Scavland First Run Checklist: What to Do in Zalesye

The opening loop, in the order it actually pays

Scavland drops you into Zalesye without a tutorial worth the name. This is the sequence that matches what the game rewards, checked against Steam’s global achievement rates — the closest thing to a public record of what players actually do.

Step 1 — Search the ruins near your start

Indoor Type, for exploring ruined buildings around Zalesye, is the most-earned achievement in the game at 59.2%. It is also the fastest way to fund everything else. Interiors are where early loot, notes and the first sense of the map come from.

Step 2 — Do not fill your bag yet

Hoarder — “got more stuff than I can comfortably carry” — sits at 47.9%, which means nearly half of all owners have already learned this the hard way. Carry weight is a real constraint, and because traders buy only within their role, the heavy thing you are dragging may be unsellable at the nearest settlement.

Step 3 — Meet the traders before you commit to a haul

Find who buys what. Grigory appears early and is described in-game as unremarkable stock but a life-saver; Anatoly is a separate relationship with its own achievement. Stock refreshes daily at 06:00 and persists otherwise. See traders.

Step 4 — Take contracts from one board

Jobs give experience with the NPC who offered them, and trader rank unlocks stock nobody else sells. The achievement tiers hint at the intended pace: 10 requests for Hard Worker (4.0%), 30 odd jobs for No Sleep Till Wyraj (0.3%).

Step 5 — Quicksave before every trip out

No autosave. Save at the settlement gate, and again before anything that looks interesting. See saves and death.

Step 6 — Fight less than you think you should

Ammunition is scarce, bleeding outlives fights, and the world’s factions and creatures fight each other without you. Waiting out distant gunfire is often more profitable than joining it.

Step 7 — Walk one unfamiliar road per trip

The map reveals itself through exploration. A route home that avoids a bad approach is worth more than the loot you did not find. The Lake — The Keeper of Mist, 30.6% — is the first landmark most players reach; getting there is a natural first milestone.

Where the wall is

After the Lake, unlock rates collapse: 4.1% for settling into the scavenging loop, 3.4% for gaining favour with the Rada, 1.7% for siding with the Gunners. If you get past those, you are already ahead of almost everyone playing. The full curve is on the achievements page, and the reasons behind it are on the difficulty page.

Source note

Achievement percentages are Steam’s global unlock rates for app 3373500, captured 5 September 2026 — one day after Early Access launch. They will change as more people play; the date on this page is what they were when it was written.