Lesser guide to Mad Island
Table of Contents
- Before you start
- Language
- Censorship
- Starting out
- Activities
- Fighting
- Questing
- Making friends
- Making friends: the alternatives
- Jobs
- Farming
- Putting food on the table
- Resting
- Frequently asked questions
- Challenges
- Mad Island
- Sane Island
- One Big Family
- Harem island
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Before you start
Language
The game might load in Japanese language the first time. Like this:
You probably can’t read Japanese, but the third option from the bottom reads “option”, and that’s where you
should go to change the game’s language to English. I hope you can read English, because I’m writing this
guide in English.
You might want to set up the other options here too.
Censorship
There are two layers of censorship in this game. One is imposed by Japanese law, and requires all the genitalia to be pixellated. Depending on where you got this game, it might be already disabled.
If not, go to \\Mad Island_Data\\StreamingAssets\\XML\\ folder (start from the folder with game’s exe file, or just
ask the game to open your save file folder), and add a “none.bat” file in there. The contents of the file don’t matter, so you should just leave it empty.
To check if it works, remove male MC’s pants. Without none.bat, his penis should be badly pixellated.
The second layer of censorship was imposed by Steam and its Western values. The censored away content is
in the DLC. I am not allowed to tell you what’s in the DLC, but I’ll give you a hint: it’s not cannibalism, guro,
rape, incest, childbirth or gerontophilia (which are all available in the base game).
I am also not allowed to just give you the download link, you have to look for it on the developer (emadeplus)’s
website. Use your browser’s auto-translation abilities for instructions, they are clearly written there (in Japanese). Seriously, read them, they are unobvious. Or at least they were, at the moment of me writing the
guide.
To check if it works, look at the options window. It should have something about the DLC written on top of it.
You will also see DLC people in larger villages.
This is how it should look like:
Starting out
So, you’re now on an uncivilized island, with only clothes that barely cover your nudity. What do you do? Don’t
panic, this is a survival-themed game, and the island has everything you need to survive. And this is a porn
game, it isn’t actually hard.
If you’ve played Don’t Starve, Terraria, Minecraft, Palworld, Ark: Survival Evolved or any game like that, you
know what to do. If you haven’t, here is a basic gameplay loop:
- Gather resources.
- Craft tools to gather what can’t run away or fight back.
- Craft weapons to gather what can run away or fight back.
- Craft workbenches to craft even more tools and weapons.
- Build yourself a base to keep all the resources you’ve gathered.
- Go forth and explore new places.
You can gather most things by left-clicking them, as long as you’re equipped with the right tool.
A few tools (like shovels and bug nets) work when you right-click with them equipped instead.
You can get additional information on most things by hovering your mouse over them.
You can use most things by right-clicking them. This equips tools and clothes, eats food and places furniture.
Right-clicking when interacting with something (friend, corpse, table, etc) attempts to use it on them.
Ctrl-clicking objects can help you interact with them when you can’t walk to them (such as being attached to
the wall)
Ctrl-clicking the “remove” button switches you to removal mode, which allows you to remove things efficiently,
and remove some things you normally wouldn’t be able to remove, such as grass tufts.
You can craft by clicking the “hammer” icon on the bottom-left. If you interact with a workbench, the contents of
your crafting list will change. In this game, workbenches are containers, and they’ll craft from their contents
(but will place the results into your inventory).
Unlike many survival games, this game has RPG elements. Everything you do, gives you experience, both to
the current character, and to skills. You will need to regularly visit your status and skill screens to distribute
upgrade points gained from levels. Especially in the beginning.
Tips:
- Everything respawns. Some things respawn while you play, others respawn when you re-enter a cave,
yet others respawn when you load your game. The exceptions are a few bosses. So don’t worry and
take everything you need.
- You respawn too, so don’t worry if you haven’t quite figured out the “surviving” part.
- At the beginning, berries will be your main source of food and water. Most other foods fill your food
meter, but not water meter.
- Many people love crafting from nearby storage containers, as in Terraria. In this game, this only works
with containers with “storage” in their name, and doesn’t work with containers with “chest” in their
name. So your basic wooden chest does not share its contents, but cloth storage does.
- A bow isn’t a powerful weapon, but it’s good at gathering what tries to run away. Hold right mouse
button to aim, press left mouse button to shoot.
Picture: list of known keyboard shortcuts as of version 0.43.2
!Keyboard shortcuts as of version 0.43.2
Activities
Fighting
Fighting in this game works Dark Souls style. Meaning you want to dodge enemy attacks a lot, while hitting
them while they are distracted. Take your time to get used to it.
WASD moves you.
Left-click attacks.
F does a “heavy” attack - slow and powerful. Make sure you’re not hit when you do it. Many weapons have
special heavy attacks. Heavy attacks tend to dismember enemies when they kill them.
Right-click blocks. This works best with a shield. Blocking lets the shield take damage instead of you. Blocking
at just the right time (”perfect block”) halves damage and makes a nice sound.
Questing
The game works with quests in an unusual way. If you see a gray, green, red or blue diamond marker on the
map, that is a quest. When you’re near it, it will look like mist of the same color.
- Green markers are accessible to both main characters.
- Red are only for female MC (Yona).
- Blue ones are only for male MC (Man).
- Gray ones are underground, in some sort of cave. You wouldn’t see their color unless you enter.
Quests involve some combination of dialogue choices, boss fights and sex. Dialogue choices matter (unlike
losing fights), so it’s better to save before stepping into the quest.
Making friends
Most things on this island don’t speak your language. You have to befriend them the caveman way:
1. Hit them with clubs (any weapon with “faint” as its stat) until their stamina runs out.
2. Take them and carry them home.
3. Put them in cage or pen as appropriate to their species and size. You will know this is the right one if
you can see them in there.
4. Give them food by putting it in cage. Hover over them to see what they like to eat.
5. The number near their portrait is how tame they are. Wait for it to reach MAX. Add more food as
needed.
6. Take them out of the cage and into your inventory, and carry them to their new home.
7. Right-click them to deploy them. (This is the part where most people have problems)
8. Left-click to talk to them and tell them what to do.
Now that you’ve tamed them, you are responsible for them. You need to provide them with food and water.
Tamed animals and people need food to heal, and water to work, but eating regularly is a Japanese tradition
that they don’t partake in.
Food boxes and wells automatically provide their contents to your friends in range. If they are not available,
you’ll need to provide food and water manually. Note that villagers need to be in a well’s or box’s range, and
not the other way around.
Tamed people also need shelter. Any house (even a native tent) with a bed (even a leaf bed) will do. Note that
this game’s AI is very primitive, so if they enter a house and see all the beds taken, they woudn’t bother
checking other houses.
Note the “move” button when talking to them - it’s important, because it sets up where the friend should be.
The blue circle is where the friend will wander normally, doing work and resting, and red circle is where they’ll
be fighting your enemies. By default, the circles will be centered on their cage, which is usually not what you
want.
“Follow” button will instead add them to your party. Note that most people and animals in the game are worth
more than 1 unit of party limit, with typical humans being worth 3 (out of 3 you have at the start).
Making friends: the alternatives
You can bypass the “hit them with clubs” part by using traps, for things that are stupid enough to get caught in
a trap. If you caught something you don’t need, you can dismantle it by hovering your mouse over it and
pressing T while it’s in your inventory.
If you don’t like hitting a girl you like with clubs, male MC can also wrestle her down with R button. R is for
“rape”, in case you didn’t guess it.
If you somehow caught a human you don’t need, there are a variety of execution devices available to you. Or
you can just keep them in a cage forever.
Quests will occasionally provide you with friends too.
This is a porn game, so you can just make your own people. You will need a female native or a DLC female -
all other kinds of women don’t get pregnant (but author plans to expand this list soon). Male MC can
impregnate them personally, or you can get some other male to do it for you. Not all pairings can actually have
sex.
Voluntary sex is only possible when the pair likes each other to at least 50. To find out how much they like
each other, hover over “Relation” part of their status sheet.
Yes, this screenshot shows she is the male MC’s daughter, and she will soon give birth to male MC’s
granddaughter who is also his daughter. Incest! I am doing a challenge where I only abduct one breedable
female, and populate my village with her and male MC’s descendants.
To improve relations, spend time together (unless one of them has a personality the other dislikes). Come on,
even a rooster can do it!
You can also speed things up by dancing together. Hold Q to see the interaction menu. There are two dances,
and everybody likes at least one of them.
Here is somebody else’s guide. Note that values seem to be with influence improved with skills - you’ll
probably get half as much in the beginning.
Player initiated sex can happen anywhere there is a ground, but villagers will need a place to have sex - such
as a bed placed outside, because they’re too busy sleeping at night when they’re inside the house. Note that
some pairings have two different animations - one on the ground/leaf bed, and one on a proper bed.
Natural fertility of natives is low (it would be considered high IRL, but it’s low for gaming purposes), so I
recommend using pregnancy promotion item (despite how it looks, it’s equipment, not consumable). Even with
that, women seem to have some kind of birth limit.
Note that not every pregnancy results in a child. The chances of success depend on facilities available for
childbirth. No facilities is 20%, a house with a proper bed gives 60%, and a specialized bed equipped with an
old woman guarantees successful delivery. If childbirth is a failure, you get a “life orb” as a consolation prize.
It’s the only way to get it, and it’s needed in some important recipes, so don’t worry too much.
Jobs
Most jobs are sufficiently explained in-game, just hover mouse over job names. But here are things that might
confuse you:
- Most jobs need some sort of workplace. The specifics are written out in the job descriptions.
- Most workplaces cannot be worked by main characters. They’re too important for that. The only
exceptions are farm plots and food boxes - you can operate those manually.
- Workplace should be within a worker’s blue circle. Training seems to be an exception, and
seems to use red circle instead.
- “Food” job does not need a source of food (like a farm), the villager just forages. Even a chicken coop
probably produces food faster, but “food” job is automated.
- Yes, even a chicken can work in mines or train to be a champion duelist.
- Excavation sites’ results depend on where the site is located. Mines’ results do not, except that mines
in the far north can produce diamonds.
- You can put a mine inside a mine, but it will only confuse the game.
- Logging plants have not been tested, because nobody cares to.
Farming
Just like in most survival games, you can’t just throw seeds on the ground and expect them to grow. Make a
farming plot, and put seeds in its cells, one seed per cell.
MCs don’t know anything about water or fertilizer, so they can only leave the plants to grow on their own.
Natives do know, so they can speed up plant growth when assigned to farming.
Either way, if a plant grows too much, it will wither, and turn from fresh vegetables into seeds. Which is good,
because you need seeds for replanting.
City folk like MCs can only breed people. If you want to breed animals, you’ll need to assign natives to it. There
are 4 known kinds of animal farming:
- Chicken coops are fully automatic, and don’t even need a native. Just fill them with 1-3 chickens, and a
coop will generate eggs.
- Pig farms generate pigs and shit when worked by natives. Some pigs (called “pork”) are extra tasty and
can be used for special meat.
- Sheep and cows can be put into “breeding farm”, where natives can harvest wool and milk from them
(and wouldn’t actually breed them).
Everything else can also be put into breeding farm, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. And native animal
farmers will get stuck admiring them (this bug may be fixed in the latest versions). But it is an alternative to
cages that doesn’t have collision, so you can just put your zoo in there.
Note that breeding farms, and farming plots tended to by natives, need a “harvest box” to put the results of
their labor into. While pig farms and chicken coops don’t.
Contrary to what you might think, animals in farms and coops don’t need to be tamed.
Newer versions of the game add herb farms and mushroom farms. Mushroom farms need to be placed
indoors, but even so, they grow mushrooms local to where they are. Both seem to be fully automated and not
needing workers.
Putting food on the table
If you want your villagers to eat, the simplest way would be to fill their food boxes. Just use (right-click) food
when interacting with the box. Doing so disintergrates all of the food’s side effects (like stomache for raw
meat). A villager with “food” task will fill it automatically, but slowly.
But you can also interact with a table. When doing so, you can put food on a table like it’s furniture. I know,
that’s what the table says to you, but it’s written in a confusing way.
What the table doesn’t tell you, is that food on it is not for eating. Just knowing you have such good food,
makes your villagers fight harder during raids, applying the food’s bonuses to all the nearby villagers. There
seems to be a limit to how much food is applied, and this limit seems to be equal to the number of raiders. So
it’s best to cook and display really high-quality food, with the best bonuses.
Resting
Adventuring makes you tired and hurt. Which is how it should be.
What you need, is a place to lie down. Any bed, or any tent you can hand-craft, would be enough. It will restore
your hitpoints, your stun resistance, and your hearts, if you just lie there for a bit.
If the bed is inside a house (which is a good place for a bed), you can also use it to skip time. Skipped time
doesn’t always interact with activities that take time (player character resting, crops growing and so on). It
seems to vary by activity, and there is no established list.
But at least you can adventure in daylight.
You can regain hitpoints (but not all the other things) even without resting, with a skill. You can also regain
hitpoints with the right herbs and medicines. It’s worth taking the first level of that skill early, to recover from
light fighting. But heavy fighting that depletes your hearts will always need bed rest (or “dying” and
respawning).
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find seeds?
Kill everybody and take their stuff.
How do I defeat raids?
Use guerilla tactics, also known as “kiting” and “hit and run”. Use every other trick you know too.
Or just tell your pet werewolf to kill them.
How do I change other people’s equipment?
When you interact with people and corpses, equipped items panel switches to those of the person/corpse you’re interacting with.
How do I seduce the big-breasted lady?
A well-fed Man is not a comrade to a hungry lady. Hunt down that cow and cook it for her.
How do I dispose of corpses?
Save and load your game, they will disappear. Later in the game, you will get a special device to dispose of
them.
I lost the other MC, what do I do?
It seems to be a common bug. If they aren’t where they should be, you can forcibly switch to them with
/change command. Later in the game, you will gain ability to summon them to your base.
What is a good place for a base?
Starting beach is a decent place. Any other beach too. Pond to the north-west of starting beach is also a solid
option.
But you don’t have to settle for one base. Build a bunch of small bases around the island.
Things to avoid:
- Many things respawn when the game reloads, including enemy villagers. Don’t try to build a base on a
captured village site.
- Bases in caves are buggy, it’s better to build in the open world.
- Bases in hard-to-access locations can cause the raids to behave unpredictably, from cancelling them
altogether to waiting for you at the bottom of an inconvenient cliff.
What is the “workshop” workbench for?
It’s for mods you get from Steam Workshop. You’ll need to actually buy the game on Steam for that to work.
Apparently, you can also make your own mods and use them there.
Can I have some more mods?
Yes. Butler’s mods and Yotan’s mods. They don’t use the game’s modding support (because it is insufficient),
so make sure to check if they work for your version. And be ready to reinstall if things go wrong.
Challenges
I offer you these fun challenges to make your playthrough special:
Mad Island
Have chickens gather corn, have hares collect food for your guard werewolf, personally catch mice for your
cat, make DLC female a grandmother, and otherwise make things crazy.
Sane Island
Do not craft or use anything that suggests you’re becoming even crazier than the natives. Nothing made out of
people, no mad science devices. Also keep any captured monsters in their place - in cages.
You can tame and use people and normal animals, but don’t make them do anything they shouldn’t be able to
do. You can sell Life Orbs to the merchant, but not craft anything out of them yourself.
One Big Family
Tame just one breedable female native, and have most of the population be her descendants.
You are allowed to get all unique characters, and tame one of each kind of native you can’t grow, such as a
large female or an old man.
Harem island
As above, but male MC has to be everybody’s father. I recommend manipulating childbirth to ensure all of the
matriarch’s descendants are female.
