Surviving and prospering as a medieval serf

Some additional instruction to the in-game tips, and how to beat the game

The Guide

Firstly, props to the developer for this game, which is a nice version of an interesting idea - surviving in the medieval period. This is a few additional tips to the in-game help.

The game runs in cycles, corresponding to periods: the basic unit is the day: one turn. It can be played as a turn-based game, and in my view should be, to take advantage of the cycles. The next cycle is the week, which is the time it takes to perform one social interaction (and also seems to be roughly the period that you need to go to church - there appears to be a negative buff if you don't go to church for a while); the month, which is the period that each meal lasts for; the season, and the year.

One important thing to understand is that in the spring, i.e. when winter ends, you are planting crops to be harvested that summer (your legumes and oats). In summer, you harvest the crops from the spring planting AND the crops that were planted the previous autumn (the developer kindly provided a field of rye already sown).

In the autumn, you sow a crop for the following summer harvest.

To manage your fields, simply weed and fertilize them to ensure a bountiful crop.

If you want to earn some cash early on to get you started, gather wood in the forest. It takes some time, but will earn you some cash in town.

In the summer, after your harvest, a good way to earn cash is to turn some of your grain into bread, then take that to the market and sell it.

For the market prices, red is cheap, green is expensive, and otherwise somewhere in between. You can check the market prices before going to town, and plan accordingly.

Each week, you can perform one social interaction. You want to woo a wife, and there is a political dimension to the game which I haven't explored fully (too time consuming). It is helpful to get married, because you can get a lot more work done, however you want to pick a wife with reasonable stats. If there are no women with good stats, check out the young ladies, try to find one, then wait for them to come of marriageable age and woo them. It is helpful to have friends because you can ask them for gifts once your friendship level is high enough. You can ask them for help too, but this doesn't appear to do anything (bug?).

The benefit from each social interaction appears to be affected by what the two of you like and dislike, and how compatible your personalities are. For the characters that you can't do the basics with (share a meal, gossip), some items are available which allow you to perform other social interactions: the fishing rod (fishing!), the candle (tables), the wind instrument (singing and dancing), etc. If you want to make friends with someone, it might be easier to wait until you have one of these objects and can perform the appropriate social interaction.

If you are repeatedly doing the same action you will suffer the negative buff, so vary your socialization to minimize the negative effect on your stats, i.e. if your taste is low, don't share a meal - pick something else. You don't want your stats getting low, because it negatively affects task performance.

In terms of house improvements, it can be helpful to put in a veggie garden. The seeds you sow appear to be harvestable the following year in the same season. It seemed to be helpful to sow in spring, because you can harvest the following spring to get a food and cash injection after winter.

In terms of the food GUI, it seems like each harvest or purchase is treated separately, with the oldest stuff first; however the engine seems to be treating all of the items together.

Once you get married, each of you can improve your stats by befriending and learning from your in-laws. Likewise, once you have children, each of them can befriend and learn from either parent, up to their maximum stats. This is why it is helpful to pick a wife with reasonable stats, because you pass them on to your kids.

The next thing is animals. I didn't explore until my wife brought one as a dowry, and this is when I realised the game is broken. The horse consumes four fodder each month, however it gets to the market in a day, which makes the market much more accessible. The female goats and the cow produce milk, which is handy to have on hand as socialising requires drinks.

Go the market, buy any old and cheap animals. Simply revisit the market until you have the animals you want. Go home, slaughter them, then return to town to sell the produce. Easy way to make money. You don't even need to crop any more, since you can simply buy food.

The game has some interesting things to explore, i.e. all the home improvements which could add value, however the bug above is game-breaking, so you don't need to do any of it.

There isn't much point playing further, because the character management system is tedious. Some system like RimWorld, where you can set tasks to prioritize, might simplify things.

Another bug is that it doesn't appear to cost anything to use the mill.

Thanks to the developer for this little gem