Drake Hollow came out earlier this month as one of our top games to play in October, full list here. It’s an amazing co-op game to play with all the friends you haven’t lost while playing Among Us. It’s a tower defence game that incorporates base building, crafting, exploring and looking after cute vegetables. Balance defending your base with exploring the world and uncovering the mysteries. Honestly playing it with someone else is way more fun because I was struggling on my own.

Drake Hollow is out right now for PC, on the Steam Store as well as on the Xbox. It’s included in the Game Pass so if you have that you should definitely check this out. Drake Hollow has a lot of little management functions floating around and while the tutorial is fairly extensive there’s a lot they’ve left you to discover yourself. Here’s where we come in.

 

How To Block And Dash

Some of the crucial movements that don’t get explained in Drake Hollow is how to dah and how to block. To dash on the PC you can hit your Left-CTRL and your character will dash forward. The dash ability is especially useful when you have to dash out of tight situations where enemies scatter bombs all over the floor.

Blocking is key in Drake Hollow and I feel like it should’ve been included in the tutorial. If you’re being attacked by more than one Feral or one of those ones that spit, blocking will save you. Block by pressing and holding the middle mouse button. You’re welcome.

 

Crossing The Aether

I don’t know about you guys but I was stumped trying to cross the water or the Aether in Drake Hollow. I was killing time and collecting materials waiting for it to unlock. But actually, all you really need are Aether Wards.

To make yourself an Aether Ward open the crafting menu and use some Glowstone Shards to make it. Simply select it on your item wheel and when you want to cross the water, activate it to create an area of protection around you. This will last 16 seconds, where you can safely cross the water. Be careful though when travelling over long distances through water because when the timer runs out and you’re not on dry land, you’ll most likely die.

Remember to always keep a couple of Aether Wards on hand so you’re never stuck in a place without one. This whole Aether Ward situation becomes less of a hassle once you’re able to set up Waypoints, which we’ll talk about later.

 

Your Base Storage Is Infinite, Your Personal Storage Is Not

Store everything you don’t need in there so that you have the maximum amount of space available when you’re out collecting. Make sure you explore the islands and gather as much resources as you can.

Note: You can store your crystals in there and still also use them to upgrade your Drakes, without pulling them out of storage.

 

Connect Islands With Waypoints

As we mentioned earlier you need to use Aether Wards to get through the water. It’s not quite sustainable for the long run but later on, you’re going to be able to construct waypoints on islands. Waypoints are helpful little tower structures that will allow you to create supply routes, and also to travel to places much faster on a kind of sky-bridge. These towers will cost you only 2 Glowing Stones and 1 Duct Tape, but you’ll likely need many of them to really get a strong system going. Note that these waypoints  do not have an infinite range, so you will have to place them in proximity to each other to connect them.

Start by placing a single tower near your camp area. From there place them along the island and on another island at the two location’s nearest peaks. To connect these waypoints go up to them and hold the E or X button to aim and select the other waypoint by tapping the spacebar or A to connect.

Note: Waypoints are reusable, so if you’ve placed them too far away or somewhere where you don’t want to you come back and pick them up.

 

Connect Supply Vans

Now that you know how to connect different islands to each other, it is time to bring some resources to your base. Scattered across the map, you will find supply vans. These vans contain specific materials needed to upgrade your base. You might wonder how you get supplies to your base in Drake Hollow? Every supply truck has a waypoint already installed, making it easy to connect the supply truck to your web of waypoints, no need to craft your own waypoints using your precious resources.

It is important that you attach your Depot in your base to your network of waypoints, otherwise, the resource won’t automatically transfer from the supply vans to your base. When you have successfully connected the supply truck to your Depot, you will see resources literally travel across your waypoints.

 

Weapon Durability

In Drake Hollow the weapons that you have can break after a certain amount of usage. There’s no way to repair or craft weapons in the game so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the durability of your favourite weapons. If there are some that aren’t worth keeping instead of selling them outright to the Magpie, use them on a couple of small enemies or raids until it turns red and then sell it. That way you get the maximum use out of the item as well as the shinies out of it.

If you drop weapons in camp your Drakes will pick them up and put them in the depot. When you go back to collect the weapons from the depot weapon durability will be reset back to max. I found this helpful and exciting as it meant I could keep hold of a nice weapon for a lot longer and also be able to sell off low grade weapon for profit. I read this but haven’t tested it yet.

If you’re looking for more weapons keep an eye out for blue duffle bags, generally found around houses and gas stations. They will respawn after some time.

 

Don’t Level Up Your Drakes Too Fast

In Drake Hollow, your main purpose is to protect, feed, and entertain your drakes. The more you level them the better perks they’ll give you but they’ll also require more maintenance. You don’t want to get to the point where you end up killing your Drakes because you can’t keep up with their needs. Once you start unlocking some of the infinite generating resource items that don’t break down, it should be much easier to look after all of them. We’ll talk about the items you should focus on building coming up next.