Outposts & Deliveries For Dummies

[Decado]

This seems to be an ongoing confusion - let's try and break it down as simply as possible - please contribute if possible.

1. What is an outpost?

It's a set of buildings away from your main village and classified as a completely separate entity. Once it's been defined as an Outpost, you can assign villagers to it.

2. How do you create an outpost?

Press N and in the Buildings list, on the far left is a dropdown labeled 'switch settlement'
When you click this, you can either 'create an outpost' or 'assign a building to an outpost'

When you're ready to create an outpost, build something like a remote mining/lumber camp, find its name in the list and name it something you'll know what it is, ie 'Copper outpost'

3. How many buildings do i need in my outpost?

It's up to you but once the outpost is created, it wont be part of the main village schedule - ie your main villagers wont deposit in its stockpile as part of their daily duties, nor will they use the mining camp.

Ideally you want something like:

a. a housing tent(s) for whoever is working there
b) a stockpile (essential - can be a small chest, but you'll want a stockpile)
c) the camp for whatever the purpose is - ie mining camp if you're setting up near a copper node.

Note - once you have designated an outpost, any additional buildings created near it will automatically be designated to that outpost.

4. How do I assign a villager to the outpost?

Similar to assigning a building but in a different location.

Go into a villagers profile and just below their roles (ie worker, companion, guard) is a drop-down labelled 'switch'

Here you can choose your newly created outpost. Your villager will then move to it and dwell there.

5. What about food?

Your worker will forage for food if hungry but this can be a problem in winter, or if there's no food nearby. Plus you want that worker working, not wandering around for food. It's far better to send them food via Deliveries (explained below)

6. Do I need tools for my outpost camps?

Yes absolutely - the same as any camps. Logging camps need simple axes, mining camps picks etc.

Now this gets a bit murky - (and a bit annoying) - I'm still experimenting with this.

You can manually deposit tools and collect broken tools, but if the outpost is remote, this can be a pain. Alternatively you can setup rules to have the main village send a tool, and likewise have the outpost send tools back.

Sometimes this appears to work - othertimes, not so much. More explained below with deliveries.

7. How do deliveries work?

These are initially confusing but know this:

a) deliveries do not require a villager to physically transport the goods
b) delivery orders are processed at exactly 12 midnight each night, and are instantaneous

and here's the really important one:

Delivery orders are selecting to RECEIVE from the distant location, NOT send.

Example:

I want my copper outpost to send copper ore back to my main village.

I will setup the delivery at the main village, to have the copper ore sent from the copper outpost.

Key point being - this order is setup AT the village, NOT the copper outpost.

Read and re-read this - it's the one most people have issues with.

8. How do I setup a delivery?

Press N and note the Delivery tab at the far right.

Also note - top left your village name can now be cycled between this and your new outpost.

Cycling between these tabs allows you to view the same stats for the two different locations - including what's stored, whose working there and delivery orders.

To create the delivery - decide what you want where, then set it up as follows:

(I want copper ore sent to my main village from the copper outpost)

Bottom left in the search box, type 'copper'

A drop down list of all copper type materials (including ingots) will appear.

Click 'Copper Ore'

This will add an entry to the delivery list.

In the first drop down, select 'Copper Outpost' (or whatever you called your outpost)

In the next field select how often you'd like this, either a One Off send, Daily, or Weekly.

And finally, select the quantity to be sent.

The number sent will depend on how many items are available. I also have read that it is potentially a limit of 20 items per villager working at the outpost, but cant confirm this.

9. How do I feed my outpost via Deliveries?

One great way to ensure the Outpost has food, is to setup a daily food delivery from the main village.

Do this as follows:

Press N and cycle to the Outpost.

Click Delivery and follow the same steps, this time search for 'mushroom'.

Select Smoked Mushrooms (or whatever you wish), with a quantity of whatever you feel (i send 10 mushrooms per day to a single worker and that's a tad overkill), and select Daily.

Every day at midnight, the main village will send 10 mushrooms to keep your remote worker fed.



Now that in a nutshell is Outposts and Deliveries. It doesnt always work as intended - and things such as tools being broken can mean they're not harvested etc. But the above is the system in a nutshell.

One tip is to regularly check how much is being produced - i find this easiest by the map.

Open the map (M) - click on the production building (ie mining camp) and click 'Statistics'.

You'll be able to see how much was produced today, yesterday and all time. If this isnt increasing over time, there's a problem somewhere.

Also note that when you click the building remotely via the map and click 'Overview', top left it will show your worker assigned to the building. To the right of their portrait it will show if there's a broken tool there.

10. Sending tools back and forth: (Edited 28/5 - today's patch has introduced 'broken' tools into the search list, you can now search for 'broken simple pick' and similar and set an order to send broken tools back. If you do this for a daily order at the main village, any broken tools will be sent back.

As mentioned above, you can send tools to the remote outpost using deliveries.

I have been using: (see edit above)

Main village: send 1 x simple pick to Copper outpost
Copper Outpost: send 1 x simple pick to Main village
For both - quantity = 1, repeat = daily

This is after delivering a handful of tools manually (or via one off delivery) to the outpost to get it started.

IN THEORY this should send a new tool to the outpost and potentially recieve the broken tool back - but not always. Experiment with this!

Any questions? Need any help?

[Muladas]

What I had read (and am repeating) is it is 20 per person at the receiving end. So your copper ore delivery to your main settlement is 20 x people at your main settlement. Stuff to copper outposts is limited to 20 x the number of residents at the copper outpost.

[Ralifur]

Heres another tip. Use outposts as districts in your main village and use Deliveries for transport. It helps alot controlling ressources.

I see alot of topics with people being annoyed that their villagers eat all their good food. If you make an outpost as a district in your main village and just assign a single guy as a cook and buildings for making food, then a stockpile for storage and receiving food. Then he will be the only one eating from the cooked food while the rest of your villagers will do other things.

The outpost system in this game is amazing and actually seem to be the fix for alot of peoples comments and thoughts here in the chat. :-)

[[Ⅶ] NatureAngel]

thanks for the guide and tips, i forgot about the outpost system and now i will try to set up a few

[AH-Chiron]

yeah, took me a while to get this figured out. The UI here could really use some adjusting.

[Decado]

Originally posted by AH-Chiron:

yeah, took me a while to get this figured out. The UI here could really use some adjusting.

I think the UI itself is solid, it could just use more by way of explanation. The send / receive part had me stumped initially, I thought it was the other way around

[Ralifur]

Do have a question as we havent been able to decipher that one among me and my friends.

How do you determine which stockpile is delivered to? We have a main base currently consisting of 8 different stockpiles. Will the delivery just end up in random stockpiles or does it choose somehow?

[Decado]

Originally posted by Ralifur:

Do have a question as we havent been able to decipher that one among me and my friends.

How do you determine which stockpile is delivered to? We have a main base currently consisting of 8 different stockpiles. Will the delivery just end up in random stockpiles or does it choose somehow?

Yeah this is a good one - as far as i can tell you can’t choose the specific location. It might be influenced by the priority setting of the stockpile/barn however

[inotna2001]

Apparently stew type foods can't be delivered. I was confused why my outposts are not receiving meat stews and mushroom stews but they received the non stew foods.

[Leroy]

This thread should be pinned as it is extremely helpful. I was camping for hours in my outpost, set the delivery priority to high, disabled anything else, created orders over and over again but nothing happenend, the store was fully and the villager idle. Now I know the reason, thanks!

[LoveGiant]

Sorry if this has been asked, but does the outpost also get threatened by bandit attacks? Or do bandits just try to go for your main village instead?

[Chris35]

I also have read that it is potentially a limit of 20 items per villager working at the outpost, but cant confirm this.

Working alot with outposts and can tell that 1 villager has a limit of 20 weight to deliver, not items. That's weight for 2 logs or 20 flax.

btw i would like to see the delivery system weight is changed to items instead of weight.

[Muladas]

Originally posted by LoveGiant:

Sorry if this has been asked, but does the outpost also get threatened by bandit attacks? Or do bandits just try to go for your main village instead?

your posts do generate their own raid threat level and can be raided, but it is pretty slow (I made an 'peronal' outpost with 1 chest and all my fast travel signs. think I got raided after about 30-40 days? came from one of the permanent bandit camps, but as a level 1 raid was 2 shirtless guys and one with a pitchfork.

[Warlord]

i have a question. is there no "top up" options for outpost deliveries? from my outpost to my main town i send 10 wood logs every day. after a while i saw, its way too much, so i put it down to 5. but in some ingame days i need more wood logs. so... how can i balance that? a top up option there would be good.

[Muladas]

Originally posted by Warlord:

i have a question. is there no "top up" options for outpost deliveries? from my outpost to my main town i send 10 wood logs every day. after a while i saw, its way too much, so i put it down to 5. but in some ingame days i need more wood logs. so... how can i balance that? a top up option there would be good.

no there is not, sadly. Just one time, daily or weekly options

[Warlord]

Originally posted by feelingluckyusa:

Originally posted by Warlord:

i have a question. is there no "top up" options for outpost deliveries? from my outpost to my main town i send 10 wood logs every day. after a while i saw, its way too much, so i put it down to 5. but in some ingame days i need more wood logs. so... how can i balance that? a top up option there would be good.

no there is not, sadly. Just one time, daily or weekly options

ok... thats not good. hope the devs will add that option. thanks for the answer