Take the guided tour of Studio and tick off your getting-started checklist.

The Studio Tour

Studio comes with two short guided tours. They spotlight the real buttons and panels as they explain them, so you learn the editor by looking at it rather than by reading about it.

The first time you open a project, the Studio tour starts on its own. It runs once — after that it only ever appears when you ask for it.

Taking the tour

WhereWhat it does
Help → Take the tourStarts the Studio tour from the beginning
Help → Map editor tourStarts the map editor tour from the beginning
Take the Studio tour on the getting-started cardSame as Help → Take the tour
Map editor tour on the getting-started cardSame as Help → Map editor tour
Show me on a checklist itemJumps straight to the tour step for that task

You can start a tour from anywhere in Studio. If you are looking at Items or Quests when you start one, Studio takes you back to the map editor first so you can see what each step is pointing at.

Moving through a tour

KeyDoes
Enter or Next step
Previous step
EscLeave the tour

The card also has Back, Next and Skip tour buttons, and the counter in the corner ("3 of 13") tells you how far along you are. Leaving part-way is fine — your place is remembered per project, so you are not starting over if you come back.

A couple of steps ask you to do something, like switching to the Object layer. Do it and the tour moves on by itself; press Next instead if you would rather just keep reading.

What the Studio tour covers

  • Your project — what belongs to it, and where projects are created, opened and given their
starting content
  • The File menu — saving, autosave, World Config, Settings, closing the project
  • World Config — weather and time, the overworld, world events, and the Features tab where
you switch whole systems like guilds, housing, PvP and farming on or off
  • The Database — every content editor in one place
  • Assets & media — sprites, tiles, VFX, sound and your media library
  • Playtest and Dry Run — the full game, or an instant walk-around of the open map
  • Server control, Settings, the AI copilot, Help, and the status bar
It finishes by offering to hand you straight over to the map editor tour.

What the map editor tour covers

  • Your maps — the map tree, folders, creating and opening maps
  • Layers — Floor, Walls, Object, Region and Events, and what belongs on each
  • Brush tools — pencil, rectangle, circle, fill, eraser, eye dropper and the hand
  • The terrain palette and autotiles — how edges, corners and shorelines resolve themselves
  • Biomes — the biome brush, blending, and the biome manager
  • Objects — filtering, placing, footprints and what blocks movement
  • Events — NPCs, chests, portals, triggers, lights and spawn points
  • Where players start — setting and moving the starting location
  • Playtest and Dry Run, saving and autosave, and publishing your changes

The getting-started checklist

The first time you open a map you will see a small Getting started card above the canvas with three things that make a world playable:

ItemTicks itself when
Create a mapYour project has a map — it ticks the moment you have one open
Create a heroYou have at least one character template for players to choose
Play your worldA Playtest or Dry Run has actually launched

You do not tick anything by hand. Each unfinished item has a Show me or Open Characters button that takes you to the right place — Show me launches the tour step that explains the task. The card disappears on its own once all three are done, and the × dismisses it for good if you would rather get on with it. Dismissing it does not stop you replaying the tours from the Help menu.

Good to know

  • Steps you cannot use are skipped. Some controls only exist on the desktop app and some only
in Studio Web. If a step's control is not on your screen, the tour moves past it rather than spotlighting nothing.
  • Progress is per project. Opening a second project gives you its own fresh checklist.
  • The tour never runs on a phone, and it stays out of the way of embedded views.
  • Your place is remembered in this browser. Clearing your browser data, or opening Studio in a
private window or on another machine, is a fresh start.