Beginner guide: your first hour
Hatch as a chick, follow an adult or forage on the ground, eat until the hunger readout settles, then claim a nest site above the waterline before you join a family.
The first hour of Broodwing decides how the next ten go. You begin as a chick that cannot do much: you eat what is brought to you or what you can reach, you stay near the nest, and you wait to grow. The players who enjoy the game immediately are the ones who use that hour to learn the map and find a family instead of trying to fly across the valley on day one.
Stage one: hatch and get fed
You spawn as a baby bird. Your job is not to explore; it is to eat. Chicks are fed at the nest, and food arrives from adults hunting the valley. If nobody is feeding you, move to the edge of the nest and look for ground prey you can reach - the game lets a chick eat what it can catch, but the reach is short and the payoff is small.
The first thing to watch is the hunger readout. When it drops, eat something before you do anything else, because a hungry chick cannot grow and cannot fly far. Do not wander off looking for a better nest in the first ten minutes; you will lose the nest you spawned in and the adults feeding you.
Stage two: learn the ground under the nest
Once you are eating reliably, walk the area under and around your nest. What you are looking for is simple: where the grass opens up, where the trees thin, and which direction the water is. The valley has three useful zones - grass, canopy, water - and a chick can learn all three within sight of its nest.
| Zone | What a chick should learn here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Under the nest | The drop to the ground and the climb back | You will fall out of the nest long before you can fly |
| Open grass | Where small prey moves | This is where your first self-caught meal comes from |
| Tree line | Which trunks are climbable and which are not | Escape route from ground predators and players |
| Water edge | The shortest line from nest to pond | Every later hunting trip follows it |
Stage three: grow into a flier
Growth is the point where the game opens up. As an adult you can leave the nest, hunt on your own, cross water and pick where to live. The growing up page covers what changes at each size; for the first hour the only thing that matters is that you keep eating until you can leave the nest under your own power.
Do not treat the chick stage as a tutorial to rush. It is the only time in the game where other players will feed you for free, and it is the cheapest time to learn the map: no nest to defend, no chicks waiting, nothing to lose if you get eaten.
Stage four: pick a nest site you can defend
Before you build, fly the area and look at it the way a predator would. A nest in the open is visible from above and from the water. A nest in a canopy fork is hidden but hard to land in. A nest on a ledge is easy to land on and easy to find again, which cuts both ways.
| Site | Strength | Weakness | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canopy fork | Hidden from above, covered from rain and birds | Awkward approach, easy to miss on the way home | Players who stay in one place |
| Cliff or rock ledge | Clean landing, wide view of the valley | Visible from a distance | Players who want to watch the map |
| Waterline reeds | Closest to fish | Exposed to anything flying low | Short, efficient hunting trips |
| Grass slope | Easy to find, easy to leave | No cover at all | Temporary nests only |
The full comparison, including approach angles and how to find your nest again after a long flight, is on the nest building page.
Stage five: join a family
Families are how Broodwing turns a solo survival game into a group activity. Join one before you build a nest of your own: you get adults to learn from, you get fed while you are still small, and you see how a working nest is run before you are responsible for one.
When you join, say what you can do. A family with two hunters and no guard loses chicks; a family with three guards and no hunter starves. The roles are simple - hunt, guard, feed, raise - and the family page covers how groups split them on a 35-player server.
Four things that waste the first hour
- Flying away from the nest as a chick. You cannot keep up, you cannot land, and you lose the only free food source you have.
- Buying a pass before playing. Five passes are priced between 250 and 450 R$; none of them changes the loop, and you cannot tell which bird you like until you have flown.
- Building in the first open spot you find. Nest placement is the one decision in Broodwing that keeps costing you for the rest of the session.
- Ignoring the water. Fish are the reliable food source and the pond is the best landmark in the valley; a player who knows where the water is never starves.
What "done" looks like at the one-hour mark
You should be able to do four things without thinking: find the water from your nest, catch something on the ground, land on your own nest from a glide, and name the two or three players you would want in a family. If you can do those, the rest of the site is about getting better rather than getting unstuck.
From here, read how to fly for the movement detail, hunting and food for the prey routes, and eggs and hatching before your first clutch.
