A Beginners Guide to Being a Villain

Welcome to what I hope will be a most despicably useful guide for aspiring Villains. This most EVIL of guides also includes some troubleshooting advice, least the game is despicably evil to you in turn...

In the Beginning

Having escaped your exploitative d*uche of a boss and set out to become the biggest, baddest, most powerful villain EVER your very first challenge will be to select 3 minions of your very own...



Minions come in many shapes and sizes and have many confusing factors about them that may influence your choices. But, I would advise you to ignore what jobs they’re good at and focus on traits that mean they will eat less and be more loyal. You may have to shuffle through the prospective list of minions as you keep this in mind…but it will be well worth it I assure you.

You see, traits you can’t improve, but job skills increase as your minions whittle away at assigned tasks. And given you have limited supplies and an evil mansion to build…you want to take all the advantages you can get.

So, what sort of minions do you want to start out with?

Well, a Mummy, a Psychopath and a Skeleton are my sage advice. Why? You make your future supply of victims go further and avoid starvation. Every victim (when butchered) only provides so much meat, blood, brains and bones…so a minion that eats less of your food and more varieties goes a long way to helping you out in the beginning.

Building YOUR Mansion

So, here you are on your plot of evil land with some food, a couple of small healing potions and some gold. Time to get building, ‘cos you’ll soon need to lure victims in to replenish your supply of food.

Now, you may have an idea of how you’d like to build your evil mansion…but you must get started fast. And what I’ll advise you on here in a quick starting sort of ramshackle of rooms to get started and practically live in whilst you get to work on your evil mansion that victims nightmares are made of.

MWUAH HA HA HA HA!

So, right where they bunged all your gold, food and potions I want you to build 5 outside floor tiles in a straight line back from the road. In the future this will be your footpath to your evil mansion. In the meantime, it should speed your minions access to any awkward resources in the way of that ideal mansion.

Right, the outside path in place I want you to build a 3x3 floor tile space back one floor tile from the outside path and one floor tile in from the road…either to the left or right. Now, place a single floor tile to the left and right and build walls around and the 3x3 floor tile room. Over the single floor tile gaps in the wall I want you to build a pretty, red door next to the outside path, and a normal door at the “back” of the room.

At the “back” of your newly built room make a 2 wide x 3 deep floor tile space with another single and central floor tile to the “back” of that room. Enclose with doors and walls. Repeat one more time…and you have practical starting home. In the “front” room place a writing desk, place a lab research board in the middle room and a butcher table in the “back” room. Now you have a Home Office, Laboratory and Kitchen that should suffice whilst you build that mansion you may well have in that evil mind of yours.



And if you don’t have one in mind, save the game, take out your evil deed stolen toilet paper and start sketching out a few ideas. Below you’ll find a few practical floor tile room size suggestions…

Hallways: 3x3

Bedrooms: 3x3

Kitchen/Dinner: 7x9 with food storage at the back.

Storage: 5x2

Home Office: 5x3 with storage at the back for gold, logs of normal wood and letters. You’ll need 2 Home Offices; 1 with a writing desk and computer in it and one for the printing press. The room with the printing press may or may not need storage behind it.

Laboratory: 5x3 with storage at the back. You’ll need 2 Laboratory’s; 1 with a research board and chemistry bench in it and one for the advanced research station. The room with the advanced research station may or may not need storage behind it.

Factory: 5x3 with storage at the back.

Healing Pod Room: 3x3

Training Room: 3x3

Victim/Trap rooms: 3x3

You perfect mansion will come as mine did, in time...

Kitchen

In the kitchen you’ll really need a Butcher Table and Smoker ASAP. The butcher table will be automatically used by any minion assigned to the job of cooking in the Jobs tab at the bottom of the HUD. When you have dead victims any minions tasked with this job will set too and…well, butcher the remains. This in turn nets you some meat, blood, brains and bones.

HOWEVER, meat, blood and brains don’t last forever…so set to and research the smoker ASAP in the laboratory!

Once you’ve researched the smoker and built it you’ll have to click on the smoker and choose how much of what you want just crafted once or levels of maintained. I highly recommend you set a maintenance level of 50 of blood, brains and meat…meaning a level of 400 will always be maintained for your minions. You can cancel and change such things if you need to at any time…

Home Office

In your home office you will craft letters and the likes to lure unsuspecting Victims to their doom. And it serves them right after that evil murder of Bob the Cow. I liked Bob the Cow…his speeches were both simple, insightful and MOOving!

Ermmm, yeahhh. MOOving on…

The Writing Desk is your first means of luring prospective victims to their doom. You’ll have to assign a minion to the job via the Jobs tab at the bottom of the HUD, and then click on the writing desk to set the letter writing in progress.

The best way to do this is to choose 5 letters to be maintained in the beginning.

Later, research will unlock the printing press and the computer which you can broach in the same manner, as suits your tastes…

Laboratory

The laboratory is where you conduct your research, and later maybe make potions and heal your minions in a Healing Pod. However, you’ll begin with a simple Fundamental Research Bench…AKA the Research Board. Like the writing desk in the home office you can set a minion to the research job in the Jobs tab at the bottom of the HUD, and then click the research board to produce some basic research to contribute to your chosen research in the Research tab.

Research comes in two varieties, basic and advanced. Needless to say the advanced research comes from the Advanced Research Bench…but you will need 1000 stone bricks crafted in the factory before you can do this, and these things take time.

Now, with your minions set to the task you'll need to choose what they research with the research they produce. Select the Research tab at the bottom of the HUD...

Factory

In the Factory you’ll be able to set up two types of crafting stations to make all the metal plates, planks, cogs and stone…and so-on and so-forth. You must click on each station and select the amounts of what you wanted crafted once or levels of maintained…but it’s simple enough to do.

Once you have, don’t forget to assign a minion to the job…

Minions

Minions are essential to your success. Loose them all and you’ll die in turn…game over!

So, make sure they have all their needs provided for; food, health (either with potions or Healing Pod use), sleep (ideally a bed in a room of their own in the end…we can share rooms in the beginning), and other factors like how evil the rooms are.

Click on the minion and then look at their Loyalty tab to see more info for how they feel and their needs you can provide for as time goes on…

Now then, as minions do stuff…they learn. No, really! Weather it’s whittling away at a job or fighting Victims, Spiders, random Tree Monsters, Heroes or training in the Training Room with a Training Dummy your minions will learn. Little screen pop-ups let you know when this is happening. HOWEVER, if you want to level up your minions fighting abilities…you must click on their picture at the top of the HUD and go to the Fight tab bit.

In the Fighting tab you can increase the strength, endurance, health, mind or special minion powers…

RIGHT, when your victims initially come calling...clicky-click on the tiny sword button bit (when the timer is almost counted down) to set your minions into attack mode and gather them into a room ready to pounce on those happy meals on legs...AKA, Victims!

When they enter your mansion...ATTACK, MURDER, KILL...make them very, very "sleepy" until they lie down and don't get back up. And then our cooks nefarious work can proceed if you clicky-click the little blue button at the top of the HUD right next to the tiny red sword button so your minions can resume their evil little ways on your behalf.

Later on you can get all fancy on how to kill victims without a minion even lifting a finger...

MWUAH HA HA HA HA!

Don't forget you'll need a cleaner about the place. Making dinner can be such a messy affair. You also need to increase the cleaning area if stuff happens outside the mansion. If so, use the Area tab at the bottom of the HUD and adjust or add for you bloody needs.

NOW, you maybe wondering about each minions inventory. Every minion has a limited type and amount of inventory space you can customise once you have items...which by default go in an equipment storage if you built one and set a minion to gather resources.

If you click on the actual item in the game, when you have a minion selected, and choose equip...well, they equip it. TADA! There are many types of items out there but you can't make them as far as I'm aware. So buy mystery boxes when that bit pops up via a Ouija Board do-dat at the top of the HUD periodically, call on a Vendor when they visit...

...and if you have a Psychopath who's learnt to nick Heroes weapon...give it a bash!

AND, did you know you can rename your minions? Well, you can. I have dubiously honoured many a favourite YouTuber for the favour, including Penge from TheGeekCupboard for introducing me to this evil little gem of a game...

MWUAH HA HA HA HA!

Victims

AKA, your minions food...and they're a bunch of freakin' idiots too if you know what to do about them.

You want to know the secret, don't you? How to make a mansion that just serves you up delicious meat, blood, brains and bones on demand? Oh alright...I suppose I can tell you!

The secret is to control the victims with zones to pull them through. Create a hallway and put a couple of bookcases in it. Now, create four rooms off the hallway at least 3x3 floor tiles. On the far side of each door into each room you'll need a rotating wall trap and a hidden door. And behind the rotating wall trap at least 3 saw wall traps to finish off the victim thrown into the slice and dice nightmare.

If you've set it up right...just make sure your minions stay out of the victims domain of lures and sit back with a nice cup of blood and a curly straw and watch the mayhem unfold.

MWUAH HA HA HA HA!

Into the Crypt

At the bottom of your HUD you’ll find a button called the Crypt. Here you can unlock new types of minions, expand your maximum number of minions and hire new minions. This entire domain is run on evilium which you can gain in one of two ways…

Killing victims is the most assured way of this and working within the rules of the League of Machiavellian Villains earns you bonus evilium atop of that. The other option is when you find yourself listening to a mysterious tape. If you respond correctly (which I have often found means gold, at least the first time) can net you 1000 evilium.

So here you are in the crypt, no doubt confused as to what the best minions are to have…am I right? Well, be afraid, be very afraid…’cos I’m going to give you my two cents worth here for whatever that’s worth.

My sage advice for, let’s say 6 minions max, is 3 Vampires, a Mummy, a Psychopath, and a Skeleton. Why?

Psychopaths can nick hero weapons and use them. Did you know a psychopath wielding a hammer can dish out 90 damage? And given what he wants for dinner, even more so with intestinal fortitude, that’s surely one crazy minion you want on hand.

As for the vampires, it’s a matter of researching broom of doom that leaves you swimming in blood. Hello blood jacuzzi! Combine that with hypnosis and you can have victims and heroes fighting each other and doing your dirty work for you. And if you happen upon a Head Umbrella then the whole Sunburn trait issue is null and void, leaving them able to toil away in the daylight.

The mummy and the skeleton just make good labourers and consume the meat and bones garnered as your harvest your victims.

With this team of minions you can feed them with ease by luring in 3 basic victims...

MWUAH HA HA HA HA!



Right, off you go you despicable little creature…I have things to do and more toilet paper to get. Where did all that toilet paper go anyway? GARHHHH!

EAPERS, it’s all gone a bit Wibbly

Oh not you again. Didn’t you leave already?

Oh well, welcome to the game bug solutions domain…I trust you’re here ‘cos somebody stole your toilet paper too huh? Well, it may feel like one of those moments anyhow.

There are two problems of late; the Save Bug and the Autosave Bug...

...and then there's the times items go a bit wonkaloids.

The Save Bug

Now, the biggest woe of late is the Save Bug. Now, what happens here is that walls vanish, it becomes eerily silent and your can’t see pictures of your revolting minions on the HUD. Well, such has been my unfortunate experience. Now, whilst I may not be able fix a game once it’s gone this manner of wibbly on you I do have some advice to share. My advice thus far is to go and manually delete the game save files via Steam.

How?

• With Steam open, right click on MachiaVillain in your library and select Properties.
  
  
• Now click Browse Local Files.
  
  
• Open up MachiaVillain Data and then Saves.
  
  
• Delete all the Saves and empty the Recycle Bin so you can start anew.

It maybe possible to delete all but your last game save or manual save that's loaded fine and have it play nicely again with you. However, I haven't tested this myself. Such solutions seem to be hit and miss for your fellow Villains at the moment sadly but rest assured a patch is in the works.

But, before you resort to such a dire approach as to wipe clean ALL your game saves you may also care to try and restart or load an older save and see if that works for you...

Regardless, my advice from here on out is to delete ALL autosaves between game play sessions.

HOWEVER, I now bet you're wondering how to create a manual save. Right? Well, here's how if you're wondering fellow vile villains...

• Right click on Settings at the bottom right of the HUD.
  
  
• Now click Save Level.
  
  
  
  
• Click on any manual or autosave, and then rename it in the bit below and click OK.
  
  

Don't worry, this last part won't erase that save you used and renamed...

The Autosave Bug

The Autosave Bug is when the games stops doing any more autosaves or allowing you to create manual saves. Thankfully this one is so simple; just delete all autosaves by using the steps noted above with the Save Bug...

I have been able to manually save since I emptied all but my manual saves when the Autosave Bug hit me, and all has been well since. PHEW!

Regardless of the causes the solution seems simple to both problems...

The Solution

So, how do you help yourself avoid such problems in the future? Just follow the advice below.

• Create Manual Saves and change the name to something easier to find in the list of saves.
  
  
• Now, check that the manual save loads without any problems. Always do this before you finish playing the game for the day. That way, if a problem does crop up, it isn't an unpleasant surprise the next game play session...and you can apply the solutions noted above.
  
  
• Always delete ALL the autosaves between game play sessions to play safe.

Hopefully that should allow you to keep playing your evil little heart out without further ado. I know it has worked for me since discovering this little trick evilly ever after...

NOW, beyond the game breaking bugs are wibbly bits of wonkaloid madness where items just don't seem to work as they ought. For example; sometimes you'll have a minion assigned to train and yet with a spare training dummy...they just idle away the hours. They key here is to disassemble and remake the training dummy.

Other items in the game can go a bit wonkaloids and wibbly just like this. So my advice is to just disassemble and remake it to see if that solves everything for you...

[Triel]

Well, once you get the broom research, you are going to have way more blood than any other food

[luckz]

Honestly since it takes quite a while to get to infinite blood supplies, it's better to skip Vampires and go straight for the much better Tire or Pumpkinhead minions. They don't die from sunlight and it's an extreme pain to babysit a vampire, especially when you don't have a way to guarantee their trips won't lead them outside.

[Vosoros]

If you click on the minion in question...all should soon become clear when you then can find the apt skill button. I wish you an evilly ever after...

[Zesty the Hermit]

How do you use skills? such as the Pumkins Pumkin gernade? I uhh don't qwite get how it works eheh...

[constantinet2001]

awesome!!! ★★★

[Vosoros]

The pictures have been added...

[constantinet2001]

Nice guide man :) if you can put an image to each section it can be perfect!!! well done :)

[Inixus]

Autosave bug or save bug hase to do with changing game speed aswell somehow, when i play and keep the speed at 1X i can save most of the time for a while, after a certain time i cant save, gg.

[Vosoros]

You've got to honour the games humour when you make a guide in my book. lol

[Fridge Lord]

Eapers, it's all gone a bit wibbly!