1. Stats Stamina is set by your Archetype. For the remaining six stats you can assign 71 points as you see fit. A solid standard array (that adds to 71) is 16, 14, 13, 12, 9 & 7. Ensure no stat is lower than 5 or greater than 16.
2. Pick an Archetype Your archetype determines how many recipes you can know, what dangers you are best at resisting, your stamina, movement and what pets/bots you can have.
3. (optional) Pick Diplomatic Keywords During the NPC interaction parts of the game, different NPCs will treat you differently based on your social class, methods of persuasion and other factors. (See p44)

Explorer Action Stats * Might most physical tasks, Mines Odd Ore [OO] * Agility for dodging, acrobatics and the like, Mines Arcane Algae [AA] * Focus to keep cool in intense situations, investigate, and resist mind effects, mines Strange Sap [SS] * Tech interpret technology / evidence, mines Molten Minerals [MM]), * Compassion to befriend alien creatures w/ compassion, diplomacy, mines Helpful Herbs [HH]) * Dominance to tame w/ dominance or to intimidate. Some creatures respond to compassion, some respond to dominance.

Rolling your stat or under is a success.

The seventh stat, stamina, doubles as your “HP.” As you take stamina damage your explorer is getting closer and closer to death.

Your Current Stamina is used for three kinds of resists – Elemental Resists, Pest Resists and Disease Resists.

Rolling equal or under your Current Stamina can negate a negative effect from one of these categories. Different classes, however, have points in these different resists. When failing the stamina check for a given resist type, they can spend 1 of those matching points to reroll the failed check. These recharge between game sessions.

As you lose stamina it will become harder to make your resistance rolls – leading you to lose even more stamina. Most characters can use the Rally action (p24) to provide stable healing to a given character once per day (they can perform Rally again on a different character). This stable healing restores two Stamina points that have been lost. Other Rally actions for the same character cause them to gain 2 temporary Stamina points that vanish at the end of the scene.