I am currently playing through dilligently but I may have missed something.
However I will only include information that I have tested and is a reliable of doing or acquiring something.
That said feel free to tell me about something I should look at in the comments to get it included.
If you see something I mention also in the comments, I will attach the persons name if I didn't think of it myself, but agree is a valuable thing to add.

-From the Chaos Creatures that spawn after the Timer hits 0, or from rare/stronger spawns as the game progresses.
If you wait until the timer runs out, Chaos Intensifies and meteors containing Chaos goo drop from the sky, destroying tiles. Several groups of meteors will drop and then a pair of Chaos Gates will spawn.
The longer you wait after the Timer hits 0, the stronger the Chaos creatures will become.

There are two solutions:
The Easy Way: Talk to The Cryptomancer next to the Iron Door, exhaust their dialogue, and they should open the door for you.
The Hard Way: You'll need to wait until The Timer runs out and fight the Eye of Chaos' that spawn for their Chaos Eye drop.
-You'll need to use that Chaos eye to unlock Lightning Strike Bullet II which is a Level 10 Bullet to be able to damage that door. Other bullets you have available aren't high enough level for you to break through it. That bullet requires Charged Lead to Load, so you'll need to fight the Crowned variant of The Scavenger or get lucky acquiring Lead from Chests that spawn on the map. I know of no other source of Lead before reaching The Fell.

• Deconstruct Structures out on Expedition if you have the time, some are worth your effort
  
• Group certain Chests, Crafting Stations, and Research Tables together. Adjacent Stations and Tables can access the contents of those Chests. This also will help you stay sane once the loot piles up, since there is no way to distinguish your chests.
  
• If you are a player who takes a lot of damage,get into the habit of healing earlier than later. Most healing happens over time.
  
• Take some time and clear out the extra flooring in the Tower, it provides plenty of charcoal and you'll need it sooner than you'll need those floors later.
  
• Different bullet affects have varying effects. Effects like damage based off stacks makes them more valuable on SMW's if you can land those shots. Plan your bullets wisely.
  
• Don't get greedy with your Weapon Slots. You can do without the Worldbuilder on Expedition, but not the Groundlayer. I still suggest bringing both though.
  
• Every Animal runs away from you, so finding a way to hold it down is useful.
  
• Your Bullets effect the environment as much as the enemy. Burning Trees adds Charcoal to their drops. Shocking Metal adds Charged Metal. Force Bullets will drop Fruit from Trees and damages enemies when pushing them into walls.
  
• You can gather lots of ice by making a freeze and chilled wep. you freeze it with one click then break it with the chilled bullets. Doing so drops you 2-5 ice each time you break frozen targets. gotta get it quick though it melts! - burncave
  
• Mechanized friends are healed by order bullets! they wreck chaos while healing your robo friends! - burncave

Type Weakness/Resistance list (Incomplete List)

Resistances
-Mechana enemies are Resistant to Poison/Fire
-Beast enemies are Resistant to Cold (Need to Test)
-

Weaknesses
-Mechana enemies are Weak(er) to Cold/Shock
-Beast/Humanoid enemies are Weak to Fire
Wooden Structures are Weak to Fire
Stone Structures are Weak to Cold
Metal Structures are Weak to Shock

If you start out playing the Tutorial, you're introduced to a handful of Mechanics, how to move, how to shoot, how to equip yourself, and how to craft.

Beyond that you'll be told what The Tower is, how the lore connects it together with how the world keeps exploding.

I'm not covering that bit except to clarify that The UI for The Wheel suggests that when you gather all of The Gears for a zone that something drastic will happen and the world will change. It's instead very gentle and changes the rate certain Biomes will spawn in your Expeditions, and the different Encounters that will spawn in those biomes on that map.

Instead I'll be covering how to play the game to help you get through it, aye?


After getting to the end of the Tutorial (Talking to Hilda Alive for the first time and leaving) there are a few things you want to do.

• You want to find some Cult of Iron guys, (the dudes with guns) shoot them, and take their guns

.-Their guns are going to be better than your Wooden Gun, twice as good actually, because they have two whole bullet slots.
Hopefully you are lucky enough to get several from them, because there is an NPC you'll see spawn soon that will sell them to you, and you want to be cheap right now.

• Shoot some Trees, gather some plants, and everything that has a Tome on it you see. Develop a prejudice for tome-carriers, because you'll need them more than they do.

Trees also drop Charcoal if they break while Burning for upgrading Fire Bullets, but you can also get some from the tiles in The Tower once you get The Groundlayer



Move the stuff in your base around

You're going to be spending a good amount of time in there preparing for your next Expedition, so make it comfortable! I'm the efficient type so I usually place my things close around The Wheel and The Gate.

You might be tempted to dump all of your tomes into upgrading a certain element and getting strong.
However, it'll help you to keep upgrading individual bullets for last, and get the core 4 bullet types first.
Beyond that go wild, the game is pretty well balanced for you to more or less be able to make anything work.
---However there are some type-resistances that I think feel bad to try and brute-force past.

(Incomplete List)
-Mechana enemies are Resistant to Poison/Fire
-Beast enemies are Resistant to Cold (Need to Re-Test)
-

But there are also some Weaknesses you can take advantage of.

-Mechana enemies are Weak(er) to Cold/Shock
-Beast/Humanoid enemies are Weak to Fire
Wooden Structures are Weak to Fire
Stone Structures are Weak to Cold
Metal Structures are Weak to Shock

However you want to set up your bullets and your base, there are a few things I suggest for progressing comfortably through the game.

• Get Comfortable with your Timer running out. You can afford about an extra Minute or so before things get a little dangerous and the Chaos Goo starts to do real damage. As long as you don't get hit by a Meteor (which I think can't target you directly) you should be fine.
  
• I suggest not using Homing, the Crude Homing is indiscriminate and can hurt more than help.
  
• If you really need extra bullets, throw down another Loading Bench, you just don't get all the resources back when you Deconstruct it.

Whichever way you play, you gotta get out there and do some Gear Encounters.
I'll be adding specific information on these later, but in the meantime, get comfortable dodging and try to use bullet types they are weak to, you'll be fine.


While you're doing Expeditions on your way to finding the Mechantress you're going to run into an Iron door that bars you from progressing. You need the Gear behind it, and it's the only Gear Encounter that will spawn until you get it.

The Easy Way to get that gear is to exhaust the dialogue of the Cryptomancer next to the door, and they'll activate the door for you.

The HARD Way (in case you enjoy struggle or are bugged) is a little longer, but will help introduce you to mechanics that you'll need to use throughout the game. The Hard Way is as follows;

In order to break that Door you need a Level 8-10 Weapon.
The only Bullet that you can Upgrade to this with the Resources available is The Lightning Strike Bullet.
It's gated behind Chaos Eyes, and is a Level 10 bullet once unlocked.
So, you'll need to farm some Eyes of Chaos to get those Chaos Eyes that spawn as The World Ends after the Timer runs out.



While you're farming for Chaos Eyes you'll want to stay and get several, these will get you your first handful of new ranks of Bullets. You'll need more as the game progresses but you won't need to intentionally farm for them.

1. First you wait until the Timer runs out and The World Ends.
   
2. Meteors will spawn in alternating waves with Chaos Rifts around where you are, not around the map, dropping larger pools of Chaos Goo and damaging or outright Breaking tiles the longer you stay.
   
3. The Eyes of Chaos only spawn after 7 (Need to Re-Test) pairs of Chaos Rifts open, and will eventually be replaced by even stronger Chaos enemies.
   
4. The Chaos Eyes drop from the Eyes of Chaos. (crazy I know) The Eye of Chaos doesn't move much so all you have to worry about is hitting it as hard as you can.

A few Chaos farming Tips:
-The Meteors fall around where you are currently. So moving in between Meteor waves will keep you on even ground.
-The Chaos enemies spawn continuously, so Shocking Bullets or another Bullet with AoE will keep the numbers down.
-The Eyes of Chaos damages tiles as it hurt you, but dodging their laser stops them from damaging you and the tile.

Once you get those Chaos Eyes, go unlock Lightning Strike II.

But when you go to load it, the Bullet requires Charged Lead.

As I understand the only source of Lead in The Imperium is from the Crowned variant of Scavengers which should spawn on your map if you have enough Gears to be stuck behind this door.
It will drop some Lead Scrap (And potentially Charged Lead if Shocked, Need to Re-Test) which you'll need to smelt and then Charge in the Lightning Furnace from the Lightning Research Station.
-Do not replace your normal Shock bullets with these bullets. The Lightning Strike round exchanges it's huge damage for having a Cooldown that stops you from continuously firing. I suggest Loading it into a Carbine for this reason.


Once you shoot your way into the door with those Lightning Strike bullets, a dangerous Chaos mini-boss jumps out to get you, and drops the Gear on death. Try and Scan it while you panic.

And from here it's a few more Gear Encounter's to the Boss of The Imperium, The Mechantress.

Mechantress is a fairly standard boss but has a wide array of moves and an arena mostly covered in stacks of books.
Mechantress does not aggro immediately so use this time to Scan them.

Mechanics and Attacks

At certain health thresholds Mechantress spawns a wave of Mech enemies, each with reduced statistics.
As Mechantress passes 75% health they spawn 4 Mechana
As Mechantress passes 50% health they spawn a wave of 6 Mechana and a Mechlander.
As Mechantress passes 25% health they spawn a Construct Mechana

Otherwise Mechantress uses a short list of moves:
-A charge with an AoE on each 'step' as Mechantress travels.
-A highly damaging Shotgun with no Telegraph
-A melee range swipe with no Telegraph

Battle Strategy:

Mechantress is a classic boss for people who have seen this type before.
Their individual damage is all short range so avoid them while dealing with waves of spawned enemies.
I suggest using your Lightning Strike bullets to start the fight, and as they become available. If you are a player who takes a lot of damage, focus on dodging and just use Lightning Strike.
Standard Shock bullets are valuable because of their arc for dealing with each Wave.
If you're a player who takes a lot of damage, the bookstacks provide valuable cover and the small ones only yield one Arcane Tome on deconstruction, so nothing is lost if they are Broken.
A Carbine and a Blunderbuss using Lightning Strike II Bullets, Shock Bullets, Cold Bullets, and Force Bullets in some combination are recommended.


Then you can reap all your Rewards, and by this time the world is likely destroyed, so you'll need to press T to Teleport to your tether (this works because you are in one of The Towers)

Once you return and you insert the Gears, The Wheel Gear Assembly will shift up, and reveal the Gear Assembly for The Fell.

This does change The World you see in Expedition entirely, but it adds a section of The Fell (Swamp) to the map.

For the most part, the content of the game past The Imperium doesn't have big surprises. There are still some more cards for them to play, but by now you've seen the gameplay loop.

For the next go around in The Fell, there are a couple of things to get used to:
-Tile Effects
-Damage/Effect Immunities


A number of enemies you'll encounter here are designed to either control the area and shephard you into the poisoned ground, or generally into dangerous positions.

And when you try and strike back, you'll find a lot of enemies here are partially or entirely immune to Poison-Type Effects. I haven't tested specifically if they are also immune to Disease-Type Bullets, but considering Disease is based off Poison, they likely also won't work.



The Fell's biggest struggle is not dealing with the enemies, it's dealing with the Poison you'll regularly get inflicted from the Sludge or Deep Sludge tiles.

The game introduces you to this danger very-very gently, so a proficient and prepared player can farm this area comfortably.

However this area does not provide many opportunities to collect Arcane Tomes. Those opportunities provide more Tomes each instance, but overall if you need Arcane Tomes at this stage I'd suggest going back to The Imperium and giving Mechantress another few beatdowns. This will give you some useful practice and all the Arcane Tomes you'll need to help you unlock some Powders to experiment with, and the new levels of Bullet you'll want before Orion.


I'll be filling this section with descriptions of the various Gear Encounters for The Fell. Suffice to say you'll have a good time.


The trek to Orion can be a little scary if you aren't yet comfortable with your dodges or haven't gotten a bit of Tome farming done to get some ranks into your Bullets.

But the Gate Guard is a Fell Anarchist buffed a little so if you can beat them you can likely beat Orion if you don't panic.

Orion is a standard boss of only level 8 with a decent array of moves and an average sized arena. The center and radial strips of the arena floor are poisoned tiles, with the center being potent poison, providing 2 stacks of poison instead of 1 when standing too long inside.

Orion does not aggro immediately so use this time to Scan them.

Mechanics and Attacks

At certain health thresholds Orion can use a new move and alters an available move, becoming progressively faster as their health lowers.
Once Orion passes 75% health,
Once Orion passes 50% health, their abilities that fire projectiles with fire more projectiles, with the projectiles being faster.
Once Orion passes 25% health their abilities that fire projectiles will also fire slow moving Blue projectiles with slight movement prediction.

Orions Moves:
-A Slow wind-up but very wide Hit-box Charge with a Telegraph
-A Medium Radius cleave attack, striking with their tentacles as they move
-Stands still and unleashes a mini-gun barrage of green projectiles towards the players current location, with slight movement tracking.
-Stands still and fires a mini-gun barrage of slower moving projectiles in a circle around them, firing towards random positions at random intervals
-A Toxic Bomb Toss, throwing a Toxic Bomb entity onto the floor a distance away, which slowly blinks it's effective area a few times before detonating. The blast radius covers roughly 1/5 of the available arena.

Battle Strategy:

Orion is an Archetypical Frenzy style boss, with them mainly being dangerous once their health bar starts to drain.
They'll begin using moves faster and faster, with new effects to try and force you to panic and throw you off guard, and mis-position putting yourself in the poison Sludge, to be gunned down while your movement speed is slowed and your health depletes.

So instead, play the fight slowly and use a carbine with it's slow-firing rate and long rate, to focus on observing Orion's moves as the fight continues and their effects change.
Additionally, ensure you've Enchanted your Helmet with Health Regeneration Rank 1 or 2 before you head out on Expedition.


Orion favor projectile attacks at the start of the fight, using their Mini-gun and Toxic Bomb moves to try and pen you in. Dodge smart and conservatively, as the Mini-gun is the most dangerous here but you have plenty of time to get out of the way of a barrage before you health fully depletes.

As the fight wears on, for a comfortable fight, use a Mug of Tea or Cup of Tea for the speed boost, and if you are particularly snugly, a Tangy Tea for the consistent Regeneration throughout the fight.

Once their health dips below 50% things can get hairy if you haven't spent some time getting comfortable with your dodge. They'll begin using their Charge frequently, spanning almost the entire Arena with it, and using their Toxic Bomb in conjunction with their Cleave to back you into a corner.

Keep your head, get liberal with your dodges, and you should have plenty of opportunities to make some space for yourself with your favorite Bullets, and counter in the short phases where he can't move or is beginning his next attack.



With a handful of skill and some farming beforehand Orion goes down pretty quickly up against some well-farmed Bullets.
Being only level 8 they go down easily to anything non-poison. I haven't tested how well Wall or Physics bullets work against them, but I'm imagining they work very well.
I had standard Burning Bullets II and Lightning Strike II in a Revolver and a Carbine respectively, and with the Burning Bullets II only at level 9 I felt almost over-prepared for the fight.
Only almost though.
I'd suggest using simple Cold Bullets in between using a Lightning Strike II, without homing unless you want to deal with your shots hitting the Toxic Bombs he throws on the floor.

On your way out

Hope you didn't come into the Orion fight with a full inventory because there are a lot of mats in the Deconstructable Structures in their Tower.

The Imperium is an 11 Gear Zone, and acts as effectively the extended Tutorial zone for the game.
Generally quaint place, practice your dodges, you'll want them for a few enemies here, and that skill will help you in The Fell.

Things to Watch For:
-Jynx Cat Charge attack does a surprising amount of damage and has a larger AoE than it broadcasts.


Items Available in The Imperium Zone/Biome

Materials Available:

• Wood
  
• Stone
  
• Metal Scrap (Smelts into Iron)
  
• Iron Ingot
  
• Charged Iron (Breaking Metal Objects or Killing Mechana Enemies while Shocked)
  
• Glass Chunk

Plants Available:

• Tangy Leaf
  
• Oak Apple (Either needs time to grow or only available during the day)
  
• Fragrant Toadstool
  
• Poe Turnip
  
• Fiddlehead Fern (Only Harvestable At Night as far as I can tell)

Enemy Drops:

• Jynx Eye

-Killing Jynxes or Mother of All Jynxes

• Poisoned Eye

-Killing Beast or Human enemies while Target is Poisoned

• Small Brain

-Killing Small Beasts

• Imperial Linen

-Killing Cult of Iron members (May be affected by Fire, need to test)

• Billycorn Horn

-Killing Billycorn Bull's or Bill himself

• Ice Chunk

-Killing Enemies while Target is Cold or Frozen

• Shoddy Weapons

-Killing Cult of Iron members (May drop the weapon they are carrying, need to test)

• Arcane Tomes

-Killing Mechana enemies, Beasts, or Humanoids

Structures Provide a valuable source of various items when Broken or Deconstructed.
Deconstructing Yields more items though if you have the time.
Structures:
-Shelf/Shelves
-Bookcases
-Desks
-Bookstack/Bookrack

The Fell is a 12 Gear Zone/Biome. It's enemies are marginally more difficult than The Imperium, but enemies with attacks that shoot several AoE or Larger AoE are more common. Additionally, Environmental hazards are introduced in the form of Sludge (Poison Swamp) Tiles.


Things to Watch For:
-Poison effects stack quickly here, but can be mitigated by the Healing over Time of Potions.
-Tile Gaps blend in with the background, don't get stuck.

Scan the Cult of Lead and find Young Joshua
Find Grandma Bogfen (The Potion Icon on the Mini-map) and upgrade your Potions

• Rotten Wood
  
• Fellstone
  
• Lead Scrap
  
• Lead Ingot
  
• Charged Lead (Breaking Metal Objects or Killing Corrupted Mechana Enemies while Shocked)
  
• Glass Chunk

• Weeping Velvetcap
  
• Thorny Nettle
  
• Skunk Cabbage Heart
  
• Skunk Cabbage Bloom

• Phibb Gall

-Killing Phibbs

• Phrogg Eye

-Killing Phroggs (Eye cannot be Poisoned)

• Poisoned Eye

-Killing Beast or Human enemies while Target is Poisoned (Phibbs and Phroggs can't be Poisoned)

• Poisoned Liver

-Killing Beast enemies while Target is Poisoned

• Soiled Linen

-Killing Cult of Lead members (May be affected by Fire, need to test)

• Ice Chunk

-Killing Enemies while Target is Cold or Frozen

• Rugged Weapons

-Killing Cult of Lead members (May drop the weapon they are carrying, need to test)

Arcane Tomes

-Killing Mechana enemies, Beasts, or Humanoids


Structures Provide a valuable source of various items when Broken or Deconstructed.
Deconstructing Yields more items though if you have the time.

• -Deep Sludge (Provides Poison when Deconstructed in The Tower, may also on Expedition, need to Test)
  
• -Anything Tome as always
  
• -Lead Furniture