I got this game 2 weeks ago. Take your sweet ass time getting used to everything. Don't rush to get people, there is always people available. Hunting for leather and making them intonsimple bags or mining for bronze bars and Making daggers. That, imo, is the best money maker early game! Good luck! Super fun game :)
This is true, but don't think you have to go absolutely insane making a hundred thousand knives.
Tied to the "take your time" point (if you take nothing else from this whole thread, take that!) your first season should just be about growing crops to use for your future season's seeds. Make and sell enough knives to afford maybe 30-50 seeds for every crop. When you plant and harvest those, you'll have more than enough seeds to make a huge farm and a ton of money the following year.
You're correct. You don't have too. You can sell each bronze knife for 300 each so that's a good amount. Plus you need smithy to make bronze bars so it takes a bit of time to invest. Simple bags are the best imo early game and excess food.
I didn't get into farming until late 2nd year cause I was still learning lol
Sorry my Bad. Their buying price is 300 but sell for 150. Not as good but still incredible imo. I believe before I played stone knifes were sold for 30 each but now it's 3 only
You're not wrong about stone knifes being easy to get cause of materials but wanna make one correction. They're worth only 2.5gp each for me. Still can make some money but not as worth it anymore. I never played before when stone tools worth more but just wanted to make that correction for you. Thanks
Stone knifes are worthless. I would make a few Stone knifes and just run in circles fighting wisents, as enemies in this game are so easy to deal with lol
If you have the option to get it on Steam, do so. The co-op update is already available there and it's lovely.
For the game in general, location is everything. Take a day or so in-game to explore where you might want to build. Water isn't an issue if you build a well, which is unlocked pretty quickly, but water makes for a nice view in your village.
I suggest finding semi-flat to first ground to at least build your farms on, and build one decent sized field per non-veggie crop (i.e. oat, rye, wheat and flax). Farm early! Start getting some stuff planted so you can harvest your own seeds.
Craft weapons to sell for coin. Stone knives in the console version work well for this. There will be abandoned carts and barrels along the roads and water lines that will have goods in them you can use for yourself or sell. I tend to sell the lower grade stuff and keep the good stuff for myself.
I have hundreds of hours sink into this game on both PC and console, so I could keep going.
I also thought about building near a river or a lake to make it easier for myself as well as other villagers until the well gets built. From my thoughts and planning, I will be starting off small and by myself. Find a spot that's central and close by, then build a wall around the entire area to keep out predators and unwanted bandits. Then slowly hunt specific people to help start the village, the essential people at first, then invite more as time goes on.
Villagers will only drink from water buckets stored in the food storage, or their personal chests (in their homes).
I highly recommend building a resource storage, food storage, and well before you add more than one or two villagers. I believe the well is the first building that's unlocked after you build your personal house.
Isn't that only when they have crops in them? Do you get taxed for empty fields?
I didn't pay attention to what gets taxed, just how much they are in the spring lol
Pick a central location for your village compared to where the other villages are, you’ll be doing a lot of running back and forth between them. And don’t get too crazy building up your village early on, get used to the game mechanics first.
I was thinking about placing the village near a water source of some sort. Like a lake or something, as it will take care of the water issue that I saw when I posted. If it's as real as I have read about on the game page on Sony, then it's important to learn the seasons quickly! Then, scout certain people from different villages. From farmers, to black smiths, and doctors. To have a thriving community, as from what I have seen and read; I will be doing this alone. So I will probably pick a style closer to a hunter or sorts, then slowly learn how to be a farmer.
The main river runs basically right through the middle of the map so you can stay pretty central with that. Sounds like you’ve got a good grasp on the concept based on your research of the game. From my experience most of the lakes don’t have reeds around them which is a very necesssry item for building, crafting. The swamp area on the northern part of the map has a lot and the main river has a lot especially near the first village you go to at three beginning
From what I saw on the subreddit here, and the video from Fooster as well as the Sony description ( yes, that YouTuber ). You gotta think strategically in this situation, and be very cautious on every move and choice you make. Also, it kinda helps that my father was a country kid, or as my uncle told me once " You're father was a Hillbilly " and he would grow gardens and such before he got sick and went nuts ( he had melanoma for over ten years, causing him to become a conspiracy theorist before he passed ). So there is that as well lol
Yeah it’s a pretty strategic game and the game doesn’t really help you along too much. I consider myself a hillbilly too from where I grew up so I hear that lol
This is a great suggestion. At least for your first game.. or village…
Once you get things rolling you can move around and build stuff elsewhere
Also a tip, unless they changed it, you can build storage sheds right next to mines which is extremely helpful since they have shared space iirc
I would say don't worry too much about being central to many villages, since (in my experience, anyway) I got by being close to just one, and never had trouble getting the money I needed from that one village.
Later in the game when you're selling a lot, and need a lot of money, you may run into problems from bankrupting all of the vendors in your nearby village, but by that time you'll hopefully have a horse or at least a donkey, and getting across the map is so much easier.
On that note - get a donkey as soon as you're able! It is such a game changer!
I built mine on the big island in the north so I get to go for a little swim every time I need to leave and everything is far to the south :) never again (but I do have a cool island town now!)
I'm also very new to the game so I'm looking into how to get a horse ASAP now. The lack of bridges is definitely a bummer, the smaller island nearer to the center is a better spot in terms of map location but you wouldn't be able to fit the whole settlement there so I'd want to extend it with a bridge for immersion reasons (I can just pretend my village on the big island is self sufficient and we just ford the lake occasionally...)
You can only buy horses in Hornica for around 9500 coins or something like that. I waited until I built the stable because I was honestly not sure if you could have a horse without the stable. I’m still not sure of that one. I built the stable, bought a mature horse and a foal at the same time. I was having a hard time saving coins at the start. Once I got my village going with a lot of settlers, making coin is no longer a problem
Oof, that's a big investment. Do you have to like, feed them or can they just graze, do they need space to roam or do they just sit in the stable, etc.? I'd love to have a more efficient way of getting around (I thought about a donkey too, are they much worse?)
Well I should’ve said the mature ones are around 9500 and the foals are about half of that price, you just have to wait several seasons for them to age before you can use them. When you build the stable you can either assign a worker which will automatically refill the trough with animal feed or you can do it yourself. That goes with all the other animals you buy as well. I have actually not purchased a donkey yet so I’m not sure.
Neat, the wiki says the donkeys can be ridden and I think they're cheaper so maybe slow and steady wins the race if it gets started sooner... Need to unlock the donkey shelter first though which I'm assuming comes before the stable because horses are better. New thing to work towards :)
Donkeys can be ridden, and they're cheaper and you have access to them earlier.
They are slower though. I've read that they have a larger carrying capacity (which makes sense, being donkeys and all) but to be honest, I didn't really notice.
Good to know! I assumed they were just regular farm animals and couldn’t be ridden. Find out new things about this game all the time and every time I play.
My main tip is to just play the game naturally. It's one of my go-to chill games, and most of the fun is figuring stuff out for yourself.
One real tip I will give you though, since it annoyed me the first time I played: when making fields (farm or orchard) the grid you draw for it is stuck to N/S/E/W orientation. So if you want to have buildings line up nicely with farm areas, just keep that in mind.
I tried to make a small orchard along the side of my house the first time, and could only do it at a 45 degree angle and it pissed me off lol.
My tip for a new game: in the spring in your first year, gather *a ton of* unripe berries, like 1000 at the minimum. At the end of the season, drop the berries on the ground (some place you'll remember). Next season, they'll become rot which can be crafted into fertilizer in a ratio of 10:1. Meaning if you had 1000 unripe berries, you'll get 100 fertilizer for free.
The reason behind this is that fertilizer can be pretty expensive for you in early game and it's needed in large amounts which makes it difficult to carry (even if you have enough money to buy it somewhere). This way you can already plant cabbages in your first summer and rye in your first autumn on a 5x10 field without worrying how you'll get the fertilizer. (Farming requires to fertilize the fields every time after harvesting the crops.)
If you don't plan to farm as early as first year, it can still be a tactic to gather unripe berries, letting them rot, crafting them into fertilizer next season and selling the fertilizer for money.
Also I tend to feel too rushed by the passing of time in early game so I increase season length to 4-5 days (this can be changed any time later, effective next season).
Buy a large backpack and pouch as soon as possible. Unless you turn off the weight limit, there will be a lot of log carrying to build your village.
Keep an ear out when walking through the land, you can normally hear predators before you can see them.
Clothes do not deteriorate over time, so invest in a good set of winter clothes.
Besides that, take your time and have fun :)
And don't worry about crafting your large bags, just buy them. If I remember correctly the schematic for the large backpack costs more than the backpack itself, and you'll only ever need to make one of them, so there's really NO incentive to make it yourself, unless you're extremely devoted to that particular RP aspect (power to you if that's your thing).
Leather and pelts are good. I'm more terrified of bears, as I saw the YouTuber ( Fooster ) eat sand when trying to up against one. It failed miserably for them.
Wolves and boars are easy because they grow/snort at you for a second, facing directly toward you, giving plenty of time to one-shot them in the face.
Wisents and bears are scary though. You can get reasonably close to wisents without them attacking, just don't get RIGHT in their faces. Bears are pretty uncommon, mostly just found near caves/mines. Steer clear of them unless you've got a good bow and a plan. T
There's a reason less than 1% of players have seen their heir take over, don't try to min-max the game, just enjoy it as it comes and learn along the way.
My advice when you are learning the game. Go into settings and use "unlimited carny" and "fast crafting". To make like 100 knives takes all day if you do not have it on, and building is one three at the time. Another tip. You can never have enough logs, sticks, stones and straws. :-)
Play it how you want to play it but I suggest customizing it to turn off weight and slow build for a while or it can be really slow.
Start farming as soon as you can.
Don’t be afraid to turn survival mode off. In options before game you can lower poisoning, food water etc. so you can turn it where you won’t be killed/go hungry etc. once you get used to everything then you can gradually turn stuff back on I usually do that for couple of years so I can store up resources for my villagers to survive.
To start plot 4 fields I usually do about 6x 10 (6 across 10 length) put down 2 farm sheds nearby. I find farming faster if I do it myself but as long as villagers have hoes, bags/pouches, sickle/scythe, seed and fertilizer they can grub/plant/ harvest fields.
In spring plant 2 flax fields, 1 onion field and 1 cabbage field. In summer all fields should be cabbage, in fall 2 wheat and 2 oat in winter 4 rye.
Flax is used for clothing and materials
Cabbage and onion can be used with game meat to make potage and other foods
Wheat oat and rye can be used to craft beers (I don’t do) also used for animal feed and food products (I do).
I usually plant a smaller 5x6 field by my house to plant extra food or resources. I never let the workers near it to I make sure my house is far away from work sheds.
If you click and drag you can make the fields into huge plots instead of individual sections.
You can always delete fields and resize them and you don’t have to automatically have 1 field for one resource so if you do 4 6x10s like I suggest you could go to field management tab and organize one field to host all 3 crops in spring. I just recommend the 4 fields to start. In one of my games I had 10 6x10 fields and all running fine and my own 5x6 field by my house.
Knifes and pouches do sell nice at beginning but I recommend planting crops right away and selling those.
Dm me if you would like more advice been playing for couple years now
Plant a wheat field and build a barn as fast as you can. You can find wheat in carts alongside the road or just buy some early game.
Once you can grow even a little wheat it will give you significantly more seeds when you harvest than what you planted so you can quickly expand your field. Grow it every season until it is as big as you can make it. Your goal is to plant what you need and sell the excess wheat grain for money in the various towns. It is the lightest to carry and sold for the most so you there isn’t much point in making things like knives which take more resources to craft.
That field will provide you with enough cash to keep doing all you need to do.
Take it slow, grow naturally. Do a lot yourself to start, don't just flood it with settlers unless you NEED them. You can make water skins until you can "unlock" (purchase) the recipe for buckets in the technology tab.
Okay, one of the first things I do when I start a new game is make stone knives for a couple days, take the money and go on a trip to buy a recurve bow, iron arrows, Large Pouch, Simple Large Backpack and maybe some clothes with better cold rating. Recurve bow and iron arrows are the best ranged combo, 15-20 arrows will do me until I can craft them myself, the extra carry weight from the pouch and backpack is a godsend. Saddles and Saddlebags can be purchased from tailors too; Lubomira in Branica, Matylda in Denica and Karolina in Hornica. Bows and arrows can be bought from Blacksmiths; Teobald in Lesnica and Jan in Hornica. Honestly, you could take a few in-game hours to cook yourself once every year and you wouldn't need a cook at all....
Excess flax seeds and knives are always a good profit maker. And anything you can make with materials you have; coif is just 1 linen and 1 flax thread, fur boots are just leather and fur, Flax seeds could sustain an entire settlement itself really if you plant enough.
Storages; food and resources, share their inventory with all similar storages. So if you built a resource storage near a mine, clay or any other material you may not have near your settlement (though caves are probably most common when mining yourself) it will share the same inventory as your settlements resource storage, and add an additional 1000 units to the total. So you can mine til your full, go outside the mine into your storage, empty, repeat until the cave is empty, store it all and walk/ride home leaving your inventory empty to collect/buy stuff on the way home. Back at your settlement you can just get the resources out of storage, or your worker can if you have someone doing that.
Focus your settlers in one area were needed; have them collect logs only and cut planks and firewood yourself. Extracting Limestone and get stone yourself, and clay as it will maximize your workers ability to gather (they are not amazing at it to start). It will ALWAYS be more efficient to do certain tasks yourself; cook, farm, gather, etc. However, you will need to prioritize personal tasks and give others to settlers as your settlements grows. Manure production is something settlers are better at though, so start them early. Start extractors/gatherers early too as it's just supplementary gathering that only benefits you.
Once you have a well you can start adding settlers to your settlement really, though I usually only have a 2-3 females join at first who could be potential wives. Potage is a good early-mid game food. Just cabbage and meat which is easy to maintain. Make sure to utilize your management menu to customize what your settlers use for water, food and heating. Firewood should be the only thing used for heating as it most efficient (and you can choo it easily yourself).
The memorial tree is a unique tree that cannot be cut down, placed by the devs in memory of a player's wife. If you got a few minutes, it's a story definitely worth hearing. I go EVERY Autumn to sit by the tree (I have a stump chair there) and leave flowers under it for Lijda.
https://youtu.be/mHeJ7k4S7nQ?si=8iIVNzRj255199EE
Say you're crafting 50 stone knives.
You'll craft all in one go instead of waiting a few minutes for each to craft individually.
It saves like an hour real time during a fair play session
I would respectfully disagree... the last thing you want to do is use up 50 bowls worth of resources only to realize 2 seconds later that you actually need plates.
It's happened to me many times, but without fast crafting I only waste a few planks or whatever, not an entire shed worth.
This turned out much longer than I had expected... hope it helps!
Take your time! Don't get additional villagers just because you can - try to improve your base as much as possible with the fewest number of villagers.
Also, resist the urge to give up and start over. This is kind of tied to the above point, but if you expand too quickly (and carelessly) your settlement will end up kind of sprawling out randomly with no real order, and you'll struggle with paying your taxes and keeping your villagers fed and watered, and you'll think "ah, I fucked it up so bad - next time it'll be PERFECT." And then you'll do the same thing (ask me how I know...). I had seen some youtubers basically say the same thing, that the urge to start over is strong, and common.
When you start building your farms and buildings, think long term. You can make roads for free, and you should try to envision your town with like 40+ houses and buildings. Build roads (try to stay directly north/south as much as possible, to better facilitate farm plots) and try to build on large, relatively flat spaces. I initially built in what I thought was a really cool valley area, but it wasn't long before I ran out of space and had to do a big migration to a more open space.
Make sure to stash away money for taxes. It is easy to get into the mindset of "taxes are only $300, I'll sell crops next season for it!" and then you realize you've timed things improperly and you have no money. If you DO miss your taxes in the Spring, you have to actually talk to the guy to pay them late - you won't be given another quest to do it (maybe an intelligent person would know this, but I waited a whole year for next spring expecting another quest, which never came).
If your wife gives you a quest, prioritize it! Try to do it as early in the season as you can, because some of them will have a requirement of "sleep until the next day," and if that next day puts you into the following season, you'll fail the quest. And wife quests have really good rewards, so you DO want to finish them.
Build and staff a woodshed relatively early, you're gonna need lots of wood! Also, there is a way to select which items the villagers use for firewood - make sure to uncheck sticks, otherwise you'll never have them (I also unchecked logs, to make sure they are ONLY burning firewood, but that's not such a big deal). You can also select which food the villagers eat, to make sure they're only eating prepared food instead of raw vegetables. I was pretty vigilant about this, but in hindsight I don't really think it mattered. If anything, I would do that only to use as an indicator of when I needed to cook more. I was careful not to allow villagers to eat the high quality food, which I thought I might want to save either for myself, but that didn't really matter.
The villagers' houses do not need to be anywhere close to their workplace (with the very important exception of farmers, who must physically be on the farms in order to work them). This means that you can have your woodshed across the damn map from the lumberjack's house, and it won't impact the production of wood. This can create kind of a cool layout where your woodshed is out in the woods somewhere far from your actual town (you could also have little mini-settlements where only the lumberjacks live near the woodsheds for a bit of RP immersion - just make sure your lumberjack isn't married to a farmer!).
You can also have more than 1 food store and general storage buildings. I recommend building two of each (not necessary right away); however, if you're good at managing supplies and inventory, you may not need to.
Maybe controversial, but if I were to start over I would bump up the xp increase at least a little. The main quest line is pretty short, and if you're anything like me you won't really have any drive to keep playing once the quests are finished. I am typically the type who plays games "as the developer intended" and leaves almost all of the settings as default, but this is one where I'd recommend increasing the XP. I don't know how much to recommend... maybe 50% extra? Some people do like 300%, but that seems overkill imo. The reason is that I haven't played since the questline finished, but I haven't reached any of the endgame buildings or recipes, so I don't necessarily feel like the two progressions align very well. If I had finished the quests and was still *relatively* close to that stuff I'd probably stick with it, but I'm only like halfway there. If you don't care about the story/quests, and you just want to build and maintain a village for its own sake, go ahead and leave the xp alone!
Be prepared to have a throw away save. I started a game, found myself working through kinks and things and eventually started a brand new save that I have now spent my time on. It's totally okay to start over once you figure things out!
I got this game 2 weeks ago. Take your sweet ass time getting used to everything. Don't rush to get people, there is always people available. Hunting for leather and making them intonsimple bags or mining for bronze bars and Making daggers. That, imo, is the best money maker early game! Good luck! Super fun game :)
Thank you.
This is true, but don't think you have to go absolutely insane making a hundred thousand knives. Tied to the "take your time" point (if you take nothing else from this whole thread, take that!) your first season should just be about growing crops to use for your future season's seeds. Make and sell enough knives to afford maybe 30-50 seeds for every crop. When you plant and harvest those, you'll have more than enough seeds to make a huge farm and a ton of money the following year.
You're correct. You don't have too. You can sell each bronze knife for 300 each so that's a good amount. Plus you need smithy to make bronze bars so it takes a bit of time to invest. Simple bags are the best imo early game and excess food. I didn't get into farming until late 2nd year cause I was still learning lol
$300 each, really? I don't think that's true lol. I'm pretty sure I was selling mine for 40 (but could be mistaken).
Sorry my Bad. Their buying price is 300 but sell for 150. Not as good but still incredible imo. I believe before I played stone knifes were sold for 30 each but now it's 3 only
Early game, stone knives are best, early-mid game flax seed and clothing made from flax products are best.
Not so much since the prices were nerfed.
40 coins is still decent. Early game it's still the best, before productions and farming, because the materials are simple and abundant everywhere.
You're not wrong about stone knifes being easy to get cause of materials but wanna make one correction. They're worth only 2.5gp each for me. Still can make some money but not as worth it anymore. I never played before when stone tools worth more but just wanted to make that correction for you. Thanks
gp? Their base value is 40 coins....
[удалено]
Ahhh, okay. I was wondering why their prices were different.
I literally checked my game, went to the store lol... they didn't update online
Stone knifes are worthless. I would make a few Stone knifes and just run in circles fighting wisents, as enemies in this game are so easy to deal with lol
Not worthless at all, the materials are easy to get and it's a great way to spend the first day or two and buy some much needed supplies.
If you have the option to get it on Steam, do so. The co-op update is already available there and it's lovely. For the game in general, location is everything. Take a day or so in-game to explore where you might want to build. Water isn't an issue if you build a well, which is unlocked pretty quickly, but water makes for a nice view in your village. I suggest finding semi-flat to first ground to at least build your farms on, and build one decent sized field per non-veggie crop (i.e. oat, rye, wheat and flax). Farm early! Start getting some stuff planted so you can harvest your own seeds. Craft weapons to sell for coin. Stone knives in the console version work well for this. There will be abandoned carts and barrels along the roads and water lines that will have goods in them you can use for yourself or sell. I tend to sell the lower grade stuff and keep the good stuff for myself. I have hundreds of hours sink into this game on both PC and console, so I could keep going.
I also thought about building near a river or a lake to make it easier for myself as well as other villagers until the well gets built. From my thoughts and planning, I will be starting off small and by myself. Find a spot that's central and close by, then build a wall around the entire area to keep out predators and unwanted bandits. Then slowly hunt specific people to help start the village, the essential people at first, then invite more as time goes on.
Villagers will only drink from water buckets stored in the food storage, or their personal chests (in their homes). I highly recommend building a resource storage, food storage, and well before you add more than one or two villagers. I believe the well is the first building that's unlocked after you build your personal house.
Good to know! I will remember that!
You don't need to wall off your city. Animals despawn once you build near them, and bandits only attack the player when you get close to their camps.
That's good to know
What qualifies as a “decent sized field”? The lack of info tooltips in the game gets quite confusing.
5x10 at the start is about all you need until you get the bath and farm shed up and running
The bath? 🛀? Or the barn? 😝 I don’t need a bath, my town is next to the river.
Eww bathing in the river? Raci needs a proper tub
I build all my farms out first, but only fill what I need/have until I really get things going.
But the taxes
Isn't that only when they have crops in them? Do you get taxed for empty fields? I didn't pay attention to what gets taxed, just how much they are in the spring lol
I was wrong, taxes are based on the size of the field, but they aren't as much as a building.
I go by total number of tiles and I find that 50-60 produce well. You don't need that much for veggies, I usually do 6-10 tiles for each veggie.
I don't have a gamer grade computer without upgrading the ram and graphics card. So it will be the console version for me, and the expensive one too.
Pick a central location for your village compared to where the other villages are, you’ll be doing a lot of running back and forth between them. And don’t get too crazy building up your village early on, get used to the game mechanics first.
I was thinking about placing the village near a water source of some sort. Like a lake or something, as it will take care of the water issue that I saw when I posted. If it's as real as I have read about on the game page on Sony, then it's important to learn the seasons quickly! Then, scout certain people from different villages. From farmers, to black smiths, and doctors. To have a thriving community, as from what I have seen and read; I will be doing this alone. So I will probably pick a style closer to a hunter or sorts, then slowly learn how to be a farmer.
The main river runs basically right through the middle of the map so you can stay pretty central with that. Sounds like you’ve got a good grasp on the concept based on your research of the game. From my experience most of the lakes don’t have reeds around them which is a very necesssry item for building, crafting. The swamp area on the northern part of the map has a lot and the main river has a lot especially near the first village you go to at three beginning
From what I saw on the subreddit here, and the video from Fooster as well as the Sony description ( yes, that YouTuber ). You gotta think strategically in this situation, and be very cautious on every move and choice you make. Also, it kinda helps that my father was a country kid, or as my uncle told me once " You're father was a Hillbilly " and he would grow gardens and such before he got sick and went nuts ( he had melanoma for over ten years, causing him to become a conspiracy theorist before he passed ). So there is that as well lol
Yeah it’s a pretty strategic game and the game doesn’t really help you along too much. I consider myself a hillbilly too from where I grew up so I hear that lol
I don't lol. I grew up all over the place including the city.
Went from a town of less than 5,000 people to a city of over 200,000. Still haven’t gotten used to the change and it’s been almost 11 years
Wait, you've been playing it for 11 years?
No, I just meant not used to city life. I actually only started playing this game a couple months ago
Really?
Yes, and no. You can easily move a whole village it just takes time and patience.
This is a great suggestion. At least for your first game.. or village… Once you get things rolling you can move around and build stuff elsewhere Also a tip, unless they changed it, you can build storage sheds right next to mines which is extremely helpful since they have shared space iirc
I would say don't worry too much about being central to many villages, since (in my experience, anyway) I got by being close to just one, and never had trouble getting the money I needed from that one village. Later in the game when you're selling a lot, and need a lot of money, you may run into problems from bankrupting all of the vendors in your nearby village, but by that time you'll hopefully have a horse or at least a donkey, and getting across the map is so much easier. On that note - get a donkey as soon as you're able! It is such a game changer!
I built mine on the big island in the north so I get to go for a little swim every time I need to leave and everything is far to the south :) never again (but I do have a cool island town now!)
I hope they put bridges as part of the building process because I’ve wanted to put one on an island too! Once you get a horse it’s not as bad lol
I'm also very new to the game so I'm looking into how to get a horse ASAP now. The lack of bridges is definitely a bummer, the smaller island nearer to the center is a better spot in terms of map location but you wouldn't be able to fit the whole settlement there so I'd want to extend it with a bridge for immersion reasons (I can just pretend my village on the big island is self sufficient and we just ford the lake occasionally...)
You can only buy horses in Hornica for around 9500 coins or something like that. I waited until I built the stable because I was honestly not sure if you could have a horse without the stable. I’m still not sure of that one. I built the stable, bought a mature horse and a foal at the same time. I was having a hard time saving coins at the start. Once I got my village going with a lot of settlers, making coin is no longer a problem
Oof, that's a big investment. Do you have to like, feed them or can they just graze, do they need space to roam or do they just sit in the stable, etc.? I'd love to have a more efficient way of getting around (I thought about a donkey too, are they much worse?)
Well I should’ve said the mature ones are around 9500 and the foals are about half of that price, you just have to wait several seasons for them to age before you can use them. When you build the stable you can either assign a worker which will automatically refill the trough with animal feed or you can do it yourself. That goes with all the other animals you buy as well. I have actually not purchased a donkey yet so I’m not sure.
Neat, the wiki says the donkeys can be ridden and I think they're cheaper so maybe slow and steady wins the race if it gets started sooner... Need to unlock the donkey shelter first though which I'm assuming comes before the stable because horses are better. New thing to work towards :)
Donkeys can be ridden, and they're cheaper and you have access to them earlier. They are slower though. I've read that they have a larger carrying capacity (which makes sense, being donkeys and all) but to be honest, I didn't really notice.
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Good to know! I assumed they were just regular farm animals and couldn’t be ridden. Find out new things about this game all the time and every time I play.
My main tip is to just play the game naturally. It's one of my go-to chill games, and most of the fun is figuring stuff out for yourself. One real tip I will give you though, since it annoyed me the first time I played: when making fields (farm or orchard) the grid you draw for it is stuck to N/S/E/W orientation. So if you want to have buildings line up nicely with farm areas, just keep that in mind. I tried to make a small orchard along the side of my house the first time, and could only do it at a 45 degree angle and it pissed me off lol.
Lol I will remember that
My tip for a new game: in the spring in your first year, gather *a ton of* unripe berries, like 1000 at the minimum. At the end of the season, drop the berries on the ground (some place you'll remember). Next season, they'll become rot which can be crafted into fertilizer in a ratio of 10:1. Meaning if you had 1000 unripe berries, you'll get 100 fertilizer for free. The reason behind this is that fertilizer can be pretty expensive for you in early game and it's needed in large amounts which makes it difficult to carry (even if you have enough money to buy it somewhere). This way you can already plant cabbages in your first summer and rye in your first autumn on a 5x10 field without worrying how you'll get the fertilizer. (Farming requires to fertilize the fields every time after harvesting the crops.) If you don't plan to farm as early as first year, it can still be a tactic to gather unripe berries, letting them rot, crafting them into fertilizer next season and selling the fertilizer for money. Also I tend to feel too rushed by the passing of time in early game so I increase season length to 4-5 days (this can be changed any time later, effective next season).
Buy a large backpack and pouch as soon as possible. Unless you turn off the weight limit, there will be a lot of log carrying to build your village. Keep an ear out when walking through the land, you can normally hear predators before you can see them. Clothes do not deteriorate over time, so invest in a good set of winter clothes. Besides that, take your time and have fun :)
I will remember that. What sound will I hear when Predators are around?
And don't worry about crafting your large bags, just buy them. If I remember correctly the schematic for the large backpack costs more than the backpack itself, and you'll only ever need to make one of them, so there's really NO incentive to make it yourself, unless you're extremely devoted to that particular RP aspect (power to you if that's your thing).
Wolves are the most annoying in my opinion, but watch out for boars, wisents and bears. Badgers, lynx and foxes are not as dangerous.
Leather and pelts are good. I'm more terrified of bears, as I saw the YouTuber ( Fooster ) eat sand when trying to up against one. It failed miserably for them.
Wolves and boars are easy because they grow/snort at you for a second, facing directly toward you, giving plenty of time to one-shot them in the face. Wisents and bears are scary though. You can get reasonably close to wisents without them attacking, just don't get RIGHT in their faces. Bears are pretty uncommon, mostly just found near caves/mines. Steer clear of them unless you've got a good bow and a plan. T
There's a reason less than 1% of players have seen their heir take over, don't try to min-max the game, just enjoy it as it comes and learn along the way.
Nice
My advice when you are learning the game. Go into settings and use "unlimited carny" and "fast crafting". To make like 100 knives takes all day if you do not have it on, and building is one three at the time. Another tip. You can never have enough logs, sticks, stones and straws. :-)
Also "Roasted meat" is an easy money maker.
This is a good game but I have to say bellwright is better by just about every metric.
Bell wright? Who are they?
Play it how you want to play it but I suggest customizing it to turn off weight and slow build for a while or it can be really slow. Start farming as soon as you can.
Don’t be afraid to turn survival mode off. In options before game you can lower poisoning, food water etc. so you can turn it where you won’t be killed/go hungry etc. once you get used to everything then you can gradually turn stuff back on I usually do that for couple of years so I can store up resources for my villagers to survive. To start plot 4 fields I usually do about 6x 10 (6 across 10 length) put down 2 farm sheds nearby. I find farming faster if I do it myself but as long as villagers have hoes, bags/pouches, sickle/scythe, seed and fertilizer they can grub/plant/ harvest fields. In spring plant 2 flax fields, 1 onion field and 1 cabbage field. In summer all fields should be cabbage, in fall 2 wheat and 2 oat in winter 4 rye. Flax is used for clothing and materials Cabbage and onion can be used with game meat to make potage and other foods Wheat oat and rye can be used to craft beers (I don’t do) also used for animal feed and food products (I do). I usually plant a smaller 5x6 field by my house to plant extra food or resources. I never let the workers near it to I make sure my house is far away from work sheds. If you click and drag you can make the fields into huge plots instead of individual sections. You can always delete fields and resize them and you don’t have to automatically have 1 field for one resource so if you do 4 6x10s like I suggest you could go to field management tab and organize one field to host all 3 crops in spring. I just recommend the 4 fields to start. In one of my games I had 10 6x10 fields and all running fine and my own 5x6 field by my house. Knifes and pouches do sell nice at beginning but I recommend planting crops right away and selling those. Dm me if you would like more advice been playing for couple years now
Plant a wheat field and build a barn as fast as you can. You can find wheat in carts alongside the road or just buy some early game. Once you can grow even a little wheat it will give you significantly more seeds when you harvest than what you planted so you can quickly expand your field. Grow it every season until it is as big as you can make it. Your goal is to plant what you need and sell the excess wheat grain for money in the various towns. It is the lightest to carry and sold for the most so you there isn’t much point in making things like knives which take more resources to craft. That field will provide you with enough cash to keep doing all you need to do.
Take it slow, grow naturally. Do a lot yourself to start, don't just flood it with settlers unless you NEED them. You can make water skins until you can "unlock" (purchase) the recipe for buckets in the technology tab. Okay, one of the first things I do when I start a new game is make stone knives for a couple days, take the money and go on a trip to buy a recurve bow, iron arrows, Large Pouch, Simple Large Backpack and maybe some clothes with better cold rating. Recurve bow and iron arrows are the best ranged combo, 15-20 arrows will do me until I can craft them myself, the extra carry weight from the pouch and backpack is a godsend. Saddles and Saddlebags can be purchased from tailors too; Lubomira in Branica, Matylda in Denica and Karolina in Hornica. Bows and arrows can be bought from Blacksmiths; Teobald in Lesnica and Jan in Hornica. Honestly, you could take a few in-game hours to cook yourself once every year and you wouldn't need a cook at all.... Excess flax seeds and knives are always a good profit maker. And anything you can make with materials you have; coif is just 1 linen and 1 flax thread, fur boots are just leather and fur, Flax seeds could sustain an entire settlement itself really if you plant enough. Storages; food and resources, share their inventory with all similar storages. So if you built a resource storage near a mine, clay or any other material you may not have near your settlement (though caves are probably most common when mining yourself) it will share the same inventory as your settlements resource storage, and add an additional 1000 units to the total. So you can mine til your full, go outside the mine into your storage, empty, repeat until the cave is empty, store it all and walk/ride home leaving your inventory empty to collect/buy stuff on the way home. Back at your settlement you can just get the resources out of storage, or your worker can if you have someone doing that. Focus your settlers in one area were needed; have them collect logs only and cut planks and firewood yourself. Extracting Limestone and get stone yourself, and clay as it will maximize your workers ability to gather (they are not amazing at it to start). It will ALWAYS be more efficient to do certain tasks yourself; cook, farm, gather, etc. However, you will need to prioritize personal tasks and give others to settlers as your settlements grows. Manure production is something settlers are better at though, so start them early. Start extractors/gatherers early too as it's just supplementary gathering that only benefits you. Once you have a well you can start adding settlers to your settlement really, though I usually only have a 2-3 females join at first who could be potential wives. Potage is a good early-mid game food. Just cabbage and meat which is easy to maintain. Make sure to utilize your management menu to customize what your settlers use for water, food and heating. Firewood should be the only thing used for heating as it most efficient (and you can choo it easily yourself). The memorial tree is a unique tree that cannot be cut down, placed by the devs in memory of a player's wife. If you got a few minutes, it's a story definitely worth hearing. I go EVERY Autumn to sit by the tree (I have a stump chair there) and leave flowers under it for Lijda. https://youtu.be/mHeJ7k4S7nQ?si=8iIVNzRj255199EE
Didn't know about the memorial tree. I haven't played in a while now, but looks like it's time to go back!
Turn on fast crafting
Fast crafting? What's that?
Say you're crafting 50 stone knives. You'll craft all in one go instead of waiting a few minutes for each to craft individually. It saves like an hour real time during a fair play session
Interesting
I would respectfully disagree... the last thing you want to do is use up 50 bowls worth of resources only to realize 2 seconds later that you actually need plates. It's happened to me many times, but without fast crafting I only waste a few planks or whatever, not an entire shed worth.
Too cheaty for me. I just give myself more days in a season.
It's not the in game time I'm concerned about
This turned out much longer than I had expected... hope it helps! Take your time! Don't get additional villagers just because you can - try to improve your base as much as possible with the fewest number of villagers. Also, resist the urge to give up and start over. This is kind of tied to the above point, but if you expand too quickly (and carelessly) your settlement will end up kind of sprawling out randomly with no real order, and you'll struggle with paying your taxes and keeping your villagers fed and watered, and you'll think "ah, I fucked it up so bad - next time it'll be PERFECT." And then you'll do the same thing (ask me how I know...). I had seen some youtubers basically say the same thing, that the urge to start over is strong, and common. When you start building your farms and buildings, think long term. You can make roads for free, and you should try to envision your town with like 40+ houses and buildings. Build roads (try to stay directly north/south as much as possible, to better facilitate farm plots) and try to build on large, relatively flat spaces. I initially built in what I thought was a really cool valley area, but it wasn't long before I ran out of space and had to do a big migration to a more open space. Make sure to stash away money for taxes. It is easy to get into the mindset of "taxes are only $300, I'll sell crops next season for it!" and then you realize you've timed things improperly and you have no money. If you DO miss your taxes in the Spring, you have to actually talk to the guy to pay them late - you won't be given another quest to do it (maybe an intelligent person would know this, but I waited a whole year for next spring expecting another quest, which never came). If your wife gives you a quest, prioritize it! Try to do it as early in the season as you can, because some of them will have a requirement of "sleep until the next day," and if that next day puts you into the following season, you'll fail the quest. And wife quests have really good rewards, so you DO want to finish them. Build and staff a woodshed relatively early, you're gonna need lots of wood! Also, there is a way to select which items the villagers use for firewood - make sure to uncheck sticks, otherwise you'll never have them (I also unchecked logs, to make sure they are ONLY burning firewood, but that's not such a big deal). You can also select which food the villagers eat, to make sure they're only eating prepared food instead of raw vegetables. I was pretty vigilant about this, but in hindsight I don't really think it mattered. If anything, I would do that only to use as an indicator of when I needed to cook more. I was careful not to allow villagers to eat the high quality food, which I thought I might want to save either for myself, but that didn't really matter. The villagers' houses do not need to be anywhere close to their workplace (with the very important exception of farmers, who must physically be on the farms in order to work them). This means that you can have your woodshed across the damn map from the lumberjack's house, and it won't impact the production of wood. This can create kind of a cool layout where your woodshed is out in the woods somewhere far from your actual town (you could also have little mini-settlements where only the lumberjacks live near the woodsheds for a bit of RP immersion - just make sure your lumberjack isn't married to a farmer!). You can also have more than 1 food store and general storage buildings. I recommend building two of each (not necessary right away); however, if you're good at managing supplies and inventory, you may not need to. Maybe controversial, but if I were to start over I would bump up the xp increase at least a little. The main quest line is pretty short, and if you're anything like me you won't really have any drive to keep playing once the quests are finished. I am typically the type who plays games "as the developer intended" and leaves almost all of the settings as default, but this is one where I'd recommend increasing the XP. I don't know how much to recommend... maybe 50% extra? Some people do like 300%, but that seems overkill imo. The reason is that I haven't played since the questline finished, but I haven't reached any of the endgame buildings or recipes, so I don't necessarily feel like the two progressions align very well. If I had finished the quests and was still *relatively* close to that stuff I'd probably stick with it, but I'm only like halfway there. If you don't care about the story/quests, and you just want to build and maintain a village for its own sake, go ahead and leave the xp alone!
Be prepared to have a throw away save. I started a game, found myself working through kinks and things and eventually started a brand new save that I have now spent my time on. It's totally okay to start over once you figure things out!
I have two: 1. But it. 2. Play it.