Hello one and all!

Hinterland was fun but very, very short, took me 3 days to get 100% achievements since I died a few times in hardcore, I was kinda disappointed there are only 9 achievements, its something I guess, wish they were more achievements specially tied to the scoring.

Like most reviews say, its a great concept, too bad it wasnt very developed.

You can 100% the game in a few days, I did it in three.
Having a quick trigger finger on the puase button will help tremendously not to mention infinite potions from your potion-refinery of a town you are gonna build.

You can embrace permadeath and start from scratch, its your time and enjoyment, my buddy, I rather pause and alt+f4 and hope the autosave didnt save just right before my death.

Read the manual, its short but has some useful information.
You can access the manual from the game's page in your library (right side; above the achievements section)

You can pause the game with spacebar or 'P' key.
Look at the map with Tab.
Ctrl+O for options

You lose the game when fame is zero and the time limit is up, you lose fame when you die or a follower gets slain, you decline a king's request or you boot an incapacitated follower.
You gain it by killing monsters, clearing areas and fulfilling king's requests.

The game saves automatically, you only have one save and in hardcore, if you die, your save gets deleted (cuz its game over).

There is no time limit, but if you have raiders enabled, they will come destroy your town every few days.

Enemies dont respawn in areas, the only infinite respawnable enemies are raiders, until you destroy their base, that is.

The achievements are divided between leveling and playing on [ hardcore, long game and with raiders] you can do them all in one run but it gets challenging, if you want to have an easier time, plan for multiple fast runs instead. You can win a long game in about 4 to 6 hours, probably.

I strongly recommend you play on normal and do the easy achievements while you learn the game then try your hardcore run to get the rest of the achievements. Do read my hardcore achievement sections for some notes on them.

Alright!
Lets get started! :)

Just play casually and you'll get these, perfect for your first try as you learn about the game, just get to level 12 and win.


Hero
You did it! You won! (Win a game)


Wanderer
Attain level 4


Adventurer
Attain level 8


Champion
Attain level 12

You get levels as you attack, defend and get hit but you only get good XP if you fight enemies above your level, so to grind to level 12, do not kill those Level 13 or Level 14 enemies just yet.
Once you get to 10 or 11, you will need to get hit by those while you get DEF/HP XP and use potions to stay alive, once you grab the L12 achievement, time to massacre them all.

So, you want a challenge, huh?
Try beating the game without townsfolk or you dying, no party members and no fulfilling requests.
If you do, you will unlock all of the achievements below.


Immortal
Win without Lord Dying (Hardcore). (Req:Long, Raiders)


Lone Wolf
Win without ever having anyone join party. (Req:Long, HC/Difficult, Raiders)


Guardian
Win without any townspeople or party members dying. (Req:Long, HC/Difficult, Raiders)


David
Defeat a monster more than 5 levels higher than Lord. (Req:Long, HC/Difficult, Raiders)


Disrespectful
Win without fulfilling a request. (Req:Long, HC/Difficult, Raiders)

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Easy right? Hahaha.. oh boy, you're in for a surprise.

To get Disrespectful achievement from declining king's requests and losing fame every time, you need to turn on the requests before starting the run. Do not pick a character that gets heavier penalties or else your fame might plummet and you will lose the game!

You can recruit townspeople into town for their buildings/bonuses but for lone wolf, you cannot add a follower to your fighting party. Equipping them is ok as long as they dont follow you.

As such, if you want to do everything at once, start a Long, Hardcore, Raiders enabled game and choose a good character that is good at fighting since you will have to deal with most fighting alone.

Out of them all, Disrespectful was the hardest for me, those fame penalties were brutal and you really had to play it smart and delay refusing for as long as you could while killing everything as fast as you could. I was tempted to use the graveyard to see if i could farm fame but it isnt that practical.

Hinterland is a simple game.. yeah..

Ok, so if you dont know whats going on, let me see if this quick rundown helps.

The compass will show red dots which are enemies and there is a little rectangle that moves around, thats the general direction of your town. Your town will always be in the SE corner.

The clock is next to the compass, I think some enemies are harder if its nighttime, dont worry about not being able to see in the dark, the game will always be sunny for some reason. Magic?

Once you enter a new region, the Threat Level and the remaining enemies in the area will be displayed there. Each skull is the danger level, not necessarily monster level, just the general threat of the area.

You can open the map with the tab key or by clicking on the region button, it shows the areas you need to clear to win the game. Notice the Legend button (Yellow arrow) to see what the icons in the map mean.

Note that raiders come from enemy bases, they look like towers, in the image, I have one camp to the north of my town! There will be an icon to the lower right, a red circle with swords meaning youre getting raided!

You can pause the game and then change equipment, loot corpses, level up, check your stats, administer the town or just look at the map.

You change equipment by drag and drop the item from the inventory (middle bottom) to your four equipment slots (upper right)

You can hold down the left mouse button to attack continuously.

If you use the aswd keys to move or the left mouse button held down, you will jog for a couple of seconds then go into a sprint.

When you level up, a green ball will be displayed on the upper right corner on your stat window, click on it to level up, remember to pause the game!

Black shields is your natural defense, white shields is extra defense from equipment.
When you get 10 points, your first shield or sword gets bigger, so a 12 attack would be 1 big sword followed by 2 small ones.

You can store items in town, it only has limited space though, you cant sell stuff until you build a market, so just drop them on the floor to make space if you need to. Townsfolk produce goods and store them in the town inventory, so always make sure to have some space for the new goods. (2 or 3 spaces will do). To build a market you need a manor, an Inn and a Merchant visitor.
To sell an item, just drop it to the ground and if you have a market, you will be able to sell it instead of discarding it. Most items only sell for 1G but hey, its something.

Once you build a lab, you can research potions, you can only have 1 potion effect active at a time.

The portals are broken, never figured out how to fix them so i had to run everywhere.

That's it!
Go out there, kill monsters, get gold, build your town, get gear, build more, explore, level up and dont die!

Every level you can improve a stat: +1 Attack, +1 defense or +4 HP
You also get a boost in health every time you level up a stat by using it (by attacking or taking damage, the stat background will fill up, when it does, you get extra HP and XP)

Tough: +4 to HP
Stalwart: +8HP (Needs Tough trait)
Observant: +1 more GP found in loot
Perceptive: Chance of an extra item when looting (Might need Observant)
Resourceful: +1 food daily
Agrarian: +2 food daily (might need resourceful)
Charisma: +10 Fame
Dangerous: +1 Attack
Deadly: +2 Attack, Dangerous required.
Agile: +1 Defense
Thrifty: +1 gold daily from town
Resilient: Gives you small HP regeneration(+0.4HP per second), stacks with background abilities.
Caring: Extra Regen in town (might require Resilient)
Swift: More attack speed
Fleet: Strike even faster (Swift Required)
Fortunate: Receive a random item (this usually sucks)

These are notes and some sort of walkthrough of things I did to get all achievements in a single run.
Do note that most of this is me going in blind, I will add notes if I can highlight a mistake I did, once I finish the game and in hindsight.

First, at the character creation screen, customize your game by:
Difficulty = Hardcore
Game Length = Long
Request = Red (Turned off)
Raiders = Green

For classes/background, its tricky.
Since we wont be doing any king's requests or have followers, we need someone strong in fighting that can maintain that fame above zero and maybe get some.
Since for Guardian, we cant let any townsfolk die, it would be a good idea to not have any townsfolk until we get rid of the raider's camps which wont be easy without merchants or support buildings.
Starving is also an issue but there are a couple of classes that are self-sustainable.

I have two choices here: Elf Ranger and Fallen Hero
The ranger has regen but cant wear Heavy Armor and buildings get very expensive.
The Fallen hero doesnt need to eat, immune to poison, has regen but it takes longer to level up and the king's request rewards are halved.

Well, since we wont get any requests, we dont mind that they will be halved, Fallen Hero it is.

Do note that there is a trait giving you +1 food daily, so any background can be self-sufficient with it.

Hindsight Edit: Defending the town is easy and producing food even easier, choose any fighting class you want, food production doesnt matter much when you have six hunters armed with bows helping you defend the town.

Takes a minute to create worlds, I suppose.

We start, what the.. -10 fame! 4 days to get it above zero or Im fired?!
Better Pause the game while I choose a trait.. Tough.
Ill go with a combat one, I need to kill 11 monsters before the time limit, ok, run run!
Ohh, found some.. erm.. a lot actually, Im dead.

haha.. Ok lets try again.

This time the world creation was way quicker.. chose attack then dangerous trait (to get another attack point) ok, it seems the traits you start off with are random.
Ok, need to find monsters to kill, the town is always in the SE corner, so let's go west.

Killed like six orcs and cleared the area! 1 fame per orc and +8 fame for area clear, that's enough to not get fired! Nice!


and a few minutes later, I learned a valuable lesson of checking my compass for red dots and not to engage a whole group of enemies by myself.

I also learned that saving progress then exiting will only put you back to your exact position, which is screwed. However, you can outrun them! It takes 2 or 3 seconds for your hero to go from jog to full run, but eventually you should get away.

Anyway, I dont want any of my townsfolk to die, Im confident in my townsfolk abilities to run away.

4 skeletons and necromancer raided my town, they were all level 1.. alright.
I leveled up!

As for level ups, I will go with Attack, Health, Defense, Health, repeat.
You dont need to kill an enemy to get XP, just hit him, this fact will make the Goliath achievement tricky. For now, I will focus on getting better gear and for that I needs gold.

I hired a farmer, a herder and 2 trappers so I can begin stocking up on food.

Raiders attack me every 2 or 3 days, its getting annoying.
I have to run back to town every time I get the notification but its renewable corpses/gold, Its alright.

Once I got 20 gold, went into the stat window and say YES! to the building of a manor (Im now mr. Fancy bones)

Since I picked some armor from the local orcs, I went into the Followers window and clicked Equip All so they could switch their peasant robes with leather armors.

I had a quarry nearby, I cleared it and got stone for the town, did the same with a nearby game forest.

Noticed my skellie regens 1% hp per second but in combat its sort of penalized?

So, i started wandering the wilderness, just scouting after a raid and I found a treasure chest!
It had amazing weapons for my level 3 skelly! I might go find a level 8 enemy and try and get the achievement now. Dont try the dark dwarves though.. they will mess you up.
As it turns out, I leveled with my hit and run tactics, now I need to find a level 9 enemy, these might do.. If I can lure one out.

Nope, nevermind, I barely escaped wih my life! or unlife, cant tell with my funnybones.

A few minutes later, I died to some shamans.
Restart.

This time I tried a Dwarven Warrior, I got resourcefulness as a starting trait making my run easier.
He heals .5 HP per second while in town and only .1 HP outside. When I got resilient, these went up .4HP per second.

Before, I noticed the treasure chest was in a wilderness in the middle of enemy camps, so In the new run I went to check and sure enough, there was another treasure chest there!
I found a magic chest deeper in with a +10ATK robe, nice.

Im getting better at running.

Be very careful not to go too far, you could get one shot at level 1.

My strategy for this run will be to conquer all areas level 5 or below before starting to build the town, I also need to keep the nearby raiders since they are all low level. I found out last run that if I destroy a raider base nearby, they will come with higher levels from another farther away base.
Raiders groups also stack.. if you dont kill them, more will come and a horde near your outpost will start to form.

Hindsight Edit: It doesnt matter if you leave the raiders close by be, harder ones will come anyway as you get more fame and higher levels.

Another thing I learned the hard way is to never fight against big numbers, 3 enemies tops and if more, run, exception is if they are raiders since you cant just lure one or two away from the group.

Regeneration really helped me out there, so the Resilient trait is very useful.
If you keep losing at the early stages of Hardcore, it might be a good idea to restart games until you find a nearby Herbs resource so you can get potion making going as soon as possible.

After a few days, I had my small town posse equipped with bows and good armor to help me defend against raiders. It is important to intercept the raiding squad before they start attacking the nearest building or a townsfolk. Make sure you pause the game and set the attacked townspeople to flee if they start getting attacked, they die really quick if you let them.

I also got a guard and upgraded her building to a watch tower, build it right at the entrance to town so it will be targeted by raiders, it worked great!

If you are having trouble seeing the topmost building plots in town, normalize your game window (as in, dont maximize it) or go full screen in the options.

I destroyed the raider bases on the west and left only the ones to the north to make sure I only got attacked from that direction, made my guards be the first line of defense, then my hunters with bows in the 2nd row, 3rd row was priests and mages and I did my craftsmen, production in the back. Do note that if you upgrade to watchtower or archery range, the guards wont go into battle

Im level 5 and right now Im focusing on getting enough gold to buy an herb patch, my idea is to load myself with 50 potions then go attack a level 13 enemy somewhere to get the achievement David, if you attack a high level enemy, you will level up fast, so that's why Im aiming for an enemy 7 levels above me. If I fail to do it by myself, I might need another run after this one but next time, Ill bring a party.

I also noticed you barely get XP if you fight enemies your own level or below.
Having a shrine to boost HP regen in town is great for city defense.

So, for the next hour or so I focused on tanking the raider attacks trying not to level up while getting gold and potions, hired six craftsmen for gold income and 2 more guards.

In the end I managed to kill a gnoll commander (level 14) using 8 potions, I started the fight at level 6 and leveled up TWO times during the fight, putting me at level 8 and getting the achievement when I finally killed him.

I started with 34 ATK and 15 DEF but he was hitting too hard, so I removed my berserker robes.
I leveled twice super fast and in the end I had 31 ATK, 98 HP and 28 DEF.


With that achievement out of the way, I can kill and level up to my heart's content.
When searching for the L14 enemy, I noticed a lot of enemy camps had cool treasures in the center, I was able to get them and run with the goodies. You dont have to be near a chest to loot it, just be able to see and click on it.

Alright, so my next step was to level up so I can defend the town properly.

I also found out that when building a temple of good I can pray to the fates and have a chance of equipment being produced as magical.. which is very nice. I also found out that when you build a lab, you can research all kinds of useful potions which would have helped earlier with the David fight, but thats fine.

Once you get like 3 or 4 potions made every day, youre golden.
If your health falls below half, pause, drink potions, continue the fight, you're immortal unless you get surrounded and get criticals on you one after the other. But if you fight smartly, it'll be fine.
I strongly suggest you focus on attack with a little bit of health or defense every now and then.
There are good equipment that gives a very balanced option of both atk and def, very cool.

I found a superb sword from an Orc chieftain's corpse that hit very hard and fast and then a 6ATK/5DEF robes, along with a ATK 8/3DEF helm, oof.. I was geared up!

After a while, I reached level 11 and then went to find some level 13/14 enemies to fight.
I didnt kill them right away, I used potions to stay alive while getting XP from defending until I reached level 12 and got my achievement.

Near the end, the raiding parties were so high level, I had to fight them on my own or risk my guards dying to them, the dragons that came were level 8 to level 12!

I never found a crystal ball and I did think of getting pet dragons but was afraid of losing the loner achievement, so I didnt.

At the end of the game, I got all achievements except Disrespectful, as it turns out, you need to have requests turned on and then turn down all requests for this achievement to trigger.
https://youtu.be/r-wAoST7UZo
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So I started a new game with Assassin and I had a team of hunters with me AND a dragon, it was fast and glorious.
To get a dragon, you actually need to ask its carer (dragoneer) to join you in adventure.
If the dragon dies, just let the dragoneer work for a day in his place to resurrect it, you dont need a new egg for that.