Surviving the jungle

Combat here isn't the threat — noise is. Every map runs a hidden timer, and when it expires the forest wakes: an enemy wave forms and heads straight for your position. You never see the number, so you manage it by managing the racket you make. Play quiet and you get twice the jungle time of a crew that shoots everything.

What winds the clock

• Gunfire — the arquebus most of all. Every shot is a step toward the wave.
• Snapping branches in dense woods, sustained fighting, and the ox-wagon's horn.
• The Tue Tue Undead's shriek, which wakes the entire forest at once — which is exactly why you walk around it instead of shooting it.

So melee what can be meleed, shove to break attacks (it's free and silent), and save powder for the things that actually need it. ACE Team has said the launch build softens the hard timer into wave-based escalation, but the principle holds: noise is a resource you spend.

The three standing orders

Most of the bestiary you fight. Three you plan around:

• The Prowler — unkillable, and it takes people. It targets explorers who wander alone, which is the game telling you the buddy rule is mechanical, not advice.
• The Hound of Tindalos — hunts whoever carries a moved treasure, and takes 10× damage. Decide who's the bait and who's the shooter before the carrier grabs the idol.
• The Tue Tue Undead — the shrieker above. Killing it loudly costs more than it saves.

Isolation is the real killer

Wandering off doesn't just invite the Prowler — being away from the crew drains your sanity directly, and low sanity is when your own eyes start lying. Stay near the ox-wagon, which is a rolling pool of light and slows sanity drain, and keep a light lit: darkness bleeds sanity and the Bandurria bird drains it just by being near, so shoot that one from distance. And revive the fallen fast with Ammonia Salts — a body left too long comes back as a hostile Y'm-bhi, and now the jungle is fighting you with your own dead.