Witchspire Beginner's Guide: Tips to Start Your Coven the Right Way

Witchspire dropped into Steam Early Access on June 10, 2026, and it has a sneaky way of tripping up survival game veterans. It looks like every other survival-crafting game you’ve played.

Then you go looking for the hunger meter and there isn’t one. No thirst bar either, and no stamina draining every time you sprint.

That one quirk changes how you should approach the opening hours.

This guide walks you through the systems that actually matter early, so you spend less time backtracking and more time bonding adorable spirit creatures.

Witchspire isn’t your usual survival game

Envar Games built a co-op magical survival adventure you can play solo or with friends. The Early Access build hands you two biomes to explore, the Meadows and the Desert, each with its own creatures and hazards.

Here’s the part that throws people. You won’t starve, and you won’t pass out from exhaustion. Food still exists, but it heals you in a fight rather than topping off a hunger bar.

Resources still matter a lot, though. Gathering them powers up your witch and unlocks higher crafting tiers, so there’s plenty of reason to keep collecting everything you pass.

The magic is woven into how you move and gather. You can call forth a forest when you’re short on timber, blink out of the way of an incoming hit, and summon phantom pickaxes to mine for you.

Pick a coven, but don’t agonize over it

Your coven is basically your starting class. It sets your opening weapon style and gives your witch an identity, with options like the Cloudpiercers and the Foretellers.

The real decision early on is whether you want to start with a Spellblade for a melee-forward opening or a Wand for a classic caster feel.

Don’t restart the game five times hunting for the perfect pick. Your coven choice isn’t a cage, since the skill tree lets you branch into other disciplines later anyway.

Set your difficulty before the world loads

Witchspire gives you four difficulty presets plus a stack of world settings you can customize. You lock these in before the world generates, so give them a proper look.

These settings change your death penalties and whether your familiars can die for good. For a first world, go gentle on yourself.

Learn the Hearth, the familiars, and the crafting stations on forgiving settings first. Save the punishing rules for a second run once you know how everything connects.

Build your base loop first

The opening hours get a lot smoother once you set up a simple home base. Place a Workbench, drop your Hearth, and put down a few storage chests.

That storage matters more than it sounds. Your inventory fills up fast here, and materials sitting in a chest can still feed your crafting and building.

If your bag is already stuffed before your first long trip, you waited too long to build storage. Set it up early and deposit often.

The Hearth is your real progression engine

Plenty of new players treat the Hearth like a simple campfire and wander off. That’s a mistake.

Upgrading your Hearth is what unlocks new skills and systems as you progress. It’s the gate everything else runs through.

When a Hearth upgrade asks for some strange material you’ve never seen, that’s not a roadblock. It’s the game nudging you toward the next system you’re meant to unlock.

Spend your skill points wisely and grab every shrine

The Luminaries skill tree is where your character really grows. You earn Luminary Points through progression, and you want to spend them on whatever is currently blocking you.

Keep an eye out for Luminary Shrines while you explore. Each one you activate hands you a free point, so never walk past one.

Decoration and quality-of-life perks can wait. Early on, pour your points into the systems that open up new crafting and traversal.

Recruiting your first familiars

This is the part that hooks most people. Familiars are creatures you bond with after beating them in the wild.

When you defeat certain creatures, a spirit form appears. Interact with it to start building your bond, and it becomes a companion that fights at your side.

Use Incense when you’re after a familiar you really want. It raises the chance that the spirit lingers long enough for you to bond with it.

Watch for Celestial familiars too. These are rarer variants with distinct looks and a bit more power, and Incense helps you run into them.

The Spirit Charmer skill in the Luminary tree makes bonding more reliable, so it’s a smart early pickup if you’re into collecting.

Put your familiars to work

Familiars aren’t only combat pets, even though they’re great in a fight. The players who pull ahead fastest figure this out early.

You can assign familiars to stations around your sanctuary, where they handle production and gathering for you. Some stations, like the Spinner, only run once you’ve got a compatible familiar parked there.

So instead of leaving your whole roster benched, put a few to work. Your crafting output climbs while you’re off exploring.

Harvest everything and clear the monster camps

That common-looking plant or ore you’re tempted to ignore? Grab it. Almost every material in Witchspire feeds into a recipe somewhere down the line.

What looks like filler in your first hour turns into an annoying bottleneck around hour ten. Building a small reserve now saves you a trip back to old zones later.

Monster camps are worth your time beyond the obvious drops. Many of them hide a treasure chest once you clear the enemies, and those chests hold gold, materials, and gear you won’t find lying around.

Work toward the broom and set up fast travel

Getting around on foot is fine at first, but the broom is your real traversal goal. It sits behind a skill tree unlock and a short progression chain, including reaching a higher Hearth level and gathering specific materials.

Flight changes how the whole world feels, so it’s worth chasing once your base is stable.

Keep an eye on the sky while you grind toward it. Meteor events drop into the world and open up unique mining spots, and your phantom pickaxes make quick work of them.

In the meantime, set up fast travel. Ritual Candles and Homebound scrolls let you zip between your Hearths, which cuts down on the long walks while you’re still grounded.

Playing with friends

Witchspire is built for co-op, and it’s a blast with a group. Sessions support up to 6 players, though 4 is the sweet spot for smooth performance, since hosting leans hard on the host’s machine.

Everyone who wants to join needs to own the game. The setup is player-hosted, so the host has to be online for friends to drop in.

If you’re the host, expect your machine to work harder than your friends’. A wired connection and a decent CPU go a long way.

Your first session, in order

If you want a clean route through your opening hours, here’s the order that works.

Pick a coven and weapon style you like, then gather the common resources around your starting area. Build a Workbench, place your Hearth, and set up storage chests right away.

From there, push your first Hearth upgrade, spend Luminary Points on whatever unlocks your next system, and start bonding your first familiars. Follow that loop and the early game opens up fast instead of leaving you stuck at the same encounter for an hour.

Now get out there and start building your coven. The Witchspire is calling.

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Images are from the Witchspire page on Steam and used under Fair Use.