The Basics

The Basics is a Dark and Darker quest assigned by the Woodsman merchant, part of the Properly Prepared quest line. People think it’s the beasts that get you in this land, but it’s not. It’s the cold. The hunger. It gets into your skin, your bones, and slowly, you’re dead before you even know it. I’ve seen too many inexperienced fools wander into the wilderness, too proud to listen to warnings, and they end up like the others. No one dies in their sleep out here unless they’re already dead. If you’re not careful, hunger and frost will do their work long before the claws of any creature ever get the chance. So it’s important to always cover your basics before any adventure. The objective is to bring 1× campfire kit. All progress requires a successful extraction — items retrieved or kills made during a failed run do not count toward quest completion. Once every objective is fulfilled, return to Woodsman in the lobby to turn in the quest and receive the reward. This quest requires completing Is it you? before it becomes available from Woodsman. Completing The Basics rewards 30 Gold, Surgical Kit, 3x Explosive Bottle, 25 XP. The quest is completed in Ice Cavern, Goblin Caves, Ruins or Ship Graveyard. Merchant quests in Dark and Darker are one of the most consistent gold and experience sources in the game, independent of loot luck on the Trading Post. Completing the full Woodsman quest chain unlocks higher reward tiers and increases merchant affinity, which can affect prices and open additional quest tiers in future seasons. The Properly Prepared chain provides a structured progression path through the Woodsman quest tree, and finishing each quest in order is the fastest route to the higher value objectives later in the line. Use the MetaBot Dark and Darker quest tracker to check all open objectives across every active merchant before extracting, so you can turn in multiple quests from a single run and get the most value out of each session.