Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Tips: Evolution, Combat, Crafting & More

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a game that really doesn’t want to hold your hand, sometimes a little to its own detriment. It’s quite the opaque experience, you only really getting a mini-tutorial right at the beginning and a few simple pointers in the pause menu. There’s little time for monkey business here.

If you’re just starting out with Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey and are struggling to know what to do with sticks and stones, here’s everything you need to know. The best way to learn is by doing, but these tips can cut out the early frustration.

 

Go To Bed

Going to bed (or the pile of leaves on the floor) is one of the first things you should do in Ancestors. When lying down, you get the option to check out “Evolution”. Here you will find upgrades, generations, and evolution, which you should acclimate yourself with as soon as possible. If you can’t find your bed, use intelligence with Y and then find a symbol with “Zzz”.

 

To Evolve Or Not To Evolve

Evolution in Ancestors requires a lot of legwork, especially when you first start out. You must first pass a generation, which entails having babies and watching your elders die. Once that’s done, you can evolve, but only if you are in your settlement and have a kid. The period of evolution is defined by how much you have accomplished in terms of feats, which includes fighting enemies and finding landmarks. There are eight million years to get through in Ancestors, so get cracking.

 

It’s All About The Jingle

Ancestors is all about timing when it comes to crafting and combat. You should always be listening for a little jingle (example here), which denotes when you should let go of a button to successfully complete the action. Try this with two rocks for practice; follow the pattern of the jingle to eventually create a grinder, which you can use to make pastes from horsetail and other helpful resources.

 

Ambidexterity Takes Time

You start off as a fairly useless hominid in Ancestors, barely able to do anything apart from sniff and mate all day. Stick with it, though, and you will unlock the ability to use two hands, which opens up the game immensely. To unlock the ability, just keep repeating the same things and watch as the odd dial in the bottom right corner flashes — that means you are gaining neural energy. You should unlock the ability through natural play.

 

Become A Childminder

Babies in Ancestors sure are cute, but they sure are also useless if you want to control them. Rather than getting them inevitably killed, control an elder and adult and carry them around instead by walking up to them and pressing B for a piggyback. Not only is this pretty adorable, but carrying kids while doing activities will give you additional neural energy to put towards upgrades.

 

Sticks Are Your Best Friends

If you see a dead branch in Ancestors, pick it up — this thing could save your life. Not only are they good for defending yourself in combat, but they can also be used to make little walls with some practice in crafting. From experience, these fortifications are completely pointless, but bonus neural energy is bonus neural energy. Here’s how you can make weapons from sticks.

 

Gorilla Combat

Combat in Ancestors really isn’t great at all, it being a QTE that you will probably experience hundreds of times during your playthrough. It does take a bit of getting used to, however. To dodge, hold A and the direction you want to move to. When you hear the sound cue, let go of A. It’s the same for combat, but you must have a stick, stone or bone and press forward towards the attacker. If you kill an enemy, you can then use a stone to cut them up and eat them.

 

Pile It Up

When you have multiple of a particular item in your settlement, you have the option to add duplicates to a pile. This is absolutely worth doing, just so that you can experiment with the combinations and possibly build something that you might not expect. Getting multiple leaves will create a new bed, which is the only way to officially settle elsewhere.

 

Move On

Speaking of, resources are finite in Ancestors, so if you’re staying in one place and constantly eating horsetail and drinking water, they may deplete and leave you in a pickle. This is the incentive you need to go out and explore the world of Ancestors, discovering new landmarks and resources along the way. If you venture out far enough, you will eventually leave the jungle and end up somewhere with its own challenges and trials.

 

Travel As A Pack

Ancestors begins as a solitary experience, but you eventually learn the ability to tell an individual hominid to follow you and then your entire clan at once. Unlocking the latter is a game-change and highly recommended if you’re going to be venturing out. Having friends with you makes intimidating predators much easier and it’s less of a hassle if you find a new place to settle, you being able to set up shop right there instead of having to go back for those you left behind.

 

Stay Close To Water

Water is absolutely vital in Ancestors with you needing to drink it for a good while every day. Therefore, settling near water is vital and just generally much more straightforward when you can roll out of bed in the morning and slurp away without having to trek each time. In addition, most bodies of water will have some horsetail around its perimeter, which is vital to help you stop bleeding after predator attack.

From our Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey review:

For a game about the beginning of us all, there’s a bit of irony in Ancestors being at its best in its own beginning before losing its way. The marvel of evolution gives way to a gameplay loop that quickly irritates without enough variety to spice it up, which, when combined with poor combat, fiddly controls, and repetitive crafting, all add up to an experience that might drive you bananas.