Getting Started
Once you downloaded the game start a new run and pick any starting options you'd like to have. Default starter pick is quite balanced for beginners, you only may want to select main character, profession and your and your starters traits. When you made it through story/setting, start exploring town to encounter new NPCs and events. Map (default hotkey is Right Mouse Button when other screens are closed) can show you what places have new events by highlighting certain locations with yellow.
Before venturing into a portal it is best to bring along starting companions with equipment that can be purchased from the shop, hotkey (S), or gathered through town exploration. You need to assign your characters to your party at home first and then proceed with equiping items on them via Prep. Party option ,hotkey (Q), which is located at the bottom of the screen. Any characters with healing abilities can help with portal exploration greatly, and if you were lucky a PlantGirl which you could pick as a starting character might have Rejuvenate skill. If you struggle to keep your team alive it is strongly advised to pick Doctor starting profession as this will make you able to heal injured party members and save on infirmary or town doctor costs. You may also want to gain certain combat experience with your team before portal explorations by picking up some easy arena fights, also earning solid amount of money, which you can spend on buying even more gear.
Choosing low hostility portals at start is of the utmost importance: as low a number as you can get, primarily below 3. Portals destabilize in a short period of time unless you pay forth some gold and crystals to maintain them. Once you have stabilized the portal, it will remain until you manually destroy it. You don't need to pay again. The maximum number of portals you can stabilize is capped at 5 from the start and you start with already stabilized portal of hostility 1. The hot key for portal menu is (E).
Once within a portal it is important to maintain your carrying capacities. Don't get overburdened (more than half carrying capacity makes you spend twice as much time for movement), if you harvest too much and cannot move, drop some things from your inventory and continue onward.
If your team has been damaged or is low on mana, set up a camp for a while and set your wounded characters to 'Rest' and your mana drained characters to 'Meditate'. You can also encounter certain tiles and events which can help you to maintain party resources. While camping in a location that is unprotected, like anywhere outside of a hut, you can be ambushed while camping. Try to keep the ambush chance as low as possible to avoid risking an attack while your characters are still weak by setting some of your party on 'Guard' duty. The higher guard character powers are, the more effective they will prevent an ambush. Nearby passing enemy groups may end up stumbling onto your camp, or notice you and attack on purpose if your group stealth value is poor, which will lead to battle. If you choose doctor as your profession, your main character duty can be set to "Doctor", which will increase the healing of all other party members who are resting.
In order to make your character stronger in long term run you may want to level up your skill tree. As Evolution and Creation MC, you must perform rituals with species who you've not already performed a ritual with and spend newly earned points under "Change" option at the bottom of the screen in order to increase your character powers (The hot key for skill menu is (C)). To perform a ritual, select gender-appropriate character (any for Evo in her futa form and futa/male for Creation) by clicking on them at home and select Ritual button at the bottom of character screen. Only pure species and their hybrids will count as valid for gaining skill points, having ritual with a species who you had a ritual with already will only grant as many points as a level difference between current partner and a former one which you had ritual with. Druid can't evolve through rituals, but he can increase his own powers through combat experience, gaining new abilities in one of 6 schools which you can select as leveling focus.
Eventually you will run into issue of having no food for your team nor money to enter a portal or buy anything in town. There are certain ways of sustaining those resources, such as assigning your fellow characters to hunt/fish whenever they are at home (done through character window), gathering food and herbs in portal explorations (some of them cost high amount of money such as StrengthenHerbs), or fighting in arena and performing brothel shows as your character to earn some money.
Crystals will be needed early for a multitude of reasons and one of the ways to obtain them early is by breeding your characters to produce eggs. The eggs will be stored at the farm, hotkey (F), within the hatchery. Destroying and egg, both incubating and a stored one, will grant you a crystal. Another way to obtain them is to travel through ocean portals and gather underwater crystal deposits. This method is much harder and advanced, but it rewards with bigger amount of crystals in a smaller amount of playtime. This method will also take a large amount of ingame time unless you have a water mount which can carry you and your team (large-sized mount for medium-sized team), or you and your whole team is able to fly and avoid water movement penalties.
If game still feels overwhelming or there are certain unclear things that you'd like to get explained feel free to join official discord and ask any question in #help_support_tutorial_etc channel.
