Need Some Tips for an Ideal Start? *SPOILERS*

[Levnekaethian]

I've played this game a bit now, guess I like it. I haven't actually beaten it yet as by the time I get to the Altar of Titans I want to restart and do it better. If you're looking for some tips to get your base up and running ASAP, here ya go:

1) Re-start the game until you find a good map. Ideally, you want your pond close to the woods with a few extra trees around (aside from the wall of trees at the back). Build the Bonfire relatively close to the tree wall in the back (see point #4) so that your workers can simply pick up wood and add it to the bonfire. Once that is built, build the Hunter's Lodge nearby some wood and the pond. Again, the closer to a tree the building is the faster it will get built as it reduces the time to transport goods to essentially zero. Since you can't pause the game during the first day, you want to place your bonfire as quickly as possible when you get into the map to save time.

2) Staff your hunter's lodge but after the animal is killed, remove the villager from the building so they can return to building. This saves you valuable time and villagers do not NEED to eat daily. It can also be helpful to use this momentary forced pause when required to staff the Hunter's Lodge to plan where you're going to build your Logger's Camp. You'll use guards to harvest the food at night (see point #5).

3) Place your Logger's Camp next to a tree or the tree wall near the back. This will not only aid building time but also remove any transportation time when you staff the Logger's Camp. Currently, you do not need to staff the building at all.

4) As soon as the Logger's Camp is completed, go straight into building the Fishing Dock. By now most folks are probably building housing, but it can wait. Housing isn't necessarily needed early on (or really at all unless people get really unhappy over time somehow) if your Bonfire is close to the tree wall. If villagers at the Bonfire are attacked they can very quickly get to the woods for safety. Not building houses too early saves a ton of time.

5) If you've done things properly, you can finish the Bonfire, Hunter's Lodge and Logger's Camp all before the day ends. Once nightfall comes you will be forced to add a guard. Immediately remove the guard from duty once you add them. Let them rest for about a quarter of the night before adding them back. One key job your guards will have early on is to retrieve the food your hunter has killed. They'll grab one ration for themselves and store the rest. After combat for the first night is over and you have gathered all food and any skins, remove the guard from duty so they can rest and return to work in the morning.

6) By the start of Day 2, you should already be building the Fishing Dock. During this time, plan where you are going to place your Carpenter Workshop and then place it. You'll want it at least nearby your Logger's Camp. Make sure to add one villager back to the Hunter's Lodge so they can kill a creature to retrieve food from at night, then remove them from the building to continue construction. Once you have completed BOTH the Fishing Lodge and the Carpenter Workshop you will send one villager to staff the Logger's Camp, one villager to staff the Fishing Dock and one villager to staff the Carpenter Workshop. You'll be a little short on builders but you should have 2-4 more by the end of Day 4. Keep an eye on villager traits as well so you send the right people to the right places (I'll explain those at the end).

7) Once your Carpenter Workshop is done its time to immediately get crafting. Start off by making two spears only - if you try to queue up any carts they will become the priority. You'll probably only get one done before the end of the day, make sure to give it to the villager you will use as a guard at night. The second spear will go to your villager in the Fishing Dock as it speeds up production. Once you've finished two spears, you can craft as many carts as you want. If you do things right, you can keep crafting going constantly and you will never run out of wood. Your first cart should be given to the Carpenter and the second should go to the Logger. Give the third to the Fisher if you want and then give your builders carts as they become available.

8) At this point you can choose to do what you want. You can start building housing, making roads (do that anyway when you can), or create the stockpile. You don't want to wait too long to make housing but I don't think it would hurt to make the stockpile first - I generally create housing after I finish the Carpenter Workshop. At this point the only thing you should have to micromanage is the guards at night. It is ideal to change out which villager is guarding each night so they don't get too low on energy. Until Day 10, you should be able to get by with one guard using a spear (the spiders on Night 7 can be a little tricky, don't be afraid to use two guards for a short time) and keep taking them off guard duty when all resources have been gathered so they can rest and be used during the day. If you're uncomfortable with trying to remember to do it every night, its fine at this point to leave one guard on permanent duty.

9) Once your stockpile, roads and housing are completed, you'll want to immediately start on the Iron Mine. Once it is done, do not use ANY iron for anything other than upgrading the Carpenter Workshop so you can make iron tools. Make sure to put two folks into the iron mine so they can make it as fast as possible. There is a bit of a dead period here where you can't build much (you can build another Logger's Camp if you want) so now is a good time to build roads if you haven't already even if its only to mark out where future buildings will go.

10) As soon as your Carpenter Workshop is done, you'll want to make one Iron Axe, two Iron Pickaxes and at least one Sickle and equip them to your villagers (except the sickle since we can't use that yet). Start on the farm and once it is complete move your villager from the Fishing Dock to the Farm with a sickle. After that, you can build tools as you see fit.

By now, you should have the early game down. What you do from here on out is your own choice. I'll leave a few extra tips below:

A) You're going to want 2-3 (preferably 3) guards with weapons on Night 10 for the boss wave.

B) The best guards traits are the Critical Strike, Precision and Crippling Strike traits. For your guards with Critical Strike, you'll want to equip them with Iron Axes as soon as possible and level up their strength. Strength benefits melee combat so it will boost their damage to have axes. For your guards with Precision or Crippling Strike, you'll want to equip them with Spears and level up their agility. Agility benefits ranged combat so it will boost their damage to have spears. Don't use villagers with the Brave trait, they just stay to die. About half the time a badly wounded villager is able to get away if an enemy is crippled. You only need a couple villagers with Crippling Strike on guard duty.

C) My final guard setup for a level 3 Bonfire is 8 melee and 4 ranged guards.

D) For production purposes, most traits do not matter. The few that do tho: Artisans should be put into crafting jobs (Carpenter Workshop, Blacksmith's Forge, Shipwright and the Cauldron). Hardworking villagers can really go anywhere (since I believe they just boost overall productivity in general) but I will normally place them in mines or the clay pit to produce more ore more quickly. I forget the name off-hand, but the trait that enables someone to store an extra item in their inventory should be used in either the Fishing Dock or the Logger's Camp - if those jobs aren't needed they are better off as a builder. The mines, clay pit and most production buildings have a set production quantity - they only produce so much at a time. It is never more than 5 units, but a villager with that trait can hold 6 (if they have a cart plus one additional for their trait). Loggers, however, can hold 6 logs before returning and the Fishing Dock produces 2 fish at a time - meaning if you have someone with this trait in the building they don't even need a cart!

E) You need coal before clay - try and locate the island the coal is on before building a bridge.

F) If you can get to steel quickly enough, do not bother with Iron Armor.

G) Place a stockpile near your mines and clay pit. Place Breweries next to a Hunter's Lodge and the coal mine's direct stockpile. You're gonna need a lot of wine eventually for trade to get meteor shards, but that's a bit later in the game so you don't have to rush it.

H) Do not build guard towers, archers are worthless and die too easily to be of any use. Don't even bother with archers at all (unless they have some use after building the Altar of Titans).

I) Build a treasury when you can; it is important to have one available to stockpile gems and meteor shards from bosses but build it when its convenient to do so.

J) You will eventually need two people to staff your Cauldron, for which they must successfully complete Monk Training (building the Temple gives you access to that). You only want to send in high intelligence villagers to do this so your crafters are ideal for this job - and if they have the Artisan perk it should help with crafting in the Cauldron as well.

K) You unlock more housing after building a bridge. After building two bridges, the maximum housing limit is unlocked. Extra bridges just allow you more ways to cross.

L) Late game, make sure to fill all three of your breweries with two workers so they pump out wine as fast as possible. If they're located near a Hunter's Lodge (that is getting food) and a stockpile with coal they will make wine as fast as possible.

M) When expanding to the other two islands for coal and clay, its ideal to build 1-2 houses next to them to house villagers. If you put all your housing on the central island, they'll spend a quarter of the day just getting to work. If you don't plan for food though,they'll still have to run to the center island for food and back to their house and that leaves them vulnerable during attacks because it takes them a while to get that done. I always build a Farm on each island and a Hunter's Lodge to store the food. One worker for each farm is plenty (and provides far more food than you need, but its necessary to have people housed on each island).

N) DO NOT BUILD the Alter of Titans until you have the Cauldron built and have outfitted all of your guards with solar gear. It's good to have some extra, too. You need tons of wine to trade for meteor shards to make the gear, so be prepared for that.

Good luck and hope this helps!

[joemama1512]

I appreciate this post a lot and after playing a bit, I would like to reiterate and rephrase what I found to be my experience.

1) Absolutely build your bonfire at the top next to the trees! This ensures your dudes can escape into the woods when attached, reducing the risk to near-zero.
Turns out there is very little reason to even bother getting huts for a long time. They love sleeping at the bonfire and running thru the woods doesnt even affect their sleep!
Eventually after you have the 2 bridges, you will make huts and upgrade.

2) Definitely reroll until you have the pond somewhat towards the top...at least middle of the screen. You don't want your dudes wandering way off to get food and caught out by monsters.
It is not a bad idea to check where the coal/clay pits are, and ensure you have one passible fighter type.

3) I don't like the ranged guys for a few reasons, mostly they dont get a better weapon for like forever. Their range isn't all that good anyways. The melee dudes get a free slot effectively since they can use a Shield instead of torch.

4) One very important concept is that you MUST do the guard-shuffle. Otherwise you wont be able to make any reaon progress on building new stuff. 3/4ths thru the day, assign guards. They will go sleep and get a cat-nap which refreshes them. They then guard and also pull food/skins. After they are done killing/looting, REMOVE them so they can sleep again briefly. During the day, they act as builders (as its easier to assign others to actual jobs).
It works best to use a Hammer as a weapon since it doesnt get removed when you transition to builder every night! That saves some aggravation.
Around day 50 once youve built up, you won't have to do this anymore thankfully.

5) I am too lazy to put on armor every night so instead, if you do get in a harder fight, or your idiots try to solo a pack of bad guys, PAUSE and EQUIP that one person with your best armor/weapon! This will help survivability and save you a lot of clicking.

6) If you see a boat with a boss guy, you need to wait for your main force to engage and then wake up EVERYONE and shove them on guard duty as much as your campfire allows. Which means push to get the steel/clay to upgrade to level 3 ASAP.
See... your guards are idiots and will collect the worthless IRON laying around while ignoring the precious GEMS. So by having all hands on deck, this helps ensure that the gems get collected.

7) So you build the shipyard and make a boat. Then build the trading dock. You add a ship to it, give 20 food or so, then add your SMARTEST person! Then send them off.
Wait 1 minute and go back and click world map which will now be clickable. Send them to the bustling town as that has the meteor shards and you need a smart person to get a good trade ratio! You also need lots of shards, whereas the other 2 islands you just trade once to get their sunstones, so they don't matter as much.
Be aware the other islands in the fog CANNOT be visited ever! So 3 ships is all you need.

[joemama1512]

8) If a building is missing something like say you need 50 bricks and you have none, PAUSE building it! Otherwise all your people will stand there waiting next to it for bricks to trickle in.

9) BE aware of which resources coexist in a given building and avoid resource-hoze. Wood is safe. Your food buildings however ALSO store skins! This is very important because you can easily max out your food supplies meaning that skins will be collected and dumped due to lack of room! It is hard to notice because your people will eat and thus free up a bit of room for more skins so you can get them trickling in. But your herdsman will be ineffective if food is full. Dump some if needed.

Ditto with storage rooms. Don't let yourself get 500 iron and wind up forcing your coal/clay to not produce or go way around to another storage container to drop off. Stop making iron for a while.

10) For coal and clay, make a storage bin close to each mine! This ensures the miners can dump it off quickly. Theres only 2 of them possible. Whereas if you need coal/clay, you can have dozens of workers carry it from the further off storage back to whateever building needs it during construction.

11) Don't over-push to build new stuff until taken advantage of existing stuff. I always build the hunter lodge on the left side of the pond, then carpenter somewhere, then right to the fishing zone. I then hold off on Iron production until I can crank out Carts for everyone, plus 1 spear for my fishing person. Carts give a huge bonus so ensure you have several before you start the iron mine.
Then once you have iron, ensure you upgrade the carpenter and get an axe, 2 picks, and several hammers ASAP before going after the bridge/coal. I crank out tons of hammers after that since my guards all use them, and unassigned builders have em too. Dont forget sickels once you do get farms (no hurry tho...2 fishers can produce tons of food).

[joemama1512]

12) I like the idea of having housing on the other 2 sections of the map once bridges are done, but its been a pain to deal with. You have to have food and storage on each side separately as well. Ive found it easier to have the huts on the left/right sides of the bonfire and make sure to assign those that work on the left side to those particular huts and vice versa. By having storage right next to clay/coal they seem to collect plenty even though it does take them a while to get to the location.

13) For Solar armor and such, gems has been the big limitation for me. I make 1 set of armor and then assign it as needed when paused to whoever is getting beat up during a tough fight. I didn't have much trouble with trading for meteor fragments. As long as you give them a smart sailor to make a decent trade route you get 6 fragments per 8 wine or so, thus one winery (albeit gotten fairly early) was enough for me.

14) Dont rush the treasury. It is useless until you have a trade route established or until a boss bad guy comes in the boat and that takes about 2-3 boat trips worth of regular spear baddies before that starts happening around day 40ish. When you are able to build it, it doesnt really do anything for you so put it off for a while.

15) Archers are absolute trash. They can ONLY man towers and never patrol. Plus even better, the enemy wolves and such chew/beat on the tower base and your archer takes damage! Yep...they aren't even immune to melee!!! Their range sucks too.