Advanced Bellwright Guide

A no-nonsense advanced guide to help you master the game.

Intro

Welcome! First:

• Linking to this page when answerering players' questions is encouraged!
  
• Feedback is welcome.
  
• If this was helpful, please upvote for visibility.
  
• Game version: 0.0.35875

If you experience crashes, lower the view distance. If crashes persist, lower other graphics settings as well. Other tips are disabling the Steam overlay, updating graphics drivers, disabling other applications and using a fan controller to max out your PC's fans (like FanControl[getfancontrol.com]).

1. General

---

1. Speed up woodcutting by timing hits, counting swings and aiming so that they hit just after starting. Holding the button prevents excess swings but is slower.

2. Hunting is easier during winter due to visibility and meat will offset the lack of plant foods. A good early hunting spot is southeast of Haerndean on both sides of the river, which you can jump across using the underwater rocks. Place two signs at hunting spots so you can fast-travel to one, clear the area and exit at the other.

3. Roads reduce sprinting stamina costs. Player-built roads also provide a movement speed bonus. Build plenty in your settlements, including to distant gathering buildings. Built roads can also improve treks between signs and villages!

4. Coins are best spent on agility/strength books for yourself, then for your best followers, and food seeds to get your food farming started - they're cheap in Blackridgepool.

The books' required level is Haerndean (1), Padstow (3), Bradford (5), Farnworth (7), then Horndean, Blackridgepool and Crasmere (9).

5. Put "!" before a building's name to list it first in the N menu. Especially useful for research while away from the settlement or easily finding your main crafting facilities.

6. Recruit the best settlers. Their renown cost goes up after each one so any savings are small, plus they'll need time to train their skills. You can dismiss bad settlers to regain their cost, but take their equipment first.

7. While hiring and faced with a bad recruit, hire him/her anyway and use this trick:

Take bad recruits' clothes to mark them as "don't check", then dismiss them to refund 100% of their hiring cost. Then check another clothed recruit. Repeat until you find one that you want and keep him/her.

The next time you recruit here, repeat the process. You'll never have to check a bad recruit again, because the bad ones you've checked are already stripped.

8. Recruits from quests are cheap and highly skilled so always recruit them. Examples are the harvester northwest of Padstow, two warriors around Blackridgepool and a knight on the beach southwest of Farnworth. If you don't have enough renown to hire them, exit the dialogue using TAB and leave the quest open, else the option may not appear again (bug).

9. The Nomad trait adds a speed bonus, which is amazing for all settlers.

• Neurotic is for dedicated workers. Keep them unarmed so they don't fight.
  
• Stalwart is for dedicated warriors and has a wrong description: It improves combat skills, not strength/agility.
  
• Porter may appear great for haulers but the speed debuff makes it decent at best, especially since you'll later get backpacks and because of small hauling demands.

10. Use the map to give your companions a distant move order, like running back to base after a skirmish (if dismissed they'll walk instead).

11. Morale is important because it grants significant stat boosts, both for workers and warriors. "Productivity" works as a modifier to job skill bonuses. Better housing provides morale boosts at the cost of construction effort.

12. You need an apprentice Carpenter as soon as possible for the River Dock, making Padstow a great first liberation target. More on liberation below.

13. The N menu building list shows which building uses which job. Jobs correspond to work attributes: Crafting also applies to smelting, harvesting also applies to woodcutting, construction uses labourer and delivery uses nothing. The others are self-explanatory.

14. Easily set job priorities based on the attribute maximum (it'll level up over time): The best attribute to 2, medium to 5 and worst to 8. Fine-tune using adjacent priorities (1/3, 4/6 and 7/9).

With enough workers, jobs that have gain differences (farming, hunting, harvesting) should be disabled for less skilled workers, though hunting can also be used to train settlers' agility.

15. Always have a settler with max research priority. The job is temporary and you'll want it done fast. For research requiring an apprentice, have one of each type with max research priority even if they're bad researchers.

16. Use settler nicknames as notes. Ugly but it works as I almost never look at my settlers' stats. Here's what my nickname-code looks like: "!Far/Cra 1N" or ">War STe".

Legend:

• "!" for specialist, later "!!" for endgame-worthy.
  
• ">" for guard
  
• Role: "War" for warrior, or the first three letters of their best job skills
  
• "1" onehander+shield/"2" twohander/"S" swordsman/"B" bow
  
• "N" for neurotic
  
• "T" for temporary (looking for a replacement)
  
• Before unlocking gear presets, "e" for needs to be equipped

2. Combat and equipment

---

1. With high movement speed, a bow allows kiting groups of enemies without being hit. Kill the archers first, then mop up the goons chasing you.

2. For melee, first focus on not getting hit. After a block you can keep attacking until the enemy blocks, then block their counter. Repeat. Against multiple opponents you'll need to be an opportunist, running backwards until you see an opening. Movement speed, a shield and weapon length are great when outnumbered.

3. During group brawls, if an enemy is focused on an ally, relentlessly attack his back. Use attack direction to avoid the ally.

4. For armor and weapons, being cheap is a major advantage. Once you get gear presets, having a few of each armor becomes useful to spread the material costs and strength requirements, so each settler has decent options.

5. Armor without speed penalty is best for workers. Medium armor on everyone works, especially at T1. Some medium armors have no speed penalty yet more armor than clothing, making them better, but past T2 workers will almost never see battle (except when you use the Staging Ground to give them battle equipment).

The monotony of uniform workers looks terrible. Though subjective, I'd stick with varied clothing, no hat and no gloves.

6. If you're going to mix armor types, make the helm, gloves and boots the heaviest. These have the best armor-to-speed ratio. I personally use the Traveler's torso and pants most of the time for this reason - they're great for kiting, exploring and questing.

7. The default gear presets are excellent for auto-equipping. "Vanguard" means twohander with heavy armor, "Footman" means shield with medium armor and "Marksman" means bow with medium armor.

8. When making a manual preset, simplify the process by enabling an entire category since settlers will automatically equip the strongest option. The exception are workers wearing 100% speed medium armor, which needs to be specified, and a cutting damage preset for the "Swordsman" trait. Archers and shieldbearers need a new preset if using heavy armor.

Sometimes it's easier to enable the whole category and disable what you don't want. Also have backups for every category, else they'll keep slots empty if they can't find what they want, so a heavy armor preset should have medium and light with lower priority.

9. Clearing bandit camps in a region makes it safer. Great for safeguarding outposts, but you may deliberately want your main settlement to keep farming bandits.

Bandits can rebuild camps if there's enough bandit presence nearby, including from neighboring territories.

10. The raid bar fills based on various actions (killing bandits, expanding your base and such). A raid is triggered when full, after which the raid level increases. Guards slow the raid bar's progress. You can also keep your band small, to reduce the raid frequency if you're struggling.

11. Though raid defenses aren't necessary, you could use fences to make inlet chokepoints, like \___|^|___/. During a raid, put shield defenders at the entrance ^ and have archers shoot the enemy's backs from the \___|. You could build similar fortifications in the expected path of brigand parties.

12. Enemies mostly ignore unarmed workers, who run away or hide in houses when attacked. Combat-ready workers can be used for early bandit farm, but the movement debuffs of armor, raid mitigation of guards and stronger bandits in later regions makes worker/guard specialization a good idea past the early game.

3. Building and settlements

---

1. Build fast-travel signs near roads and always have one in each settlement, at a central player-hub with food and storage.

• While exploring, craft signs (and an axe) using common materials.
  
• Spam signs for maximum freedom, but keep in mind the 150 renown cost.
  
• On the map, enable signs' waypoint within your settlements for easier fast-travel. They'll also show up on the minimap.
  
• Switch signs to a new "Personal" outpost to prevent guards "defending" them. Also use this outpost to deny settlers access to personal storage chests. Raids on outposts without storage will have the raid party wandering around the map, doing nothing.

2. A good base location has looks, a road for a travel sign, flat space to build on (especially for farms) and access to wherever you're skirmishing (later this can be a River Dock). Resources are useful but can be replaced with outposts, except early on.

3. The ideal first makeshift encampment would be southeast of Haerndean, above the river. It has reed, copper and plenty of wildlife. Stay there until you've researched what you can using the materials available.

4. The ideal location for your first long-term settlement is east of Padstow (north of the lake). Nearby it has mud, tin, reed, garlic and wildlife.

If you choose these locations, turn the first makeshift encampment into a copper outpost and you'll have everything you need for T1 and much of T2. The image above is the beach south of Farnworth, which is pretty but not much else.

5. Outposts locations must have important resources, be fairly safe and near a road for a sign. More on outposts below.

6. Moving to a new settlement is hard work and shouldn't be taken lightly unless you enjoy building. Start with a small outpost at the destination, including a Stockpile and a few settlers for logging/gathering, then use their delivery capacity to send construction materials.

Move buildings using your map from the new location. Your settlers can do most of the work if storage is available, though it'll take time. Expand from there.

7. A settlement between the Brigands HQ and their reclamation target will naturally "intercept" them. This can either be useful or a problem, since guards don't fight as a cohesive unit. I recommend being near the brigands' path but not on it.

8. Building next to a brigand-occupied village, then angering the brigands, will make your guards constantly fight the respawning garrison, keeping brigand hostility up.

I recommend settling out of a village garrison's range. This prevents being unable to abandon the village and making the brigands friendly again, though if you're past that point anyway, passively farming their loot is good fun!

9. If you don't yet have the Barn unlocked, build Stockpiles as if they were ~10% larger for easy upgrading. First move the old storage, place the Barn, copy the moved storage's settings and move everything back. It's a hassle but the barn has 150% more capacity (1000).

10. Most rare resources aren't region-specific, though you may need to look for them. Use map overlays to more easily see resource icons.

Some have specific locations: Reed near water, wheat in brigand Wheat Fields and some south of the river. Cranberries, peat and moss grow west around the swamp. South has lots of cotton and iron.

11. The interactive map[bellwright.fandom.com] is currently very incomplete, so don't rely on it too much in its current state. Contributing will make it better!

12. Don't bother personally constructing buildings which require a hammer. It's absurdly slow.

13. For aesthetics: Use decorations, lots of Fences, some Trophies, a few Outhouses, extra Drying Racks and Standing Torches (especially around your camp's entrances and farms).

• Roads look great if built in short segments with gentle curves.
  
• Weapon Racks can also be toolracks!

4. Supply chain

---

1. Dedicated storage is anything with an item filter: Chests, Stockpiles, Barns, Weapon Racks and such. They're required for settlement deliveries, both as the source and destination, and greatly slow food decay. Deliveries are also used to build village expansions.

2. There are two optimal storage methods:

• Dedicated storage with top-up gathering orders limiting the amounts (you can still add storage limits to prevent unforeseen buildups, or have multiple destination storages for an item type). This is usually best. The majority of hauling runs are to crafting stations as they request small numbers of items, so having its ingredients close improves efficiency.
  
• Workplace storage without dedicated storage in between. There are a few optimal use cases, like water, which should be produced close to consumers. A few extra berries/mushrooms at the T2 Foraging Hut also helps keep the drying racks filled, by setting a lower limit on your main storage.

3. Haulers try to fill every single item not at capacity/limit if the item is available in workplace storage, causing tiny hauling orders going back-and-forth, which is terribly inefficient. Therefore set the delivery job priority low, except for dedicated haulers. Gatherers fill their gathering quota and deposit in the gathering building, while haulers will move them to dedicated storage.

4. Food is crucial. Long-lasting foods reduce the amount of time spent eating but farmed crops are very efficiently produced. Settlers prefer cooked foods so expect those to run out first. The best farmed foods are onions, then potatoes and beetroots (not turnips and radishes).

5. Use housing storage to dump excess items for later use, like early pelts. Settlers then automatically move them to main storage when there's room.

6. A garbage storage next to an Outhouse can be used to get rid of unwanted items, which you'll need to empty once in a while. This prevents clogging.

• Spoiled food slowly accumulates.
  
• Farms generate excess seeds, and if not harvested they won't allow a new plant to be placed.
  
• Woodcutting generates tree seeds.
  
• Hunting produces excess items.
  
• Mining produces stone as a byproduct.

7. Passive crafting stations with a single output (like Compost Piles/Drying Racks) can be limited via storage limit, but have a higher top up order, making settlers refill them whenever empty.

Tanning Racks can also be dedicated by having one type of production order, for the same effect. Setting their priority higher than normal ensures they're always in use.

5. Outposts

---

1. Most outposts harvest target resources (mud, ore, logs, garlic, wildlife etc.) though more creative uses are possible.

• Good logging camps have tall trees, which contain more logs. Keep in mind that some trees are hardwood which is a different resource.
  
• Early on, outposts should also have foraging for mushrooms plus wood. Later, farmed food deliveries are more efficient, freeing up the workers to focus on secondary harvesting: Wood, foraged plants, logs and such.
  
• Set secondary gathering to have lower building priority - it's merely a bonus to prevent idling.

2. Prioritize important deliveries by listing them first: Food and tools to outposts, rare items and broken tools to the main settlement. Everything else comes after. You can set up extra deliveries to also import spoiled food, seeds, extra wood and such, but list them further down.

3. The delivery limit is 20 per inhabitant of the receiving location. For top-up delivery, far exceeding the max is good idea as the delivery capacity may not be used when the target storage is already filled.

4. To have multiple outposts contribute to a settlement's income cap, set each to "daily" with a smaller amount to avoid overly draining one, and have a storage cap on the recipient to prevent buildup. This can be used to drain camps of ore on the ground, by setting those as dailies and putting the main mining camp deliveries underneath with a top-up order, so its veins last longer.

5. Sending broken tools/traps back to the main settlement for repairs is easier to set up than local repairs, and frees up outpost workers' time. Local repairs requires sending the required resources, but does alleviate the delivery system.

6. Check the main storage once in a while to see if excesses are building up.

7. Processing on-site can be useful to alleviate deliveries somewhat. For example, logs take up 9 delivery space each. When converted into 3 planks they take up 6 space.

8. It's possible to use the delivery system creatively by converting parts of your settlement into "district" outposts. Items then get delivered in bulk overnight and you can control who eats which types of food.

However, the raid mechanic will be active for each district and the reduced storage freedoms can be a hindrance if not planned properly.

9. Currently, farms with multiple crop types aren't fully automated. The workaround is one crop type per farm, which requires a huge flat area, making an outpost the best choice.

Set these dedicated farms to 1000 top-up, limited by a central barn storage next to an outhouse (to occasionally dump seeds). Workers then keep the fields full and eat what they produce.

10. My checklist for early outpost storage settings; useful for a new game. Top-up gathering is used to limit the amounts:

• Resources: Foraged plant seeds (10), crude stone (10, byproduct of mining)
  
• All Food, All Tools
  
• The rest doesn't matter (Armors, Weapons, Ammo, Quest, Others)

11. Checklist for early outpost gathering/production settings and (recommended amount):

• Food: Mushroom (50), Roasted Mushroom (20), Smoked Mushroom (20). Optional: Berry (20, only if there aren't enough mushrooms), and later three types of farmed foods (10 each, replacing the other foods). The pile of uncooked mushrooms is for winter.
  
• Outpost-specific Resources: Log (10), Ore (20), Mud (30), River Reed (30), Wood (60), Foraged plants (20)

6. Miscellaneous

---

1. After gaining Protector status with a village it can be liberated from the brigands. The "Time has come" quests are optional but give a huge amount of renown. Either way you'll first build a Belltower, which gives a renown/trust boost. Small brigand tax collection parties then start visiting the town.

2. When the bell is rung, the village status becomes "Rebelling". The guards then become hostile and need to be killed. Reclamation parties will periodically be sent from the Brigands HQ. After killing the first party, the liberation is complete - you can then trade with the village by clicking on it via the map, recruit apprentices and gain even more trust (now named prosperity) to improve its militia.

3. When reclamation parties enter a liberated village they'll fight its militia, reducing prosperity for each killed. Then they move to a predetermined spot, reclaiming the village and destroying the Belltower, reducing prosperity even further. Recruitable villagers won't attack brigands.

4. Letting a village be reclaimed has no downsides except temporarily losing the liberation advantages, which is why you should liberate early and hire some apprentices.

5. Having liberated villages increases minimum brigand hostility, while killing brigands adds temporary hostility.

6. T2 village buildings add permanent prosperity, making them great for long-term village development even if reclaimed.

7. This mechanic is tedious, so I don't use it and set XP gains to 120% instead: Before a high-level book finishes, eat XP bonus foods: Fish Stew (+20%), cloudberry (+50%), cranberry (+30%) or apple (+20%).

There's a merchant east of Padstow, at the lake's southern edge, who cheaply sells Fish Stew. Place a sign here and another at the western swamp for cranberries. The Crasmere merchant sells cloudberries.

Eat bonus foods at 6-12 minutes left depending on what's already in your stomach, perhaps less if you intend to sleep soon (which progresses stomach contents but not reading).

8. Here are Bellwright's exploits, which I don't recommend using and will hopefully be patched out:

• Bandit camps near villages can be cleared with the help of brigands, by luring the enemy in. This nets you camp loot by just running around.
  
• Build fences to block the enemy, letting you headshot them while they stand there.
  
• For absurd amounts of renown: Liberate a village, let it get reclaimed for another Time Has Come quest and re-liberate it. Rinse, repeat. If you really want a 100-man army to crash your PC with, this is the way to go.

9. Now that you've reached the end of the guide, here's a final bonus: Because I like breaking games, I went hiking around the unfinished edges of the map. The terrain shown on the map actually exists though unfinished.

There are small patches of forest and swamp amidst glitchy hills without proper collision, even cranberries, mushrooms, trees, crude stones and such, though no rare resource nodes like ore or mud.

I left the normal map east of Haerndean, just north of the waterfall. Here's the full gallery[imgur.com], and this is a map of the route I took:

[kbag]

thank you!

[Gessie]

Good point, I was unclear! Fixing it now. The method is hire > take clothes > dismiss. This refunds the full cost (100%) so you can move on to the next recruit.

I also did another pass to fix language issues and unclear sentences.

[Bahamas]

@Crispyco I guess you recruit them take the clothes off and expel them

[Crispyco]

7. When hiring, take bad recruits' clothes to mark them as "don't check". Check each clothed recruit until you find one that you want and keep him/her. The next time you recruit here, repeat the process. You'll never have to check a bad recruit again.

How do you do this?

[SAS-Booker]

Perfect detailed guide

[vicious]

great guide! one tip to add, since only one piece of food per stack spoils at a time, it's a good idea to make sure you only have one food stockpile if you want to avoid spoilage (sorry if this is already listed and i missed it!)

[Gessie]

Thanks for the encouragements!

[SrCarloS]

Awesome! Thanks!

[HenryOfSkalitz]

great guide thanks

[Sinfulmoon]

Thank you for the guide, its a good read and I'll definitely will be using the what I learned here.