See...!

'''It's dark, dammit! I can't see anything!'''

Just started the game and found yourself in a place where a few isolated blueish campfires cast dim circles of light or else there is no light at all?

Haven and Hearth has both a night and day cycle and a lunar cycle. Sometimes there is a full moon and it is easy to operate at night. Sometimes there is a crescent moon or no moon at all and it is just about impossible without a light source. It will become light when the moon moves around counter clockwise to the horizon. The darkest part of the night lasts about three hours. If you wait it will get light. But during the night it can be very dark indeed. If you blunder around in the dark you will probably get attacked by animals and not be able to see what you are doing. You will need to light a fire. Find a tree and click on it. If the tree has not been recently harvested it should give you the option of getting branches.

When you have two branches in your inventory you can use them to light a brand. However you will have to have a fire to light. Use five branches in inventory and the Adventure menu to Build Fire.

If you are having trouble finding branches but can find a boulder you can chip stone to build a fireplace. Select branches from your inventory and right click the fireplace to build a fire in the fireplace. If you right click the fireplace it will show how many branches have been loaded into the fireplace, and four empty slots for cooking or processing materials. With the fireplace open use the Adventure menu to Light Fire using two branches from your inventory.

Your stamina will run down while you attempt to light the two branches and turn them into a brand. If you succeed the brand will appear on your tool tip and you can click the fireplace with it to light it. Again this will drain stamina but since the brand burns down quickly you don't want to delay.

If you place the brand in your inventory the brand will go out and turn into ashes.

This will give you some light to explore with. Newbies may find it convenient to have several fires. That way when they start to go out you will still have some light to find the tree and make some more of them. You can also build a torchpost to put your torch in so that you can have light and keep your hands empty. If you have a fireplace you can keep adding branches to the fire to keep it alight.

If you have access to experienced player resources, such as if you have joined a town with a mine there are two other sources of light, both based on candles. Miners often wear mining helmets with a candle so that they can see to work and still have the two hands they need to hold their pick, and candelabras can be made of metal to hold the candles the way the torchpost holds torches.

It is still perfectly possible to see in a mine by building a chain of campfires, if you do not have torches or candles.

For those who have a flat screen monitor, you will find moving the gaming window as far down as possible and looking at the screen from slightly above makes it easier to see when it is dark.

For those who don't want to experience the night and day cycle or stumble around in the dark you can download Pacho's client and use that instead of the default client. Pacho's client has a setting where you can remove the colour filters altogether that create the darkness so that wherever you character is, is permanent day light. There is a link to Pacho's client in the forum.

http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2965

Update: Pacho's client is out of date now so most people use Ender's Client.

FEATURE LIST: All files could be get from here: http://www.mediafire.com/hnh_ender and here(thanks to Phades for granting hosting) - archive with win 32bit and win 64bit clients as well as update archive for those who want to upgrade. For other versions extract all files from update archive into your other client folder. source code could be found at [git://github.com/EnderWiggin/Haven-and-Hearth-client-modified-by-Ender.git git://github.com/EnderWiggin/Haven-and- ... -Ender.git]
 * All Gilbertus features
 * automatic translation of chat messages and runestones into English/Russian powered by Google Translate. Tweaked in options.
 * 2 additional belts - floating, shrinkable, flippable, with tooltips. Can be locked to prevent accidental changes. Hotkeys for the first one is 0-9, and for second one - F1-F12.
 * highlight radius of beehives/mine supports (well, anything with influence radius) when trying to place same thing. E.g. - when placing beehive all beehives show their radius.
 * [x->r] option to toggle highlight radius of beehives/mine supports (well, anything with influence radius). Try to place oject, to activate highlighting of this object for current session.
 * [x->s] option to toggle highlight of hidden objects.
 * CTRL-G shows grid
 * reworked chat. Can be toggled off in options->general
 * reworked audio options.
 * ability to zoom with mouse wheel. Can be toggled in options->camera
 * reworked minimap. Now it floating resizeable window. Can be toggled in Options->General. You can scroll minimap, zoom it, center on player and show grid. Accessible through buttons on minimap panel.
 * added simple haven wiki browser. Accessible through X->W. You can use input field to enter search request or drag icon from lower-right menu to open search results for this item. Left click on link opens in same tab, right click - in new tab.
 * option to always show kin names. Can be toggled in Options->General
 * added ability to make screenshots by pressing END key. Can be configured in Options->General

INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS: http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=14575&start=1890#p271391

HOW TO GET AN API KEY FOR TRANSLATOR: http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=20558#p247337