoning talents replaced two old ones.

Food and Farming

• Harvest wild plants to get seeds. Plant them on tilled ground (dig with a shovel, then plant).
• Watering speeds growth and is required for a good harvest; get a watering can early.
• Cooking Pot: combine two ingredients; better and rarer ingredients (plus golden variants of crops) produce stronger buffs.
• Eat before bosses. Food buffs like max health, damage and regen are often the difference between a win and a wipe.

Base Building and Automation

• Build walls and doors to keep wandering enemies out. Light the perimeter.
• Storage chests organised by resource save a lot of time.
• Automation: drills, conveyor belts and robot arms move ore into smelters and chests without you. Power them with generators and electrical wire. (The 1.3.0.2 hotfix fixed drills dealing damage on the first tick after receiving power, which had broken some sorting builds.)
• Waypoints (added in 1.0) let you teleport between discovered points, which makes far-flung biomes practical.
• Housing for merchants and cavelings: merchants trade gear and seeds; many are attracted by building suitable rooms.

Pets, Cattle and Mounts

• Pets fight alongside you and have their own progression. 1.3 added three new pets: Hoppet (ranged attacks with a slippery effect), Azeos Jr. (fires shards that stun), and a lazy surprise pet in the Desert of Beginnings.
• Cattle can be raised for resources.
• Mounts (1.3): every cattle type can become a rideable mount by using a Saddle or Racing Saddle on it. The Saddle UI lets you rename the mount and set whether it stays put, roams, or follows you. Remove the saddle to turn it back into ordinary cattle. The new cattle, Orex, lives in the Moss sub-biome.

Progression Checklist

Use this as a rough "am I ready to move on?" list. It follows the biome order above.

1. Early game: torches, a workbench and Furnace by the Core, copper pickaxe and armor, a Heart Berry farm, and a Cooking Pot. Beat Glurch.
2. Tin tier: push into the Clay Caves, upgrade to tin gear, and set up a few storage chests sorted by resource. Hunt Ghorm and the Hive Mother; place their drops in the Core to awaken it.
3. Iron tier: explore the Forgotten Ruins, upgrade to iron, start simple automation (a drill feeding a conveyor), and prepare for Malugaz.
4. Wilderness and beyond: scarlet gear for Azeos' Wilderness, then a boat for the Sunken Sea. By now you should be cooking food for every boss fight and have waypoints set in each biome.
5. Late game: Desert of Beginnings, Shimmering Frontier and The Passage. Expect every fight to need your best gear, full food buffs and a planned arena.

If a fight feels impossible, the fix is almost always one of three things: a gear tier upgrade, better cooked food, or more skill levels in your main combat skill.

Boss Guide (Spoiler-Light)

1.3 added new loot chests for Azeos, Omoroth and Ra-Akar, giving you reasons to refight them.

What's New in 1.3: Riders of the Underground

• Mounts via Saddle and Racing Saddle on any cattle.
• Hookshots: a new off-hand type (Hookshot and Gilded Hookshot) that latches onto walls to pull you over pits and water.
• Moss sub-biome in the Forgotten Ruins, with the new Orex cattle.
• New enemies: Wingling and Searpent.
• New weapons: Corrosion Staff, Blizzard Staff, Sniper Rifle, and seven Scepters (a new Warlock weapon type, including a Legendary).
• 10 new armor pieces, 15 new rings, 15 new necklaces, and a craftable Training Dummy for testing builds.
• Quality of life: gear comparison, a key bind to cycle loadouts, a resizable paintbrush (up to 5x5), customizable cursor and crosshair.
• Roadmap ("Road to the Maw"): 1.4 Trials of the Depths, then 1.5 Beyond the Breach.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Exploring without light or food. Most early deaths come from dark tunnels and no healing.
• Ignoring pickaxe upgrades. A weak pickaxe makes mining painfully slow and blocks progress.
• Fighting bosses without food buffs. Cook first, fight second.
• Scattering your base. Keep crafting stations, storage and farms close to the Core, and use waypoints for distant outposts.
• Leaving minions on a timer mindset. Since 1.3 they persist, so summoner builds should keep a full army up rather than re-summoning.
• Hoarding everything in one chest. Sort by type; you'll save hours.

Advanced Tips

• Automate ore early in the mid-game. A drill on a rich vein feeding a conveyor into a smelter keeps bars coming while you explore.
• Test builds on the Training Dummy (1.3) to compare damage between weapons and talent choices.
• Use the Hookshot to cut travel time across pits and water instead of building bridges.
• Racing Saddles turn cattle into fast mounts for long trips; set your mount to follow so it's ready.
• Golden crops make stronger food; plant lots and cook the best ones for boss fights.
• Use the community map tool (co-created by Pugstorm developers and community members) to find unexplored areas and bosses from your map files.

FAQ

How many players can play together? 1 to 8 players in online co-op, with drop-in/drop-out and optional dedicated servers.

What's the first boss I should fight? Glurch the Abominous Mass in the starting caves, then Ghorm the Devourer and the Hive Mother to awaken the Core.

How do I ride mounts? Since 1.3, craft a Saddle or Racing Saddle and use it on any cattle.

Do minions still expire? No. As of 1.3 minions persist until you despawn them, and there's no spawn cooldown.

What's next for Core Keeper? The "Road to the Maw" roadmap: 1.4 Trials of the Depths and 1.5 Beyond the Breach, following 1.3.

Is Core Keeper finished or Early Access? It left Early Access with 1.0 on 27 August 2024 and has had major free updates since (Bags & Blasts, Void & Voltage, and now Riders of the Underground).

Sources

• Steam store page
• Steam news: 1.3.0.1 patch notes, 1.3 announcement, Road to the Maw roadmap, 1.3.0.2 hotfix
• Wikipedia: Core Keeper