From your tested portal outside the Swamp, scout in daylight along known ground. Mark each green-lit Sunken Crypt, keep the key in your inventory, and return after locating one rather than treating the first visit as an iron haul. Pick turnip flowers when the retreat stays clear, then grow them at home.
Sunken Crypts are Swamp dungeons. Their gate is opened with the reusable Swamp key; they are the primary early source of Scrap iron. A tower, grave, or a patch of muddy ground is not automatically a crypt entrance.
Move from the safe border in short loops. Look for the dungeon entrance and its green torch light, then mark it before deciding whether to enter. Crypt distribution is procedural: some Swamps hold few crypts, and one building does not promise a useful amount of Muddy scrap piles.
Do not let the presence of a locked gate turn a scout into an unplanned night trip. A marked crypt, a known walk back to the portal, and full food are enough to finish the first outing. Return to prepare the actual clearing kit.
Look among the Swamp trees for a Sunken Crypt’s stone entrance with green lanterns; inside, find a Muddy scrap pile glowing by the wall in the flooded green corridor.
Keep one retreat direction visible as you enter. Mark the portal side of the Swamp and the crypt entrance separately; a single generic marker is hard to use after a death.
Walk around shallow pools instead of assuming they are harmless. Leeches are a water threat, while Blobs and Oozers add poison near land. Save sprinting for a clear escape, not for every stretch of wet ground.
If a Draugr, Blob, or other group blocks the line to a crypt, choose whether to fight from a known patch of ground or return. Your first objective is the entrance, not eliminating every visible creature.
When the route will be repeated, make small improvements after the area is calm: clear a passage, mark turns, or use the hoe on a short shallow section. Do not build a long construction project while carrying your first iron.
Turnip flowers in the Swamp give turnip seeds. They do not respawn after harvesting, and they are harder to find than carrot seeds because much of the biome is water. Pick them only when you can return with them; a seed is useful only after it reaches your garden.
At home, use the cultivator on cultivated ground to plant seeds. Each seed grows into one turnip. Plant a harvested turnip with the cultivator’s Seed-turnip option; that plant produces three turnip seeds when mature. Keep an early harvest for reproduction before cooking every turnip. The first-iron guide explains the level-2 cauldron food chain.
Turnip stew1 Boar meat + 3 TurnipCauldron level 2
Spice rack3 Dandelion + 2 Carrot + 5 Mushroom + 3 Thistle + 3 TurnipWorkbench; within cauldron range
The key is not consumed by opening a crypt. Leave it in your inventory and use the gate when the plan above holds. The interior is a separate instance; a portal outside is still your route home, but Scrap iron cannot pass through it under normal portal rules.
Decide before opening the gate
Check
Ready to enter
Return first when
Return route
Portal and safe edge are marked and you know how to reach them.
The portal is inside an active fight, tag has not yet been tested, or route is unknown.
Time and condition
It is daylight, you are Rested, fed, and poison resistance is available.
Night, low food, a damaged kit, or a poison-resistance batch still fermenting.
Inventory
The key, pickaxe, light, and only the supplies needed for this trip are carried.
You are carrying a full load that leaves no room for Scrap iron or a grave recovery.
Treat it as a scouting result, not a failed character. Mark the explored edge and look through another Swamp or deeper area on a later prepared trip; crypt quantity and locations vary by world.
The crypt gate will not open.
Carry the Swamp key in your own inventory, stand at the gate, and use the interaction prompt. The key is reusable; a portal chest does not count if the key is not on you.
Turnip seeds are rare or I lost them after dying.
Keep scanning safe ground on later scouting trips and return seeds immediately when you find them. Once home, use grown turnips to make Seed-turnips before relying on the food recipe.
A crypt is visible across water.
Do not swim to it. Mark the entrance, trace a shallow or land route, and return with stamina and a clear escape route rather than turning the map discovery into a recovery run.
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3:00–3:15 · 15 s1.0: a Sunken Crypt entrance, then the muddy scrap piles inside