Beginner's Guide

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Greetings, Viceroy!

Newcomers are encouraged to read this article before exploring the main articles and the rest of the information on this wiki. There are deep systems and mechanics that compound and can feel complicated quickly. So let's start with the absolute basics.

If you have just started the game for the first time and want to get everything out of the first tutorial with clear, step-by-step instructions and explanations that will jump-start your understanding of the game without overwhelming you with depth, head over to the Tutorial Walkthrough and come back to this after you finish the first mission.

Winning and Losing

At the bottom of the game window, Reputation (left, blue bar, 4/14 points) and Queen's Impatience (right, red bar, 1/14 points)

A mission is won when the entire blue Reputation Bar is filled.

A mission is lost when the entire red Queen's Impatience Bar is filled, or when all villagers leave or die.

Reputation Points

Main Article: Reputation

Gaining a Reputation point lowers the Queen's Impatience, granting you more time to complete the mission. Reputation, Impatience and Hostility are linked. When you gain Reputation, your Impatience goes down, and your Hostility will go up. You can earn Reputation Points several ways:

• Completing Orders: Each completed Order grants 1 Reputation point. This will likely be the source of the first Reputation point you earn each mission.
• Solving Glade Events: Your choices when solving Glade Events may reward you with Reputation. You will earn more Reputation from solving events in Dangerous and Forbidden Glades than you will from events in Small Glades.
• Villagers Resolve: Once a species' Resolve reaches the Resolve Threshold (indicated by a blue mark on the track around their portrait), they will start to generate Reputation. The more villagers you have of that species, the more Reputation will be generated per minute. With time, the villagers will become accustomed to their living conditions, raising their Resolve Threshold and requiring more complex needs to be satisfied before they will again generate Reputation (This is called Decadence). Villagers with high Resolve will likely be your primary source of Reputation in most of your missions.
• Earning Perks and Cornerstones: Some Cornerstones grant Reputation when you accomplish something, like trading a certain amount.
• Forest Mysteries: Some Forest Mysteries grant extra Reputation when you solve a Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Event while the modifier is active. For example, the Aura of Peace Forest Mystery will grant an extra Reputation point when you solve a Dangerous or Forbidden Glade event during the drizzle season.

It is important to understand you cannot rely on only orders to win the game, you have to work towards stocking up on things that will make your Villagers happy at the end of the game to "push" you through those last few Reputation Points.

Break Time

Every few minutes, Villagers will go on break to eat, and fulfill a Complex Need, like donning Coats and receiving a Service. Break times are +/- 5 seconds long.

Species	Beavers	Foxes	Harpies	Humans	Lizards
Break Interval	02:00	02:00	01:40	02:00	01:40

Food

Main article: Complex Food Need

Villagers need to eat, or their Resolve drops with every Hunger stack (each time they went on break and could not eat), and eventually they starve to death or leave.

Food Preference: Villagers eat 1 unit of any preferred*¹ Complex Food per break that is available. If the preferred Complex Food is not available, they will eat 1 unit of a random available Raw Food instead. If neither of these are available, they will eat 1 unit of a random available disliked Complex Food. Viceroys can force their Villagers to eat a specific Complex Food every break to stretch food stores. This can be done via Consumption Control.

"Food" includes:

• Raw Food - Mushrooms| Roots| Vegetables| Meat| Eggs| Insects| Berries
  • Harvested from camps or farms.
  • Can be turned into Complex Food, which multiplies it.
  • Does not add additional Resolve.

• Complex Food- Jerky| Porridge| Skewers| Biscuits| Pie| Pickled Goods
  • Made in Buildings from Raw Food.
  • Most efficient way of feeding your people.
  • Can add additional Resolve.

Ideally, Viceroys want to rush making Complex Food to stretch Raw Food and use those workers collecting Raw Food in other departments instead. This can most easily done by making Porridge , using Grain and Rainwater, or any mix of ingredients valid for that recipe. Jerky is another easy starter Complex Food to make.

Once you start making enough Complex Food, turn off all raw food consumption and force your Villagers to eat that Complex Food so you multiply your raw food into complex food and stretch it for longer.

• ¹Preferred Complex Food = Complex Food they gain Resolve from.

Table of Complex Food Preference and Resolve Bonus

Species	Complex foods
	Jerky	Porridge	Skewers	Biscuits	Pie	Pickled Goods
Beavers	—	—	—	+5	—	+8
Foxes	—	+4	+5	—	—	+8
Harpies	+4	—	—	+5	+5	—
Humans	—	+4	—	+5	+5	—
Lizards	+5	—	+4	—	+5	+8

Services

Main article: Services Need

Setting up some sort of Services for your Villagers are essential if you want to win through Resolve. Ideally you can hoard all the Goods used in Services until the last Drizzle or Clearance season, and have a big Resolve push by then enabling all Services and winning.

To set up a Service, you need:

• A Service Building
• A Service Good
• One Villager manning the service building.

Each break, Villagers will take one Service Good at the Hearth if a Service Building is erected somewhere in the settlement and the service good in that building and in Consumption Control is enabled. They will then receive a Resolve boost related to that service.

Table of complex food, clothing, and services needs by species

Species	Clothing	Services
	Coats	Leisure	Brawling	Religion	Education	Luxury	Treatment
Beavers	+5	+8	—	—	+10	+8	—
Foxes	—	—	+8	—	—	+10	+10
Harpies	+5	—	—	—	+10	—	+10
Humans	+5	+8	—	+8	—	—	—
Lizards	—	—	+8	+8	—	—	—

Orders

Main article: Orders

Orders button

There are two types of Orders, but you will only unlock the 2nd type later in the game as you unlock more Upgrades in the Citadel. These are:

• Typical Orders
• Timed Orders

Typical Orders will reward you with 1 Reputation Point each, and some sort of rewards like Goods, Villagers or Building blueprints. These can be completed in any timeframe.

Timed Orders are just that - You will have only a certain amount of time to complete these orders. It is thus advised to only open the Orders tab starting year II when you're better established so you can position yourself to complete them in time. The rewards for these Orders are often very high, and could include Cornerstones and Perks, as well as Delivery Lines for Goods.

Glade Events

A Glade Event in a Dangerous Glade

Main Article: Glade Events

Glade Events are diverse challenges that are found in the Glades uncovered by cutting through The Forest. These can be divided into 3 categories:

Small Glades may contain:

• A Small Glade Event
• An Abandoned Cache
• A Travelling Trader

Dangerous Glades may contain:

• A Dangerous Glade Event
• A Large or Medium Abandoned Cache
• Ruins of some sort.
• Survivor Encampments.

Forbidden Glades may contain:

• A Forbidden Glade Event
• A Medium or Large Abandoned Cache
• Ruins of some sort.

When opening a Dangerous or Forbidden Glade, it is essential you click on the event and check the timer and consequences of not completing the event in time. All have negative effects if you leave them alone for too long. Remember to take into account how long it will take your villagers to solve the challenge! Building a Small Warehouse next to the event will help your Villagers haul goods to and fro faster.

• The Cursed Royal Woodlands is a biome haunted by ghosts that make challenging requests of you. If you fulfill their requests, they reward you with opened caches.
• Seals can be found in the Sealed Forest Biome, always in a Dangerous [[Glade], they create Plagues!

Seasonal Conditions

Drizzle Season of Year I

Main Article: Seasons

The three seasons are displayed in the top middle of the screen, to the right of the time controls. You'll face fewer beneficial and more and increasingly dangerous modifiers at higher difficulties.

There are 3 season, namely:

• Drizzle - 04:00
  • Drizzle Water rains during this time.
  • Positive Forest Mysteries are active.
  • Sowing takes place on Farms, yield chances are calculated now.

• Clearance - 04:00
  • Clearance Water rains during this time.
  • Harvesting takes place now. Place Small Warehouses near farms to minimize hauling time.

• Storm - 02:00
  • Storm Water rains during this time.
  • Negative Forest Mysteries are now active.
  • Plowing takes place on Farms, +10% yield chances.

Negative modifiers often reduce Resolve based on the level of the Hostility of the Forest. These can be avoided entirely as long as the modifier's conditions are met or as long as you manage Hostility so that it doesn't activate in the first place.

Beneficial conditions are only active during the drizzle period while harmful ones only activate during the storm.

Hostility of the Forest

Hover over the highlighted icon.

Main Article: Hostility

Unsurprisingly, the Forest hates being cut into. Your Villagers feel its Hostility towards them, and this will lower their Resolve. There is no difference in effect between 1 and 99 points within a Hostility level. The longer you linger in a settlement, the higher your Hostility will become. The higher the Queen's Impatience, the lower your Hostility will become.

Hostility levels trigger negative Forest Mysteries during the Storm Season. The higher your Hostility, the more will trigger.

At the top center of the game window, Hostility is displayed as a number. For every 100 points, the Hostility level increases. Hover over the big red to see what is influencing your Hostility level.

Hostility is affected by the following:

• Increases:
  • For very year that has passed.
  • For every villager in your settlement.
  • For each villager assigned as woodcutters in Woodcutters' Camp - Take Woodcutters off during the Storm
  • For every opened glade, with a smaller increase from Small Glades than from Dangerous and Forbidden Glades.
  • From the negative effects of Glade Events you are working on, sometimes by as much as 500 (5 whole levels)

• Decreases:
  • From building more Hearths.
  • From some Perks and Cornerstones
  • From removing Woodcutters from the Woodcutters' camps.
  • From completing certain Glade Events that decreases Hostility.
  • From Killing off Villagers.
  • From driving up the Queen's Impatience.
  • From assigning a Fox to the Hearth

Resolve

Foxes species with high Resolve

Main Article: Resolve

A villager's Resolve represents their willingness to stay in the village. Below the species' portrait is one or sometimes two numbers. Always shown is the current Resolve value. If their Resolve is changing, a second number will show the Resolve value that the species will end up with if conditions stay the same. Even though villagers have individual values for resolve, only the average shown in the Species UI affects gameplay.

Villagers Leaving from Low Resolve

When the Storm arrives or when interacting with Glade Events, villagers face significant penalties to their Resolve. If their Resolve reaches or falls below zero, a random villager of that species will leave the settlement. Once it reaches zero, a red timer indicator will sweep around their portrait, indicating the time until a villager leaves. This timer repeats: If Resolve stays at or below zero long enough, more villagers will leave. When each villager leaves, the Queen's Impatience also increases by a fraction of a point. Resolve mismanagement can snowball into a complete mission loss if, for example, the villagers who leave were gathering food or fuel, were providing critical functions like keeping the Hearth fueled, or were solving a Glade Event with a powerful negative effect.

It takes time for species' Resolve to drop to zero due to the Storm and other penalties, and then the red timer has to finish sweeping around their portrait before a villager leaves. Therefore, if your villagers start the Storm with high Resolve, you may have enough time even after the Storm starts to make any quick adjustments to keep your villagers from leaving before the end of the Storm.

Gaining Reputation from High Resolve

As mentioned above in the introduction to Reputation, if a species' Resolve exceeds a certain threshold, the Viceroy gradually earns Reputation. The amount earned depends on the species, population, Perks and Cornerstones, and more. When a species' Resolve is earning you Reputation, their portrait lights up light blue.

Bonuses and Penalties to Resolve

Increases

• Increases slightly when species' need for Shelter is satisfied
• Increases when species' need for their Species-specific Housing is satisfied
• Increases when their need for Complex Food is satisfied
• Increases significantly when their need for Services is satisfied
• Increases or decreases from certain Perks and Cornerstones
• Increases for one species when they are favored by the Viceroy (but keep reading)

Decreases

• Decreases for the other two species when the other is favored by the Viceroy
• Decreases significantly from negative Forest Mysteries that are active during the Storm
• Decreases significantly from being hungry (when they go to rest at the Hearth and there is no food available), especially because this effect stacks for every missed opportunity to eat
• Decreases from Glade Events that have temporary penalties while they are being worked on
• Decreases from Glade Events that were not solved in time and cause a permanent penalty
• Decreases massively when the Hearth runs out of fuel, since it compounds with losing the increases gained from your satisfying their needs for Shelter or their Species-specific Housing when their houses go cold

Difficulty

Main Article: Difficulty

Difficulty	Blightrot?	Forest Mysteries	Hostility Scaling		Other Scaling	XP per Win	Reward
			Max	Multiplier
Settler	No	2 Positive 1 Negative	6	1x	Win at 12 Reputation Villagers eat 35% less food 12 Orders available	30 xp	21 Food Stockpiles
Pioneer	No	2 Positive 3 Negative	9	1.5x	Win at 14 Reputation 11 Orders available	70 xp	42 Food Stockpiles
Veteran	Yes	1 Positive 4 Negative	16	2x	Win at 14 Reputation 10 Orders available	140 xp	70 Food Stockpiles
Viceroy	Yes	1 Positive 4 Negative	31	3x	Win at 14 Reputation 9 Orders available	175 xp	91 Food Stockpiles

Standard Opening (a.k.a. "the Meta")

Consider the following for your first year of your first mission. After that, you will need to adapt to the Forest Modifiers, Cornerstones, Blueprints, and resources available on your map.

• Disable coal consumption since it is far more valuable than Wood because it can solve Glade Events (with a full stack of 30).
• Choose your best available Firekeeper worker at your Hearth.
  • Assign a Lizard to gain +1 to everyone's Resolve if this gets you over a species' threshold. If you have only one Lizard, then they get an additional +5 for working in the Hearth with the  Warmth Specialization—if you have more than one, this large bonus will get averaged away.
  • Assign a Harpy to gain their powerful Firekeeper bonus of +5 to every villagers' carrying capacity.
  • Assign a Beaver early on to save fuel burned at Hearth.
  • Assign a Human to slow down the rate at which the Queen's Impatience increases.
• Build two Woodcutters' Camp and start clearing trees in the direction of a Dangerous Glade, but do not allow them to open it yet.
• Build a few plain roads, at least to connect your Main Warehouse to the Hearth.
• Build three Shelters and four tiles of decorations to upgrade the Hearth for the bonus to Resolve.
• Build a Crude Workstation to start getting building materials.
• Build gathering camps that can gather from the resource deposits you started with.
• Choose your first Orders based on what you can see on the map.
• Choose your first Blueprints based on the products they make: focus on food first. Match the icons next to the species' portraits to the food goods the buildings make. Humans like Biscuits, for example.
• Build a Trading Post during the first Storm. You will try to use what the first Trader sells to help you solve your first Dangerous Glade Event.
• Build one of your Blueprints.
• At the beginning of Year 2, after the first Storm, open the first Dangerous Glade and do everything you can to solve it.

Final Summary

• Reputation wins you the mission. The Queen's Impatience running out makes you lose the mission.
• Gaining Reputation reduces the Queen's Impatience.
• Hostility lowers Resolve during the Storm.
• High Impatience reduces Hostility.
• Time in game (years) increases Hostility.
• Opening Glades increases Hostility, but enables more production by revealing new resources and rewards.
• Being able to produce Complex Foods and goods for Services boosts Resolve, allowing you to withstand higher Hostility.
• Every mission is about balancing these pressures and priorities.