Beginner's Guide

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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. 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 from solving events in Dangerous and Forbidden Glades than you will from events in Small Glades.
• Villagers Resolve: Once a species' Resolve reaches a certain threshold (indicated by a blue mark around their portrait), they will start to generate Reputation. Larger populations generate more Reputation per minute. With time, the villagers will become accustomed to their living conditions, raising their threshold and requiring more complex needs to be satisfied before they will again generate Reputation. This 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 modifiers and mysteries grant extra Reputation when you, for example, solve a Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Event while the modifier is active, for example, during a particular season.

Orders

After a certain amount of time, the Citadel will offer you new options for new Orders. You may choose one to complete, and your choices affect which Orders you may choose from in the future. You can see your Orders, new options, and the timers until you get your next choices by clicking the envelope icon at the top-right of the game window.

Orders will reward you with 1 Reputation and additional rewards, such as stacks of goods or additional villagers. Each pair of orders is more difficult than the previous one. At higher difficulties, fewer Orders will be available over the course of the mission, requiring you to gain your Reputation through other means.

Glade Events

Main Article: Glade Events

Glade Events are diverse challenges that are found in the glades uncovered by cutting through the forest. They vary widely, and some require you to act quickly, starting from the moment the glade is opened.

• Caches of goods, requiring  Stone or  Tools that you can open for yourself or send back to the Citadel.
• Camps of villagers, requiring food, that you can choose to recruit to your settlement or send back to the Citadel.
• Abandoned buildings that you can choose to repair to use yourself or salvage for their resources.
• Larger events that might be cleansing shrines, investigating villager remains, dealing with strange creatures and spells, and Rainpunk machines. 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!
• The Cursed Royal Woodlands is haunted by ghosts that make challenging requests of you. If you fulfill their requests, they reward you with opened caches.
• Seals that create plagues, and more for you to discover!

Seasonal Conditions

Main Article: Seasons

The three seasons (Drizzle, Clearance, and Storm) bring beneficial and harmful changes. They 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.

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

Main Article: Hostility

Hostility represents the Forest's dread and darkness and its potential to harm your villagers and their villagers' Resolve. Alongside the Queen's Impatience, which acts as a passive timer, Hostility is the main pressure on you to finish your mission before its effects devastate your settlement.

Since Hostility increases over time unless managed by the Viceroy, the Storm get more difficult to survive as the years go on. By accepting more villagers, claiming Cornerstones, and unlocking more building Blueprints, you improve your ability to provide villagers with housing and satisfy their needs for goods and services. Your goal is to finish the mission before time runs out (the Queen's Impatience) and before the Forest gets too hostile.

At the top center of the game window, Hostility is displayed as a number. For every 100 points, the Hostility level increases. This Hostility level is often used as a multiplier to negative effects. Each settlement starts with Hostility at 0, and over the course of your mission as your settlement grows and you expand, Hostility rises, sometimes quickly.

You will have to manage Hostility. During the Storm, stackable negative Forest Mysteries trigger, each generating different negative effects.

Hostility is affected by the following:

• Increases for every year passed
• Increases for every villager in your settlement
• Increases much more if your villagers are assigned as woodcutters
• Increases for every opened glade, with a smaller increase from Small Glades than from Dangerous and Forbidden Glades
• Increases from the negative effects of Glade Events you are working on, sometimes by as much as 500 (5 whole levels)
• Decreases from some cornerstones
• Decreases from building and fueling additional Hearths
• Decreases from sacrificing fuel in the Hearth, although it is expensive
• Decreases with Impatience—so as time is running out, the Storms are slightly easier to weather

Difficulty

Main Article: Difficulty

Difficulty	Embarkation Points	Blightrot & Corruption	Seasonal Conditions	Max Hostility	Hostility Multiplier	Other Effects	Experience per Successful Settlement	Base Reward
Settler	3	No	2 Positive 1 Negative	6	1x	12 Reputation required to win. Villagers eat 35% less food. 12 Total Orders Available.	30	21 Food Stockpiles
Pioneer	2	No	2 Positive 3 Negative	9	1.5x	14 Reputation required to win. 11 Total Orders Available.	70	42 Food Stockpiles
Veteran	1	Yes	1 Positive 4 Negative	16	2x	14 Reputation required to win. 10 Total Orders Available.	140	70 Food Stockpiles
Viceroy	1	Yes	1 Positive 4 Negative	31	3x	14 Reputation required to win. 9 Total Orders Available.	175	91 Food Stockpiles

Resolve

A villagers resolve determines their willingness to stay in the village. Below the species portrait are two numbers, displaying the current resolve value and the target resolve that the villagers will end up with if current trends continue. Even though villagers have individual values for resolve, only the average shown in the UI is relevant. Once the storm approaches or when interacting with glade events players face penalties to resolve which may reach to or below zero, prompting villagers to leave. Once this point is reached, a pie chart appears above their portrait which displays the time until the next villager departs. If resolve stays at or below zero long enough, several villagers may leave. When villagers leave or die the player gets +0.3 impatience, further penalizing insufficient resolve management. Since the villagers resolve has to drop to 0 before villagers leave due to resolve, players who keep their villagers resolve high at the start of the storm have a longer grace period and may survive the storm without a single villager leaving, even though target resolve is negative. During a villagers break, a shortage of food (either due to a lack of food or restrictions in the consumptions tab) gives villagers a resolve penalty. This penalty remains in place until the next break, where it will be removed if the villager eats or increased if they skip their meal again. Should the hearth run out of fuel, all villagers will be hit with a massive resolve penalty aswell as lose their benefits from housing and species specific housing as their homes go cold. If resolve exceeds a certain positive value, the portrait lights up and the player gradually gets reputation based on the reputation and amount of members of said species.

Resolve is affected by:

• Housing need fullfilled (+3)
• Species specific housing need fullfilled (+3)
• Basic needs fullfilled
• Services needs fullfiled
• Cornerstones
• Harmful Forest mysteries (Only active during the storm).
• Glade events
• Unfair Treatment (+5 to one preferred species, -5 to the other two species)
• Hunger (-4 every time a villager misses food, stacking)
• Fuel shortage (-20)

General Tips

These tips are from 0.37.3 and may be out of date with the newer version. These pre-date many features like World Map Modifiers, Rain Engines, Gathering Camp changes, massive Glade changes & logistics changes!(Nov 2022 Ver.)

• Most runs are ended due to negative resolve effects during the storm, a glade event, or both. Avoid dealing with glade events during the storm if possible.
• Don't open too many glades at once, as this means hostility will rise sharply, increasing the difficulty of the next storm.
  • In general avoid opening small glades all together. They offer small amount of resources in exchange for permanent rise in hostility level.
• When the storm starts, you should in this order:

1. Decrease hostility without using resources (e.g. by unassigning woodcutters)
2. Increase resolve by assigning villagers to their desired jobs (e.g. heat for lizardmen, not to be confused with jobs they have a strong apititude for, e.g. meat for lizardmen)
3. Use resources to decrease hostility further (sacrifces) or enabling new consumption resources (e.g. allowing villagers to use a previously forbidden resource like cloaks in the consumption tab)
4. Use unfair treatment, you can increase one species resolve by +5 decreasing other species resolve by the same amount (-5). This has a cooldown of 60s once deactivated before it can be used again.

• Stockpile resources. Collecting fuel before the storm starts allows you to unassign woodcutters during the storm. You may want to forbid your villagers from using consumable resources if they are not needed to keep resolve positive so that you may use them later.
• Focus on permanent ways to increase your villagers resolve, such as housing and cornerstones. Consumable goods may also improve resolve, but once you run out your resolve drops again.
• Resource recipes can "improve" the value of your goods. For example, by using a smokery, you can create 10 jerky from 4 meat and 5 wood. While you can run out of jerky and lose your resolve penalty, it takes you longer to run out of 10 jerky than you would run out of the 4 pieces of meat. So you solve hunger and complex food needs at once.
• Service goods often require complex production chains (unless you have cornerstones that significantly shorten them, e.g. getting 3 barrels every time you produce 10 planks). Focus first on basic needs and produce service goods only when you know you have enough food/fuel to survive the next storm.
• Service buildings provide powerful bonuses if they are fully staffed. It may be worth to construct them even if you are unable to provide the service goods they use. If you want to keep your service goods, you can use the consumption tab and still construct the building.
• Resolve is a resource. You can intentionally restrict access to valuable goods or starve your villagers as long as it is positive so that you have more resources to keep for harsher times or to sell to the trader.

Standard Opening

The writeup below aims to provide a skeleton of meta strategy for the first year of the game. While players are encouraged to develop their own strategies and adjust them to modifiers/cornerstones/available resources/etc, this is a good reference to learn what you should be doing at beginning of year. Last Updated: Sealed Forest Update (Aug 31, 2023) by a noob player, for all that's good and bad about that...

• Disable coal consumption (so that it is available to solve first event)
• Disable food consumption.
  • Specifically disable the raw foods that can easily be processed (e.g. meat/insects into Jerky)
  • This is slightly more advanced strategy, but allowing your villagers to starve a bit during first year is a good way to save resources. Reenable consumption once the next hunger stack pushes you to negative resolve
• Make your Main Hearth Firekeeper selection
  • Harpy provides a very strong +5 carry global bonus (probably best overall choice)
  • Beaver saves on fuel burned at Hearth (can be good at start, when wood is premium, and before other fuels are available)
  • Human will slow down Impatience gain (good for mid/late game if you need to buy more time)
  • Lizard gives +1 Global resolve (really only good if that +1 keeps you above 0 or breaks a resolve threshold to blue)
• Build two Woodcutters' Camps and start digging in direction of dangerous glade; do not open it yet
• Depending on the resources, orders and blueprints you see do all/some of the following. Note that as you become more experienced with the game, you might want to delay your blueprint/order picks, but don't worry about that for now
  • Build a basic road network
  • Build three shelters or two shelters and one species specific house. Build four decorations. This is to unlock upgrade of Hearth
  • Build a Crude Workstation
  • Build gathering camps for your initial resources
  • Build one of your blueprints
• Build a Trading Post during the first storm
  • Don't build it too early, your goal is to be able to use first trader to solve first event
• At the beginning of Year 2 open the first dangerous glade

High Level Themes

• Reputation/Impatience and Hostility/Resolve
  • Each pair is directly related to each other:
    • Reputation Wins Games; Impatience Loses Games, and gaining Reputation directly reduces Impatience.
    • Hostility lowers Resolve, and the reduction is multiplied during the storm.
  • There are also secondary relationships among them:
    • Impatience reduces Hostility
    • High Resolve (blue) earns Reputation
• Timing/Tempo and Expansion/Production
  • How this relates to game length and expansion:
    • Time in game (years) increases Hostility
    • Expanding into Glades also increases Hostility
    • Expanding opens up more resource nodes (read: enables more production)
    • Increasing Production allows for more complex food and services (read: provides Resolve boosts, which counters loss from Hostility)
  • The key is to strike this balance for each specific run. Is there a fast win condition, where fast-expanding works? Will the game be drawn out, in which case Hostility might become a problem later, so maybe safer to not expand too much? etc.

Basic Strategies

1. Secure Food (Complex Food Production)
   • Raw Food is very inefficient. To support your growing population, you'll want to process your raw food into some type of complex food. Jerky is one of the easiest to make (just meat/insects and fuel). Biscuits are also quite good, but has a more complex production chain (you need to produce/procure flour first). Check to make sure your species will eat whatever type of food you choose (can use Consumption Tab).
2. Secure Efficient Core Recipes
   • The Crude Workstation is also inefficient. Ideally, your first few building choices would include improvements to producing Planks, Fabric, and Bricks, as you need these to build the rest of your settlement.
   • There's an art to choosing between a more efficient core producer (of say, Planks) compared to a new recipe (e.g. Jerky). Usually having access to a new recipe (that is useable) has more value.
3. Secure Fuel
   • Similarly, wood is very inefficient to burn at the Hearth, and critical for your building expansion, so try moving to Oil/Coal or Sea Marrow (if nodes found)
4. Determine Need for Services (Resolve Boosts)
   • This is trickier, as you need both the service-related item (e.g. Ale) and the building to provide that service (e.g. Tavern)
     • You can buy the material from traders, so you may choose to pick the service building before knowing you can produce the item.
     • The service buildings also provide boosts (outside providing any services) simply when they are staffed. Some boosts are worth having even without providing the service at all, so it's always worth checking the boosts to see if it matches your run.
5. Find Win Condition
   • Don't rely only on Orders. As the games get longer, you won't have enough Orders to clear, and often some Orders are going to be nearly impossible given your current run.
   • Glade Events can be a good source of Reputation, but you need the right materials on-hand to solve them
   • Caches in Glades can add up to a lot of Reputation (and Amber), but you need a source of Tools to open them
   • Resolve grants a lot of Reputation, especially mid/late game where your population is higher (so the rate multiplier is higher). You'll need Complex Foods and Services to boost resolve to this level.
6. Redeem Orders Selectively
   • High Impatience is actually a good thing (as it reduces Hostility) right up until you lose from it. Delaying the redemption of completed orders allows you to keep Impatience up while having an instant way to lower it when necessary. Just check the rewards to make sure you're not missing critical resources or perks.