Gnomoria Basics - Beginner's Guide

This guide will take you through how to play Gnomoria. It will start by guiding you through the menus and what they all mean. Then it will take you through setting up your first Kingdom. It will assume you are playing on Peaceful just to help you get started. If you've never played a fortress-building game before, this guide will get you up to speed.

Welcome

Welcome! If you want to start playing Gnomoria, and other fortress-building games like Towns and Dwarf Fortress, but have no clue where to start, this guide is for you. In it, we'll cover all the major elements of playing most fortress-building games plus throw in some tips and tricks for making the most of your time.

The most important thing to note is that Gnomoria is a 'fortress building' game. You don't control your citizens (Gnomes) directly like in a traditional realtime strategy game. Instead, you issue orders and your Gnomes will do them or not depending on things such as if they need sleep or they're hungry. Your Gnomes will always try to tend to their own needs before they try to complete whatever orders you've given them.

If you're looking for cheats or easy tricks to make the game simple, you'd best spend your time elsewhere. Games like Gnomoria can take days to play through all the content, and that's assuming you just want to reach the end of the "tech" tree. Realistically, there is no end game to Gnomoria. End game is what you choose it to be.

Also, please be aware that Gnomoria is still in Early Access and is, as such, not yet complete. There will be bugs and things that aren't perfect. You can head over to the official site to report problems or get more in-depth help.

If you're fine with everything so far, then let's move on to the bare-bone basics, starting a new game.

Starting a New Game

No, I do realize you're fully capable of starting a new game on your own. This section is going to explain what all the options for a new game mean, and show you the settings we'll use for this guide. Let's begin!

When you start a new game in Gnomoria, you'll see this screen:


This first option is pretty obvious. It's the name of your kingdom and, thus, the name of your save game. The next two options are also fairly obvious. Kingdom size determines how big your map is and Difficulty determines how hard the game is.

WARNING: There is a bug in Gnomoria 0.9.8 that causes goblin raiders to spawn, even on Peacful. Unarmed Gnomes should be able to deal with a single goblin raider, but you never know.

You'll also see the Advanced Setup button. Click it to bring up the advanced settings.


Wow, that's a lot of stuff. I'll explain it all, never fear!

• Kingdom Name - Same as before.
  
• Kingdom Size - Same as before.
  
• Kingdom Seed - This number is used as the starting point for generating your map. The same seed with the same settings of Kingdom Center, Kingdom Size, Height, Hill Width, Smoothness, Metal Depth and Metal Amount will generate the same map every time you use it. So if find a really cool map (say with a floating island) and want to share it, you give them this number and your settings.
  
• Kingdom Center - Another pair of numbers that is used to generate the map. These numbers control where the center of your kingdom is. The exact meaning is really only known to the game creators.
  
• Height - This controls how tall hills are in the generated map. Setting it to flat will make no hills. Setting it tall will make them reach almost as high as they can go.
  
• Hill Width - This controls how wide or narrow hills are. The wider the hills, the less flat space that will be left over once the game generates. You'll get some flat areas on the hillsides, though.
  
• Smoothness - This controls how smooth hills are. Smooth hills are more likely to have flat areas on their sides. Bumpy hills are more likely to go straight up and down, as well as simply making a lot more hills on the map.
  
• Difficulty - This box has some pre-set difficulties for you to use. Changing any of the settings below it will change it to Custom. If you use a pre-set difficulty, you can change the difficulty settings at any time in game. Changing them in the game will result in them being set to Custom, locking them in place.
  
• Metal Depth - This setting controls how deep down metals start appearing. Setting it to Shallow is recommended for beginners.
  
• Metal Amount - This controls how big metal seems are and how often they appear. Setting it to Abundent is recommended for beginners.
  
• Enemy Strength - This slider controls how strong enemies are. It's a multiplier, so 0.5 means enemies are half as strong while 2 means they're twice as strong. Beginners should turn it all the way down if they're going to have enemies on.
  
• Attack Rate - Similar to the above slider, this slider changes the multiplier how often enemies attack. 0.5 means half as often, 2 means twice as often. Again, beginners may want to make it 0.5.
  
• Attack Size - This slider controls the size of enemy squads when they spawn. Again, it's a multiplier, so 0.5 means half as many enemies while 2 means twice as mean. Beginners, you know the drill.
  
• Increase Enemy Strength over time - Checking this will cause the Enemy Strength slider to increase as you play the game. Check this if you're really good at setting up your military and need a challenge. Just be aware, enemy strength will increase fairly quickly.
  
• Lots of checkboxes - These checkboxes control which enemies are enabled in the game. There are two kinds of enemies, Invaders and Spawners. Invaders appear at the edge of the map and try to find a way into your fortress. Spawners will spawn underground in dark places. Wild Animals, Goblins and Mants are Invaders. The rest are Spawners.

When you're done choosing settings, you can press Preview to get an idea of what your map will look like. I'd recommend playing with the map settings and pressing Preview a few times to get a feel for what they do. When you're done, change your settings to what you want and press Generate. For reference, I'd suggest the following settings for beginners/those following along with this guide.

Menu Basics - How to Make Things Happen

This is where a lot of new players to the fortress-building genre hit a "wall". There's often no tutorial and the menus aren't very descriptive. This section will cover the Gnomoria menu system and what each button does.

After generating a new map, you'll end up in the game world, looking something like this:


In the middle of the map you can see your Gnomes and a pair of Yaks, plus some other supplies to get you started. You can ignore them for now. We're going to cover basic controls.

WASD will move you around the map. Easy enough. You can also right click and drag or left click and drag. Scrolling will move you up and down through the layers of the map. Try it now. You can also use the plus and minus key on your keyboard. Beware, the plus and minus keys on your numpad won't work. It's something that people are asking the developers to add in. You can zoom in and out by holding the Ctrl key and either scrolling or pressing plus/minus. Finally, you can rotate the map by pressing the period or comma keys. That covers basic controls. Now, look to the menu bar along the bottom of the screen.


Lets cover them one by one, and then go into greater detail of each.

• Terrain - This button will take you into the terrain menu where you can dig and do other things to the terrain. Be aware, this is not where you'll go to build things, even terrain.
  
• Agriculture - This button takes you to the menu where you can set up farms, groves and other things you'll need to keep you Gnomes fed and supplied with drinks and wood.
  
• Build - This menu is for building things. It's an important menu because without it, you can't build the many workshops you'll need to advance.
  
• Designate - In Gnomoria, and many fortress-building games, designations is a way of telling your Gnomes that a certain area is used for something, like storing stuff in a stockpile. There's some overlap in this menu with agriculture menu.
  
• Clean Floor - This button doesn't take you to a menu, but it allows you to tell your Gnomes to take items lying on the ground and put them somewhere else, usually a stockpile.
  
• Deconstruct - This button allows you to tell your builders to take something apart and turn it back into the parts used to build it.
  
• Remove Designation - This button removes designations. Right now, it just removes them period. There are people requesting that we be able to use it to shrink areas instead. So if you ever put a farm somewhere and need to move it, use this button.
  
• Cancel Job - Don't want your builders to build something? Use this button to remove the order. Told your miners to dig an area you don't want to dig? Again, this button.

Now let's look at the terrain button in more depth.


So many buttons! Let's go over them.

• Mine - This button takes you to a menu where you can order your Gnomes to mine on the same level as themselves, or to the level above them.
  
• Dig - This button takes you to a menu where you can order your Gnomes to dig down to the level below them.
  
• Remove Floor - Simple enough, removes the floor block of a tile. Without a floor block, Gnomes can't walk on that square.
  
• Remove Ramp - Another self-explanatory one, this button allows you to remove ramps.
  
• Change Wall - This is a cool button. When you select it, you'll be taken to a menu where you can select a wall type. You can then select walls in the game world and your Gnomes will replace those walls with the kind of wall you chose. Good for taking those rooms you mined and making their walls made of metal. I'll go over what the different wall types mean when I talk about building.
  
• Change Floor - Just like Change Wall, but for floors.
  
• Fill Hole - In the Dig menu is a button that lets you dig holes. Normally, because your Gnomes can't get to the same level, they can't build a wall there. If you wanted to cover a hole, you'd have to build a floor on top. This button will build a wall and floor in one go, but only from the level above where the wall goes.

The Mine and Dig menus have three options each. The Mine menu has Mine, which removes walls, and Mine Stairs/Mine Ramp. The last two will create either a set of stairs or a ramp to the level above where your Gnome is. There's an important difference between Stairs and Ramps. Stairs only go up. Gnomes have to walk to the stairs, go up a level, and then step off the stairs before they can move somewhere else. With Ramps, your Gnomes can go to the ramp and then step off in any direction, including diagonally. There's a disadvantage, though. Gnomes can't perform orders from on Ramps. If you order your Gnome to mine a square next to a Stairs, he'll do it. If you order a Gnome to mine a square next to a Ramp, he can't do it unless he can find an empty square next to the wall. Anyway, the Dig menu is the same thing, but down. Dig will dig a hole in the ground and the other two buttons dig Stairs and Ramps respectively.

Now we get into the real meat and potatos of Gnomoria, the Agriculture menu (pun totally intended).


This menu is going to be confusing to a lot of new players. Basically, this menu lets you make farms and orchards to feed your Gnomes, plus some other things. Again, let's go over the buttons.

• Farm - This button will let you designate a farm. Gnomes assigned to manage farms will plant crops in them and harvest them when they're grown.
  
• Underground Farm - It's the same thing as a regular farm, just for Mushrooms. Don't worry about it for now, Mushrooms are a very late game thing, after you have Mechanisms for moving water. Underground Farms need to be irrigated, and underground.
  
• Pasture - Gnomes assigned to take care of pastures will bring animals to this area as well as feed them if there are troughs in the pasture. They'll also harvest the animals. Yaks produce Milk, Emus produce Eggs and Alpacas produce wool.
  
• Grove - This button will create a Grove. Groves are areas where Gnomes will plant trees and then take clippings (used to plant new trees), pick fruit or even cut the trees down for wood. They'll do it all automatically, too, based on the settings you choose for the Grove.
  
• Plant Trees - Simple enough, plants trees, assuming you have clippings to plant them with.
  
• Fell Trees - Cut down trees. Cutting down a tree will create a Log, plus has a random change of creating a clipping that can be used to plant a new tree. Be careful. Since felling trees doesn't always make a clipping, you could cut down all the trees on the map and then have no clippings to plant new ones. That's pretty much game over for new fortresses.
  
• Cut Clipping - Does just what it says. It'll cut a clipping from a tree. Clippings can be used to plant new trees. This doesn't cut the tree down. If the tree has fruit on it, it'll also pick the fruit at the same time. Use this to ensure you always have enough clippings to plant more trees. Over time, trees will grow new clippings.
  
• Gather - This button will be very useful in the beginning. When used on fruit trees, this will pick their fruit. When used on Strawberries or Cotton plants, this button will pick them and produce a resource (a Strawberry or a Cotton ball) and a seed that you can use to plant new ones on a farm.

Sadly, Steam limits how much tech can be in each section, so in the next part we'll cover the rest of the menus

Menu Basics - How to Make Things Happen Part 2

Right, on to the Build menu.

• Workshops - This button lets you build Workshops. Workshops are used in crafting. Crafting works by taking a raw material and turning it into items. These items can be combined with other items at other Workshops to make finished items such as Furniture, Weapons, Armor and other Workshops.
  
• Mechanisms - This is a late game thing. Mechanisms are researched and can be used to build interesting contraptions. I'll cover them later.
  
• Furniture - Furniture is things like beds, chairs, tables or just about anything that doesn't fall into one of the other categories. The big one in this area is beds, which I'll talk about later as well.
  
• Storage - Normally, when things are stored in a stockpile, they're stored one item to a square (there are a few exceptions like dirt, stone and straw). Obviously if you wanted to store all your wood, you'd need an insanely huge stockpile. Storage containers hold up to 32 of an item type and can only be built in stockpiles. In this way, you can store 32 items per square. They come in three types: crates, barrels and bags.
  
• Terrain - This menu is where you'll spend most of your time when you're building things. It allows you to build walls, floors, stairs and ramps, both up and down in the case of the last two. I'll cover them in more detail later.

The last menu we need to cover is the Designate menu. This menu let's you give areas of the map special purposes. This menu is key to a successful fortress.

• Stockpile - This button is the key to fortress-building games. You'll see it in every fortress-building game you play, no matter if they're 3D, 2D or somewhere in between. Sciene fiction, fantasy, whatever. A Stockpile is an area where your Gnomes will store things. You can set what kinds of things a Sockpile holds and your Gnome, if they're not busy doing something else, will take items not already in a Stockpile and put them in one, provided that Stockpile has room and is set to hold that kind of item. There's a lot of ways to use this. For example, put your food stockpile near your kitchens and dining hall so Gnomes don't have to go so far to get food. Or put a stockpile of wood near your woodworkers so they don't have to walk far to get what they need for crafting. Proper Stockpile placement will make your life so much easier.
  
• Agriculture - This is that overlap I was talking about earlier. This menu lets you place farms, pastures and groves (since those are technically areas). I explained them already, so I'll skip over them here.
  
• Rooms - This menu lets you designate a few different kinds of rooms. Personal Quarters are the same thing as personal rooms for you Gnomes where they can go to sleep or eat. If a Gnome has a personal quarter and it has a bed, they will sleep there. If it has a table and chair next to each other, they will go there to eat. Dormitories are like communal sleeping areas. Gnomes without a personal room, or with a personal room with no bed, will go there to sleep, as long as there's a free bed for them. Dining halls are where Gnomes go to eat, assuming their room doesn't have a table and chair and there's a free table and chair in the dining hall. A single Dining Hall can also be designated as the Great Hall. Idle Gnomes will gather there. The last room is a Hospital. Sick or injured Gnomes will go to a Hospital as long as it has a free bed for them. Doctors will tend to them there.
  
• Guard Area - A guard area is an area where a squad will stand and attack any enemy who comes into their view. It's a good way to protect the entrance of your fortress.
  
• Patrol Route - This one's a little more complicated. It allows you to lay out a series of points, called a route. You can assign a squad and they will walk that route, attacking any enemies they see. This is good if you have a large fortress with multiple places enemies could enter and don't want a squad at each.

That sums up all the menus on the bottom menu bar. Next we'll look at the top menu bar and what its options do. Then we'll actually start playing. Feel free to skip ahead to the play section if you want, the top menu bar isn't as important as the bottom one. It is really useful though.

Menu Basics - Learning About your Kingdom

So, the top menu bar. This is the "info" bar where you can learn about your Gnomes and the kingdom they live in. It has six buttons:

• Kingdom - A general overview of the kingdom.
  
• Stocks - Information about the kingdom's supplies.
  
• Population - Information about the Gnomes living in the kingdom and their jobs.
  
• Military - Squads, formations and uniforms.
  
• Events - A log of events that have happened.
  
• Help - The official Gnomoria help menu.

So, let's look at each of them.


The Kingdom screen provides you with basic information for managing your kingdom. The main tab shows you your kingdom name, world seed and difficulty setting. It also shows you how many Gnomes you have as well as the number of workshops, farms and pastures in your kingdom. The last thing it shows you is the worth of your kingdom.

Let me talk about worth for a minute, because it's a bit important. Worth is the combined worth of your stocks, constructions and your Great Hall if you have one. It's kind of like a score, if you really want to think of it that way. Worth controls a few things in the game. First, it determines your population. The more your kingdom is worth, the more likely it is that new Gnomes will join your kingdom. The Gnomoria Wiki has some numbers if you want them. Worth also determines how likely it is that you'll discover other kingdoms to trade with, and the worth of those kingdoms. The last thing it controls, and this one is very important, is enemies. The more your kingdom is worth, the better equiped and larger attacking enemy groups will be.

The next tab deals with Diplomacy.


This tab will show you any other kingdoms you've met during your game, they type of kingdom they are, the distance they are from you and their ambassador, if any.

The type of a kingdom indicates what they sell and buy. For example, merchants will buy and sell everything are fair price but mining colonies will sell metals and gems cheaply and buy food for a lot more than its normally worth. The distance shows how long it will take a trader to travel from that kingdom to yours, or from yours to that kingdom. Last, you can host an ambassador from a kingdom to allow you to send traders to them to trade for specific items. Ambassadors are a bit special. They require their own room with a bed, a certain minimum worth and privacy (that is, it must have walls and a door). Ambassadors will consume food and drink from your supplies. If you don't meet the needs of the ambassador, they'll leave and go home.

The next three tabs show you information about your workshops, farms and pastures. It's fairly straight forward, so I'll leave it to you to understand them. The last tab shows all the rooms in your kingdom, including dining halls, personal rooms, hospitals, etc.

Moving on, the Stocks screen shows you information about yours stockpiles and the items available to you.


This section is pretty self-explanatory, but I want to touch on the last tab, Tracked Items. In the upper left corner of your game window, you'll see a few numbers. Depth, food and drink. Depth shows which layer of the map you are viewing, relative to ground level. The other two show how much food and drink you have. They are called Tracked Items. In the Tracked Items tab you can add your own things to track and they'll show up along with the Food and Drink in the upper left corner.

Next we'll be talking about the population screen, and I've split it into its own section because there's a lot to talk about in there and it's important enough to get its own section.

Menu Basics - Population

This section covers another very important aspect of fortress-building games, jobs. In Gnomoria, you can assign your Gnomes to do certain jobs. The game will create a few defaults to get you started, but if you really want to harness your Gnomes, you're going to want to customize. Open the Population screen.


The main tab shows you some basic information about how many Gnomes are in your kingdom, how many are busy/idle and how many have died. It also shows you how many Gnomes are assigned to each job type.


The assign screen lets you change what profession your Gnomes are. Professions control which jobs your Gnomes will perform, which ones they'll do first and a uniform if they need one. You can also see what they're up to at the moment.


The profession screen is where things get very confusing for new players. At the top is a box with the name of the profession you're changing. You can add and remove them with the buttons to the right. Below those buttons is where you can set a uniform (I'll cover those later when we talk about Military). The main view is a list of categories. Each category has sub-categories. These are the jobs. I'm going to cover each one because some of them aren't obvious or have little quirks to them.

• Mining - Anyone assigned to mining will carry out dig orders.
  
• Masonry - Anyone assigned to masonry will work in the Stonecutter and Stonemason workshops, crafting items.
  
• Stonecarving - Stonecarvers will work in the Stonecarver workshop, crafting trinkets that can be used for trading.
  
• Woodcutting - Anyone assigned to woodcutting will chop down trees, either when ordered of when trees need to be felled in a grove.
  
• Carpentry - Carpenters work in the Sawmill and Carpentry workshops, crafting items.
  
• Woodcarver - The same thing as a stonecarver, only with wood.
  
• Smelting - Anyone assigned to smelting will run the smelters, which take metal items and change them back to metal bars for reuse. They'll also run the Furnaces, which turn wood into coal. Finally, they also run the Forge, which turns metal ore into metal bars.
  
• Blacksmithing - Blacksmiths will work in the Blacksmith workshop, turning metal bars into items.
  
• Metalworking - The same was woodcarver and stonecarver, only with metal.
  
• Weapon Crafting - Anyone assigned to weapon crafting will work in the Weaponsmith workshop making weapons from metal bars.
  
• Armor Crafting - Anyone assigned to weapon crafting will work in the Armorer workshop making armor from metal bars.
  
• Gem Cutting - Gem cutters work in the Gem Cutting workshop and will turn raw gems into cut gems.
  
• Jewelry Maker - Jewelers will work in the Jewelry workshop making jewelry, which can be traded for high value.
  
• Weaving - Weavers work at Looms making thread and cloth from raw fibers.
  
• Tailor - Tailors work at Tailor workshops making cloth items.
  
• Pottery - Potters will work at Kilns making pottery trinkets and bricks.
  
• Leatherworking - Leatherworks work at the Leatherworking workshop making leather armor.
  
• Bonecarving - Bonecarvers are important, even though they mostly produce trinkets. Bonecarvers are needed to make bone needles, which are required to make tailor workshops. Don't neglect them! They work in the Bonecarving workshop.
  
• Prospecting - Prospectors work at the Prospecting workshop where they can turn 10 soil or stone clumps into a single metal sliver. 10 metal slivers makes a bar.
  
• Tinkering - Tinkers' work at the Tinkering Workbench and are like scientists. They'll perform research and every so often will discover new mechanisms for you to make.
  
• Machining - Anyone assigned to machining will work at a Mechanist's workshop producing mechanism parts.
  
• Engineering - Engineers produce mechanisms at the Engineering Table workshop. They also ring alarm bells.
  
• Mechanic - Mechanics reset automatic traps and operate mechanisms.
  
• Animal Husbandry - Gnomes with this assignment will look after pastures and the animals in them.
  
• Butchery - These guys run the Butcher's Table workshop, chopping up animals and corpses into meat, hide and bones.
  
• Horticulture - This one covers a lot of jobs. These Gnomes are responsible for planting trees, taking clippings and harvesting fruit.
  
• Farming - Gnomes with this job will take care of farms.
  
• Cooking - Simple enough, these Gnomes work in the Kitchen making food.
  
• Brewing - These Gnomes work in the Distillery making drinks.
  
• Medic - Gnomes with this job will tended to wounded Gnomes, provided there are bandages to treat them with.
  
• Caretaker - This job is an interesting one. During combat, Gnomes can have limbs chopped off. A Gnome with no arms cannot eat or drink, so they will rely on Caretaker Gnomes to feed them when they are hungry or thirsty.
  
• Construction - Gnomes with this job are in charge of building things. Anything. Workshops, terrain, you name it. They also deconstruct things.
  
• Hauling - Almost all Gnomes will have this job on them. This job allows Gnomes to move items to a stockpile.

That's a lot of jobs. Still, it's pretty straight forward. Many new players wonder why they're Gnomes are doing one job but not another when the other job is more urgent. The last box here is the priority box. With this, you can set which jobs a profession will handle first. By default, all professions have the same ordering. I'm going to go through these too because one of them is tricky.

• Mining - This one only applies to miners, but it's the priority of digging jobs.
  
• Agriculture - This is the tricky one. This job covers the horticulture job and part of the farming job plus the woodcutting job. I'll explain. This priority adjusts the priority of gathering (both orders and from farms and groves), taking clippings, cutting trees and planting trees. Some of them always take priority though. Gathering will always happen before any other job on that list. Make sure you don't give huge orders to pick fruits, or your farms will get neglected. This can be a big problem for early kingdoms. Try to split those jobs up in the job list between different professions if you can. One Gnome can handle a farm or two, so set the other to handle Groves. Or make your Ranchers also do Groves (since they don't do much to start with).
  
• Build - Affect build orders.
  
• Mechanic - This one affects the priority with which mechanics will operate mechanisms or reset traps.
  
• Workshop - This one affects basically all workshops except the Tinkers' Bench. The higher it is on the list, the more priority you give to workshop orders.
  
• Farm - The priority or caring for farms. This involves tilling and planting seeds, but not gathering crops (that's Agriculture).
  
• Grove - The same as Farm, but for Groves. It involves planting, clipping and felling trees, but not gathering their fruit.
  
• Pasture - Tending to pastures.
  
• Tinker - This controls the priority of working at a Tinkers' Bench.
  
• Hauling - This one should always be last on the list, unless you have enough Gnomes to have dedicated haulers. This controls the priority of moving items to stockpiles.

That's jobs! This is the big section that trips a lot of new players up. Next up is the military and then we can start playing.

Menu Basics - Military

So, as I pointer out earlier in the guide, there is a bug in Gnomoria 0.9.8 that causes goblin raiders to spawn on Peaceful. Gnomes should be able to handle a single goblin raider on their own, without any weapons, but it's a good idea to cover military and arm a few Gnomes just in case.


The military screen covers the basics of your miliary. It tells you about your squads, what they're doing and a few other pieces of information about guard areas and patrol routes. The next tab, Enemies, lists the enemies currently on the map that you know about. Now on to the Squads tab.


This screen lets you choose/remove an existing squad or make a new one. Squads use what's known as a Formation and consists of five members (a leader and four others).


In the Formations tab you can create formations and edit/remove existing ones. The Perk box lets you select a perk to give to this formation. Perks offer bonuses for things like having lots of members with shields or melee weapons. The remaining boxes let you select what type of position each member in the squad has. You can also change some behaviors of the formation, such as whether or not they avoid combat (for medic squads for example) and whether or not they'll rush to the aid of Gnomes who spot enemies.


The Positions tab lets you set up the different positions that can be in a formation. You can pick a perk (such as other Gnomes attacking the same target as this Gnome getting bonus damage if this Gnome isn't wearing a helmet), a uniform (which I'll talk about in a second) and a few other settings. Maintain distance is a good one for archers since it makes them move back a bit.


The last tab is the Uniforms tab where you can set up uniforms. Uniforms are arrangements of weapons and armor. They can be used both for military and for regular jobs (for example, you may want all miners to have a pickaxe in their left hand).

That covers the military. You should have everything you need now to understand how to play the game, or at least tell your Gnomes to do things. For those who still would like more help, continue on and we'll cover how to actually set up a Kingdom and get your Gnomes through their first winter.

Playing - Laying the Groundwork

When you start a new game, you'll be given 9 Gnomes, 2 Yaks (a male and female), straw, bandages, some seeds and a small supply of food and drink, all packed into crates, barrels and bags. Take a look for yourself.


There's a few things we should do right away. The first is optional, but if you want you can set up your jobs to your liking. The default job set should work for starting out, but you'll probably find it lacking as your kingdom grows. Refer to the earlier sections for help with how to do that.

The next couple of steps can be completed in any order, but you should complete them before unpausing the game for the first time.

First, we'll need a farm of wheat. Wheat is used to feed Yaks and Alpaca as well as for padding in beds and armor, so we'll need a lot of it. You start with 32 wheat seeds, so a 6x6 farm will use all of our seeds with only four extra spaces unplanted. You can, of course, go bigger right off the bat, but your farms will spend extra time tilling spaces that won't be used, so it's not a good idea.

To make a farm, select the Farm option from the Agriculture menu. Now click on a square on the map and then move the mouse. Don't click and drag, you'll just move the map. Click once, then move. You'll see a green box grow with you. That's where your farm will be. Any red squares are squares you can't build you farm on. Farms must be on dirt squares (not clay or water) and cannot be occupied by trees or plants such as cotton or strawberries. When your farm is as big as you want, click again. If the game doesn't pop up a window, right click on your new farm. You'll see the following window.


Let's go over it together. First, you can pick the kind of crop you want to plant. Pick wheat. The number beside it is how many seeds of that kind you have. Now set the priority. The priority chooses how important this farm is compared to other farms. The higher the number, the sooner Gnomes with the Farming job will get to it. Remember, priority is also controlled by the settings in the profession menu, specifically the Agriculture option. Adjust that if you find your farms aren't being handled. I'd suggest a priority of 4 since your wheat farm is important for keeping your Yaks alive not to mention making beds later on. There's lots of other food sources, so it won't hurt your Gnomes too much if they spend some extra time handling the wheat farm. Finally, name your farm. If you don't change the name, it will default to "(crop name) farm". Most farms, pastures and groves work the same way.

Next, we need a pasture for the Yaks. Pastures work on size. The size of a pasture is equal to its area. So a 6x6 pasture has a size of 36. Animals also have a size. Yaks have a size of 12. You want at least enough space for 4 Yaks (2 male, 2 female), possibly more. Yaks take a while to breed, so you can start small if you want. Just be aware that Yaks without a pasture will not be milked.

If you want, you can also set up a Strawberry farm. Again, you have 32 seeds, so a 6x6 farm is adequate to start out.

The last thing to do before unpausing is to lay out a few Stockpiles. You'll want one for food and drink, perhaps separately, as well as seeds and straw. The seeds stockpile should go near your farms and the straw stockpile near your pasture. I would recommend making your Food/Drink stockpile a priority 4 so it's kept well stocked.

For reference, this is what my world looks like when I'm all done that stuff.


Now you can unpause the game and watch your Gnomes get to work. You'll probably notice a few things. First, you've got some Gnomes doing nothing, or you will shortly after starting. This is because they're miners and they are only going to move things around. Second, some of your stockpiles might get full very quickly, like the food/drink stockpile. Since you start with a few crates, barrels and bags, you can use the build menu to place them and your builders will put them in place. Just select build->storage. You'll get a window where you can select what you want to build. Bags hold clippings, grain and seeds. Barrels hold drinks. Crates hold just about everything else. The only items that don't need storage are soil, stone and straw. These items stack automatically.

The next thing we need is stone to build our first workshop. Head to the terrain menu, dig, dig stairs. Find a good spot to start digging and select it. Make sure it's not near any water. Your Gnomes can't swim. Actually, none of the creatures in the game can swim. A moat as a viable defense strategy, but difficult to set up. I'll explain why later in the guide when I talk about what late game looks like.

Anyway, wait for one of your miners to dig the stairs. Then go down a level. You should see lots of gray. These are undiscovered blocks. Where your stairs are, you'll see the stairs and the blocks around it. Go the terrain menu->mine->mine wall. Select a 5x5 area centered on your stairs. Wait for your miners to dig it out. Keep doing this until, digging down, until you hit stone. If you generated a perfectly flat map like I did for this guide, you should hit stone at depth -7.

Once you find stone, mine out an area. Make it as big or small as you want, but if you make it small, be prepared to expand it for more materials pretty quickly. Now would also be a good time for another stockpile, one to hold soil and stone. I'd suggest making it hold only the raw materials since for the most part you'll be using crafted items right away and you don't want them being dragged off to a stockpile where your craft Gnome will have to run after them.

A word of warning needs to go out right now. If you're not on Peaceful, you have 2 game days to stockpile everything you mine out. Beyond that, if there's enough unstockpiled items near each other, they will form together into a golem. Right now, golems will only form from dirt, stone, wood, etc. In the future, that might change. As a general rule, stockpile everything as soon as you can.

The last resource you'll need here is wood. You can just chop down some trees to get you started, but I'd suggest something different.

Go to agriculture->cut clipping and select some trees. I'd recommend birch trees. I haven't touched on it yet, but birch is the most valuable wood type and that will have impacts on gameplay later. Pine is the lowest and it's a good wood if you want to keep your worth down until you can start making weapons. Either way, take some clippings and then lay out a Grove (Agriculture->Grove). This will give you an "endless" source of wood if set up right. When you make a Grove, it'll give you a similar window to the farm window. Pick the kind of tree you want, the priority (leave it at 5) and a few other settings. You can turn off the Pick Fruit setting since this is a birch grove, but it has no effect really either way.

Keep an eye on your food count. If it starts dropping, you'll need to give a Forage order (Agriculture->Forage) on some apple/orange trees for some extra food. You'll need to keep doing this until your farms start producing food. You can also Forage some Cotton and start a Cotton farm in preparation for later. Don't give your Gnomes too much work right away, though. There's only so many of them.

Once the clippings are cut, fell the trees. Once you have wood, it's time for the final step in laying the groundwork. Go to the build menu and pick Workshops. At the top of the list is Crude Workbench. This is the start of the crafting tree. You can see it requires a log and a raw stone. You can pick the kind of log and stone if you have more than one. Place the workshop where you want it and your builders will hop to it. Next we'll talk about more advanced stuff.

Playing - Crafting 101 and Sleep

If you've been following along and abusing the pause button to let yourself set up orders without time ticking away, it should be around midnight of your first night. It's okay if it's not, I've been playing Gnomoria a long time and I've custom set my jobs too. It should be no later than morning of the second day, though. You should have a wheat farm, a strawberry farm, some stockpiles and a Crude Workbench. Optionally, you can also have a few groves, one for the kind of tree you want to use to build with and two others for the fruit trees. Just so you get an idea, here's my game world at midnight.


Now it's time to start crafting! Go to your Crude Workbench and right click on it. This will open the crafting menu. Head to the Overview tab for a minute so we can cover some basics.


Okay, what is all this? Well, first off you can assign a crafting station to an individual. Only that individual may use that crafting station. This is useful if you, say, set up a house for a Gnome to live in and in it you put the workshops they need to craft. You can lock those workshops to them so that other crafters won't waste time walking all the way to that Gnome's house. Assigned a workshop to a Gnome won't stop that Gnome from using other workshops, though, so it's only really useful if you have enough workshops for everyone to have their own. Otherwise you may end up with your assigned Gnome using the only other free workshop and thus nobody else can work (since they can't use that Gnome's assigned workshop).

Next up is priority. Like farms, pastures, groves and stockpiles, this determines what order Gnomes will carry out jobs. A good suggestion, when you're starting out, is to set the workshop that produces the finished good to a higher priority, that way it will be finished the moment your Gnomes have all the materials they need and when they don't they'll go to the other workshops to make them.

Finally, the two checkboxes control whether or not a workshop is suspended and whether or not it accepts generated jobs. Suspended is the same thing as disabled. While a workshop is suspended, nobody will use it no matter what. You can suspend lots of things in the game. Farms, groves, stockpiles, etc. The other checkbox changes whether or not that workshop accepts generated jobs. When you order a workshop to craft something, it will check if it has all the things it needs. If it doesn't, it will try to create them for you by ordering other workshops to create the parts it needs. Unfortunately, it's not perfect. Sometimes it will create to many items (especially if you have lots of build orders). One big problem is woodworking. Many crafting recepies for wood use wood planks, and different amounts of them. If you're trying to build a workbench (5 planks) and a crate (4 planks) at the same time, the crate will always be finished first. Why? You're going to have 4 planks before you have 5, so it'll use them to build the crate instead of the workbench! Try not to load your workshops down with a lot of build orders, or else build what you need by hand to avoid that problem.

Now, look at the Crafting tab.


Lots to talk about here! First, on the left side you have a list of all items that can be crafted at this particular workshop. Below that you can see what the required crafting level is and what items you need to craft it. You can also pick what kind of each material you want to use, provided you've had at least one of that kind of material in stock at a given time. In the middle is a list of all the crafting jobs queued at this workshop. Select Plank, choose the kind of wood you want (or any if you don't care) and press craft. You should see the plank in the job list.

A word of warning, it's not a good idea to pick "any". Your Gnomes aren't smart enough to pick a material, they'll just keep crafting items randomly until they have enough of one to make whatever they want. This is a waste of resources and time.

Now, on to the right of the crafting menu. There's a few options here. Pick the plank job. You can now set it to either repeat (produce that item endlessly) or repeat to, which will create that item over and over until there's a certain number in stock. Repeat to is great for food and drink to ensure you have a constant supply without producing insane amounts of it (and consuming all your fruit to make wine in the process). The last option is called "Craft Ingredients". This is similar to the "Accept generated orders" from earlier. Turning this off will prevent that job from creating crafting jobs for its parts. For example, a sandwich needs meat and bread. If you try to craft a sandwich, your kitchen will create meat and bread crafting orders and leave them there until they're crafted, making lists very hard to read. Turning that off will disable that. This setting can also be disabled globally in the game options under "Gameplay"->"Generate item craft jobs by default".

Anyway, create a plank and then a chair, workbench and chisel. This part will take a while since your Gnomes aren't the most skilled right now. It's probably morning by now (it's not for me, but like I said, I've been playing Gnomoria and fortress-building games in general for a long time). Now is a good time to talk about sleep.

Your Gnomes need to sleep. It's quite likely at least one has passed out on the floor by now and you've gotten a message about it in the lower left corner. Gnomes will get tired and when they're tired, they work slower and move slower. Find a 5x5 area and make it a dormitory (Designate->Room->Dorimtory). Now go to the build menu and select Furniture. Find "Straw Bed" and make 4 straw beds with one square between any other bed. Don't build too many, you need straw to feed your Yaks too! Your builders will grab some straw and build them. You'll then notice some of your Gnomes will suddenly have Zzz over their heads and they'll run to the beds and lie down. They're sleeping and they won't get up for a while. It's better then them sleeping on the floor, though, because then they sleep even longer. Sleeping Gnomes are one of the most irritating things in the game, particularly early on because everyone will sleep at roughly the same time and then nothing gets done.

Let's touch on sleep for a bit longer. Gnomes are actually quite greedy. The more valuable their room is, the better they sleep and the longer they can go without sleep. You can make their rooms more valuable by putting items in it like statues and dressers. You can also make it more valuable by making the walls and floor out of more valuable materials. There's an exception to all of this, though. Dorimtories. Gnomes will always sleep the same in a Dormitory, which is to say, not well. It's better than the floor though. It's not recommended to waste beds on a Dormitory early on since they'll have no impact on how well Gnomes sleep.

Back to crafting! Wait until your chair, workbench and chisel are crafted. These are the next items in the crafting chain. When they're done, go to the building menu, pick workshops, and find the stonecutter workshop. You need this workshop and a stonemason to create a sawblade. A sawblade will then be used to build a sawmill. Then you can build a carpenter. At that point your Crude Workbench will be obsolete and can be removed. I'll let you do all that, then we'll move to the next section.

Playing - Kitchen and Distillery

The next two items on our list is the Kitchen and Distillery. We'll work on the distillery first since it's more important. By the time your Gnomes finish taking their naps and get around to constructing the your workshops, it'll probably be the third day. This is the point where another warning goes out.

If you're not playing on Peaceful, creatures who spawn in the dark below depth -7 will begin appearing at this point, 2 game days after your Gnomes arrived in the kingdom. Be careful, they will come out of the mines you'll have built to get stone for crafting. In the future, make sure your mines are brightly lit, can be sealed or that you have an adequate military to handle them. You can light dark spaces with torches, which require coal and sticks to make. I'll discuss these when I talk about late game stuff, such as metal smithing.

If you're running low on drink, or if you have spare time, now is a good time for a well. You'll need a Stonecutter workshop and at least a Crude Workbench to produce what you need. A well needs to be placed over water, so on a shore. It provides water for your Gnomes to drink and is a more or less endless supply (unless you drain the lake for some reason). A well can be a life saver in winter when you need to conserve food and thus can't use fruit to make wine. I'll explain the winter thing when we get there, never fear.

Meanwhile, order a distillery from your build menu, under workshops. A distillery requires a table and two barrels. Once your distillery is built, you can start producing drink for your Gnomes. Wine is the most basic kind of drink and is better than water. The better the drink, the longer your Gnomes will go without drinking. The same applies for food.

You'll need to construct a kitchen to supply higher quality food. A kitchen requires a table, chair and a knife. To craft a knife, you need a Stonemason (and thus a Stonecutter) and a Carpenter (and thus either a Sawmill or Crude Workbench). The Stonemason makes the knife blade and knife, the Carpenter makes the knife handle.

At this point you have a way to produce food, water, and all the supplies you need to sustain your kingdom. From here on out, you should have all the tools and knowledge you need to play the rest of the game without assistance.

Tips, Tricks and Notes

There's a few things to note before I let you go play.

First, nothing grows in the winter. Remember how I mentioned conserving food during the winter? That's why. Trees won't grow, crops won't grow, nothing. Your only source of food in the winter is whatever you have stockpiled plus whatever you can get from trading/butchering animals/eating the corpses of your fallen enemies (yes, you can do that).

Second, this guide is not in its final form. I will be coming back at a later date to expand on late game stuff like Mechanisms, which is another confusing topic for a lot of new players.

Third, and last, enjoy the game.

Change Log

July 1, 2014

• Updated guide to reflect changes to golems.

December 26, 2015

• Updated legal section to deal with translation requests.

Legal Stuff

This guide (C) 2014-2015 M. Damian Mulligan (G'lek Tarssza)
Gnomoria (C) 2012 Robotronic Games

The following site/services have permission to host this guide:

- Steam Community

If you find this guide on a site other than those listed above, please let me know.

You may print this guide for personal use only.

Translations are acceptable under the following conditions:

• You must contact me prior to posting your translation to the public.
  
• You must only publish the translations to the sites/services listed above.
  
• You must maintain the legal information in this section exactly as it appears, within the limits of the language of the translation.
  
• You must link to the original version of the guide (this version) somewhere in your translation.
  
• You are expected to keep your translation(s) up to date with the original version (this version). I will not maintain translated versions of this guide.
  
• You must explicitly state that your guide deviates from the contents of this guide at any location where it does so in any way which is not a result of the translation.

Question, comments or concerns may be sent to me by email at robloxianmany AT gmail DOT com

[nordblom1]

Great guide. I have played this game for some weeks and could not get started. This guide helped me quite much.
Any chance for a follow up? What next to do?

[Balthazar]

@LordanDaMage press tab I had that same problem to. Tab brings it back

[Piratebear]

Section Playing - Laying the Groundwork > Farms, Priority
"The higher the number, the sooner Gnomes with the Farming job will get to it"
*lower

[Zlatans Purple Lambo]

Great guide, helped me out a lot! Thx!

Tiny suggestion; under "Menu basics" You could add corresponding numbers (instead of just a dot-list) to the descriptions of the menu bar buttons?

[G'lek]

@LordanDaMage
As far as I'm aware it only spawns above ground. You'll need to really push for those yaks to start producing milk for your Gnomes.

[LordanDaMage]

I just figured it out. If you press tab it hides it. It must have been from alt-tabbing. On a completely non-related note, there is no surface water in my world. Does water spawn underground? Because, if not, I have no clue how to build a well.

[G'lek]

@LordanDaMage
I'm afraid not. That sounds like a bug to me and you should report it to the developer if you can.

[LordanDaMage]

Hey, so my overlay disappeared (the part with the pause/resume buttons and the tabs: "Kingdom", "Population", etc.). Any clue on how to get it back? Thanks.

[lab2000g]

Oh okay, so It doesnt matter about the shape as long as there is enough space for all the starting seeds i get it, thanks

[G'lek]

@Kaukas
Technically speaking yes, it would be, but I've found that I end up needing those four extra spaces to generate enough wheat for my yaks after the first harvest comes in. It also depends how much continuous space you have. Some maps don't have enough for a 6x6 area. At the end of the day, if you have enough resources, the exact layout is up to you.