The Survivalists: How To Train Your Monkeys To Fight, Craft And Gather For You

In The Survivalists, it’s your job to make a deserted island liveable again. This includes gathering materials for a home base, defeating aggressive enemies and foraging for supplies. You’ll need a steady stream of timber, pebbles and other materials to make life on the island worthwhile but there’s only so many hours in a day. You’ll need to balance this hunter-gatherer lifestyle with sleeping, eating and defending yourself from predators. Luckily, The Survivalists has a very nifty way of solving the everyday struggles of living: trainable monkeys.

As you travel through the islands of The Survivalists, you’ll come across a bunch of wandering monkeys. In exchange for a Monkey Meal (1 x petals, 1 x berries, 1 x makeshift bowl crafted by hand and via campfire) they’ll join your team. Collect enough monkeys and you’ll have a killer army for crafting, fighting or gathering. But before any of that, they’ll need to be trained.

Here’s the best way to train your monkeys to fight:

• Gather at least two weapons
• Press ZR on the Switch (or the equivalent button on other consoles) to open the monkey training menu
• Throw a weapon to your chosen monkey with Y (or the equivalent button)
• Press X (or the equivalent button) to throw a banana to your chosen monkey — they’ll mimic your actions for the next 30 seconds
• Approach your chosen target (a monster camp or a wandering animal)
• Attack this animal — your monkey will watch for a moment, then attack alongside you
• Repeat this process for all your monkeys until they all know how to fight 

For other tasks like crafting and foraging, repea the same process. You’ll need at least two of each tool to equip yourself and your monkeys. By training your monkeys, you can take some of the more menial tasks out of the game, protect yourself while you’re gathering materials and stay safe on each island.

If you lose your monkeys (either by dying or leaving them on an island) you’ll need to retrain them by going through this process again.

Whether you’re just heading out to look for more raw material, taking down a monster army or travelling with mates, you should always travel with the maximum number of monkeys the game allows you. In multiplayer, you’ll be limited to just five companion monkeys but it’s mostly a free-for-all when you’re travelling on your own.

Go forth and conquer. Long live the monkey army.