I decided to write this guide, since there is not much help when you're in-game.

I have since then found out that there is an official StarForge manual (here) written by the developers.

I am not sure whether the game is completely up to date with the information in the manual, however.

It seems that StarForge started as an Indiegogo crowdfund project, and I am not completely certain if the Steam version is up to date with the alpha that IGG backers are playing.

Thus, all info in the guide is stuff that I have tested out myself in the Steam version of the game, and *should* be completely up to date.

The basic controls of StarForge are the pretty much standard FPS keybindings:

WASD to move
Shift to sprint
Ctrl to crouch
Mouse look, left click to place items/shoot
Scroll on your mouse to go through action bar items.
F to turn on your flashlight

E to pick up/drop, or press E for longer to pick up structures/items that you have placed (which allows you to re-place them).

Tab to bring up the crafting menu,

If you crafted a gun, and the game placed it in a weird (say, the 7th) slot, you can re-arrange your action bar by bringing up the crafting menu, and then clicking and dragging items to the action bar slot you desire.

The ability to craft (at least in the Fort Defense mode) hinges on you picking up resources as they drop around your location, and putting them in a great big pile.

As of the patch of 20 July 2013, all crafting must happen within range of the crafting/forging console which is found close to the VAT / Spawn Point you must protect.

You can craft a Forging Terminal which will increase the range where it is possible to craft items.

There are (at the time of writing) these resources available in the game:

• Oil Drums
  
• Metal
  
• Wood crates
  
• Stone

In addition to that, you can gather wood by crafting a gun, and shooting trees - typically, one "chunk" of wood will seperate from the tree trunk, and the rest of the tree will fall over. If you then press "E" on the chunk of tree, it will be turned into a wood crate. Keep shooting at the tree trunk to turn it into lesser chunks of wood that can then be turned into even more wood crates.

Once you've done that, bring up your crafting screen by pressing "Tab" on your keyboard.

Once inside the crafting menu, you have to right-click, and then click and drag on items to craft them.

As previously mentioned, we have the following kinds of crafting materials:

• Oil Drums
  
• Metal
  
• Wood crates
  
• Stone

Each kind of crafting material node (or box) has a numerical resource value:

• Oil Drums - 100 Oil per node
  
• Metal -100 Metal per node
  
• Wood crates - 20 Wood per node
  
• Stone - 100 Stone per node

As you will learn not long after logging into StarForge the first time, the night is dark (and if you're playing on Fort Defense mode, full of terrors).

While a single gun is pretty decent at keeping the monsters at bay, having more sources of light is always nice.

So far, I have found the following sources of light in the game:

• The flashlight - press F to toggle on/off
  
• Glow Sticks - Second row of the "Equipment" part of your crafting screen, these cost 25 oil per Glow Stick to craft.
  
• Cars - cars in game will keep their lights on after you've driven them, and they light up the dark quite nicely.
  
• Search Lights - this item is crafted. It is in the second row of the "Equipment" part of your crafting screen, and is the second item from the left. It costs 50 metal to craft.

The Search Light seems to sweep 360 degrees, at least when monsters are present - which makes it quite nice, and a lot easier for you to tell where monsters are coming from.

Once you've crafted yourself a bunch of blocks from the "Crafting" section of your crafting screen, you'd probably like to build something with them.

Using left mouse button to place blocks seems to work for at least the first layer, but stacking blocks with left mouse button seems to be more or less impossible - which is why you're going to use the right mouse button to place additional blocks. Doing it this way allows you to stack blocks to your heart's content (which might come in handy in Fort Dense mode, to actually build a fort around the spawn point (or whatever that thing is).

There are some resources that it is a good idea to keep up to date with if you are interested in the development of StarForge.

• Juno, Community Manager for Codehatch
  
• Official announcements
  
• Official Twitter for the game
  
• StarForge wiki on Wikia[starforge.wikia.com]

30/7-2013:

Juno, Community Manager for Codehatch / StarForge commented on this guide, confirming that the digging feature is planned for the end of the summer.

When / if I learn of bugs in the game, I will update this section to reflect on them.

As of the 10th of July 2013 (thanks to Lone Wolf for pointing this out):

• Turrets might sometimes destroy your VAT in Fort Defense mode - try building them on towers so they are positioned above the line of sight of the VAT, or build a wall between the turrets and the VAT. (Please note: I have not noticed this bug with the Rocket Turret, so you could also try to use those instead of the other turrets)

[19/07-2013]

Removed the Dev Build section, as it seems the developers have removed that option from the game. (thanks to Overlord the very first for pointing it out to me)

[22/07-2013]

Updated the crafting section with relevant information (thanks to osiriss2 for the info!), added a "Useful Links" section.

[30/7-2013]

Added "Planned Features" section, and updated it with confirmation from the StarForge/Codehatch Community Manager Juno that digging is planned to be implemented in the game some time at the end of summer.