Aka: 5 Beginner Tips

Aka is a cozy life sim where you run around as the titular red panda, make friends, craft items, and clean up the island. The game's goal is left up to you since Aka gives you plenty of freedom from the beginning, so you can chill as much as you like.

There is a lot to do, and the game leaves you to your own devices, so knowing where to start can be a little challenging. Thankfully, we've got all the beginner tips you'll need when starting your journey in Aka before you become overwhelmed by all the different systems.

Take The Train

Just west of your home, you can find an easy-to-miss train track with a carriage that periodically arrives. This train carriage will take you to a different part of the island full of useful shops and buildings.

Here, you'll be introduced to Aka's fun card-collecting game. There'll also be a library full of poems and recipes, a hat shop with changeable headwear, and a recycling stall. Take five bits of trash you find on the island to this stall, and you'll receive a special reward each time.

Craft All Of Your Tools From The Start

Aka is as much about crafting as it is about chilling. In typical crafting fashion, this means you'll be chopping down trees, picking at rocks, and cutting grass to create materials and build items, just for the cycle to continue again. Your main pieces of equipment include your sword — which is already unlocked — a pickaxe, a hoe, an axe, and a watering can.

You'll want these as soon as possible since they're essential to gathering more materials for, you guessed it, more crafting. But these pieces of equipment can also open up new areas, as you'll need an axe to break apart a wooden gate. You can go to the bull's house, which is adjacent to yours, to build these pieces of equipment.

Read Thom's Book

You can find Thom waiting on the roof of your house. He can give you some initial tips, but head into his hut for the true gift. Here you'll find his cauldron, which is essential when it comes to making certain food recipes. There'll also be an open book waiting on the side. The book contains a ton of useful information that the game doesn't give you in tutorials.

It gives you all sorts of useful information pertaining to gardening, including the basics of using a hoe, as well as some advanced, obscure info. For example, different plants and veg grow better or worse depending on the surrounding wildlife and other plants that are growing around them. Study this book to perfect your gardening skills.

Build The Boat

Once you start your adventure, you'll be able to walk down to the beach side, directly south of your home. You'll find an NPC with a broken boat waiting by the beach. If you talk to them, it will initiate a quest that requires you to gather a variety of materials to rebuild and fix the boat.

This quest should be one of your early priorities, as getting the boat opens up several new areas in the game, but it will take a while to prepare all the required materials. Completing the game's main quest — spreading your friend's ashes — can only be completed after you acquire the boat anyway.

Interact With Everything

Some quests in Aka can be unlocked traditionally: by talking to random NPCs. These NPCs will give you a problem, and it's up to you to solve the quest. However, plenty of quests in Aka begin by accident.

Since the goal of the game is to clean up the island, picking up a trash can, or chopping down a stub of wood will also initiate their own quests. If you see a new object on the floor, interact with it, even if it looks like trash. Chances are, it will open up a new quest line.

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