What to use the starting 10 gold bars on?

[twosicilies]

Question above. I was not sure what is a good use, do I buy new residents, buy tax evasion book, or something else?

Thank you! I am very new just exploring the game now, I'm sure I'll figure out eventually but wouldn't mind knowing sooner.

[Iyasenu]

Tax Evasion is incredibly negligible.
I mean, it's better than not having it, but it's like pennies off per level.
Gold bars would be better spent elsewhere first.

I'd spend it on getting the Open for Business policy, if you go check out a Scholar NPC's store stock.
There's a Scholar over at Tinker's Camp so check out their inventory.
That will let you start getting Lodging and Tourism income at your base.

Maybe also the Border Watch policy, it lowers maximum allowed level of enemies that can attack your base.

Also, you can buy NPCs at the Slaver in Derphy, where it costs Orens instead of Gold Bars.

[Just Some Random Kid]

Originally posted by Iyasenu:

Tax Evasion is incredibly negligible.
I mean, it's better than not having it, but it's like pennies off per level.
Gold bars would be better spent elsewhere first.

I'd spend it on getting the Open for Business policy, if you go check out a Scholar NPC's store stock.
There's a Scholar over at Tinker's Camp so check out their inventory.
That will let you start getting Lodging and Tourism income at your base.

Maybe also the Border Watch policy, it lowers maximum allowed level of enemies that can attack your base.

Also, you can buy NPCs at the Slaver in Derphy, where it costs Orens instead of Gold Bars.

Open for Business is always sold by Loytel alongside Resident Tax. Both are really good to have OfB costs 5 and RT costs 8.

Edit: Still new to the whole base building thing but from my experience taxes outweigh tourism so heavily especially early that if you're going to choose one my recommendation would be taxes. You can also get Faith tax and Wealthy tax. Resident and Faith are better unless you have wealthy type NPCs in your town.

[Ginrikuzuma]

1g - millstone recipe from Fiama - a lot of useful goodies from playing with the millstone. Making kibble from corpses + bark lets you make food that won't spoil.

1g - home board from Fiama - allows you to enact policies in your base (edit: a quest might give you one I forgot???)
1g - build board from Loytel - allows terraforming and has more and more uses as your base levels up.


Optional:

Travel North to Tinker's Camp and look for Nino.
1g - Mailbox from Nino - All non-package mail you receive will go in here. Otherwise it all clutters around your hearthstone.


2g sculpting table from Fiama. - If you don't mind doing some early crime. Going to Derphy to mine their walls to level up your mining and what not eventually (assuming you talked to the guild first) you will eventually be able to join them and once your mining is high enough. You can mine the thieves guild's walls which are made of gold.
You can use that gold to then sculpt some statues to sell.

[Just Some Random Kid]

Originally posted by Ginrikuzuma:

1g - millstone recipe from Fiama - a lot of useful goodies from playing with the millstone. Making kibble from corpses + bark lets you make food that won't spoil.

1g - home board from Fiama - allows you to enact policies in your base
1g - build board from Loytel - allows terraforming and has more and more uses as your base levels up.


Optional:

Travel North to Tinker's Camp and look for Nino.
1g - Mailbox from Nino - All non-package mail you receive will go in here. Otherwise it all clutters around your hearthstone.


2g sculpting table from Fiama. - If you don't mind doing some early crime. Going to Derphy to mine their walls to level up your mining and what not eventually (assuming you talked to the guild first) you will eventually be able to join them and once your mining is high enough. You can mine the thieves guild's walls which are made of gold.
You can use that gold to then sculpt some statues to sell.

Honestly yea, recipes tend to be the hardest to actually get so prioritizing that over random residents and policies early on is probably best. Get things that help produce more gold bars before getting passive stuff.

[evilserran]

Definitely millstone and sculpting table. Its not even close. Sculpting skill can be very useful to get money early and build skill up. You can sculpt meat and all stones metals etc. Once you start raiding the thieves guild treasury those statues can net you some pretty major early on money, but you need to sculpt them from the gold blocks.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Iyasenu:

I'd spend it on getting the Open for Business policy, if you go check out a Scholar NPC's store stock.
There's a Scholar over at Tinker's Camp so check out their inventory.
That will let you start getting Lodging and Tourism income at your base.

Maybe also the Border Watch policy, it lowers maximum allowed level of enemies that can attack your base.

Originally posted by Ginrikuzuma:

1g - millstone recipe from Fiama - a lot of useful goodies from playing with the millstone. Making kibble from corpses + bark lets you make food that won't spoil.

1g - home board from Fiama - allows you to enact policies in your base (edit: a quest might give you one I forgot???)

Originally posted by Ginrikuzuma:

2g sculpting table from Fiama. - If you don't mind doing some early crime. Going to Derphy to mine their walls to level up your mining and what not eventually (assuming you talked to the guild first) you will eventually be able to join them and once your mining is high enough. You can mine the thieves guild's walls which are made of gold.
You can use that gold to then sculpt some statues to sell.

This is what I did with my first 10 (or pretty close as I think all that ends up being 10 gold bars).

[gimmethegepgun]

Millstone recipe (1g), Sculpting Table recipe (2g), Resident and Home Boards (1g each), all from Fiama.
Open for Business plan (5g) from Loytel.

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by twosicilies:

Question above. I was not sure what is a good use, do I buy new residents, buy tax evasion book, or something else?

Thank you! I am very new just exploring the game now, I'm sure I'll figure out eventually but wouldn't mind knowing sooner.

I think buying residents with gold bars is a massive waste of gold bars because you can get residents from slave masters for orens and gold bars are far more scarce than orens.