Survillian guide: how to survive, level up and prestige

Updated 25 October 2026

Survillian is an idle survival game. Every action takes ten seconds, your survivor carries on working while the tab is closed, and staying alive means keeping five needs above empty while you build up skills and gear. This guide explains how each system works, what to do first, and how to set up a run that looks after itself while you are away.

Play Survillian

Night at the camp: a campfire in the forest, the list of actions such as foraging berries, gathering sticks and hunting, and the survival bars across the top. — Survillian on SyphonGames.

Time and the clock

One real second is one minute of game time, so a full day takes 24 minutes and an hour takes one. Every action takes ten seconds, ten minutes of game time. Night runs from about a quarter to seven in the evening until six in the morning, a little under half of every day, and it is much colder than the daytime.

The five vitals

Your survivor has five bars, each out of 100. Four of them drain all the time:

Water drains fastest: 12 an hour. From full it is empty in about eight minutes.
Food drains 9 an hour, so a full stomach lasts about eleven minutes.
Energy drains about 5 an hour on its own, and every gathering or hunting action costs more on top.
Warmth drains only 3 an hour in daylight but nearly 17 an hour at night, and storms and snow make you lose it 60 per cent faster again. A full warmth bar lasts about six minutes on an ordinary night.

Health is the one that matters. It recovers by 30 an hour while you are fed, watered, rested and warm (food and water above 40, energy above 15, warmth above 20). It falls whenever a bar is empty: an empty water bar takes 30 health an hour, empty food or warmth 24 each, and empty energy 12, and these add together. Once it runs dry, water on its own will kill a healthy survivor in under three and a half minutes. When health reaches zero, you die.

Some events make every need drain faster: a visitor by 40 per cent, a bear in camp by 15 per cent. A tamed dog makes food and water drain a quarter faster, permanently, because it eats too.

Keeping yourself alive

Water. Drink Water restores 35. Once you own a clay bowl it becomes Collect Water, which restores 25 and also stores 2 water in your pack, plus one more for each level of waterskin. Stored water goes into stew and medicine.
Food. Berries restore 12. A cooked meal (from cooking meat or fish) restores 45 food and 5 energy. A hearty stew (raw meat, a mushroom and a water) restores 70 food, 12 energy, 15 warmth and 6 health, the best meal in the game. Cooked meals and stew spoil five game hours after you make them, so cook shortly before you need to eat.
Energy. Sleep restores 40 energy for 4 food and 4 water.
Warmth. Tend Fire burns one wood for 50 warmth. Keep at least three wood in hand when night is coming.
Health. A bandage restores 30 and medicine 55. Both are crafted.

Skills and actions

There are six skills: Survival, Woodcutting, Mining, Crafting, Cooking and Combat. Every action trains one of them, and higher levels unlock better actions. The experience needed for the next level grows by 12 per cent a level: 60 to reach level 2, about 166 at level 10 and about 516 at level 20. Levels go up to 99.

Gather: Gather Sticks (1 wood), Chop Wood (3 wood, Woodcutting 5), Mine Stone (2 stone), Dig Clay (2 clay), Mine Coal (Mining 6), Mine Iron (Mining 8), Forage Berries (2 berries), Gather Herbs (Survival 2) and Pick Mushrooms (Survival 3).
Hunt and fish: Hunt Rabbit (1 meat, 1 hide), Hunt Deer (3 meat, 2 hide, 1 bone; Combat 5) and Catch Fish (Survival 4). Fight the Bear! appears only while a bear is in camp.
Cook: Cook Meat, Cook Fish and Make Stew (Cooking 3).
Sustain: drinking, eating, sleeping, tending the fire, bandages, medicine and repairing gear.
Companion: the dog's fetching actions, once you have tamed one.

No action needs a tool. Tools add to what an action produces, so build them early, but you can hunt a rabbit with your bare hands on the first morning. Hunting yields also grow with your Combat level and spear, up to double.

Gear

Equipment is levelled rather than collected: each upgrade costs more materials than the last and gives a bigger bonus, and every upgrade earns Crafting experience. The first level of each costs:

Axe: 8 wood, 6 stone. Each level adds one wood to every chop (half that, rounded up, when gathering sticks).
Spear: 6 wood, 4 stone. Each level adds one meat to every hunt and makes you stronger against the bear.
Pickaxe (Crafting 3): 6 wood, 7 stone. Each level adds one to everything you mine or dig.
Knife (Crafting 2): 4 stone, 1 bone, 2 wood. Extra hide from every hunt, and an extra berry when foraging.
Fishing Rod (Survival 4): 5 wood, 2 rope. One more fish per catch per level.
Waterskin (Crafting 2): 3 hide, 2 rope. One more water stored each time you collect.
Torch: 3 wood, 1 coal, 1 rope. Six per cent less warmth lost per level, up to 30 per cent.
Hide Armor (Crafting 4): 7 hide, 3 rope. Eight per cent less damage from creatures per level.
Shelter (Crafting 3): 32 wood, 10 stone, 2 rope. Fifteen per cent less warmth lost per level, up to 80 per cent. The best defence against night.

The Craft tab makes the four simple items: Rope (3 herbs), which almost every upgrade needs; the Clay Bowl (3 clay); Bandages (Crafting 2: 2 herbs and a rope); and Medicine (Crafting 5: 4 herbs, 2 mushrooms and a water).

Gear wears out. A tool loses a little durability every time it is used, more on a hunt and most against the bear, and the shelter is battered by the weather, three times faster in storms and snow. A tool, the torch or the armour at zero durability gives no bonus at all until it is fixed; a worn shelter still keeps out the cold, but keep it repaired all the same. Repair Gear uses 3 wood (and a stone, if you have one) to restore whichever item is in the worst shape to full. Hard fights can also knock a weapon down a level: about one rabbit hunt in a hundred, three deer hunts in a hundred and one bear strike in ten.

A plan for the first day

Forage berries and drink to stay topped up, and gather sticks until you have a few wood for the night.
Mine stone and gather sticks for an axe and a spear. Neither needs a skill level.
Dig clay for a clay bowl. It turns drinking into collecting, which you need for stew and medicine.
At Survival 2, gather herbs and turn them into rope. Rope is the material that holds most later gear back.
Hunt rabbits for meat and hide, and cook the meat shortly before you need to eat.
Work Crafting up to 3 and build a shelter before your first long time away. Nights stop being dangerous once it is up.

Auto mode

The AUTO button hands the decisions to the game. It puts survival first: medicine or a bandage when health is under 55, then whatever is lowest if health falls under 30, a drink when water is under 50, food under 50 (stew first, then a meal, then cooking what you have, then hunting, then berries), sleep under 30 energy, and the fire under 55 warmth. It keeps three wood for the night, fights a bear only with a spear and more than 55 health, and repairs anything under 40 per cent.

With its needs met, it builds gear in the order axe, spear, pickaxe, knife, shelter, rod, waterskin, armour and torch, first one level of each and then up to level 4. It crafts a bowl, keeps three rope and a bandage, keeps some berries and wood in reserve, and spends the rest of its time training whichever gathering skill is lowest. It is a sensible, cautious player, and the best way to leave a run going.

While you are away

Close the tab and your survivor keeps going for up to seven days. Time away is played by Auto's rules whether or not Auto was switched on, at one action for every 100 seconds away: a tenth of the pace of playing live. Your needs keep draining, and if health reaches zero while you are gone you are revived on the spot, with every bar at 60 but 15 per cent of everything you carry gone. A report on your return lists what was done, gathered, levelled and lost.

Before you leave: top up every bar, keep firewood and food in stock, build the shelter, and get the spear to level 2. Bears turn up while you are away too, and a survivor with a level 2 spear usually drives them off for meat, hide and bone instead of taking a mauling.

Events

Every two and a half to five minutes something may happen:

A stray dog wanders in and waits for 90 seconds. Taming it costs 25 raw meat. A tamed dog unlocks three Send Dog actions, for sticks, berries and a hunt, which finish in under two seconds instead of ten, but food and water drain a quarter faster for the rest of the run. Worth it once meat is plentiful; not on day one.
A bear (from day 4) prowls the camp for five game hours. Every one to three minutes it mauls you for 12 to 22 health, less with armour, and your needs drain faster while it is there. You can wait it out, or use Fight the Bear!: each strike costs energy and a little health, does more damage the higher your Combat level and spear, and the bear takes nine points to bring down. Only the killing blow pays: 6 meat, 4 hide, 3 bone and 100 Combat experience.
A visitor stays for five game hours, during which everything drains 40 per cent faster, then leaves a gift: berries, herbs, rope, wood, stone, hide, mushrooms, bone, iron or a medicine.
A meteor shower drops 4 to 9 stone and 1 to 3 iron at your feet.
A strange craft drifts over the trees and, more often than not, leaves something behind.

Dying

If you die while playing you can watch a short advert for a full revive with nothing lost, or respawn straight away and lose a fifth of every resource. Either way the run carries on.

Prestige

From day 8, or once any skill reaches level 20, you can prestige. It resets the current run (the day, your skills, your inventory and your gear) in exchange for a permanent bonus of 15 per cent to all experience and every resource you gather, and the bonus stacks: 1.15 times after the first, 1.30 after the second, and so on. Achievements, statistics, your bests and your daily streak are kept.

The first prestige is worth taking as soon as it is offered. Early levels come back quickly with the bonus, and every later run is faster for it.

Daily rewards, achievements and leaderboards

Claim a reward once a day for a seven-day cycle of 50, 80, 120, 180, 260, 380 and 600 wood, each with half as much stone. Watching an advert doubles the day's reward. Miss a day and the streak starts again from the beginning.

There are 172 achievements: every fifth level of each skill up to 60, gathering milestones for thirteen resources up to 25,000, surviving to days 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 100, 200 and 365, action counts, crafting, prestiges, your first bowl and your first shelter. Leaderboards rank the longest survival, the highest skill level, the most resources, the most buildings built, the most achievements and the fastest prestige.

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