When you start a new game, you get a quick intro that teaches you how to walk around, how to open loot boxes, and gives you a little back-story for this game. In essence, you're a dwarf and you were living with your people in their underground homestead, but for many years the city's resources have been dwindling and there is a danger that you will all run out of food, water, and supplies. The King of the Dwarves left the colony a long time ago to search for a new homeland, but never returned... his fate is unknown. Just before the start of the game, you stood before the Dwarven Council and suggested that they should move the entire city's population above ground where resources are more plentiful. They said no. They do not want to punish you too severely, but they worry that your radical ideas might be a bad influence on the other Dwarves, so you get banished. Which, technically, is what you wanted anyway because now you can go ahead and establish a new colony above ground.

You will explore a little island; build a village there; fight against goblins, orcs, and other enemies; gather resource like leather, iron ore, and mushrooms; craft potions and weapons to keep yourself alive; and invite other Dwarves to come live in your new village. It's a fun mixture of free-roam adventure/gathering and city-building.

There are no "survival" mechanics here. You don't need to eat, drink water, or use a toilet every day and you don't have to worry about the temperature or the weather. But there are certain mechanics to keeping your villagers HAPPY so they perform better.

In the beginning, you start with NOTHING and the tutorial walks you through your first few new buildings in the village as well as combat mechanics and how to use your inventory and skills menus. It gives you quests asking you to build specific structures in the village, but it will NEVER tell you where to put what you build - that part is entirely up to you. But I have some advice that will allow you to design your village more efficiently.

Later in the story there are a few quests that will take you away from your village to other islands ruled by your enemies. Be advised that while you are away, your village continues to consume resources like coal, food, and beer - even if all of your villagers have been kidnapped and are not currently in the village! So you might have to resupply when you finish those quests and return to your own island. No big deal, just requires a bit of micro-managing for about 10 minutes to recover what your village used while you were away from town.

As you go, you will gain XP to levelup your SKILLS. This does not affect your health, stamina, or how much damage you do in combat. It just gives you more options to be more effective at either adventuring/gathering loot or combat (depending which skills you select). Be advised there is a HARD CAP of 35 skills plus Lightning 1 is free via the main quest. If you want to increase your health or the amount of damage your attacks can do, you will need to gather leather and various metal ores and spend them at workshops run by your villagers to produce better weapons and armor for you to wear as you explore.

If you haven't played the game or seen any YouTube videos yet, I hope this description helps you understand the point of the whole thing.

Nope, not quite.
The quests are somewhat randomly generated, and most of them will repeat as you cycle through them over time. There are something like a dozen or so repeating quests that may pop up.
And the village construction is mostly left up to you, after the basic tutorial.
There is a somewhat flimsy "main story" and a handful of quests will come up as you unlock better metal ores in your mines and build more things in your village to take you through the story. But none of them will be labeled as "main quest" - you won't even realize it's part of the main story until it's over.

That said, the loosely organized quests and the lightly applied main story work pretty well. The focus of the game is twofold: keep upgrading your village and keep your villagers happy, and keep upgrading your equipment with better weapons and armor. Then the main story guides you out of the dwarven city into the daylight, across a couple of other islands, and eventually back into the dwarven city to defeat a great evil. I won't spoil the details for you though.

However, there are a couple of points in the game where it would be useful to know what's about to happen, to give yourself a bit of time to prepare. And a few quests cause time to stop until you complete them, which affects your village's production and consumption of EVERY resource except for metal ores from your miners and quality wood & stone from your workers. Everything except ore, quality wood, and quality stone will just STOP BEING MADE OR USED during these time-freeze quests. So I'll list those points, and what you should do to get ready once you see them coming.

1. The tutorial lasts until you've built a storehouse, a house, a metalworker shop, another house, and your first mine (copper). After that, you're free to develop your village as you see fit. Even so, I have some tips further down this guide that will help you to do it more efficiently. Feel free to scroll down and take a look at those if you need to.
   
2. Keep an eye out for a quest about a stone elemental golem. His name is Grrrumble and he'll be your friend if you go help him clear the monsters out of the cave where he lives.
   
3. After the tutorial you'll get a quest about "Shady Business" that will ask you to go investigate in the forest. You'll find a goblin there who wants you to bring him some quality wood to rebuild his home. Do that, and he'll open a shop where you can sell your extra weapons, armor, helmets, pickaxes, hatchets, and shields for some gold. NOTE: currently there is a glitch where you can sell him 4 things instead of just 1 and for some reason the price will increase in a HUGE way. If you sell him one item for 50g, you get 50g. If you then try to sell four of those same items you'll get 750g instead of 200g. This might get patched out later, but for now it's a cheezy way to make some extra gold coins.
   
4. SERIOUS WARNING HERE: NEVER sell the only weapon, shield, pickaxe, or hatchet that you own. There are several quests that effectively freeze time so that your villagers won't do any work until you beat the quest. Meaning that you can't restock your leather, veggies, meat, cooked meals, cotton, wheat, beer, herbs, or handles/tools/weapons until AFTER the quest is completed. And if you remove your equipment during one of these quests, you'll NEVER be able to defeat any enemies, chop any trees, or mine any rocks. Because you can't collect any leather to make new weapons or armor. Which means it is entirely possible to basically doom yourself and break the game just by selling your only weapon, shield, pickaxe, or hatchet. So rule of thumb: never unequip or sell ANYTHING unless you have a replacement or upgrade item already in your backpack.
   
5. At some point (after you build a Carpenter shop probably) you'll notice a quest pop up and then your villagers will be wearing pumpkins on their heads. This quest is called "Night of the Scarecrows." It is the first quest that freezes time. Step 2 in the quest will have you go investigate "a light in the forest" but actually you'll find a scary lich near the path leading to Shady's shop. This one is the first time you'll really need to prepare for a quest. Bring a lot of health potions and a few stamina potions with you, as well as be wearing a FULL SET of armor before you talk to the creepy guy in the woods. And once this quest pops up, NO OTHER QUESTS will pop and NO VILLAGERS WILL DO ANY WORK (except miners and workers) until you complete it. That means basically you're STUCK, unable to get any more resources, until you finish the quest. The lich in the forest wants a magic dwarven book, which you'll find by taking the boat to a necromancer's island and defeating all the enemies there. If you don't bring enough health potions or good enough weapons/armor, then you will never be able to continue the game.
   
6. WORK IN PROGRESS, check back later for more.

This game has a number of resources that your villagers need for full happiness. It also has several that are needed by you to build up your village. Here's a list. Items marked with a "$$" before the name are dependent on the flow of time - meaning that any quests that freeze time will force your village to stop producing that item. Good news is your village also stops using those items. You can restore the flow of time by completing the necessary quest. See the "Walkthrough?" chapter for more information about which quests will freeze time.


Gold Coins - quest rewards, loot chests, or sell equipment to Shady.
Used by YOU for construction projects.

Quality wood - chop down trees to get 6 per tree.
Used by YOU for construction projects, certain Champion House furniture, and a few weapons/armor.
Used by METALWORKER to make tools, weapons, and handles.
Used by CARPENTER to make furniture for village houses.

Quality stone - mine grey rocks to get 2 per rock.
Used by YOU for construction projects, certain Champion House furniture, and a few weapons.
Used by METALWORKER to make tools, weapons, and handles.
Used by STONEMASON to make chimneys for village houses.

$$ Cooked Meals - Assign dwarves as COOKS or INNKEEPERS to make them automatically.
Used by villagers as food, to maintain their happiness.

$$ Veggies - assign dwarves as FARMERS, tell them to grow corn, tomato, or carrot.
Used by villagers to eat raw if there are no cooked meals available.
Used by TAVERN and COOKHOUSE to produce cooked meals.

$$ Meat - Assign dwarves as HUNTERS or FISHERMEN to gather some.
Used by villagers to eat raw if there are no cooked meals available.
Used by TAVERN and COOKHOUSE to produce cooked meals.

$$ Handles - made automatically by METALWORKER.
Used by METALWORKER to make tools and weapons.
Used by CARPENTER to make certain village furniture.

$$ Tools - made automatically by METALWORKER
Used by METALWORKER to make weapons.
Used by CARPENTER and STONEMASON to build village furniture.
Possibly used by Tailor to make clothing, but I'm not sure about this.

$$ Weapons - made automatically by METALWORKER
I'm not sure what, if any, purpose the village weapons serve.

$$ Beer - Assign dwarves as BREWERS to make it automatically.
Used by TAVERN or BREWERY to maintain villager happiness.

$$ Leather - Loot chests, or assign dwarves as Hunters to collect some.
Used by YOU for making weapons and armor, and certain Champion House furniture.
Used by TAILOR to make clothing.
Used by METALWORKER to make tools, weapons, and handles.

$$ Clothing - made automatically by TAILOR.
Used by villagers to maintain their happiness level.

$$ Coal - assign villagers as Miners and tell them to gather coal instead of metal ore.
Used to heat all the houses in the village, increases villager happiness.

$$ Cotton - Assign dwarves as FARMERS and tell them to grow cotton.
Used by TAILOR to make clothing.

$$ Wheat - Assign dwarves as FARMERS and tell them to grow wheat.
Used by BREWERS to make beer.

Roses, seeds - find in the wilderness.
Used by YOU to make certain village decoration items (trees, shrubs, firefly lanterns).

White Marble - trade with Callie at endgame.
Used by YOU to build a few Champion House furniture items and such.




Metal Ores - assign dwarves as MINERS. Comes in copper, iron, gold, jade, diamond, and bloodstone varieties.
Used by YOU to make metal ingots and certain Champion House furniture items.
Used by METALWORKER to make certain tools, weapons, and handles.

$$ Mushrooms and other herbs - Loot chests, find in the wilderness, or assign HERBALISTS to grow.
Used by YOU to make potions.

Beehives, fireflies - find in the wilderness.
Used by YOU to make certain village decoration items (trees, shrubs, firefly lanterns).

Black Marble - trade with Callie at endgame.
Used by YOU to build a few Champion House furniture items and such.



Metal Ingots - made by YOU at the Tinker, Mage, Metalworker, Weaponsmith, Armorer, or Carpenter shops. Comes in copper, iron, gold, jade, diamond, and bloodstone varieties.
Used by YOU to build certain Champion House furniture, new weapons and armor, and teleport stones.

Wood - chop down trees on Orc Island
Used by YOU on Orc Island only, to build axe upgrades and new orc tents.

Sandstone - mine rocks on Orc Island
Used by YOU on Orc Island only, to build axe upgrades and new orc tents.

Obsidian - defeat golems and open loot chests on Orc Island.
Used by YOU on Orc Island only, to build axe upgrades and new orc tents.

When you build a new house, you invite two additional Dwarves to live in your village. Then you can give each Dwarf a job. Each Dwarf has a happiness statistic that will add to the village's overall happiness rating. Happiness of your residents can change over time, and it will depend on a lot of factors.

• Have you died recently? If so, debuff to happiness.
  
• Is their house getting enough coal to keep it WARM? Debuff if not, buff if so.
  
• Is their house within range of BEER (brewery or tavern)? They like beer.
  
• Is their house within range of CLOTHING (tailor shop)? They like clean fresh clothes.
  
• Is their house within range of FOOD (tavern or cookhouse)? Dwarves gotta eat.
  
• Is their house within range of WATER (a well)?
  
• Is their house CLEAN (within range of a sewer)?
  
• Is the area around their house BEAUTIFUL (lights, fountains, trees/shrubs, etc.)?
  
• Does their house have a piece of furniture from a special quest (i.e. glow-mushroom or heirloom books)? Those give buffs to happiness.
  
• Is their house made of wood (just okay) or stone (better)?
  
• How much FURNITURE is in their house (from carpenter)?
  
• Does their house have a FIREPLACE (from stonemason)?
  
• And there is a temporary buff when they first arrive in town, too.
  
• Is that particular dwarf having a good (buff) or bad (debuff) day? This is randomized and will reset in a day or two.
  
• Certain quests can effect happiness until you complete them, too. For example, if there are monsters living in your sewers everyone gets -25 happiness until you kill all the monsters because they have clogged up the sewer system.

High happiness makes your villagers work harder and faster. Low happiness makes them less efficient. A really bad mood will make them stop working altogether. For the Dwarves who are responsible for creating your weapons, shield, and armor a bad mood will make them more likely to create poor quality stuff; a good mood will make them more likely to create better quality ("Masterwork") stuff for you. So it is in your best interest to build your village in such a way that everyone has at least a little bit of buff on their mood towards the happy end of the scale.

If you see a resident is "having a bad day" you can talk to them and cheer them up to reverse the debuff. Or ignore it and they go back to normal the next day. But while they are in a bad mood, they might be rude to their neighbors and that bad mood can spread. Likewise, sometimes villagers have a good day so they get a happiness buff. Occasionally they do something nice like telling a joke to their neighbors which gives the neighbor a buff to happiness.

Mood is an interesting mechanic, pretty easy to manipulate just by playing the game normally, but it doesn't have such a big impact that it's something you'll have to worry about constantly.

Really your biggest source of frustration in this game will be finding enough GOLD to build your village fast enough... sometimes you'll be sitting around for a day or two waiting for another quest to pop up so you can do it and get paid. Or spend a couple of days running around the woods hunting enemies to steal the gold from their loot chests. Or make extra armor and sell it to Shady for a few extra gold coins. Yep, gold is a bigger factor than mood modifiers in this game. Even so, things go a bit more smoothly if you keep your villagers happy.

When you bring a new Dwarf to town by building a house, you can choose TWO of THREE randomized Dwarves to live there. Each of them will have a randomized name, sex, and appearance. They will also each have two randomized traits that will affect their mood and how well they do certain jobs. Some traits are good, some are bad, and some depend what job you assign that Dwarf to perform for your village.

• WORKERS: they gather wood and stone so you can make further construction possible.
  
• WOOD CHOPPERS: They allow trees to regrow faster after your workers cut them down. TRAINERS: Pay them a fee to reset your skill points from leveling up, so you can choose different skills this time.
  
• ALCHEMISTS: Bring them the right ingredients and they will make potions for you.
  
• Red potions restore health, blue potions restore stamina.
  
• METALWORKERS: they build copper and iron weapons and armor, as well as certain decorations for your Champion House and level 1 health and stamina potions. They also make Handles, Tools, and Weapons for the villagers to use.
  
• WEAPONSMITHS: they make weapons and shields from advanced metal ingots.
  
• ARMORSMITHS: they make armor from advanced metal ingots.
  
• TINKERS: they add GEMS to your weapon to give it magical effects in combat.
  
• MAGES: they sell diamond and bloodstone teleportation crystals, turn diamond and bloodstone ore into ingots, and they can turn any metal ingot into a lower-tier ingot (for example they convert a few diamond ingots to gold, jade, iron, or copper ingots... but they cannot turn diamond ingots into bloodstone).
  
• CARPENTERS: can craft decorations for your Champion House, and make furniture for villager homes.
  
• STONEMASONS: will sell you the jade and gold Teleportation Crystals, but their main purpose is to make fireplaces for villagers' homes.
  
• TAILORS: will sell you trophies and rugs to decorate your Champion House, and dye to change your clothes. Their main purpose is using leather and cotton to make clothing for villagers.
  
• HUNTERS: gather leather for the village, and occasionally also raw meat.
  
• FISHERMEN: gather raw meat for the village. Occasionally they find gold for you, too.
  
• COOKS: they use raw meat and raw veggies to make meals for the villagers. Villagers will eat raw food but they will not be happy about it, they prefer a cooked meal.
  
• BREWERS: they use wheat to make beer for the villagers. Bonus to villager happiness if the brewery is built near an apiary. ("Apiary" is a fancy name for a man-made beehive where you can collect honey.)
  
• TAVERN KEEPERS: they provide beer and meals to the villagers, anyone who lives near the Tavern gets a happiness buff in addition to the normal food/beer buffs.
  
• HERBALISTS: each one has THREE gardens where you can choose which herbs (potion ingredients) to grow. They are placed directly into the village storage when ready.
  
• HEALERS: bring them the right herbs and they will produce better quality herbs that you need in order to purchase the level 5 and 6 potions from the Alchemist.
  
• FARMERS: each one has FOUR gardens where you can choose which crops to grow. Corn, tomatoes, and carrots produce raw veggies. Cotton is used to make clothes at the Tailor Shop. Wheat is used to make beer at the Brewery.

• This first list is for the traits that affect specific jobs.
  
• SCHOLAR - happiness buff if they work as a Mage. Debuff if they work as farmer, worker, miner, herbalist, carpenter, stonemason, brewer, hunter, or fisherman. Try to avoid this one, your town really only needs one Mage.
  
• OAF - no debuffs. Buff for working as a Worker or Miner.
  
• CLAUSTROPHOBIC - debuff for working as a Miner
  
• MOLE - no debuffs. Buff for working as a Miner.
  
• GREEN THUMB - buff for working as Farmer or Herbalist, plus crops grow faster. No debuffs
  
• ANiMAL LOVER - debuff for working as Hunter or Fisherman
  
• CLUMSY - no happiness effect. Makes "poor quality" equipment more often if their job is Metalworker, Armorsmith, or Weaponsmith.
  
• METICULOUS - no happiness effect. Makes "masterwork" equipment more often if their job is Metalworker, Armorsmith, or Weaponsmith.
  
• FOODIE - no happiness effect. If working as a Cook, will sometimes make extra meals.

This second list is for traits that affect pretty much any job.

• HUNGRY - eats more food than regular Dwarves, so you need to grow/cook more food to feed him.
  
• MESSY - ruins clothing faster than regular Dwarves, so you have to make more clothes.
  
• TRENDY - ruins clothing more slowly than regular Dwarves so you don't have to make as much.
  
• DRUNK - drinks more beer than regular Dwarves so you have to make extra beer for them.
  
• SLEEPY - frequently needs to go home for a nap, will stop working to do so
  
• GRUMPY - more likely to "have a bad day" for temporary happiness debuff
  
• HAPPY - more likely to "have a good day" for temporary happiness buff
  
• SLOW - walks much more slowly than a regular Dwarf
  
• FAST - walks much faster than a regular Dwarf; useful for jobs that have to carry things to/from the Storehouse all the time.
  
• LAZY - works more slowly than a regular Dwarf, gathers/produces resources more slowly
  
• HARD WORKER - works faster than a regular Dwarf, gathers/produces resources more quickly
  
• SICKLY - more likely to get sick (stops working) and trigger the side quest to go get herbs.
  
• HEALTHY - less likely to get sick and trigger that side quest.
  
• WEAK - has noodles for arms, carries less resources than a regular Dwarf.
  
• STRONG - built like a dump truck, carries more resources than a regular Dwarf.
  

And here is a chart showing which traits are good or bad for each type of job.

DO NOT try to play with a controller, they don't work properly and not all functions are mapped to controller buttons. Play with keyboard/mouse for the best experience.

To open the "mayor" menu, which allows you to assign jobs to your villagers, change the ore that miners dig for, or swap between stone and wood gathering for workers:
Press "L" while inside the village

To open your "backpack" and see what items you're carrying with you:
Press "I" from anywhere

To open the "storage" menu and view the village's stored items:
enter a storage shed, turn right to face the log pile, and press "F" on the dropoff point
Click the arrow buttons to move items between your backpack and town storage.
CTRL + L-Click to move an entire stack of items

To open the "build" menu to move or build structures in your village:
Press "P" while inside the village

In the build menu...
WASD or arrow keys moves the village map
+/- zooms the map in/out (use the numpad)
Q/E rotates the village map
L-Shift toggles camera movement speed
click an item on the menu to see a description and price
CTRL + R-click on a building to open its options menu to change its roof color etc, upgrade it, or demolish it. NOTE: houses, storehouses, farms, herbalists, and sewers CANNOT be demolished..
ALT + R-click on a building to pick it up to rotate it or move it.
Click the "Road Placement" button to view options for building paths and roads
(road placement requires you to build a stonemason first)
Click an item from the building list and then click "craft" to buy a blueprint, then move the blueprint where you want it, press Z/C to rotate it properly, and L-click to build it.

Talk to a shopkeeper about "Craft" to open their shop menu. In the shop menu:
click on an item to view its description and price, then click "Craft" to sell it.
Or SHIFT + L-CLICK the "Craft" button to buy as many as you can of that item.



To open the "skills" menu, allowing you to view the skill tree and allocate skill points:
Press "X" while outside the village

To open your "backpack" and see what items you're carrying with you:
Press "I" from anywhere
drag weapons and armor from your backpack onto the body slots to the right to equip them
drag potions and teleport stones from your backpack onto the numbered belt slots to prepare them, then close the menu and press that slot's number to use the item

View a rudimentary map of the island:
M

Move yourself around:
WASD, or arrow keys

Dodge-roll: Backward
double-tap W, or press SHIFT + W

Dodge-roll Left:
double-tap A, or press Q

Dodge-roll Right:
double-tap D, or press E

Walk/Sprint toggle:
Caps Lock

Sprint (temporary)
Hold LShift while moving

Jump:
Spacebar
Good for getting unstuck from weird rocks or fences, but not much else.

Basic attack
L-click
Hold the button down to keep attacking
You can dodge-roll to cancel an attack

Block (must have a shield equipped)
R-click
Hold the button to keep blocking
You cannot move or dodge-roll while blocking

Toggle mouse function from "turn the camera view" to "move the on-screen cursor":
C

Interact with on-screen objects such as treasure chests
F

Talk to people:
R

Use an item on your belt:
Press the number assigned to that slot

Cycle through your quest list, to choose which quest shows markers on your compass:
Tab

Selling things to Shaydee outside of town:
Shaydee ONLY buys weapons, armor, shields, pickaxes, and hammers.
Drag the item from your backpack into his "Sell" menu, you can sell up to four items at a time.
Click the "Sell" button to sell those items and receive the specified amount of GOLD as payment.

The village is separated into three regions:

• Two small areas along the cliffs where you can only build MINES.
  
• The beach where you can only build FISHING PIERS.
  
• The main plot where you can build anything/everything else.

This will be your village, so I'm not going to tell you which grid coordinates are best for which structure. This will just be some general tips on how to build more efficiently.

• Construction will use up materials from your pack first, then storage.
  
• Walls don't serve much of a purpose but have a high cost - save them for the VERY LAST THINGS you build near the end of the game.
  
• If you want to build walls, they are quite wide so plan accordingly.
  
• You can climb up onto the walls from the towers on either side of the main gate.
  
• Farms produce raw vegetables from carrots, tomatoes, and corn; which your villagers will eat but they prefer cooked food.
  
• Farms can also produce wheat for your brewery to make beer.
  
• Farms can also produce cotton for your tailor to make clothing.
  
• Select your farm's product (choose FOUR) by talking to the farmer responsible for that plot, or by selecting that farmer in the villager management menu.
  
• Farms are best built in a block or row, all connected. There are a few side quests that affect ALL the farms and this saves you from needing to run across the whole village every time. So plan on saving a big section for several connected farms. You probably want 7 farms eventually.
  
• If you build a farm, IMMEDIATELY get a scarecrow from the Carpenter and install it in the farm. Otherwise you'll frequently get attacked by monsters on the farm which will prevent it from growing any crops until you kill all the monsters.
  
• Fishing and Hunting produce raw meat, which your villagers will eat but they prefer cooked food. You'll probably have 2 hunters and 2 fishermen.
  
• Hunting barely brings home any meat, usually only gets Leather - which you need to make armor AND your tailor needs it to make clothing for the village.
  
• Each new house brings two new Dwarves, choose two out of three random selections each with randomized traits. You'll likely end up with 20 houses.
  
• Each house gets a happiness buff for: coal (warmth), sewer (cleanliness), well (water), and any decorative (beauty) structure. If any are missing, you lose the buff. If coal runs out you get a happiness debuff for having a cold house.
  
• Coal is the only housing buff that affects ALL HOUSES on the map. The other ones each have an effective radius shown in a blue circle when you build that item.
  
• Houses also need proximity to: beer (tavern or brewery), clothing (tailor), food (tavern or cooking shop). If any of these is out of stock or is too far from the house, residents get happiness debuff.
  
• Barracks has only one purpose: pay gold to reset your skill points. Not a necessary building unless you messed up your level-up progress.
  
• Woodchopper just makes trees regrow faster; completely unnecessary since they already regrow fairly quickly.
  
• Carpenter and Stonemason both build certain furniture items for the houses that you build. Furniture provides happiness buff for residents but mostly it just looks nice when you go into the house to see what it looks like. This can be toggled on or off, if you want to save stone and wood resources turn it off from the mayor menu (V by default)
  
• Metalworker, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Tinker, and Mage Tower all provide you with equipment crafting services for your own adventuring gear. Try to keep them close together so you don't have to run around the whole village every time you want to shop for upgrades.
  
• Metalworker also builds Handles, Tools, and Weapons for the villagers to use. You might want 2 of them.
  
• Champion's House - this is where you will live. You can build furniture for it at the Carpenter and Tailor shops. There are chests for storing your items, lots of decorations and lighting options, and even a bed. Build the bed first - sleep in it to recover full health and stamina without using a potion.
  
• Teleport Platform - the stones used for teleportation are expensive and only have a certain number of uses before they disappear. The stonemason can craft the most basic ones, the mage tower makes better ones.
  
• You can build several mines. Each one can hire ONE miner and you can choose which ore (or coal) you want each miner to dig for. You can only choose metals that you already found and used. FIrst mine requires a piece of copper, second mine requires a piece of iron, third mine requires a piece of jade, etc. You can assign several miners to the same ore to get it faster. Eventually you will have 6 mines, each requires one miner.
  
• Various shopkeepers will use the ore gathered by your miners to make things that the town needs. So if you see your ore resources dropping, this is why. Once they are fully stocked on town goods they will stop using ore. Town goods = handles, weapons, tools, and some furniture.
  
• Breweries need wheat to make beer. You'll probably want 2 breweries.
  
• Taverns use beer from breweries as well as raw meat and raw veggies. They provide beer AND meals to villagers who live nearby.
  
• Healers use alcohol from breweries, too. They let you buy better potion ingredients.
  
• Cookhouse uses raw meat and raw veggies to make meals. You'll want about 2 of them.
  
• You can build up to three storage buildings. Each one adds to your available maximum storage limits, so if you find that your workers have nothing to do because you're maxed out at 45 stone and 45 wood, consider building a second storage building to give you a cap of 90 stone and wood.
  
• If you increase your storage limit, your craftsmen will go a little bit crazy at first trying to make enough handles, weapons, meals, clothes, etc. to fill up your whole storage space.
  
• Herbalists are like farms; choose which crop you want it to grow. But instead of veggies they grow herbs as potion ingredients. Each has three gardens. You probably want 2 of them.
  
• Alchemists use herbs to brew potions. The only potions in this game will either heal your HP or restore your stamina. Each comes in several different strengths that require a different recipe.
  
• Tailor shops use cotton and leather to make clothing for your villagers AND some furniture and clothing dye for you. You probably will want two of them.
  
• Stone houses give more happiness than wood houses.
  
• Stone houses are so big you CANNOT run between them if you don't leave a space, I like to leave two squares open as a main road after every third house in a row.
  
• If you build a wood house, later you can upgrade it to stone but it costs extra resources. It is cheaper to just build a stone house from the start.
  
• If you build BOTH a carpenter and stonemason, then your cost for houses will be significantly reduced. Get those two shops built as soon as possible to save some gold! In fact, you might want 2 of each.
  
• Any left-over Dwarves will be assigned as Workers who will gather stone and wood for your construction efforts. If you run out of Workers, build another House.
  
• Build your warehouses near trees, rocks, and mines for faster gathering (workers and miners don't need to walk so far with their loads).
  
• Build a warehouse in each section of the village so that workers don't have to run all the way across town to pickup wood and stone to build with.
  
• All of your warehouses share the same inventory. You can put a log in one warehouse, and pull it out of the other warehouse if you want to. Imagine they're connected by a magical pocket dimension so that all three warehouses are actually gates to the same pile of stuff.

There are a lot of buildings available in this game. Eventually you'll end up with this many things, where the numbers A (1) x B are the SIZE of the building and the (1) tells you to add one extra row on that side for a road in front of the building. So houses are 8 (1) x 8 meaning it's an 8 row x 8 column square but one side needs an extra row for a road in front of the door so it's actually 9 x 8 total.

• 6 mines (they all fit along the ridge north of the main village)
  
• 2 or 3 cookhouses
  
• 2 or 3 tailors
  
• 2 or 3 breweries
  
• 2 or 3 hunters
  
• 2 or 3 fishing piers
  
• 2 metalworkers - 8 (1) x 11
  
• 2 or 3 herbalists
  
• 7 farms (possibly as many as 9)
  
• 20 - 22 houses - 8 (1) x 8
  
• 3 Storehouses - 12 (1) x 8
  
• 1 or 2 Carpenters
  
• 1 or 2 Stonemasons
  
• 0 or 1 Woodchoppers
  
• 0 or 1 Barracks
  
• 1 Alchemist
  
• 1 Weaponsmith
  
• 1 Armorsmith
  
• 1 Tinker
  
• 1 Mage Tower
  
• 1 Tavern
  
• 1 Infirmary
  
• plus a bunch of sewers, wells, decorative items, and maybe even walls and gates.

The mines have their own special zone at the north end of town, and the fishing piers go on the beach south of town. Everything else has to fit within a 130 (E-W) x 80 (N-S) grid for the main village. This looks like a pretty big area when you first start, but by the time you're done it will feel pretty cramped. So it's important to have some kind of plan for how to arrange your village right.

As you go, you'll see that most buildings require quite a bit of wood and stone, as well as a lot of gold. Gold will be the number one factor that limits your progress in this game. Metal ores to make better weapons and armor will be the second limiting factor. Gold is only found in three ways:

• Sell weapons and armor to Shaydee
  
• Open loot chests after killing enemy camps
  
• Completing quests

Enemies will respawn but it takes a couple of days. There are not so many of them that you can just grind and farm for gold like crazy. For this reason, the most useful skills you can get at levelup are the ones that give you more gold from loot chests.

When you are starting out, the process of building a village might seem a bit daunting. So to help you out, here is my suggested order to build your early construction projects. Note that the first few of these are "required" by the tutorial, but after you have your Metalworker in place the game basically allows you to build whatever you want.

1. Storehouse 1
   
2. House 1
   
3. House 2
   
4. Metalworker 1
   
5. Mine 1
   
6. House 3
   
7. Carpenter 1
   
8. Stonemason 1
   
9. House 4 (now that you have both a carpenter and stonemason, house prices get discounts!)
   
10. Farm 1 (all veggies, no wheat or cotton)
    
11. Farm 2 (all veggies, no wheat or cotton)
    
12. House 5
    
13. Hunter 1
    
14. House 6
    
15. Cookhouse 1
    
16. Tailor 1
    
17. Farm 3 (all cotton, no wheat or veggies)
    
18. House 7
    
19. Woodchopper 1 (completely OPTIONAL, not actually recommended since it's kind of a waste; consider a second carpenter or stonemason instead)
    
20. Mine 2
    
21. Storehouse 2
    
22. House 8
    
23. Fishing Pier 1
    
24. Brewery 1
    
25. Farm 4 (all wheat, no cotton or veggies)
    
26. House 9
    
27. Alchemist
    
28. House 10
    
29. Barracks (completely OPTIONAL, not actually recommended unless you're unhappy with your skills you picked at levleups, consider a second carpenter or stonemason instead
    
30. Mine 3
    
31. House 11
    
32. Weaponsmith
    
33. Armorsmith
    
34. House 12
    
35. Farm 5 (all veggies, no cotton or wheat)
    
36. Farm 6 (two cotton, two wheat)
    
37. House 13
    
38. Cookhouse 2
    
39. House 14
    
40. Hunter 2
    
41. Fishing Pier 2
    
42. Storehouse 3
    
43. Tavern
    
44. House 15
    
45. House 16
    
46. Mine 4
    
47. Herbalist 1
    
48. Teleportation Platform (completely OPTIONAL, it lets you use teleportation stones from anywhere to return to the village AND it does NOT require any dwarves assigned to work)
    
49. Tinker
    
50. House 17
    
51. Infirmary
    
52. Herbalist 2
    
53. House 18
    
54. Farm 7 (contents depend on what you need: recommend 1 wheat, 1 cotton, 2 veggies).
    
55. House 19
    
56. Mine 5
    
57. Mage Tower
    
58. House 20
    
59. Mine 6
    
60. Decorate your village!
    
61. Callie's Trading Post (only available after completing her quest to defeat the Deep Delvers)
    
62. Walls (completely OPTIONAL, not actually recommended since it's kind of a waste but I guess they look kinda cool)

Remember to keep your residents' happiness up by building wells, sewers, and decorative items near all the houses AND an apiary near the breweries. Just don't go crazy with decorating until after you have built the Mage Tower or else you'll run out of gold pretty quickly. But do bear in mind this plan is just a SUGGESTION based on how I played the game. If you prefer to do it a different way, feel free to try.

I like to build my houses in little neighborhoods of six: 2 rows of 3, back to back. Leave an alley one space wide between the rows so your villagers don't get stuck trying to walk back there. And leave a "main road" 2 or 3 squares wide after every third house on the block, so you and your villagers can move around town freely. Then I group two of these housing blocks in a row because when they are clustered like that it is easier to reach all of them within the effective radius of sewers and wells and such. Then you can build your support structures (wells, sewers, tailors, etc.) around that neighborhood of 12 houses.

I also like to keep my farms in a single block so that when side quests that make me pick herbs from EVERY farm pop up I don't have to run all over the village like a crazy person.

If you are smart, you can put your Tavern in a location that is central to all 20 houses, so they all gain the happiness boost from having lunch in the tavern. Then you only need to build a single tavern. But still build at least two breweries and cookhouses, of course.

In a nutshell, XP lets you level up so you can unlock new skills. You get one skill point per level.
There is a HARD CAP of 35 skill points available in the game so choose your skills wisely. There are 54 skills you can learn and you can only learn 36 of them total (because Lightning 1 will be unlocked FOR FREE during the main quest), but Lightning 2 and 3 will cost you regular skill points if you want them. Leveling up has no effect on your health, attack damage, or stamina though; it is only for earning skill points. You gain experience points in a few ways in this game:

• Building structures in your village
  
• Completing quests
  
• Murdering your enemies

When you gain enough XP, your character gains a level and you get to choose a new skill to unlock. There are three categories of skills: attack, defend, and adventure. All of the skills provide a nice description if you mouse over the icon, so I will not list them all here. The attack category basically adds more special attacks, or increases the power of your special attacks, It also is home to the Lightning skill, which you learn from a story quest before you are able to use it. It basically throws a bolt of lighting in front of you that knocks all the enemies in the area down. The defend category reduces the stamina cost for your defensive actions (blocking and rolling) as well as reducing damage from attacks. The adventure category does a few different things: makes you run faster, provides a permanent boost to village happiness, and gives a chance to find extra gold or items in loot chests after every battle. Honestly, those loot bonuses in the Adventure category are THE BEST in the game, with Power Attack and Shield Break from the attack category close behind.

Hit the SKILL MENU button (X key by default) now and look at the skill menu. Notice how the skill tree is divided into different tiers? The column on the left tells you how many HOUSES you have to construct in your village in order to open that row of skills for upgrading. That's right, progression down the skill tree is made by building houses, not by XP level. XP level only determines how many skill points you can use to unlock new skills. Also, certain skills have three strength levels. You must unlock the first one before the second, and the second before the third.

Now a brief description of the combat skills that you have to manually activate and spend stamina each time you use them:

• Block - use your shield to avoid damage, not effective against magic or power attacks (10 stamina)
  
• Roll - dodge out of the way, useful for magic attacks or power attacks (10 stamina)
  
• Kick - knock down a single enemy straight in front of you. (20 stamina I THINK)
  
• Dash - like Kick but from a running start (20 stamina I THINK)
  
• Shield Bash - like Kick but hit the button after a successful block with your shield (20 stamina)
  
• Power Attack - depends on your weapon type (50 stamina)
  
• Shield Break - stun an enemy and destroy his shield, only used on enemies that carry shields
  
• Confuse - stun an enemy and remove a magical buff, only used on enemies that have had their defense or attack buffed by a spell
  
• Lightning - knocks down everyone in front of you and removes elemental shields from deep delvers (100 stamina)

For skills with three power levels, additional levels will increase the damage done as well as decrease the stamina used.


XP levels have NO EFFECT on your health, attack damage, or stamina levels. Your maximum stamina will always be constant at 100, but certain skills can reduce the stamina cost of your actions in battle. Your attack damage and maximum health are affected by the equipment you wear. As you gain access to better metal ores, you will notice enemies get TOUGHER. They take more hits to kill, and they do more damage per hit so you die faster. The only way to keep up with them is to upgrade your equipment - your weapons and armor. All armor adds to your maximum health. That is all it does for you. The weapon you wield determines how much damage you do. You can also visit the TInker to put an elemental enchantment on your weapon, but I am not sure what effects that actually has in battle. (Last I heard this feature was purely aesthetic.) You can have two shoulder pads, two bracers, a weapon, a shield, and a helmet equipped. You can also bring a pick to mine stone and ore, and a hatchet to chop down trees for wood.

There are six tiers of equipment determined by the type of metal you made it from. In order of least to most powerful, they are:

1. Copper
   
2. Iron
   
3. Jade
   
4. Gold
   
5. Diamond
   
6. Bloodstone

The metalworker can create things using copper and iron. For the more advanced materials you will need to shop at the weaponsmith and armorsmith, and you will need the Mage to turn diamond and bloodstone ores into ingots for them to craft into new equipment. As you go up in metal tier, you will need some ingots from the previous tier to make the new equipment, in addition to some leather and ingots of the main metal type.

There are three levels of quality that you can get from your equipment craftsmen. First is "Poor" which has the lowest health or damage. Then is regular, which is better than poor but not great. Finally there is "Masterwork" which is fantastic. If your craftsman has the trait "Clumsy" you will get a lot of Poor quality stuff. If he has the "Meticulous" trait you will get a lot of Masterwork items.

If you are running low on gold but you have a lot of extra metal ore, turn it all into ingots and make some equipment even though you don't need it. Then take it to Shaydee (just north of your village) and he will buy weapons, armor, shields, picks, and hatchets from you. Better metal items sell for more gold. But better metal ores take longer to get out of the mines, so you're basically trading extra mining time for a few more coins.

There are three classes of weapon: axe, sword, and hammer. Each one has its own version of a power attack that you can unlock from the skill tree. Unlocking the Power Attack makes it available for all three weapons so you don't have to unlock it three separate times. The sword's special attack is a forward thrust that does a lot of damage to a single enemy (and anyone standing directly behind it). The axe swings in a wide arc, hitting everything in front of you and possibly stunning them (looks like about a 20% chance to stun, rough guess). The hammer is my personal favorite. It does a smashing attack that knocks down all enemies in your vicinity. It takes them a few seconds to get back up, so you have time to drink a potion or get a few more attacks in before they try to kill you again.

The power attack takes a decent chunk off of your stamina, and it uses your "special charge" that takes a little time to recharge. The charging process goes faster if you attack an enemy while charging. The lightning attack uses 100 stamina (your whole bar) and also uses up the special charge. The kick will knock down a single enemy. It uses a little bit of stamina as well as the special charge. Dash Attack is like the kick, except from a running start. The Shield Bash is done by hitting the kick button immediately after you block an enemy's attack, and it knocks the enemy down for a little longer than a regular kick. Shield Break and Confusion special attacks use about the same amount of stamina as a power attack, plus they also consume your special charge. When the diamond next to your stamina bar turns GREEN, your special charge is ready to do another special attack. If it is RED, that means it is charging so it is not ready yet.

This only covers your dwarf village. The orc village is listed in a separate chapter at the end of the guide. These tables are arranged according to the structure's tab on the build menu, i.e. all shops are in one table, all housing is in another table, etc. Each entry is setup to show the cost in quality wood, then quality stone, then gold. Mines are an exception because each mine requires one metal ore, and the type of ore depends how many mines you already have. The first mine requires copper ore, the second requires iron, the third requires jade, and so on. The "Notes" column gives some other useful information about the structure. If you need more wood or stone, you can just go outside of town and chop down trees or mine rocks yourself if your workers are too slow or if your storage capacity is too low. But if you need gold, there are three ways to get it and they are all pretty slow - you can complete quests, you can kill enemies and open treasure chests, or you can make weapons and armor then sell it to Shady the goblin merchant who lives in a cabin in the woods. Gold will definitely be the limiting factor on what you can build, and how quickly you can build another structure.

There are a few structures in the "MISC" tab that utilize marble. These will not initially show up on your construction menu in the village. You first have to complete the Deep Delvers quest for Callie to grant access to them.

This section covers the crafting of items you personally can use. Potions, weapons and armor, and decorative/useful items for your home.

POTIONS AND CRYSTALS
Potions are sold at the Alchemist. Potions come in two flavors - HP and Stamina. The difference between the tier number is the magnitude of points it will recover for you. Bigger numbers give better healing. Ingredients for potions can be grown at the herbalist shop, and the infirmary will take certain plants and convert them into two ingredients needed for the level 5 and 6 potions, too.

Teleport Crystals are sold at the Stonemason and the Mage Tower. Teleport crystals each carry a certain number of charges to use. You are allowed up to 6 charges per day. Jade crystal can be used once per day since it uses all 6 points. Gold uses 3 points and can be used twice per day. And so forth.


WEAPONS AND ARMOR
You can equip one weapon at a time and you have a choice between sword, axe, and hammer. Each type has a different power attack move. The sword stabs a single enemy in front of you for massive damage. The axe swings a wide arc in front of you for medium damage to everyone in range. The hammer does a jumping smash attack that does little damage but knocks down all enemies around you (even behind you). You can also equip a pick for harvesting quality stone from rocks and a hatchet for harvesting quality wood from trees. The pick is also used for harvesting the ores that you need for making metal ingots. If you have no actual weapon equipped, you will equip with your fists or with your harvesting tool. You can equip a shield to block enemy attacks, for which you can also learn the Shield Bash skill to knock an enemy down after blocking his attack. You can also equip one helmet, two bracers for your wrists, and two shoulder pads which increase your maximum health. The actual strength of the item will depend what material it is made of. Copper < Iron < Jade < Gold < Diamond < Bloodstone. (NOTE: there is no gold pick or gold hatchet in the game, it skips from Jade to Diamond for those.) Here are the price lists for each of the shops that carry this type of equipment:

Metalworker

Weaponsmith

Armorsmith

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
PAINTINGS, FURNITURE, and CLOTHING DYE
The tailor sells dye to change the color of your clothing, paintings (and the blank canvas required to make a painting) to hang on the walls of your Champion Home, and trophies made from the heads of your enemies which you can also hang in your home.

The carpenter sells beds to sleep in that recover your health and stamina, chests to store items in, and various decorations for your home. He also sells picture frames needed to make paintings at the tailor, stairs to use in your home so you can hang decorations on higher walls, and if you have the Armor Decoration Kit from the metalsmith you can combine it with a shield to make an armor set to display in your home.

During the quest for Shady to find herbs for his sick friend (I think it's called "Trick or Treat") as soon as you touch the herbs you pass out and your villagers all get kidnapped! You need Shady's help to get to the island where the orcs are holding them as slave laborers in their obsidian mines. Once you get in the boat, you CANNOT RETURN until you clear the entire questline with the orcs. So here's some advice to help you prepare before you touch those herbs:

• You will build a village for the orcs similar to how you build one for the dwarves. But they use different resources so don't bring any Quality Wood or Quality Stone with you. You won't need it.
  
• Bring at least 7 pieces of Leather - for crafting upgraded axes for the orcs to use during a battle.
  
• If you don't have an alchemist shop built yet, bring all your mushrooms and plants with you because you will build one in the orc village and they can make potions for you using your botanical ingredients.
  
• During the course of the orc quests you will only need a few materials: Desert Wood, Sandstone, and Obsidian.
  
• Obsidian Golems live in the caves outside the village, they only appear during a specific quest and only after talking to the scout Plebels near the cave.
  
• There are two caves with obsidian, each cave has its own quest.
  
• There are no regular enemies here. You only have to fight three camps of goblins for one quest, then an invasion of undead during another quest, and a few golems and orcs for other quests. On a normal day there are no enemies wandering the island.
  
• The orc chief's hut can only be entered after you defeat the orc chief in arena combat.
  
• Buying obsidian axes from the orc blacksmith is OPTIONAL. There are seven orc villagers (not shopkeepers) and you can give an obsidian axe to each of them if you want to by talking to them. If you want to do this, do it BEFORE you build both of the watchtowers because that is the start of the undead invasion. All the orcs will help you fight against the undead, but this is the only time they fight with you so this is the only time those upgraded axes will be useful. Without upgraded axes, the battle is still not too difficult but it will take longer.

You will find a few extra wood, stone, and obsidian as you go. After the quest ends, when you return to your home island you can just throw those resources away because you're done with them. Or put them in a chest as souvenirs. Whatever.

These notes are summarized along with a map of the orc island here:

At one point, Callie (from the very beginning of the game) shows up in your Champion Home. She brings tidings of an unstoppable evil that is attacking the underground dwarven city and they need your help. Eventually after you talk to her enough she takes you back underground to the dwarven fortress where you started the game. Here is a map of that fortress, it's not that complicated but maybe you just want to know where all the little side doors lead.

NOTE: Before you go with Callie, stock up on some of the GOOD healing potions. There is no bed down there for you to sleep in, and there are new enemies here that have "elemental shields" so you are supposed to use the lightning skill to remove the shield before any of your attacks will damage them..

Callie's Trading Post is a building you can construct after completing Callie's quest to defeat the enemy in the underground Dwarven city. Once you build it, Callie will work there and will trade village supplies with you. Every morning she gets a fresh load of stuff so her list of available items will be refreshed. There is NO GOLD REQUIRED here. It's a simple barter system. If you take a few things from Callie, you pay her by giving her something else.

The LEFT SIDE of her trade window shows your town's inventory. The RIGHT SIDE show's what Callie currently has. The MIDDLE column is essentially the price. If the TOTAL price for the entire transaction is RED (negative), you cannot complete the transaction. You need to balance out the trade so that the final price is zero or greater (the number will be shown in WHITE) for Callie to accept the trade.

You can go through the list and use the arrows to move items back and forth between your village's storage and Callie's inventory. When you sell an item to Callie, it increases your sale points. When you take an item from Callie, it reduces your sale points. You can buy/sell as many items simultaneously as you want to as long as they are in the inventory list. Callie does NOT (currently) run a catalog order service like Amazon or JC Penny online. LOL.

Not EVERY item will be on the list. There are a few things that Callie just doesn't feel like buying or selling. Some items on her shopping list include: meals, clothing, beer, bloodstone ore, diamond ore, gold ore, black marble, white marble, coal, and tools.