Towers of Aghasba - Things Worth Noting

This is an informal start to a collection of observations and information about the interface and gameplay mechanics associated with Towers of Aghasba. The focus will be on those aspects that might not be deliberately called out in the game UI, tool-tips or tutorials, but could be useful to players trying the game for the first time. In an effort to minimize spoilers, walkthrough level step-by-step details will be avoided as much as possible.

Game UI

The radial menu (press 'R') is essentially the "hotbar" for this game. Items and tools can be assigned to it by using the "Link" button from the inventory screen and then pressing LMB once you mouse toward the slot you want it placed on.

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When feeding fauna in the world, an easy way to place food on the ground is to assign the food to a slot in the radial menu, switch to that food then hold down RMB to "aim" and then press LMB to throw the food.

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When you are placing seeds and certain structures, keep an eye on the bottom left of the UI for a message next to a lightbulb icon indicating that the seed/structure can't be MOVED or REMOVED after it is placed. It's in white text so it can be somewhat easy to miss or gloss over.

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Over time, the player will be awarded inventory (+4 slots when upgrading town/village):

and max health upgrades (+10 health when upgrading the colossal tree):

typically after completing certain quests. You can see a visual reflection of the health increases by checking the total number of "pips" present on the health bar in the bottom left of the UI. Each pip represents 25 health.

Started the game with 2 pips:

Had 2.3-ish pips later on:

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Unfortunately when using the button to transfer a whole stack of something from your backpack into a storage container it doesn't auto-stack. This can lead to duplicate stacks of items in the destination container. In addition, if the destination container is full, it will drop items on the ground even though the corresponding stack in the container wouldn't have been maxed out by transferring the items.

Great news! Not only was the above issue fixed, but as of Patch #3 on 11/23/2024 there are additional buttons in the UI allowing the player to "fill" stacks either from the backpack to storage, or from storage to the backpack as you can see here:


NOTE - If you want ALL items from the backpack to fill the appropriate stacks in storage you need to make sure that an empty backpack slot is selected. Otherwise it's only going to fill for the item you have selected.

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The "Fill Orders" tab in the UI is a very handy page that allows you to click through and check what materials you need in order to complete any building/upgrade related actions that have been triggered so far (i.e. ruin upgrades, tree upgrades, building construction, etc). No more having to run over to Location X to check on this manually like you have to do in other games.

NOTE - You can see some of this from the map screen as well!

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If you have multiple tools of the same type in your inventory, when one of them breaks another will automatically be equipped.

In addition, as of the Patch #3 on 11/23/2024, when you are in range to "harvest" a node, the first button press will automatically have the player equip the corresponding tool needed based on node type.

NOTE - The above referenced patch also reduced the number of "hits" required for stone tools on several resource types (Stone, Clay, Big Cap Mushrooms, and Dead Trees). However, there are still many others that require 5 hits.

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It's a good idea to get familiar with and regularly check your "Amity" total from time to time. It's essentially a currency with some reputation like effects. While it doesn't display in the UI all the time (can see it from the inventory screen in the top right):

You can also see it pop up temporarily when you take an action that deducts from it or increases it:

• Decreases when you harvest flora
  
• Decreases when you kill fauna
  
• Increases when you plant flora
  
• Increases when you destroy the central node of infested withered growths
  
• Increases when you heal injured fauna
  
• Increases when you feed fauna

It is also possible to take damage when harvesting flora if you don't have any Amity.

There are also visual displays of Amity reduction (red particles/glow) and gain (green particles/glow) around the crystal amulet behind the player on their belt.

NOTE - As of a patch prior to 11/23/2024, Amity now displays in the top right of the screen at all times.

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Certain regions in the game are initially covered by a "withered haze" until you restore the region's shrine. In addition to the misty greyscale effect on the screen, you can see at the bottom left of the screen above the health meter an indicator of the player's resistance to the haze:

The circular meter slowly expires upward and once it is fully depleted the player will begin to take periodic health damage. If the player manages to exit the withered haze quickly enough, their resistance will be restored slowly and the icon will disappear.

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When using blueprints or recipes that you get from quests or find in chests around the world you'll notice that a pop-up will appear toward the top middle of the screen displaying what has been discovered and the building where it can be produced.

NOTE - If you don't see the pop-up after using it, that means the recipe or blueprint is a duplicate.

Gameplay Mechanics

While the game allows the player a great deal of flexibility when placing a village marker or a colossal tree seed it is important to make sure that when dealing with tree seeds the rocky/uneven ground can become problematic later on.

Unlike villages, the player isn't able to bypass elevation based terrain issues by using a building block (or changing the building foundation elevation) when it come to placing the colossal tree seeds and the seeds of other flora that'll be needed for the ecosystem.

In addition, there appears to be a literal elevation based limitation if you try and plant seeds too high up even if you are still in the right ecosystem.

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Feeding creatures in general will provide Amity as well as an opportunity to collect dung, seeds and other fauna related products such as fur and milk depending on the type of creature.

I haven't figured out exactly what manages it, but there does appear to be somewhat of a "cooldown" on how often creatures will eat. Perhaps at some point I'll try and time it, but I usually just show up scatter a few bits of food of each type for the specific ecosystem and wait a minute or two for them to eat the first serving and then leave after that.

When you come back there's often additional resources dropped on the ground from them eating food while you're not there. Plus you can also see the little sprout looking spirits get absorbed into the crystal amulet on your belt as well, which is the visual trigger letting you know Amity has been gained.

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Trees are actually a decent source of "food" early on because you can actually eat the roots, which at times seems to be easier to find than berries. Eating food is a pretty reliable way to keep your health up early on in the game, especially since the player doesn't have natural health regeneration and doesn't respawn with full health after death.

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Speaking of death, the penalty in the game isn't very severe. It doesn't appear that the player loses any items from the inventory or suffers any additional durability loss from tools/weapons. The player respawns at the nearest village/town.

The largest impact is not respawning at full health (but at approximately 50%).

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Be on the look out for chests scattered across the world. While there might not be as many as you see in other open world games, there are enough of them out there to make it worth while to climb mountains, ledges and other elevated terrain formations to look for them.


Plus regularly ascending to high elevation is a good way to look for POIs and other interesting locations.

So far I've gotten an upgraded glider from an "ornate chest" but mostly just village decoration and cooking related blueprints from the "wooden" ones and the containers you find at the shrine ruins.

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It can be useful to let the withered do your dirty work for you. Every time you kill a non-withered creature you lose a small amount of Amity. However if a withered creature kills them you don't and the creature still drops their loot which you can collect later.

NOTE - All creatures (even withered) are capable of doing "friendly fire" damage to any nearby creature(s).

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You can recover arrows that hit the terrain or are embedded in a creature you hit.

NOTE - A similar principle applies when "throwing" other objects at enemies. For example, you can kill enemies by throwing stones at them and then picking the stones up off the ground later.

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Be careful when you are out for a swim and decide to dive and go deeper. Because of how slow the player moves in water and how fast the stamina drains, you are much more likely to die from stamina hitting zero than you are from running out of breath.

It's especially punishing because unlike most games, when you run out of stamina you instantly die regardless of how much health you have!

The swimming changes included in Patch #3 on 11/23/2024 have made traversing the water significantly less deadly and in line with what you'd expect to see in most games of the genre:

• The player swims faster and turns much more responsively.
  
• Stamina drain is much slower and when the player runs out of stamina or air the health depletes periodically.
  
• The player no longer instantly dies when running out of stamina in the water.

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The purple bulbed infested looking root structures that you see scattered across the world (a.k.a. "withered blobs") spawn the withered creatures.


Rather than being destroyed by damage from the player's weapon they are destroyed by the crystal amulet. So to do this you get close to the growth and then hold down "E" until the progress bar finishes and the growth gets vaporized. As you encounter larger growths, additional nodes need to be destroyed before you can vaporize the central core growth.

NOTE - Some of these nodes are even high enough on the withered structures to require climbing to reach and destroy them.

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When you see a small flock of 10+ birds circling an area that's and indication of something worth investigating!

NOTE - There are actually different types of birds that do this, not just the black ones that resemble crows, with some of them even pointing the player towards treasure under water!

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It may prove helpful to using higher elevation as a means of more easily feeding creatures that tend to flee when you get close. Standing on top of a stone formation or tree is a great way to remain out of their detection range while also being able to lob pieces of food relatively close to them.

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You can use the Tether Bow to "grab" seeds and other harvestables at a distance. It's especially handy for the colossal tree as it saves you the effort of having to climb and move across narrow branches to get into melee range of every single seed/harvestable. Instead, just shoot the harvestable and it'll automatically be pulled to you just like it works for fish.

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There are some "recipes" at production buildings that take a tool as an ingredient but the durability of the tool does not impact the produced good(s). For example, to produce Clay x 3 at the Clay Pit takes Stone Shovel x 1 + Coal x 3. Since the durability of the tool isn't a factor, if you can remember to save your almost broken stone shovels you can use them there.

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Additional Notes on Building

As the player continues to construct buildings and other structures within their citadel (Midhaven) and various villages the requirements to increase tier will get more complex. For example, in order to go past Tier 1 the player will need to accumulate "culture points" within the village. These can be obtained by crafting and placing certain buildings from the "Construction Table". Each blueprint will indicate how many culture points the building is worth and there don't appear to be any diminishing returns, just make sure the building is constructed within range of the village center. There are two small icons in the bottom right of the UI that can be referenced to check if the player is in range of the village.

Thanks to Patch #4 on 11/28/2024, players have significantly more decorations that provide culture points. In addition, there are a handful of decorations that only require 1 wood but provide 10-15 culture points:

• Bathhouse Shrine = 10 culture points
  
• Zamku Monument 02 = 12 culture points
  
• Amani Monument 01 = 15 culture points

Keep in mind though, I've obtained several of these from wooden/ornate chests found across the world. So based on RNG your decoration blueprints may be different.

As a side note, while there are buildings which might appear to be specific to a village type (i.e. Mining vs. Farming) they can be placed in any type of village to boost culture points. So if you try and place a "mining" building in a Farm Village it will work and the culture points will be counted.

In addition, it is possible to "place" a building before you have all the available materials. This can also be helpful in that it will now show up on the "Fill Orders" screen and essentially be tracked from any location.

NOTE - When choosing a location to place a village marker, it can be helpful to take into consideration that with each village also comes a portal. So it can be advantageous to strategically place villages in areas of the world map where there are no pre-existing portals close by.

Additional Notes on Climbing

While pretty straightforward as a mechanic overall, there are some additional elements involved in getting the most out of the players climbing ability:

• Peakfur armor set can be used to reduce stamina usage while climbing.
  
• Consumables can be used while climbing, so food with stamina buffs and potions that restore stamina can be key for long distance climbing without footholds. NOTE - Food buffs appear to last approximately 40 minutes.
  
• The Bloomstep arrow can be shot against a climbing surface to essentially create a flat mushroom platform in a specific location that the player can use as a foothold. However, due to how close the camera is on the player depending on the surface you are climbing on it can be difficult to get a good angle to place the platforms in certain locations. In addition, the platforms don't last forever, but they do last at least 60 seconds (I think).
  
• Climbing upside down at various angles will cause a red lightning icon to appear indicating stamina is being used at a much faster rate. Be careful when climbing a route that has a lot of this.

Additional Notes on Flora Planting and Harvesting

While planting and harvesting the flora in Towers of Aghasba is a fairly straightforward task in most cases, there are still some interesting considerations involved:

• Don't have to till soil or water seeds/plants, but rather just wait for a seed to grow after it's planted (UI timer displayed). However the type of flora that will appear is somewhat random.
  
• Planting the same seed in a different ecosystem or barren area can result in a different set of flora potentially growing there. For example, a "Ripe Seed" may grow into cacti in a Tropical ecosystem, but not in a Temperate or Arid one.
  
• Some flora appears only in the wild and in barren or withered haze areas and can't be planted by the player.
  
• Not all flora simply requires harvesting and then provides one or more items for the player to collect. Some of them provide a unique "effect" instead. For example, the player is healed when harvesting the Mendstalk, gains +3 Amity when harvesting weeds and can be shot up high in the air (to facilitate gliding) when harvesting the large flat "Fly Fly" mushrooms.
  
• Certain flora even has a high chance (perhaps even guaranteed) to "spawn" a specific creature that can then be interacted with immediately. For example, there are small bowl-like plants in some barren areas that when hit once or twice with a shovel will spawn a small creature that can be fed and then drops byproducts to loot. This can be quite helpful for "farming" dung as every plant you come across will spawn the creature so you don't have to "wait" as long as you would if you were feeding a limited number of that same creature within one of your ecosystems.

Note the following additional flora that provide effects when harvested (not a full list):

Flora	Harvest Effect	Duration
Swift Flower	Player does not lose stamina while sprinting	~40 seconds
Seafarer	Player does not lose breath while swimming	~40 seconds

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Another interesting dynamic that I've noticed through playing the game is that over time the player gets access to multiple flora-based sources of several resources, even those that are non-organic. For example:

• Hima's Cradle provides coal or clay when harvested (with a pickaxe).
  
• Earthshell provides flint when harvested (with a pickaxe).
  
• Succulent Allei provides cactus fruit when harvested (with an axe) and doesn't do damage to the player.
  
• Coward's Cactus provides cactus fruit when harvested (no tool required) and doesn't do damage to the player.

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See below for examples of two types of seed placement errors related to ecosystem specific planting:

Location is too high:

Surface can't be planted on (i.e. rock/stone):

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While most harvested nodes have relatively normal resource yields and Amity costs there are certain nodes worth calling attention to:

• Prickly Paddles (cacti harvested with an iron hatchet) does approximately 10 damage to the player per hit.
  
• Latex Tree (harvested with an iron hatchet) costs 30 Amity when harvested.
  
• Ichor Pool (harvested with an iron shovel) costs 30 Amity when harvested.

NPC Trade Requests

This section is a work in progress as I'm starting to complete and document successful trades with the various NPCs that can spawn at your Farm or Mining Village to see which ones are worth the effort. Unfortunately, they despawn so quickly after you talk to them (or if you use the portal) it is very challenging to complete a request you don't already have the materials for. As a result some of the entries I'll document in the tables below won't have rewards.

Though the overall sample size I'm working with is quite small, it does appear that the requests are different for Tier 1 Villages vs. Tier 2 Villages.

Farm Villager

Requested Resource	Reward	Thoughts
Sticks x 15	Iron Pickaxe	Tier 1 Reward - Great deal.
Dung x 25	Iron Shovel	Tier 1 Reward - Good deal.

Midhaven Trader

Requested Resource	Reward	Thoughts
Gold Dust x 3	Cacti Tea Recipe	Tier 1 Reward - Good deal.
Gold Dust x 3	Stuffed Truffle Recipe	Tier 1 Reward - Good deal.
Gold Dust x 3	Seafood Stew Recipe	Tier 1 Reward - Good deal.
Gold Dust x 3	Sweet Bread Recipe	Tier 1 Reward - Good deal.
Gold Nugget x 1	Meaty Bunwedge Recipe	Tier 2 Reward - Good deal.
Gold Nugget x 1	Vigor Juice Recipe + Sweet Bread Recipe	Tier 2 Reward - Great deal.
Wood x 30	Steel Hatchet	Tier 2 Reward - Great deal.

Mask Merchant

Requested Resource	Reward	Thoughts
Gold Dust x 3	Random Mask	Merchant doesn't say which mask it will be, not really worth it unless masks start having stats or something later on.

Mining Villager

Requested Resource	Reward	Thoughts
Flint x 18	???	Didn't have materials to complete.
Limestone x 30	Steel Shovel	Tier 2 Reward - Great deal.

Withered Haze

After exploring and restoring Midhaven, further exploration into other regions of the world map begin to be controlled by the player's ability to dissipate the "withered haze". This is essentially a mechanic that represents the player's battle to defeat the withered occupation of these regions.

These are some of the impacts of a region being infested by the withered haze:

• Mounts can't be used
  
• Seeds can't be planted
  
• Village markers can't be placed
  
• Ruins can't be interacted with
  
• Relics can't be interacted with
  
• Climbing stamina drain is increased and does not pause if the player stops moving

Fortunately for the player, there are consumables that can be made at the alchemy building as well as flora within the withered haze that can be used to eliminate the haze from a region:

• Potions that provide "moderate" and "major" withered resistance
  
• Large glowing white trees with a bluish hue toward the roots which fill the resistance meter (inner circle) against the withered haze
  
• Small glowing white plants which fill the resistance meter (outer ring) against the withered haze

The above is what the player can use to prevent the periodic health damage that occurs when the resistance meters are fully depleted. However, to remove the withered haze from a region, the player needs to restore the shrine of that region, which happens to be right next to a portal that can also be restored. In addition, the center area of the portal is a "safe zone" that will provide maximum withered resistance as long as the player is standing there. Once out of this "safe zone" the inner circle resistance will be removed and the player will only have the outer ring resistance (which lasts roughly 40-45 seconds).

NOTE - The nice thing about the portal is that it allows the player to initiate the shrine restoration process to find out what materials are required and then teleport out without having to backtrack and traverse the withered haze on foot/mount/glider.

An efficient approach to clearing a region with the withered haze would be to enter the region at a point that represents the shortest approximate path to the portal while following the breadcrumb like placement of the large white glowing trees. While there will be enemies scattered across the region (and sometimes in close proximity to the large glowing white trees), it's only necessary to dispatch those that are at risk of threatening the player's ability to leapfrog between large glowing white trees in order to maintain the outer ring and inner circle withered resistance buffs on the way to the portal/shrine.

Withered Resistance Debuff Diagram:

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One other thing worth noting is that when destroying withered blobs any nearby withered creatures will disappear. Since being hit while the progress bar is going doesn't interrupt the process, sometimes it's worth just staying the course and vaporizing the core rather than stopping the process to kill a few newly spawned wither spiders.

[Flashand]

press z to bring back hud

[Sesqua]

Farm Villager
Requested Resource Reward Thoughts
Sticks x 15 Iron Pickaxe Tier 1 Reward - Great deal.
Dung x 25 Iron Shovel Tier 1 Reward - Good deal.

I gave him the Sticks and Dung but did not get anything in return... just played yesterday.

[Tenoshii]

@el Cheeto - If you follow the glowing white trees to keep your withered resistance buff active and only kill the withered that you have to in order to move from tree to tree, it's a much smoother experience with minimal consumables required.

Honestly the hardest part is simply locating the first two trees, after that you can sort of guess the direction of the rest of them all the way to the portal.

It make take a couple deaths to get used to what techniques work best for you in terms of running past a lot of the enemies along the way and dancing around them rather that fighting.

[el Cheeto]

yeah, the only things i have left to do for Midhaven right now is locate all the gods and their relics. but they are all in the corruption zone. and attempting to craft enough moderate healing foods to tolerate those zones are waaaay to time consuming with the super low drop rates. Takes me hours, and i get way to bored doing one task over and over to be able to complete these missions.

[Tenoshii]

@el Cheeto - Those are available at varying Tiers of the citadel of Midhaven.
- Iron Tools come from the Blacksmith
- Planks come from the Lumber Mill
- Gold Chunks come from the trade merchant.

If you just continue the related quests for Midhaven you'll get to it

[el Cheeto]

how do i unlock the ability to make iron tools and craft certain materials like planks and get gold chunks? im at a point where it doesn't really wanna tell me any of this and im stuck and can't progress

[Tenoshii]

Made edits as follows:
- Added additional entries to the "NPC Trade Requests" table (Limestone x 30 = Steel Shovel).
- Updated "Gameplay Mechanics" section to mention that saving your nearly broken shovels for the clay recipe in the Clay Pit could be useful.
- Updated "Additional Notes on Flora Planting and Harvesting" section to include details on certain resource nodes with higher than usual Amity costs or other effects.

[Tenoshii]

Made edits as follows:
- Reordered some sections.
- Added a "NPC Trade Requests" section to include more data on trades I have seen and removed the related entry from the "Gameplay Mechanics" section.

[Tenoshii]

Made edits as follows:
- Updated the "Withered Haze" section to include an entry about how attacks don't interrupt the removal process for the withered blob nodes and that vaporizing a withered blob also causes nearby withered creatures to disappear.
- Updated the "Additional Notes on Climbing" section to indicate that food buffs (such as increased stamina) last approximately 40 minutes.
- Updated the "Additional Notes on Building" section to include the fact that as of Patch #4 today, there are more decorations that have a culture point value, some of which only require 1 x wood to build.

[Tenoshii]

Made edits as follows:
- Updated the "Withered Haze" section to include a diagram illustrating how to read the withered resistance debuff icon.
- Updated the "Gameplay Mechanics" section to indicate that when creatures attack they do damage to nearby creatures as if "friendly fire" is on.